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Comment Re:Whats the real efficiency... (Score 4, Interesting) 187

by crazybit (#31532088) Attached to: Piezo Crystals Harness Sound To Generate Hydrogen
In this discovery they use sound waves to get hydrogen (which you can later use to make electricity or move cars). Sound waves are being generated all over nature as a natural left over of different processes. On the other hand electrolysis requires electricity, which has a cost in our modern economy.

You should measure not only the efficiency, but the total cost of energy generation.
Earth

Piezo Crystals Harness Sound To Generate Hydrogen 187

Posted by timothy from the what's-shakin'? dept.
MikeChino writes "Scientists at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have discovered that a mix of zinc oxide crystals, water, and noise pollution can efficiently produce hydrogen without the need for a dirty catalyst like oil. To generate the clean hydrogen, researchers produced a new type of zinc oxide crystals that absorb vibrations when placed in water. The vibrations cause the crystals to develop areas with strong positive and negative charges — a reaction that rips the surrounding water molecules and releases hydrogen and oxygen. The mechanism, dubbed the piezoelectrochemical effect, converts 18% of energy from vibrations into hydrogen gas (compared to 10% from conventional piezoelectric materials), and since any vibration can produce the effect, the system could one day be used to generate power from anything that produces noise — cars whizzing by on the highway, crashing waves in the ocean, or planes landing at an airport."

Comment this study is completely biased (Score 4, Insightful) 278

by crazybit (#31505614) Attached to: Study Finds That Video Games Hinder Learning In Young Boys
If they want to see the REAL consequences, they should get a group of 1000 straight A students and see how many of them had video games for the last four years. I am sure the results will be the other day. I am sure many people HERE have been great students and did have a NES or some other console during their school years.

As the article says, these consoles where given to kids that where anxious to have them (they did't have it before but played them at their friends houses). Get a man that haven't had sex in 6 years and give him a girlfriend and analize what happens. Anyone has considered that those consequences might have happened because (1) those kids didn't have a console BEFORE (the novelty factor) and (2) those kids wanted to get the most out of the console because of subconscious fear that it might be taken away from them later.
Education

Study Finds That Video Games Hinder Learning In Young Boys 278

Posted by Soulskill from the fun-activities-distract-from-studies,-film-at-11 dept.
dcollins writes "Researchers at Denison University in Ohio have shown that giving PlayStations to young boys leads to slower progress in reading and writing skills. Quoting: 'The study is the first controlled trial to look at the effects of playing video games on learning in young boys. That is to say, the findings aren't based on survey data of kids' game habits, but instead on a specific group of children that were randomly assigned to receive a PlayStation or not ... Those with PlayStations also spent less time engaged in educational activities after school and showed less advancement in their reading and writing skills over time than the control group, according to tests taken by the kids. While the game-system owners didn't show significant behavioral problems, their teachers did report delays in learning academic skills, including writing and spelling.'"
Programming

Simpler "Hello World" Demonstrated In C 582

Posted by kdawson from the non-obfuscated dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Wondering where all that bloat comes from, causing even the classic 'Hello world' to weigh in at 11 KB? An MIT programmer decided to make a Linux C program so simple, she could explain every byte of the assembly. She found that gcc was including libc even when you don't ask for it. The blog shows how to compile a much simpler 'Hello world,' using no libraries at all. This takes me back to the days of programming bare-metal on DOS!"
Open Source

OpenBSD 4.7 Preorders Are Up 191

Posted by timothy from the so-you're-in-favor-then? dept.
badger.foo writes "The OpenBSD 4.7 pre-orders are up. That means the release is done, sent off to CD production, and snapshots will turn -current again. Order now and you more likely than not will have your CD set, T-shirt or other cool stuff before the official release date. You get the chance to support the most important free software project on the planet, and get your hands on some cool playables and wearables early. The release page is still being filled in, but the changelog has detailed information about the goodies in this release."
Open Source

Licensing an Abandonware Game? 148

Posted by Soulskill from the rolling-the-dice dept.
WolverineOfLove writes "I'm recreating a 1980s abandonware game with copyrights that have been seemingly unused for the past 18 years. The situation is detailed further in a Slashdot journal entry I just wrote, but in short: Is it worth dealing with all the copyrights and paying money if I want to recreate an abandonware title as an open source game? I know there are legal implications to certain decisions I might make, but there is a real possibility that this game's copyright holder will do nothing with the rights, and I'd much prefer preserving it for others than letting it fade away."
Encryption

OpenSSH 5.4 Released 127

Posted by timothy from the but-it's-secret dept.
HipToday writes "As posted on the OpenBSD Journal, OpenSSH 5.4 has been released: 'Some highlights of this release are the disabling of protocol 1 by default, certificate authentication, a new "netcat mode," many changes on the sftp front (both client and server) and a collection of assorted bugfixes. The new release can already be found on a large number of mirrors and of course on www.openssh.com.'"
Hardware Hacking

Submission + - The Wow Factor. Lua meets mbed (mbed.org)

Submitted by spartacus
spartacus writes: That unsung hero of embedded scripting languages, Lua, has been ported by the eLua project to the powerful, low cost microcontroller development environment, mbed
. The marriage of Lua with mbed, an Arduino-on-steroids with its compiler-in-the-cloud, provides a
fascinating insight into future tools that will be available to the humble hobbyist to develop ever more complex
home hacks.
Wow!

Submission + - Supreme Court to Rule on Anti-Gay Protests (washingtonpost.com)

Submitted by introspekt.i
introspekt.i writes: The Washington Post reports that the Supreme Court of the United States is taking on the case of Snyder v. Phelps. This will decide whether or not the anti-gay protests by Westboro Baptist Church (Phelps's church) is protected by the first amendment of the constitution. For those on all sides of the debate, most can probably agree that the methods employed by this set of people are completely unpalatable. Would it be going to far to rule the protests as something other than free speech? Where is the line drawn between freedom of expression and harassment?

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