Ridley Scott to direct new Blade Runner.

Well, at least it's not a remake, or in this case, replicant. From Raw Story:

Nearly 30 years after making the sci-fi cult classic "Blade Runner," British director Ridley Scott has agreed to direct a new installment, the producers have said.

The new "Blade Runner," produced by Alcon Entertainment, will not be a remake but rather a follow-up or a prequel to the original. Scott has yet to decide between the two options, the company said in a statement.

"It would be a gross understatement to say that we are elated Ridley Scott will shepherd this iconic story into a new, exciting direction," said producers Andrew Kosove and Broderick Johnson.

"We are huge fans of Ridley's and of the original 'Blade Runner'." This is once in a lifetime project for us," they added.

No casting decisions have been made as of yet, and no release date has been fixed.

Deep history of coconuts decoded.

"Are you suggesting coconuts migrate?" From WUSTL:

The coconut (the fruit of the palm Cocos nucifera) is the Swiss Army knife of the plant kingdom; in one neat package it provides a high-calorie food, potable water, fiber that can be spun into rope, and a hard shell that can be turned into charcoal. What’s more, until it is needed for some other purpose it serves as a handy flotation device.

No wonder people from ancient Austronesians to Captain Bligh pitched a few coconuts aboard before setting sail. (The mutiny of the Bounty is supposed to have been triggered by Bligh’s harsh punishment of the theft of coconuts from the ship’s store.)

So extensively is the history of the coconut interwoven with the history of people traveling that Kenneth Olsen, a plant evolutionary biologist, didn’t expect to find much geographical structure to coconut genetics when he and his colleagues set out to examine the DNA of more than 1300 coconuts from all over the world.

“I thought it would be mostly a mish-mash,” he says, thoroughly homogenized by humans schlepping coconuts with them on their travels.

He was in for a surprise. It turned out that there are two clearly differentiated populations of coconuts, a finding that strongly suggests the coconut was brought under cultivation in two separate locations, one in the Pacific basin and the other in the Indian Ocean basin. What’s more, coconut genetics also preserve a record of prehistoric trade routes and of the colonization of the Americas.

The discoveries of the team, which included Bee Gunn, now of the Australian National University in Australia, and Luc Baudouin of the Centre International de Recherches en Agronomie pour le Développement (CIRAD) in Montpellier, France, as well as Olsen, associate professor of biology at Washington University in St. Louis, are described in the June 23 online issue of the journal PLoS One.

Tractor beam is possible with lasers.

Wake me up when we have holodecks. From BBC:

A laser can act as a "tractor beam", drawing small objects back toward the laser's source, scientists have said.

It is known that light can provide a "push", for example in solar sails that propel spacecraft on a "wind of light".

Now, in a paper on the Arxiv server, researchers from Hong Kong and China have calculated the conditions required to create a laser-based "pull".

Rather than a science fiction-style weapon, however, the approach would only work over small distances.

The effect is different from that employed in "optical tweezers" approaches, in which tiny objects can be trapped in the focus of a laser beam and moved around; this new force, the authors propose, would be one continuous pull toward the source.

And it relies on directly impinging on an object, making it distinct from an approach demonstrated in 2010 by Australian researchers whose trapping worked by heating air around a trapped particle.

The trick is not to use a standard laser beam, but rather one known as a Bessel beam, that has a precise pattern of peaks and troughs in its intensity.

Seen straight-on, a Bessel beam would look like the ripples surrounding a pebble dropped in a pond.

If such a Bessel beam were to encounter an object not head-on but at a glancing angle, the backward force can be stimulated.

As the atoms or molecules of the target absorb and re-radiate the incoming light, the fraction re-radiated forward along the beam direction can interfere and give the object a "push" back toward the source.

Scientists discover which dance moves drive the ladies wild.

From Popular Science:

For Fred Astaire, it was best done cheek to cheek. Madonna made it all about getting into the groove. And Outkast advocated shaking it like a Polaroid picture. Dancing can take many different forms. But which is proven to attract more members of the opposite sex? Science has been silent on the subject until now.

Psychologists at Northumbria University in Newcastle, the U.K., say they have used avatars shimmying to computer-generated dance sequences to pinpoint the moves most likely to win over women, reports LiveScience.

They recruited 19 men between the ages of 18 and 35 to bob to a German dance track while reflectors attached to the men’s clothing recorded their moves. The psychologists then used the motions logged by the reflectors to craft avatars – the same method the makers of Lord of the Rings employed to create the character Gollum, if you’re wondering – and then asked several dozen heterosexual women to rate the avatars. By having women watch 15-second snippets of faceless white creatures rather than actual men, the reasoning goes, the psychologists weeded out possible prejudices that might creep in because of physical attractiveness. (Because women are never prejudiced by looks in real life.)

The results, which appear in the online edition of the Royal Society’s Biology Letters, aren’t what you’d guess. The pelvis gets surprisingly short shrift. Instead, the researchers say, the difference between a bad dancer and good dancer comes down to the neck, torso, and right knee. Women tend to be drawn to men who move their upper bodies, use a lot of space, and vary their movements.

While the choice of German dance music is questionable, the researchers say the study is an important breakthrough. “Men all over the world will be interested to know what moves they can throw to attract women,” psychologist Nick Neave said. “If a man knows what the key moves are, he can get some training and improve his chances of attracting a female through his dance style.” Sense of rhythm not included.

Canada is home to Vulcan.

Live long, prosper, and watch Hockey Night. From BBC:

Fewer than 2,000 people live in the small prairie town of Vulcan in Alberta, Canada.

But the town sees its population swell every June as it trades on its name and its association with Vulcan, the home planet of Mr Spock in Star Trek.

Fans in costume, or wearing Spock's signature pointy ears, come from around the world for Vulcan's annual three-day Star Trek convention: the "VulCON Spock Days Galaxyfest".

Hard-core enthusiasts, or Trekkies, admire the town and its replica of the USS Enterprise. Vulcan even has a tourism centre designed to look like a spacecraft coming in to land.

"The whole community gets involved," says Cricket Courtney, who travelled from the US and dressed as a Klingon, the villains of the show, for last year's Galaxyfest.

"We went to the bakery where the baker was wearing his Spock ears. The mayor dresses up in a Star Trek uniform, people come and talk to you on the street, take your picture. I feel like you come home to Vulcan."

Stephen Hawking: Aliens are out there and they could kick our ass.

Maybe probing is their way of shaking hands? From News.com.au:

British astrophysicist Stephen Hawking says aliens are out there, but it could be too dangerous for humans to interact with extraterrestrial life.

Professor Hawking claims in a new documentary that intelligent alien lifeforms almost certainly exist, but warns that communicating with them could be "too risky".

With the universe made up of some 100 billion galaxies each containing hundreds of millions of stars, it was unlikely the Earth was the only place where life has evolved.

"To my mathematical brain, the numbers alone make thinking about aliens perfectly rational," he said.

"The real challenge is to work out what aliens might actually be like."

The 68-year-old scientist says a visit by extraterrestrials to Earth would be like Christopher Columbus arriving in the Americas, "which didn't turn out very well for the Native Americans".

"We only have to look at ourselves to see how intelligent life might develop into something we wouldn't want to meet," he said.

Physics professor writes open letter to Hot Tub Time Machine.

Great letter from a real professor. Click here to read the whole thing.

Dear Sirs:

As a noted time-travel expert, I looked forward to your new film, "Hot Tub Time Machine" with great anticipation. Of course, one expects a fair amount of artistic license in movies. For example, even in 1985, the most energy efficient flux capacitors could be powered at far less than 1.21 Gigawatts of electricity. It is also wholly understandable that you have ignored (or are perhaps ignorant of) the vast literature on time machine design and have therefore built yours around a hot tub, which has been shown to be unstable, rather than around the more conventional wormhole. Further, you exhibit an admirable attention to detail on many particulars. Following on the Terminator model, you correctly realize that time travel may only be undertaken while in the nude.

However, I cannot stand idly by as you subject your characters to a number of inviolable paradoxes. Considered from least to most egregious:

1. Predestination Paradoxes. In models of time travel with a single timeline, a traveler who has already experienced the past has no choice but to repeat his/her actions. It is troubling to me that you address predestination in matters of only the most trifling detail, such as whether John Cusack is destined to get a fork in the eye or the fate of Crispin Glover's arm, all while allowing gross details of history to be changed with impunity. Tinkering with history isn't a matter of "close enough." Once things are changed, however slightly, they're changed for good.

Your characters, showing better temporal intuition than you, yourselves, comment on this point, and warn of the "Butterfly Effect." A couple of observations are in order. First, the movie of that name was unspeakably terribly, and you do yourself and your characters a disservice to speak of it approvingly. Secondly, the changes wrought in the past would have so changed the future that any foreknowledge would quickly become worthless. If you don't make your fortune in the first couple of days, it's already too late. The alternate future you will have created will likely have everyone running around in goatees and building doomsday devices.

World of Warcraft predicts the future.

From New Scientist:

In his new book The Warcraft Civilization, sociologist William Sims Bainbridge argues that the online game World of Warcraft portends the future of the real world. I spoke with him to find out more.

You've spent 2300 hours in World of Warcraft (WoW). Is it more than a game?

Like Tolkien's Lord of the Rings or Wagner's The Ring of the Nibelung, WoW isn't just escapist fantasy. It's posing alternatives to the world we actually have today. It raises questions about environmentalism and colonialism; it asks how people are going to be respectful of each other in a world in which there aren't enough resources.

Tolkien believed that all good people could come together on the same side. This is one of the biggest questions that humanity faces: can we have a world consensus by which we're all partners in finding a solution? Or, like the Hoarde vs Alliance situation in WoW, are we doomed to be in separate factions competing ultimately to the death? It touches on very serious issues but in a playful way.

Hella way to describe massive numbers!

From New Scientist:

We need a way to describe super-high numbers. So says an online petition with over 20,000 supporters, advocating the prefix "hella" for 10²⁷.

Yotta (10²⁴) is the largest prefix in the International System of Units (SI), followed by zeta (10²¹), exa (10¹⁸) and peta (10¹⁵), according to Physics World

Hella units could prove handy for numbers such as the sun's wattage, according to physics student Austin Sendek of the University of California, Davis, who set up the webpage on Facebook. He writes:

"Designating a prefix for 1027 is of critical importance for scientists in all fields. This number is significant in many crucial calculations, including the wattage of the sun, distances between galaxies, or the number of atoms in a large sample."

Sendek argues that the prefix "hella" would be an appropriate way to honour the science of North California, where he is based.

BBC scriptwriters admit using Doctor Who to bring down Margaret Thatcher.

"EXTERMINATE (the Falkand Islands)." From the Daily Mail:

She famously battled the Argentine army abroad and the trade unions at home, but she never knew she was also under attack from outer space.

Left wing scriptwriters hired by the BBC during the 1980s tried to inspire a 'Tardis revolution' by using Doctor Who as propaganda to undermine Baroness Thatcher.

In one series they caricatured the then Prime Minister as a vicious and egotistical alien ruler who banned outward displays of unhappiness among her downtrodden people and used a secret police to oppress dissidents.

Other Doctor Who plots set in distant planets included thinly veiled support for the miners' strike and the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, former actors and writers on the show have admitted.

The revelations appear to confirm complaints at the time that the BBC opposed the then Mrs Thatcher's government which prompted the Tory party chairman, Norman Tebbit, to claim that the corporation was in the hands of a 'Marxist mafia'.

But so lacklustre was the extraterrestrial satire that even those who produced it admit that it had no impact on the Conservative government and nobody at the time even 'noticed or cared'.

Sylvester McCoy, the actor who played the Time Lord for two years in the 1980s, said: 'Our feeling was that Margaret Thatcher was far more terrifying than any monster the Doctor had encountered.'

Coozer-Bits.

Health: Green tea may block lung cancer.

Dorky: Most beautiful math structure appears in lab for first time.

Film: How to make a Michael Cera movie.

Cthulhu Watch: 2010 summed up so far in squid.

Yipes: Monster Great White shark, longer than a bus, eats swimmer.

Cthulhu Watch: Mysterious tentacled creature washes up in British Columbia.

Patrick Stewart to be knighted.

Yet another snub to Scott Bakula. From the Daily Record:

Star Trek actor Patrick Stewart is to be knighted in the New Year's Honours.

The 69-year-old movie star and thespian will be one of the big names in the honours list announced by the Queen.

Patrick has had a 50-year career in theatre and films including 16 years with the Royal Shakespeare Company.

But he is best known as Captain Jean-Luc Picard in Star Trek: The Next Generation and Professor Charles Xavier in the X-Men films.

Senior sources said the Queen was an admirer of the famously bald star.

Japanese man weds video game character.

Just stay away from Rikku, buddy. She's mine. From Boing Boing:

On Sunday, a man named Sal9000 married the love of his life. Her name is Nene Anegasaki, and she lives inside of a Nintendo DS video game called Love Plus. The wedding took place during a Make: Japan meet-up held at the Tokyo Institute of Technology. In attendance were a live audience, an MC, the bride's virtual video game girlfriend — who made a speech — and a real human priest.

Jedi may sue Tesco over hood ban.

I love the corporate response from Tesco. From Ananova:

A Jedi church leader is considering legal action after he was asked to leave a supermarket for wearing his hood.

Daniel Jones, 23, from Holyhead in North Wales, who founded the International Church of Jediism, claims Tesco in Bangor victimised him for his beliefs, reports the Daily Post.

He said: "It states in our Jedi doctrination that I can wear headwear. It just covers the back of my head.

"You have a choice of wearing headwear in your home or at work but you have to wear a cover for your head when you are in public."

Daniel, who works in Bangor, said he'd gone to the store to buy something to eat during his lunch-break but was told by staff to leave unless he took his hood off.

"They said: "Take it off and I said: "No, its part of my religion. It's part of my religious right." I gave them a Jedi church business card," he said.

Daniel has now made an official complaint and is seeking legal advice.

"It was discrimination. They were making a joke against me. I was really upset. Nobody should be treated like that," he moaned.

A Tesco spokesperson said: "Jedis are very welcome to shop in our stores although we would ask them to remove their hoods.

"Obi-Wan Kenobi, Yoda and Luke Skywalker all appeared hoodless without ever going over to the Dark Side and we are only aware of the Emperor as one who never removed his hood."

Coozer-Bits.

Aww: Swan takes babies under wing for trip across pond.

D'oh: Catholic bank owned shares in birth control pill companies.

Yipes: Scorned women superglue cheating husband's member.

ZombieWatch: Amusement park workers sent to Zombie Boot Camp (with video).

Duh: Video gamers hooked for life.

Dorky: 5 snacks that are shaped like the universe.

Coozer-Bits.

RUW: Panasonic creates robot that dispenses drugs.

Yipes: Super prickly cacti spreading in Australia. One prick can puncture a truck tire!

Sports: Yankees fan wins suit after being thrown out for pee break during "God Bless America."

Health: Nutrition labeling systems becoming more confusing, meaningless.

Misc: Britain launches full-scale review of its armed forces.

Dorky: Outer space gets its own internet. Uranus porn!

Aww: Dogs communicate where to find tasty treats through sniffing breath.

Yipes: Japan scientists to breed "super tuna"!

Politics: Half TRILLION dollar transportation bill mostly bipartisan earmarks and corruption.

Goldblum: Behind the fake report of The Goldblum's impossible demise.

Misc: Al Gore talks about something other than Sarah Palin or Michael Jackson. I guess it's not important.

Dorky: 15 science fiction film sequels that don't utterly suck.

Duh: Costa Rica is the world's happiest place.

Yipes: Top-class restaurant opens up inside of prison.

Science: Why were dinosaurs so big anyway?

Aww: Study: Self-help programs just make you feel worse.

Curse word on school roof spotted from space.

From LiveScience:

Students at a UK grammar school used bricks to spell out a certain word for a certain bit of male anatomy (co*k), on the school's roof. Then it was spotted by satellite, in a Google Earth image, according to The Register.

The headmaster requested it be taken down. But hey, maybe the kids were just doing some kind of cosmic rooster worship?

Meantime, what can't be seen from space these days? The military has spy satellites with enough resolution to actually spot that human anatomy, er, in the flesh, were it to be displayed thusly. Google Earth uses images that aren't so crisp, yet a search (yes, on Google, but we're not going to provide the links here...) will reveal lots of, well, sunbathers.

The millionth word in English is... Web 2.0.

And yet they continue to ignore "Goldblumin' " (1. adj. Unbearably awesome. 2. verb Fornicating with an attractive person.)

The English-language's millionth word, spewed out of a computer in Texas yesterday, and it's downright geeky: Web 2.0.

Runners-up include "jai ho," a Hindi phrase indicating the joy of victory, popularized in the Oscar winning film Slumdog Millionaire, and n00b, a put-down in gamers' lingo for a newcomer. Yes, those are zeros in the word.

With a worldwide network of computers scanning billions of web pages, the Global Language Monitor media analytics firm has been counting and tracking English words for six years, measuring a word's use and geographic distribution. To be deemed a word, trackers have to find it at least 25,000 times.

Among the other runners-up:

Cloud computing – technical jargon for the Internet.
Carbon neutral – relating to an effort to stem climate change.
Sexting – sending email or text messages with sexual content.

From here.

Competition between two MMORPGs shuts down internet for 300 million people.

From New Scientist:

In online games like World of Warcraft, the violence is normally restricted to fantasy realms populated by orcs and wizards. But when a dispute broke out between rival gaming services recently, it brought down large chunks of China's internet.

Problems started when hackers linked to an unnamed gaming company launched an attack on a server that provides access to a competitor site. The Xinhua News Agency says the attackers disabled the server by flooding it with incoming signals. Other, connected servers were slowed too, in a chain reaction that caused internet problems for 300 million people.

Two suspects were arrested on 29 May. Chinese authorities rate the disruption to the country's internet as the worst since an earthquake ruptured undersea cables near Taiwan in 2006.

Iraqi teen solves 300-year-old math problem.

Meanwhile, American teens are sexting each other. From FOX News:

An Iraqi-born 16-year-old reportedly has cracked a math puzzle that has gone unsolved for over 300 years.

Mohamed Altoumaimi, who immigrated to Sweden six years ago, took only four months to find a formula that explains a sequence of calculations known as the Bernoulli numbers, a code that had stumped some of the best experts in the field, Agence France-Presse reported.

Altoumaimi said after his high school teachers were skeptical about his work he contacted professors at Uppsala University, one of Sweden's top institutions, who confirmed his formula was correct and offered him a place at the university, AFP reported.

The teen opted to continue his general studies but planned to take courses in advanced mathematics and physics this summer, AFP reported.