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United States

Submission + - White House visitor logs provide window into lobbying industry (washingtonpost.com)

Submitted by
TheGift73
TheGift73 writes: "Before 9 a.m., a group of lobbyists began showing up at the White House security gates with the chief executives of their companies, all of whom serve on President Obama’s jobs council, to be checked in for a roundtable with the president.

At 1 p.m., a dozen representatives from the meat industry arrived for a briefing in the New Executive Office Building. At 3 p.m., a handful of lobbyists were lining up for a ceremony honoring the 2011 World Series champions, the St. Louis Cardinals.

And at 4 p.m., a lobbyist for Goldman Sachs arrived in the Old Executive Office Building for a meeting with Alan B. Krueger, chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers.

It was an unremarkable January day, with a steady stream of lobbyists among the thousands of daily visitors to the White House and the surrounding executive office buildings, according to a Washington Post analysis of visitor logs released by the administration. The Post matched visits with lobbying registrations and connected records in the visitor database to show who participated in the meetings, information now available in a search engine on the Post’s web site."
Science

Submission + - Human water use accounts for 42% of recent sea level rise (nature.com)

Submitted by scibri
scibri writes: During the latter half of the twentieth century, global sea level rose by about 1.8 millimetres per year. The combined contribution from heating of the oceans, which makes the water expand, along with melting of ice caps and glaciers, is estimated to be 1.1 millimetres per year, which left some 0.7 millimetres per year unaccounted for.

It seems that the effects of human water use on land could fill that gap. Researchers report in Nature Geoscience that land-based water storage could account for 0.77 millimetres per year, or 42%, of the observed sea-level rise between 1961 and 2003. The extraction of groundwater for irrigation and home and industrial use, with subsequent run-off to rivers and eventually to the oceans, represents the bulk of the contribution.

It would be even worse if we weren't also locking up lots of water from rivers behind dams like the Hoover Dam.
Digital

Submission + - Photographers, you're being replaced by software (photo-mark.com)

Submitted by Mrs. Grundy
Mrs. Grundy writes: CGI software, even open-source software like Blender, continues to improve in quality, speed and easy-of-use. Photographer Mark Meyer wonders how long it will be before large segments of the photography industry are replaced by software and become the latest casualty to fall to outsourcing. Some imagery once the domain of photographers has already moved to CGI. Is any segment of the photography market safe? Will we soon accept digital renderings in places where we used to expect photographs?
Earth

Submission + - The Most Detailed 121-megapixel Image Of Earth Captured By Russian Satellite (gizmocrazed.com) 1

Submitted by Diggester
Diggester writes: The satellite, known as Elektro-L No.1, took this image from its stationary point over 35,000 kilometers above the Indian Ocean. This is the most detailed image of the Earth yet available to human beings, just because it captures the Earth in a single shot with 121-megapixels unlike NASA satellites, which usually use a collection of pictures from multiple flybys stitched together. The detail in the pic is just amazing, with everything visible so clearly.
Idle

Submission + - Death Star is not economical: too much metal (washingtonpost.com)

Submitted by Tablizer
Tablizer writes: Washington Post: "Should we build a Death Star? This debate picked up this year after some Lehigh University students estimated that just the steel for a Death Star would cost $852 quadrillion, or 13,000 times the current GDP of the Earth...Death Star is a bit misunderstood. It is primarily a tool of domestic politics rather than warfare, and should be compared to alternative means of suppressing the population of a galaxy. Second, as a weapon of war, it should be compared to alternative uses of scarce defense resources. Understood properly, the Death Star is not worth it.
Science

Submission + - Scientists Plan $1 Billion Ghost Town

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens writes
Hugh Pickens writes writes: "Although a fully operation city with no people sounds like the setup for a dystopian sci-fi novel, the Boston Globe reports that the Center for Innovation, Testing and Evaluation will develop a $1 billion scientific ghost town near Hobbs, New Mexico to help researchers test everything from intelligent traffic systems and next-generation wireless networks to automated washing machines and self-flushing toilets on existing infrastructure without interfering in everyday life. Bob Brumley, senior managing director of Pegasus Holdings, says the town will be modeled after the real city of Rock Hill, South Carolina, complete with highways, houses and commercial buildings, old and new although unlike traditional cities, City Labs will start with its underground “backbone” infrastructure that will allow the lab to monitor activity throughout the 17-mile site. “The idea for The Center was born out of our own company’s challenges in trying to test new and emerging technologies beyond the confines of a sterile lab environment,” says Brumley. Since nobody lives in the Center's buildings, computerized systems will mimic human behavior such as turning thermostats up and down, switching lights off and on, or flushing toilets. The Center’s test facilities and supporting infrastructure may require as much as 20 square miles of open, unimproved land where the controlled environment will permit evaluation of the positive and negative impacts of smart grid applications and integration of renewable energies for residential, commercial and industrial sectors of the economy. Additional testing opportunities would include technologies emerging in intelligent traffic systems, next-generation wireless networks, smart grid cyber security and terrorism vulnerability. “It’s an amusement park for the scientists,” adds Brumley. "The only thing we won't be doing is destructive testing, blowing things up — I hope.""
The Military

Submission + - Britain to deploy "sonic gun" at Olympics (reuters.com)

Submitted by skipkent
skipkent writes: Britain's military will be armed with a sonic device that can be used as a high-volume loudspeaker or a non-lethal weapon to disperse crowds at this summer's Olympic Games in London, the defence ministry said on Friday.

The equipment, which can project a piercing sound over hundreds of metres causing physical pain, has been used during protests at the G20 summit in Pittsburgh in 2009 and against pirates operating off the Somali coast.

The Ministry of Defence said it expected to use it primarily in loudspeaker mode to communicate with boats it wants to stop on the River Thames.

Defence chiefs have already caused controversy by announcing plans to put surface-to-air missiles on the top of residential buildings near the Olympics site in east London.
Google

Submission + - Can You Quit Google? (itworld.com)

Submitted by
itwbennett
itwbennett writes: "Quitting Google isn't easy, but if you value your privacy, it might be well worth doing. Tom Henderson spent 7 days freeing himself from Google's tentacles. Here's how he did it, starting with purging Google's traces from your browser, computer, and phone, and then finding alternatives for all those services he'd come to rely on."
The Almighty Buck

Submission + - How the Syrian Games Industry Crumbled Under Sanctions and Violence (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by
Fluffeh
Fluffeh writes: "Syria's games industry now looks like just another collateral casualty of dictator Bashar Al-Assad's struggle to hold power. "Life for Syrian game developers has never been better," joked Falafel Games founder Radwan Kasmiya, "You can test the action on the streets and get back to your desktop to script it on your keyboard." Any momentum Syria may have been building as a regional game development hub slowed considerably in 2004, when then-US President George W. Bush levied economic sanctions against the country. Under the sanctions, Syria's game developers found themselves cut off from investment money they needed to grow, as well as from other relationships that were just as important as cash. "Any [closure of opportunity] is devastating to a budding games company as global partnerships are completely hindered," said Rawan Sha'ban of the Jordanian game development company Quirkat. "Even at the simplest infrastructure level, game development engines [from the US] cannot be purchased in a sanctioned country.""
Slashdot.org

Submission + - When Was Slashdot's Heyday?

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: In the past few years, Slashdot editors have introduced a multitude of changes to our site that have been met with mostly negative comments. A few days ago, SlashdotBI was introduced. A few weeks ago, Slashdot editors announced plans for their SlashdotTV. Slashdot's last overhaul occurred on January 25th 2011, which revamped the existing HTML and CSS code. In all of these announcements and many more, a plethora of Slashdot users have expressed concern that the site simply is not good enough as it was in the past. This concern goes back all the way to a 2000 Geeks in Space episode, where Rob "CmdrTaco" Malda asked the GIS panel (albeit tongue-in-cheek): "When did Slashdot start sucking?" A lot of people reminisce about "the good old days" of Slashdot and how things were inherently "better" back then. My question to Slashdot users everywhere is: Is Slashdot's best years gone? When was Slashdot's heyday in terms of popularity, enjoyment, information, and intelligent discussions? How can Slashdot return back to what many users regard as its former glory?
NASA

Submission + - Europe to get the JUICE flowing to explore Jupiters moons (video) (tech-stew.com)

Submitted by
techfun89
techfun89 writes: "The European Space Agency has given the go for a mission to the icy moons and Jupiter called JUICE, which stands for JUpiter ICy moons Explorer.

JUICE will consist of a solar-powered craft that will spend 3.5 years at the Jovian system. It will investigate Ganymede, Europa and the upper atmosphere of Jupiter. The mission won't launch until 2022 and arrive at Jupiter 8 years later in 2030.

The main science objectives are that of the largest icy moons, Ganymede and Europa, which are thought to harbor liquid oceans under their frozen surfaces.

The total cost of this mission is expected to be $1.1 billion (870 million euros)."
Space

Submission + - Venus to Appear in Once-In-A-Lifetime Event (sciencedaily.com)

Submitted by revealingheart
revealingheart writes: ScienceDaily reports that on 5 and 6 June this year, millions of people around the world will be able to see Venus pass across the face of the Sun in what will be a once-in-a-lifetime experience. It will take Venus about six hours to complete its transit, appearing as a small black dot on the Sun's surface, in an event that will not happen again until 2117.

Transits of Venus occur only on the very rare occasions when Venus and Earth are in a line with the Sun. At other times Venus passes below or above the Sun because the two orbits are at a slight angle to each other. Transits occur in pairs separated by eight years, with the gap between pairs of transits alternating between 105.5 and 121.5 years — the last transit was in 2004.

"We are fortunate in that we are truly living in a golden period of planetary transits and it is one of which I hope astronomers can take full advantage," writes Jay M Pasachoff, an astronomer at Williams College, Massachusetts.

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