Comment Anemometer (Score 2) 90
Mod parent up. This is not a microphone, it's a differential hot wire anemometer.
Submission + - Google+: Browser no longer supported (blogspot.fr)
doru writes: The +You link in Google's main menu yields the following warning: Your Browser is no longer supported. This on Firefox 23, in safe mode (disabled add-ons). Fortunately, there is a workaround: use the full profile number.
Chrome 28 works just fine.
Submission + - Writing and Deletion of Single Skyrmions Could Yield Far Smaller Storage Devices
An anonymous reader writes: Scientists from the University of Hamburg say they have found a way to create and annihilate single skyrmions — small magnetic vortices that occur in a variety of materials — in a manner that corresponds with the writing and deletion of information from a storage device.
Comment Prelude to extradition request (Score 1) 616
Russia is also a party to the European Convention on Human Rights, so the Strasbourg court can prevent it from extraditing Snowden if he can face the death punishment (less certain about torture, since Russia failed to ratify the relevant protocol). Holder is simply preparing his extradition request to Moscow.
Comment Brief (Score 1) 335
Submission + - Fighter jets armed with lasers
doru writes: "The Pentagon is interested in mounting 150 kW lasers aboard military aircraft, for defense against rockets and surface-to-air missiles but also for attacking ground targets. These devices are less powerful (but also much lighter) than the 1 MW laser tested in the cancelled Airborne Laser Test Bed program. Tests should begin in 2014."
Submission + - Gun-related deaths and inequality
doru writes: Each new mass shooting revives the discussion of gun control and raises the point of the relation between gun possession and gun-related deaths. However, the situation is presumably much more complex. For instance, the number of deaths by firearm is also strongly correlated with the inequality (as quantified by the GINI coefficient). What other parameters might be relevant?
Comment Re:Devil's advocate here... (Score 1) 526
It is Euclid who proved that there are infinitely many prime numbers. And the proof is not exactly by contradiction (although you might say that it is used at some step). Anyway, he doesn't start by saying "There are only N primes".
Comment It has been reproduced (Score 2) 186
The data obtained by two independent experiments (CMS and ATLAS, both at the LHC) is in excellent agreement for the mass of the particle. The results are also coherent with those obtained by two experiments (CDF and D0) based at the Fermilab.
Something has been found, with a very high statistical relevance (five sigma level, so there is only a chance in a few million that this is a fluctuation). Whether this something is indeed the Higgs boson as predicted depends on its detailed behaviour, so it will take more time to find out. It does however look like it, or a close relative...
Comment Re:Exhaustive search... (Score 2) 170
Notice that no computers where involved in the proof — this is classical mathematical proof involving logical deductions rather than exhaustive search.
Computers were involved to some extent. From Tao's blog:
The first refinement, which is only available in the five primes case, is to take advantage of the numerical verification of the even Goldbach conjecture up to some large {N_0} (we take {N_0=4\times 10^{14}}, using a verification of Richstein [...])
. See the paper by Richstein: http://www.ams.org/journals/mcom/2001-70-236/S0025-5718-00-01290-4/S0025-5718-00-01290-4.pdf
Comment Paranoid (Score 2) 256
I was feeling really paranoid [...] Ozzy Osbourne
Oh really ?!
Comment Re:It's not a first step (Score 1) 101
It would be no great loss to any journal in particular to not accept work from Princeton.
It would be very dangerous for any journal to have to acknowledge publicly that they refuse publication based on the institution of the authors, because they must (at least appear to) be fair and objective. They will most likely add another item on the copyright form, to the effect that: "If you belong to institutions A, B or C you do not have to turn over copyright to us".
Comment The original paper (Score 1) 77
The paper appeared in the journal Nano Letters, not to be confused with ACS Nano (although both journals belong to the American Chemical Society).
Link: http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/nl100499x
Comment Since 1960 (Score 1) 712
The first laser was created in 1960. The structure of DNA was discovered in 1953 (I suppose it took a while for the molecular biology revolution to unfold). Integrated circuit - 1958.
I'd say quite a lot happened since 1960...
Submission + - SPAM: Stephen Wolfram builds a radical new search engine
destinyland writes: "Mathematician Stephen Wolfram is releasing a radical new browser/search engine.
"Wolfram|Alpha figures out what your question means, looks up the necessary data to answer your question, computes an answer, designs a page to present the answer in a pleasing way, and sends the page back to your computer," Wolfram explains
in his first interview about the new search engine (with cyberpunk author
author Rudy Rucker). "Of all the things science can compute, most take a second or less," Wolfram argues, building on his theory that very simple rules describe complex phenomenon. "If anything, you might call it a platonic search engine..." Wolfram says. "We compute the answers, and we discover new truths." A closed beta of the interface is online, along with a mailing list, and an audio excerpt from Rucker's two-hour interview."
Link to Original Source
Link to Original Source
