Comment Big Bang Theory (Score 1) 114
Not what I was expecting. Raj meets Siri
Comment Relavent TED video (Score 1) 125
In this brief talk, Saul Griffith unveils the invention his new company Makani Power has been working on: giant kite turbines that create surprising amounts of clean, renewable energy.
Submission + - Google looks to cut funds to illegal sites (telegraph.co.uk)
rbrandis writes: Google is in discussions with payment companies including Visa, Mastercard and PayPal to put illegal download websites out of existence by cutting off their funding. If Google goes ahead with the radical move, it would not mark the first time that illegal websites have been diminished or driven out of business by having a block put on their source of cash.
Submission + - Interactive Tool Visualizes Tolkien's Works (lotrproject.com)
dsjodin writes: Last year, LotrProject brought us extraordinary statistics on the population of Middle-Earth. Now, they have released an interactive tool for analysis of the Silmarillion, the Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings. With keyword frequency search, character mentions, sentiment analysis and network diagrams of character interactions it is a beautiful set of data visualizations and fascinating for fans and non-fans alike. The site can for example be used to find out that bacon is mentioned seven times in the Hobbit while only two times throughout the entire the Lord of the Rings.
Submission + - Are Plastic-Bag Bans Really Killing People?
theodp writes: A paper by Wharton’s Jonathan Klick and Joshua Wright suggested that San Francisco’s eco-friendly ban on plastic bags might actually be killing people. Klick and Wright found that food-borne illnesses in San Francisco increased 46% after the bag ban went into effect in 2007, with no such uptick in neighboring counties. Most likely, the authors concluded, this was due to the fact that people were putting their food into dirty reusable bags and not washing them afterward. But Tomas Aragon, an epidemiologist at UC Berkeley and health officer for the city of San Francisco, begs to differ, arguing that in order to establish a link between the bag ban and illnesses, the authors would have to show that the same people who are using reusable bags are also the ones getting sick. Aragon offers an alternative hypothesis for the recent rise in deaths related to intestinal infections, noting that a large portion of the cases in San Francisco involve C. difficile enterocolitis, a disease that’s often coded as food-borne illness in hospitals which has become more common in lots of places since 2005, all around the U.S., Canada, and Europe (for yet-unexplained reasons). 'The increase in San Francisco,' he suggests, 'probably reflects this international increase.'
Comment TED Talk: Understanding cancer through proteomics (Score 1) 59
This TED.com talk by Danny Hillis is informative on this topic, http://www.ted.com/talks/danny_hillis_two_frontiers_of_cancer_treatment.html
"Danny Hills makes a case for the next frontier of cancer research: proteomics, the study of proteins in the body. As Hillis explains it, genomics shows us a list of the ingredients of the body -- while proteomics shows us what those ingredients produce. Understanding what's going on in your body at the protein level may lead to a new understanding of how cancer happens."
Submission + - Are You Ready For the Tech Apocalypse? (foxbusiness.com)
rbrandis writes: The convergence of four forces — social, mobile, the cloud and information — is about to turn the world we know topsy-turvy, according to the analysts at Gartner, a technology research company. Gartner calls this the Nexus of Forces. But for business owners and IT professionals, it may look more like the four horseman of the tech apocalypse saddling up.
This mashup, which Gartner says is a byproduct of the consumerization of information technology (IT), is revolutionizing business and society, disrupting old business models and creating new leaders. In fact, it's the basis of the technology platform of the future
This mashup, which Gartner says is a byproduct of the consumerization of information technology (IT), is revolutionizing business and society, disrupting old business models and creating new leaders. In fact, it's the basis of the technology platform of the future
Comment Ad Revenue (Score 1) 299
This is not the first time Google has made such efforts. I believe in the SEO industry this is referred to as "Google Dance". I think this is an effort to protect their pay-per-click advertising revenue.
Comment ZFS on OpenIndiana? (Score 1) 306
OpenSolaris is Dead. Long live http://openindiana.org//
Comment Windows 8 (Score 1) 577
Is this not similar to what Microsoft is doing with Windows 8?
Comment Calculus Made Easy (Score 1) 467
What about Calculus Made Easy? "What one fool can do, another can". It was good enought to get Richard Feynman started.
Will ACTA Be Found Unconstitutional? 260
DustyShadow writes "Harvard's Jack Goldsmith and Lawrence Lessig have an interesting op-ed in Friday's Washington Post, arguing that it would be constitutionally dubious for President Obama to adopt the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) as an executive agreement. '[T]he Obama administration has suggested it will adopt the pact as a "sole executive agreement" that requires only the president's approval. ... Joining ACTA by sole executive agreement would far exceed these precedents. The president has no independent constitutional authority over intellectual property or communications policy, and there is no long historical practice of making sole executive agreements in this area. To the contrary, the Constitution gives primary authority over these matters to Congress, which is charged with making laws that regulate foreign commerce and intellectual property.'"
Planned Nuclear Reactors Will Destroy Atomic Waste 344
separsons writes "A group of French scientists are developing a nuclear reactor that burns up actinides — highly radioactive uranium isotopes. They estimate that 'the volume of high-level nuclear waste produced by all of France’s 58 reactors over the past 40 years could fit in one Olympic-size swimming pool.' And they're not the only ones trying to eliminate atomic waste: Researchers at the University of Texas in Austin are working on a fusion-fission reactor. The reactor destroys waste by firing streams of neutrons at it, reducing atomic waste by up to 99 percent!"
Thorium, the Next Nuclear Fuel? 710
mrshermanoaks writes "When the choices for developing nuclear energy were being made, we went with uranium because it had the byproduct of producing plutonium that could be weaponized. But thorium is safer and easier to work with, and may cause a lot fewer headaches. 'It's abundant — the US has at least 175,000 tons of the stuff — and doesn't require costly processing. It is also extraordinarily efficient as a nuclear fuel. As it decays in a reactor core, its byproducts produce more neutrons per collision than conventional fuel. The more neutrons per collision, the more energy generated, the less total fuel consumed, and the less radioactive nastiness left behind. Even better, Weinberg realized that you could use thorium in an entirely new kind of reactor, one that would have zero risk of meltdown. The design is based on the lab's finding that thorium dissolves in hot liquid fluoride salts. This fission soup is poured into tubes in the core of the reactor, where the nuclear chain reaction — the billiard balls colliding — happens. The system makes the reactor self-regulating: When the soup gets too hot it expands and flows out of the tubes — slowing fission and eliminating the possibility of another Chernobyl. Any actinide can work in this method, but thorium is particularly well suited because it is so efficient at the high temperatures at which fission occurs in the soup.' So why are we not building these reactors?"
Submission + - Birth Control Pills May Alter Mating Preferences 1
Pickens writes: "An report in Trends in Ecology & Evolution asserts that there is emerging evidence that the use of birth control pills can alter a woman's natural hormonal cycles and also alter their choice of partners. The study suggests that women prefer more masculine and genetically dissimilar men when they are ovulating but when using the pill are more attracted to men that are genetically similar to themselves. "The use of the pill by women, by changing her mate preferences, might induce women to mate with otherwise less-preferred partners, which might have important consequences for mate choice and reproductive outcomes," says Alexandra Alvergne, lead author of a study appearing in Trends in Ecology & Evolution. "One prediction is that offspring of pill users are more homozygous than expected, possibly related to impaired immune function and decreased perceived health and attractiveness." Ovulating women exhibit a preference for more masculine male features, and they are particularly attracted to men showing dominance and male-male competitiveness, according to background information in the study. But some experts think this new revelation on the pill may have been overinterpreted. "I don't think there are many women who change who they would mate with at different times of the month," says Dr. William Hurd, a reproductive endocrinologist at University Hospitals Case Medical Center. "It might change desires or perceptions but, gee whiz, that's a long stretch to changing who you would date, or even who you would go to dinner with.""
