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Science

Submission + - Quantum Mechanics at Work in Photosynthesis (sciencedaily.com) 1

Submitted by telomerewhythere
telomerewhythere writes: A team of University of Toronto chemists have made a major contribution to the emerging field of quantum biology, observing quantum mechanics at work in photosynthesis in marine algae.

"We stimulated the proteins with femtosecond laser pulses to mimic the absorption of sunlight," explains Scholes. "This enabled us to monitor the subsequent processes, including the movement of energy between special molecules bound in the protein, against a stop-clock. We were astonished to find clear evidence of long-lived quantum mechanical states involved in moving the energy. Our result suggests that the energy of absorbed light resides in two places at once — a quantum superposition state, or coherence — and such a state lies at the heart of quantum mechanical theory."

Article found in Nature
Science

Europe's LHC To Run At Half-Energy Through 2011 194

Posted by samzenpus from the part-time-collision dept.
quaith writes "ScienceInsider reports that Europe's Large Hadron Collider will run at half its maximum energy through 2011 and likely not at all in 2012. The previous plan was to ramp it up to 70% of maximum energy this year. Under the new plan, the LHC will run at 7 trillion electron-volts through 2011. The LHC would then shut down for a year so workers could replace all of its 10,000 interconnects with redesigned ones allowing the LHC to run at its full 14 TeV capacity in 2013. The change raises hopes at the LHC's lower-energy rival, the Tevatron Collider at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia, Illinois, of being extended through 2012 instead of being shut down next year. Fermilab researchers are hoping that their machine might collect enough data to beat the LHC to the discovery of the Higgs boson, a particle key to how physicists explain the origin of mass."
Science

Submission + - Quantum effects behind photosynthesis efficiency (wired.com)

Submitted by siddesu
siddesu writes: Wired has a fascinating story about a recent discovery that sheds light on the quantum physics mechanisms behind the efficiency of photosynthesis. Antenna proteins appear to "use" quantum effects to route energy almost without loss from photon-sensitive molecules to nearby reaction-center proteins, which convert it to cell-driving charges. As a bonus, the article provides a car analogy.
Google

Submission + - Google Chrome is now supporting extensions (blogspot.com)

Submitted by kaychoro
kaychoro writes: Google Chrome announces that they will support extensions along with an API for developers. They claim that over 1500 extensions are ready to be installed, and provide a video [youtube.com] of how to install them. Could this be what pushes Firefox out and brings Chrome in?
Science

Submission + - Colliding Particles Can Make Black Holes After All (sciencemag.org) 1

Submitted by cremeglace
cremeglace writes: Particle physicists predict the world's new highest-energy atom smasher, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) near Geneva, Switzerland, might create tiny black holes, which they say would be a fantastic discovery. Some doomsayers fear those black holes might gobble up Earth--physicist say that's impossible--and have petitioned the United Nations to stop the $5.5 billion LHC. Curiously, though, nobody had ever shown that the prevailing theory of gravity, Einstein's theory of general relativity, actually predicts that a black hole can be made this way. Now a computer model shows conclusively for the first time that a particle collision really can make a black hole. No need to stock up on canned beans for doomsday though--the black holes still require energies vastly exceeding what the LHC is capable of.
Microsoft

Submission + - Microsoft Knew of IE Zero Day Since September (threatpost.com)

Submitted by Trailrunner7
Trailrunner7 writes: Microsoft today admitted it knew of the Internet Explorer flaw used in the attacks against Google and Adobe since September last year. The vulnerability used in the attacks was privately reported to Microsoft last August by Meron Sellen, a white-hat hacker at BugSec, an Israeli security research company. Microsoft program manager Jerry Bryant said the company confirmed the severity of the flaw in September and planned to ship a fix in a cumulative IE update next month.
Linux

Submission + - IE is so secure we just had to build an OS out of (buntfu.com)

Submitted by
buntfu
buntfu writes: "Microsofts new Gazelle concept is the greatest thing to hit Linux or the computer industry as a whole ever. According to Microsoft, Gazelle is a secure web browser constructed as a multi-principal OS. I never thought I would live to see the day that Microsoft announces its own suicide."
Biotech

Scientists To Breed the Auroch From Extinction 277

Posted by samzenpus from the back-by-popular-demand dept.
ImNotARealPerson writes "Scientists in Italy are hoping to breed back from extinction the mighty auroch, a bovine species which has been extinct since 1627. The auroch weighed 2,200 pounds (1000kg) and its shoulders stood at 6'6". The beasts once roamed most of Asia and northern Africa. The animal was depicted in cave paintings and Julius Caesar described it as being a little less in size than an elephant. A member of the Consortium for Experimental Biotechnology suggests that 99% of the auroch's DNA can be recreated from genetic material found in surviving bone material. Wikipedia mentions that researchers in Poland are working on the same problem."

Submission + - Bacteria rewired to flash in sync (newscientist.com)

Submitted by deusanima
deusanima writes:
Glowing bacteria that flash on and off together are pointing the way towards implants made of engineered cells that would deliver precise doses of drugs or hormones at specific times of the day.

The bacteria have been engineered to fluoresce in synchronised bursts to produce waves of luminescence, but the researchers were not after a biological light show. The feat is proof in principle that the activity of cells can be artificially coordinated, so that they no longer work in isolation.

As well as a new way of delivering drugs, controlling synchrony between cells might also provide new insights into sleep, learning and brain diseases like Parkinson's and Alzheimer's, which are thought to occur when synchrony between neurons is abnormal.

Submission + - Obama DOJ Sides With RIAA Again in Tenenbaum (blogspot.com)

Submitted by NewYorkCountryLawyer
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes: Despite having had some time to get their act together, Obama's Department of Justice has filed yet another brief defending the RIAA's outlandish statutory damages theory — that someone who downloaded an mp3 with a 99-cent retail value, causing a maximum possible damages of 35 cents, is liable for from $750 to $150,000 for each such file downloaded, in SONY BMG Music Entertainment v. Tenenbaum. The 25- page brief (PDF) continues the DOJ's practice of (a) ignoring the case law which holds that the Supreme Court's due process jurisprudence is applicable to statutory damages, (b) ignoring the law review articles to like effect, (c) ignoring the actual holding of the 1919 case they rely upon, (d) ignoring the fact that the RIAA failed to prove 'distribution' as defined by the Copyright Act, and (e) ignoring the actual wording and reasoning of the Supreme Court in its leading Gore and Campbell decisions. Jon Newton of p2pnet.net attributes the Justice Department's 'oversights' to the 'eye-popping number of people [in its employ] who worked for,and/or are directly connected with,Vivendi Universal, EMI, Warner Music and Sony Musicââs RIAA'.

Comment I know of two (Score 1) 2

by Andy Jensen (#30814108) Attached to: Free Photo Editing Software?
Before I got CS3, I would use gimp, fireworks, and paint.net. Each is free, except fireworks might cost a small amount of money now that Macromedia is purchased by Adobe. They are not as good as Photoshop, but they were fine for me doing basic things.

Comment Has the music gotten better? (Score 3, Interesting) 112

by Andy Jensen (#30813686) Attached to: Video Game Music Recognition Gets a Boost
Honestly, I'm not to surprised. The music in video games have increased in complexity and quality on an exponential scale. Now full orchestras are making music with real instruments versus the previous 8-bit simple tunes. But I still prefer the classic themes. Maybe I'm just overly nostalgic instead of knowing my music...

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