xoundmind - Slashdot User

Submission + - The Next Solar Cycle May Have Begun (space.com)

Submitted by

Josh Fink

on Tuesday December 18, 2007 @08:24AM

Josh Fink writes: "As many of us know, the sun usually works on an 11 year cycle for extreme solar storms and flares. The last time that this cycle peaked was in 2001 and 2002. However, on December 11th, scientists began to observe a "modest knot of magnetism," and are saying this might be the signal for increased activity from our local star. From the article: 'This patch of magnetism could be a sign of the next solar cycle," said solar physicist David Hathaway of the Marshall Space Flight Center. 'Solar minimum is upon us.'....Though forecasts vary wildly, some scientists predict Solar Cycle 24 will be intense. If so, 'it could have significant impacts on telecommunications, air traffic, power grids and GPS systems,' according to the NASA statement."

Submission + - Understanding Evolution Matters (blogspot.com)

Submitted by Advocate123 on Tuesday December 18, 2007 @02:07AM

Advocate123 writes: Scientists have just created synthetic DNA that is on the brink of creating new life forms. This is why Understanding Evolution matters.

Submission + - iPhone hacker trades work for fast car, job (networkworld.com)

Submitted by

coondoggie

on Tuesday August 28, 2007 @09:51AM

coondoggie writes: "George Hotz, the teenager from New Jersey who hacked the iPhone last week posted on his blog today that he traded the unlocked iPhone for "a sweet Nissan 350Z and 3 8GB iPhones" and a paid consulting gig. Hotz said he reached a deal with CertiCell, a Louisville, Kentucky-based mobile phone repair company. "We do not have any plans on the table right now to commercialize Mr. Hotz' discovery. However, we are keenly interested in having Mr. Hotz assist our engineers in developing solutions to other software related challenges including software updating, reflashing and memory elimination of repaired and or refurbished cellular handsets," said Terry Daidone, co-founder of Certicell on the firm's Web Site. http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/18815"

Submission + - Modeling Damping for Better Hard Drives (physorg.com)

Submitted by

eldavojohn

on Friday August 24, 2007 @02:25PM

eldavojohn writes: "Hard drives (at their core) operate on electromagnetic properties and finer control of electrons lead to better drive performance. Which is why PhysOrg's article on recent research is exciting. Researchers have discovered how to model and predict intrinsic dampening[PDF Warning!] of Fe, Co & Ni. They say that these results could be used to optimize damping in new magnetic alloys by using their model to predict intrinsic damping in new alloys without guess & test style development. End result, better micromagnetic control leading to faster read/writes on drives."

Submission + - Scientists prove Schrödinger's cat with l (physorg.com)

Submitted by

0ddity

on Friday August 24, 2007 @01:30PM

0ddity writes: "Australian and French scientists have made another breakthrough in the technology that will drive next generation computers and teleportation. The researchers have successfully superposed light beams, which produces a state that appears to be both on and off at once. Light beams that are simultaneously on and off are vital for the next-generation super computers which should be faster than current computers based on bits, that are either on or off. Previously, only smaller light particles had been superposed and the group has also proved a quantum physics theory known as Schrödinger's cat. http://www.physorg.com/news107177837.html"

Submission + - SPAM: Website Design vs. Consumer Behaviour

Submitted by

rinkjustice

on Friday August 24, 2007 @11:52AM

rinkjustice writes: "Artist. Psychologist. Wordsmith. Any good webdesigner needs to wear these three hats if they have any chance of converting first-time visitors to loyal customers and readers. "This is Your Brain On My Website" explores the behaviours of the consumer, where their eyes go, and what should meet their eyes to make a positive and lasting impression."
Link to Original Source

Submission + - The 10 Commandments for New Linux Users (linuxbraindump.org) 2

Submitted by on Thursday August 16, 2007 @10:35PM

An anonymous reader writes: Thou shalt not log in as root. Use "sudo" or "su -" for administrative tasks. That's how it starts. The rest are at Linux Brain Dump. How does the Slashdot community feel about these commandments? Should new users adhere to these guidelines? Do you have other suggestions?

Submission + - How to Terraform Mars (philforhumanity.com)

Submitted by

philforhumanity

on Monday August 13, 2007 @09:11AM

philforhumanity writes: "Lately, Ive read a lot of flawed suggestions on how to terraform the Planet Mars, so I wanted to clarify how to really terraform Mars with todays technology."

Submission + - Black hole seen swallowing star (and belching)

Submitted by

mcgrew (sm62704)

on Wednesday August 08, 2007 @11:24AM

mcgrew (sm62704) writes: "New Sceintest reports that the Swift satellite has detected GRB 070610. From the article:

A black hole has been spotted belching out a burst of gamma rays after gulping down part of a nearby star, something never seen before. Such violent burps may actually be the most common type of explosive "gamma-ray burst" in the universe.

Astronomers led by Mansi Kasliwal of Caltech in Pasadena, US, traced the burst to a star system in our own galaxy, where a black hole and a star slightly less massive than the Sun are orbiting each other.

Observing this black hole outburst from nearby would be a risky prospect. "If you were as close to the black hole as the [companion] star, things wouldn't be pretty," Kasliwal told New Scientist. "I don't think you'd want to be near it."
Raise shields, Mr. Sulu!"

Submission + - Newfound Planet "Theoretically Should Not Exis

Submitted by

indiejade

on Tuesday August 07, 2007 @08:06PM

indiejade writes: "Various sources are reporting on the discovery of an extra-solar planet that is "20 times larger than Earth and circling a star 1,400 light-years away." It is thought to be the largest planet found so far for which we actually know the size, and one which some scientists say "theoretically should not even exist." TrES-4 is approximately "70 percent larger than Jupiter," according to Georgi Mandushev, the Lowell Observatory astronomer and lead author of the paper announcing the discovery."

Submission + - First Water on an Extrasolar Planet (tfot.info)

Submitted by

Iddo Genuth

on Tuesday August 07, 2007 @04:51PM

Iddo Genuth writes: "Scientists discovered what seems to be the first conclusive evidence for water on an extrasolar planet. The discovery was made by French scientists using data from NASA's Spitzer space telescope and was recently published in the scientific magazine Nature."

Submission + - Does Caffeine Perk Up Memory? (sciam.com)

Submitted by

Raver32

on Tuesday August 07, 2007 @11:15AM

Raver32 writes: "Trying to cut down on your coffee consumption, ladies? Well if you're of a certain age, you might want to reconsider. A new study from France found that women — especially those 65 and over — who reported drinking three-plus cups of java daily did better on memory tests than compeers who drank one or fewer cups a day. "Caffeine is a psychostimulant which appears to reduce cognitive decline in women," study author Karen Ritchie of INSERM, the French National Institute for Health and Medical Research in Montpellier, France, said in a statement."

Submission + - New water-cooled hard drives coming (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by CoolHandLuke on Friday August 03, 2007 @03:26PM

CoolHandLuke writes: NEC and Hitachi are teaming up on a liquid cooling system for hard drives. The goal is to cut down on noise levels while providing more efficient cooling. 'Hitachi and NEC are developing the water-cooled hard drive systems for desktop computers mainly to reduce noise levels to 25 decibels, 5 decibels quieter than a whisper. To do this, NEC and Hitachi actually wrap the hard drive in "noise absorbing material and vibration insulation." According to Hitachi and NEC, the cooling cold plate they're planning to use is the most efficient plate ever used for heat conduction, which means they'll be able to cool the hard drives quicker and more efficiently.'

Submission + - Diebold Voting Machines Vulnerable to Virus Attack

Submitted by

mcgrew

on Friday August 03, 2007 @02:31PM

mcgrew writes: "PC world is reporting in the linked "printer friendly version" that

Diebold Election Systems Inc. voting machines are not secure enough to guarantee a trustworthy election, and an attacker with access to a single machine could disrupt or change the outcome of an election using viruses, according to a review of Diebold's source code.

"The software contains serious design flaws that have led directly to specific vulnerabilities that attackers could exploit to affect election outcomes," read the University of California at Berkeley report, commissioned by the California Secretary of State as part of a two-month "top-to-bottom" review of electronic voting systems certified for use in California.

The assessment of Diebold's source code revealed an attacker needs only limited access to compromise an election.
Oddly, my state of Illinois, long known for election fraud, has paper trails (at least in my county) and according to Black Box Voting doesn't use Diebold anywhere."

Submission + - "Renewable" gasoline from bacteria!

Submitted by ItsLenny on Friday August 03, 2007 @02:29PM

ItsLenny writes: A San Carlos, CA based company called LS9 "The renewable petroleum company" developed a way to produce gasoline from bacteria.

Acording to MIT's Technology Review: "Next year LS9 will build a pilot plant in California to test and perfect the process, and the company hopes to be selling improved biodiesel and providing synthetic biocrudes to refineries for further processing within three to five years."

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