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Graphics

Submission + - The first image taken with an ultra low field MRI (arxivblog.com)

Submitted by
KentuckyFC
KentuckyFC writes: "MRI machines are about to get smaller, much smaller. Most of their bulk is taken up by the huge superconducting magnets required to generate fields of about a Tesla. Now a team at the Los Alamos National Lab in New Mexico has built a machine that can produce images using a field of only a few microTesla. So giant superconducting magnets aren't necessary, a development that has the potential to make MRI machines much smaller, perhaps even suitcase sized. Today, the team has posted sections of the first 3D brain image taken with the device (abstract, pdf)."
Enlightenment

Submission + - Pseudoscience winning weblog award (scienceblogs.com) 1

Submitted by OneMHz
OneMHz writes: A pseudoscience climate change denialist blog is currently winning the science weblog award. Why? Because conservative websites are encouraging people to go vote for it, whether they read it or not. Their strongest competitor, Bad Astronomy, needs help. I encourage people to go read it, then vote for it. They've embedded the science poll in the page, so you can vote there, or here. It's a sad day when pseudoscience wins over real sience...
The Military

Submission + - The real Mother Of All Bombs - 46 years ago today (wikipedia.org)

Submitted by
vaporland
vaporland writes: "Tsar Bomba is the Western name for the RDS-220, the largest, most powerful weapon ever detonated.

The bomb was tested on October 30, 1961, in an archipelago in the Arctic Sea. Developed by the Soviet Union, the bomb had a yield of about 50 megatons. Its detonation released energy equivalent to approximately 1% of the power output of the Sun. The device was scaled down from its original design of 100 megatons to reduce the resulting nuclear fallout.

The detonation of Tsar Bomba qualifies as being the single most powerful device ever utilized throughout the history of humanity."
Portables

Submission + - Asus' Linux-based Eee PC 701 reviewed 3

Submitted by Bongo Bob
Bongo Bob writes: CNET.co.uk has a review up of the Asus Eee PC 701 that runs Linux and according to the reviewer "It's hard to fault the Eee PC, mainly because of its price. It can be difficult to use because of the cramped keyboard, but it's better than similar-sized laptops like the Toshiba Libretto. If you're in the market for a second PC, or looking for something you can take with you almost anywhere, the Eee PC is definitely worth buying."
Software

Submission + - LoggerFS: a revolutionary take on logging (itauth.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: LoggerFS is a FUSE-based virtual file system written in C++ using the FUSEXX C++ bindings. It seamlessly passes log data through the file system and directly into a database. Unlike existing log parsers, which often run periodically and scan the entire file for changes, LoggerFS takes a unique approach by masking the database backend with a filesystem frontend. When log lines are appended to a virtual file on the LoggerFS file system, lines that match a regex pattern are directly stored in a database. Read on for an Introduction to LoggerFS.
Software

Submission + - Browsing Wikipedia differently (webaroo.com)

Submitted by
Sheece
Sheece writes: "With the explosive growth of Wikipedia content, there seems to be a lot of interest in offering not just mirrors to Wikipedia, but alternative ways to interact with Wikipedia content. Some examples out there are WikiProject and futef.com. A new mashup that's just been released is WikiSlice from Webaroo.

WikiSlice produces slices of Wikipedia, based on a particular topic. Anyone can easily create a slice and browse through it, just by running a search query. There is also the option of downloading and using a WikiSlice with the Webaroo software."
Robotics

Submission + - Operator Turns Off Engine - UAV Crashes in Arizona

Submitted by Scott Tracy
Scott Tracy writes: The plane crashed near Nogales, Ariz., because the pilot had turned off the engine and never noticed, the National Transportation Safety Board ruled Tuesday. The board chairman, Mark V. Rosenker, said part of the problem was inadequate supervision and regulation of U.A.V.'s. "We definitely need to change the mind-set from computer game-boy to pilot of an aircraft," he said. If the object was simply to operate a computer console, with no reference to safety on the ground, "you could get an 8- or 10-year-old kid who probably could fly it better than what the pilots are doing."
Space

Submission + - Extrasolar Planet Predicted, Then Found (astrobio.net)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Breaking news! It has been more than 150 years since astronomers last predicted the orbit of an unknown planet — and then found it. Last time around, the planet was Neptune. This time, it is a Saturn-mass planet orbiting a sun-like star more than 200 light years away. The discovery is a feather in the cap of astronomers Rory Barnes and Sean Raymond. Their new theory that solar systems are "packed," as full of planets as they can be, led to the successful prediction of the distant world.
Networking

Submission + - Particle physics on your home computer (newscientist.com)

Submitted by
michaelmarshall
michaelmarshall writes: "The Large Hadron Collider, the massive particle accelerator being built in Switzerland, is going to generate an enormous amount of data. To help cope with it, the LHC team have relaunched the LHC@home system. This allows people to donate their computer's downtime to the LHC's computing projects. It's modelled on the popular SETI@home software. http://space.newscientist.com/article/dn12791-you-too-can-do-particle-physics.html"
Education

Submission + - 'Floating Bridge' Property of Water Found (physorg.com)

Submitted by
eldavojohn
eldavojohn writes: "When exposed to high voltage, water does some interesting things. From the article, ' When exposed to a high-voltage electric field, water in two beakers climbs out of the beakers and crosses empty space to meet, forming the water bridge. The liquid bridge, hovering in space, appears to the human eye to defy gravity. Upon investigating the phenomenon, the scientists found that water was being transported from one beaker to another, usually from the anode beaker to the cathode beaker. The cylindrical water bridge, with a diameter of 1-3 mm, could remain intact when the beakers were pulled apart at a distance of up to 25 mm.'"
Programming

Submission + - Lisaac : The first prototype object compiler (u-strasbg.fr)

Submitted by
Ontologia
Ontologia writes: "Lisaac is a new prototype based object language. It stands as a Self and SmallTalk successor and takes some Eiffel ideas like genericity and contract programming. The goal of the project is to provide a high level language as fast as C.
In fact, with some benchmarks on an mpeg2 decoder rigorously translated from C, Lisaac is 17% faster to 44% slower than C, for 40 % less lines of code with lots of gcc optimizations.
Lisaac provides a lot of powerful features thanks to the prototype based object model : Absolutely all is object, contract programming, dynamic inheritance, block type which is a list of instruction giving functional programming facilities, and so on..

The 0.12 version, distributed in GPLv3, is the latest stable version for the 0.2 specification.
Lisaac was convincing enough for writing IsaacOS, a fully object operating system. IsaacOS runs on five different architectures."
Education

Submission + - Major fraud in climate research

Submitted by Sara Chan
Sara Chan writes: The European Science Foundation has just held the first World Conference on Research Integrity. A major conference topic was the fraud allegation against SUNY professor Wei-Chyung Wang. Wang's research has been crucial evidence that urbanization effects are insignificant in global warming studies (and Wang's research was relied upon in the latest report from the IPCC). Now it has been alleged that Wang's research was fabricated. The Daily Tech has the story. The allegation was made by mathematician Douglas Keenan, whose report is clear and disturbing. Wang's university has begun an investigation.
Biotech

Submission + - Pen testing and unintended consequences. 2

Submitted by shdo
shdo writes: Over at http://isc.sans.org/ Craig Goranson submitted a thought provoking question about unintended consequences of pen testing.
http://isc.sans.org/diary.html?storyid=3407

A nagging feeling is telling me that this is just the tip of the iceberg and one which is not only something we will need to take in to account but the possibility of abuse is staggering.

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