Hawking: Mankind must colonize space
CAMBRIDGE, England, Jan. 6 (UPI) -- British physicist Stephen Hawking says mankind faces the threat of nuclear annihilation and should build colonies on Mars and beyond.
Hawking made the remarks on a radio program to mark his 70th birthday, responding to questions submitted by listeners, The Daily Telegraph reported Friday.
"It is possible that the human race could become extinct but it is not inevitable. I think it is almost certain that a disaster, such as nuclear war or global warming, will befall the Earth within a thousand years," the Cambridge University cosmologist and theoretical physicist said.
"It is essential that we colonize space. I believe that we will eventually establish self-sustaining colonies on Mars, and other bodies in the solar system, although probably not within the next 100 years," Hawking said.
But if on its journey outward into space humanity should encounter alien races, the consequences could be disastrous, he warned.
"The discovery of intelligent life elsewhere in the universe would be the greatest scientific discovery ever. But it would be very risky to attempt to communicate with an alien civilization.
"If aliens decided to visit us, then the outcome might be similar to when Europeans arrived in the Americas," Hawking said. "That did not turn out well for the Native Americans."
Modified silkworms spin spider silk
SOUTH BEND, Ind., Jan. 6 (UPI) -- Silk produced by genetically engineered silkworms has approached the sought-after strength and elasticity of spider silk, U.S. researchers say.
Scientists as Notre Dame University say this stronger silk has mechanical properties that could be used to make sutures, artificial limbs and parachutes.
The project to create transgenic silkworms with both silkworm and spider silk proteins was a collaboration between Notre Dame and the University of Wyoming.
"It's something nobody has done before," Malcolm Fraser Jr., Notre Dame professor of biological sciences, said in a university release Friday.
Fibers produced by the genetically modified worms were tougher than typical silkworm silk and as tough as dragline silk fibers produced by spiders, researchers said.
Commercial production of spider silk from spiders is impractical because spiders are too cannibalistic and territorial for farming, scientists say.
The stronger fiber from the modified silkworms could find application in sutures, where some natural silkworm silk is used, as well as wound dressings, artificial ligaments, tendons, tissue scaffolds, microcapsules, cosmetics and textiles, Notre Dame said.
Extreme users said using up bandwidth
NEWBURY, England, Jan. 6 (UPI) -- On the world's congested mobile airwaves, just 10 percent of users consume 90 percent of wireless bandwidth, a report by a British monitoring company says.
Arieso in Newbury, England, which advises mobile operators in Europe, the United States and Africa, said it tracked 1.1 million customers of a European mobile operator during a 24-hour period in November to determine bandwidth usage, The New York Times reported.
The biggest consumers, the company said, are a mix of business users gaining access to the Internet over a 3G network while traveling and individuals with generous or unlimited mobile data packages watching videos, the main cause of the excess traffic.
And the gap between extreme users and the rest of the population is widening, Arieso said.
In 2009, the top 3 percent of heavy users generated 40 percent of network traffic. Now, Arieso said, these users are responsible for 70 percent of the traffic.
Sixty-four percent of extreme users were using laptops, a third were using smartphones and 3 percent had iPads or other tablet computers, it said.
Japan plans robot farm in disaster area
TOKYO, Jan. 6 (UPI) -- Japan says a futuristic robotic farm will be built on land swamped by the March 11 tsunami as part of an experimental government project.
The Ministry of Agriculture project will see unmanned tractors working the fields of the farm on a 600-acre site in the disaster zone, Britain's The Daily Telegraph reported Friday.
Robots will also box the produce grown on the farm, including rice, wheat, soybeans, fruit and vegetables.
The experimental farm will be located on a site in northeast Japan's Miyagi prefecture in northeast Japan that was flooded in last year's tsunami.
The project is expected to begin later this year with a predicted government investment of $51 million over the next six years, ministry officials said.
Farming land in Miyagi prefecture was hit hard by the disaster, with tsunami water leaving soil laden with salt and oil deposits, as well as radiation contamination as a result of the leaking Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant.
With more than 59,000 acres of once-fertile farmland damaged as a result of the earthquake, tsunami and nuclear fallout, Japan's agriculture industry is struggling to recover.
"We hope the project will help not only support farmers in the disaster-hit regions but also revive the entire nation's agriculture," a spokesman for the Agriculture Ministry said.
