Catch up on stories from the past week (and beyond) at the Slashdot story archive

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×

Comment Re:What a crappy article (Score 1) 37

by jandar (#42409741) Attached to: Britain Suspends Exploratory Drilling of Antarctic Lake

The British scientists decided to abandon the mission after trying for 20 hours to connect two holes in the ice that were needed for the hot-water drill to work, said a BAS spokeswoman.

Without a connection between the two holes, the hot water would seep into the porous surface layers of ice and be lost, reducing the pressure and rendering the drill ineffective

I RTFA and all I can say is "Huh?"

The next sentence explains it, they have not enough water in reserve to compensate:

The team tried to melt and dig more snow to compensate for the water loss, but without success.

Submission + - Benefits of Green Tea (blogspot.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Green tea Aids with your body weight loss. It burns fat and boosts your metabolism rate naturally. It can help you burn up to seventy calories in just one day. That translates to seven pounds in one year. It increases the metabolism. The polyphenol found in works to intensify levels of fat oxidation and the rate at which your body turns food into calories.Prevents fatness by stopping the movement of glucose in fat cells.6000
The Military

Submission + - Did a CIA Drone Really Level Two Homes in Indianapolis? (vice.com)

Submitted by
pigrabbitbear
pigrabbitbear writes: "The theories swirling around a mysterious, deadly explosion in Indianpolis over the weekend sound like the recipe for a futuristic Tom Clancy thriller or a dystopian video game.

“It was just mass chaos,” Dan Able, a southside Indianapolis resident, told the Indianapolis Star. “You can’t even imagine how bad it was.”

Able wasn’t the only one to witness the destruction from the mysterious explosion that officials are still struggling to explain. The horrific event left at least two dead, obliterated two homes, damaged 18 others, rendered another 27 temporarily uninhabitable, and briefly displaced some 200 residents."

Comment Re:Actually (Score 1) 637

by jandar (#41972629) Attached to: Study Claims Human Intelligence Peaked Two To Six Millennia Ago

Which goes to show you that of course IQ tests are horrible at measuring intelligence.

It's even weirder, there is no generally accepted definition of intelligence. So IQ tests are really bad at measuring something undefined and the paper applies this to some unmeasurable (dead) entities. I'm going to read tea leaves to evaluate the significance of this ;-).
Transportation

Submission + - Airlines Face Acute Pilot Shortage 2

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens writes
Hugh Pickens writes writes: "The WSJ reports that US airlines are facing their most serious pilot shortage since the 1960s, with federal mandates taking effect that will require all newly hired pilots to have at least 1,500 hours of prior flight experience—six times the current minimum—raising the cost and time to train new fliers in an era when pay cuts and more-demanding schedules already have made the profession less attractive. Meanwhile, thousands of senior pilots at major airlines soon will start hitting the mandatory retirement age of 65. "We are about four years from a solution, but we are only about six months away from a problem.,” says Bob Reding, recently retired executive vice president of operations at AMR Corp. A study by the University of North Dakota's aviation department indicates major airlines will need to hire 60,000 pilots by 2025 to replace departures and cover expansion over the next eight years. Meanwhile only 36,000 pilots have passed the Air Transport Pilot exam in the past eight years, which all pilots would have to pass under the congressionally imposed rules and there are limits to the ability of airlines, especially the regional carriers, to attract more pilots by raising wages. While the industry's health has improved in recent years, many carriers still operate on thin profit margins, with the airlines sandwiched between rising costs for fuel and unsteady demand from price-sensitive consumers. "It certainly will result in challenges to maintain quality," says John Marshall, an independent aviation-safety consultant who spent 26 years in the Air Force before overseeing Delta's safety. "Regional carriers will be creative and have to take shortcuts" to fill their cockpits."

Submission + - Computer Glitch Creates Voting Precinct With No Residents (startribune.com)

Submitted by
phishead
phishead writes: "Barry Clegg, who chairs the line-drawing Charter Commission elaborated that the software "could not draw the line around the edge of the lake without putting a census block in the wrong ward; it would just connect along the shortest distance between two points, which meant a line across the lake.""
Censorship

Submission + - Internet Freedoms put in Stranglehold in United Arab Emirates (rt.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Russia Today reports: 'Lawmakers in the Arab Emirates have introduced jail terms for all those who incite public protests and insult the state and its rulers online. The Persian Gulf countries are tightening internet laws, fearing Arab Spring-style uprisings. The news measures take the form of codes to monitor and enforce strict internet content guidelines to prevent “the deriding [of] or to damage the reputation or the stature of the state or any of its institutions." This includes any of the seven emirates that govern the country’s principalities and the president. Furthermore, it rounds on “information, news, caricatures or any other kind of pictures" that could present a threat to “public order” and “disobey the laws and regulations of the state.” Moreover, it punishes any person or organization calling for a demonstration or protest without the necessary license with a jail sentence. Ironically, President Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed al-Nahayan signed off the decree just hours after he was granted a seat on the UN Human Rights Council for the next three years.'
Robotics

Submission + - Mind-Controlled Robot Avatars Inch Towards Reality (gizmag.com)

Submitted by Zothecula
Zothecula writes: Researchers at the CNRS-AIST Joint Robotics Laboratory (a collaboration between France's Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique and Japan's National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology) are developing software that allows a person to drive a robot with their thoughts alone. The technology could one day give a paralyzed patient greater autonomy through a robotic agent or avatar.
Businesses

Submission + - Here come the humanoids. There go U.S. jobs (cnet.com) 1

Submitted by
concealment
concealment writes: "Rethink Robotics founder Rodney Brooks took to the stage at the Techonomy conference here to talk about the wonders of his new robot, Baxter, which is designed to work on factory floors doing dull and necessary tasks. He costs just $25,000 and works for what amounts to $4 an hour.

Baxter is a step forward in robotics with mass potential. It has a face and sensors to tell it when people are near. It's about as close to a humanoid robot as we can get, and Brooks said it's just the beginning.

"Within 10 years, we're going to see humanoid robots," said Brooks, who was a co-founder of iRobot, maker of iRoomba, the vacuum cleaner robot."

Slashdot Top Deals

Living on Earth may be expensive, but it includes an annual free trip around the Sun.

Close