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Sci-Fi

Submission + - New Blade Runner Film to Be a Sequel or a Prequel?

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens writes
Hugh Pickens writes writes: "News that Ridley Scott has agreed to direct a "follow-on" to Blade Runner, the classic film set in 2019 Los Angeles starring Harrison Ford as a police officer hunting genetically engineered robots called replicants, has prompted discussion as to whether the new film is going to be a prequel or a sequel and whether Harrison Ford would have any involvement in the film. "Everything Ridley does as a filmmaker is fresh," says Producer Andrew Kosove. "I believe he sees an opportunity to create something that's wholly original from the first Blade Runner." The original film cost $28 million to make and failed to become a blockbuster, grossing only $32 million but later became a cult classic."

Submission + - New research cracks AES keys 3-5x faster! (computerworld.com) 1

Submitted by qpgmr
qpgmr writes: AES, generally thought to be the gold standard for encryption, is showing weaknesses:

From Computerworld: "Researchers from Microsoft and the Dutch Katholieke Universiteit Leuven have discovered a way to break the widely used Advanced Encryption Standard (AES), the encryption algorithm used to secure most all online transactions and wireless communications."

Link to paper: http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/projects/cryptanalysis/aesbc.pdf
Power

Submission + - 13-Year-Old Makes Fibonacci Solar Breakthrough (inhabitat.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: While most 13-year-olds spend their free time playing video games or cruising Facebook, one 7th grader was trekking through the woods uncovering a mystery of science. After studying how trees branch in a very specific way, Aidan Dwyer created a solar cell tree that produces 20-50% more power than a uniform array of photovoltaic panels. His impressive results show that using a specific formula for distributing solar cells can drastically improve energy generation. The study earned Aidan a provisional U.S patent – it’s a rare find in the field of technology and a fantastic example of how biomimicry can drastically improve design.
Space

Submission + - Future Sun may disrupt spacecraft and satellites (bbc.co.uk)

Submitted by dtjohnson
dtjohnson writes: A study published today predicts that solar storms are going to become increasingly disruptive to satellites and communications in the coming decades as the sun cycles towards a minimum of activity. "The work, published in Geophysical Research Letters, predicts that once the Sun shifts toward an era of lower solar activity, more hazardous radiation will reach Earth. The team says the Sun is currently at a grand solar maximum. This phase began in the 1920s — and has lasted throughout the space age....The evidence seems to indicate that although there are fewer solar storms once the Sun leaves its grand maximum, they are more powerful, faster and therefore carry more particles."
Space

Submission + - Construction Underway at World's First Spaceport (foxnews.com)

Submitted by Velcroman1
Velcroman1 writes: In the deserts of the western United States, space tourism is becoming a reality as construction progresses on Spaceport America — the world's first purpose-built commercial space travel facility, 45 miles north of Las Cruces, N.M. Today, concrete and rebar litter the ground here as crews build walls and windows, roads and runways. They've been toiling for a year and a half and will continue until 2013, when a glowing, round disk standing testimony to the future will be unveiled in the desert — at least according to artists' imaginations of the facility. Right now it looks like any old construction site, with men in hard hats and prosaic dump trucks carting rubble in and out. In 2013, things will be different.

“You’ll experience weightlessness, they’ll actually go near space so you’ll see the curvature of the Earth,” said Chris Anderson, executive director of the New Mexico Spaceport Authority.
Science

The Encroachment of Fact-Free Science 962

Posted by Soulskill from the truth-is-out-there dept.
G3ckoG33k writes "Fact-free science is not a joke; it is very much on the move, and it is quite possibly the most dangerous movement in centuries, for the entirety of mankind. One can say it began as counter-movement to Karl Popper's ground-breaking proposals in the early 20th century, which insisted that statements purporting to describe the reality should be made falsifiable. A few decades later, some critics of Popper said that statements need peer acceptance, which then makes also natural science a social phenomenon. Even later, in 1996, professor Alan Sokal submitted a famous article ridiculing the entire anti-science movement. Now New York Times has an article describing the latest chilling acts of the socially relativistic, postmodern loons. It is a chilling read, and they may be swinging both the political left and right. Have they been successful in transforming the world yet? How would we know?"

Submission + - Fusion power in four years? (generalfusion.com)

Submitted by 50000BTU_barbecue
50000BTU_barbecue writes: A few years ago I researched fusion as a practical energy source in the foreseeable future for a school paper. I thought I had been quite thorough in finding and describing all the contenders starting with the usual suspects like Tokamaks and Polywell, etc. My conclusion, based on my skepticism was that, at best, real practical fusion energy was half a century away and would likely be just another energy source and not a panacea. Things like peak helium and the need for superconducting magnets really stood out as a problem. Somehow, the folks at General Fusion escaped my attention at the time.

They are proposing a "solid based" system of fusion using a large spherical reaction chamber filled with molten lead and lithium and then using acoustic shock waves to compress the core where all the good stuff will happen. I'm looking for insights and comments from /.ers in the know about the project. Is this viable? Can it produce power? If so, this is a huge deal.
Transportation

Digital Dashboard Device Detects Driver Drowsiness 117

Posted by timothy from the string-between-ceiling-and-nostril dept.
Pickens writes "Science Daily Headlines reports that researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Digital Media Technology have developed a self-contained, dashboard-mounted assistant system that tracks a driver's eye movements and issues a warning before the driver has an opportunity to nod off to sleep. 'What we have developed is a small modular system with its own hardware and programs on board, so that the line of vision is computed directly within the camera itself,' says Professor Husar. 'Since the Eyetracker is fitted with at least two cameras that record images stereoscopically — meaning in three dimensions — the system can easily identify the spatial position of the pupil and the line of vision.' The cameras, which can be installed in any model of car, evaluate up to 200 images per second to identify the line of vision. If the camera modules detect that the eye is closed for longer than a user-defined interval, it sounds an alarm. The Eyetracker also has applications in computer games where players could look around themselves without requiring a joystick to change their viewing direction, and in marketing and advertising, where researchers could determine which parts of a poster or advertising spot receive longer attention from their viewers."

Comment Re:Sunday, of course (Score 5, Informative) 510

by kitezh (#33623250) Attached to: The best day of the week, generally:

If you read in Romans, Paul strongly advocates against this kind of thinking. The Law (10 Commandments) are provided to point out what is right and wrong. The new covenant with Christians is that God's laws will be written in our hearts and minds, not on stone (Hebrews 8:10). The laws themselves haven't changed.

Keep reading through Acts and other books of the New Testament and you will see the early church still keeping the Saturday Sabbath. It wasn't until hundreds of years after Christ that the church decided to make Sunday the "official" day of rest (Sabbath in Christianity, Wikipedia).

What can be confusing is separating the 10 Commandments, the unchangeable law of God, with the rest of the ceremonial laws described by Moses. It is the ceremonial law (sacrifices, rituals for cleaning, etc.) that were no longer necessary, because they contained symbols that pointed forward to the Messiah. Once He arrived, they were no longer necessary. Note, however, that Jesus never said to get rid of the 10 Commandments while He was on earth. In fact, He kept them all Himself.

Think of it this way: if these no longer applied, then stealing and killing are OK, and so is lying and dishonouring your parents. Idolatry and having gods other than God would also be acceptable. This is exactly the opposite of what God wanted.
Space

Submission + - Nasa warns of potential 'huge space storm' in 2013 (telegraph.co.uk)

Submitted by Low Ranked Craig
Low Ranked Craig writes: Senior space agency scientists believe the Earth will be hit with unprecedented levels of magnetic energy from solar flares after the Sun wakes “from a deep slumber” sometime around 2013. In a new warning, Nasa said the super storm would hit like “a bolt of lightning” and could cause catastrophic consequences for the world’s health, emergency services and national security unless precautions are taken. Scientists believe it could damage everything from emergency services’ systems, hospital equipment, banking systems and air traffic control devices, through to “everyday” items such as home computers, iPods and Sat Navs. “We know it is coming but we don’t know how bad it is going to be,” said Dr Richard Fisher, the director of Nasa's Heliophysics division. "I believe we're on the threshold of a new era in which space weather can be as influential in our daily lives as ordinary terrestrial weather." Fisher concludes. "We take this very seriously indeed."
Privacy

Submission + - FAA under pressure to open US skies to drones (myway.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: "Unmanned aircraft have proved their usefulness and reliability in the war zones of Afghanistan and Iraq. Now the pressure's on to allow them in the skies over the United States."

The article describes some logistic issues of UAVs sharing the air with manned craft, from aircraft to hot-air balloons. Conspicuously absent is any mention of the danger to personal privacy and civil liberties such wide-spread use of automated surveillance would bring.

Submission + - Humans too simple to understand universe (edmontonsun.com) 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: A top British scientist says we may never know all the secrets of the universe because, quite simply, we're just not smart enough.

"Just as Einstein's ideas would baffle a chimpanzee," said President of the Royal Society Lord Martin Rees, gaining a full understanding of how the universe works might not be possible "simply because they're beyond human brains."
Space

Submission + - Mars may have been 1/3 ocean? (networkworld.com)

Submitted by coondoggie
coondoggie writes: It’s possible that a huge ocean covered one-third of the surface of Mars some 3.5 billion years ago, a finding likely to reignite an old argument about that amount of water on the red planet, according to a new report. The study by the University of Colorado at Boulder is the first to integrate multiple data sets of river deltas, valley networks and topography from a cadre of NASA and European Space Agency orbiting missions of Mars dating back to 2001, the researchers claim.

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