Follow Slashdot stories on Twitter

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
Image

Dad Delivers Baby Using Wiki 249

Posted by samzenpus from the 9cm-edited dept.
sonamchauhan writes "A Londoner helped his wife deliver their baby by Googling 'how to deliver a baby' on his mobile phone. From the article: 'Today proud Mr Smith said: "The midwife had checked Emma earlier in the day but contractions started up again at about 8pm so we called the midwife to come back. But then everything happened so quickly I realized Emma was going to give birth. I wasn't sure what I was going to do so I just looked up the instructions on the internet using my BlackBerry."'"
Science

Aussie Scientists Find Coconut-Carrying Octopus 205

Posted by timothy from the concealed-carry-in-australian-waters dept.
An anonymous reader writes with this excerpt from an AP report: "Australian scientists have discovered an octopus in Indonesia that collects coconut shells for shelter — unusually sophisticated behavior that the researchers believe is the first evidence of tool use in an invertebrate animal. The scientists filmed the veined octopus, Amphioctopus marginatus, selecting halved coconut shells from the sea floor, emptying them out, carrying them under their bodies up to 65 feet (20 meters), and assembling two shells together to make a spherical hiding spot. ... 'I was gobsmacked,' said Finn, a research biologist at the museum who specializes in cephalopods. 'I mean, I've seen a lot of octopuses hiding in shells, but I've never seen one that grabs it up and jogs across the sea floor. I was trying hard not to laugh.'"
Image

The Perfect Way To Slice a Pizza 282

Posted by samzenpus from the equal-distribution-of-the-pie dept.
iamapizza writes "New Scientist reports on the quest of two math boffins for the perfect way to slice a pizza. It's an interesting and in-depth article; 'The problem that bothered them was this. Suppose the harried waiter cuts the pizza off-center, but with all the edge-to-edge cuts crossing at a single point, and with the same angle between adjacent cuts. The off-center cuts mean the slices will not all be the same size, so if two people take turns to take neighboring slices, will they get equal shares by the time they have gone right round the pizza — and if not, who will get more?' This is useful, of course, if you're familiar with the concept of 'sharing' a pizza."
Space

Super-Earths Discovered Orbiting Nearby, Sun-Like Star 242

Posted by Soulskill from the i-for-one dept.
likuidkewl writes "Two super-earths, 5 and 7.5 times the size of our home, were found to be orbiting 61 Virginis a mere 28 light years away. 'These detections indicate that low-mass planets are quite common around nearby stars. The discovery of potentially habitable nearby worlds may be just a few years away,' said Steven Vogt, a professor of astronomy and astrophysics at UCSC. Among hundreds of our nearest stellar neighbors, 61 Vir stands out as being the most nearly similar to the Sun in terms of age, mass, and other essential properties."

Comment How long does sequencing take nowadays? (Score 1) 126

by engineerofsorts (#28002149) Attached to: 13,000 Volunteer To Put Personal Genomes Online
It seems like the initial human genome sequencing took several years, ending back in 2003 or thereabouts. Just how fast is the process nowadays? I trust, if they plan to sequence DNA from tens of thousands of individuals, it must be multiple orders of magnitude faster than what the original sequencing took????

Comment Fire Ant's Damage (Score 1) 398

by engineerofsorts (#27947297) Attached to: Texas Makes Zombie Fire Ants
I believe the imported fire ants have one-neuron brains that work as follows: Am I in contact with something? If yes, bite it. In reality the fire ants have displaced native ant species, which are the primary diets of some much more delightful creatures, the horned lizards. Perhaps the only chance the horned lizards have are the phorid flies to keep the fire ants sufficiently controlled that native ants can make a sufficient comeback to save the horny toads.

Comment Re:Pretty Pictures with Little to No Functionality (Score 2, Insightful) 403

by engineerofsorts (#26875727) Attached to: Spiraling Skyscraper Farms For a Future Manhattan
You also forgot: A key part of photosynthesis is the "photo" part. What is this idiot planning to do, have a zillion megawatts/acre of grow lights on all the lower levels? Kill a forest or two to power this POS. This "architect" should get negative points on is certified moron exam for excess display of ignorance.

Slashdot Top Deals

"I've seen it. It's rubbish." -- Marvin the Paranoid Android

Close