LaruRidi - Slashdot User

Submission + - Ability to Drink May Be an Evolutionary Advantage That Evolved 10000 Years Ago (counselheal.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 19, 2013 @03:37PM

An anonymous reader writes: Apparently, the urge to pour a stiff drink is an ancient one, stretching back thousands of years. According to a recent study, the ability to process alcohol first appeared about 10,000 years ago.
Steven Benner, a chemist from the Foundation for Applied Molecular Evolution in Gainseville, Florida, believes that he is cracked the answer as to why humans and some other primates, like chimpanzees and gorillas, can process ethanol, while others. He believes that the answer lies in fermented fruit.

Submission + - Flightgear 2.10 released (flightgear.org)

Submitted by arnodf on Tuesday February 19, 2013 @03:03PM

arnodf writes: "The FlightGear development team is happy to announce the v2.10 release of FlightGear, the free, open-source flight simulator. This new version contains many exciting new features, enhancements and bugfixes. Highlights in this release include improved usability, better terrain rendering and a fully scriptable 2D rendering system."

"Highlights to FlightGear 2.10 include improved usability, a fully-scriptable 2D rendering system, and better terrain rendering. There's also improved modularization, atmospheric light scattering, improved performance, better internationalization support, Rembrandt renderer improvements, AI improvements, and much more. An extensive list of FLightGear 2.10 changes can be found from their Wiki-based change-log. "

Submission + - Does the Higgs Boson Reveal Our Universe's Doomsday? (discovery.com)

Submitted by

astroengine

on Tuesday February 19, 2013 @02:16PM

astroengine writes: "If calculations of the newly discovered Higgs boson particle are correct, one day, tens of billions of years from now, the universe will disappear at the speed of light, replaced by a strange, alternative dimension, one theoretical physicist calls boring. "It may be that the universe we live in is inherently unstable and at some point billions of years from now it’s all going to get wiped out. This has to do with the Higgs energy field itself,” Joseph Lykken, with the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia, Ill., told Discovery News. "This calculation tells you that many tens of billions of years from now there’ll be a catastrophe.""

Submission + - University of Oxford Develops Low-Cost Self-Driving Car System (gizmag.com)

Submitted by Zothecula on Tuesday February 19, 2013 @12:15PM

Zothecula writes: Oxford University’s Mobile Robotics Group (MRG) has developed an autonomous navigation system for cars at a build cost of only £5,000 (US$7,700). Installed in a production Nissan LEAF, the robot car uses off the shelf components and is designed to take over driving while traveling on frequently used routes.

Submission + - STRaND-1 – World's First Smartphone-Based Satellite Set to Launch (gizmag.com)

Submitted by Zothecula on Wednesday February 13, 2013 @10:38AM

Zothecula writes: The University of Surrey’s Surrey Space Centre (SSC) and Surrey Satellite Technology Limited (SSTL) are set to launch the world’s first smartphone-based satellite. Built around a Google Nexus One smartphone running on the Android operating system, the STRaND-1 (Surrey Training, Research and Nanosatellite Demonstrator) satellite will also be the U.K.’s first CubeSat to go into space.

Submission + - Britain Could Switch Off Airport Radar And Release Spectrum (techweekeurope.co.uk)

Submitted by

judgecorp

on Wednesday February 13, 2013 @09:00AM

judgecorp writes: "Britain is considering switching off air traffic control radar systems and using "passive radar" instead. A two year feasibility study will consider using a network of ground stations which monitor broadcast TV signals and measure echoes from aircraft to determine their location and velocity. The system is not a new idea — early radar experiments used BBC shortwave transmitters as a signal source before antenna technology produced a transceiver suitable for radar — but could now be better than conventional radar thanks to new antenna designs and signal processing techniques. It will also save money and energy by eliminating transmitters — and release spectrum for 5G services."

Submission + - Retail copies of Office 2013 are tied to a single computer forever (geek.com) 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 13, 2013 @08:35AM

An anonymous reader writes: With the launch of Office 2013 Microsoft has seen fit to upgrade the terms of the license agreement, and it’s not in favor of the end user. It seems installing a copy of the latest version of Microsoft’s Office suite of apps ties it to a single machine. For life.

On previous versions of Office it was a different story. The suite was associated with a “Licensed Device” and could only be used on a single device. But there was nothing to stop you uninstalling Office and installing it on another machine perfectly legally. With that option removed, Office 2013 effectively becomes a much more expensive proposition for many.

Submission + - Ancient Languages Reconstructed by Computers (halls-of-valhalla.org)

Submitted by

halls-of-valhalla

on Wednesday February 13, 2013 @08:18AM

halls-of-valhalla writes: "Researchers have developed a new software which can be used to reconstruct dead, ancient languages using probabilistic models of sound change.

This new software was tested by taking 637 Austronesian languages currently spoken in Asia and the Pacific, and attempting to reconstruct the ancient languages they're based on. The system was found to have provided a relatively accurate, large-scale automatic reconstruction of the protolanguages. A language believed to be roughtly seven thousand years old was reconstructed using a database of 142,000 words.

When compared to the results of linguists specializing in Austronesian languages, more 85% of the system's reconstructions were found to be within one character of the manual reconstruction. These are very promising results, however a linguist is still able to produce a higher accuracy, so this will be likely to become a tool used by linguists rather than a replacement for them."

Submission + - Living cells turned into computers (nature.com) 2

Submitted by ananyo on Wednesday February 13, 2013 @07:48AM

ananyo writes: Synthetic biologists have developed DNA modules that perform logic operations in bacteria. These ‘genetic circuits’ could, for example, be used by scientists to track key moments in a cell’s life or, in biotechnology, to turn on production of a drug at the flick of a chemical switch. The researchers have encoded 16 logic gates in modules of DNA and stored the results of logical operations. The different logic gates can be assembled into a wide variety of circuits.

Submission + - Earth-buzzing asteroid could be worth big bucks: $195B if we could catch it (networkworld.com)

Submitted by

coondoggie

on Tuesday February 12, 2013 @07:21PM

coondoggie writes: "The asteroid NASA say is about the half the size of a football field that will blow past Earth on Feb 15 could be worth up to $195 billion in metals and propellant. That's what the scientists at Deep Space Industries, a company that wants to mine these flashing hunks of space materials, thinks the asteroid known as 2012 DA14 is worth — if they could catch it."

Comment Re:Satisfied with CFLs (Score 1) 743

by LaruRidi on Tuesday April 17, 2012 @02:54PM (#39714007) Attached to: $60 Light Bulb Debuts On Earth Day

My oldest CFLs are from late 90s. I have been mostly CFL since 2007 and in autumn last year I put CFLs even in the "unsuitable" areas like bathroom/toilet (frequent on/offs). I have yet to meet my first failed CFL. It kinda sucks because those old Phillipses from the 90s lost a lot of intensity but they refuse to die and I'm reluctant to throw away a working light bulb. I only buyed Phillips then switched to Osrams circa three years ago when some of the newer Phillips bulbs seemed cheaply made (they made bad plastic smell when heated). Even within the brand you will probably find cheap (==low quality) models. I never buyed any other brands. I also noticed that the ones I buy tend to be among the most expensive on the market.

Comment Re:Where the oxygen came from... (Score 1) 109

by LaruRidi on Thursday January 12, 2012 @04:50AM (#38671668) Attached to: Tracking Down the First Oxygen Users

You can understand carbon storage as a shorthand for "freeing up the oxygen" (I've probably never seen this term used before). From this point of view fossil fuels don't really differ from limestone -- both are geological structures which contain a lot of carbon a store it "indefinitely". Of course the limestone will one day be recycled in the mantle and we burn the fossil fuels like there is no tomorrow.

Comment Re:Something I've wondered about (Score 1) 350

by LaruRidi on Monday October 03, 2011 @02:18AM (#37587554) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: How to Exploit Post-Cataract Ultraviolet Vision?

The glass in my model starts luminescing when exposed to UV or near-UV light (405 nm laser does this very well). The luminescence is white-ish and possibly due to scattering goes out even from part of the glass which is not directly illuminated. To an unprepared observer, the effect might look like "foggy" vision.

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