amigoro - Slashdot User

Submission + - Scientists create mini 'black hole' (veracium.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 03, 2010 @05:19PM

An anonymous reader writes: A group of Chinese researchers have created an artificial mini "black hole" capable of absorbing electromagnetic waves coming in from all directions, according to research published in the current issue of New Journal of Physics. The researchers took advantage of the special properties of metamaterials, a class of ordered composites which can distort light and other waves, to realize a an omnidirectional electromagnetic absorber in microwave frequencies.

Submission + - Mystery about how electrons behave in metals solve (veracium.com)

Submitted by

Anonymous Coward

on Wednesday June 02, 2010 @05:47PM

Anonymous Coward writes: "Scientists have cracked the 25-year-old mystery about how electrons behave in metals by capturing images of electrons that appear to take on extraordinary mass and do "a wave-like dance"under certain extreme conditions, according to an article appearing in current issue of the journal Nature.

"When electrons interact in materials unpredictable things can happen," Graeme Luke, professor in the Department of Physics & Astronomy at McMaster University, said. "Heavy fermion behavior — where electrons behave as if they weigh 1,000 times or more their actual mass — is one of the most fascinating examples of these phenomena. In this case, they were doing a kind of wave-like dance that changes the form and very nature of the electrons.""

Submission + - Larger human brain led to larger penis (pressesc.com) 2

Submitted by

Anonymous Coward

on Thursday December 27, 2007 @11:10AM

Anonymous Coward writes: "The human penis is comparatively larger than that of the other great apes because of our comparatively larger brains, gynecologist Edwin A. Bowman explains in the journal Archives of Sexual Behavior. Through millions of years evolution the infant babies' skulls became larger in order to accommodate bigger brains, explained Dr. Bowman. This in turn led to a female pelvis become larger to allow women to give birth to children with larger brains, and this led to the female vagina also becoming less tight."

Submission + - Scientists design invisibility cloak (presscue.com)

Submitted by

Invisible Coward

on Tuesday December 18, 2007 @06:20PM

Invisible Coward writes: "University of Maryland researchers are using plasmonics technology to create the world's first invisibility cloak that works by bending light and sending it around the object. A research team at University's A. James Clark School of Engineering comprised of Professor Christopher Davis, Research Scientist Igor Smolyaninov, and graduate student Yu-Ju Hung, have applied the same technology to build a revolutionary superlens microscope that allows scientists to see details of previously undetectable nanoscale objects."

Submission + - Monkeys do math as well as college students (pressesc.com)

Submitted by

Anonymous Coward

on Tuesday December 18, 2007 @01:51AM

Anonymous Coward writes: "Monkeys have the ability to perform mental arithmetic, and they equal the performance of college students given the same test, researchers at Duke University have demonstrated."

Submission + - Dogs trained to use computers (presscue.com)

Submitted by

Canine at the Keyboard

on Wednesday November 28, 2007 @01:16PM

Canine at the Keyboard writes: "Austrian researchers have successfully trained dogs to use computers, according to a study published online in Animal Cognition. Friederike Range and colleagues from the University of Vienna in Austria have shown for the first time that dogs can classify complex color photographs and place them into categories in the same way that humans do, and the dogs successfully demonstrate their learning through the use of computer automated touch-screens, eliminating potential human influence. Considering that million monkeys at keyboards made the Internet, I wonder what contribution the dogs would make."

Submission + - US kids reading less (presscue.com)

Submitted by

amigoro

on Monday November 19, 2007 @02:01PM

amigoro writes: "Teens and young adults in the United States read less often and for shorter amounts of time compared with other age groups and with Americans of previous years, a new report released today by the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) reveals."

Submission + - Yahoo lied to Congress about helping China police (wor.ldne.ws)

Submitted by

amigoro

on Tuesday November 06, 2007 @01:45PM

amigoro writes: "A United States congressional panel ruled today that Yahoo provided false information to Congress during the investigation into whether the search engine giant provided information to authorities in China which lead to a dissident journalist to being sentenced 10 years in prison.

"Mr. Yang, Mr. Callahan, Shi Tao's mother is sitting in the first row right behind you — I would urge you to beg the forgiveness of the mother whose son is languishing behind bars due to Yahoo's actions," Lantos said."

Submission + - Scientists make radio from single carbon nanotube (wor.ldne.ws)

Submitted by

amigoro

on Wednesday October 31, 2007 @02:10PM

amigoro writes: "A team of researchers have created the first fully functional radio from a single carbon nanotube, making it by several orders of magnitude the smallest radio ever made, according to an article they published in the journal Nano Letters. They successfully tested their radio with Good Vibrations by the Beach Boys transmitted via FM."

Submission + - Privacy advocates demand "Do Not Track List (wor.ldne.ws)

Submitted by

Welcome to the Future

on Wednesday October 31, 2007 @12:27PM

Welcome to the Future writes: "A coalition of privacy advocates on Wednesday demanded measures to give consumers greater control over their personal data and to offset the impact of pervasive behavioral tracking. The key demand is the establishment of the Do Not Track List, which would function much like the national "Do Not Call" list, is one of several consumer privacy protections the group asked the FTC to adopt as part of a broad effort to correct a privacy imbalance that has deprived Americans of the ability to control their own valuable personal information. The Do Not Track List would require advertising entities that place persistent tracking technologies on consumers' computers to register with the FTC all domain names of the servers involved in such activities. Developers of browser applications would be encouraged to create plug-ins allowing users to download the Do Not Track list onto their computers. Having the list accessible via a browser application would allow users to prevent any site from tracking behavioral data."

Submission + - AIDS came to US via just one migrant from Haiti (wor.ldne.ws)

Submitted by

amigoro

on Tuesday October 30, 2007 @03:45AM

amigoro writes: "The AIDS virus entered the United States via Haiti, probably arriving in just one immigrant in about 1969, and from there spread worldwide, according to new research published this week in the online Early Online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. "Our results show that the strain of virus that spawned the U.S. AIDS epidemic probably arrived in or around 1969. That is earlier than a lot of people had imagined," said senior author Michael Worobey."

Submission + - Scientists design glow-in-the-dark clothes (wor.ldne.ws)

Submitted by

amigoro

on Friday October 26, 2007 @02:53PM

amigoro writes: "British Researchers have developed textile yarns that can be used to make glow-in-the-dark garmentswhich would replace current high visibility products such as those used by emergency services, cyclists and highway maintenance workers. The traditional high visibility garments, which depend on external light sources to make them visible, can be ineffective in low light situations and require a light source from something like vehicle headlights to make them visible leading to the wearer being seen too late. esearchers at the William Lee Innovation Centre (WLIC) at the University of Manchester announced that they have successfully designed clothes from electroluminescent (EL) yarns, allowing the wearer to be permanently visible and therefore improving personal safety."

Submission + - Eyes work independently of each other when we read (pressesc.com)

Submitted by

amigoro

on Monday September 10, 2007 @04:43AM

amigoro writes: "Most scientists have assumed that when we read both eyes look at the same letter of a word concurrently, but research by cognitive psychologists show that our eyes look at different letters in the same word and then combine the different images through a process known as fusion."

Submission + - Congress urged to "really" fix FISA (pressesc.com)

Submitted by

amigoro

on Wednesday September 05, 2007 @02:16PM

amigoro writes: "Congress was today urged to to address recent changes to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) that gave United States authorities sweeping powers to spy on American citizens, by those testifying at the House Judicial Committee hearing on warrantless surveillance and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act."

Submission + - Laser zaps viruses in blood (pressesc.com)

Submitted by

amigoro

on Tuesday September 04, 2007 @03:28PM

amigoro writes: "Lasers can be used to zap viruses in blood, making the process of disinfecting blood for transfusions more efficient, a father-son team reported in the Journal of Physics: Condensed Matter. The researchers aimed a low-power 425 nm wavelenghth visible laser with a pulse lasting 100 femtoseconds (10-13 second) into glass tubes containing saline-diluted viruses that infect bacteria, also known as bacteriophages and the amount of infectious virus within each cube plummeted 100- to 1000-fold after the laser treatment."

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