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Science

Submission + - Return of the Vacuum Tube (sciencemag.org)

Submitted by sciencehabit
sciencehabit writes: Peer inside an antique radio and you'll find what look like small light bulbs. They're actually vacuum tubes—the predecessors of the silicon transistor. Vacuum tubes went the way of the dinosaurs in the 1960s, but researchers have now brought them back to life, creating a nano-sized version that's faster and hardier than the transistor. It's even able to survive the harsh radiation of outer space.
Oracle

Submission + - No Patent Infringement Found in Oracle vs. Google (cnet.com)

Submitted by sl4shd0rk
sl4shd0rk writes: Today, the jury in the Oracle vs. Google trial found Google innocent on infringement claims. The jury deliberated about 30 minutes to reach the verdict bringing an end to the second phase of the trial, and a beginning to the damage phase which may be very little of what Oracle orginally asked for. Still no word on API copyright issues. Judge Alsup will be ruling on that in the near future and certainly have an impact on the dev community.
Government

Submission + - Days before Congressional recess, Senators need to be called before CISPA vote (privacyisawesome.com)

Submitted by
skaterperson
skaterperson writes: "CISPA, the cybersecurity bill currently going through Congress, has gone through a tricky legislative maze that has a lot of people confused. Here's the deal: CISPA is now tucked inside of Senate bill S.2105, which has bipartisan congressional support, is being actively supported by the Obama Admin., and is scheduled for a vote in early June. It's alive and well, and on a clear path to becoming law.

The Senate goes on recess next week, and which means there are exactly 3 days to make calls to their offices before they leave for a week and then come back for the vote. The most important thing constituants can do with that time is to try to get meetings scheduled with their Senators while they are in their home states during the recess. This is a proven grassroots strategy that was key to killing SOPA. If enough people contact their Senators either in person or over the phone, CISPA can be defeated.

Privacyisawesome.com makes it easy to contact your Senator's office in just a few minutes. Just enter your number and zip, and your Senator's number will be provided along with a script (for those who are phone shy). Everyone should do this to put an end to this awful piece of legislation."
Japan

Submission + - Little health risk seen from Fukushima's radioactivity (nature.com) 2

Submitted by
gbrumfiel
gbrumfiel writes: "Two independent reports show that the public and most workers received only low doses of radiation following last year's meltdowns at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Japan. Nature reports that the risks presented by the doses are small, even though some are above guidelines and limits set by the Japanese government. Few people will develop cancer as a result of the accident, and those that do may never be able to conclusively link their illness to the meltdowns. The greatest risk lies with the workers who struggled in the early days to bring the reactors under control. So far no ill-effects have been detected. At Chernobyl, by contrast, the highest exposed workers died quickly from radiation sickness."

Submission + - DARPA Pays $3.5 Million For New TechShops and Secret Reconfigurable Factories (businessweek.com)

Submitted by pacopico
pacopico writes: Bloomberg Businessweek reports that DARPA will pay for the creation of two new TechShops in Washington D.C. and Pittsburgh. The $3.5 million deal includes 2,000 TechShop memberships for military veterans and will have DARPA employees performing top secret work at night. They're part of the iFab team, trying to make factories that can be reconfigured on-the-fly through software. Maker mayhem.
Java

Submission + - Say Goodbye to Browser Choice? (cnet.com)

Submitted by plawson
plawson writes: c|net offers an in-depth discussion of the browser's future, making the case that "new mobile devices threaten to stifle the competitive vigor of the market for Web browsers on PCs." Given the vertical integration of many mobile systems, the article predicts that "... the only opportunity you'll get to truly change browsers is when your two-year smartphone contract expires..." The trade offs are security and performance. Web pages that rely on JavaScript and JIT will be big losers. How important is browser choice on a smartphone or tablet compared with a PC?

Submission + - Tesla S Set to Hit Streets in June

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Tesla announced that customer delivery of the Model S, the company's first premium electric sedan, will begin on June 22, 2012. To celebrate the occasion, select customers will be invited to receive their new cars at a private event held in Tesla's Fremont, California factory.

Regarding the hardware underneath, Tesla claims that the Model S comes with the most energy-dense battery pack in the industry. Combined with best-in-class aerodynamics, the Model S can reach 300 miles in a single charge, the longest range of any electric car in the world. As powerful as it is efficient, the 40kWh battery and three phase electric motor propels the sedan from 0-to-60 mph in an ample 4.4 seconds.
Apache

Submission + - Is APache Tomcat NOW Enterprise Ready? (apache.org)

Submitted by
ekimminau
ekimminau writes: "I have seen a number of outdated articles discussing whether or not Tomcat is considered "Enterprise Ready". The majority of them state it is fine for "light weight" applications but most fall back to a position similar to this http://www.javaworld.com/javaworld/jw-01-2008/jw-01-tomcat6.html from JavaWorld in 2008.

My question to Slashdot: Do you feel that with TomEE (Tomcat Enterprise Edition) that Tomcat is more than just a light weight niche player and now stands with the rest of the "Enterprise Ready" Application servers?"
Science

Submission + - MIT creates superhydrophobic condiment bottles (geek.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: First we had a superhydrophobic spray that meant no dirt or sweat could stick to your clothes. Then the same coating was applied to circuit boards to make them water resistent. Now MIT has gone a step further and solved one of the ongoing problems of using condiments: they've figured out how to make a food-safe superhydrophobic coating for food packaging. It means ketchup and mayonnaise will no longer be stuck to the insides of the bottle, and therefore there will no longer be any waste.

What's amusing is this seems to be a happy accident. The MIT team was actually investigating slippery coatings to stop gas and oil lines clogging as well as how to stop a surface from having ice form on it. Now their lab is filled with condiments for continued testing of their food-safe version.

Submission + - Know What Time It Is? Your Medical Device Doesn't (economist.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: A man with one clock knows what time it is, goes the old saw, a man with two is never sure. Imagine the confusion, then, experienced by a doctor with dozens. Julian Goldman is an anaesthetist at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. After beginning to administer blood-thinning medication during an urgent neurological procedure in 2005, Mr Goldman noticed that the EMR had recorded him checking the level of clotting 22 minutes earlier. As a result, four hospitals in the northeast had their medical devices checked, and found that on average they were off by 24 minutes. The easy solution that devices could have used since 1985? NTP.
Facebook

Submission + - Facebook, Zuckerberg sued over IPO (cnet.com)

Submitted by mrquagmire
mrquagmire writes: Facebook shareholders have sued the social network, CEO Mark Zuckerberg, and a number of banks, alleging that crucial information was concealed ahead of Facebook's IPO.

The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court in Manhattan this morning, charges the defendants with failing to disclose in the critical days leading up to Friday's initial public offering "a severe and pronounced reduction" in forecasts for Facebook's revenue growth, as users more and more access Facebook through mobile devices, according to Reuters, which cited a law firm for the plaintiffs.

Submission + - Seagate to Buy External Drive Maker LaCie (computerworld.com)

Submitted by Lucas123
Lucas123 writes: Hard drive maker Seagate today announced an exclusive agreement to acquire a controlling interest in external drive maker LaCie. The all-cash transaction would be worth about $186 million, or $5.17 a share. LaCie Chairman and CEO Philippe Spruch is expected to join Seagate to run its consumer storage products organization. Seagate Chairman Steve Luczo said LaCie's products would compliment Seagate's own drive products and allow it to expand its line by adding a "premium-branded" direct-attached storage (DAS) line. The move will also help Seagate develop better software.
Databases

Submission + - New MinuteSort Record Set by Microsoft Research (i-programmer.info)

Submitted by mikejuk
mikejuk writes: A team from Microsoft Research has taken the lead in the MinuteSort data sorting test using a specially-devised technology, Flat DataCenter Storage. The figures are impressive — 1401 gigabytes in the 60 seconds, using 1033 disks across 250 machines. This is not only three times as much as the previous record, but also, uses only one sixth of the hardware resources, according to a blog post about the test from Microsoft. One thing that’s interesting about the success is the technology used. While solutions such as Hadoop and MapReduce are traditionally used for working with large data sets, Microsoft Research created its own technology called the “Flat Datacenter Storage,” or FDS for short. This isn’t just academic research, of course. The team from Microsoft Research has already been working with the Bing team to help Bing accelerate its search results, and there are plans to use it in other Microsoft technologies.
Biotech

Submission + - Scientists Turn Skin Cells Into Beating Heart Muscle (ibtimes.com)

Submitted by
redletterdave
redletterdave writes: "Scientists have for the first time succeeded in taking skin cells from patients with heart failure and transforming them into healthy, beating heart tissue that could one day be used to treat the condition. The researchers based in Haifa, Israel, had their study published in the European Heart Journal on Wednesday, and said clinical trials of the technique could begin within 10 years. But even with more testing to go, the results meant they might eventually be able to reprogram patients' cells to repair their own damaged hearts."
Google

Submission + - Google to Warn of DNSChanger Infections (krebsonsecurity.com)

Submitted by tsu doh nimh
tsu doh nimh writes: Google plans today to begin warning Internet users if their computers show telltale signs of being infected with the DNSChanger Trojan. The company estimates that more than 500,000 systems remain infected with the malware, despite a looming deadline that threatens to quarantine the sick computers from the rest of the Internet. The company said the warning will appear only when a user with an infected system visits a Google search results property (google.com, google.co.uk, etc.), and will include the message, “Your computer appears to be infected.” Google security engineer Damian Menscher said the company expects to notify approximately a half-million users in the first week of the notices.
Space

Submission + - SETI pioneer Jill Tarter retires (nature.com)

Submitted by ananyo
ananyo writes: After 35 years, astronomer Jill Tarter is retiring from the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) — a field she helped pioneer and popularize, most recently at the SETI Institute in Mountain View, California. Tarter, who inspired the late Carl Sagan to create the fictional character Ellie Arroway, heroine of the book and movie ‘Contact’, says she will instead focus her efforts on what she calls “the search for intelligent funding.”
Your Rights Online

Submission + - Oil Company Neste Tries to Shut Down Parody Site (greenpeace.org)

Submitted by
emakinen
emakinen writes: "Environmental NGO Greenpeace has been campaiging against Finnish oil company Neste Oil. Recently, they published a parody site www.nestespoil.com about Neste biofuel impact on rain forests. Neste is now trying to shut the parody site down using a trademark complaint to WIPO. Furthermore, the Swedish ISP for Greenpeace, Loopia, has today shut down the original site, according to a newspaper Helsingin Sanomat (in Finnish). In a game of cat and mouse, Greenpeace has already opened a mirror site."
Moon

Submission + - Russia to establish bases on the Moon (nature.com)

Submitted by ananyo
ananyo writes: Vladimir Popovkin, the head of Roscosmos, the Russian space agency, has said that Russia will pursue extensive, long-lived operations at the Moon’s surface. "We’re not talking about repeating what mankind achieved 40 years ago,” Popovkin said, through a translator at the Global Space Exploration Conference in Washington DC. “We’re talking about establishing permanent bases.”
The heads of the space agencies for Europe, Canada and Russia, along with senior representatives from the space agencies of India and Japan were in Washington DC talking about the benefits of international collaboration. JAXA, the Japanese Space Agency, also issued a clear pronouncement about targeting the Moon.
Science

Submission + - Everything you know about electrostatics is wrong (nature.com)

Submitted by scibri
scibri writes: Bring two positively charged spheres together and what happens? They repel, right? Wrong.

Physicist John Lekner, has proven mathematically that they will attract when they get close enough together (paper's not live yet, but the link where it will eventually live is here). A region of positive charge on one sphere can cause the positive charge on the other to retreat, piling up further away and leaving a patch of negative charge behind.

English scientist William Snow Harris, who invented lightning conductors for ships, saw something like this in 1836 with charged disks. So now all that remains is for someone to prove Lekner's math experimentally today.

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