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Space

Australian Astronomers Make Interstellar Hologram 22

Posted by Zonk from the floaty-transparent-and-informative dept.
KentuckyFC writes "Australian astronomers say the way a beam of light from a pulsar is scattered by interstellar dust is analogous to the way a hologram is made. But to reconstruct an image of this dust, you've got to know what the light was like before it was distorted. With an impressive piece of computer optimization, these astronomers have worked out the 8000 coefficients that determine the light field and so have been able to produce an image of the interstellar medium (abstract on the physics arXiv)."
Patents

Submission + - Nortel and Vonage settle patent disagreement. (www.cbc.ca)

Submitted by
Yaztromo
Yaztromo writes: "CBC.ca is reporting that Nortel and Vonage have decided to settle their patent dispute amicably. According to the story, Digital Packet Licensing originally filed the suit, but after Vonage picked up some of their patents, they continued the suit against Nortel. Nortel (predictably) countersued. This agreement provides a cross-licensing solution for all the patents involved, with no money changing hands. Too bad Vonage hasn't been able to reach such agreements in other patent cases, but at least this is one less pending patent suit against them."
United States

Submission + - Lifesaving hospital hygiene checklist banned (nytimes.com) 2

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes: From the article:
Johns Hopkins University published a simple five-step checklist designed to prevent certain hospital infections. It reminds doctors to make sure, for example, that before putting large intravenous lines into patients, they actually wash their hands and don a sterile gown and gloves.

The results were stunning. Within three months, the rate of bloodstream infections from these I.V. lines fell by two-thirds. The average I.C.U. cut its infection rate from 4 percent to zero. Over 18 months, the program saved more than 1,500 lives and nearly $200 million.

Yet this past month, the Office for Human Research Protections shut the program down.
Government

Submission + - Governor orders return of Nativity scenes to parks

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes: In apparent disregard for the separation of church and state, Ohio's governor, Ted Strickland has ordered that nativity scenes removed from two state parks be put back up.

Strickland spokesman Keith Dailey says the governor decided last week that the Nativity scenes should be restored to the state parks because they're appropriate and traditional.
Music

Submission + - DoJ sides with RIAA on damages in Capitol v Thomas (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by Alberto G
Alberto G writes: As Jammie Thomas appeals the $222,000 copyright infringement verdict against her, the Department of Justice has weighed in on a central facet of her appeal: whether the $9,250-per-song damages were unconstitutionally excessive and violated the Due Process Clause of the Constitution. The DoJ says that there's nothing wrong with the figure the jury arrived at: '[G]iven the findings of copyright infringement in this case, the damages awarded under the Copyright Act's statutory damages provision did not violate the Due Process Clause; they were not "so severe and oppressive as to be wholly disproportioned to the offense or obviously unreasonable."' The DoJ also appears to be impressed with the RIAA's argument that making a file available on a P2P network constitutes copyright infringement. 'It's also impossible for the true damages to be calculated, according to the brief, because it's unknown how many other users accessed the files in the KaZaA share in question and committed further acts of copyright infringement.'
Education

Submission + - MIT sues architect of $300 million tech building (networkworld.com) 1

Submitted by
bednarz
bednarz writes: "Architect Frank Gehry's celebrated design for the Stata Center at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology is making headlines again — this time because of a lawsuit claiming deficient design work is the cause of leaks, cracks and mold in the 730,000-square-foot building. MIT dedicated the $300 million Stata Center building, home to its Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL), in May 2004. Soon after its completion, the center's outdoor amphitheater began to crack, leaks sprang up throughout the building and mold grew on parts of the exterior, the lawsuit alleges."
Power

Submission + - Global Warming Can't Be Stopped (foreignpolicy.com)

Submitted by
tcd004
tcd004 writes: "An article in Foriegn Policy argues that it is already to late to stop major climate change.

The mounting scientific evidence, coupled along with economic and political realities, increasingly suggests that humanity's opportunity to prevent, stop, or reverse the long-term impacts of climate change has slipped away....it would be irresponsible for us to count on an energy technology miracle to save the day.
The authors suggest that world governments begin taking drastic actions to prepare their populations for "a new world." What do you think?"
NASA

Submission + - Arctic Pole Lost 23% of ice in the last 2 years. (bitbistro.com)

Submitted by
joao.r.silva
joao.r.silva writes: "NASA is examining data that shows a reduction of 23% of Arctic Pole Ice in the last two years (from 2005 to 2007).
This total Ice lost has the size of California and Texas combined.
This summer temperatures of 22 degrees Celsius where observed by explorers in the Canadian Icy regions, far above the normal for the region.
Scientists aren't optimists about this situation, it's the biggest melt ever recorded and more important the trend is there to continue.

Related Links:
http://www.nasa.gov/vision/earth/lookingatearth/quikscat-20071001.html
http://www.zeeburgnieuws.nl/nieuws/kv_arctic_antarctic_melt.html
http://www.reuters.com/article/environmentNews/idUSN0134058320071002"
Mozilla

Firefox Working to Fix Memory Leaks 555

Posted by CmdrTaco from the important-but-boring-work dept.
Christopher Blanc writes "Many Mozilla community members, including both volunteers and Mozilla Corporation employees, have been helping to reduce Firefox's memory usage and fix memory leak bugs lately. Hopefully, the result of this effort will be that Firefox 3 uses less memory than Firefox 2 did, especially after it has been used for several hours." Here's hoping. Frequent restarts of things on my computer make me furious. I can't imagine why anyone would tolerate such things.
The Media

Submission + - Boston Mistakes Blinking LEDs for a Bomb... Again.

Submitted by
iamdrscience
iamdrscience writes: ""In a story bearing a striking similarity to the Aqua Teen Hunger Force "hoax device" story from a few months ago, Star Simpson, a 19 year old MIT student, was arrested this morning at Logan airport by Boston police for allegedly carrying a fake bomb. She has already been charged with "disturbing the peace and possessing a hoax device" to which she plead not guilty and was released on $750 bail. The device in question consisted of a black sweatshirt with prototyping breadboard attached to the front which had been wired up a few blinking LEDs. In a press conference, State Police Major Scott Pare, the commanding officer at the airport was quoted as "She was immediately told to stop, to raise her hands and not to make any movement, so we could observe all her movements to see if she was trying to trip any type of device, had she not followed the protocol, we might have used deadly force.""
Graphics

Submission + - Windows XP vs Vista Performance Update

Submitted by
Timmus
Timmus writes: "On launch day Windows Vista was plagued with early graphics drivers that ran poorly in some apps compared to Windows XP: games ran slower and with numerous graphical artifacts, features were missing, while GeForce cards often crashed the OS when resuming from suspend mode. NVIDIA was even threatened with a class action lawsuit! In this article, FiringSquad takes a look at how things have progressed, comparing the performance of 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Vista against Windows XP. It looks like NVIDIA has made lots of strides, but AMD has problems with some newer games."
The Internet

Submission + - Americans giving up sex, friends, for Internet (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by Bocanegra
Bocanegra writes: A survey conducted by ad agency JWT shows that 20% of the respondents willingly give up sex (with other people, no less) in order to spend more time on the Internet. Another 28 percent spend less time with their friends in favor of surfing the web. In fact, the majority of those in the survey just can't bear to go without the Internet for very long. '15 percent of the group admitted to being weak-willed and said that they would only be able to last a day or less without feeling isolated and disconnected from the world. Another 21 percent didn't do much better, saying they could only go a couple of days, with 19 percent saying they could go "a few days." Only about 18 percent of the group said that they could go a week or more without being connected.'

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