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Comment Re:There's an easy fix for this (Score 2, Interesting) 181

No they don't. They have a responsibility to do whatever they want to do. If they say shareholders be damned, then shareholders be damned.

You can't invest in an "environmentally friendly" company and sue them because they aren't being as profitable as you think they could be. They might have other priorities.

Comment Re:You're kidding, right? (Score 1) 2058

What about the danger to the fire fighters?

You'd suggest if I refuse to pay for car insurance, Geico should pay me for a new car after I smash mine up because I begged them to.

The article didn't seem to indicate there was any risk to life here, just property. But IF there were people trapped inside, I would suggest accepting the risk to save a life and billing him after the fact much like a call for an ambulance would.

Space

Big Dipper "Star" Actually a Sextuplet System 88

Theosis sends word that an astronomer at the University of Rochester and his colleagues have made the surprise discovery that Alcor, one of the brightest stars in the Big Dipper, is actually two stars; and it is apparently gravitationally bound to the four-star Mizar system, making the whole group a sextuplet. This would make the Mizar-Alcor sextuplet the second-nearest such system known. The discovery is especially surprising because Alcor is one of the most studied stars in the sky. The Mizar-Alcor system has been involved in many "firsts" in the history of astronomy: "Benedetto Castelli, Galileo's protege and collaborator, first observed with a telescope that Mizar was not a single star in 1617, and Galileo observed it a week after hearing about this from Castelli, and noted it in his notebooks... Those two stars, called Mizar A and Mizar B, together with Alcor, in 1857 became the first binary stars ever photographed through a telescope. In 1890, Mizar A was discovered to itself be a binary, being the first binary to be discovered using spectroscopy. In 1908, spectroscopy revealed that Mizar B was also a pair of stars, making the group the first-known quintuple star system."

Comment Re:Interesting (Score 1) 416

Why not build a high speed train that transports cars (electric or otherwise)? Kind of like a ferry. That way people don't need to worry about renting a car once they've reached their destination.

Cars should be for cities only. City to city transportation could use high speed bullet trains/"ferries", not freeways.

Medicine

New Success For Brain-Controlled Prosthetic Arm 81

An anonymous reader writes "A number of amputees are now using a prosthetic arm that moves intuitively, when they think about moving their missing limb. Todd Kuiken and colleagues at the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago surgically rearrange the nerves that normally connect to the lost limb and embed them in muscles in the chest. The muscles are then connected to sensors that translate muscle movements into movement in a robotic arm. The researchers first reported the technique in a single patient in 2007, and have now tested it in several more. The patients could all successfully move the arm in space, mimic hand motions, and pick up a variety of objects, including a water glass, a delicate cracker, and a checker rolling across a table. (Three patients are shown using the arm in the related video.) The findings are reported today in Journal of the American Medical Association."
Power

Submission + - Convert Trash Into Energy With No Pollution

happylucky writes: Remember when Dr. Emmett Brown (Christopher Lloyd) dumped some garbage into his engine for fuel in Back to the Future II? Startech Environmental Corporation has come up with a similar process that can take both hazardous and non-hazardous waste and convert it into energy, glass and hydrogen.

They use a plasma process that doesnt burn the garbage but breaks the molecules down into their individual elements (atoms). It is a safe process that involves a closed-loop system so no pollutants are released into the environment. All of it is converted into a safe material.

The company says that it will convert all hazardous waste, except nuclear waste, into an obsidian-like glass and hydrogen. The technology could potentially solve two problems at one time. It could help us solve our energy problem and our landfill problem.

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