Follow Slashdot stories on Twitter

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
Biotech

DNA-Less 'Red Rain' Cells Reproduce At 121 C 149

Posted by timothy from the that-beats-most-hot-tubs dept.
eldavojohn writes "A new paper up for prepublication from the controversial solid-state physicist Godfrey Louis claims that the cells Louis collected from a Keralan red rain incident divide and produce daughter cells at 121 degrees Celsius. While unusual, this is not unheard of as the paper recalls cells cultivated from hydrothermal vents are known to reproduce at 121 C as well. Of course, caution is exercised when dealing with the possible explanation surrounding the theory of panspermia but the MIT Technology Review says researchers 'examined the way these fluoresce when bombarded with light and say it is remarkably similar to various unexplained emission spectra seen in various parts of the galaxy. One such place is the Red Rectangle, a cloud of dust and gas around a young star in the Monocerous constellation.'"
Australia

Researchers Create 4nm Transistor With Seven Atoms 120

Posted by CmdrTaco from the xanthir-has-almost-70k-hp dept.
EmagGeek writes "University researchers have created a transistor by replacing just seven atoms of silicon with phosphorous. The seven-atom transistor has hopeful implications for the future of quantum cryptography, nuclear and weather modeling, and other applications. 'The significance of this achievement is that we are not just moving atoms around or looking at them through a microscope,' says Professor Michelle Simmons, a co-author of a paper on the subject that is being published by Nature Nanotechnology. The paper is entitled 'Spectroscopy of Few-Electron Single-Crystal Silicon Quantum Dots'."
Sci-Fi

Design Starting For Matter-Antimatter Collider 191

Posted by samzenpus from the dump-the-warp-core dept.
couch_warrior writes "The Register is carrying a story on the early design efforts for the next generation of high-energy particle accelerators. They will be linear, and will collide matter and antimatter in the form of electrons and positrons. The obvious question will be: once we have a matter-antimatter reactor, how long till we have warp drive, and will the Vulcans show up for a sneak-peak?"
Graphics

Game Companies Intrigued By 3D Tech 23

Posted by Soulskill from the bringing-depth-to-the-industry dept.
An editorial by Rob Fahey looks into the possibility of game companies experimenting with modern 3D technology. Over the past decade, advances in the field have been enough for film studios to give 3D another shot, but significant price-related hurdles remain when considering individual consumers. Quoting: "[The approach presently favored by game makers] has actually been around for some time. It displays the image for the left eye, then the right eye, in quick succession on screen — while the glasses you wear close LCD 'shutters' over your eyes so that each eye only sees the appropriate image. If this is done fast enough, the brain sees no flicker — just a continuous, steady 3D image. The best thing about this final approach is that some televisions already exist which could, in theory, support it. No new display technology is required, but what you do need is a TV screen which can display twice the number of frames per second as a normal screen — since you now need one frame for each eye, where previously you had one frame for both eyes. You also need LCD glasses synched to the television's refresh rate for each viewer. All of this lies in the realms of being moderately plausible."
Security

US Electricity Grid Reportedly Penetrated By Spies 328

Posted by kdawson from the im-in-ur-wirez-eatin-ur-lectrons dept.
phantomfive worries about a report in the Wall Street Journal ("Makes me want to move to the country and dig a well") that in recent years a number of cyber attacks against US infrastructure have been launched over the Internet: "Cyberspies have penetrated the US electrical grid and left behind software programs that could be used to disrupt the system, according to current and former national-security officials. The spies came from China, Russia, and other countries, these officials said, and were believed to be on a mission to navigate the US electrical system and its controls. The intruders haven't sought to damage the power grid or other key infrastructure, but officials warned they could try during a crisis or war."
Biotech

Human-Animal Hybrids Fail 554

Posted by timothy from the good-help-hard-to-find dept.
SailorSpork writes "Fans of furries and anime-style cat girls will be disappointed by the news that attempts to create human animal hybrids have failed. Experiments by British scientists to create embryonic stem cells by putting human DNA into cow or rabbit eggs had raised ethical concerns, but the question of how we would treat sub-humans will have to wait until we actually figure out how to make them."
Google

Google Terminates Six Services 195

Posted by Soulskill from the hasta-la-vista,-baby dept.
Jonah Bomber writes with this excerpt from Information Week: "In addition to Google's announcements about the elimination of 100 recruiting positions and the shutdown of offices in Austin, Texas; Trondheim, Norway; and Lulea, Sweden, the company said it would close Dodgeball, Google Catalog Search, Google Mashup Editor, Google Notebook, and Jaiku. It also said it's discontinuing the ability to upload videos to Google Video. ... Jaiku, however, will live on as an open source project. Gundotra said that Google engineers have been porting the microblogging service to Google App Engine and that when the migration is completed, the company plans to make the code available under the Apache license."

Slashdot Top Deals

It is easier to write an incorrect program than understand a correct one.

Close