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Earth

Submission + - On Brink of War in Idaho: readying Titan I missiles during Cuban Missile Crisis (thebulletin.org) 1

Submitted by Lasrick
Lasrick writes: The Bulletin has two first-person accounts of military personnel readying missiles during the Cuban Missile Crisis (50 years ago this month): former US Air Force Col. Charles G. Simpson describes his efforts to prepare new Titan I missiles based in Idaho for use during the CMC — as his wife prepared to give birth to a new son. Retired Soviet Col. Valery Yarynich also provides his personal account at a Soviet rocket corps base in the Ural Mountains: http://www.thebulletin.org/web-edition/features/the-brink-of-the-abyss-the-urals. Really great companion pieces

Submission + - Green Grid Argues That Data Centers Can Lose the Chillers (slashdot.org)

Submitted by
Nerval's Lobster
Nerval's Lobster writes: "The Green Grid, a nonprofit organization dedicated to making IT infrastructures and data centers more energy-efficient, is making the case that data center operators are operating their facilities in too conservative a fashion. Rather than rely on mechanical chillers, it argues in a new white paper, data centers can reduce power consumption via a higher inlet temperature of 20 degrees C.

Green Grid originally recommended that data center operators build to the ASHRAE A2 specifications: 10 to 35 degrees C (dry-bulb temperature) and between 20 to 80 percent humidity. But the paper also presented data that a range of between 20 and 35 degrees C was acceptable.

Data centers have traditionally included chillers, mechanical cooling devices designed to lower the inlet temperature. Cooling the air, according to what the paper originally called anecdotal evidence, lowered the number of server failures that a data center experienced each year. But chilling the air also added additional costs, and PUE numbers would go up as a result."
Government

Submission + - TechCrunch Launches CrunchGov, a Tech Policy Platform (techcrunch.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: TechCrunch has launched a project called CrunchGov, which aims to bring educated people together to work on tech-related government policy. "It includes a political leaderboard that grades politicians based on how they vote on tech issues, a light legislative database of technology policy, and a public markup utility for crowdsourcing the best ideas on pending legislation." They give politicians scores based on how their votes align with consensus on policy in the tech industry. "A trial run of the public markup utility in Congress has already proven successful. When Rep. Issa opened his own alternative to SOPA for public markup, Project Madison participants came in droves with surprisingly specific legal suggestions. For instance, one savvy user noticed that current piracy legislation could mistakenly leave a person who owns a domain name legally responsible for the actions of the website administrator (the equivalent of holding a landlord responsible if his tenant was growing pot in the backyard). The suggestion was included in the updated bill before Congress, representing perhaps the first time that the public, en masse, could have a realistic shot at contributing to federal law purely based on the merit of their ideas."
Education

Submission + - What does your degree matter? Millions of dollars over time (networkworld.com)

Submitted by
coondoggie
coondoggie writes: "Over the course of a working career, the type of degree you have can be worth millions of more dollars to your bottom line. The US Census Bureau this week came out a wit couple first-time studies that show people with higher level technical or engineering degrees can on average make over $3 million more during their lifetimes than those who graduated with majors in the arts, humanities and education."
Government

Submission + - Converting sea water to navy jet-fuel (defensetech.org)

Submitted by
Jules IV
Jules IV writes: "Navy scientists and researchers say they are close to a breakthrough toward turning seawater into jet fuel.
The U.S. Naval Research Laboratory is working to extract the carbon dioxide and produce hydrogen gas from the seawater. The key is then converting the carbon dioxide and hydrogen into hydrocarbons that can then be used to develop JP-5 fuel stock."
Power

Submission + - Updated roundtable on access to nuclear fuel banks (thebulletin.org)

Submitted by __aaqpaq9254
__aaqpaq9254 writes: The Bulletin's roundtable on nuclear fuel banks has been updated by Ta Minh Tuan with an article examining misunderstandings (his own included) about whether nations will have to forgo enrichment in order to gain access to fuel banks. Good examination of IAEA policies vs. what nations believe those policies to be.
Science

Submission + - Elephant Hair Acts as Pin Fins for Cooling (vice.com) 1

Submitted by derekmead
derekmead writes: A new paper from Conor Myhrvold, Howard Stone, and Elie Bou-Zeid of Princeton, published in PLoS One, shows that elephants’ sparse hair actually acts as pin-shaped cooling fins, which helps the giant animals dissipate heat more effectively. The hair works by creating more area for heat to be released, while also also pushing heat away from the animal’s body where wind flow is less impeded.

The team calculated the heat transfer coefficients for measured values of elephants’ smooth skin (around ears, for example) and rough skin (on the legs), both with and without hair. They found that, at high wind speeds, the convection effect of the wind overpowered any surface differences. But at low wind speeds, when convection effects are lower and elephants have more trouble shedding heat, the team found that hair acted as pin-shaped cooling fins, which increased convection cooling efficiency by as much as 24 percent. For elephants dealing with huge thermal loads, that’s an important difference.

Submission + - Oops! Sorry, we got it all wrong, IMF says (herald.ie) 1

Submitted by daem0n1x
daem0n1x writes: Ireland, Greece and Portugal have been under draconian austerity measures after they have been forced to ask financial rescue from the IMF, in the aftermath of the 2008 bank crash. The results of these austerity measures are well known: Recession, unemployment and general social and economic meltdown.
After all this pain and suffering, the IMF suddenly finds a gigantic flaw in the formulas used to calculate the economic effects of austerity.
Well, at least they stepped forward to recognise they screwed up. But is it in still time for European and global economies to recover?
How is it possible that worldwide economic policies be conducted by such flawed systems? Numerous economists have been warning about this for years, but they faced deaf ears. Sounds familiar? Yes, just like before the subprime bubble bust.
Biotech

Submission + - The half-life of DNA - seems that Jurassic Park was impossible (nature.com)

Submitted by another random user
another random user writes: Few researchers have given credence to claims that samples of dinosaur DNA have survived to the present day, but no one knew just how long it would take for genetic material to fall apart. Now, a study of fossils found in New Zealand is laying the matter to rest — and putting paid to hopes of cloning a Tyrannosaurus rex.

After cell death, enzymes start to break down the bonds between the nucleotides that form the backbone of DNA, and micro-organisms speed the decay. In the long run, however, reactions with water are thought to be responsible for most bond degradation. Groundwater is almost ubiquitous, so DNA in buried bone samples should, in theory, degrade at a set rate.

Determining that rate has been difficult because it is rare to find large sets of DNA-containing fossils with which to make meaningful comparisons. To make matters worse, variable environmental conditions such as temperature, degree of microbial attack and oxygenation alter the speed of the decay process.

By comparing the specimens' ages and degrees of DNA degradation, the researchers calculated that DNA has a half-life of 521 years. That means that after 521 years, half of the bonds between nucleotides in the backbone of a sample would have broken; after another 521 years half of the remaining bonds would have gone; and so on.

Comment Re:I'm confused... (Score 4, Insightful) 223

by __aaqpaq9254 (#41531015) Attached to: 82-Year-Old Nun Breaks Into Nuclear Facility, Contractors Blamed
Actually, the point for me is, rather, not that nationalized security would be better, per se (although I think ThatsMyNick's point is well taken), but that the constant calls for privatizing things that shouldn't be privatized is really ridiculous. Companies exist to make money, and they do that by keeping costs low wherever they can, even if it means low beyond the point of reason...beyond the point of doing a good job. True, I suppose the company would eventually be fired, but only after a huge mistake (as we see here). When we are talking about national security, and a few other things I can think of, that isn't such a good idea.
Government

Submission + - Security at nuclear Y-12 National Security Complex Nun Too good (thebulletin.org) 1

Submitted by Lasrick
Lasrick writes: Private security contractors strike again, this time at the Y-12 National Security Complex. How a nun, a gardener, and a housepainter cut through 3 security fences to find themselves 20 feet away from highly dangerous nuclear material. And of course, only 1 guard has been fired (the one who arguably acted the bravest and did the right thing). Contractors still have the contracts, etc.
Science

Submission + - Misconduct, not error, is the main cause of retractions (nature.com)

Submitted by
ananyo
ananyo writes: "One of the largest-ever studies of retractions has found that two-thirds of retracted life-sciences papers were stricken from the scientific record because of misconduct such as fraud or suspected fraud — and that journals sometimes soft-pedal the reason. The study contradicts the conventional view that most retractions of papers in scientific journals are triggered by unintentional errors.
The survey examined all 2,047 articles in the PubMed database that had been marked as retracted by 3 May this year. But rather than taking journals’ retraction notices at face value, as previous analyses have done, the study used secondary sources to pin down the reasons for retraction if the notices were incomplete or vague. he analysis revealed that fraud or suspected fraud was responsible for 43% of the retractions. Other types of misconduct — duplicate publication and plagiarism — accounted for 14% and 10% of retractions, respectively. Only 21% of the papers were retracted because of error (abstract)."
Earth

Submission + - Idea: Buy up fossil fuel reserves so gases aren't released into the atmosphere. (thebulletin.org)

Submitted by __aaqpaq9254
__aaqpaq9254 writes: Kennette Benedict at the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists proposes an intriguing (and hugely expensive) idea: buying up the $27 trillion in coal/oil/gas reserves so all that carbon isn't released into the atmosphere. Benedict points out that these reserves represent "five times as much coal, gas, and oil...as climate scientists think is safe to burn." Benedicts jumping-off point is the excellent piece in Rolling Stone by Bill McKibbon: Global Warming's Terrifying New Math: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/global-warmings-terrifying-new-math-20120719 These are both excellent reads and worth debating.
Security

Submission + - Darwin's Theory Applies to Malware (net-security.org)

Submitted by
Orome1
Orome1 writes: "G Data’s new malware report shows a new and unexpected development in malware: the extreme growth of new malicious programs seems to be slowing down. Granted, the antivirus industry still needed to develop 1,381,967 new virus signatures to detect and block all new malware in the first semester of this year, which is an all time high. But the number is not as high as was to be expected: the figure is only marginally bigger (3.9%) than the 1,330,146 new malware types that were found in the semester before that. This does not give anyone any reason to be relieved. The new malware that appeared this year has been the smartest code yet, suggesting an evolution similar to Darwin’s evolution theory."

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