Want to read Slashdot from your mobile device? Point it at m.slashdot.org and keep reading!

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
Science

Submission + - Genome of Human Ancestor Mapped, There Might Be Other Undiscovered Ancestors Yet (medicaldaily.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Researchers have managed to map an entire genome of a human ancestor and also suspect that there are more species that existed in the past that we have not yet found, particularly in Asia.
Researchers have managed to map an entire genome of a human ancestor. The ancestor is a member of the Denisovan group, a cousin of the Neanderthals. Researchers are hesitant to label them as a different species, choosing to call them instead a different group of humans. They also suspect that there are more species that existed in the past that we have not yet found, particularly in Asia.
Science

Submission + - Biodiesel From Sewage Sludge (acs.org) 1

Submitted by
MTorrice
MTorrice writes: "Scientists have developed a way to convert lipids from sewage sludge into biodiesel. The low cost and high yield of the sludge process may make it economically feasible as a source of biofuel, the researchers say. Today, biofuel producers use lipids in vegetable oils to derive biodiesel, a mixture of fatty-acid-like molecules. Biodiesel is compatible with existing diesel engines, burns with less pollution than petroleum-derived diesel does, and comes from renewable resources. But current biodiesel feedstocks are expensive, limiting the fuel’s widespread use. The researchers from South Korea found that sewage sludge, the semisolid material left over from wastewater treatment, can yield 2,200 times more lipids than soybeans and costs 96% less to process. To turn the sludge lipids into biodiesel, the researchers heated them with methanol."

Comment Cartography (Score 1) 365

Those are good questions, antdude. I would like to learn more about the cartographic practices that resulted in the map they carried.

I wonder what Earhart and Noonan knew or presumed about the chart's accuracy with respect to islands when they were leaving New Guinea?

I wonder what they made of what happened when they were talking about it afterwards on Gardner island?

Comment Junk Mail is intrusive (Score 2) 219

by wombatmobile (#38435100) Attached to: IBM's Five Predictions For the Next Five Years

Duh... the reason Junk Mail is not valued by the recipient is because it is INTRUSIVE. Intrusiveness cannot be overcome by personalisation. More like enhanced. The more personalized the junk, the creepier the intrusion.

I wonder why that person from IBM predicts such a creepy future?

Why does IBM pay someone to publish creepy stuff like that?

Comment Open Web Standards (Score 0, Flamebait) 644

by wombatmobile (#38268764) Attached to: Will Firefox Lose Google Funding?

I thought FireFox was such a positive force for open standards, in the days when IE was a monopoly.

But something happened. FireFox got to 20% market share, and they got a bunch of money (from Google) and fame. Then, Mozilla ceased to become an organization that was dedicated to an open web. It became, instead, an organization that knew better than the open web. It wasn't about implementing standards any more. It was about God's chosen web engineers determining what was best for the web.

The problem with Mozilla refusing to implement open standards that other browsers implement, is the same problem we had back when IE had disproportionate market share.

Chrome and Opera and Webkit don't suffer from this narcissism. They just get on with it and implement open standards.

Hooray for open standards!

Comment Adobe's Revenue Model (Score 1) 129

by wombatmobile (#38024088) Attached to: Will Adobe's HTML5 Strategy Help Developers?

Adobe earns most of its income selling authoring tools.

Sure, Adobe would rather the internet was Flash and PDF. But if it isn't, which it isn't, Adobe makes money by selling authoring tools. HTML5 authoring tools, as it turns out.

Standards win in the browser. Adobe sells authoring tools. Punters get good content. Win - Win - Win.

Comment Android is not one man's vision. It is more/less. (Score 4, Insightful) 373

by wombatmobile (#37965846) Attached to: How Android Phone Makers Are Missing the Marketing Boat

Why?

Because:

  1. Android, unlike iOS, has marketing funded by many different organizations and managers separately, working competitively against other Android manufacturers. They are each trying to differentiate from the other.

  2. And don't forget:

  3. Android devices don't have a standardized dock/interface connector so dock accessories don't exist for Android.
  4. Android devices just show up as dumb disk drives when you plug them into my computer.

Comment Re:Siri and translation (Score 1) 185

by wombatmobile (#37738430) Attached to: Google Improves Android Translator To Battle Siri

Siri doesn't do translations, it's more of an advanced voice recognition tool.

Siri is a user shell. It provides an interface to the operating system. Voice recognition is one part of the technology; a vital part. The other part is the logic Siri uses to process the words it hears as commands. It translates spoken natural language statements into operating system calls.

Comment Hox genes are the basic sequence of embryogenesis (Score 5, Insightful) 138

by wombatmobile (#37730170) Attached to: Scientists Discover Mechanism That Gives Shape to Life

TFA is saying that organisms are built in slices, from the tip of the head down to the tip of the tail. These slices are activated in order, from first to last. It is the same in fruit flies, worms, whales, dogs, monkeys, deer and humans. The HOX genes control the basic sequence, like a player piano roll or a series of punch cards.

The reason we get so many different organisms, like whales, fruit flies and elephants, is evolution.
Google

Submission + - What happened inside Google Wave (rethrick.com)

Submitted by wombatmobile
wombatmobile writes: Dhanji R. Prasanna was the 25th employee of the Google Wave group in Sydney. He tells how 'even the smartest, most motivated and talented people in the world--with a track record of delivering success--are alone not sufficient to overcome complexity that creeps up on you.'

Comment Refactoring (Score 1) 321

by wombatmobile (#37160562) Attached to: IBM Chief: All CEOs Reluctant To Invest In R&D
Refactoring is fraught because to do it, you have to know what you are refactoring for. To make that judgement requires and engineer to think above his/her pay grade, and predict the future. Now, good engineers can do that, but there's no guarantee that their judgement will be supported by the manager that pays the salary. The disincentives are high.

Slashdot Top Deals

Never ask two questions in a business letter. The reply will discuss the one you are least interested, and say nothing about the other.

Close