Computer scientist wins Canada's top science prize

A Toronto researcher who has dedicated his career to proving whether certain types of problems are solvable by computers has won this year's Gerhard Herzberg Canada Gold Medal for Science and Engineering, which comes with $1 million in research funding.

Canada's top annual science prize has gone to Stephen A. Cook, a researcher in the department of computer science at the University of Toronto.

Pluto-Bound Spacecraft Gets Review for US Postage Stamp

The grassroots mission to land a Pluto-bound planetary probe on a postage stamp has caught the attention of postal authorities, the team that organized the campaign announced on Monday (Feb. 25)."Recently, we were issued a letter from the [United States Postal Service] USPS informing us that the New Horizons mission stamp proposal will be submitted for review and consideration before their Advisory Committee!" wrote Con Tsang, a research scientist at the Southwest Research Institute in Colorado, in an e-mail addressed to supporters and posted on the NASA mission's Facebook page. "We have cleared the first hurdle!"Last February, Tsang began a petition on the Change.org website urging the USPS and its Citizens' Stamp Advisory Committee to honor the first mission to Pluto with its own postage stamp. Backed by the New Horizon's flight team, including the mission's principal investigator Alan Stern, the petition collected more than 12,000 signatures by the time the effort ended on March 13, 2012.

NASA's Sequester Plan Targets Private Space Taxi Funds and Tech

WASHINGTON — To deal with the nearly $900 million budget hit NASA will absorb if automatic spending cuts known as sequestration are allowed to take effect March 1, the U.S. space agency would slow development work on commercially operated astronaut taxis, delay or cancel space technology programs and postpone the launch of some small science missions.NASA Administrator Charles Bolden outlined the spaceagency’s sequestration plans in a Feb. 5 letter to Senate Appropriations Committee Chairwoman Barbara Mikulski who released it following a Feb.

Billionaire releases plans for Titanic replica set to sail in 2016

An Australian billionaire is getting ready to build a new version of the Titanic that could set sail in late 2016.Palmer unveiled blueprints for the famously doomed ship's namesake Tuesday at the Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum in New York. He said construction is scheduled to start soon in China.Palmer said 40,000 people have expressed interest in tickets for the maiden voyage, taking the original course from Southampton, England, to New York. He said people are inspired by his quest to replicate one of the most famous vessels in history.We all live on this planet, we all breathe the same air and, of course, the Titanic is about the things we've got in common," he said. "It links three continents."The original Titanic was the world's largest and most luxurious ocean liner when it hit an iceberg in the North Atlantic and sank on April 15, 1912. Only 700 people of the more than 2,200 on board survived the most famous maritime disaster in history, partly because there were not enough lifeboats to carry everyone.

Galaxy smartphone

Samsung is hosting an event in New York next month, where it's expected they will reveal the first details on their next Galaxy smartphone.

A tweet posted by the electronics giant's Samsung Mobile account reveals an invitation to a New York event on March 14 at 7 p.m. ET, with a teaser that reads "come and meet the next Galaxy."

Oscar award for best picture

Director and Producer Ben Affleck accepts the award for best picture for "Argo"

at the Oscars on Sunday Feb. 24, 2013, in Los Angeles.

Access to govt. research

White House directs open access for government research

The White House has moved to make the results of federally funded research available to the public for free within a year, bowing to public pressure for unfettered access to scholarly articles and other materials produced at taxpayers' expense."Americans should have easy access to the results of research they help support," John Holdren, the director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, wrote on the White House website.An online petition on the White House website demanding free access over the Internet to scientific journal articles arising from taxpayer-funded research drew 65,704 signatures.directive comes amid a changing landscape for publishing and the availability of information due to the Internet.Scientists have long published the results of their work in scholarly journals, and many such publications have warned that open access would destroy them and the function they provide the scientific community.