Edward Keller, a geologist with UCSB, has found a lost island, Isla Calafia, off Santa Barbara.

Tejal Desai is working on ways to implant microelectomechanical systems (MEMS) into people for timed drug release: BioMEMs.

On the history of the factor 2 in fundamental physics, arguing that in all significant cases the same physical operation is taking place.

How much computation can have taken place in the history of the universe? This paper argues it's no more than 10¹²⁰ operations on 10⁹⁰ bits.

SSSCA hearings cancelled among anthrax threat and resistance from tech industry. [via rc3]

The Thermodynamics of Terrorism: favoring high entropy, resiliant systems as a means of defense. [via rc3]

Objects in mirror are closer than they appear

Energy has been observed by the ESA's XMM-Newton satellite flowing out of a black hole for the first time. [via bottomquark]

Nature is making available an archive of research on anthrax and other potential bioweapons. [via Interesting People]

Globalsecurity.org's section on the war. [via net.narrative environments]

Can't remember where I found the link, but the World Press Review has a good section on current events, with links to reporting around the world. The political leaning of each source is noted.

A couple of recent stories from NPR on Mars Odyssey

MSN shuts out non-Microsoft browsers. I don't use Microsoft browsers, but I still can't bring myself to care.