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Earth

Submission + - Ice melt boosts planet's waistline (sciencenews.org)

Submitted by klchoward
klchoward writes: From a recent ScienceNews.org article:

Melting ice has changed the shape of Earth, making it more bulgy at the equator. Scientists understand most of the things that affect the planet's shape, such as tides and weather, but satellite measurements between 1975 and 2009 show an unexplained change starting in the mid-1990s. Researchers at the University of Colorado at Boulder have now combined those measurements with data from the gravity-sensing GRACE satellites, and report that ice melting off Greenland and Antarctica is to blame. Solid ice near the poles has transformed into liquid water distributed around the planet, the team reports in an upcoming Geophysical Research Letters. Alexandra Witze

You can find the article here: http://www.agu.org/journals/pip/gl/2011GL047879-pip.pdf

Comment Why? (Score 1) 2

by klchoward (#36403578) Attached to: Cow cloned to produce human milk
Why do this? 1) The last time I looked around there were plenty of ACTUAL human females on this planet to provide ACTUAL breast milk, and 2) with so many women using formula now , instead of breast milk, where is the market for this?
Power

Submission + - First solar power plant that works at night (dailymail.co.uk)

Submitted by surveyork
surveyork writes: The world's first commercial Concentrated Solar Power (CSP) plant that generates power at night has recently been commissioned.

"The Gemasolar Power Plant near Seville in southern Spain consists of an incredible 2,650 panels spread across 185 hectares of rural land.

The mirrors — known as heliostats — focus 95 per cent of the sun's radiation onto a giant receiver at the centre of the plant.

Heat of up to 900C is used to warm molten salt tanks, which create steam to power the £260million station's turbines.

But, unlike all other solar power stations, the heat stored in these tanks can be released for up to 15 hours overnight, or during periods without sunlight."

Company website: http://www.torresolenergy.com/TORRESOL/gemasolar-plant/en

Promo video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QN-8DMZLpyI

Submission + - Anonymous Caught in Spain (bbc.co.uk)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!
Apple

Submission + - Apple Slams Amazon's Android E-Store As 'Inferior' (computerworld.com)

Submitted by
CWmike
CWmike writes: "Apple this week called Amazon's Appstore for Android 'inferior' as it urged a federal court to block the online retailer from using the term 'appstore,' court documents show. In the same filing, Apple also cited Android security problems, including one last week where Google was forced to pull more than 30 malicious apps from its own Android Market. Apple and Amazon have been tussling in court since mid-March, when Apple sued Amazon for trademark infringement over the latter's use of 'appstore.' Apple submitted a trademark application for 'App Store' with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office in 2008. That application is pending, awaiting resolution of opposition from Microsoft."
Technology

Submission + - Russian Lie Detector ATM (popsci.com)

Submitted by smitty777
smitty777 writes: Apparently the Russians are starting to add lie detectors to their ATMs in an attempt to prevent identity theft and bad withdraws. It appears to use GSR responses to questions like "Do you have any outstanding loans?". Let the Soviet Russia comments begin!
Science

Submission + - Can Brain Scans Predict Music Sales? (sciencemag.org)

Submitted by sciencehabit
sciencehabit writes: A few years ago, Gregory Berns, a neuroeconomist at Emory University in Atlanta, and colleagues had teenagers listen to 120 songs the team had culled from unsigned artists on MySpace. While the kids listened to the songs, the researchers studied their brain activity. In 2010, the team compared the brain data to music sales data. The team found that activity in the nucleus accumbens, a region of the brain heavily linked to reward and anticipation, accounted for about 10% of the variance in song sales--much more so than the kids' verbal ratings for how much they liked a particular song. Experts say that activity in the nucleus accumbens may provide a more pure indication of how much people actually want something, unencumbered by economic and social considerations that might influence their ratings. And that may be of use to "neuromarketers", who want to use brain activity to assess consumer sentiment.
Science

Submission + - Cow cloned to produce human milk (thehindu.com) 2

Submitted by
aBaldrich
aBaldrich writes: "Argentinian scientists have introduced modified genes in a cloned calf that are to cause it to produce a kind of human breast milk when it grows up.
The cow named Rosita ISA had two human genes introduced, which guide the production of two proteins contained in human milk and which are important for the nutrition of babies, Argentina’s National Institute of Agrobusiness Technology near Buenos Aires said Thursday. (Spanish — Goglenglish."
NASA

Submission + - Space Shuttle Endeavour Finishes Its Career (spaceflightnews.net)

Submitted by
Spacearium
Spacearium writes: "America's space shuttle program came one step closer to it's end Wednesday morning with the landing of shuttle Endeavour at Kennedy Space Center at 2:35am EST, having successfully completed a 16 day mission to deliver the final major component the International Space Station."
Japan

Submission + - Experimental "Smart Town" To Be Built In Japan (popsci.com)

Submitted by
StormDriver
StormDriver writes: "Basically, Fujisawa SST is envisioned as a bottom-up approach to energy efficiency--a green village built from scratch with modern green technologies rather than less-efficient older tech. Panasonic wants to use it as a template for other larger communities in Japan and elsewhere. If all goes as planned, Fujisawa SST will start receiving residents in March of 2014 and finish filling up its houses by 2018."

Submission + - Zediva Fights Back Against MPAA (torrentfreak.com)

Submitted by MoldySpore
MoldySpore writes: When Zediva burst onto the streaming scene earlier this year, they managed to do something nobody else was doing. Navigating around the copyright law they found a way to stream rental movies not currently available on other services, because they were still inside the DVD sales window, and filled a role not currently part of the competitions services. The service grants a "rental" of the physical movie to the user, who is then able to stream it over the internet, usually with the option to re-rent after played. By having it be a rental service, they were able to avoid some of the legalese associated with streaming movies outside of that sales window. Needless to say the MPAA was not pleased. But instead of making nice with the MPAA, Zediva has decided to fight back in the form of expensive legal heavy-hitters from " elite San Francisco law firm, Durie Tangri", which has forced the MPAA to hire their own team of expensive legal ninjas.

Zediva argues what most technologically informed people would when looking at this service: that they are essentially a rental service who are renting physical media, and providing the DVD player and a very long cable to the renters' TV. They are able to do this while providing the same function that the traditional brick and mortar stores do during the DVD sales window: a place for people to watch rental movies that were just released on DVD. The only difference is that you don't have to physically walk into a shady video store and pick it up because they stream that DVD for you that you just rented. It is a clever interpretation of the copyright law, and will certainly have some impacts on future streaming cases.

Comment Passion for science outweighs the pay (Score 1) 694

by klchoward (#35933218) Attached to: Why Science Is a Lousy Career Choice
People with a true passion for a science don't get into it for the money...they study science because they love it. Any one else is kidding themselves. On the other hand though...I am a scientist (meteorologist) working for a contractor for the US govt and I make a decent wage (enough to pay my insane school loans), work very flexible hours, and am hands on with the science every day...even when it doesn't always seem like it. If I didn't love my job I wouldn't have it...I would do something easy, like everyone else.

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