Follow Slashdot stories on Twitter

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
Image

Zombie Pigs First, Hibernating Soldiers Next 193

Posted by samzenpus from the fattening-up-on-brains dept.
ColdWetDog writes "Wired is running a story on DARPA's effort to stave off battlefield casualties by turning injured soldiers into zombies by injecting them with a cocktail of one chemical or another (details to be announced). From the article, 'Dr. Fossum predicts that each soldier will carry a syringe into combat zones or remote areas, and medic teams will be equipped with several. A single injection will minimize metabolic needs, de-animating injured troops by shutting down brain and heart function. Once treatment can be carried out, they'll be "re-animated" and — hopefully — as good as new.' If it doesn't pan out we can at least get zombie bacon and spam."
Space

Herschel Spectroscopy of Future Supernova 21

Posted by Soulskill from the that's-a-big-star dept.
davecl writes "ESA's Herschel Space Telescope has released its first spectroscopic results. These include observations of VYCMa, a star 50 times as massive as the sun and soon to become a supernova, as well as a nearby galaxy, more distant colliding starburst galaxies and a comet in our own solar system. The spectra show more lines than have ever been seen in these objects in the far-infrared and will allow astronomers to work out the detailed chemistry and physics behind star and planet formation as well as the last stages of stellar evolution before VYCMa's eventual collapse into a supernova. More coverage is available at the Herschel Mission Blog, which I run."
Science

Programmable Quantum Computer Created 132

Posted by Soulskill from the four-out-of-five-ain't-bad dept.
An anonymous reader writes "A team at NIST (the National Institute of Standards and Technology) used berylium ions, lasers and electrodes to develop a quantum system that performed 160 randomly chosen routines. Other quantum systems to date have only been able to perform single, prescribed tasks. Other researchers say the system could be scaled up. 'The researchers ran each program 900 times. On average, the quantum computer operated accurately 79 percent of the time, the team reported in their paper.'"

Comment My Experience With HD-DVD (Score 1) 685

by cybrpnk2 (#28423453) Attached to: Blu-ray Adoption Soft, More Still Own HD DVD
I got a closeout HD-DVD player off of EBay for $40 delivered and bought it primarily to play standard DVDs on my HDTV. The HD-DVD unit reads the standard DVD at 480p just fine but outputs a 1080p signal to the HDTV via the HDMI inputs - so I'm effectively using it as a cheap scanline upconverter staying digital all the way. The result looks BEAUTIFUL, much better than letting the HDTV having to convert an analog signal from a standard cheap DVD player. Plus there are around 300 movies out there in HD-DVD format that are going for under $5 - MUCH cheaper than your average Blu-Ray disk. I am a very happy HD-DVD owner with no Blu-Ray and with the expense of the latter and free DVDs from the library, I'm going to stay that way for a long time to come.

Comment Blue Brain Actually Modeled A Neocortical Column (Score 1) 521

by cybrpnk2 (#27331067) Attached to: Microchip Mimics a Brain With 200,000 Neurons
Read the great SEED article closely. The IBM Blue Brain project was trying to map the physical layout of the neocortical column, a standardized blob of nerve cells about a millimeter long and a fraction of a millimeter in diameter. If the brain is a machine made of modular parts, then the neocortical column is the starndard Lego used, over and over and over.
Biotech

Scientists Discover Proteins Controlling Evolution 436

Posted by samzenpus from the let-the-flamewar-begin dept.
Khemisty writes "Evolutionary changes are supposed to take place gradually and randomly, under pressure from natural selection. But a team of Princeton scientists investigating a group of proteins that help cells burn energy stumbled across evidence that this is not how evolution works. In fact, their discovery could revolutionize the way we understand evolutionary processes. They have evidence that organisms actually have the ability to control their own evolution."
Censorship

Submission + - Death of Free Internet is Imminent

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Recently covered by http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0807/S00225.htm, Kevin Parkinson lays out what teh large Canadian telcos have up their sleeves to turn the current free internet with a "change (that) will be so radical that it has the potential to send us back to the horse and buggy days of information sharing and access".
It's the end of the world as we know it, and I'm not so "fine" with that at all.

Slashdot Top Deals

One of the chief duties of the mathematician in acting as an advisor... is to discourage... from expecting too much from mathematics. -- N. Wiener

Close