GrayArea - Slashdot User

Submission + - NASA's Phoenix lander could miss life on Mars (arxivblog.com)

Submitted by

KentuckyFC

on Monday October 08, 2007 @08:53AM

KentuckyFC writes: "When Viking landed on Mars over 30 years ago, it famously found evidence for life on Mars which NASA later rejected as a false positive. Now the Phoenix lander is en route to the red planet with an experiment designed to end the controversy by looking for hydrogen peroxide, the chemical that NASA says probably caused the Viking result. Now astrobiologists have recreated the Phoenix experiment on Earth (abstract, pdf) and the signs are that NASA could again end up with an ambiguous result."

Submission + - Is the internet bad for professional writers? (10zenmonkeys.com)

Submitted by

destinyland

on Monday October 08, 2007 @04:20AM

destinyland writes: "The internet democratized writing — but has there been collateral damage? A former magazine editor asks 10 professional writers how the net has changed their profession, and even the act of writing itself. Has the net changed the demand for longer articles, or created more opportunities for more kinds of writing? It's a fascinating read that belongs in a time capsule for the variety of reactions captured — including the author who complains reading time was traded away for time to maintain our applications, and adding "Gates and Jobs...ought to be disemboweled — yes, on the internet.""

Submission + - 1300 Unopened Fry's Rebate Forms Found In Dumpster (consumerist.com) 2

Submitted by

blackmonday

on Thursday September 06, 2007 @01:23PM

blackmonday writes: "The Consumerist is reporting a find of 1,300 unopened rebate submissions in a dumpster belonging to Vastech, a rebate processor hired by Fry's Electronics. Vastech's management blames it on a bad employee."

Submission + - A telescope as big as the Earth

Submitted by

Roland Piquepaille

on Thursday September 06, 2007 @01:23PM

Roland Piquepaille writes: "A week ago, seven telescopes around the world were linked together to watch a distant galaxy called 3C273 in real time and create a single world telescope. The data from these telescopes, which are located in Australia, China and Europe, was streamed around the world at a rate of 256 Mb per second. One of the Australian researchers involved in the project said that it was the first time that astronomers have been able to instantaneously connect telescopes half a world apart. He added that 'the diameter of the Earth is 12,750 km and the two most widely separated telescopes in our experiment were 12,304 km apart.' So he's almost right by cliaming they created 'a telescope almost as big as the Earth.' But read more for additional references and a picture showing the location of these telescopes."

Submission + - Server benchmarking lone wolf bites Intel again (worlds-fastest.com)

Submitted by

Ian Lamont

on Thursday September 06, 2007 @12:34PM

Ian Lamont writes: "Neal Nelson, the engineer who conducts independent server benchmarking, has nipped Intel again by reporting that AMD's Opteron chips "delivered better power efficiency" than Xeon processors. Nelson's specific observations included:

1) Larger memory configurations deliver both higher throughput and better power efficiency, 2) Intel's power efficiency advantages decrease as memory size increases, 3) AMD's power efficiency advantages increase as memory size increases, 4) For primarily calculation type workloads, the Xeon delivers 8.0 to 14.0 percent higher peak throughput, and 5) For primarily disk I/O intensive workloads the Opteron delivers 11.3 to 19.4 percent higher peak throughput.
Intel has discounted the findings, claiming that Nelson's methodology "ignores performance," but the company may not be able to ignore Nelson for much longer: the Standard Performance Evaluation Corp., a nonprofit company that develops computing benchmarks, is expected to publish a new test suite for comparing server efficiency that Nelson believes will be similar to his own benchmarks that measure server power usage directly from the wall plug."

Submission + - Fungi Make Biodiesel at Room Temperature

Submitted by SoyChemist on Monday August 20, 2007 @02:28PM

SoyChemist writes: Researchers at the Indian Institute of Chemical Technology have used pellets made from the fungus Metarhizium anisopliae to produce biodiesel at room temperature. Usually, biodiesel is made by brewing vegetable oil with methanol and lye at high temperatures. That wastes a lot of energy, and thus partially defeats the point of making an alternative fuel. The researchers in Hyderabad mixed sunflower oil with methanol and trickled it through a glass column filled with fungus pellets. A lipase enzyme in the fungus converted the brew into biodiesel with a yield as high as 85 percent. Considering that the U.S. Department of Energy and BP are have pumped tons of money into synthetic biology for making alternative fuels, it is amazing to see what an apparently underfunded lab can do with natural organisms.

Submission + - The aerogel revolution is almost upon us (timesonline.co.uk)

Submitted by GnarlyDoug on Monday August 20, 2007 @01:07PM

GnarlyDoug writes: Aerogels, nicknamed liquid smoke, are basically nanofoam. Imagine a material with such a low density that it is transparent yet extremely tough, and such a good insulator that even asbestos cannot compare. It also has a massive surface area, making it perfect as a filter and purifier. Aerogels have been around since the 1930s but they have mainly been laboratory curiosities because they were so brittle and so expensive to make. It seems that has finally changed and that aerogels are about to become mainstream.

Submission + - Automotive X-Prize Reveals First 31 Teams

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 02, 2007 @01:49PM

An anonymous reader writes: The Automotive XPRIZE announced yesterday the first 31 teams to have signed on for the competition to build 100 mpge (mile-per-gallon equivalent) automobiles. The list contains obvious contenders like electric bike vendor ZAP, electric truck peddler Phoenix Motorcars, Munich's überefficient Loremmo AG, and Elon Musk-backed Tesla Motors as well as Cornell University and a laundry list of other less well known names. There's even a team commited to an Open Source-like license. Notable is the total absence of any established manufacturer. Contrary to expectations of a Big Auto win, could the AXP be up for grabs?

Submission + - Monkeys and humans learn the same way (sciencedaily.com)

Submitted by

Lucas123

on Thursday August 02, 2007 @01:33PM

Lucas123 writes: "A new study from UCLA showed that monkeys, like humans, learn faster by being actively involved in the learning process rather than just having information placed before them, according to a story in ScienceDaily. In the study, two rhesus macaque monkeys learned to put up to 18 photos on an ATM-like touch screen in a row. 'The monkeys did much better on the first three days when they had the help than when they didn't, but on the test day, it completely reversed.'"

Submission + - Monkeys and humans learn the same way (sciencedaily.com)

Submitted by

Lucas123

on Thursday August 02, 2007 @01:33PM

Lucas123 writes: "A new study from UCLA showed that monkeys, like humans, learn faster by being actively involved in the learning process rather than just having information placed before them, according to a story in ScienceDaily. In the study, two rhesus macaque monkeys learned to put up to 18 photos on an ATM-like touch screen in a row. 'The monkeys did much better on the first three days when they had the help than when they didn't, but on the test day, it completely reversed.'"

Submission + - Should We Rebuild America with Minneapolis Bridge? (popularmechanics.com) 2

Submitted by mattnyc99 on Thursday August 02, 2007 @01:32PM

mattnyc99 writes: The tragic collapse last night in Minneapolis of a truss bridge—one that the U.S. Dept. of Transportation found "structurally deficient" two years ago—raises an important issue beyond just the engineering of one single span. As national security expert Stephen Flynn pleads in an op-ed on American infrastructure in the wake of yesterday's disaster, "The blind eye that taxpayers and our elected officials have been turning to the imperative of maintaining and upgrading the critical foundations that underpin our lives is irrational and reckless." Do we need to start spending to rebuild America?

Submission + - Should We Rebuild America with Minneapolis Bridge? (popularmechanics.com) 2

Submitted by mattnyc99 on Thursday August 02, 2007 @01:32PM

mattnyc99 writes: The tragic collapse last night in Minneapolis of a truss bridge—one that the U.S. Dept. of Transportation found "structurally deficient" two years ago—raises an important issue beyond just the engineering of one single span. As national security expert Stephen Flynn pleads in an op-ed on American infrastructure in the wake of yesterday's disaster, "The blind eye that taxpayers and our elected officials have been turning to the imperative of maintaining and upgrading the critical foundations that underpin our lives is irrational and reckless." Do we need to start spending to rebuild America?

Submission + - Apple is sued for soldering battery

Submitted by fermion on Monday July 30, 2007 @02:03PM

fermion writes: The reports are everywhere about the first class action lawsuit against the Apple iPhone. The suit claims that the battery is not user replaceable, that consumers were not told that the battery was soldered to the board, and that the battery will exhaust itself in 300 charges. I certainly understand that those people who bought phones in the first mad rush might have not noticed that they were buying a sealed unit, but after that Apple had plenty of iPhones out, and from what I saw there was plenty of time to play with it. The fact that all iPods are sealed units, and it costs a pretty penny to replace the battery, seems to have no effect on the suit. A second topic, that the AC adapters are bad, seem totally with merit as Apple seems to have difficulty making reliable AC adaptors. IMHO, this is a testament to the incredible sales number for the iPhone, as in only one month, there has been enough phones sold to get the attention of the lawyers.

Submission + - Futurama Movie Set for November 27th (tvsquad.com)

Submitted by

kevin_conaway

on Monday July 30, 2007 @11:18AM

kevin_conaway writes: "TV Squad informs us that the new Futurama movie will be available on November 27th. The show will return as a full-length high-def film sold on DVD. It will be followed by three additional films, and each film will be divided into four episodes each to be aired on Comedy Central. So, that's 4 DVD movies or 16 new episodes depending on how you look at it."

Submission + - Wikipedia corrects Enciclopaedia Britannica (wikipedia.org)

Submitted by

javipas

on Monday July 23, 2007 @08:27AM

javipas writes: "Despite all the controversy about Wikipedia's work model, no one can argue the potential of a project that has demonstrated the usefulness of the "wisdom of crowds" concept. And that wisdom has been able to detect several mistakes on one of the most relevant references on human knowledge: the Enciclopaedia Britannica. All kind of data has been spotted as wrong, such as the birthdate of Bill Clinton or the definition of NP problems in Mathematics."

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