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Books

Submission + - J.K. Rowling explains "Dumbledore is Gay" (bbc.co.uk)

Submitted by DA's Faaabulous Recruit
DA's Faaabulous Recruit writes: J.K. Rowling, Author of the Harry Potter series of books, explained to a crowd in New York's Carnegie Hall on Friday that Albus Dumbledore is gay. When asked if Albus had ever found "true love" she replied (from the article)

"Dumbledore is gay," adding he was smitten with rival Gellert Grindelwald, who he beat in a battle between good and bad wizards long ago. The audience gasped, then applauded. "I would have told you earlier if I knew it would make you so happy," she said.

Feed Science Daily: Fast, inexpensive sensors? Gel Changes Color On Demand (sciencedaily.com)

From feed by sdfeed
MIT researchers have created a new structured gel that can rapidly change color in response to a variety of stimuli, including temperature, pressure, salt concentration and humidity. A critical component of the structured gel is a material that expands or contracts when exposed to certain stimuli. Those changes in the thickness of the gel cause it to change color, through the entire range of the visible spectrum of light.

Feed Science Daily: New Role For Well-known Protein: Could Lead To Lead To Alzheimer's, Parkinson's (sciencedaily.com)

From feed by sdfeed
In a finding that may lead to potential new treatments for diseases such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's, researchers report an unexpected role in the brain for a well-known protein. The new study shows that the same protein that enables a yeast cell to bud into two daughter cells also helps neurons sprout the branch-like protrusions used to communicate with other neurons.
Power

Submission + - Toward greener jet fuels

Submitted by
Roland Piquepaille
Roland Piquepaille writes: "Researchers at Princeton University are currently working on two projects to reduce jet travel's role in global warming. The first one, a major project funded by the U.S. Air Force with $7.5 million, is focused on developing computational models that accurately simulate the burning of jet fuel, a complex process not well understood today. The second one, funded by NetJets, a company providing business jets, will help to develop new jet fuels with near-zero net greenhouse gas emissions. Read more for additional references and a picture of the variable-pressure flow reactor used to determine the chemistry of how petroleum and alternative fuels burn."
Censorship

Submission + - UK Lawyers Are Shutting Down Blogs Left and Right (aol.com) 7

Submitted by zarloq2
zarloq2 writes: Craig Murray's site, along with several other UK-based political blogs have been shut down in response Usmanov's lawyers putting pressure on his webhost.

Here's an excerpt from the sports.aol.com blog:
Craig Murray, the former British Ambassador to Uzbekistan, is badmouthing Alisher Usmanov, the billionaire Russian steel magnate attempting to take over Premier League club Arsenal (UK football club), because he wants to sell you a book he wrote about his experience in that former Soviet republic. It has become clear today, however, that whatever Murray is attempting to sell, Usmanov and his lawyers do not want anyone to buy it.
According to Tom Dunmore at PitchInvasion.net, Craig Murray's web site was taken off line today after sustained pressure on Murray's web hosting provider from Schillings, the London law firm representing Usmanov. What's more, Schillings has also managed to put the kibosh on political site Bloggerheads three days after Tim Ireland wrote this piece on Schillings' cease & desist letters.
Announcements

Submission + - Anti-Bacterial Soap No Better than Plain Soap (physorg.com)

Submitted by
eldavojohn
eldavojohn writes: "Stop buying antibacterial soap as it's no more effective than the regular stuff and, on top of that, you are introducing a risk to a mutation of bacteria! From the article, "The team looked at 27 studies conducted between 1980 and 2006, and found that soaps containing triclosan within the range of concentrations commonly used in the community setting (0.1 to 0.45 percent wt/vol) were no more effective than plain soaps. Triclosan is used in higher concentrations in hospitals and other clinical settings, and may be more effective at reducing illness and bacteria. Triclosan works by targeting a biochemical pathway in the bacteria that allows the bacteria to keep its cell wall intact. Because of the way triclosan kills the bacteria, mutations can happen at the targeted site. Aiello says a mutation could mean that the triclosan can no longer get to the target site to kill the bacteria because the bacteria and the pathway have changed form." For the love of god, stop endangering everyone with your soapy hand held mutation experiments!"
Intel

Submission + - Intel's vision on the future of multicores

Submitted by paleshadows
paleshadows writes: In the company's blog, Sean Koehl, technology strategist for Intel, said that eight technical papers would be released this week, describing key findings from the company's work on future programmable multicore architectures. Koehl then provides a short preview: One of the papers discusses "data center-on-a-chip" (tera-scale processor composed of 32-core, each with 4-SMT, amounting to 128 threads of execution), proposing a new high-bandwidth L4 cache optimized by a cache quality of service discipline that will determine how multiple threads share cache space. Two other papers are about how to obtain parallel scalability for multimedia and search/mining applications. Another paper argues Intel would be required to build the memory directly on top of the die to obtain high-enough bandwidth to keep all threads busy. A related paper explores how caches would be shared between cores with an on-die interconnect mesh. Finally, two more papers discuss how Intel plans to simplify parallel programming using special runtime environments of tera-scale platforms and accelerator cores.
User Journal

Journal Journal: The Death of the iTunes Music Store? 2

Journal by larry bagina
The Drudge Report is reporting that Universal Music Group (the largest record company) will not be renewing their contract with iTMS. Universal, you may remember, is being paid a license fee for every Zune sold and was widely rumored to be demanding the same concession from Apple.
Handhelds

Submission + - In-depth Review of the iPhone

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: As more blogs coming out with in-depth reviews of the iPhone, it sounds like it will make Steve Jobs even richer:

"It is indeed revolutionary, super-sexy and insanely easy to use. This is a phone you could give your multimedia-lovin' mum and she'd get the hang of everything quickly. And she'd appreciate the large icons too . Steve Jobs wasn't exaggerating when he said this was the best iPod Apple has ever made. The fantastic wide screen display, responsive and beautiful cover flow, good audio quality and support for every file that a regular iPod should make this the darling of iPod fans. The phone works well in terms of volume, voice quality and reception. It's powerful enough to compete with smartphones but the lack of a physical keyboard and 3rd party applications (including an Office suite) mean it falls short for those with serious business needs. If you simply need excellent email, a superb web browser, RSS and attachment viewing, then it will suffice."
Microsoft

Submission + - Vista is watching you!

Submitted by greengrass
greengrass writes: Are you using Windows Vista? Then you might as well know that the licensed operating system installed on your machine is harvesting a healthy volume of information for Microsoft. In this context, a program such as the Windows Genuine Advantage is the last of your concerns. In fact, in excess of 20 Windows Vista features and services are hard at work collecting and transmitting your personal data to the Redmond company.

more a Softpedia
GUI

Submission + - New Magic vs. The Old GUI

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Interesting perspective on Google as a "new magic" user interface, taking over from GUIs, like GUIs took over from CLIs: "What other "magical" approaches are there to the things Google doesn't do? It's like asking, circa 1985, what else can you do with a graphical user interface other than help people run an operating system?"
Education

Journal Journal: Firstborns Raised to be More Intelligent

Journal by Cyspeth
The Long held beleif that first born children are genetically more likely be more intelligent than their younger siblings has at last been debunked. It turns out that its how the children are raised that matters... And why am I not surprised? "Even if a child had lost an older sibling and was raised as the eldest, their IQ was higher by an average of 2.3 points than their younger siblings." http://www.worldnewsaustralia.com.au/region.php?id=137876&region=3

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