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Education

Stable Roentgenium Claimed Found In Gold 160

Posted by timothy from the check-your-wedding-band dept.
eldavojohn writes "Amnon Marinov, a physicist specializing in super heavy elements, claims that a stable isotope of roentgenium is commonly found alongside gold, just in very small quantities that we could not measure before. To prove this, he boiled gold in a vacuum, postulating that as the gold evaporated, the roentgenium should remain. He did this for two weeks and then passed the resulting mess through a mass spectrometer and was left with several peaks that could be explained away except for one. Marinov lead the team that found the first super heavy 122 thorium isotope in nature a few years back and now claims that, despite all indications that this super heavy element shouldn't exist longer than a few seconds, he has found a stable isomer of roentgenium in nature. Is he on to something, or overlooking a simpler explanation in his quest for evidence of the island of stability long theorized by physicists?"

Comment Homebrew == Unsigned code (Score 1) 1

by jrobot (#34414062) Attached to: xbox modding trial goes wonky,

I'm all for fair use of personal hardware, but can he really argue that modifying the DVD firmware enables homebrew? I thought those hacks just bypassed the media authentication checks (not allowing unsigned code). The hacks to allow unsigned/homebrew code were the king kong shader/jtag exploits right? Or do those also require custom DVD firmware to run?
Games

Submission + - xbox modding trial goes wonky, (wired.com) 1

Submitted by mrbongo
mrbongo writes: Opening statements in the first-of-its kind Xbox 360 criminal hacking trial were delayed here Wednesday after a federal judge unleashed a 30-minute tirade at prosecutors in open court, saying he had “serious concerns about the government's(TM) case.” Makes for a nice read.
Displays

Submission + - Apple wins patent on glasses-free 3D projector (idg.com.au)

Submitted by
angry tapir
angry tapir writes: "Apple has been awarded a U.S. patent for a display system that would allow multiple viewers to see a high-quality 3D image projected on a screen without the need for special glasses, regardless of where they are sitting. Entertainment is far from the only field in which 3D can enhance the viewing experience: others include medical diagnostics, flight simulation, air traffic control, battlefield simulation, weather diagnostics, advertising and education, according to Apple's U.S. patent 7,843,449 for a 3D display system."

Comment Re:Two eyes are better than one (Score 1) 106

by jrobot (#34394546) Attached to: Combining Two Kinects To Make Better 3D Video

CMOS sensors light gathering capabilities fall off over increasing wavelength.
Silicon's quantum efficiency at NIR is much lower than visible. There's not a
huge range of NIR to play in without QE falling off.

IR diodes don't emit light over a single wavelength. Not only do they shift long with
temperature, but the rated wavelength is really an average of the range the wavelength
drifts over.

Very tight bandpass filters tend to drift shorter in wavelength off axis.

Submission + - How to get back into software development 3

Submitted by luv2sled
luv2sled writes: I have a CS degree and about 5 years of software development (mostly in Java and UI development). Unfortunately, it's been a few years since I've used any of these skills. For the last 7 years, I have been working in Product Management/Development. I have found this work to be less than satisfying and would like to move back to software development. Any suggestions on how to make this transition?
Censorship

Submission + - Kuwait Ban of DSLR Cameras turns out to be a Hoax (kuwaittimes.net) 3

Submitted by Voulnet
Voulnet writes: The Kuwait Times, the newspaper that started the false rumor of Kuwait banning DSLR cameras, has posted an update saying that after investigation, it turned out that they didn't verify their information, and issued a retraction: "On Saturday, November 20, 2010 the Kuwait Times published an article titled 'Multi ministry camera ban frustrates artists' in which incorrect information was provided. The newspaper regrets failing to verify the information. The article wrongly stated that a ban on DSLR cameras was implemented by the Ministries of Information, Social Affairs and Finance. This information is false. In a follow up investigation, it was proved that no such ban has been issued. We regret this error and deeply apologize for any inconvenience caused"

Submission + - Homeland Security Seizing Pirate Site Domains (cnet.com) 2

Submitted by Nocuous
Nocuous writes: The Department of Homeland Security is now seizing sites, using new powers granted by the Senate. Ironic, given the mission statement on the DHS' website about "preserving our freedoms"

"The U.S. government has launched a major crackdown on online copyright infringement, seizing dozens of sites linked to illegal file sharing and counterfeit goods. Torrent sites that link to illegal copies of music and movie files and sites that sell counterfeit goods were seized this week by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement division of the Department of Homeland Security. Visitors to such sites as Torrent-finder.com, 2009jerseys.com, and Dvdcollects.com found that their usual sites had been replaced by a message that said, "This domain name has been seized by ICE--Homeland Security Investigations, pursuant to a seizure warrant issued by a United States District Court." "My domain has been seized without any previous complaint or notice from any court!" the owner of Torrent-Finder told TorrentFreak, which listed more than 70 domains that were apparently part of the massive seizure. "
Space

Submission + - X-37B Super Secret Space Plane To Land Soon (universetoday.com) 1

Submitted by
Phoghat
Phoghat writes: "The Highly Classified X-37B SSpace Plane is scheduled to land soon. Launched from Cape Canaveral in Florida on April 22 on top of an Atlas 5 rocket, the Air Force is still being very secretive on al aspects of the flight. We do know that it's set to touch down at Vandenverg Air Force Base's 15,000 foot runway, originally built for the Space Shuttle program.
In many ways the craft resembles the shuttle with stubby wings, landing gear and a powerful engine that allows the craft to alter its orbit (much to the dismay of many observers on the ground)
It's success has Apparently given new life to its predecessor the X-34 which had been mothballed"

Submission + - What 2D GUI Foundation do you use? 2

Submitted by Zmee
Zmee writes: I am looking to build a 2D application for personal use and I will need to use a canvas to paint custom objects. I am trying to determine what foundation to use and have not located a good side-by-side comparison of the various flavors. For reference, I need the final application to work in Windows; Linux is preferred, but not required. I have looked at WPF, Qt, OpenGL, Tcl/Tk, Java's AWT, and others. I have little preference as to the language itself, but each of the tutorials appear to require significant time investment. As such, I am looking to see what the community uses and what seems to work for people prior to making that investment.

Submission + - Quark-Gluon Plasma observed at LHC (www.cbc.ca)

Submitted by Canadian_Daemon
Canadian_Daemon writes: A phase of matter created moments after the Big Bang is thought to have been detected at the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland. "Striking" evidence of a quark-gluon plasma has been observed by a team of researchers, including Canadians, at the facility near Geneva, the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) announced Friday.

Comment Re:In particular... (Score 1) 188

by jrobot (#34326464) Attached to: Intel Launches Atom CPU With Integrated FPGA

The Virtex 7's with dual A9MPs are going to be awesome parts.
They supposedly will function independently of the bitstream configuration,
which suggests increasing possibilities for partial reconfiguration.

Xilinx's software team needs to get their act together.
SystemVerilog for synthesis, extended IDE w/ tcl support are long overdue.[/rant]
Input Devices

Hacked iRobot Uses XBox Kinect To See World 124

Posted by Soulskill from the gesticulating-at-robots dept.
kkleiner writes "A student at MIT's Personal Robotics Group is going to put Microsoft's Kinect to a good use: controlling robots. Philipp Robbel has hacked together the Kinect 3D sensor with an iRobot Create platform and assembled a battery-powered bot that can see its environment and obey your gestured commands. Tentatively named KinectBot, Robbel's creation can generate some beautifully detailed 3D maps of its surroundings and wirelessly send them to a host computer. KinectBot can also detect nearby humans and track their movements to understand where they want it to go." In related but less agreeable news, "Dennis Durkin, who is both COO and CFO for Microsoft's Xbox group, told investors this week that Kinect can also be used by advertisers to see how many people are in a room when an ad is on screen, and to custom-tailor content based on the people it recognizes."
Biotech

Scientists Turn Skin Into Blood 229

Posted by samzenpus from the horror-movie dept.
Breakthru writes "In an important breakthrough, scientists at McMaster University have discovered how to make human blood from adult human skin. The discovery, published in the prestigious science journal Nature today, could mean that in the foreseeable future people needing blood for surgery, cancer treatment or treatment of other blood conditions like anemia will be able to have blood created from a patch of their own skin to provide transfusions. Clinical trials could begin as soon as 2012."

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