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Microsoft

Submission + - Windows Chief Steven Sinofsky Leaves Microsoft (computerworld.com)

Submitted by
CWmike
CWmike writes: "Steven Sinofsky, the executive in charge of Microsoft's Windows 8 operating system and the driving force behind the new OS, is leaving the company effective immediately, Microsoft announced late Monday. Sinofsky was also the public face for Windows 8 and its new Metro interface, posting constant updates in a Windows 8 blog that charted its development. His last post, fittingly, was entitled 'Updating Windows 8 for General Availability.' The OS was officially launched at the end of last month. According to the All Things D blog, there was growing tension between Sinofsky and other members of the Microsoft executive team, who didn't see him as enough of a team player. But Microsoft's official position is that the decision was a mutual one. Sinofsky had only good things to say about his former employer."
Technology

Submission + - When a Jet Hits a Soap Film, opens up an entirely new way to control microjets (technologyreview.com)

Submitted by KPexEA
KPexEA writes: Today, Geoffroy Kirstetter and buddies at the Universite de Nice Sophia-Antipolis in France ask what happens when a jet of liquid hits a soapy film.

These guys used a bowl of washing up liquid to generate a soap film some 10cm across in a wire frame. They then pumped a stream of soapy water through a sub-millimetre nozzle to create a jet with a size and velocity they could vary. Finally, they fired the jet at the film at various different angles to see what happens.

It turns out that the film is surprisingly robust. "Regardless of its velocity, radius and incident angle, the jet never breaks the soap lm," say Kirstetter and co.

But something else happens instead: the film bends the jet by an amount that depends on its angle of incidence. In effect, the film acts like a lens and Kirstetter and co are able to derive a kind of Snell-like law to describe this kind of refraction.
Technology

Submission + - Gamers solve molecular puzzle (msn.com)

Submitted by KPexEA
KPexEA writes: Video-game players have solved a molecular puzzle that stumped scientists for years, and those scientists say the accomplishment could point the way to crowdsourced cures for AIDS and other diseases. The feat, which was accomplished using a collaborative online game called Foldit, is also one giant leap for citizen science — a burgeoning field that enlists Internet users to look for alien planets, decipher ancient texts and do other scientific tasks that sheer computer power can't accomplish as easily.

The monkey-virus puzzle was one of several unsolved molecular mysteries that a colleague of Khatib's at the university, Frank DiMaio, recently tried to solve using a method that took advantage of a protein-folding computer program called Rosetta. "This was one of the cases where his method wasn't able to solve it," Khatib said.

Fortunately, the challenge fit the current capabilities of the Foldit game, so Khatib and his colleagues put the puzzle out there for Foldit's teams to work on. "This was really kind of a last-ditch effort," he recalled. "Can the Foldit players really solve it?"

They could. "They actually did it in less than 10 days," Khatib said.
Science

Submission + - Bristol physicists break 150-year-old law (physorg.com)

Submitted by KPexEA
KPexEA writes: A violation of one of the oldest empirical laws of physics has been observed by scientists at the University of Bristol. Their experiments on purple bronze, a metal with unique one-dimensional electronic properties, indicate that it breaks the Wiedemann-Franz Law.
Security

Submission + - The EFF is asking people to set up TOR relays. (eff.org)

Submitted by KPexEA
KPexEA writes: Operate a Tor relay to help Tor users all over the world!

Activists worldwide use Tor to protect their anonymity online and to circumvent Internet censorship. But they all rely on a limited number of user-provided "relays" to protect themselves and communicate with others. Internet users worldwide need your help to make the Tor network stronger and faster, so take the Tor Challenge today!

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