Science and Technology Religion

World's first 'printed' plane snaps together and flies

English engineers have produced what is believed to be the world's first printed plane. I'm not talking a nice artsy lithograph of the Wright Bros. first flight. This is a complete, flyable aircraft spit out of a 3D printer.

The SULSA (Southampton University Laser Sintered Aircraft) is an unmanned air vehicle that emerged, layer by layer, from a nylon laser sintering machine that can fabricate plastic or metal objects. In the case of the SULSA, the wings, access hatches, and the rest of the structure of the plane were all printed.

As if that weren't awesome enough, the entire thing snaps together in minutes, no tools or fasteners required. The electric plane has a wingspan of just under 7 feet and a top speed of 100 mph.

Jim Scanlon, one of the project leads at the University of Southhampton, explains in a statement that the technology allows for products to go from conception to reality much quicker and more cheaply.

"The flexibility of the laser-sintering process allows the design team to revisit historical techniques and ideas that would have been prohibitively expensive using conventional manufacturing," Scanlon says. "One of these ideas involves the use of a Geodetic structure... This form of structure is very stiff and lightweight, but very

Read more: http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-20085901-1/worlds-first-printed-plane-snaps-together-and-flies/#ixzz1ThrQ79dQ

NASA Finds Earth-Size Planet Candidates in Habitable Zone, Six Planet System

Candidates require follow-up observations to verify they are actual planets. Kepler also found six confirmed planets orbiting a sun-like star, Kepler-11. This is the largest group of transiting planets orbiting a single star yet discovered outside our solar system.

"In one generation we have gone from extraterrestrial planets being a mainstay of science fiction, to the present, where Kepler has helped turn science fiction into today's reality," said NASA Administrator Charles Bolden. "These discoveries underscore the importance of NASA's science missions, which consistently increase understanding of our place in the cosmos."

The discoveries are part of several hundred new planet candidates identified in new Kepler mission science data, released on Feb. 1. The findings increase the number of planet candidates identified by Kepler to-date to 1,235. Of these, 68 are approximately Earth-size; 288 are super-Earth-size; 662 are Neptune-size; 165 are the size of Jupiter and 19 are larger than Jupiter.

Of the 54 new planet candidates found in the habitable zone, five are near Earth-sized. The remaining 49 habitable zone candidates range from super-Earth size -- up to twice the size of Earth -- to larger than Jupiter.

The findings are based on the results of observations conducted May 12 to Sept. 17, 2009, of more than 156,000 stars in Kepler's field of view, which covers approximately 1/400 of the sky.

"The fact that we've found so many planet candidates in such a tiny fraction of the sky suggests there are countless planets orbiting sun-like stars in our galaxy," said William Borucki of NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif., the mission's science principal investigator. "We went from zero to 68 Earth-sized planet candidates and zero to 54 candidates in the habitable zone, some of which could have moons with liquid water."

Among the stars with planetary candidates, 170 show evidence of multiple planetary candidates. Kepler-11, located approximately 2,000 light years from Earth, is the most tightly packed planetary system yet discovered. All six of its confirmed planets have orbits smaller than Venus, and five of the six have orbits smaller than Mercury's. The only other star with more than one confirmed transiting planet is Kepler-9, which has three. The Kepler-11 findings will be published in the Feb. 3 issue of the journal Nature.

"Kepler-11 is a remarkable system whose architecture and dynamics provide clues about its formation," said Jack Lissauer, a planetary scientist and Kepler science team member at Ames. "These six planets are mixtures of rock and gases, possibly including water. The rocky material accounts for most of the planets' mass, while the gas takes up most of their volume. By measuring the sizes and masses of the five inner planets, we determined they are among the lowest mass confirmed planets beyond our solar system."

All of the planets orbiting Kepler-11 are larger than Earth, with the largest ones being comparable in size to Uranus and Neptune. The innermost planet, Kepler-11b, is ten times closer to its star than Earth is to the sun. Moving outward, the other planets are Kepler-11c, Kepler-11d, Kepler-11e, Kepler-11f, and the outermost planet, Kepler-11g, which is half as far from its star as Earth is from the sun.

The planets Kepler-11d, Kepler-11e and Kepler-11f have a significant amount of light gas, which indicates that they formed within a few million years of the system's formation.

"The historic milestones Kepler makes with each new discovery will determine the course of every exoplanet mission to follow," said Douglas Hudgins, Kepler program scientist at NASA Headquarters in Washington.

Source: http://goo.gl/ea7M5

Kepler Finds Evidence of Habitable Earth-Size Planets in Milky Way

Is our Milky Way galaxy home to other planets the size of Earth? Are Earth-sized planets common or rare? NASA scientists seeking answers to those questions recently revealed their discovery.

"We went from zero to 68 Earth-sized planet candidates and zero to 54 candidates in the habitable zone -- a region where liquid water could exist on a planet's surface. Some candidates could even have moons with liquid water," said William Borucki of NASA's Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif., and the Kepler Mission's science principal investigator. "Five of the planetary candidates are both near Earth-size and orbit in the habitable zone of their parent stars."

Planet candidates require follow-up observations to verify they are actual planets.

"We have found over twelve hundred candidate planets -- that's more than all the people have found so far in history," said Borucki. "Now, these are candidates, but most of them, I'm convinced, will be confirmed as planets in the coming months and years."

The findings increase the number of planet candidates identified by Kepler to-date to 1,235. Of these, 68 are approximately Earth-size; 288 are super-Earth-size; 662 are Neptune-size; 165 are the size of Jupiter and 19 are larger than Jupiter. Of the 54 new planet candidates found in the habitable zone, five are near Earth-sized. The remaining 49 habitable zone candidates range from super-Earth size -- up to twice the size of Earth -- to larger than Jupiter. The findings are based on the results of observations conducted May 12 to Sept. 17, 2009 of more than 156,000 stars in Kepler's field of view, which covers approximately 1/400 of the sky.

"The fact that we've found so many planet candidates in such a tiny fraction of the sky suggests there are countless planets orbiting stars like our sun in our galaxy," said Borucki. "Kepler can find only a small fraction of the planets around the stars it looks at because the orbits aren't aligned properly. If you account for those two factors, our results indicate there must be millions of planets orbiting the stars that surround our sun."

"We're about half-way through Kepler's scheduled mission," said Roger Hunter, the Kepler project manager. "Today's announcement is very exciting and portends many discoveries to come. It's looking like the galaxy may be littered with many planets."

Among the stars with planetary candidates, 170 show evidence of multiple planetary candidates, including one, Kepler-11, that scientists have been able to confirm that has no fewer than six planets.

"Another exciting discovery has been the tremendous variations in the structure of the confirmed planets -- some have the density of Styrofoam and others are denser than iron. The Earth's density is in between."

"The historic milestones Kepler makes with each new discovery will determine the course of every exoplanet mission to follow," said Douglas Hudgins, Kepler program scientist at NASA Headquarters in Washington.

Kepler, a space telescope, looks for planet signatures by measuring tiny decreases in the brightness of stars caused by planets crossing in front of them -- this is known as a transit.

Since transits of planets in the habitable zone of sun-like stars occur about once a year and require three transits for verification, it is expected to take three years to locate and verify Earth-size planets orbiting sun-like stars.

The Kepler science team uses ground-based telescope and the Spitzer Space Telescope to perform follow-up observations on planetary candidates and other objects of interest found with the spacecraft. The star field that Kepler observes in the constellations Cygnus and Lyra can only be seen from ground-based observatories in spring through early fall. The data from these other observations helps determine which of the candidates can be validated as planets.

"The first four months of data have given us an enormous amount of interesting information for the science community to explore and to find the planets among the candidates that we have found," said Borucki. "Keep in mind, in the future, we'll have even more data for small planets in and near the habitable zone for everyone to look at."

Kepler will continue conducting science operations until at least November 2012, searching for planets as small as Earth, including those that orbit stars in a warm habitable zone where liquid water could exist on the surface of the planet. Since transits of planets in the habitable zone of solar-like stars occur about once a year and require three transits for verification, it is expected to take three years to locate and verify Earth-size planets orbiting sun-like stars.

Borucki predicted that the search using the Kepler spacecraft's continuous and long-duration capability will significantly enhance scientists' ability to determine the distributions of planet size and orbital period in the future.

"In the coming years, Kepler's capabilities will allow us to find Earth-size planets in the habitable zone of other stars," Borucki said. "Future missions will be developed to study the composition of planetary atmospheres to determine if they are compatible with the presence of life. The design for these missions depends of Kepler finding whether Earth-size planets in the habitable zone are common or rare."

The Kepler Mission team has discovered a total of 15 exoplanets, including the smallest known exoplanet, Kepler-10b.

"Kepler is providing data 100 times better than anyone has ever done before," said Borucki. "It's exploring a new part of phase space, a new part of the universe that could not be explored without this kind of precision, so it's producing absolutely beautiful data. We're seeing the variability of stars like no one has ever seen before. We're finding planets smaller than anyone has ever seen before, because the data quality is extremely good."

"In one generation we have gone from extraterrestrial planets being a mainstay of science fiction, to the present, where Kepler has helped turn science fiction into today's reality," said NASA Administrator Charles Bolden. "These discoveries underscore the importance of NASA's science missions, which consistently increase understanding of our place in the cosmos."

Read more: Kepler Finds Evidence of Habitable Earth-Size Planets in Milky Way

Global data storage calculated at 295 exabytes !!

Mankind's capacity to store the colossal amount of information in the world has been measured by scientists.

The study, published in the journal Science, calculates the amount of data stored in the world by 2007 as 295 exabytes.

That is the equivalent of 1.2 billion average hard drives.

The researchers calculated the figure by estimating the amount of data held on 60 technologies from PCs and and DVDs to paper adverts and books.

"If we were to take all that information and store it in books, we could cover the entire area of the US or China in 13 layers of books," Dr Martin Hilbert of the University of Southern California told the BBC's Science in Action.
Information revolution
Digital audio tape By 2007, 94% of stored information was kept digitally

Computer storage has traditionally been measured in kilobytes, then megabytes, and now usually gigabytes. After that comes terabytes, petabytes, then exabytes. One exabyte is a billion gigabytes.

The same information stored digitally on CDs would create a stack of discs that would reach beyond the moon, according to the researchers.

Scientists calculated the figure by estimating the amount of data held on 60 analogue and digital technologies during the period from 1986 to 2007. They considered everything from computer hard drives to obsolete floppy discs, and x-ray films to microchips on credit cards.

The survey covers a period known as the "information revolution" as human societies transition to a digital age. It shows that in 2000 75% of stored information was in an analogue format such as video cassettes, but that by 2007, 94% of it was digital.

"There have been other revolutions before." Dr Hilbert told the BBC's Science in Action programme.

"The car changed society completely, or electricity. Every 40, 50 or 60 years something grows faster than anything else, and right now it's information.

"Basically what you can do with information is transmit it through space, and we call that communication. You can transmit it through time; we call that storage. Or you can transform it, manipulate it, change the meaning of it, and we call that computation."

Other results from the global survey show that we broadcast around two zettabytes of data (a zettabyte is 1000 exabytes). That's the equivalent of 175 newspapers per person, per day.

The fastest growing area of information manipulation has been computation. During the two decades the survey covers, global computing capacity increased by 58% per year.

These numbers may sound large, but they are still dwarfed by the information processing and storage capacity of nature.

"The Human DNA in one single body can store around 300 times more information than we store in all our technological devices" according to Dr Hilbert.

This study looked at the world as a whole, but the scientists say that it does show that the "digital divide" between rich and poor countries is growing. Despite the spread of computers and mobile phones, the capacity to process information is becoming more unequal.

In 2002 people in the developed world could communicate eight times more information than people in the developing world. Just five years later, in 2007, that gap has nearly doubled, and people in richer countries have 15 times more information carrying capacity.

Source:- Global data storage calculated at 295 exabytes

3G hype fails to woo customers in India

Will 2011 turn out to be a revolutionary new year for India's half a billion mobile subscribers? While telecom companies are already hyping the brave new world of 3G services, standards of basic telephony services continue to languish in the basement.

The nine leading telecom operators, including state-run BSNL and MTNL, who had burned their pockets to pay Rs 67,718.95 crore to acquire 3G spectrum, much to their dismay, are finding it difficult to sell-off these airwaves to those telecom operators or companies who had not bid for it.

The worries for these operators have compounded further as they have invested another whopping Rs 20,000 crore and more to develop the 3G infrastructure, which they expect to roll out by early next year.

"3G is not successful. The operators paid too much to buy the 3G airwaves to freeup congestion in voice calls. They also feared losing customers once the mobile number portability (MNP) is rolled-out. Most of the newcomers have ample spectrum and they don't anticipate 3G requirement," said an industry expert.

Despite the fact that state-run telecom operators BSNL and MTNL were given 3G airwaves two years back - private operators have got it in October this year - they have not been able to do much with their first-mover advantage in 3G. Both are now in the process of outsourcing their 3G networks. But both MTNL as well as BSNL are yet to find any potential client for selling-off 3G airwaves. Heads of both the state-run BSNL and MTNL had written to the telecom minister for refund of licence fee paid for 3G and BWA spectrum.

However, operators like Bharti Airtel, who already have 3G services in many circles are in talks with operators who have got 3G for roaming pacts for ensuring a pan-India footprint. There have been speculations that Bharti could enter into strategic alliance with Idea and Vodafone for pan India 3G rollout. But other operators who do not have 3G airwaves have largely ignored the need for it in the near future.

For instance, Sistema Shyam TeleServices Ltd (SSTL), a joint venture (JV) between Sistema of Russia and the Shyam Group of India, which operates CDMA mobile services under the brand name MTS has already clarified that it does not need 3G services and that it has enough bandwidth to support faster data services and jam-free voice network.

"We have adequate spectrum and we don't anticipate its need," said a top SSTL official. Then there are worries whether the bruising tariff war currently on in 2G will continue into 3G. When Tata DoCoMo launched 3G services at 0.66 paise per second Bharti Airtel said it had paid heavily for 3G spectrum and cannot afford a tariff war.

Tata DoCoMo is keen on subscribing to 3G network to stay afloat in the Indian market. It does not have even start-up spectrum in certain circles.

Moreover, the industry experts have a view that 3G services will hardly matter for large number of subscribers. "I don't think 3G will make much of difference to most of the subscribers. We hardly have less than 20 per cent of them who use services beyond voice calls. Over half of the subscribers are those who use nonvoice services," said Col SN Aggarwal, consumer activist and telecom expert.

"3G is hyped. We have already told Trai (Telecom Regulatory Authority of India) that consumers first need to get better services rather than 3G services. We continue to get spam calls. There is no check on operators and telemarketers. The Trai, as a regulator, has become toothless. We need better regulations to govern the sector effectively," points out Randhir Verma, a telecom expert.

Source: 3G hype fails to woo customers in India

China leadership 'orchestrated Google hacking'

Senior Chinese figures were behind the hacking of Google earlier this year which forced the search engine to quit the country, leaked US cables suggest.

One cable, released by whistle-blowing site Wikileaks, cites a "well-placed" contact as saying the action against Google was "100% political".

A politburo member is said to have been angered after Googling his name and finding critical comments online.

The cable says it is unclear whether China's top leaders were involved.

Other cables show Beijing has been "extremely concerned" about the use of high-resolution satellite imagery on Google's mapping software, Google Earth.

In January, Google said it had been subjected to a "sophisticated cyber attack originating from China" - it said the e-mail accounts of human rights activists were among those hacked.

In the ensuing row over internet censorship, Google abandoned mainland China and moved its Chinese-language operations to Hong Kong.

The company did not say who it thought was responsible but the cables, released by Wikileaks and published on the Guardian website, show the company had repeatedly raised concerns about the issue.
'Forbidden fruit'

The BBC's Nick Childs says the allegations contained in the cables will reinforce both the perception that the Chinese government is highly sensitive about the internet and suspicions that it was behind the hacking attacks on Google.

Read more China leadership 'orchestrated Google hacking'

What is Wikileaks ?

Whistle-blowing website Wikileaks is once again at the centre of attention.

It is preparing to unveil a new set of US secret documents which it says are bigger than past releases on Afghanistan and Iraq.

Last month, Wikileaks posted online almost 400,000 documents detailing events in Iraq after the 2003 invasion, months after releasing some 90,000 secret records of US military incident and intelligence reports about the war in Afghanistan.

It is the latest in a long list of "leaks" published by the secretive site, which has established a reputation for publishing sensitive material from governments and other high-profile organisations.

In April 2010, for example, Wikileaks posted a video on its website that shows a US Apache helicopter killing at least 12 people - including two Reuters journalists - during an attack in Baghdad in 2007. A US military analyst is currently awaiting trial, on charges of leaking the material along with other sensitive military and diplomatic material.

In October 2009, it posted a list of names and addresses of people it claimed belonged to the British National Party (BNP). The BNP said the list was a "malicious forgery".

And during the 2008 US elections, it published screenshots of the e-mail inbox, pictures and address book of vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin.

Other controversial documents hosted on the site include a copy of the Standard Operating Procedures for Camp Delta, a document that detailed restrictions placed on prisoners at Guantanamo Bay.
Legal wrangles

It provoked controversy when it first appeared on the net in December 2006 and still splits opinion. For some it is lauded as the future of investigative journalism. For others it is a risk.

In mid-March 2010 the site's director, Julian Assange, published a document purportedly from the US intelligence services, claiming that Wikileaks represented a "threat to the US Army".

The US government later confirmed to the BBC that the documents were genuine.

Read More: What is Wikileaks

Farms to harvest rare animal parts 'are not the answer !!

Farming rare animal species will not halt the illegal trade in animal parts, a conservation group has warned.

Care for the Wild says the fact that the animals are worth more dead than alive is hampering efforts to save species such as tigers and rhinos.

They add that selling parts from captive-bred creatures would not result in a halt of illegally traded animal parts and would instead fuel demand.

A kilo of powdered rhino horn can fetch £22,000 on the black market.

Mark Jones, programmes director of Care for the Wild International, said recent media reports suggested that the South African government was considering "a feasibility study on some kind of farming or ranching of rhinos for their horns".

"This flagged up that these sort of farming initiatives are still being considered at quite high levels," he explained.

"Rhinos are in quite a lot of trouble at the moment, with the value of their horns going through the roof, especially in Vietnam."
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Tiger in the scrub (Image: AP)

A recent report said wild tigers were still at risk as a result of poaching

* 1,000 tigers 'killed in a decade'

Media coverage in 2009 reported that a member of the Vietnamese government said he took rhino horn and his cancer went into remission, prompting a growth in the demand for the illegal product.

"The sums that are being paid for powdered rhino horn are just astronomical."

There are two species of rhino found in Africa. While the white rhino (Ceratotherium simum) has enjoyed a surge in numbers in recent years, taking the population to about 17,500, it is a very different story for the northern sub-species Ceratotherium simum cottoni.

It is listed as Critically Endangered, and conservationists have warned that it is on the "brink of extinction" with four or fewer individuals remaining.

More than 200 rhinos have been killed in South Africa for their horns since the beginning of this year. This week, the nation's defence minister told BBC News that troops would be deployed to help rangers fight poachers.

Read more: Farms to harvest rare animal parts 'are not the answer

Alien' planet detected circling dying star !!

Astronomers claim to have discovered the first planet originating from outside our galaxy.

The Jupiter-like planet, they say, is part of a solar system which once belonged to a dwarf galaxy.

This dwarf galaxy was in turn devoured by our own galaxy, the Milky Way, according to a team writing in the academic journal Science.

The star, called HIP 13044, is nearing the end of its life and is 2000 light years from Earth.

The discovery was made using a telescope in Chile.
Cosmic cannibalism

Planet hunters have so far netted nearly 500 so-called "exoplanets" outside our Solar System using various astronomical techniques.

Read more:- Alien' planet detected circling dying star

Huge antenna launched into space !!

A US satellite carrying the biggest commercial antenna reflector ever put in space has been launched successfully from Baikonur in Kazakhstan.

The mesh structure on the Skyterra-1 spacecraft is 22m (72ft) across.

It will relay signals for a new 4G-LTE mobile phone and data system for North America run by Lightsquared.

Callers whose networks are tied into the system will be automatically switched to a satellite if they are out of range of a terrestrial mast.

Lightsquared is the latest effort to try to establish a hybrid satellite-terrestrial system in the US.

Two previous ventures ran into financial problems. Both Terrestar and DBSD North America had to seek legal protection under Chapter 11 bankruptcy rules while they sought to restructure enormous debts built up as they rolled out their systems.
Skyterra-1 (Boeing) The satellite has been built by Boeing

LightSquared has promised a different approach. It says its business will be wholesale only. It will be selling capacity to carriers who wish to offer go-anywhere connectivity to their consumers, be they phone or data users.

The system will be capable of supporting smartphone-sized devices, it says.

Under a schedule approved by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), the company has to have a ground network of terrestrial stations in place to serve 90% of the US population by the end of 2015.

The Skyterra-1 satellite was launched from Baikonur on a Proton rocket at 2329 local time on Sunday (1729 GMT)

The 5.4-tonne satellite will be located at 101.3 degrees West longitude and is expected to have a service life of 15 years.

The launch was the 10th Proton flight of 2010, and the seventh organised by International Launch Services, the company that sells the Russian rocket to commercial operators who need to get satellites into orbit.

A second satellite, Skyterra-2, will follow in 2011.

Huge antenna launched into space

Internet pioneer Vint Cerf warns over address changes !!

The internet could face years of instability as it moves to a new addressing system, one of the network's original architects has warned.

Vint Cerf, one of the fathers of the internet, spoke as the UK was urged to begin using the new addressing system.

With current addresses due to run out in 2012, nations and businesses must get on with switching, said Mr Cerf.

During the switch internet links could become unreliable, making sites and services hard to reach, Mr Cerf said.

"This has to happen or the internet will stop growing or will not be growable," he said of the move to the addressing system.

The net has grown to its current size using version 4 of its addressing scheme (IPv4), which allows for about 4.3 billion addresses.

Estimates suggest that this pool of addresses will be exhausted by the end of January 2012.
Priority issue

A system with a far larger pool of addresses has been created, called IPv6, but progress towards using it has been sluggish.

"The business community needs to understand that this is an infrastructure they are relying on and it needs to change for them to continue to grow and to rely on it," Mr Cerf said.

He criticised global businesses, saying they were "short-sighted" for not making the shift sooner.
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“Start Quote


"They cannot grow their business if they do not have an address space to grow it into," he added.

The problem of the switchover will be exacerbated, said Mr Cerf, because the two addressing systems are not compatible.

As parts of the internet do eventually convert to IPv6 those trying to get at the parts still on IPv4 may not reach the site, resource or service they were after.

The net would not stop during the switch, said Mr Cerf, but access could get "spotty".

That instability could last years, he suggested, as even search giant Google - his current employer - took three years to get its IPv6 network up and running.

"There's work to be done," he said.

"It's not massive work but it is meticulous work."
Clock, BBC Time is running out for firms to get using the replacement addressing scheme

Mr Cerf was the keynote speaker at a launch event for 6UK, a non-profit group set up to get UK businesses converting to the new addressing scheme.

Currently only about 1% of data sent over the internet is wrapped in IPv6 packets, said Mr Cerf, adding that moving to using the bigger address space should now be a global priority.

Some nations, such as China and the Czech Republic, had made great strides in using IPv6 but others had not even started.

"There is turbulence coming," said Nigel Titley, chairman of RIPE, the body that hands out Europe's allocation of IPv4 addresses.

He said it was only a matter of time before the shortfall of addresses started to hit business.

Attempts to get more people online, close digital divisions or to boost e-commerce could all be hampered by a lack of addresses, Mr Titley said.

The key to accelerating the shift to IPv6 would be making internet service providers (ISPs) offer the service to their customers, he said, something too few were doing at the moment.

"Sooner or later BT is not going to be able to provision a new broadband customer," said Mr Titley. "That's when the accountants might wake up."

Burma hit by massive net attack ahead of election !!

An ongoing computer attack has knocked Burma off the internet, just days ahead of its first election in 20 years.

The attack started in late October but has grown in the last few days to overwhelm the nation's link to the net, said security firm Arbor Networks.

Reports from Burma say the disruption is ongoing.

The attack, which is believed to have started on 25 October, comes ahead of closely-watched national elections on 7 November.

International observers and foreign journalists are not being allowed into the country to cover the polls.

It will raise suspicions that Burma's military authorities could be trying to restrict the flow of information over the election period.

The ruling generals say the polls will mark a transition to democratic civilian rule.

But as the BBC's Sue Lloyd-Roberts reports from Burma, many believe the election is a sham designed to cement the military's grip on power.

In the last elections in 1990, Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy (NLD) won a landslide victory but the junta ignored the result and have remained in power ever since.
Cyber attack

The Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack, as it is known, works by flooding a target with too much data for it to handle.

source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-11693214