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Space

Magnetic Portals Connect Sun and Earth 235

Posted by Soulskill
from the no-cake-jokes-allowed dept.
MaxwellEdison writes "Scientists have discovered evidence of magnetic portals connecting the Earth and the Sun every 8 minutes. 'Several speakers at the Workshop have outlined how FTEs form: On the dayside of Earth (the side closest to the sun), Earth's magnetic field presses against the sun's magnetic field. Approximately every eight minutes, the two fields briefly merge or "reconnect," forming a portal through which particles can flow. The portal takes the form of a magnetic cylinder about as wide as Earth. The European Space Agency's fleet of four Cluster spacecraft and NASA's five THEMIS probes have flown through and surrounded these cylinders, measuring their dimensions and sensing the particles that shoot through.'"
Businesses

Dog pees on server rack and shuts down business->

Submitted by Funny Finder
Funny Finder writes "After taking her small lap dog to the vet on her day off Stint stopped by Action Tools to pick up her first paycheck. She sat her dog down to talk to another employee in the back office. While the dog was unattended it walked over to the company's small floor computer rack server and did its business all over the set up. Dog pee story"
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Patents

100 Terabyte 3.5-inch Digital Data Storage Disks->

Submitted by
oblonski
oblonski writes "A very good article over at PhysOrg.com about a new patented technology that allows the manufacturing of 100 Terabyte 3.5" digital data storage discs There is lots of technical explanations and diagrams of the science involved. From the article: "Have you ever dreamt of 100 terabyte of data per 3.5-inch disk? New patented innovation nanotechnology from Michael E. Thomas, president of Colossal Storage Corporation, makes it real. Michael invented and patented the world's first and only concept for non-contact UV photon induced electric field poling of ferroelectric non-linear photonic bandgap crystals, which offers the possibility of controlling and manipulating light within a UV/Deep Blue frequency of 1 nm to 400 nm. It took him 14 years to find a practical conceptualization that would work to advance the storage industry; 3D Volume Holographic Optical Storage Nanotechnology, for which Michael holds the patents. He was invited to present this fascinating discovery to the National Science Foundation in February 2004. This invention and patents on a technique for changing matter at the molecular level is one of the World's only new enabling technologies, having many hundreds of electro-optic applications. Atomic Holographic Nanotechnology will allow for the first time a functional method for programmable molecular lenses that will allow incoming light to be rejected, modified internally, or allowed to pass unaltered through a transparent lens known as disk, tape, card, drum, film, etc. By being able to program optical lenses, many applications based on light and color can be developed, such as holographic storage, bio-terror detection devices, optical electronics, security products, and hundreds of other products never seen before on the world's markets. The small size of ferroelectric transparent structures makes it possible to fabricate nano-optical devices, such as volume holographic storage, having both positive and negative index of refraction that will allow molecular particles of an atomic size to be modified, controlled, and changed to perform a specific function, desired task, used for low cost accurate chemical / biological matter detection, and reprogrammed to accept new non-volatile data and molecular functions. ""
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Media

Kodak unveils brighter CMOS color filters->

Submitted by brownsteve
brownsteve writes "Eastman Kodak Co. unveiled what it says are "next-generation color filter patterns" designed to more than double the light sensitivity of CMOS or CCD image sensors used in camera phones or digital still cameras. The new color filter system is a departure from the widely used standard Bayer pattern — an arrangement of red, green and blue pixels — also created by Kodak. While building on the Bayer pattern, the new technology adds a "fourth pixel, which has no pigment on top," said Michael DeLuca, market segment manager responsible for image sensor solutions at Eastman Kodak. Such "transparent" pixels — sensitive to all visible wavelengths — are designed to absorb light. DeLuca claimed the invention is "the next milestone" in digital photography, likening its significance to ISO 400 color film introduced in the mid-1980's."
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Intel

Intel V8 Octa-Core System, Full Performance Tests

Submitted by MojoKid
MojoKid writes "In the April time frame, details of Intel's dual-socket 8-core system dubbed "V8" became available but only preliminary performance numbers were shown. The platform consists of quad-core Xeon processors in an Intel 5000X chipset-based motherboard, along with FBDIMM (Fully Buffered DIMM) serial memory. This follow-on article goes into significantly more detail on the platform and showcases many more performance metrics on a Windows Vista 64-bit installation. The POV-Ray and Cinebench 95 benchmark numbers alone are something to smile about."
Television

10 MORE Reasons Why HD-DVD Formats Have Failed->

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes "Almost exactly a year ago Audioholics wrote an eye-opening piece on the demise of both HD DVD and Blu-ray Disc high definition DVD formats. On the anniversary of that article Clint DeBoer has penned a follow-up article called "10 MORE Reasons Why HD-DVD Formats Have Already Failed" that discusses each point in light of a year's worth of released hardware and software and whether his predictions were on the mark or just a bunch of hot air. The bottom lines are interesting and it does seem to indicate that his initial assumptions are still on track."
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NASA

Space station oxygen, water computers fail

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes "HOUSTON, Texas (AP) — Russian computers that control the international space station's orientation and supply of oxygen and water have failed, potentially extending the space shuttle's mission — or cutting it short.

Russian engineers aren't sure why the computers stopped working. A failure of this type has never occurred before on the space station.

The station is operated primarily by the Russian and U.S. space agencies, with contributions from the Canadian, European and Japanese space agencies.

"We have plenty of resources, so we have plenty of time to sort this out," said Mike Suffredini, NASA manager of the space station program.

http://64.236.16.20/2007/TECH/space/06/14/space.sh uttle.ap/index.html"

Microbiology Lab: Staph Only!