Russian ATM Scans Credit Applicants to Determine if They're Lying

A new ATM for a Russian bank turns money machines into truth machines, using fingerprint recognition, 3-D face scans and voice analysis to determine whether customers are worthy of applying for credit cards.

The Russian bank Sberbank plans to install the ATMs in bank branches and locations like malls, the New York Times says.

We?ve seen ATMs that scan fingerprints instead of magnetic cards, with a handful deployed in Poland last summer. But face scanning plus voice recognition takes it to a new level. In this case, it?s not necessarily intended to prevent identity theft ? although fingerprint and face scans would help with that ? but rather to prevent fraud by people with bad credit.

As the New York Times points out, it?s something we can imagine in the files of the KGB: It uses software to determine whether someone is telling the truth in response to questions like ?At this moment, do you have any other outstanding loans?? It detects nervousness or ?emotional distress,? the Times says, which could be indications that a credit card applicant is not being forthright. It can supposedly detect involuntary nervous reactions, much like a polygraph.

A firm called the Speech Technology Center developed their algorithms by listening to law enforcement databases of people who were lying during police interrogations. Perhaps fittingly, the Federal Security Service, the Russian descendant of the KGB, is one of the company?s clients.

The Times story notes that Russians already expect to be snooped upon, so they may not be as hesitant to bank with a truth-sniffer (or, um, an ATM) as an American consumer would.

Sberbank said the ATM is merely a guide ? indeed, someone applying for a line of credit may have legitimate reasons to be nervous. A bank executive said it is no more invasive than checking someone?s credit history.

But is it better to trust a machine instead of a person when making a determination of human honesty?

[New York Times]

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How NYC's East River Could Get Its Own Floating Pool (LiveScience.com)

A group of designers are working on an initiative to build a floating pool in New York City?s East River that will filter water from the river itself.

The designers are creating a pool not on the river, but within the river itself, using an innovative infiltration system that is still in the creation process. They are still trying to raise money to start preliminary infiltration tests.

"When it?s an incredibly hot summer, the first thing you want to do is jump in a pool," one of the designers said in a video message on their website, PlusPool.org. "We looked at the river as something we would like to get into and how surreal it would feel to actually be in that river and see what the city looked like from it."

The +Pool will be made up of four different pools put together ? a children?s pool, sports pool, lap pool and lounge pool to form a giant plus sign, creating a sleek design that resembles an intersection.

The + Pool's design filters river water through the pool's walls, similar to a giant strainer dropped into the East River. The concentric layers of filtration materials that make up the sides of the pool are designed to remove bacteria, contaminants and odors, leaving only safe and swimmable water that meets city, state and federal standards of quality, according to the site.

"This pool will be the first of its kind, which is of course very exciting, but really we just want to be able to swim in the river,? the site said.

The site also notes that the pool can be used independently to cater to all types of swimmers, combined to form an Olympic-length lap pool or opened completely into a 9,000 square foot pool for play.

In the first few days, the designers have raised $25,000 and are still accepting donations on the site.

This story was provided by TechNewsDaily, a sister site to LiveScience. Reach TechNewsDaily senior writer Samantha Murphy at @SamMurphy_TMN

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Archive Gallery: PopSci's Most Sensational World War II Headlines

Tank killers, nightmares for Hitler, bombed-out volcanoes and more explosive ideas from World War II-era PopSci.

October 1943

After celebrating the 67th anniversary of D-Day this week, it's only fitting that we publish a gallery documenting World War II-era PopSci. A warning, though: this was the 1940s, so practically nothing in here conforms to our modern-day notion of political correctness. Some of these headlines may sound a little extreme, but rest assured, we took care to elaborate on the idea from a scientific standpoint.

Click to launch the photo gallery.

First, let's go back three years earlier to 1942, when the Germans unveiled their 88-mm tank gun in Libya and Egypt. After the American and British press acknowledged its spectacular showing, we ran a story to assure our readers that our weaponry could vanquish the Nazi troops any day. "American Guns Do Not Lack a Punch, They Are -- Tank Killers With a Wallop!" we proclaimed.

Like "Tank Killers," "Nightmares to Order for Hitler" coasted on the nation's optimism for an Allied victory. Other features, such as a spread titled "This is How a Defenseless America Could Be Invaded" reflect the apprehension Americans felt while watching footage of bombings in Europe and the Pacific.

If there's one feature that still holds up today, it's an illustrated narrative titled "Yankee Ingenuity Licks Prison-Camp Hardships." Here, Major William Orris describes how he and his fellow POWs survived in a Luftwaffe prison camp by fashioning kitchen devices out of old cans and tin sheets--a combination of The Great Escape and MacGuyver, if you will, but more importantly, a compelling story about how simple gadgetry directed these men toward a certain future.

Click through our gallery to read about the decoy tanks, the kamikaze fighters, and one geologist's plans to bomb Japan's volcanoes.

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NASA prepping next Mars spacecraft for fall launch (AP)

PASADENA, Calif. ? NASA's next roving spacecraft to the surface of Mars has arrived in Florida after a cross-country flight to undergo final testing.

A C-17 cargo jet carrying the rover nicknamed Curiosity took off from March Air Force Base in California and arrived Wednesday night in Florida.

Engineers will spend the next several months prepping the rover for its November launch.

The $2.5 billion mission was supposed to fly in 2009, but problems during development pushed costs up and delayed launch.

Curiosity is scheduled to land in August 2012 and will study whether the Martian environment was ever favorable for microbial life.

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory manages the program, formally known as the Mars Science Laboratory.

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Japanese Environment Ministry to Slash Energy With Hawaiian Shirt Initiative Dubbed "Super Cool Biz"

Super Cool Biz Louisa Lim/NPR

At Japan's Environment Ministry offices, the employees conform to a new energy-saving dress code known as Super Cool Biz (what, you have a better name?). Super Cool Biz (which I will refer to by its full name as often as possible, for obvious reasons) is an effort to tamp down Japan's skyrocketing energy consumption, largely through cutting out excess air conditioning--and the hotter offices required a change in the traditional Japanese dress code, from full suits to eye-catching and naturally cooling Hawaiian shirts.

Pioneered by Masahiro Sato, the Environment Ministry's Super Cool Biz actually incorporates a few different tactics to lower energy consumption. Lights are dimmed if used at all, half of the elevators have been shut down, and instead of pumping notoriously energy-hungry air conditioning throughout the building, Super Cool Biz mandates open windows and an internal temperature kept at a balmy 82 degrees.

Of course, 82 degrees is pretty toasty, and so Super Cool Biz allows for a much looser set of dress guidelines for the employees following it. Polo shirts, Crocs, and Hawaiian shirts apparently make up the majority of the employees' outfits, which coincidentally would allow them to easily blend in at Disney World or any of the American east coast's more tourist-clogged beaches.

It sounds like a bit of an uphill battle for much of the country; NPR interviewed a few other Japanese people about the prospect of wearing a pink-flamingo-emblazoned Hawaiian shirt at work and found some stiff opposition. One man was "horrified" (though through his horror he managed to "flash the label of his fancy Italian suit"), one claimed excess energy use is "propaganda" (?), and another noted that customers might not trust someone wearing such clothing. (We should add that we're no better over here; remember the New Jersey Outrage of 2011?) But Masahiro Sato expects Super Cool Biz to lower his office's energy consumption by around 10 percent this year, which is nothing to scoff at. Maybe they could take a look at some of these energy-saving gadgets, as well?

[NPR]

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Pa. robot institute attracts presidential visit (AP)

PITTSBURGH ? Need help defusing a bomb, mowing a lawn or scraping old paint?

President Barack Obama might see robots that can do those tasks on Friday when he visits the National Robotics Engineering Center at Carnegie Mellon University. It's one of eight research centers at the school's Robotics Institute.

The institute has been a global force in robotics development over the last 30 years. Its scientists have created robot vehicles to scout out war zones, medical robots, entertainment robots and even the SnackBot, which ferries snacks to people so scientists can study how humans respond to machines.

With growing interest from the military, businesses and consumers, the institute has more than 500 technical experts and a $65 million annual budget. And its scientists aren't just asking questions ? they're building robots that ask questions, too.

Institute director Matthew Mason told The Associated Press that in the early days of robotics research the vision was for machines to do the dull, dirty or dangerous jobs that humans shun.

"But now we think not so much of a robot instead of a person, but of robotic technology working with people," Mason said. That could mean helping the elderly or sick cope with basic household tasks, or helping a doctor perform surgery.

For Manuela Veloso, a scientist at the institute, a key step was building robots that are aware they don't have all the answers.

"They know the bounds of their ability. If they are not confident, they stop," and then ask a human a question, she said.

Her robots also learn that some people in the office don't have the time or inclination to answer questions from a machine.

"The robot plans not only with a model of the environment, but a plan of the people in the environment," she said.

Veloso now has two of the new designs ? called co-bots for collaboration ? and like humans who gossip about the best path to success at work, the co-bots compare notes.

"The two robots exchange information when they learn about the humans, and they negotiate who should go where among the two of them," said Veloso, who is also president-elect of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence.

She now sees robots ? and artificial intelligence ? in a completely new way.

"Forget about these robots knowing it all," she said. "I suddenly realized that intelligence was not about what you know. It was actually about knowing what you don't know."

Her next project is training the robots to go to the Internet for answers when humans can't provide them.

"I have a big vision of where we are going," Veloso said of her robots. "They know what they can do and what they cannot do. That's very beautiful."

Now the question may be how humans react to such new robots.

Mason, director of the institute, says that there's always been the issue of human trust in technology.

"For many years a lot of us were reluctant to get into medical robotics," he said, because of a fear that a robot mistake might cause harm to a patient, and thus tarnish the whole field.

But Mason thinks that the success of robots that identify and dispose of bombs in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars has helped change views.

"You can't look at the wreckage without feeling grateful" that no human life was lost, he said.

Large agricultural companies also are considering robotic harvesting because of potential migrant labor shortages, he said.

Obama will stress the theme of growing American jobs through high-tech manufacturing with the visit to Carnegie Mellon.

Some companies already have such job openings, and they struggle to find enough people with the right skills.

Roderick Herrick is vice president and site manager for Bayer Corp.'s industrial park in Baytown, Texas. It's a manufacturing plant that uses advanced techniques. Jobs there can pay well ? around $60,000 a year ? and have the opportunity for advancement.

"The challenge is really whether we can find the talent," Herrick said. "Manufacturing has kind of gotten a black eye over the years."

___

Online:

http://www.ri.cmu.edu/

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How NYC's East River Could Get Its Own Floating Pool (LiveScience.com)

A group of designers are working on an initiative to build a floating pool in New York City?s East River that will filter water from the river itself.

The designers are creating a pool not on the river, but within the river itself, using an innovative infiltration system that is still in the creation process. They are still trying to raise money to start preliminary infiltration tests.

"When it?s an incredibly hot summer, the first thing you want to do is jump in a pool," one of the designers said in a video message on their website, PlusPool.org. "We looked at the river as something we would like to get into and how surreal it would feel to actually be in that river and see what the city looked like from it."

The +Pool will be made up of four different pools put together ? a children?s pool, sports pool, lap pool and lounge pool to form a giant plus sign, creating a sleek design that resembles an intersection.

The + Pool's design filters river water through the pool's walls, similar to a giant strainer dropped into the East River. The concentric layers of filtration materials that make up the sides of the pool are designed to remove bacteria, contaminants and odors, leaving only safe and swimmable water that meets city, state and federal standards of quality, according to the site.

"This pool will be the first of its kind, which is of course very exciting, but really we just want to be able to swim in the river,? the site said.

The site also notes that the pool can be used independently to cater to all types of swimmers, combined to form an Olympic-length lap pool or opened completely into a 9,000 square foot pool for play.

In the first few days, the designers have raised $25,000 and are still accepting donations on the site.

This story was provided by TechNewsDaily, a sister site to LiveScience. Reach TechNewsDaily senior writer Samantha Murphy at @SamMurphy_TMN

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NASA prepping next Mars spacecraft for fall launch (AP)

PASADENA, Calif. ? NASA's next roving spacecraft to the surface of Mars has arrived in Florida after a cross-country flight to undergo final testing.

A C-17 cargo jet carrying the rover nicknamed Curiosity took off from March Air Force Base in California and arrived Wednesday night in Florida.

Engineers will spend the next several months prepping the rover for its November launch.

The $2.5 billion mission was supposed to fly in 2009, but problems during development pushed costs up and delayed launch.

Curiosity is scheduled to land in August 2012 and will study whether the Martian environment was ever favorable for microbial life.

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory manages the program, formally known as the Mars Science Laboratory.

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'Missing' Moon Dust Turns Up at St. Louis Auction (SPACE.com)

NASA has recovered a few grains of moon dust after learning that the lunar material was set to be auctioned off in St. Louis this month, federal prosecutors announced Thursday (June 23).

There's not much of the stuff ? just some residue attached to a piece of transparent tape one-eighth of an inch (3 millimeters) wide. But its origin and history are what make the dust special: It came down to Earth in July 1969 with the Apollo 11 astronauts, who were the first humans to set foot on the lunar surface.

The United States Attorney's Office for Eastern Missouri learned in early June that the moon dust was going to be auctioned off in St. Louis. NASA investigators then contacted the auction house, Regency-Superior Auctions, which withdrew the material, prosecutors said.

Officials from the U.S. Attorney's Office took possession of the tape last Friday (June 17), then handed it over to NASA. The material was returned to the agency's Johnson Space Center in Houston on Monday (June 20). [Photos: Our Changing Moon]

The federal government regards the Apollo lunar samples as national treasures. It has never knowingly given moon rocks or loose moon dust to private individuals. But no arrests have been made in this case.

The woman who consigned the tape to Regency-Superior inherited it from her late husband, who apparently acquired it in good faith, officials said. The woman's name has not been released.

"In this particular situation, there was no wrong done," said space history expert Robert Pearlman, editor of the website collectSPACE.com, which is a SPACE.com partner. "Everyone cooperated."

Selling is not a crime

It's not illegal per se to sell lunar materials, Pearlman said. It all depends on how the seller came into possession of the samples. And people have gotten a hold of moon dust legally.

For example, NASA gave Apollo astronauts the patches from the outsides of their spacesuits, which had become impregnated with lunar dust. And the agency once released from its inventory a so-called "temporary stowage bag" used on one of the Apollo flights to hold small items during the mission.

In the course of the flight, the items placed in the bag stained the interior with moon dust. When the bag was later sold during an Oct. 2000 auction, its new owner found some smatterings of the remaining moon dust inside when he opened it up, Pearlman said.

A dusty film cartridge

The moon dust to be auctioned in St. Louis this month was originally lodged in the film cartridge of a camera used by Apollo 11 astronauts, who apparently dropped it on the surface of the moon.

Back then, a NASA employee named Terry Slezak was in charge of processing the film brought back from the Apollo missions. When he opened this particular cartridge, dust poured out, getting all over his hands. Slezak thus became the non-astronaut ever to touch lunar material with his bare hands.

According to Slezak, he used a towel and some transparent tape to clear the dust off the film, the New York Times reported.

The Apollo 11 astronauts later presented Slezak with a signed commemorative poster board, complete with pictures showing a smiling Slezak holding his dusty hand up for the camera. Slezak affixed the dusty piece of tape to the poster.

"I thought that would be kind of neat," Slezak told the Times.

Slezak sold the poster at auction in 2001 for just over $25,000, Pearlman said. While Slezak was never authorized to take the dust-flecked tape, he maintains that NASA has never questioned him about the matter.

Later, the dusty tape from the poster board was cut up into tiny pieces, some of which were also put up for sale. A piece three-eighths of an inch (9 mm) wide has sold for about $6,000, and slivers the size of the one Regency-Superior was going to auction off have been offered at nearly $1,000, Pearlman said.

Moon rocks for sale?

NASA astronauts brought 842 pounds (382 kilograms) of lunar material home to Earth between 1969 and 1972, souvenirs from their Apollo moonwalking jaunts. A court has valued this stuff at $1.44 million per ounce ($50,800 per gram), based on how much those NASA missions cost.

The space agency has given small amounts of moon material to national and state governments over the years. But NASA hangs on tightly to the rest of it.

"They track it very well," Pearlman said, adding that less than 1 ounce (28 g) of the lunar samples is thought to be unaccounted for.

But moon rocks, real or fake, are circulating on the market.

Just last month, NASA officials busted a woman who was trying to sell a purported moon rock for $1.7 million. The moon rock sting went down in a Denny's restaurant in Lake Elsinore, Calif.

While the auction of this tiny tape sliver seems to be small potatoes by comparison, Pearlman said he understands why NASA works so hard to recover lunar materials.

"You can't undo precedent," Pearlman said. "They want to be able to defend when there are large missing moon rocks, if that ever comes up. So they have to respond to every report that they receive."

Preliminary analysis of the dust on the tape indicates that it likely is of lunar origin, though it will take two to three weeks to confirm this definitively, prosecutors said.

You can follow SPACE.com senior writer Mike Wall on Twitter: @michaeldwall. Follow SPACE.com for the latest in space science and exploration news on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.

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Endangered species hit hard by historic Ariz. fire (AP)

PHOENIX ? The largest wildfire in Arizona history left a charred landscape of blackened forest, burned-out vehicle hulks and charred fireplaces as it destroyed more than 30 homes. It also inflicted a serious toll on an ecosystem that's home to numerous endangered species.

The flames spared three packs of endangered Mexican gray wolves but likely killed at least some threatened Mexican spotted owls as it roared through more than a half-million acres of a pristine forest on the New Mexico border.

Though some spots were untouched or had only undergrowth burn, the effect of the human-caused Wallow fire will last for decades because it burned so hot in many areas that it completely denuded the landscape, forest specialists said.

"The natural fires are good for a healthy forest, but these fires ? where the debris has been allowed to build up and it just hasn't been addressed ? they come out very hot and just scorch everything. As soon as the monsoon shows up, there's a potential for a lot of soil to move," said Tom Buckley, a U.S. Fish and Wildlife spokesman.

Forest managers are warning homeowners in the White Mountains to get flood insurance immediately because summer storms will likely create severe runoff.

It's part of the steep human cost from the 832-square-mile blaze that continues to churn through thousands of new acres per day in the Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest.

The fire destroyed 32 homes and four rental cabins. The charred skeletons of vacation homes are physical reminders of disrupted lives and bygone memories. For many Arizona desert dwellers, the mountains provided an escape from the heat for generations.

The Wallow fire was 67 percent contained by Thursday night but still slowly growing on the south and southeast flanks.

Two other major fires are burning in the state. The 44-square-mile Monument fire near Sierra Vista, Ariz., has destroyed 57 homes. Authorities lifted an evacuation order for an estimated 200 to 300 homes Thursday, but about 300 remain evacuated. The 348-square-mile Horseshoe Two fire atop southeastern the Chiricahua mountains has destroyed nine homes in the world-renowned bird watching area.

The three wolf packs in the Apache-Sitgreaves all had pups and were in or near their dens when the fire that broke out on May 29 roared through, said Jim Paxon, a spokesman for the Arizona Game and Fish Department. Firefighters on the ground have seen two of the packs moving around with their pups. Radio collars on the three adults in the third pack show they are alive, but the status of their pups remains unknown because they are in an area still too hot for ground crews to enter.

"They're there, and functioning, and able to persist and take care of their pups," Paxon said. "We feel very confident that our wolves are out there and they've all got pups, and that's a good thing."

The Fish and Wildlife Service said Thursday it had not confirmed the pups survived.

The wolves were reintroduced into Arizona and New Mexico beginning in 1998. Managers had hoped to have more than 100 in the wild by 2006, but the count stood at 42 at the beginning of 2010.

The spotted owls are another matter.

Crown fires in overgrown forests have become the greatest cause of unusual losses for the birds, and 73 protected nesting areas were burned in the fire, said Beth Humphrey, Apache-Sitgreaves biologist. There are 145 protested nest sites in the entire 2.1 million acres forest.

Any nestlings or eggs caught in the fire were surely lost, although mortality among adults was likely limited, Humphrey said.

"We don't know the severity of the impacts of those owl sites," Buckley said. "Fires don't burn evenly, so we have a lot of hope that some survived."

Fish and Wildlife is looking to see if prey for the wolves and owls will return quickly enough to let the animals stay in their regular areas.

The burned forest supports more than a dozen other endangered or threatened species, including snails, frogs and fish. Dozens of other species live in the forest that aren't rare, including bear, deer, antelope and a herd of elk that, at about 6,000, is among the state's biggest.

Only two dead elk have been found, Paxon said. A yearling calf had to be euthanized because its hooves were badly burned.

"These ungulates, the elk and the deer and the antelope, they're a whole lot smarter than people are when it comes to evacuations," Paxon said.

"When they feel heat, they will move away from heat toward a cooler area, and generally that's perpendicular to the way the fire's going. If it's not a huge fire, they often circle around and come back in. If it is a pretty widespread fire front, they simply get out in front of that and go over the hill into the next drainage."

The next round of damage will come once summer rains hit. The National Weather Service is warning of major flash floods and debris flows even with a 15-minute-long moderate downpour.

A 23-square-mile fire outside Flagstaff, Ariz., last June led to severe flooding from summer rains that inundated more than 80 homes and led to the drowning death of a 12-year-old girl.

The flooding from the Wallow will kill fish, since it will carry major flows of ash and sediment and clog streams. Decades-long efforts to restore endangered Apache and Gila trout to the streams that flow from the mountain will be hurt.

Already, plans are being made to pull pure Apache trout from streams where it is expected they will die, to preserve the lineage, said Julie Meka Carter, native trout conservation coordinator for the Arizona Game and Fish Department. They could be put in other streams or placed in hatcheries for as long as three years, until the ash and sediment flows subside.

"The forest will be very changed, very, very different," said Apache-Sitgreaves forest supervisor Chris Knopp.

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How NYC's East River Could Get Its Own Floating Pool (LiveScience.com)

A group of designers are working on an initiative to build a floating pool in New York City?s East River that will filter water from the river itself.

The designers are creating a pool not on the river, but within the river itself, using an innovative infiltration system that is still in the creation process. They are still trying to raise money to start preliminary infiltration tests.

"When it?s an incredibly hot summer, the first thing you want to do is jump in a pool," one of the designers said in a video message on their website, PlusPool.org. "We looked at the river as something we would like to get into and how surreal it would feel to actually be in that river and see what the city looked like from it."

The +Pool will be made up of four different pools put together ? a children?s pool, sports pool, lap pool and lounge pool to form a giant plus sign, creating a sleek design that resembles an intersection.

The + Pool's design filters river water through the pool's walls, similar to a giant strainer dropped into the East River. The concentric layers of filtration materials that make up the sides of the pool are designed to remove bacteria, contaminants and odors, leaving only safe and swimmable water that meets city, state and federal standards of quality, according to the site.

"This pool will be the first of its kind, which is of course very exciting, but really we just want to be able to swim in the river,? the site said.

The site also notes that the pool can be used independently to cater to all types of swimmers, combined to form an Olympic-length lap pool or opened completely into a 9,000 square foot pool for play.

In the first few days, the designers have raised $25,000 and are still accepting donations on the site.

This story was provided by TechNewsDaily, a sister site to LiveScience. Reach TechNewsDaily senior writer Samantha Murphy at @SamMurphy_TMN

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Stress May Worsen Lung Function in Kids Breathing Dirty Air (HealthDay)

FRIDAY, June 24 (HealthDay News) -- Children who live in stress-filled homes experience more air pollution-related lung damage than kids in less stressful environments, a new study finds.

Researchers looked at the effects of traffic-related pollution and parental stress on 1,400 children, aged 10 to 12, in California. There were no significant associations noted between parental stress alone and lung function levels in the children.

But as exposure to traffic pollution increased, lung function decreased among children in high-stress homes. This did not occur among children in low-stress homes, said the researchers at the Keck School of Medicine of the University of Southern California, Los Angeles.

Certain factors associated with low socioeconomic levels were also linked with high stress, such as an annual income below $30,000, low education levels among parents, no air conditioning in the home and a lack of health insurance.

The study appears online ahead of print in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine.

"One possible explanation for the stress-related pattern of [traffic-related pollution] respiratory effects is the biological pathways common to effects of traffic-related pollution and stress," lead researcher Talat Islam, an assistant professor in the environmental health division at Keck, said in a news release from the American Thoracic Society.

"Like air pollution, stress has been linked to both inflammation and oxidative damage at the cellular level, so this may explain the association," he added.

The public health implications of this finding are clear, he noted.

"The magnitude of the traffic-related pollution-associated deficits in [lung function] levels in children growing up in high-stress households was larger than deficits reported for children exposed to maternal smoking during pregnancy and secondhand tobacco smoke," Islam said.

"Our findings suggest that by regulating traffic-related pollution levels around residential areas and schools, we could reduce the adverse effect of traffic-related pollution on lung function among vulnerable children," he concluded.

More information

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has more about respiratory health and air pollution.

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2011 Invention Awards: From Waste To Water

A machine that uses exhaust heat to treat onboard sewage

By Bjorn Carey Posted 06.10.2011 at 11:30 am

Clean Machine After a weeklong cruise, a typical 3,000-passenger cruise ship may hold nearly 200,000 gallons of wastewater in toilets?a problem, inventor Namon Nassef says, that the ZLD could easily eliminate. John B. Carnett

When Namon Nassef had to buy a new engine for his boat, he saw an opportunity. He could finally install the invention he had been working on, a machine he calls the Zero Liquid Discharge Sewage Elimination System (ZLD). The device uses engine heat to oxidize and evaporate toilet, shower and galley waste.

A typical combustion engine makes use of only 30 to 35 percent of the energy contained in fuel; the rest escapes as heat through the radiator or the exhaust. The microwave-oven-size ZLD puts that exhaust heat to work. When a passenger flushes a boat?s toilet or drains the waste-containment tank, the wastewater runs through a pipe to the ZLD, which can be installed anywhere in the craft. First the waste enters the machine?s equalization tank, which grinds it into pieces a quarter of an inch or smaller in diameter. Next it moves to the homogenizer, a container with three sets of blades that dissolve solids into 0.002-inch-diameter particles. Then an injector pump pressurizes the waste stream and sprays it through a nozzle into the engine?s exhaust system as a fine aerosol.

The exhaust of an idling engine is at least 550�F, which is hot enough to flashevaporate the waste and thermally oxidize the organic materials. Quite simply, the device can break down anything organic that?s put into it. The process eliminates all odors, Nassef says, and the main by-products are carbon dioxide and clean water vapor.

How It Works: Zero Liquid Discharge: Waste flows from the boat?s toilet to an equalization tank, which breaks it into small pieces. The material next moves into the homogenizer, a container where it gets chopped into particles. The injector pump pressurizes the material and sprays it through a nozzle into the engine?s exhaust system, where the heat cleans it. �Blanddesigns.co.uk

Nassef built a ZLD prototype in 2004 from washing-machine parts and a five-gallon paint bucket. The current version, his 11th update, uses only as much energy as ten 100-watt lightbulbs, sterilizes waste without any of the harsh chemicals of other portable toilet-waste-disposal systems, and can be scaled up or down. In 2007 it earned a certificate of approval from the U.S. Coast Guard for marine sanitation devices.

Nassef is starting with boats, but the ZLD has the potential to work in just about any vehicle with hot-enough exhaust and a toilet. He?s drawn interest from RV manufacturers and the U.S. military, which often resorts to burning waste with jet fuel (at a total cost of $400 per gallon) at its forward operating bases. Another promising market is airlines, which could plug the ZLD into existing toilets, allowing some planes to shed up to 500 pounds of wastewater weight over the course of a flight.

Name: Zero Liquid Discharge
Inventor: Namon Nassef
Time: 7 years
Cost: ?Hundreds of thousands of dollars"

The Other 2011 Invention Awards Winners Are...

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This Week In The Future, June 6-10, 2011

June 2011: The 5th Annual Invention Awards

In this issue, we spotlight the year's most incredible inventions, from a cheaper prosthetic hand to a jet-propelled body board.

Plus: Science versus science fiction in summer blockbusters, the dogged persistence of bedbugs, and more.

Read the issue here.

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Endangered species hit hard by historic Ariz. fire (AP)

PHOENIX ? The largest wildfire in Arizona history left a charred landscape of blackened forest, burned-out vehicle hulks and charred fireplaces as it destroyed more than 30 homes. It also inflicted a serious toll on an ecosystem that's home to numerous endangered species.

The flames spared three packs of endangered Mexican gray wolves but likely killed at least some threatened Mexican spotted owls as it roared through more than a half-million acres of a pristine forest on the New Mexico border.

Though some spots were untouched or had only undergrowth burn, the effect of the human-caused Wallow fire will last for decades because it burned so hot in many areas that it completely denuded the landscape, forest specialists said.

"The natural fires are good for a healthy forest, but these fires ? where the debris has been allowed to build up and it just hasn't been addressed ? they come out very hot and just scorch everything. As soon as the monsoon shows up, there's a potential for a lot of soil to move," said Tom Buckley, a U.S. Fish and Wildlife spokesman.

Forest managers are warning homeowners in the White Mountains to get flood insurance immediately because summer storms will likely create severe runoff.

It's part of the steep human cost from the 832-square-mile blaze that continues to churn through thousands of new acres per day in the Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest.

The fire destroyed 32 homes and four rental cabins. The charred skeletons of vacation homes are physical reminders of disrupted lives and bygone memories. For many Arizona desert dwellers, the mountains provided an escape from the heat for generations.

The Wallow fire was 67 percent contained by Thursday night but still slowly growing on the south and southeast flanks.

Two other major fires are burning in the state. The 44-square-mile Monument fire near Sierra Vista, Ariz., has destroyed 57 homes. Authorities lifted an evacuation order for an estimated 200 to 300 homes Thursday, but about 300 remain evacuated. The 348-square-mile Horseshoe Two fire atop southeastern the Chiricahua mountains has destroyed nine homes in the world-renowned bird watching area.

The three wolf packs in the Apache-Sitgreaves all had pups and were in or near their dens when the fire that broke out on May 29 roared through, said Jim Paxon, a spokesman for the Arizona Game and Fish Department. Firefighters on the ground have seen two of the packs moving around with their pups. Radio collars on the three adults in the third pack show they are alive, but the status of their pups remains unknown because they are in an area still too hot for ground crews to enter.

"They're there, and functioning, and able to persist and take care of their pups," Paxon said. "We feel very confident that our wolves are out there and they've all got pups, and that's a good thing."

The Fish and Wildlife Service said Thursday it had not confirmed the pups survived.

The wolves were reintroduced into Arizona and New Mexico beginning in 1998. Managers had hoped to have more than 100 in the wild by 2006, but the count stood at 42 at the beginning of 2010.

The spotted owls are another matter.

Crown fires in overgrown forests have become the greatest cause of unusual losses for the birds, and 73 protected nesting areas were burned in the fire, said Beth Humphrey, Apache-Sitgreaves biologist. There are 145 protested nest sites in the entire 2.1 million acres forest.

Any nestlings or eggs caught in the fire were surely lost, although mortality among adults was likely limited, Humphrey said.

"We don't know the severity of the impacts of those owl sites," Buckley said. "Fires don't burn evenly, so we have a lot of hope that some survived."

Fish and Wildlife is looking to see if prey for the wolves and owls will return quickly enough to let the animals stay in their regular areas.

The burned forest supports more than a dozen other endangered or threatened species, including snails, frogs and fish. Dozens of other species live in the forest that aren't rare, including bear, deer, antelope and a herd of elk that, at about 6,000, is among the state's biggest.

Only two dead elk have been found, Paxon said. A yearling calf had to be euthanized because its hooves were badly burned.

"These ungulates, the elk and the deer and the antelope, they're a whole lot smarter than people are when it comes to evacuations," Paxon said.

"When they feel heat, they will move away from heat toward a cooler area, and generally that's perpendicular to the way the fire's going. If it's not a huge fire, they often circle around and come back in. If it is a pretty widespread fire front, they simply get out in front of that and go over the hill into the next drainage."

The next round of damage will come once summer rains hit. The National Weather Service is warning of major flash floods and debris flows even with a 15-minute-long moderate downpour.

A 23-square-mile fire outside Flagstaff, Ariz., last June led to severe flooding from summer rains that inundated more than 80 homes and led to the drowning death of a 12-year-old girl.

The flooding from the Wallow will kill fish, since it will carry major flows of ash and sediment and clog streams. Decades-long efforts to restore endangered Apache and Gila trout to the streams that flow from the mountain will be hurt.

Already, plans are being made to pull pure Apache trout from streams where it is expected they will die, to preserve the lineage, said Julie Meka Carter, native trout conservation coordinator for the Arizona Game and Fish Department. They could be put in other streams or placed in hatcheries for as long as three years, until the ash and sediment flows subside.

"The forest will be very changed, very, very different," said Apache-Sitgreaves forest supervisor Chris Knopp.

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Tevatron Did Not See A New Particle After All, Fermilab Says

Fermilab's Tevatron Reidar Hahn/Fermilab

America?s grand particle smasher may not go out with a bang after all. A bump in data at the Tevatron, reported earlier this spring, turns out to be a false alarm ? not a new particle or a new force of nature.

Physicists at Fermilab say they looked at 200 trillion particle collisions and did not see the same bump in data that their colleagues had announced back in April. ?In terms of this effect being a real new physics discovery, I think it is close to dead,? said Stefan S?ldner-Rembold, a professor at the University of Manchester in the UK who is a spokesman for the follow-up experiment.

As we told you earlier this spring, an analysis of 10,000 proton-antiproton collisions at the Tevatron yielded a strange result a couple hundred times. Post-collision jets of electrons and W bosons did not behave as they should, and one explanation was that a potential new particle or new force was in play. It would not have been the Higgs boson, however, because the Higgs decays into heavier particles than the new anomaly did.

But it still would have been a major finding, and a grand finale for the Tevatron before it shuts down this fall due to funding cuts.

An independent verification of the data could not find the same statistical anomaly at all, however. The initial findings came from the Tevatron?s CDF experiment; the follow-up came from the DZero experiment.

A paper describing the DZero finding was submitted to the physics arXiv and should be online by Monday, for those interested in parsing particle jets at 1.96 TeV. It was also sent to Physical Review Letters.

Now that physicists are pretty sure they don?t have a new particle to study, they have to figure out why the DZero and CDF findings were so different. Fermilab set up a task force to analyze both experiments.

?This is exactly how science works,? S?ldner-Rembold said. ?Independent verification of any new observation is the key principle of scientific research.?

Sometimes, that can mean great disappointment.

[Fermilab Today, BBC]

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Call to ban wild animals from British circuses (AFP)

LONDON (AFP) ? Wild animals could be banned from circuses in Britain if a cross-party alliance of MPs succeeds with a call on Thursday for government action.

MPs will vote on a motion brought forward by backbenchers from the three main parties proposing a ban.

The campaign to stop the use of animals has gathered momentum, with an open letter by a group of celebrities to the Prime Minister on Wednesday urging the government to act.

The vote on the backbench motion will not be binding on the government, but if passed will put extra pressure on ministers.

Agriculture Minister Jim Paice has so far ruled out an outright ban on wild animals in circuses, partly because the government fears being sued by circus owners using human rights laws.

The open letter to David Cameron was organised by campaign group Animal Defenders International (ADI) and signed by high-profile names, including actor Brian Blessed, comic Ricky Gervais and Queen guitarist Brian May.

It said a system of stricter regulations favoured by ministers would not be effective in protecting circus animals.

"The coalition government's decision is completely at odds with public and parliamentary will," it says.

"Every legal obstacle that the government has recently put forward has now been knocked down."

ADI says it has received legal advice that an outright ban on the use of wild animals would not breach the Human Rights Act or the EU Services Directive.

X Factor diva Leona Lewis has also joined the fight, writing a letter to her MP Diane Abbott (Hackney North and Stoke Newington).

She said: "I am shocked and outraged that there needs to be a debate about whether it is OK for wild animals to perform tricks in the big top."

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Call to ban wild animals from British circuses (AFP)

LONDON (AFP) ? Wild animals could be banned from circuses in Britain if a cross-party alliance of MPs succeeds with a call on Thursday for government action.

MPs will vote on a motion brought forward by backbenchers from the three main parties proposing a ban.

The campaign to stop the use of animals has gathered momentum, with an open letter by a group of celebrities to the Prime Minister on Wednesday urging the government to act.

The vote on the backbench motion will not be binding on the government, but if passed will put extra pressure on ministers.

Agriculture Minister Jim Paice has so far ruled out an outright ban on wild animals in circuses, partly because the government fears being sued by circus owners using human rights laws.

The open letter to David Cameron was organised by campaign group Animal Defenders International (ADI) and signed by high-profile names, including actor Brian Blessed, comic Ricky Gervais and Queen guitarist Brian May.

It said a system of stricter regulations favoured by ministers would not be effective in protecting circus animals.

"The coalition government's decision is completely at odds with public and parliamentary will," it says.

"Every legal obstacle that the government has recently put forward has now been knocked down."

ADI says it has received legal advice that an outright ban on the use of wild animals would not breach the Human Rights Act or the EU Services Directive.

X Factor diva Leona Lewis has also joined the fight, writing a letter to her MP Diane Abbott (Hackney North and Stoke Newington).

She said: "I am shocked and outraged that there needs to be a debate about whether it is OK for wild animals to perform tricks in the big top."

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The 25 Best Places to Photograph on Planet Earth

Siem Reap, Cambodia Alison Wright

Popular Photography, our sister site, has a stunning guide to the 25 best places to photograph on this crowded, magnificent rock on which we live. The ancient world (Petra, Chich�n Itz�), far-flung destinations like remote and mountainous Bhutan, amazing natural wonders (animals!), and more--even if you don't take the guide literally and actually spend the next few years of your life scrambling to get to these places, you can take a pretty great virtual tour right here.

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Endangered species hit hard by historic Ariz. fire (AP)

PHOENIX ? The largest wildfire in Arizona history left a charred landscape of blackened forest, burned-out vehicle hulks and charred fireplaces as it destroyed more than 30 homes. It also inflicted a serious toll on an ecosystem that's home to numerous endangered species.

The flames spared three packs of endangered Mexican gray wolves but likely killed at least some threatened Mexican spotted owls as it roared through more than a half-million acres of a pristine forest on the New Mexico border.

Though some spots were untouched or had only undergrowth burn, the effect of the human-caused Wallow fire will last for decades because it burned so hot in many areas that it completely denuded the landscape, forest specialists said.

"The natural fires are good for a healthy forest, but these fires ? where the debris has been allowed to build up and it just hasn't been addressed ? they come out very hot and just scorch everything. As soon as the monsoon shows up, there's a potential for a lot of soil to move," said Tom Buckley, a U.S. Fish and Wildlife spokesman.

Forest managers are warning homeowners in the White Mountains to get flood insurance immediately because summer storms will likely create severe runoff.

It's part of the steep human cost from the 832-square-mile blaze that continues to churn through thousands of new acres per day in the Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest.

The fire destroyed 32 homes and four rental cabins. The charred skeletons of vacation homes are physical reminders of disrupted lives and bygone memories. For many Arizona desert dwellers, the mountains provided an escape from the heat for generations.

The Wallow fire was 67 percent contained by Thursday night but still slowly growing on the south and southeast flanks.

Two other major fires are burning in the state. The 44-square-mile Monument fire near Sierra Vista, Ariz., has destroyed 57 homes. Authorities lifted an evacuation order for an estimated 200 to 300 homes Thursday, but about 300 remain evacuated. The 348-square-mile Horseshoe Two fire atop southeastern the Chiricahua mountains has destroyed nine homes in the world-renowned bird watching area.

The three wolf packs in the Apache-Sitgreaves all had pups and were in or near their dens when the fire that broke out on May 29 roared through, said Jim Paxon, a spokesman for the Arizona Game and Fish Department. Firefighters on the ground have seen two of the packs moving around with their pups. Radio collars on the three adults in the third pack show they are alive, but the status of their pups remains unknown because they are in an area still too hot for ground crews to enter.

"They're there, and functioning, and able to persist and take care of their pups," Paxon said. "We feel very confident that our wolves are out there and they've all got pups, and that's a good thing."

The Fish and Wildlife Service said Thursday it had not confirmed the pups survived.

The wolves were reintroduced into Arizona and New Mexico beginning in 1998. Managers had hoped to have more than 100 in the wild by 2006, but the count stood at 42 at the beginning of 2010.

The spotted owls are another matter.

Crown fires in overgrown forests have become the greatest cause of unusual losses for the birds, and 73 protected nesting areas were burned in the fire, said Beth Humphrey, Apache-Sitgreaves biologist. There are 145 protested nest sites in the entire 2.1 million acres forest.

Any nestlings or eggs caught in the fire were surely lost, although mortality among adults was likely limited, Humphrey said.

"We don't know the severity of the impacts of those owl sites," Buckley said. "Fires don't burn evenly, so we have a lot of hope that some survived."

Fish and Wildlife is looking to see if prey for the wolves and owls will return quickly enough to let the animals stay in their regular areas.

The burned forest supports more than a dozen other endangered or threatened species, including snails, frogs and fish. Dozens of other species live in the forest that aren't rare, including bear, deer, antelope and a herd of elk that, at about 6,000, is among the state's biggest.

Only two dead elk have been found, Paxon said. A yearling calf had to be euthanized because its hooves were badly burned.

"These ungulates, the elk and the deer and the antelope, they're a whole lot smarter than people are when it comes to evacuations," Paxon said.

"When they feel heat, they will move away from heat toward a cooler area, and generally that's perpendicular to the way the fire's going. If it's not a huge fire, they often circle around and come back in. If it is a pretty widespread fire front, they simply get out in front of that and go over the hill into the next drainage."

The next round of damage will come once summer rains hit. The National Weather Service is warning of major flash floods and debris flows even with a 15-minute-long moderate downpour.

A 23-square-mile fire outside Flagstaff, Ariz., last June led to severe flooding from summer rains that inundated more than 80 homes and led to the drowning death of a 12-year-old girl.

The flooding from the Wallow will kill fish, since it will carry major flows of ash and sediment and clog streams. Decades-long efforts to restore endangered Apache and Gila trout to the streams that flow from the mountain will be hurt.

Already, plans are being made to pull pure Apache trout from streams where it is expected they will die, to preserve the lineage, said Julie Meka Carter, native trout conservation coordinator for the Arizona Game and Fish Department. They could be put in other streams or placed in hatcheries for as long as three years, until the ash and sediment flows subside.

"The forest will be very changed, very, very different," said Apache-Sitgreaves forest supervisor Chris Knopp.

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GM marijuana problem growing in Colombia (AFP)

CALI, Colombia (AFP) ? Greenhouses lined with genetically modified marijuana sit on a mountainside just an hour ride from Cali, Colombia, where farmers say the enhanced plants are more powerful and profitable.

One greenhouse owner said she can sell the modified marijuana for 100,000 pesos ($54) per kilo (2.2 pounds), which is nearly 10 times more than the price she can get for ordinary marijuana.

Local authorities said the arrival of genetically modified seeds, which are imported from Europe and the United States have allowed "a bigger production and better quality at the same time".

A police commander in the Cauca region where Cali is located, Carlos Rodriguez, said one of the modified varieties goes by the name, "Creepy".

Another seed modified in The Netherlands is fetching a good price in the area, said a foreign researcher, who asked to remain anonymous. That version, well-known in Europe as "La Cominera", is named for the Colombian village where it grows.

"La Cominera's" higher value is due to its increased concentration of THC, the plant's principal active ingredient, and the modified plant verges on an 18 percent concentration level, compared to a normal marijuana plant's two to seven percent, said the researcher.

Despite the fact that marijuana production is illegal in Colombia, farmers say they continue to sell both traditional and modified marijuana because of economic advantages. One resident who spoke on the condition of anonymity said he can sell 11 kilograms of marijuana for 160,000 Colombian pesos ($87).

In the greenhouses outside of Cali, in a secret location accessible only by foot, it is easy to recognize the famous plant with star-shaped leaves, where it grows amid other legal crops.

"I don't like growing marijuana, but it ended up that way," one farmer said. "I received a loan to grow coffee, but I was drowning and I had to sell my harvest very cheap. My sister told me it would be better to plant marijuana."

Marijuana was first introduced to the country in the 1930s and residents of Cali said that for economic reasons, they have never stopped cultivating the plant since.

They added they cannot sustain themselves on coffee and banana crops alone, because prices fluctuate widely and it is difficult to reach markets in time to sell the perishable items before they spoil, due to a poor road network.

The hemp plant was originally legally used in the production of textiles and soccer balls until 1962, when authorities banned the use of marijauana in those products in order to comply with international standards.

According to botanist Luis Miguel Alvarez, a teacher at the University of Caldas in Manizales and the author of several marijuana studies, after marijuana is grown and dried, it can endure long periods without spoiling, which is a strong economic advantage.

Police commander Rodriguez said the crop's growth poses a problem for local law enforcement, because profits are often used to finance other criminal activity.

"We believe that the sixth front of the FARC guerrilla forces are 90 percent financed by marijuana," he said. The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia is Latin America's largest and longest-fighting insurgency with 47 years of armed struggle and 8,000 fighters.

Marijuana production and sales are growing in Colombia, which was also the world's biggest producer of cocaine in 2009, according to available statistics, he said.

"This year we have already seized 27 tons (of marijuana by June), compared to 23 tons last year. It is troubling that the resources of armed groups are growing and because of this they can acquire arms and explosives," Rodriguez said.

Nationwide, authorities say they have seized 41.8 tons of marijuana to date in 2011, compared to a total of 228 tons in 2010.

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Russian ATM Scans Credit Applicants to Determine if They're Lying

A new ATM for a Russian bank turns money machines into truth machines, using fingerprint recognition, 3-D face scans and voice analysis to determine whether customers are worthy of applying for credit cards.

The Russian bank Sberbank plans to install the ATMs in bank branches and locations like malls, the New York Times says.

We?ve seen ATMs that scan fingerprints instead of magnetic cards, with a handful deployed in Poland last summer. But face scanning plus voice recognition takes it to a new level. In this case, it?s not necessarily intended to prevent identity theft ? although fingerprint and face scans would help with that ? but rather to prevent fraud by people with bad credit.

As the New York Times points out, it?s something we can imagine in the files of the KGB: It uses software to determine whether someone is telling the truth in response to questions like ?At this moment, do you have any other outstanding loans?? It detects nervousness or ?emotional distress,? the Times says, which could be indications that a credit card applicant is not being forthright. It can supposedly detect involuntary nervous reactions, much like a polygraph.

A firm called the Speech Technology Center developed their algorithms by listening to law enforcement databases of people who were lying during police interrogations. Perhaps fittingly, the Federal Security Service, the Russian descendant of the KGB, is one of the company?s clients.

The Times story notes that Russians already expect to be snooped upon, so they may not be as hesitant to bank with a truth-sniffer (or, um, an ATM) as an American consumer would.

Sberbank said the ATM is merely a guide ? indeed, someone applying for a line of credit may have legitimate reasons to be nervous. A bank executive said it is no more invasive than checking someone?s credit history.

But is it better to trust a machine instead of a person when making a determination of human honesty?

[New York Times]

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The 25 Best Places to Photograph on Planet Earth

Siem Reap, Cambodia Alison Wright

Popular Photography, our sister site, has a stunning guide to the 25 best places to photograph on this crowded, magnificent rock on which we live. The ancient world (Petra, Chich�n Itz�), far-flung destinations like remote and mountainous Bhutan, amazing natural wonders (animals!), and more--even if you don't take the guide literally and actually spend the next few years of your life scrambling to get to these places, you can take a pretty great virtual tour right here.

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Pollution found in Pa. wells near site of blowout (AP)

ALLENTOWN, Pa. ? Federal environmental officials say that testing has revealed contamination in three private water wells following an April blowout at a Pennsylvania natural gas drilling site.

Environmental Protection Agency spokesman Roy Seneca said Friday that EPA took water samples from seven private water wells near the Chesapeake Energy Corp. drilling site near Canton in in northeastern Pennsylvania's Bradford County.

EPA briefed residents on the sampling results Thursday. Seneca declined to reveal the nature of the contamination. He says EPA will sample the wells again in July.

The Chesapeake well spilled thousands of gallons of salty, chemical-laced water into fields and a stream.

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'Missing' Moon Dust Turns Up at St. Louis Auction (SPACE.com)

NASA has recovered a few grains of moon dust after learning that the lunar material was set to be auctioned off in St. Louis this month, federal prosecutors announced Thursday (June 23).

There's not much of the stuff ? just some residue attached to a piece of transparent tape one-eighth of an inch (3 millimeters) wide. But its origin and history are what make the dust special: It came down to Earth in July 1969 with the Apollo 11 astronauts, who were the first humans to set foot on the lunar surface.

The United States Attorney's Office for Eastern Missouri learned in early June that the moon dust was going to be auctioned off in St. Louis. NASA investigators then contacted the auction house, Regency-Superior Auctions, which withdrew the material, prosecutors said.

Officials from the U.S. Attorney's Office took possession of the tape last Friday (June 17), then handed it over to NASA. The material was returned to the agency's Johnson Space Center in Houston on Monday (June 20). [Photos: Our Changing Moon]

The federal government regards the Apollo lunar samples as national treasures. It has never knowingly given moon rocks or loose moon dust to private individuals. But no arrests have been made in this case.

The woman who consigned the tape to Regency-Superior inherited it from her late husband, who apparently acquired it in good faith, officials said. The woman's name has not been released.

"In this particular situation, there was no wrong done," said space history expert Robert Pearlman, editor of the website collectSPACE.com, which is a SPACE.com partner. "Everyone cooperated."

Selling is not a crime

It's not illegal per se to sell lunar materials, Pearlman said. It all depends on how the seller came into possession of the samples. And people have gotten a hold of moon dust legally.

For example, NASA gave Apollo astronauts the patches from the outsides of their spacesuits, which had become impregnated with lunar dust. And the agency once released from its inventory a so-called "temporary stowage bag" used on one of the Apollo flights to hold small items during the mission.

In the course of the flight, the items placed in the bag stained the interior with moon dust. When the bag was later sold during an Oct. 2000 auction, its new owner found some smatterings of the remaining moon dust inside when he opened it up, Pearlman said.

A dusty film cartridge

The moon dust to be auctioned in St. Louis this month was originally lodged in the film cartridge of a camera used by Apollo 11 astronauts, who apparently dropped it on the surface of the moon.

Back then, a NASA employee named Terry Slezak was in charge of processing the film brought back from the Apollo missions. When he opened this particular cartridge, dust poured out, getting all over his hands. Slezak thus became the non-astronaut ever to touch lunar material with his bare hands.

According to Slezak, he used a towel and some transparent tape to clear the dust off the film, the New York Times reported.

The Apollo 11 astronauts later presented Slezak with a signed commemorative poster board, complete with pictures showing a smiling Slezak holding his dusty hand up for the camera. Slezak affixed the dusty piece of tape to the poster.

"I thought that would be kind of neat," Slezak told the Times.

Slezak sold the poster at auction in 2001 for just over $25,000, Pearlman said. While Slezak was never authorized to take the dust-flecked tape, he maintains that NASA has never questioned him about the matter.

Later, the dusty tape from the poster board was cut up into tiny pieces, some of which were also put up for sale. A piece three-eighths of an inch (9 mm) wide has sold for about $6,000, and slivers the size of the one Regency-Superior was going to auction off have been offered at nearly $1,000, Pearlman said.

Moon rocks for sale?

NASA astronauts brought 842 pounds (382 kilograms) of lunar material home to Earth between 1969 and 1972, souvenirs from their Apollo moonwalking jaunts. A court has valued this stuff at $1.44 million per ounce ($50,800 per gram), based on how much those NASA missions cost.

The space agency has given small amounts of moon material to national and state governments over the years. But NASA hangs on tightly to the rest of it.

"They track it very well," Pearlman said, adding that less than 1 ounce (28 g) of the lunar samples is thought to be unaccounted for.

But moon rocks, real or fake, are circulating on the market.

Just last month, NASA officials busted a woman who was trying to sell a purported moon rock for $1.7 million. The moon rock sting went down in a Denny's restaurant in Lake Elsinore, Calif.

While the auction of this tiny tape sliver seems to be small potatoes by comparison, Pearlman said he understands why NASA works so hard to recover lunar materials.

"You can't undo precedent," Pearlman said. "They want to be able to defend when there are large missing moon rocks, if that ever comes up. So they have to respond to every report that they receive."

Preliminary analysis of the dust on the tape indicates that it likely is of lunar origin, though it will take two to three weeks to confirm this definitively, prosecutors said.

You can follow SPACE.com senior writer Mike Wall on Twitter: @michaeldwall. Follow SPACE.com for the latest in space science and exploration news on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.

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First Graphene-Based Integrated Circuit Is a Major Step Toward Graphene Computer Chips

Graphene Circuit Science/AAAS

IBM researchers have built the first integrated circuit based on graphene, a breakthrough the company says could herald a future based on graphene wafers instead of silicon. The circuit, a 10 gigahertz frequency mixer, could give wireless devices greater range. At higher frequencies, the technology could someday allow law enforcement and medical personnel to see inside objects or people without the harmful effects of X-rays, according to IBM.

The circuit was built on a silicon carbide wafer and consists of graphene field-effect transistors. Last year, the same IBM team demonstrated the first graphene-based transistor, capable of operating at 100 GHz, but this time they integrated it into a complete circuit.

The circuit is a broadband radio-frequency mixer, which, as IEEE Spectrum explains, is a crucial component of radios. It creates new radio signals by finding the sum and difference between two input frequencies. IBM?s circuit performed frequency mixing up to 10 GHz, and worked well up to 257 degrees F. The research team believes it can get even faster ? if so, chips like these could improve cell phone and transceiver signals, possibly allowing phones to work in spots where they currently can?t receive service, the company says.

Several teams have been working on graphene transistors and receivers, but it has been difficult to marry the single-carbon-atom sheets to the metals and alloys used on chips. This circuit also uses aluminum, gold and palladium, for instance, which do not adhere well to graphene. What?s more, graphene can be easily damaged in the etching process, as Yu-Ming Lin and colleagues at IBM?s Thomas J. Watson Research Center explain in a paper about the new circuit.

The team figured out a new process that clears those hurdles by growing graphene on the silicon face of the silicon-carbide wafer. Then they coated the graphene in a polymer, conducted the necessary etching, and removed the polymer using some acetone. The transistor gates are only 550 nanometers long, and the entire wafer is the size of a grain of salt, IBM says.

It will still be a while before graphene FET chips start taking over Silicon (Graphene?) Valley, however. The IBM team already has a few ideas for improving next-generation designs, including the use of different metals that don?t degrade graphene?s superb electrical conductivity.

The research is reported in today?s issue of the journal Science.

[Eurekalert]

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Russian ATM Scans Credit Applicants to Determine if They're Lying

A new ATM for a Russian bank turns money machines into truth machines, using fingerprint recognition, 3-D face scans and voice analysis to determine whether customers are worthy of applying for credit cards.

The Russian bank Sberbank plans to install the ATMs in bank branches and locations like malls, the New York Times says.

We?ve seen ATMs that scan fingerprints instead of magnetic cards, with a handful deployed in Poland last summer. But face scanning plus voice recognition takes it to a new level. In this case, it?s not necessarily intended to prevent identity theft ? although fingerprint and face scans would help with that ? but rather to prevent fraud by people with bad credit.

As the New York Times points out, it?s something we can imagine in the files of the KGB: It uses software to determine whether someone is telling the truth in response to questions like ?At this moment, do you have any other outstanding loans?? It detects nervousness or ?emotional distress,? the Times says, which could be indications that a credit card applicant is not being forthright. It can supposedly detect involuntary nervous reactions, much like a polygraph.

A firm called the Speech Technology Center developed their algorithms by listening to law enforcement databases of people who were lying during police interrogations. Perhaps fittingly, the Federal Security Service, the Russian descendant of the KGB, is one of the company?s clients.

The Times story notes that Russians already expect to be snooped upon, so they may not be as hesitant to bank with a truth-sniffer (or, um, an ATM) as an American consumer would.

Sberbank said the ATM is merely a guide ? indeed, someone applying for a line of credit may have legitimate reasons to be nervous. A bank executive said it is no more invasive than checking someone?s credit history.

But is it better to trust a machine instead of a person when making a determination of human honesty?

[New York Times]

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How NYC's East River Could Get Its Own Floating Pool (LiveScience.com)

A group of designers are working on an initiative to build a floating pool in New York City?s East River that will filter water from the river itself.

The designers are creating a pool not on the river, but within the river itself, using an innovative infiltration system that is still in the creation process. They are still trying to raise money to start preliminary infiltration tests.

"When it?s an incredibly hot summer, the first thing you want to do is jump in a pool," one of the designers said in a video message on their website, PlusPool.org. "We looked at the river as something we would like to get into and how surreal it would feel to actually be in that river and see what the city looked like from it."

The +Pool will be made up of four different pools put together ? a children?s pool, sports pool, lap pool and lounge pool to form a giant plus sign, creating a sleek design that resembles an intersection.

The + Pool's design filters river water through the pool's walls, similar to a giant strainer dropped into the East River. The concentric layers of filtration materials that make up the sides of the pool are designed to remove bacteria, contaminants and odors, leaving only safe and swimmable water that meets city, state and federal standards of quality, according to the site.

"This pool will be the first of its kind, which is of course very exciting, but really we just want to be able to swim in the river,? the site said.

The site also notes that the pool can be used independently to cater to all types of swimmers, combined to form an Olympic-length lap pool or opened completely into a 9,000 square foot pool for play.

In the first few days, the designers have raised $25,000 and are still accepting donations on the site.

This story was provided by TechNewsDaily, a sister site to LiveScience. Reach TechNewsDaily senior writer Samantha Murphy at @SamMurphy_TMN

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First Graphene-Based Integrated Circuit Is a Major Step Toward Graphene Computer Chips

Graphene Circuit Science/AAAS

IBM researchers have built the first integrated circuit based on graphene, a breakthrough the company says could herald a future based on graphene wafers instead of silicon. The circuit, a 10 gigahertz frequency mixer, could give wireless devices greater range. At higher frequencies, the technology could someday allow law enforcement and medical personnel to see inside objects or people without the harmful effects of X-rays, according to IBM.

The circuit was built on a silicon carbide wafer and consists of graphene field-effect transistors. Last year, the same IBM team demonstrated the first graphene-based transistor, capable of operating at 100 GHz, but this time they integrated it into a complete circuit.

The circuit is a broadband radio-frequency mixer, which, as IEEE Spectrum explains, is a crucial component of radios. It creates new radio signals by finding the sum and difference between two input frequencies. IBM?s circuit performed frequency mixing up to 10 GHz, and worked well up to 257 degrees F. The research team believes it can get even faster ? if so, chips like these could improve cell phone and transceiver signals, possibly allowing phones to work in spots where they currently can?t receive service, the company says.

Several teams have been working on graphene transistors and receivers, but it has been difficult to marry the single-carbon-atom sheets to the metals and alloys used on chips. This circuit also uses aluminum, gold and palladium, for instance, which do not adhere well to graphene. What?s more, graphene can be easily damaged in the etching process, as Yu-Ming Lin and colleagues at IBM?s Thomas J. Watson Research Center explain in a paper about the new circuit.

The team figured out a new process that clears those hurdles by growing graphene on the silicon face of the silicon-carbide wafer. Then they coated the graphene in a polymer, conducted the necessary etching, and removed the polymer using some acetone. The transistor gates are only 550 nanometers long, and the entire wafer is the size of a grain of salt, IBM says.

It will still be a while before graphene FET chips start taking over Silicon (Graphene?) Valley, however. The IBM team already has a few ideas for improving next-generation designs, including the use of different metals that don?t degrade graphene?s superb electrical conductivity.

The research is reported in today?s issue of the journal Science.

[Eurekalert]

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Russian ATM Scans Credit Applicants to Determine if They're Lying

A new ATM for a Russian bank turns money machines into truth machines, using fingerprint recognition, 3-D face scans and voice analysis to determine whether customers are worthy of applying for credit cards.

The Russian bank Sberbank plans to install the ATMs in bank branches and locations like malls, the New York Times says.

We?ve seen ATMs that scan fingerprints instead of magnetic cards, with a handful deployed in Poland last summer. But face scanning plus voice recognition takes it to a new level. In this case, it?s not necessarily intended to prevent identity theft ? although fingerprint and face scans would help with that ? but rather to prevent fraud by people with bad credit.

As the New York Times points out, it?s something we can imagine in the files of the KGB: It uses software to determine whether someone is telling the truth in response to questions like ?At this moment, do you have any other outstanding loans?? It detects nervousness or ?emotional distress,? the Times says, which could be indications that a credit card applicant is not being forthright. It can supposedly detect involuntary nervous reactions, much like a polygraph.

A firm called the Speech Technology Center developed their algorithms by listening to law enforcement databases of people who were lying during police interrogations. Perhaps fittingly, the Federal Security Service, the Russian descendant of the KGB, is one of the company?s clients.

The Times story notes that Russians already expect to be snooped upon, so they may not be as hesitant to bank with a truth-sniffer (or, um, an ATM) as an American consumer would.

Sberbank said the ATM is merely a guide ? indeed, someone applying for a line of credit may have legitimate reasons to be nervous. A bank executive said it is no more invasive than checking someone?s credit history.

But is it better to trust a machine instead of a person when making a determination of human honesty?

[New York Times]

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