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NASA

Huge Defunct Satellite to Plunge to Earth Soon->

Submitted by
cultiv8
cultiv8 writes "The huge Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite (UARS) is expected to re-enter Earth's atmosphere in an uncontrolled fall in late September or early October. Much of the spacecraft is expected to burn up during re-entry, but some pieces are expected to make it intact to the ground, NASA officials said.

The U.S. space agency will be taking measures to inform the public about the pieces of the spacecraft that are expected to survive re-entry."
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Robotics

Israel, Germany jointly develop UAV arms system->

Submitted by
garymortimer
garymortimer writes "Loitering weapons system combines drones developed by both nations.

A rare look into Israel’s unmanned weapons capabilities was revealed on Tuesday with an announcement by Germany’s Rheinmetall that it had jointly developed with Israel a loitering weapons system based on an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV).

The system, called WABEP, which in German stands for “Weapons system for standoff engagement of individual and point targets,” was developed by Rheinmetall together with Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI), a world leader in the development of UAVs and loitering weapons.

The WABEP is a combination of Rheinmetall’s KZO drone and IAI’s Harop attack drone, which according to media reports, is already in operational use in India and Turkey.

The Harop was developed as a weapon to suppress enemy radar systems used together with surface-to-air missiles or other similar high-value targets."
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Hardware

Single-chip DIMM to replace big sticks of RAM-> 1

Submitted by
MrSeb
MrSeb writes "Invensas, a subsidiary of chip microelectronics company Tessera, has discovered a way of stacking multiple DRAM chips on top of each other. This process, called multi-die face-down packaging, or xFD for short, massively increases memory density, reduces power consumption, and should pave the way for faster and more efficient memory chips. Multi-die face-down packaging is exactly what it sounds like, with memory dies stacked on top of each other like roofing tiles. Much like a normal desktop DIMMs and laptop SO-DIMMs, each of the stacked dies is wired to each other in series — but in this case, the connections are much shorter, as they only have to run a few micrometers to the chip below it. This is where all of the power and speed enhancements come from: shorter interconnects mean less power is needed (and thus less heat is dissipated) and signals propagate faster."
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IBM

IBM, 3M team to glue together silicon "bricks"->

Submitted by
coondoggie
coondoggie writes "IBM and 3M today said they will jointly develop a new line of adhesives they hope will let them make it possible to build commercial microprocessors composed of layers of up to 100 separate chips. Such stacking would allow for higher-powered servers and more advanced consumer electronics applications, the companies stated. Processors could be tightly packed with memory and networking, for example, into a "brick" of silicon that would create a computer chip 1,000 times faster than today's fastest microprocessor enabling more powerful smartphones, tablets, computers and gaming devices."
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User Journal

Journal: Climate Change Caused by Cosmic Rays?

Journal by OverTheGeicoE

When journalists talk about climate change, they are usually talking about the man-made kind. There may be more important contributors, however, like cosmic radiation and solar output variations possibly affecting the rate of cloud formation on Earth. If you've ever seen a cloud chamber, you might get the idea. Physicists at CERN have been doing experiments to test this hypothesis. The Wall Street Journal has an

Power

Ammonia: The Fuel Technology Of The Future?->

Submitted by thecarchik
thecarchik writes "Ammonia: Useful in fertilizers, cleaning products and fairly unpleasant in direct human contact. Used as a fuel for vehicles? Certainly not impossible.

Rather than using hydrogen to power fuel cells and the associated high-pressure storage problems associated with this, we could would use water to produce hydrogen from electrolysis, and this is then combined with nitrogen from the air to produce ammonia.

The ammonia itself would then be burned in an internal combustion engine, but the burning process only releases water vapor and nitrogen, rather than the unburned hydrocarbons and other pollutants that internal combustion is normally associated with.

In theory, the ammonia is also simple and cheap to produce — enough so that it could be sold at 20 cents per gallon. As long as researchers keep working on radical ideas such as Ammonia powered cars or "urine powered cars", they are bound to one day to hit on the formula that can be widely adopted."
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CRESST-II search finds evidence for dark matter ->

Submitted by
pmarinus
pmarinus writes "The CRESST-II cryogenic Dark Matter search, aiming at detection of WIMPs completed 730 kg days of data taking in 2011. Detector modules picked up both a phonon signal and coincidently produced scintillation light. From the abstract "The former provides a precise measure of the energy deposited by an interaction, and the ratio of scintillation light to deposited energy can be used to discriminate different types of interacting particles and thus to distinguish possible signal events from the dominant backgrounds. Sixty-seven events are found in the acceptance region where a WIMP signal in the form of low energy nuclear recoils would be expected." A model was used to estimate the contribution of several background sources to the signal. "Using a maximum likelihood analysis, we find, at a high statistical significance, that these sources alone are not sufficient to explain the data. The addition of a signal due to scattering of relatively light WIMPs could account for this discrepancy, and we determine the associated WIMP parameters.""
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Comment: Later (Score 1) 1521

by Anonymous Matt (#37214588) Attached to: Rob "CmdrTaco" Malda Resigns From Slashdot

/. is the only site I followed regularly in the 20th century that I still follow. It's still relevant. I check /. more than I check CNN. That has to say something.

One of my regrets is that I lurked before registering. It didn't seem important at the time, but a low ID has turned into a prized possession. That this is something I sincerely regret has to say something.

About OMG Ponies! When I checked /. that day and saw that plus the pink, it made me laugh in RL. Classic, just classic. It's the standard against which I compare all April Fool's gags. That has to say something.

My post is going to be buried at the bottom, but I'm confident you'll read them all. I know that says something. :) I appreciate everything you've done here.

"America is a stronger nation for the ACLU's uncompromising effort." -- President John F. Kennedy