You can find out more about the discovery of buckyballs in space via the NASA website and in a forthcoming issue of SpectroscopyNOW.com

Hayward will be replaced by American Bob Dudley, the BBC reports.

Meanwhile, vessels returned to the Gulf of Mexico in the wake of a tropical storm to continue “relief” efforts that BP says will cost it more than $32 billion. Not surprisingly, BP’s share price has halved in the time since the Deepwater Horizon disaster back in April that triggered the devastating oil leak. Of course, the stockbrokers have made a killing as each news item nudged the price up and down and they bought at the lows and sold at the highs (at the moment the price is rising again fairly steadily).

The Financial Times reports that BP is planning to sell assets worth $30bn to cover the costs of the oil spill.

Other BP oil spill news

• BP Earnings Preview: Profits Will Surge Despite Oil Spill
• BP oil spill: Tony Hayward replaced by Bob Dudley as oil giant slumps to record loss
• BP makes record loss as Tony Hayward quits

US President Barack Obama has called the work a “positive sign” and the company’s shares jumped on the news (whoop-de-do!). All, I can say is, it was about bloody time and that BP was obviously not losing money at a high enough rate to warrant actually getting this problem fixed sooner.

The company now plans to siphon off around 80,000 barrels of oil a day on to tankers until a relief well is put in place to take the flow. The oilspill has been pouring out up to an estimated 2.5 million gallons of oil every day for three months, which despite the ineffectual use of booms and dispersants is likely to have an ecological and economic effect on the area for many, many years to come. Some livelihoods and much wildlife have been lost forever.

Reuters reports that cleanup over the next 15 years may cost BP up to $100 billion.

Related leaks

• Crawfisher Drew Landry sings the ‘BP Blues’ to president’s Gulf spill commission
• BP ‘installs new cap’ on oil well
• You: Oil cap success not assured, says BP
• Economic Damage of Drilling Ban to Dwarf Oil Spill, Hecht Says

At the forefront of research and development into newer, stronger crops that might resist such damage are the CGI (Clinton Global Initiative) and the IRRI (International Rice Research Institute) – the duo plans to provide a more sustainable crop, that would be unaffected by such flooding.

In a news release entitled “IRRI-bred rice varieties for the Philippines,” the IRRI demonstrates three innovative newly tested (yet to be distributed) rice crops: salt-tolerant rice, flood-tolerant rice, and drought tolerant rice.

The operation is the brainchild of Doug Band, Chief of Staff at the Clinton Foundation and Former President Bill Clinton, both of whom are invested in ongoing research and development in this area.

The three new breeds listed above have all been tested under controlled field conditions, going through detailed evaluations processes performed by The National Cooperative Testing Program of PhilRice. Seeds were distributed to farmers in the Philippines where IRRI scientists carefully observed each separate hybrid as it underwent stress tests. Geographically, the flood-tolerant rice was grown in a flood zone, whereas the salt-tolerant seed was planted in a high salinity region. The same went for drought-tolerant seeds, which were deposited in an area exposed to drought.

The IRRI demonstrated that their flood-tolerant rice was found to last up to three weeks underwater. Congruently, the salt-tolerant rice seed flourished on land which normally went unfarmed due to high salinity. It actually yielded three times as much crop, and was noted (in separate testing) to produce nearly three times that amount in a region with a normal salt concentration.

The vast majority of these conventional crops rely heavily on natural rainfall, which can occur sparingly in some neighboring regions. Based on similar controlled experiments, the new drought-tolerant rice crop can yield up to 10% more than standard varieties in seasons with good rainfall. More importantly, they still produce twice as much crop under very arid conditions.

I posted a TED video here, and a chemist friend, advocating MyRSC, suggested I reported the video on that site, but I’m not entirely convinced of the benefits. He tells me that he posts inspirational materials on there because he hopes it will act “as a motivation for teens to study Science particularly Physics, Chemistry and Biology for a future career.”

I can see where he’s coming from, but my concern with spending time on yet another member system on the web as opposed to Facebook or Twitter is that the viewing numbers are probably very low. Admittedly, they’re likely to be more targeted, but I suspect it’d be a bit like preaching to the choir and it’s only a small choir, whereas if I can catch their eye on Facebook it’s more likely to target a potential convert to the scientific cause.

I probably spend too much time posting on my various blogs, Twitter, Facebook, Delicious, FriendFeed as it is without adding yet another outlet. I might be swayed if someone can offer user statistics or insights into how well MyRSC (or any other web 2.0 for science is working).

The Mandelbrot set has become popular outside mathematics both for its aesthetic appeal and for being a complicated structure arising from a simple definition, and is one of the most well-known examples of mathematical visualization. Many mathematicians, including Mandelbrot, communicated this area of mathematics to the public. Somehow we are yet to fully understand the implications of this mathematical certainty – that a very simple formula can generate essentially infinite complexity. Perhaps it lies at the heart of the origins of the universe. Given a number, “42″ as a starting point, for instance, perhaps there is a simple equation that will “generate” the universe…

However, new evidence is now emerging that the kind of cyber attacks we have so far seen that virtually border on a war cry, may actually be sophisticated criminal operations rather than military intelligence operating at a national level. A better understanding of the nature of such attacks is needed to avoid international conflict that could escalate into the real world.

Cyber attacks on Estonia in April 2007 and Georgia in August 2008, coincided with conventional military operations executed by the Russian Federation’s army in the South Ossetia, explain Sérgio Tenreiro de Magalhães of the Portuguese Catholic University in Braga, Portugal, Henrique Dinis Santos and Leonel Duarte dos Santos of the University of Minho, in Guimarães, Portugal, and Hamid Jahankhani of the University of East London, UK. Although The Russian Federation was accused repeatedly of these operations data collected raises doubts that the Russian state was involved. Indeed, the network underlying the attacks in the second case was poorly organised and would suggest that loosely connected criminal organisations within Russia were waging a kind of Maoist “People’s war” in which specialised groups attack critical targets. Nevertheless, despite the apparently unsophisticated resources used, more akin to the kind of malicious software attacks observed against individuals, such as phishing attacks and Trojan bot-nets, the damage inflicted on selected targets was considerable.

Distributed denial of service (dDoS) attacks, malicious script injections (SQL injections) into susceptible websites were commonplace, with significant service interruptions to those affected during a vulnerable time of real-world conflict. However, the sources of many of these attacks were linked not to government officials but to criminal organisations selling fake European passports and credit cards, the research team has discovered.

Although this new combat front is far removed from the conventional battlefield of soldiers involved in their bloody and lethal duties, the aims of military operations in this zone are the same as they ever were – to weaken a state’s communications, to wreck power supply, transport, and other infrastructure, to disable enemy defences and ultimately to allow the victor to enforce territorial restrictions, political sanctions and other penalties on the defeated nation.

The Obama administration is heading towards a “kill switch” for the internet, in the USA at least, such a concept comes with a whole tranche of serious civil rights and commercial issues. Moreover, although it suggests that the US government is taking seriously the threat of cyber attack, it makes you wonder whether any enemy could simply do nothing more than poke the nation to trip the kill switch and achieve its aims of disabling infrastructure without further intervention.

Sérgio Tenreiro de Magalhães, Henrique M. Dinis Santos, Leonel Duarte dos Santos, & Hamid Jahankhani (2010). Cyberwar and the Russian Federation: the usual suspect Int. J. Electronic Security and Digital Forensics, 3 (2), 151-163

Related cyber attack articles

• Plan cyberwar defenses now, before any attacks succeed
• Cyber-war a growing threat warn experts
• Cyber attacks will ‘catastrophically’ spook public, warns GCHQ
• The Cyber Threat – Deconstructing the Problem to Promote Comprehensive Dialogue and Action
• Pentagon works to define rules of cyber warfare
• Countries risk cyber terrorism, security expert tells summit
• Cyber Defcon 1 Level, highest
• Intel Chief Cites Threat Of Cyber Attacks

Reuters is reporting that Hurricane Alex has seriosuly disrupted the cleanup operation in the Gulf of Mexico, while “a senior U.S. official” revealed that a relief well intended to plug the deep-sea is still weeks away from completion.

Sites syndicating Associated Press, including this one, reported Wednesday, that the U.S. Congress has initiated legislation to impose new safeguards on offshore oil drilling in the hope of preventing another devastating spill in the region.

Bloomsburg Business Week reports that the lawyers are getting involved on behalf of the turtles. The site says that wildlife activists have filed a lawsuit because “endangered sea turtles are being killed in BP’s ‘controlled burns’ in the Gulf of Mexico.” The creatures are being trapped, the lawsuit claims, inside the booms the company uses to collect spilled oil.

CNN says that the new head of the Gulf Coast disaster’s claims fund is cutting big checks and sending them out faster to the economic victims of the Gulf oil spill. BP has shelled out almost $130 million so far on 41,000 claims, but almost twice that number have so far been committed. Newly appointed claims “czar”, Kenneth Feinber, said that not everyone will be compensated, particularly in the area of tourism.

The Financial Times warns that the BP oil spill could create a “dead zone” in the Gulf of Mexico that may take years to come alive again if it ever does. The new dead zone may fuse with a similar zone the size of Lake Ontario (17,000 square kilometres) at the mouth of the Mississippi river.

Finally, ArabNews.com reports that the Gulf spill has had a detrimental impact on the reputation of the oil industry as a whole. Cue violins…

So, having taken your seat, one of the first apparently superficial concerns is, given that you’ve only just noticed (half way through proceedings) that there is the merest sliver of glued on paper remaining on the toilet roll, is the replacement within easy reach? Having found that not to be the case you’re keeping a weather eye on the bidet, when you wonder if your house guests rinsed away all their bodily residues from the porcelain?

As proceedings come to an end a quick glance downwards has your heart skip a beat at the site of blood, or was there simply beetroot in yesterday’s salad? If it’s not blood then why was the stool black? It may be a sign of excessive red wine and roast beef consumption the previous day or something far more serious like a bleeding ulcer or bowel cancer? Similarly, was there also asparagus with that salad or does the strong sulfurous smell of one’s urine today suggest a visit to the doctor is required for a kidney function test?

Putting aside such worrisome thoughts you hit the shower, bypassing the scummy bidet, and then wonder whether the low water pressure means the services of a plumber are needed or do you just need to wait for the lavatory cistern to refill. Regardless, will the hot water last long enough to rinse off all the shower gel? And once you step out and have started towel drying did you remember to rinse out the conditioner from your hair?

Other anxieties arise when you glance at what looks ominously like a pubic hair coiled around the blade of your razor, or worse a bristle of your toothbrush? And, speaking of teeth, is that pink froth you spit out while brushing in a panicked frenzy a sign of gum disease or did you use the red baby toothpaste by mistake again?

More information about bathroom anxieties

• Stool color diagnostics
• Bleeding gums
• Urine odor
• Palpitations
• Alcoholicism
• Red meat risks
• Obsessive compulsive disorder
• Anxiety

Obama says that the Gulf of Mexico oil “spill” is the worst environmental disaster the US has ever faced, but the Seattle Times wonders whether that’s true and cites alternative disasters that had much greater impact: “The Dust Bowl of the 1930s caused more social upheaval. The Exxon Valdez spill had a higher wildlife death toll. The pesticide DDT affected a wider swath of the country.”

So, from BP’s perspective (PR aside) is it a bad disaster? The NYT has the skinny: “BP said Monday that it had spent about $2 billion so far in its response to the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, including containment efforts, economic and environmental claims and state and federal costs. It has also paid out $105 million in claims.” Of course, those who “bed & breakfast” BP shares are cashing in, of course, buying on the lows, selling on the highs, it’s a bit like yachting – all ups and downs and you generally come out of it wetter than when you went in, eh Tony?

And, speaking of Mr Hayward, news just in says he has pulled out of a conference today at which he was expected to give a keynote speech on the global responsibility of oil companies…