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Doctors Save Premature Baby Using Sandwich Bag Screenshot-sm 246

Born 14 weeks early, Lexi Lacey owes her life to some MacGyver inspired doctors and a sandwich bag. Lexi was so small at birth that even the tiniest insulating jacket was too big, but she fit into a plastic sandwich bag nicely. ''The doctors told us they had never known a baby born as prematurely as Lexi survive. She was so tiny the only thing they had to keep her body temperature warm was a sandwich bag from the hospital canteen — it's incredible to think that saved her life," says her mom.
Idle

Submission + - Computer Model Explains Moses' Red Sea Parting

Ponca City, We love you writes: "Scientists and others have tried for decades to recreate the mystery of the Israelites' escape from the advancing cavalry of the Pharaohs. Now the Guardian reports that researchers at the National Centre for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) and the University of Colorado at Boulder (CU) claim to have used computer modelling to reconstruct the various wind and wave combinations that could have produced the dry land bridge described in Exodus and found that a strong east wind, blowing overnight, could have driven back the waters on a coastal lagoon in northern Egypt long enough for the Israelites to walk across the exposed mud flats before the waters rushed back in, engulfing the Pharaoh's cavalry. "The simulations match fairly closely with the account in Exodus," says Carl Drews, the study's lead author. "The parting of the waters can be understood through fluid dynamics. The wind moves the water in a way that's in accordance with physical laws, creating a safe passage with water on two sides and then abruptly allowing the water to rush back in." A steady 63 mph wind from the east over a digitally reconstructed lake along the Mediterranean near today's Port Said could have swept the waters back to the western shores exposing wide mud flats and creating a land bridge that would remain high and dry for four hours. "If you are going to match the biblical account, you need the wind from the east," adds Drews."
Open Source

Submission + - Stallman crashes World Computer Congress session (itnews.com.au)

schliz writes: Software freedom activist Richard Stallman briefly interrupted a European Patent Office presentation at the World Computer Congress in Brisbane, Australia today, with a placard that said: "Don't get caught in software patent thickets". He told journalists that the Patent Office was "here to campaign in favor of software patents in Australia", arguging that "there's no problem that requires a solution with anything like software patents". Stallman was accompanied by another protestor and distributed printouts of his article about intellectual property being a "seductive mirage".
Google

Submission + - Google Promises Docs Editing for iPad (computerworld.com)

CWmike writes: Google said on Monday that Apple iPad owners would soon be able to edit Google Docs files on their tablets. The announcement was made the same day as the company added two-factor authentication to its enterprise-oriented Google Apps suite. Currently, Google Docs users can view, but not edit files with the Apple tablet. iPad owners already have Google Docs access-and-edit options via the $17 apps sold by Quickoffice and DataViz. Google has not created its own app, but instead supports Google Docs viewing through the iPad's browser.

Submission + - Universal Video Player VLC OK’d for iPad (cultofmac.com)

L4wNd4rt writes: Popular open-source media player VLC is now available for iPad, thanks to developer Applidium.

Offered gratis, VLC faces some competition from other universal media-playing apps already available for the iPad including paid apps OPlayer ($2.99) and CineXPlayer ($3.99).

VLC has long been my go-to app for video viewing (can’t remember the last time I even bothered to update Quicktime), nice to know it’s available now for the iPad, too.

Censorship

Submission + - MPAA Asks If ACTA Can Be Used To Block Wikileaks (techdirt.com)

An anonymous reader writes: With the entertainment industry already getting laws to block certain sites, it appears they're interested in expanding that even further. The latest is that at a meeting with ACTA negotiators in Mexico, an MPAA representative apparently asked if ACTA rules could be used to force ISPs to block "dangerous sites" like Wikileaks. It makes you wonder why the MPAA wants to censor Wikileaks (and why it wants to use ACTA to do so). But, the guess is that if it can use Wikileaks as a proxy for including rules to block websites, how long will it be until other "dangerous" sites, such as Torrent search engines are included...
Firefox

Submission + - Mozilla Unleashes the Kraken (mozilla.com)

An anonymous reader writes: Mozilla has released the first version a new browser benchmark called Kraken. Mozilla's Robert Sayre writes on his blog, 'More than Sunspider, V8, and Dromaeo, Kraken focuses on realistic workloads and forward-looking applications. We believe that the benchmarks used in Kraken are better in terms of reflecting realistic workloads for pushing the edge of browser performance forward. These are the things that people are saying are too slow to do with open web technologies today, and we want to have benchmarks that reflect progress against making these near-future apps universally available.' On my somewhat elderly x86_64 Linux system Google Chrome 6.0.472.55 beta completes the Kraken benchmark in 28638.1 milliseconds, Opera 10.62 completes it in 23612.4 milliseconds, and the current Firefox 4 nightly build completes it in 19897.5 milliseconds.
Google

Submission + - Google Engineer Spied On Teen Users (gawker.com)

bonch writes: Former Google employee David Barksdale accessed user accounts to spy on call logs, chat transcripts, contact lists. As a Site Reliability Engineer, Barksdale had access to the company's most sensitive information and even unblocked himself from a teen's buddy list. He met the minors through a Seattle technology group. Angry parents cut off contact with him and complained to Google, who quietly fired him.
Biotech

Submission + - Researchers On The Cusp Of Curing Aging (gizmag.com) 1

ElectricSteve writes: For many scientists who know about such things, the question isn’t whether the first person to live forever has been born, but how old they are. The basis for this belief is that, if a person can survive the next 20 or 30 years, then breakthroughs in biotechnology will easily allow them to extend their lifespan – not to mention their quality of life – to 125 years. From that point, the advances will keep coming to allow the prolonging of life indefinitely. One of the first steps towards such a reality has just been announced by a group of researchers who have discovered the first compound that activates an enzyme called telomerase in the human body.
Graphics

Submission + - NVIDIA Launches GeForce GTS 450 (hothardware.com)

MojoKid writes: "NVIDIA finally launched a new low-cost derivative of their GeForce 400 series graphics processor. As its GTS moniker denotes, NVIDIA's new GeForce GTS 450 is targeted at the mainstream market. That card's reference specifications call for a 783MHz GPU clock and 902MHz GDDR5 memory (3608MHz effective data rate). With those frequencies, stock GeFore GTS 450 cards offer 57.7GB/s of memory bandwidth with a 25.1GigaTexel/s textured fillrate. As is typically the case with mainstream NVIDIA GPU’s, however, board partners will be releasing cards clocked somewhat higher than the reference specifications recommend. Along with a $129 (give or take) price tag, the GeForce GTS 450 is more affordable than any other DX11-class GPU out there right now. Performance-wise, the cards measure up pretty well versus competitive offerings from AMD."
The Military

Submission + - WikiLeaks Releases 92,000 Docs on Afghanistan War (nytimes.com)

Hugh Pickens writes: "A six-year archive of classified military documents to be made public on Sunday offers an unvarnished, ground-level picture of the war in Afghanistan that is in many respects more grim than the official portrayal.

The secret documents, to be released on the Internet by an organization called WikiLeaks, are a daily diary of an American-led force often starved for resources and attention as it struggled against an insurgency that grew larger, better coordinated and more deadly each year.

The New York Times, the British newspaper The Guardian and the German magazine Der Spiegel were given access to the voluminous records several weeks ago on the condition that they not report on the material before Sunday.

The documents — some 92,000 reports spanning parts of two administrations from January 2004 through December 2009 — illustrate in mosaic detail why, after the United States has spent almost $300 billion on the war in Afghanistan, the Taliban are stronger than at any time since 2001."

Comment Re:Nope (Score 1) 376

So what he needs is a 27MHz Citizen's Band radio? Besides rednecks and freaks, who still uses CB?

Truck drivers. Oh, wait...

(Disclaimer: I am a truck driver, so I'm allowed to make that joke without being modded troll/flamebait.)

Hey! I resemble that remark! (2 million miles and counting.)

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