27271498
submission
mknewman writes:
AT&T says it is ending its $39 billion bid to buy T-Mobile USA after facing fierce government objections.
The cellphone giant said Monday that the actions of the government to block the deal do not change the challenges of the wireless phone industry, which it says requires more airwaves to expand.
26210074
submission
mknewman writes:
The European Space Agency reported Wednesday that a ground station in Australia has re-established contact with Russia's Phobos-Grunt probe, two weeks after a mysterious post-launch glitch.
On Tuesday, the Interfax news agency quoted Russia's deputy space chief, Vitaly Davydov, as saying that "chances to accomplish the mission are very slim." Then ESA said its tracking station in Perth, Australia, made contact with the probe late Tuesday (20:25 GMT, or 3:25 p.m. ET).
"ESA teams are working closely with engineers in Russia to determine how best to maintain communication with the spacecraft," the agency reported on its website Wednesday.
25255090
submission
mknewman writes:
CMS spokesperson Guido Tonelli dangled an intriguing teaser in today's release: "As we speak, hundreds of young scientists are still analyzing the huge amount of data accumulated so far; we'll soon have new results and, maybe, something important to say on the Standard Model Higgs Boson."
22491050
submission
mknewman writes:
n honor of South Park's 15th season, Comedy Central, in conjunction with Frito-Lay, will begin selling Cheesy Poofs on August 28 in Wal-Mart stores across the country. They will be available through September 18.
Leigh Anne Brodsky, President of Nickelodeon Consumer Products, described the soon-to-be released product as "a salty snack that's cheesy in flavor," and she expects that they will be well-received by fans. Co-creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker, themselves, were on-board and involved with the development of real-life Cheesy Poofs to ensure the snack remained faithful to the iconic animated version.
21993762
submission
mknewman writes:
Computer hackers shut down al-Qaida's ability to communicate its messages to the world through the Internet, interrupting the group's flow of videos and communiqués, according to a terrorism expert.
20237082
submission
mknewman writes:
A distant galaxy with stars that began forming just 200 million years after the big bang has been discovered. The finding addresses questions about when the first galaxies arose and how early the universe evolved, scientists report.
The galaxy was spotted with the Hubble Space Telescope. It is visible through a cluster of galaxies called Abell 383, whose powerful gravity bends the rays of light like a magnifying glass. The so-called gravitational lens amplifies light from the distant galaxy, making it appear 11 times brighter and allowing detailed observations.
Infrared data from Hubble and NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope show the galaxy's stars formed when the universe was 200 million years old. Observations with the W.M. Keck Observatory on Muna Kea in Hawaii revealed the observed light from the galaxy dates to when the universe was 950 million years old. The universe formed about 13.7 billion years ago.
16946132
submission
mknewman writes:
SpaceShip 2 was successfully dropped off it's WhiteKnight 2 mothership today from an altitude of 45,000 feet and glided to a landing in the Mojave airstrip. http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2010/10/10/5266767-spaceshiptwo-flies-free-for-first-time
14241208
submission
mknewman writes:
The Tevatron — located at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia, Illinois — has been furiously searching for the particle which would help to explain the origins of mass in the universe — and it looks like they might have found it. A rumor has been swirling about recently that the found particle is a "three-sigma," meaning that it's got a 99.7 percent statistical likelihood of being correct — but the lab itself has yet to confirm or deny. The Tevatron, which was completed 27 years ago, is the second largest accelerator in the world (after the LHC) and it's expected to be retired once the CERN facility is fully operational.
10766018
submission
mknewman writes:
EMC2 recently created a buzz in the fusion underground by reporting on its Web site that a series of experiments was able to "validate and extend" earlier results reported by the late physicist Robert Bussard. The company is now using a $7.9 million contract from the U.S. Navy to build a bigger test machine, known as WB-8. (WB stands for "Wiffle Ball," which refers to the shape of the machine's magnetic fields.)
What's more, Nebel and his colleagues are now seeking contributions to fund the development of what they say would be a 100-megawatt fusion plant — a "Phase 3" effort projected to cost $200 million and take four years.
"Successful Phase 3 marks the end of fossil fuels," the Web site proclaims.
10722666
submission
mknewman writes:
Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo rocket plane took to the air for the first time this morning from California's Mojave Air and Space Port.
The craft, which has been christened the VSS Enterprise, remained firmly attached to its WhiteKnightTwo carrier airplane throughout the nearly three-hour test flight. It will take many months of further tests before SpaceShipTwo actually goes into outer space. Nevertheless, today's outing marks an important milestone along a path that could take paying passengers to the final frontier as early as 2011 or 2012.
7787004
submission
mknewman writes:
eReader, now a Barnes and Noble company, formerly PeanutPress and PalmPress (Palm), has started advertising a eInk book reader called the eSlick. Aparently from Israel, the reader sports an Open Source Linux OS, 6" E Ink® Vizplex screen 600 x 800 pixel resolution, 4-level grayscale, 512m memory, 2gb SD card, and support for eReader PDB, ePub, PDF, TXT. Also comes with $100 in eReader credits.
This is a bit of a surprise with B&N releasing their own Nook reader, I was expecting eReader support within Nook.
6195857
submission
mknewman writes:
The New York Daily News is reporting that Red Sox Hall of Famer Ted Williamsâ(TM) severed head was mistreated at an Arizona cryonics facility, according to details from a new book.
In âoeFrozen,â Larry Johnson, a former executive at the Alcor Life Extension Foundation in Scottsdale, Ariz., writes that Williamsâ(TM) head, which had been severed and frozen for storage, was abused at the facility. Johnson claims a technician took baseball-like swings at Williamsâ(TM) frozen head with a monkey wrench.
Johnson writes that technicians with no medical certification photographed and used crude equipment to decapitate Williams.
Williams' severed head was then frozen, and even used for batting practice by a technician trying to dislodge it from a tuna fish can.
Johnson told the Daily News that he wired himself with an audio recorder for his last three months at Alcor, stole internal records and took gruesome photographs that are reproduced in the book.
5279167
submission
mknewman writes:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32034204/ns/technology_and_science-science/
Bats use sonar to navigate and hunt. Many have been killed by wind turbines, however, which their sonar doesn't seem to recognize as a danger. Surprisingly, radar signals could help keep bats away from wind turbines, scientists have now discovered.
Although wind power promises to be a clean source of energy, some researchers have raised concerns that wind turbines inadvertently kill bats and other flying creatures. For instance, in 2004, over the course of six weeks, roughly 1,764 and 2,900 bats were killed at two wind farms in Pennsylvania and West Virginia, respectively. The bats might not be killed by the wind turbine blades directly, but instead by the sudden drop in air pressure the swinging rotors induce, which in turn cause their lungs to over-expand and burst surrounding blood vessels.
The researchers discovered that radar helped keep bats away, reducing bat activity by 30 to 40 percent. The radar did not keep insects away, which suggests that however the radar works as a deterrent, it does so by influencing the bats directly and not just their food.
Radar signals can lead to small but rapid spikes of heat in the head that generate sound waves, which in turn stimulate the ear.
"A bat's hearing is much more sensitive than ours," Racey noted. "It may be so sensitive that even a tiny amount of sound caused by electromagnetic radiation is enough to drive them out of there."
Future research can design a radar system optimized at deterring bats.
So how does radar keep bats away? The researchers explained that a great deal of research suggests that people can actually hear radar pulses.
"This was noticed when radar arrays first started up during World War II," Racey said. "A portion of radar operators said they heard clicks in their ears when they were switched on."
