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Space

Submission + - British company claims biggest engine advance since the jet (reuters.com)

Submitted by intellitech
intellitech writes: Excerpts from the article: "A small British company, Reaction Engines Ltd, believes its Sabre engine, which would operate like a jet engine in the atmosphere and a rocket in space, could displace rockets for space access and transform air travel by bringing any destination on Earth to no more than four hours away. Sabre produces thrust by burning hydrogen and oxygen, but inside the atmosphere it would take that oxygen from the air, reducing the amount it would have to carry in fuel tanks for rocket mode, cutting weight and allowing Skylon to go into orbit in one stage. Scramjets on test vehicles like the U.S. Air Force Waverider also use atmospheric air to create thrust but they have to be accelerated to their operating speed by normal jet engines or rockets before they kick in. The Sabre engine, however, can operate from a standing start. If the developers are successful, Sabre would also be the first engine in history to send a vehicle into space without using disposable, multi-stage rockets. The space plane to incorporate this engine, dubbed Skylon, only exists on paper. What the company has right now is a remarkable heat exchanger that is able to cool air sucked into the engine at high speed from 1,000 degrees Celsius to minus 150 degrees in one hundredth of a second. However, they are tight-lipped on exactly how they managed to do it. The company has deliberately avoided filing patents on its heat exchanger technology to avoid details of how it works — particularly the method for preventing the build-up of frost — becoming public."
Privacy

Submission + - Texas student who called RFID 'the mark of the beast' headed to federal court (networkworld.com) 2

Submitted by colinneagle
colinneagle writes: Opinions about RFID have long been controversial, but no more so than when a Texas school tried to suspend a girl for refusing to wear a student ID card embedded with an RFID chip. By forcing students to hang the ID card around their necks and to keep it visible at all times, the school claims it is guaranteed proof of class attendance or absence. Sophomore Andrea Hernandez said, "I feel it's an invasion of my religious beliefs. I feel it's the implementation of the Mark of the Beast. It's also an invasion of my privacy and my other rights."

The newest hearing about the tracking chips was canceled. According to WOIA, San Antonio's Northside Independent School District issued this statement:

Since the Jay High School student and her father are alleging a violation of the student's federal constitutional rights, Northside ISD asked that the case be heard in federal court. The case scheduled to be heard today in State court has been canceled and now will rest with a Federal judge to make a ruling. Neither a judge nor a date for a federal hearing has been set.

NISD acknowledged the family's objection based on religious grounds and offered the student a Student ID Card without the RFID technology. The student and family refused the exception.
Technology

Submission + - (Yet Another) Space-based navigation system (arxiv.org)

Submitted by RockDoctor
RockDoctor writes: A proposal has been, uh, proposed for a relatively low-cost method for producing regional satellite-based location system. Instead of putting up an expensive constellation of atomic-clock-carrying satellites in near-polar orbits, the proposal is to send timing signals from ground-based atomic clocks, to pre-existing geostationary satellites with poor latitude control. The "geostationary" satellites re-transmit the timing signals to earth, and triangulation then supplies location from the arrival times of the signals at the receiver.
The proposal paper on Arxiv also suggests that, since most existing communications satellites are designed for 2-way communications, this could provide a "cheap" back channel for (say) location-enabled emergency communications.
Crime

Submission + - Verizon Tech given 4-year federal prison sentence for $4.5M Equipment Scam (ajc.com)

Submitted by McGruber
McGruber writes: Michael Baxter, the network engineer at the southeastern regional headquarters of Verizon Wireless that submitted hundreds of fraudulent service requests to Cisco (SLASHDOT Article from December 12, 2011: http://yro.slashdot.org/story/11/12/12/0431246/verizon-tech-charged-in-45m-equipment-scam), has been sentenced to four years in federal prison, followed by three years of supervised release. Baxter was also ordered to pay $2.3 million in restitution to Cisco Systems, and $462,828 in restitution to Verizon.

Instead of placing the replacement parts into service in the Verizon Wireless network, Baxter took the parts home and sold them to third-party re-sellers for his own profit. He used the money to buy cars, jewelry and multiple cosmetic surgeries for his girlfriend.
Science

Submission + - Exoplanets form never-seen-before celestial alignment (newscientist.com)

Submitted by CelestialScience
CelestialScience writes: The heavens have aligned in a way never seen before, with two exoplanets overlapping as they cross their star. Teruyuki Hirano of the University of Tokyo, Japan, and colleagues used data from the Kepler space telescope to probe KOI-94, a star seemingly orbited by four planets. It seems that one planet candidate, KOI-94.03, passed in front of the star and then the innermost candidate, KOI-94.01, passed between the two. The phenomenon is so new it doesn't yet have a name though suggestions include "planet-planet eclipse", "double transit", "syzygy" and "exosyzygy".
Iphone

Submission + - Apple Acknowledges Major iPhone 5 Camera Flaw 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Many iPhone 5 users are complaining that its camera is adding a purple flare to their photos. Speculation is that it's caused by the new sapphire lens cover that Apple touted as "thinner and more durable than standard glass with the ability to provide crystal clear images." Apple's response to those who've complained? "You're using it wrong."
Space

Submission + - New Comet Discovered—May Become "One of Brightest in History" (nationalgeographic.com)

Submitted by intellitech
intellitech writes: From the article: 'If astronomers' early predictions hold true, the holidays next year may hold a glowing gift for stargazers—a superbright comet, just discovered streaking near Saturn. Even with powerful telescopes, comet 2012 S1 (ISON) is now just a faint glow in the constellation Cancer. But the ball of ice and rocks might become visible to the naked eye for a few months in late 2013 and early 2014—perhaps outshining the moon, astronomers say. The comet is already remarkably bright, given how far it is from the sun, astronomer Raminder Singh Samra said. What's more, 2012 S1 seems to be following the path of the Great Comet of 1680, considered one of the most spectacular ever seen from Earth.'

Comment Let's not? I think it'll be okay. (Score 5, Informative) 50

by intellitech (#41207773) Attached to: CDC Says 10,000 At Risk of Hantavirus In Yosemite Outbreak

Source: http://www.cdc.gov/hantavirus/hps/transmission.html

The types of hantavirus that cause HPS in the United States cannot be transmitted from one person to another. For example, you cannot get the virus from touching or kissing a person who has HPS or from a health care worker who has treated someone with the disease. You also cannot get the virus from a blood transfusion in which the blood came from a person who became ill with HPS and survived.

It seems like this is about as isolated of an incident as it can be. It's not contagious, and that's key.
Crime

Submission + - LA Times: James Holmes Refused to Embrace OOP

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: Reporting that accused Colorado movie shooter James Holmes was a mediocre student intern at the Salk Institute’s Computational Neurobiology Laboratory, the Los Angeles Times oddly fixates on Holmes' refusal to embrace object-oriented programming to drive home the point. 'Holmes insisted on using what's known as procedural programming, much more time consuming and complicated [than OOP],' reports the Times. A co-worker at the time says Holmes was 'absolutely stubborn. I was at a loss to how to get him to program in an object-oriented way. He just refused.'

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