German Researchers Reveal Date of Christ's Death

The U.S. and German geologists claim they had discovered the exact date when Christ was crucified, the International Geology Review reported.

According to the report, published in the academic journal this week, the scientists discovered that Christ had been crucified on Friday, April 3, 33 AD.

Jefferson Williams from the U.S. Supersonic Geophysical together with his German colleagues, Markus Schwab and Achim Brauer analyzed seismic activity near the Dead Sea and the earthquakes’ descriptions in the New Testament’s first book, Gospel of Matthew.

Matthew’s Chapter 27 says that as Jesus lay dying on the cross “the earth did quake, and the rocks rent.”

The scientists, who had detected the signs of two earthquakes in the soil samples from the Dead Sea, revealed that the latter earthquake had occurred between 26AD and 36AD, at the time when Pontius Pilate was procurator of Judea and when, as all four canonical gospels say, Jesus was crucified.

By putting together several clues from the Gospel of Matthew, combined with the Jewish calendar and astronomical data, the researchers revealed the date of the crucifixion with a fair degree of precision, the journal said.

Marc Faber: 100% Chance of Global Recession

By: Lee Brodie

The stock market appears to be at a critical inflection point. That’s the takeaway from widely followed economist Marc Faber, author of the Boom, Gloom & Doom newsletter.

Faber’s bearish market calls have been followed closely since 1987 when he warned his clients to cash out before Black Monday.

And in a live interview on CNBC’s Fast Money Halftime Report, Faber again warned that economies of the world may be on the brink of a serious slowdown.

Faber indicated that while investors remain focused on Greece and Europe – other issues, bigger issues are looming. And they’re more threatening.

“As an observer of markets – whenever everyone focuses on one thing – like Greece and Europe – maybe they miss issues that are far more important – such as a meaningful slowdown in India and China.”

The latest reports from Beijing would support Faber's assertion. The HSBC Flash Purchasing Managers Index, slipped to 48.7 in May from 49.3 in April. That marks the seventh straight month that the index has been below 50, a level which indicates economic activity is contracting.

Faber also cited weakness in the high-end as another key catalyst that’s very negative.

“There are more and more stocks that are breaking down – economic sensitive stocks and companies that cater to the high-end,” he said. "That suggests to me the economy is likely to weaken and the huge asset run is likely to come to an end with significant asset deflation.”

Earlier in the week Tiffanylowered forecasts citing slower sales. At that time, Fast Money trader Dan Nathan warned that results such as these were foreboding and suggested the high-end was starting to crack.

When taken in concert, Faber says all the economies of the world could take a hit from these negative developments.

“I think we could have a global recession either in Q4 or early 2013." When asked what were the odds, Faber replied, "100%."

However, in the near term Faber also sees potential for a market rally.

Faber said the bullish catalyst would be Greece exiting the EU.

“I think the market would be relieved if finally Greece exited the euro. There would be some clarity. Although it wouldn’t be good for banks and insurance (stocks) in general I think markets are oversold and with an exit – markets would rally.”

It’s worth noting that Faber is talking hypothetically; he does not think Greece exits the EU in the near future.

“What I think will happen is that Germany will show more flexibility and issue more euro bonds.”

Faber pointed to the recent decline in the euro as evidence that the currency markets share his view. “More bonds will challenge the quality of the euro. That’s why the euro has been very weak, lately."

For investors looking to navigate what could be a serious economic storm, Faber said the best thing to do is keep the portfolio in US dollars and own gold, “knowing that sentiment is negative and in the near-term it could trade down to the Dec 29 low of $1522.”

Using Your Fingers Instead of Passwords

By Kendra Srivastava

Tablet owners may soon unlock their devices using biometric sensors, as security technology progresses beyond traditional passwords.

Napa Sae-Bae, a graduate student at the Polytechnic Institute of New York University, is creating an iPad app to verify users' hand shape and finger length. Sae-Bae's biometric analyzing algorithm has already yielded a 90 percent accuracy rate, suggesting her innovation may have widespread application when it debuts in a year.

This project improves on Sae-Bae's existing tablet app, which unlocks iPads in response to hand gestures like palm rotation.

"Unlike gestures, fingerprints are physiological physical traits that you can't change," she explained about her current research. "There's the feeling that these are supposed to be secure and private."

Biometric identification research like Sae-Bae's may revolutionize the mobile industry if it succeeds, as consumers demand new and better ways to protect their data against hackers.

A hospital in Canada already uses fingerprint scanners to verify doctors' identities, allowing them to reach medical records with one swipe rather than entering long passwords.

Fujitsu, a Japanese company, is developing another kind of biometric sensor called PalmSecure that recognizes users' vein patterns instead of fingerprints or hand length.

The company maintains that hand veins never change, while fingerprints and other external hand features may fade or scar over time.

Echoing Fujitsu's logic, researchers at the National Chung Hsing University in Taiwan are building heartbeat scanners to identify mobile phone and tablet owners. Every person's heartbeat is unique, making this biological marker an ideal password.

These seemingly foolproof innovations are designed to prevent the increasing incidence of hackers stealing or cracking personal and company passwords. Recent hacks against worldwide governments and corporations suggest no traditional password is safe, not even those at the Pentagon or FBI.

Despite the danger, many mobile phone owners and IT departments still use convenient security codes like "password1" or "1234," leaving them easily susceptible to malicious intrusions.

But while a palm or retina-scanning app may end the need for such passwords, this technology could also backfire.

For example, the facial detection system on Samsung's Galaxy Nexus is easily fooled by a picture, negating its usefulness as a security tool.

Biometric identification may discourage today's hackers more effectively than traditional passwords, but like any security tool it will likely challenge a new breed of hackers to twist it for their purposes.

Private Dragon Spacecraft Is 'Golden Spike' of Final Frontier, Astronaut Says

by Robert Z. Pearlman, collectSPACE.com Editor

HOUSTON — The arrival of the first commercial spacecraft at the International Space Station this week is tantamount to the golden spike that completed the first railroad to span the United States 143 years ago this month, an astronaut on the orbiting lab said Saturday (May 26).

"We all remember the completion of the transcontinental railroad, which opened up the western frontier of the United States and it was celebrated by pounding in a golden spike," NASA astronaut Don Pettit radioed from inside the privately-built Dragon spacecraft. "This is sort of the equivalent of the golden spike."

The robotic Dragon space capsule, which was designed by Hawthorne, Calif.-based Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) was captured via robotic arm by Pettit and attached to the space station on Friday (May 25). Today, Pettit opened the hatch to the cargo craft and was the first to go inside.

"One other interesting detail, nobody remembers who pounded that golden spike in. The important thing to remember was that the railroad was completed and was now open for use to help settle the western frontier," Pettit added.

This test flight, conducted under NASA's Commercial Orbital Transportation (COTS) program, is paving the way for a change in how the space agency launches cargo and, eventually, astronauts to the space station. SpaceX, headed by PayPal co-founder Elon Musk, has a $1.6 billion contract with NASA to provide 12 Dragon cargo ship flights to the station, not counting this test flight.

iPads could scan palms for passwords

By Matt Liebowitz

Like palm-activated ATMs and retina-scanning smartphones, tablet computers like the iPad may soon authenticate their rightful users by reading the unique movement of their hands, not their passwords.

Napa Sae-Bae, a doctoral student at the Polytechnic Institute of New York University, is working to build an app that, using multitouch sensors, will biometrically authenticate tablet users' hand gestures. Her goal, she told NextGov, is for the tablet device to recognize its owner's specific biological traits — their hand shape and finger length, for example — and use those unique characteristics, which do not change, to replace passwords, which run the risk of being cracked.

Although she says it will be at least a year before her app is ready, Sae-Bae has already developed an iPad app that asks users to make gestures on a touch screen, such as rotating an open palm and opening a closed fist, in order to verify their identity. The hand sensor technologies she's using are currently available and already used, in different capacities, on iPads and Android tablets.

She also built a biometric-analyzing algorithm that will be the technological basis of the app; in experiments with 34 people, she achieved a 90 percent accuracy rate in authenticating the hand movements made by each participant, NextGov said.

Sae-Bae's work falls in line with other advancements in biometric authentication that have made headlines in recent months, both for the consumer market and for the government. As part of its human measurements and signatures intelligence (human MASINT) program, the U.S. Air Force has expressed interest in developing security cameras that can detect a suspect's age and ethnicity, and even whether that person is a terrorist smuggling a bomb.

Last month, a Japanese bank announced that beginning in September, it would equip 10 ATMs with biometric sensors that read customers' palms for identity verification.