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Submission + - Hint of HIggs Boson (nature.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Both ATLAS and the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) experiments are seeing an unusual surplus of events in a rough mass range of 130–150 gEV. The data are far from conclusive, but physicists believe this could be the first indication of the Higgs particle, believed to be responsible for the masses of other particles.
Science

Submission + - Physicists Report Possible Hints of Higgs Boson (sciencemag.org)

Submitted by sciencehabit
sciencehabit writes: Physicists working with the world's largest atom smasher may have spotted evidence of the long-sought Higgs boson. Officially, experimenters working the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at the European particle physics laboratory CERN, near Geneva, Switzerland, have merely ruled out vast ranges of potential masses for the Higgs, the particle key to physicists' explanation of how all other particles get their mass. But it's a slight excess in another region of mass that has people talking, especially as the LHC should be able to confirm or quash the putative signal within a year.

Comment What's next? (Score 1) 1

by resignator (#36847812) Attached to: Did an Unholy Trinity Kill Jesus?
Theorizing if Humpty Dumpty's fall was sufficient enough to break a normal egg? Did Humpty have a pre-existing genetic condition that made his shell extremely brittle? Perhaps, farmers at the time were using a pesticide similar to DDT? Someone needs to ask these tough questions about imaginary beings.
China

Submission + - China building EMP weapons for use against U.S. (washingtontimes.com)

Submitted by
cultiv8
cultiv8 writes: "China's military is developing electromagnetic pulse weapons that Beijing plans to use against U.S. aircraft carriers in any future conflict over Taiwan, according to an intelligence report made public on Thursday.

Portions of a National Ground Intelligence Centerstudy on the lethal effects of electromagnetic pulse (EMP) and high-powered microwave (HPM) weapons revealed that the arms are part of China’s so-called “assassin’s mace” arsenal — weapons that allow a technologically inferior China to defeat U.S. military forces.

EMP weapons mimic the gamma-ray pulse caused by a nuclear blast that knocks out all electronics, including computers and automobiles, over wide areas. The phenomenon was discovered in 1962 after an aboveground nuclear test in the Pacific disabled electronics in Hawaii."

Submission + - Fish oil the 'elixir of youth' (telegraph.co.uk)

Submitted by krou
krou writes: New research on fish oil has identified why omega-3 fatty acids are so good for you: they protect telomeres from shortening as cells divide, and thus help decrease the rate of cellular damage. The results of tests on rats showed that those on a diet high in omega-3 fatty acids lived approximately a third longer than those without, and a study on 608 patients with heart disease found that 'those with high levels of omega-3 fatty acids in their diet over five years had longer' telomeres than those without. Dr Ramin Farzaneh-Far from the University of California at San Francisco noted that 'These findings raise the possibility that omega-3 fatty acids may protect against cellular ageing in patients with coronary heart disease.'
Businesses

Submission + - SPAM: The Six Most Common Pitfalls for Business Owners

Submitted by Gowerstone
Gowerstone writes: The Six Most Common Pitfalls For Business Owners (And How To Avoid Them)
By Andy Jones, The Gowerstone Group

Are you:
Working around the clock but still wondering how to pay the bills? Flush with orders but lacking the time, capital or people to fill them? Ready to take the next step to grow your business, but unsure of how to take it? Reeling from the loss of a major client or industry group and unsure of how to refocus? Overwhelmed with the pressure of having to carry out every aspect of your business?
If any of these scenarios sound familiar, you're not alone. As any business consulting expert will tell you, there are many ways to grow your business, but not all growth is good growth. Here, we examine the six most common pitfalls business owners encounter, along with strategies for ensuring business success today and in the future.

Pitfall #1: Hitting the ground running
Many small business owners “evolve” into their roles. An unexpected opportunity comes up, and suddenly you're in business. Then one opportunity leads to another, and before you know it, you're a full-fledged business owner. But are you leading your business or is your business leading you?
Working without a clear vision of your business' goals and purpose will find you continually reacting to whatever work comes your way, rather than proactively targeting your ideal customers — the ones who will help to take your business to the next level.

Strategy: Create clear, precise vision and strategy statements for your business. Why are you doing what you're doing? What are your goals? How will you achieve them? Another helpful guiding tool for your business is a values statement. Understanding – and stating – the values you uphold, as well as the values you expect in your customers, will help you build a business with integrity and a solid reputation.
The most effective vision, strategy and values statements are brief and clear. Enlisting the help of business colleagues, mentors and business consulting experts to help you translate yours into words can be invaluable.

It pays to get good advice
In one study, entrepreneurs who regularly sought professional advice, including business consulting services, experienced
76 per cent more revenue growth than those who didn't enlist outside advisors.
(Source: 2004 CIBC Small Business Outlook Poll, Decima Research)

Pitfall #2: Navigating without a road map
Once you've articulated your vision, strategy and values, you'll need a plan that outlines your specific business processes and procedures. A commonly understood set of business practices, along with documented procedures for everything from order fulfilment to resource management to marketing is critical. After all, without a road map, you may eventually arrive at your destination — or you may get lost along the way or run out of gas before you get there.

Strategy: Develop a carefully considered, well-documented business plan that will act as the “GPS” for your business and help to keep it on the right path to growth. Your plan should address all aspects of your business, and should be understood and vetted by all of your company's key stakeholders.

Stay tuned for further Pitfalls......
Link to Original Source

Submission + - SPAM: FTC slams spam gang boss with $15M fine

Submitted by coondoggie
coondoggie writes: Whether or not anyone actually ever gets this money remains to be seen but at the behest of the Federal Trade Commission, a federal judge has ordered the mastermind of what was a vast international spam network to pay $15.15 million in a default judgment for his role in running the operation which sent out billions of junk e-mails. The anti-spam organization Spamhaus Project called Atikinson's crew the largest spam gang in the world which at one point may have accounted for as much as one-third of the world's spam. The group's specialty was pushing male-enhancement pills, prescription drugs, and weight-loss pills, the FTC stated.

[spam URL stripped]
Link to Original Source
Sony

Submission + - SPAM: Sony's 3D TV Plans

Submitted by itwbennett
itwbennett writes: Sony's road to 3D TV domination is "all up to the content," said Hiroshi Yoshioka, executive deputy president of Sony and head of the unit that includes its TV business. According to an article on ITworld, 'Sony's 3D plans revolve around gaming, movies and sports. Sony is already working on gaming with the PlayStation 3 upgrade plans and its movies division, Sony Pictures, is already producing 3D movies. If history is any indicator, sports is an additional area where users are willing to pay a little more money for a better experience. The company's existing relationship with broadcasters through its movie division and TV production house could serve well in promoting 3D but even if it doesn't there will be a secondary route to 3D-capable sets. Sony is expanding its PlayStation Network service to cover its televisions and will launch a new content delivery service next year that will pump movies, TV shows and other video content directly into Bravia TVs and Blu-ray Disc players from its own servers.'
Link to Original Source

Comment Re:Explained by a Simple Formula (Score 1) 944

by resignator (#29850663) Attached to: When Libertarians Attack Free Software
"but the USA didn't seem to do too hot without one before the Great Depression"

-The Federal Reserve was created December 23, 1913.

-The Great Depression lasted from Oct. 24, 1929 until about 1940.

So how exactly did the Fed save us again? You do realize many people believe that the Fed actually created the Depression to consolidate power for themselves right?
Data Storage

Submission + - Direct Attached vs SATA SSD Performance Explored (hothardware.com)

Submitted by
bigwophh
bigwophh writes: "With any desktop PC architecture currently in use, whether you're plugging in an SSD or a standard spinning hard drive, at least two interfaces are at work to get the data off the drive and to the host processor. The SATA (Serial ATA) interface needs to be accommodated so the drive can be accessed via the legacy SATA command set and the SATA controller needs to be bridged to the rest of the system architecture. Bridging gives the host processor the ability to talk to an otherwise "non-native" interface (SATA) over a native one like PCI Express. An intrinsic problem with an implementation like this is that it adds latency and essentially slows things down. That said, a question lingers. Is the high performance SATA SSD as we know it today eventually going to end up on the endangered species list? This article takes a look at Intel's X25-M SSD in two and four-drive RAID 0 configurations and compares their performance to Fusion-io's ioDrive, a PCI Express-based SSD. Though the technologies are currently targeted at different markets and applications, this is definitely a case study in speed, and potential look at the future of storage on the PC."
Announcements

Submission + - Extra dimensions? Only if smaller than 3*10^-6 m!

Submitted by Vincenzo Romano
Vincenzo Romano writes: The website of the fortnightly scientific magazine Science News is reporting today an interesting article about the maximum size of any extra dimension, if any.
A team of theoretical physicists and astronomers has calculated that any hidden extra dimension beyond our familiar three-dimensional space, a world known in physics parlance as a 3-brane, must be less than 3 micrometers.
The study has been submitted online by Oleg Gnedin, Assistant Professor of Astronomy at the College of Literature, Science, and the Arts of the Univesrity of Michigan and is based on observations on one of the oldest black holes ever found in our universe, lurking deep inside the NGC 4472 galaxy.
Basically, that black hole has not evaporated yet by the Hawking radiation on the predicted "short" short timescale, thus posing an upper limit to the size of any extra dimensions to less thab 0.003 mm.
So what? String theorists must buy better magnifying lenses if they want to prove to be right.
Privacy

Submission + - Court IP addresses not "personally identifiabl (mediapost.com)

Submitted by yuna49
yuna49 writes: Online Media Daily reports that a federal judge in Seattle has held that IP addresses are not personal information. "In order for 'personally identifiable information' to be personally identifiable, it must identify a person. But an IP address identifies a computer," U.S. District Court Judge Richard Jones said in a written decision. Jones issued the ruling in the context of a class-action lawsuit brought by consumers against Microsoft stemming from an update that automatically installed new anti-piracy software. In that case, which dates back to 2006, consumers alleged that Microsoft violated its user agreement by collecting IP addresses in the course of the updates.

This ruling flatly contradicts a recent EU decision to the contrary, as well as other cases in the US. Its potential relevance to the RIAA suits should be obvious to anyone who reads Slashdot.
Mars

Submission + - ESA and NASA establish a joint Mars exploration in (spacefellowship.com)

Submitted by
Matt_dk
Matt_dk writes: "At the bilateral meeting in Plymouth, the executive board recommended NASA and ESA establish MEJI spanning launch opportunities in 2016, 2018 and 2020, with landers and orbiters conducting astrobiological, geological, geophysical and other high-priority investigations, and leading to the return of samples from Mars in the 2020s. The Director and Associate Administrator agreed, in principle, to establish the Initiative and continue studies to determine the most viable joint mission architectures."

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