A team of European and American astronomers has announced the discovery of the best evidence yet for the nature of the star systems that explode as type Ia supernovae. The team obtained a unique set of observations with the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope and the Keck I 10-meter telescope in Hawaii. The researchers were able to detect the signature of the material that surrounded the star before it exploded. The evidence strongly supports the scenario in which the explosion occurred in a double-star system where a white dwarf is fed by a red giant.

The teenage driver’s phone was in use moments before a fatal crash, but a local official said “we will never be able to clearly state that she was the one doing the text messaging.”

Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

Glucose has been the building block for many zany creations 'round these parts, but using the widely available substance to create "products currently created from petroleum" has some fairly far reaching consequences. Gurus at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory have reportedly "converted sugars ubiquitous in nature into a primary building block for fuel and polyesters," dubbed hydroxymethylfurfural (HMF). Aside from the obvious benefits of finding yet another renewable energy to tap into, learning to harness this power could give garb and plastic manufacturers new routes to source raw materials. So what do the creators themselves think? "The opportunities are endless" -- we say: prove it.

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

Filed under: Gaming

As Pong attempts to solidify itself as the most hacked up game in the history of mankind, Ashish Derhgawen has programmed his computer to actually play a homegrown version of the title without any human interaction at all. By utilizing a webcam as the machine's eyes, he was able to write up an image recognition program that could detect borders and make appropriate movements based on where the ball currently was. Nothing too dramatic in terms of execution, but teaching an old computer new tricks always brings about a certain sense of pride. Check the video after the jump.

[Via Hack-A-Day]

Continue reading Computer uses webcam to play Pong with itself

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

We've been noting with some surprise today the stories that seem to be popping up all over the place saying that Michael Moore's latest movie has made its way onto P2P networks. It's hard to see how this really constitutes news anymore, though perhaps we're wrong in assuming that pretty much any movie is available online these days. In any case, a story in Advertising Age seems to be where it all started, and it's notable -- if for no other reason than the ridiculous hyperbole contained within. The author seems genuinely surprised that he could find and download the movie easily, but the fun really starts when he says Moore and his distributor "have a [sic] every film maker's worst marketing nightmare on their hands -- how to persuade people to go to the theater to see a show that's available free on the Internet." Wow! Why would anybody go to the movies since it could be downloaded? It's not as if being available online and widely downloaded has kept other films from hitting the top of the box office, and obviously nobody went to see the latest Star Wars movie after it was leaked online -- it just managed to rake in $850 million by magic. It's probably also worth pointing out to the Ad Age reporter that Moore himself doesn't have a problem with people sharing his movies, since as far as he's concerned, "the more people who get to see them, the better."

How does the largest animal on earth survive on a diet of the smallest of prey? By having a jaw that spans a quarter of its body length, an enormous mouth that goes from the head to the belly button, and by doing lots of "lunges," according to UBC zoology PhD candidate Jeremy Goldbogen.