The bottleneck in computing these days is principally the limited bandwidth of telecommunications networks, but emerging fiber optic networks are set to change all that. Now a research program called OptIPuter, which stands for Optical networking, Internet Protocol, computer storage, processing, and visualization technologies, is being designed to "exploit a new world in which the central architectural element is optical networking, not computers - creating 'supernetworks'.... Essentially, the OptIPuter is a 'virtual' parallel computer in which the individual 'processors' are widely distributed clusters; the 'memory' is in the form of large distributed data repositories; 'peripherals' are very-large scientific instruments, visualization displays and/or sensor arrays; and the 'motherboard' uses standard IP delivered over multiple dedicated lambdas." Branches of the sciences that generate massive amounts of data - on the terabyte and petabyte scales - will be able to interactively combine datasets from multiple databases located around the country or the world through optical networks. The OptIPuter program is currently developing and testing the system in collaboration with EarthScope, which manages the USArray seismology research program, and the Biomedical Informatics Research Network (BIRN) program of the National Institutes of Health.

If you've ever sat bored to tears in physics class wondering how physics will ever apply to you in your life, you need to visit Physics Life on the Institute of Physics physics.org website. Physics Life is a fun Flash animated website that you explore with the click of a mouse to learn how everyday objects and technologies work. Click the remote control to learn how remote controls work with your television. Click the microwave to learn how microwaves cook food. Click a fuse box to learn how they protect against excessive currents. Etc.

Presenting science to kids in a way that is fun, intelligent, and engaging is practically a science itself, so when we found out about "Peep and the Big Wide World," we just had to post about it. In fact, the review we found on The Creative Science Quarterly is so right on, that we may take the easy way out and just repost it here. "On most mornings, somewhere in the landscape of childrens television, you can hear Taj Mahal singing and Joan Cusack narrating not about sharing, or taking turns, or telling the truth, or even potty training for that matter, but actually on (of all things) science. Funded in part by the National Science Foundation, Im referring to a program called Peep and the Big Wide World, a quaint animated offering which follows the adventures of Peep, Quack, and Chirp (a chick, a duck, and a robin), as they explore and discover all the things that go in their little world. I know about this show because I happen to be a scientist with a vested interest in acts of science education. And I also know about this show because I happen to have two young children, who find it both amusing and engaging enough to sit still for its entirety. Of course, my children dont [care] about it being science and all. And they certainly wouldnt even begin to understand the irony of using characters that, in my circle of colleagues, currently represent reservoirs for both the Avian Flu Virus and the West Nile Virus (the duck, of course, has the funniest lines, possibly because he knows that he alone is the asymptomatic carrier). But at the end of the day, I think that this is all really beside the point. And thats because the point is this: we should be impressed because the show succeeds in talking effectively to the general public about science. And it does this by being different, creative, charming and yet informative which believe me is no easy task."

A continent-wide seismic observatory called USArray is marching its way across America beginning in California to provide scientists with earthquake data to study active tectonics and deep earth structure across the continent. The transportable telemetered array of 400 unmanned broadband seismometers are arranged in a grid with an approximate 70 km station spacing. The data are transmitted in real time through the USArray Network Facility at the Institute for Geophysics and Planetary Physics (IGPP) at Scripps Institution of Oceanography. This movie shows how the USArray seismometers will be moved eastward every two years to eventually cover the entire the United States. Permanent stations (yellow triangles above) will also be emplaced. The program has currently covered the state of California and much of Oregon and Washington. More than a Gigabyte of data are recorded everyday from 100 stations and viewed on a tiled, 50-megapixel display at IGPP. You can view the 100 most recently recorded earthquakes from the array on the ANF website and find information for downloading data for research through the EarthScope website. Need a thesis topic? There will be more than enough data from this program to keep seismologists busy for years.

Quick, what's a Pele's hair? A pahoeohe flow? A fumarole? These are just some of the terms on the US Geological Survey (USGS) photo glossary of volcano terms. Just click any word or phrase, like "effusive eruption" (pictured right), and you'll find cool photos, detailed descriptions, and various volcano trivia with which to impress your friends. There are other handy pages on the USGS volcano website, which is intertwined with the Smithsonian volcano program pages, including a weekly volcanic activity report, regional volcano maps, and a comprehensive database of information on volcanoes from around the world.

We've moved things around in the Science & Culture section of Element List to give you more convenient access to the ever growing listing of science blogs. Now you can surf science blogs to your heart's content. If you wish to have your science blog listed on Element List, send us an e-mail or post a comment.

A magnitude 6.8 earthquake stuck the Lake Tanganyika region along the East African Rift zone on December 5 at 2:19 PM local time. Moment tensor solutions for the earthquake show that it was a normal faulting earthquake along a roughly north to north-northwest striking faulting plane. The East African Rift zone lies along the failed rift arm of the Afar Triangle, or triple junction, along which the Arabian plate rifted from Africa. The US has a similar kind of failed rift arm that runs along the Mississippi river and the New Madrid fault zone, which is less seismically active, but which failed in a series of large earthquakes in 1811-1812 that rang church bells as far as Boston.

What has three wheels, folds like an umbrella, runs on electricity, and can scoot you around campus at a zippy 9.5 mph (15 km/h)? It's the sleek little Rider. Small enough to carry around with you on the subway and tuck discretely in your office, it's perfect for riding between the subway and home or office and for little trips across campus. The Rider has a front wheel motor, uses regenerative braking, and runs on a 24 volt rechargable battery that lasts for up to four hours. Reportedly, its best feature is that it leans as you corner, making it more maneuverable than typical tricycles. The Rider is designed by Elisha Wetherhorn, who is looking for a partner or two to manufacture the Rider and bring it to market. Any takers? (via Treehugger)

"Millions upon millions of the world's population today are fearful of A-bomb attack. Hanging over our heads is the atomic sword of Damocles." So begins the 1950 publication of Atomic Bombing: How to Protect Yourself by the non-profit science news organization Science Service, known today largely for writing science news for school kids. The book, now hosted online in its entirety by Josh Karpf, describes in gripping detail what might happen in a nuclear attack. "At a point 2,000 feet above the ground, the first atomic rocket of World War III explodes over your city. In one vast flash of light, equal to 100 suns, the buildings are etched against a sky of fire.... There, in a millionth of a second, a lump of plutonium or uranium, perhaps the size of a basketball, disappears. As it vanishes, the temperature at that point jumps to 1,000,000 degrees Centigrade.... A thousandth of a second later, the ball of fire is 45 feet across. Its temperature has dropped to 300,000 degrees. After a full second, there is a globe of flaming air 450 feet wide, the size of a city block. The shadows cast by this ball of fire are etched permanently into concrete sidewalks and granite buildings. Directly beneath the burst, in the split second before the blast wave arrives, pedestrians simply vanish into smoke and ash. This is the point which atomic scientists call "ground zero." Here the sidewalk temperature is between 3,000 and 4,000 degrees." Written in a matter-of-fact, Father-Knows-Best tone, some passages are so scary, they're almost comical. "Each generation is born, lives and dies. The A-bomb, if it comes, like any disaster, will prune human lives. Finally each of us must die. It is a question of timing."

The December 1 issue of Nature contains a special section Science in the Web Age that covers the new wave of online publishing and communication, which seems to be passing many scientists by. Open access publishing, weblogs, and wikis, which are huge, growing forces on the internet, have yet to gather strength within the scientific research community, which ironically lives and dies by peer-review, publishing, and citations. According to one article by Declan Butler, "Most younger biologists blog anonymously, says Roland Krause, a researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Genetics in Berlin and a bioinformatics blogger. 'Many fear that their superiors consider it a waste of time, or even dangerous,' he says. [RealClimate blogger and scientist at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, Gavin] Schmidt agrees: 'Until blogging is seen as normal, this will continue to be a problem.'" Perhaps it's a generation gap that distinguishes young researchers who grew up with the internet, video games, and online social networking sites like Friendster and MySpace, which are only a few years old. "Such fears are dated, argues Jason Kelly, an MIT graduate student involved in OpenWetWare. The upcoming generation, he says, believes that excessive competition can harm science; they see the benefits of brainstorming their research ideas on blogs as far outweighing the risks."

Intelligent design advocates criticize biological evolution, which is based on at least 150 years of research and observation, but when the John Templeton Foundation offered financial support for scientific research into intelligent design, no one stepped up to the plate. As reported in today's New York Times, "The Templeton Foundation, a major supporter of projects seeking to reconcile science and religion, says that after providing a few grants for conferences and courses to debate intelligent design, they asked proponents to submit proposals for actual research. "They never came in," said Charles L. Harper Jr., senior vice president at the Templeton Foundation, who said that while he was skeptical from the beginning, other foundation officials were initially intrigued and later grew disillusioned. "From the point of view of rigor and intellectual seriousness, the intelligent design people don't come out very well in our world of scientific review," he said."

What do you do when you just have to get on the internet to find out if your tomography model is done, and you don't want your thesis advisor to know you've been shopping at Macy's where there's not a single cybercafe in sight? If Santa is good to you this year, you just might whip out your handy WiFi digital hotspotter to find an open wireless network. The Canary Wireless hotspotter from our geeky pals at ThinkGeek will tell you not only the presence of a wireless network and signal strength, but the network ID, encryption status, and channel. If you're lucky enough to find more than one open network, you can simply scroll down for the best one. It's small enough to fit in the palm of your hand and makes for a handy keychain.

On November 28 the Kilauea volcano east Lae`apuki lava delta collapsed into the sea producing a huge outpouring of lava and a cloud of steam and other gases. The USGS reports that the cliff edge retreated 50 meters during the collapse and that Kilauea's summit and Pu`u O`o cone on the east rift zone slightly deflated after the event but has been inflating since December 1. The USGS website has a regularly updated photolog with more cool pictures of the delta collapse and subsequent redevelopment. Some of the pictures make for great desktop wallpaper.