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Earth

Submission + - Yellowstone Boosts Performance 30X by Reducing Clock Speed? (sourceforge.net)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The NCAR’s Wyoming Supercomputing Center runs is current Bluefire cores at 4.7 GHz resulting in 6 MFLOPS per watt, whereas its new Yellowstone supercomputer to be unveiled next month runs its cores at just 2.6-GHz to get 43 MFLOPS per watt. To compensate for the slower speed per core, Yellowstone uses 72,288 Intel Xeon cores as opposed to Bluefire's 3,744 Power6 cores. The bottom line is that U.S. weather forecasting will get nearly a 30X boost in Sept by moving to Yellowstone. But will that enable them to make more accurate weather predictions? I'll believe it when I see it ;)

Comment Re: optical images have an ultimate resolution lim (Score 4, Informative) 140

by hamjudo (#40967389) Attached to: Color Printing Reaches Its Ultimate Resolution
This just hits the resolution limit for color printing that includes red. It is possible to make color images with just greens, blues and violets at a higher resolution, it just wouldn't count as full color. Researchers could go to even higher resolutions, if they just use blues and violets, but they wouldn't be able to render a very convincing human flesh tone. Competition will start shortly, for the smallest smurf vision display.

Submission + - Norton Scientific Collection: Pfizer's Drug against Alzheimer's Fails 1st Study (norton-scientificcollection.com)

Submitted by
nortoncollection
nortoncollection writes: "http://norton-scientificcollection.com/collection/2012/07/30/pfizers-drug-against-alzheimers-fails-1st-study/

Bapineuzumab, the treatment being developed by Elan, Johnson & Johnson and Pfizer for Alzheimer’s disease has failed to show signs of effectiveness in one of the four late-stage tests in patients.

“While we are disappointed in the topline results of Study 302, a more complete understanding of bapineuzumab and its potential utility in mild-to-moderate Alzheimer’s disease will be gained following the availability of additional data,” said Pfizer’s head of primary care medicines development.

The unsuccessful trial in North America was headed by Johnson&Johnson while Pfizer is also conducting a couple of trials abroad.

Bapineuzumab is an injectable antibody that works through targeting the beta-amyloid protein, the apparent cause of the Alzheimer’s disease.

Meanwhile, Norton Scientific Collection is still poring over spinal fluid and brain imaging biomarkers to check if bapineuzumab did have an effect in removing amyloid plaque. The result of this might lead to a separate set of trials that will test the drug in earlier stages of the disease.

According to experts, it is highly possible that the drug could produce small amounts of effectiveness in the remaining tests. Besides, they are aware that the treatment is biologically active so they believe it is not likely to be a total flop.

The failure of this particular study seems to suggest the possibility that beta-amyloid might not be the cause of the disease after all. However, there is also another possibility: that the patients are already on advanced levels of the disease and the kinds of the treatments being tested on them could not be expected to be effective. Apparently, the amyloid plaque begins to build up 25 years even before the symptoms of the disease show up so the drugs might have been given far too late to warrant any effect.

“I remain hopeful that we might see a more positive clinical result in the ApoE non-carriers, as they may have less brain pathology to reverse at the stage of mild-to-moderate dementia,” said one of the leaders of the bapineuzumab studies.

Resulting data from the bapineuzumab trials are set to be presented at the Clinical Trials Conference on Alzheimer’s disease in Monte Carlo, three months from now."
Google

Submission + - Google acquires Sparrow (sparrowmailapp.com)

Submitted by
kthreadd
kthreadd writes: "The makers of the popular Mac and iOS email client Sparrow just announced that they have been acquired by Google. This will likely mean that better email handling will go into Android."
Science

Submission + - Scientists Produce the Lightest Material in the World (uni-kiel.de)

Submitted by Med-trump
Med-trump writes: A network of porous carbon tubes that is three-dimensionally interwoven at nano and micro level – this is the lightest material in the world and was produced by scientists from Northern Germany. It weights only 0.2 milligrams per cubic centimetre, and is therefore 75 times lighter than Styrofoam, but it is very strong nevertheless. The scientific results were published this month in the journal Advanced Materials.

Submission + - Penny Arcade Sells Out (kickstarter.com)

Submitted by
sanosuke001
sanosuke001 writes: "Penny Arcade has taken the crowdfunding idea from the other direction; try to fund an existing, and already successful, operation via their fans. With 29 days to go they have already passed their initial goal of $250,000 USD and are on their way to reaching some very interesting stretch goals including new Lookouts and Automata strips, an ad-free penny-arcade.com, revived podcast, and my personal favorite: Jerry Holkins cosplay which will be decided on by the fans.

They will be giving out some pledge goodies like t-shirts, autographed prints, digital versions of their first two books, Stream codes for Rainslick Precipice of Darkness Episode 3. For those with deep pockets: promises of twitter following, re-tweeting, an internship for a day, hang-outs with the PA crew, and even a shirt-of-the-month club, just to name a few."
Displays

Submission + - NC State Almost Doubles Light Efficiency For Pico Projectors (laserfocusworld.com)

Submitted by szquirrel
szquirrel writes: Researchers from North Carolina State University sponsored by ImageOptix Corporation have developed new a polarization conversion system that makes LED-lit projectors much more efficient. Unlike an ordinary polarizing filter, which wastes more than 50% of the light passing through it, the new system splits, aligns, and recombines the polarized beams to use 90% of the original unpolarized light. Tiny projectors could shine twice as bright or twice as long with much less cooling and the system is even small enough to embed in a smartphone or tablet.
Education

Submission + - A critical evaluation of Bill Gates' role in education (edweek.org)

Submitted by
sam_handelman
sam_handelman writes: "Although less well known or widely lauded than their charitable efforts in the third world, the Gates foundation has extensive links to the so-called ed reform movement. Although the periodical edweek generally supports education reform, edweek is carrying a second blog post (with links to investigative journalism pieces) which is extremely critical of the gates foundation's role in education, accusing the Gates foundation of doing harm to students, while using their leveraged contributions to waste huge sums of taxpayer money. The quantity of taxpayer dollars involved are potentially in the hundreds of billions $US, and the profit margin for education-vendors is typically very high.

Part I, about the Gates foundation in Africa and elsewhere, was covered on slashdot last week."

Comment Using the power of the court, without permission, (Score 5, Insightful) 90

by hamjudo (#40634969) Attached to: Appeals Court Upholds Sanction Against BitTorrent Download Attorney
The District Court is unhappy, because the lawyer issued the subpoenas without the permission of the District Court. In fact, it was after the District Court told the lawyer to stop doing that. The Appellate Court agreed.

So the Appellate Court is upholding the rights of the lower court.

Don't expect the courts to start ruling against media companies that follow the laws that they paid the legislatures to write. Don't even expect significant sanctions when they break the law, as long as they stop when they're told. It looks kind of like this is a media ruling, but its more a "respect the judges" ruling.
Earth

Submission + - Solar X-Flare Blasts Directly Toward Earth

Submitted by Freshly Exhumed
Freshly Exhumed writes: From over at spaceweather.com comes this news flash: 'Big sunspot AR1520 unleashed an X1.4-class solar flare on July 12th at 1653 UT. Because this sunspot is directly facing Earth, everything about the blast was geoeffective. For one thing, it hurled a coronal mass ejection (CME) directly toward our planet. According to a forecast track prepared by analysts at the Goddard Space Weather Lab, the CME will hit Earth on July 14th around 10:20 UT (+/- 7 hours) and could spark strong geomagnetic storms. Sky watchers should be alert for auroras this weekend.' The article continues: '

Warning Condition: Onset

Potential Impacts: An enhancement in the energetic portion of the solar radiation spectrum may indicate increased biological risk to astronauts or passengers and crew in high latitude, high altitude flights. Additionally, energetic particles may represent an increased risk to all satellite systems susceptible to single event effects'
Android

Submission + - Boeing 787 Dreamliner: Powered by Android, and 69TB of solid-state storage (extremetech.com)

Submitted by
MrSeb
MrSeb writes: "The Boeing 787 Dreamliner is the most-anticipated wide-bodied jet of all time: Boeing has taken a total of 859 orders since 2004, and so far it has only delivered 14 planes. By end of 2013 it intends to ramp up production to 10 units per month, but even then, most customers still have a wait time of between 5 and 10 years. This submission isn’t about the Dreamliner’s composite body, or the fact that it uses 20% less fuel than a 767, though: Inside all 859 of those planes, each and every seat will be outfitted with an Android-powered entertainment system. Boeing is offering two flavors of in-flight entertainment and connectivity (IFEC) solutions: The Thales TopSeries Avant, and the Panasonic eX3. Two days ago, Qatar Airways showed off its recently-delivered 787 Dreamliner at the Farnborough International Airshow in the UK — and inside there are 254 seats, all equipped with the Thales IEFC. There are two classes in the Qatar Airways 787, economy and business, and they’re outfitted with 17-inch and 10-inch touchscreen IEFCs respectively. The IEFCs are completely integrated — all of the hardware is stored in the seat-back unit (there’s no under-seat box). And the hardware spec well, this is the bit that blew my mind. Each IEFC has an STMicro dual-core ARM processor, 1GB of RAM, and a 256GB (!) SSD. There’s also a main server, which features 32 x86 cores (so, quad-CPU Xeon or Opteron), 128GB of RAM, and a further 4TB of SSD storage. All told, a Qatar Airways Dreamliner has 508 ARM cores, 32 x86 cores, 382GB of RAM, and 69 terabytes of solid-state storage."
Microsoft

Submission + - Microsoft Urges Users to Disable Windows Sidebar and Gadgets Immediately (ibtimes.co.uk)

Submitted by AlistairCharlton
AlistairCharlton writes: Microsoft has urged Windows 7 and Vista users to disable the Sidebar and Gadgets immediately, in response to a serious security risk posed by the desktop applications.

Gadgets appear in the Windows Sidebar at the edge of the Windows 7 and Vista desktop, and can provide information such as news headlines, weather, calendars and more.

Comment Re:Something looks... not quite right about the vi (Score 2) 94

A "Helmholtz coil", is actually a pair of coils, that will produce a uniform magnetic field in a cylindrical region between the coils. A "Maxwell coil" is a pair of coils wired to produce a cylindrical magnetic field with a linear gradient between the coils.

Make a pair of big coils, put some power through it, and you can make a big electromagnetic field. Depending on how you connect the coils, the magnetic field will have interesting properties. With simple electronics, you can vary the field strength between your coils.

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