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Science

First Black Hole For Light Created On Earth 244

Posted by CmdrTaco from the better-wear-a-hard-hat dept.
An anonymous reader writes "An electromagnetic 'black hole' that sucks in surrounding light has been built for the first time. The device, which works at microwave frequencies, may soon be extended to trap visible light, leading to an entirely new way of harvesting solar energy to generate electricity. A theoretical design for a table-top black hole to trap light was proposed in a paper published earlier this year by Evgenii Narimanov and Alexander Kildishev of Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana. Their idea was to mimic the properties of a cosmological black hole, whose intense gravity bends the surrounding space-time, causing any nearby matter or radiation to follow the warped space-time and spiral inwards."
The Internet

Submission + - SPAM: Searching Where Google Can't

Submitted by
itwbennett
itwbennett writes: "Believe it or not, there are parts of the world beyond Google's reach. And while most of us have happily assumed that their information needs are being met with SMS alerts, Rose Shuman developed a contraption for this under-served population called Question Box that is essentially a one-step-removed Internet search:

A villager presses a call button on a physical intercom device, located in their village, which connects them to a trained operator in a nearby town who's sitting in front of a computer attached to the Internet. A question is asked. While the questioner holds, the operator looks up the answer on the Internet and reads it back. All questions and answers are logged. For the villager there is no keyboard to deal with. No complex technology. No literacy issues.

This week, Jon Gosier, of Appfrica, launched a web site called World Wants to Know that displays the QuestionBox questions being asked in real time. As Jon put it, it's allowing 'searching where Google can't.' And providing remarkable insight into the real information needs of off-the-grid populations."
Link to Original Source

United States

Submission + - Is America sinking into a dark ages of reasoning? (informationweek.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: According to Information Week, Americans are quickly sinking into the mire of superstition vs hard facts and scientific reasoning. With the high proliferation of college degrees per capita, I bring into question the following hypothesis: "Does the average American have a clue about the scientific process?"
Enlightenment

Submission + - Dumpster Diving, Reinvented. (inhabitat.com)

Submitted by
Kevin
Kevin writes: "An enterprising and brilliant trio of swimming pool design aficionados have truly raised the bar on Brooklyn-based innovation. Jocko Weyland, David Belt, and Alix Feinkind, founders of Macro|Sea, have re-purposed dumpsters into an elegant and refreshing getaway on a rooftop in Brooklyn. The project pays homage to the original dumpster pool developed by Curtis Crowe in Athens, GA. While we don't know its exact location, we're certain someone out there is reaping the full benefits of a friendship with Macro|Sea. I won't lie, we're jealous."
Censorship

Submission + - Censordyne - net censoring gets toothpaste (smh.com.au)

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes: Toothpaste is the latest weapon mobilised to fight against the Australian Federal Government's plan to censor the internet.

Online activist group GetUp, which has already run ads slamming the internet filtering policy, today launched a new campaign — Censordyne — a parody ad playing on the Sensodyne brand of toothpaste.

Censordyne promises to offer "unproven, ineffective relief from internet nasties", protection "against fast internet" and a "fresh multimillion-dollar flavour". There is also a video on YouTube that the government attempted to have taken down.
Medicine

Submission + - life extension drug (bbc.co.uk)

Submitted by jumpinp
jumpinp writes: A drug discovered in the soil of a South Pacific island may help to fight the ageing process, research suggests. When US scientists treated old mice with rapamycin it extended their expected lifespan by up to 38%. The findings, published in the journal Nature, raise the prospect of being able to slow down the ageing process in older people. Article from BBC & Times
The Almighty Buck

Submission + - The Destruction of Community Within Companies

Submitted by
theodp
theodp writes: "If you've let your Harvard Business Review subscription lapse, you can only preview McGill prof Henry Mintzberg's Rebuilding Companies as Communities. Still, you can get the gist of his argument for free in a Globe and Mail interview, in which Mintzberg blames downsizing, technology and short-term thinking for destroying the sense of belonging in organizations, adding that we're all paying a terrible price as a result. 'Corporations do not like communities,' says Mintzberg, 'because global corporations, at least, are not in communities.' Mintzberg isn't keen on social networking either: 'They think that they are networking because they are on Facebook or LinkedIn, or whatever. But those are networks though, not tight, intimate communities. That comes from dealing with people face to face.' So what's the solution? Instead of mindless downsizing, says Mintzberg, companies must start recognizing the importance of community and building cultures that encourage people. For a role model, Mintzberg suggests Iceland, where people still bind together to help each other, providing a kind of human or social insurance that the U.S. once had."
Toys

Submission + - USB Chainsaw - when you need to open something up! (usbchainsaw.com)

Submitted by cruff
cruff writes: Don't know if the USB Chainsaw is real or not, but the 500 ma provided by a USB port probably won't cut the stuff they show in the video, unless you spend a long time charging a battery. :-) However, imagine the uses to which a properly trained IT person could utilize this new tool!
Announcements

Submission + - Open Source Car:20 year lease, free fuel for life! (ostatic.com)

Submitted by ruphus13
ruphus13 writes: The race for a hyper-fuel-efficient car is on in a big way. Now, Riversimple has tried to leverage the knowledge of the masses to bring its vision to reality soon with a car that gives the equivalent of 300 miles to the gallon. From the post, "The idea to build an open source car isn't a new one, but you've got to give vehicle design company Riversimple credit for originality. The company plans to unveil its first car in London later this month, a small two-seater that weighs roughly 700 pounds. If you agree to lease one for 20 years (yes, 20), Riversimple will throw in the cost of fuel for the lifetime of the lease...The team decided to release the car's designs under an open source license in order to speed up the time it takes to develop the vehicle while also driving down the cost of its components. "
AMD

Submission + - Faster AMD Phenoms Due In Early '08

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: In the wake of yesterday's announcement of AMD's Spider platform, InfoWeek reports that three faster quad-core Phenom processors are coming in early 2008. AMD has so far announced two Phenoms: the 2.2-GHz Phenom X4 9500 and 2.3-GHz 9600. (Spider also includes the ATI Radeon HD 3800 Series graphics cards, and the AMD 7 Series chipset, which has CrossFireX and OverDrive technology.) These will be joined by two faster cousins in the first quarter: the 2.4-GHz Phenom X4 9700 and the 2.6-GHz Phenom X4 9900. Then a third processor (no model number available) running at 3.0-GHz is due in the second quarter of 2008. That'll make for five Phenoms all together by Q2 of next year. The big question: Do you think this is too little too late in the face of Intel's 45-nm Penryn family, and its desktop 3.0-GHz Core 2 Extreme QX9650, announced last week.
Security

Submission + - Apple Mail in Leopard vulnerable again (heise-security.co.uk)

Submitted by
juct
juct writes: "In March 2006 Apple defused a security problem in Apple Mail that made it possible to inject disguised malignant code. In Leopard, the patch was apparently forgotten. This means that you can inadvertently start an executable by double-clicking a mail attachment that looks like a JPEG image file. This works with special attachmnets of the MIME type AppleDouble, that carry information which application should be used to open a file. In Tiger you got a warning about a program being opened, Leopard silently executes a shell script with Terminal.app. heise Security provides a demo, where you can check for yourself."

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