Dr. Knowfun - Slashdot User

Submission + - LucasFilm Ltd. protects lightsaber design (cnn.com) 3

Submitted by uvajed_ekil on Tuesday July 06, 2010 @10:31PM

uvajed_ekil writes: From the article:
""Star Wars" creator George Lucas wants to force a laser company to stop making a new, high-powered product he says looks too much like the famous lightsaber from his classic sci-fi series."

The laser does look vaguely like a lightsaber, or at least the hilt of the Jedi weapon. Nevermind that it is not a lightsaber, is not intended as a weapon, can not be used like a lightsaber, and is not marketed as one. LucasFilm Ltd. has insisted that it be pulled from the market anyway. Is this a legitimate demand to protect intellectual property and a somewhat novel design, given that LucasFilm does not sell a working lightsaber, and has no apparent intentions to develop one?

Submission + - Mobile Medical Lab - The $10 Phone Microscope (singularityhub.com)

Submitted by kkleiner on Tuesday July 06, 2010 @05:08PM

kkleiner writes: Aydogan Ozcan of UCLA has developed a microscope attachment for a cell phone – turning the device into a sort of mobile medical lab. It’s both lightweight (~38g or 1.5 oz) and cheap (parts cost around $10). The cellphone microscope can analyze blood and saliva samples for microparticles, red blood cells, white blood cells, platelets, and water borne parasites. Ozcan and his team have recently won three prestigious awards for the device: a Grand Challenges award from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (worth $100,000), the National Geographic Emerging Explorer award (worth $10,000), and the CAREER award from the National Science Foundation ($400,000). With these funds, Ozcan plans on starting case studies in Africa to see how the microscope can help revolutionize global medicine.

Comment If it cost money for the institution they should b (Score 1) 295

by Dr. Knowfun on Saturday December 05, 2009 @01:01AM (#30332752) Attached to: SETI@home Project Responds To School Firing

If it cost money for the institution they should be able to write off the cost as a donation to SETI@home. Just sayin, if its about money the SETI@home guys could make the offer and make this a win/win instead of more of the usual zero sum game we usually see. Dr. Knowfun "The hardest thing of all is to find a black cat in a dark room, especially if there is no cat." --Confucius

Jetman Attempts Intercontinental Flight 140

Posted by samzenpus on Wednesday November 25, 2009 @01:32PM from the a-jetwing-and-a-prayer dept.

Last year we ran the story of Yves Rossy and his DIY jetwings. Yves spent $190,000 and countless hours building a set of jet-powered wings which he used to cross the English Channel. Rossy's next goal is to cross the Strait of Gibraltar, from Tangier in Morocco and Tarifa on the southwestern tip of Spain. From the article: "Using a four-cylinder jet pack and carbon fibre wings spanning over 8ft, he will jump out of a plane at 6,500 ft and cruise at 130 mph until he reaches the Spanish coast, when he will parachute to earth." Update 18:57 GMT: mytrip writes: "Yves Rossy took off from Tangiers but five minutes into an expected 15-minute flight he was obliged to ditch into the wind-swept waters."

US Air Force Buying Another 2,200 PS3s 144

Posted by Soulskill on Wednesday November 25, 2009 @05:02AM from the quick-who-knows-a-good-ps3-flight-sim dept.

bleedingpegasus sends word that the US Air Force will be grabbing up 2,200 new PlayStation 3 consoles for research into supercomputing. They already have a cluster made from 336 of the old-style (non-Slim) consoles, which they've used for a variety of purposes, including "processing multiple radar images into higher resolution composite images (known as synthetic aperture radar image formation), high-def video processing, and 'neuromorphic computing.'" According to the Justification Review Document (DOC), "Once the hardware configuration is implemented, software code will be developed in-house for cluster implementation utilizing a Linux-based operating software."

Proton Beams Sent Around the LHC 115

Posted by kdawson on Friday November 20, 2009 @05:40PM from the going-in-circles dept.

feldhaus writes "The BBC reports that the first beams for over one year have been successfully sent around the complete circumference of the Large Hadron Collider. Engineers do not yet have a stable circulating beam but they hope to by 0600 GMT on Saturday."

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