Michigan

Enough with the tweets, the blogs, the Internet searches.

That's the message being communicated by courts across the country as jurors using their portable electronic devices continue to cause mistrials, overturned convictions and chaotic delays in court proceedings.

Last year a San Francisco Superior Court judge dismissed 600 potential jurors after several acknowledged going online to research the criminal case before them.

by Jeff Wilson
I. GONDWANALAND, MIGRATION, AND DINOSAURS

by Jeff Wilson
I. GONDWANALAND, MIGRATION, AND DINOSAURS

by Jeff Wilson
I. GONDWANALAND, MIGRATION, AND DINOSAURS

NOTE: The scientist who made this discovery, Jeff Wilson, will be writing about it himself here on 3QD on Monday.

Christpher Joyce at National Public Radio:

A growing number of police departments are turning to mobile camera systems to fight motor vehicle theft and identify unregistered cars.

The cameras read license plates of parked and moving cars -- hundreds per minute -- and check them against vehicle databases, said Lance Clem, a spokesman for the Colorado Bureau of Investigation, which purchased several systems for its police vehicles last fall.

Jared Starkey is going all out for Google broadband. The day after Google said it would provide high-speed Internet access to as many as 500,000 people around the U.S., Starkey set up a Facebook page to lobby Google to bring the service to his hometown, Topeka, Kan. Since then, Starkey has passed out bright-orange necklaces made of the kind of fiber-optic cable used to deliver fast Web connections and rallied 100 people to show up at a downtown redevelopment meeting wearing T-shirts that play on Google's motto for the broadband plan.

With its sterling reputation and its scientific bent, Shanghai Jiaotong University has the feel of an Ivy League institution.

The university has alliances with elite American ones like Duke and the University of Michigan. And it is so rich in science and engineering talent that Microsoft and Intel have moved into a research park adjacent to the school.

But Jiaotong, whose campus here has more than 33,000 students, is facing an unpleasant question: Is it a base for sophisticated computer hackers?

3QD friends Sam Anderson in New York Magazine:

At the Detroit Auto Show on Monday, Ford Chairman William Clay Ford announced that the company was going to be investing an additional $450 million in facilities for the production of batteries and electric vehicles. Ford spoke of bringing battery technology back "in house," and returning research and production of battery systems as a "core competency" for Ford.