21584006
submission
swellconvivialguy writes:
Looking at a picture of the world’s largest container ship it’s easy to visualize how 10,000 containers fall overboard from these vessels every year. Now scientists from the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute are undertaking the Lost Container Cruise, an attempt to gauge the effects of shipping containers lost at sea by studying a tire-filled container, which marine biologists discovered in the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary. ( The research is being funded by a multi-million dollar settlement with the operators of the Med Taipei, the ship that lost the cargo.) The work is not unlike studying a deep water shipwreck: Use robotic submarine to take pictures and collect sediment samples; repeat.
21581912
submission
leftover writes:
Single-celled organisms that lase. This could only lead to ... Sharks with Friggen' Lasers in their Heads!!!
21395778
submission
cylonlover writes:
Mitsubishi Electric will unveil a huge, 19.7 foot (6 m) wide OLED globe at Tokyo's National Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation on June 11. Billed as the world's first large-scale spherical OLED screen, "Geo-Cosmos" is made up of an aluminum frame covered with 10,362 tiny OLED panels, each measuring 3.7 x 3.7 inches. The sphere will display images of clouds and other views of the Earth coming from a meteorological satellite as it hangs almost 60 feet (18 m) above the museum floor.
20988478
story
jhernik writes
"The ongoing debate over the supposed dangers posed by mobile phone usage and wireless signals has exploded once again. An influential European committee has called for a ban on mobile phones and Wi-Fi networks in schools – the GSM Association has denounced the report as an 'unbalanced political assessment, not a scientific report.' The report made its recommendation to reduce mobile and wireless use in schools, despite admitting that there is a lack of clear scientific and clinical proof. However, it said the lack of proof was reason enough to restrict use, just in case, comparing mobile phone radiation to other things whose dangers were once unknown, such as asbestos, leaded petrol and tobacco."
18742740
story
universegeek writes
"Mathematician Ken Ono, from Emory, has solved a 250-year-old problem: how to exactly and explicitly generate partition numbers. Ono and colleagues were able to finally do this by realizing that the pattern of partition numbers is fractal (PDF). This pattern allowed them to find a finite, algebraic formula, which is like striking oil in mathematics."
18584574
submission
schwit1 writes:
In one University of Illinois lab, invisibility is a matter of now you hear it, now you don't.
Led by mechanical science and engineering professor Nicholas Fang, Illinois researchers have demonstrated an acoustic cloak, a technology that renders underwater objects invisible to sonar and other ultrasound waves.
"We are not talking about science fiction. We are talking about controlling sound waves by bending and twisting them in a designer space," said Fang, who also is affiliated with the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology.
The researchers tested their cloak's ability to hide a steel cylinder. They submerged the cylinder in a tank with an ultrasound source on one side and a sensor array on the other, then placed the cylinder inside the cloak and watched it disappear from their sonar.
"The structure of what you're trying to hide doesn't matter," Fang said. "The effect is similar. After we placed the cloaked structure around the object we wanted to hide, the scattering or shadow effect was greatly reduced."
I'm sure the Navy will have kittens if this becomes practical. What's to protect the coast or carrier battle groups from enemy subs?
18584004
submission
Neil writes:
Damon Sicore, Senior Director of Platform Engineering at Mozilla, has announced that the company is almost ready to ship Firefox 4. On its mailing list, Mozilla has revealed it has around 160 hard blockers to fix, before proceeding to Release Candidate stage. Both the RC and the final version would arrive in February, according to Sicore. Mozilla was originally planning on having Firefox 4 out by the end of last year, but it had to delay the release till 2011. Last month, Firefox 4 Beta 8 was released for Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux 32-bit/64-bit, with support for 57 languages. Mozilla's roadmap says it still wants to release a Beta 9, a Beta 10, and at least one Release Candidate build before the final version.
18583678
submission
florescent_beige writes:
Researchers from Cal Tech and the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab have made a palladium-based glass that is both strong and tough. In fact, it might be the toughest material ever made.
Sadly, with current prices at $800/oz and a density 50% higher than steel, palladium won't be showing up in bridges airplanes, or spaceships anytime soon. Dental applications, maybe.
18511046
submission
garymortimer writes:
The model flying discipline of First Person View continues to court controversy. Before Christmas we had a flight over New York city and the Statue of Liberty. Now a weaponized model aircraft shooting at flying targets.
