The tsunami washed over Fire Island and, to the west, waves perhaps as high as 20 feet spilled into Lower Manhattan. The furious onrush of water left sediment a foot and a half deep on the Jersey Shore, and debris cascaded far up the Hudson River. No, there's no need to rush to higher ground, commandeer a rowboat in Central Park or empty the closet to grab the rubber boots. This disaster occurred about 2,300 years ago, though how bad it was, or even if it was a tsunami, remains in dispute.

With all the open bars, people on the road and rejoicing in the streets, it is easy to imagine that New Year's is a risky time. Holidays are the most hazardous time for drivers, a result of sharp increases in traveling and drunken driving. And when it comes to New Year's, research over the years offers sobering statistics.

f this were some 1950s sci-fi thriller, the Doomsday Cloud would loom dark and ominous in the evening sky. Each night more stars would wink out along its edges. The cloud would sweep past Jupiter, swallowing it whole, and race on toward Earth. There would be an inky darkness at noon. And so on.

Agricultural crop production relies on composted waste materials and byproducts, such as animal manure, municipal solid waste composts, and sewage sludge, as a necessary nutrient source. Studies have shown that human hair, a readily available waste generated from barbershops and hair salons, combined with additional compost, is an additional nutrient source for crops.

Researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have developed a method to measure the toughness-the resistance to fracture-of the thin insulating films that play a critical role in high-performance integrated circuits. The new technique could help improve the reliability and manufacturability of ICs and, better yet, it's one that state-of-the-art microelectronics manufacturers can use with equipment they already own.

A new study shows that sugar may not be so sweet for the brain – and may lead to memory problems.Researchers from four universities report in the Annals of Neurology that people who absorb glucose more slowly than those who metabolize it quickly are more forgetful and are more likely to have a faulty dentate gyrus, a pocket in the hippocampus section of the brain. The hippocampus is involved with learning and memory formation.

The firms not mentioned here are just as important as the ones that are, as the privatization of space has just inched closer to reality. Rather than NASA handling ISS resupply chores itself or farming the job out to mega-corps such as Lockheed Martin or Boeing, the agency has instead awarded one contract each to Virginia-based Orbital Sciences (valued at around $1.9 billion) and California's own SpaceX ($1.6 billion). The two will be responsible for 20 service flights between 2009 and 2016, with each trip requiring delivery of "a minimum of 20 metric tons of upmass cargo to the space station." The agreements also call for "delivery of non-standard services in support of the cargo resupply, including analysis and special tasks as the government determines are necessary." So yeah, if FedEx / UPS have been balking at your request to ship to a Martian eBay winner, you now know who to call.[Via TG Daily]Filed under: Misc. Gadgets, TransportationNASA taps Orbital Sciences, SpaceX for ISS resupply missions originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 28 Dec 2008 01:29:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Sharp has certainly been an integral part of these solar installations before, but the latest endeavor by the city of Sakai and the Kansai Electric Power Company isn't anything to sneeze at. The initiative will see a pair of "mega solar plants" constructed, one of which will crank out around 10,000 kW while the other outputs 18,000 kW. Once the plants go online in 2011, expectations are that CO2 emissions will decrease on the order of 10,000 tons per year. Of course, a staggering ?5.0 billion ($46.5 million) will be coughed up in order to make it happen, but you can bet Mother Earth will certainly see it as money well spent.

This New Year's Eve Times Square in New York is set to debut a dazzling new LED-encrusted New Year's ball! Composed of 32,256 Philips Luxeon Rebel LEDs, the 12-foot wide energy-efficient orb weighs in at 11,875 pounds, making it twice the size of any ball previously dropped overhead in Time Square. A marriage of tradition and new technology, the stunning new sphere will be ringing in the 100th anniversary of the New Year's Eve ball.

US space agency Nasa tries to create a competitive market for re-supply flights to the International Space Station. Cut off in the seclusion of space, crew members living aboard the International Space Station (ISS) depend on regular deliveries of air, water, food and fuel for their survival. But when the ageing space shuttle fleet is retired in 2010, the US space agency (Nasa) will lose a principal means of ferrying crew and cargo to the ISS. The shuttle's replacement – Ares-Orion – will not enter service until 2015 at the earliest. And in April, Nasa told legislators it would stop asking for Congressional permission to buy cargo space on Russian Progress re-supply vehicles after 2011. That leaves the US dependent on European and Japanese spacecraft for delivering supplies to the space station.