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Submission Summary: 0 pending, 69 declined, 38 accepted (107 total, 35.51% accepted)

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Submission + - New Nonstick Chewing Gum

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens
Hugh Pickens writes: "About 600,000 metric tons of chewing gum are manufactured in the world every year and a large percentage ends up on streets and pavements becoming a pollution issue costing millions of dollars to remove. The MIT Technology Review reports that scientists have developed a new gum that easily comes off roads, shoes, and hair. Traditional chewing gum contains a gum base that is a mixture of synthetic petroleum-derived polymers, natural latex, resins, and waxes that are are hydrophobic — they stay away from water — and stick to the grease and grime on sidewalks. The new "Clean Gum" has polymers with a hydrophobic part that's wrapped inside a hydrophilic, or water-attracting, part. so a film of water can form around it making it easy to wash away with water. When researchers stuck the gum on sidewalks, rainwater or street cleaning would wash it off within 24 hours. Subjects in blind taste tests say that the gum tastes just as good as leading brands although the texture is slightly softer because the hydrophilic polymer interacts with saliva."
Biotech

Submission + - New Plastic Strong as Steel

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens
Hugh Pickens writes: "Individual nano-size building blocks such as nanotubes, nanosheets and nanorods are ultrastrong but scientists have had difficulty transferring the strength of individual nanosheets to the entire material. Now researchers at the University of Michigan have created a new composite plastic made of layers of clay nanosheets and a water-soluble polymer with a machine they developed that builds materials layer by layer like mother of pearl, one of the toughest natural mineral-based materials. The layers are stacked like bricks, in an alternating pattern. "When you have a brick-and-mortar structure, any cracks are blunted by each interface," explained Nicholas Kotov adding that further development could lead to lighter, stronger armor for soldiers or police and their vehicles and could also be used in microelectromechanical devices, microfluidics, biomedical sensors and valves and unmanned aircraft."
Censorship

Submission + - Howl Against Censorship

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens
Hugh Pickens writes: ""I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked," begins Allen Ginsberg's classic poem "Howl" now celebrating the 50th anniversary of a court ruling that found the poem had "redeeming social importance" and was thus not obscene. But Ginsberg, who died in 1997, might be surprised to learn that when Pacifica radio station WBAI considered broadcasting his poem to celebrate the anniversary, they decided against it fearing they could run afoul of the FCC's interpretation of indecency and incur bankrupting fines of up to $325,000 for every violation of its standards. "Since 2004 there's really been a sea change," said one first amendment lawyer. "The FCC made it clear it has a zero-tolerance policy for offensive language and images." In June the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in New York ruled against the FCC in the Janet Jackson Superbowl case, but the FCC has indicated that it will appeal to the Supreme Court. Meanwhile Ginsberg's protege Lawrence Ferlinghetti noted that the trial judge in the original Howl obscenity case once wrote: "Would there be any freedom of press or speech if one must reduce his vocabulary to vapid innocuous euphemism? An author should be real in treating his subject and be allowed to express his thoughts and ideas in his own words.""
Censorship

Submission + - Burma Shuts Down Internet 3

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens
Hugh Pickens writes: "MIT Technology Review reports that in the aftermath of pro-democracy protests, Burma's military rulers have physically disconnected their country from the internet:

Last week — after images of the beatings of Buddhist monks and the killing of a Japanese photographer leaked out via the Internet — Burma's military rulers took the ultimate step, apparently physically disconnecting primary telecommunications cables in two major cities, in a drastic effort to stop the flow of information from Burma to the rest of the world. It didn't completely work: some bloggers apparently used satellite links or cellular phone services to get information outside the country.
One Burmese blogger reported last week that "Myanmar main ISP has been shut down by so-called "maintenance reasons" and most of the telecommunication services have been cut off or tapped. ""
Space

Submission + - Weather on Titan Is Tropical in Nature

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens
Hugh Pickens writes: "Climate researchers Ray Pierrehumbert and Jonathan Mitchell at the University of Chicago say that Titan, the only moon in the solar system large enough to support an atmosphere, has many of the same weather features as Earth, but with completely different substances that work at temperatures that plunge down to minus 170 degrees Celsius. Pierrehumbert and Mitchell call Titan's climate tropical, a climate that is warm to hot and wet year-round, because on Titan methane assumes the role of water and exists in enough abundance to condense into rain and form puddles on the surface. Titan's tropical nature means that scientists can observe the behavior of its clouds using theories they've developed to understand Earth's tropics. For example, Titan's atmosphere produces an updraft where surface winds converge to lift evaporated methane up to cooler temperatures and lower pressures, where much of it condenses and forms clouds, "a well-known feature on Earth called an ITCZ, the inter-tropical convergence zone," Mitchell says."
Biotech

Submission + - Mutant Algae to Fuel Cars of Tomorrow?

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens
Hugh Pickens writes: "Algae has long been known as a promising source of biodiesel, however algae also produce a small amount of hydrogen during photosynthesis. The MIT Technology Review reports that now researchers have created a mutant algae that makes better use of sunlight to increase the amount of hydrogen that the algae produce. In a commercial bioreactor, the top layers of algae absorb most of the sunlight but can only use a fraction of it. Anastasios Melis and his team at the University of California have manipulated the genes that control the amount of chlorophyll in the algae's chloroplasts reducing the chlorophyll so that the algae absorb less sunlight. This lets more light penetrate into the deeper algae layers so that more cells use the sunlight to make hydrogen. Although the process is still at least five years from being used for hydrogen generation, Melis estimates that if 50% of capacity of the photosynthesis of the algae could be directed toward hydrogen production, an acre could produce 40 kilograms of hydrogen per day bringing the cost of producing hydrogen to $2.80 a kilogram. At this price, hydrogen could compete with gasoline, since a kilogram of hydrogen is equivalent in energy to a gallon of gasoline."
Power

Submission + - First New Nuclear Plant in US in 30 years

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens
Hugh Pickens writes: "With backing from the White House and congressional leaders, and subsidies like the $500 million in risk insurance from the Department of Energy, the nuclear industry is experiencing a revival in the US. Scientific American reports that this week NRG Energy filed an application for the first new nuclear power plant in the US in thirty years to build two advanced boiling water reactors (ABWR) at its South Texas nuclear power plant site doubling the 2700 megawatts presently generated at the facility. The ABWR, based on technology already operating in Japan, works by using the heat generated by the controlled splitting of uranium atoms in fuel rods to directly boil water into steam to drive turbines producing electricity. Improvements over previous designs include removing water circulation pipes that could rupture and accidentally drain water from the reactor, exposing the fuel rods to a potential meltdown, and fewer pumps to move the water through the system. NRG projects it will spend $6 billion constructing the two new reactors and hopes to have the first unit online by 2014."
Space

Submission + - When Science Mattered

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens
Hugh Pickens writes: "I remember growing up in the late 1950's, listening to space launches played over the school intercom at Washington Elementary, and two years later being put into the first math class at junior high to study SMSG's new math, but what I remember most was the sense of urgency from teachers and parents that America "catch up." The New York Times is running a story on those heady days after Sputnik when scientists warned that the cold war would be fought with slide rules, not rifles and Congress rushed to pass the National Defense Education Act to stimulate the advancement of education in science, mathematics, and foreign languages. If you've seen the movie October Sky, you remember what it was like when space first captured the country's imagination and teachers pushed us to pursue our dreams. For me, studying math and science from grade school to college was a natural progression everyone encouraged and I count myself lucky that my personal interests happened to coincide with the nation's. What support did you get in your early years to study science, how did it make a difference in your life, and what can we do today to encourage our kids and grandkids?"
Programming

Submission + - Apple Discourages iPhone Unlocking Programs

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens
Hugh Pickens writes: "Apple has released the following statement on the iPhone:

Apple has discovered that many of the unauthorized iPhone unlocking programs available on the Internet cause irreparable damage to the iPhone's software, which will likely result in the modified iPhone becoming permanently inoperable when a future Apple-supplied iPhone software update is installed. Apple plans to release the next iPhone software update, containing many new features including the iTunes Wi-Fi Music Store (www.itunes.com), later this week. Apple strongly discourages users from installing unauthorized unlocking programs on their iPhones. Users who make unauthorized modifications to the software on their iPhone violate their iPhone software license agreement and void their warranty. The permanent inability to use an iPhone due to installing unlocking software is not covered under the iPhone's warranty.
"
Power

Submission + - Future Looks Bright for Large Scale Solar Farms

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens
Hugh Pickens writes: "The economist reports that Concentrating Solar Power (CSP) systems that capture and focus the sun's rays to heat a working fluid and drive a turbine, are making a comeback. Although the world's largest solar farm was built over twenty years ago, until recently no new plants have been built. Now with the combination of federal energy credits, the enactment of renewable energy standards in many states, and public antipathy to coal fired power plant, the first such plant to be built in decades started providing 64 megawatts of electricity to Las Vegas this summer. Electricity from the Nevada plant costs an estimated 17 cents per kilowatt hour (kWh), but projections suggest that CSP power could fall to below ten cents per kWh as the technology improves. Coal power costs just 2-3 cents per kWh but that will likely rise if regulation eventually factors in the environmental costs of the carbon coal produces."
Power

Submission + - Concentrating Solar Power has Bright Future

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens
Hugh Pickens writes: "The world's biggest solar farm with more than 400,000 mirrors was built in the 1980's and still generates 354 megawatts, enough to power more than 900,000 houses. Now due to a federal energy credit, the enactment of renewable energy standards in many states, and public antipathy to coal fired power plants, large scale Concentrating Solar Power (CSP) is making a comeback. Scientific American reports that the first such plant to be built in decades started providing 64 megawatts of electricity to the neon lights of Vegas this summer. Although CSP proponents claim that a solar thermal power plant built on about 1% of the surface of the Sahara Desert would be sufficient to satisfy the entire world's electricity demand, a key problem has been energy storage during the night. One company, Ausra, claims to be solving the storage problem without using molten salts or other expensive means of conserving heat and estimates that the price of its electricity will drop to roughly 8 cents per kilowatt hour if it can store heat for 16 hours. Their system will employ pressure and a steam accumulator to accomplish the trick. "You allow some of the steam to recondense," a spokesman explains. "It flashes back to steam when you reduce the pressure just by opening the valve to the turbine.""
Privacy

Submission + - Rising PC Surveillance leading to Divorce Courts

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens
Hugh Pickens writes: ""Google and Yahoo may know everything, but they don't really care about you," says one divorce attorney but "no one cares more about the things you do than the person that used to be married to you." Read an article from the New York Times on how traces of Web site visits, mobile telephone records, and hacked e-mail accounts are becoming the fodder for divorce proceedings. One lawyer says three-quarters of her cases now involve some kind of electronic communications and that she routinely asks judges for court orders to seize and copy the hard drives of her clients' spouses. Although lawyers must navigate a complex legal landscape governing the admissibility of electronic evidence, if the computer in question is shared by the whole family, or couples have revealed their passwords to each other, reading a spouse's e-mail messages and introducing them as evidence in a divorce case is often allowed. "The only thing you can truly erase these things with is a specialty Smith & Wesson product," says one investigator. "Throw your computer into the air and play skeet with it.""
Privacy

Submission + - Divorce PC-Style

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens
Hugh Pickens writes: "The New York Times is running a story on how traces of Web site visits, mobile telephone records, and hacked e-mail accounts are becoming the fodder of many divorce proceedings. "Google and Yahoo may know everything, but they don't really care about you," says one attorney but "no one cares more about the things you do than the person that used to be married to you." One lawyer says three-quarters of her cases now involve some kind of electronic communications and that she routinely asks judges for court orders to seize and copy the hard drives of her clients' spouses. Although lawyers must navigate a complex legal landscape governing the admissibility of electronic evidence, if the computer in question is shared by the whole family, or couples have revealed their passwords to each other, reading a spouse's e-mail messages and introducing them as evidence in a divorce case is often allowed. "The only thing you can truly erase these things with is a specialty Smith & Wesson product," says one investigator. "Throw your computer into the air and play skeet with it.""
The Almighty Buck

Submission + - Cleaning up the Most Toxic Pollution in the World

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens
Hugh Pickens writes: "Blacksmith Institute has published their list of the most polluted sites in the world compiled by comparing the toxicity of the contamination, the likelihood of it getting into humans and the number of people affected. For example, ninety-nine percent of the children living in and around the poly-metallic smelter at La Oroya in Peru, owned by the Missouri-based Doe Run Corporation, have blood lead levels that exceed acceptable limits. The Scientific American says that despite the massive pollution, it would be relatively cheap and easy to clean up the most dangerous hazards. For $15,000, the radioactive contaminated soil from the Mayak plutonium facility on the shore of the Techa River in the Russian town of Muslyomova could be dug up, saving an estimated 350 lives. "For about $200, the cost of a refrigerator, we are able to save someone's life," says Richard Fuller, founder of Blacksmith."
Real Time Strategy (Games)

Submission + - New Technologies Attack the One-World Problem 1

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens
Hugh Pickens writes: "While some massive multiplayer online games (MMOs) already involve a lot of people — World of Warcraft recently passed the nine-million-player mark — players usually aren't truly together, inside one world. Instead, a game company makes many copies of the world, called shards, each of which holds several thousand players. Sharding is popular because it's easy to add more shards to accommodate new players as a game grows in popularity, and because it can prevent overcrowding in small virtual worlds. MIT Technology review reports that now technologies are being developed to keep lots of players within a single world and the technologies don't just apply to gaming. NASDAQ, for example, can be thought of as a very large MMO, supporting very large numbers of "players" performing billions of transactions daily in a graphically intense environment, all within a single shard. Technologies that solve this problem effectively, says George Dolbier, technical lead for games and interactive entertainment at IBM, will have applications in any industry that requires spotting and reacting to trends, or "anything where behavior is dynamic and you need to move resources around rapidly.""

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