Please create an account to participate in the Slashdot moderation system

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
Bitcoin

Submission + - The Internet Archive to Pay Salaries in Bitcoin, Requests Donations (paritynews.com)

Submitted by hypnosec
hypnosec writes: Bitcoin is gaining popularity among mainstream sites lately and the latest to adopt the digital currency as a medium of donations and payments is the Internet Archive. Ready to accept donation in the form of Bitcoin, the Internet Archive announced that it wants to do so to pay some part of employees’ salaries, if they choose to, in Bitcoin. The Archive, known for its storage of digital documents especially the previous version of webpages, is looking to start part salary payments in Bitcoin by April 2013 if everything goes well.
Power

Submission + - New process that takes the energy from coal without burning it (osu.edu)

Submitted by
rtoz
rtoz writes: "Ohio State students had come up with a scaled-down version of a power plant combustion system with a unique experimental design--one that chemically converts coal to heat while capturing 99 percent of the carbon dioxide produced in the reaction.

Typical coal-fired power plants burn coal to heat water to make steam, which turns the turbines that produce electricity. In chemical looping, the coal isn't burned with fire, but instead chemically combusted in a sealed chamber so that it doesn't pollute the air.

This new technology, called coal-direct chemical looping, was pioneered by Liang-Shih Fan, professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering and director of Ohio State's Clean Coal Research Laboratory"

Submission + - Got a Cell Phone Booster? Well FCC says you have to turn it off (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by Dngrsone
Dngrsone writes: Some two million people have bought cell-phone wireless signal boosters and have been using them to get better communication between their phones and distant cell towers. But now, the FCC says they all have to turn their boosters off and ask permission from their providers and register their devices with those providers before they can turn them back on. FCC FAQ: http://wireless.fcc.gov/signal-boosters/faq.html

Submission + - How to memorize quickly (memorizequick.com)

Submitted by
Calebman114
Calebman114 writes: "Hi, Caleb here..

Have you ever wanted to be able to remember anything that you have read out of the Bible? To be able to throw scripture out there from the back of your brain and know that your quoting it word for word? How about being able to study scripture quickly and then enter debates and discussions, sounding like a theologian simply because you know what the Bible says? Or perhaps you simply just want to get into a deeper relationship with God by getting to know his word and having it apart of you? Whatever the case might be, you simply want to know God’s word and be able to remember exactly what it says. And I know that its hard. It involves time, commitment, disipline, and alot of headaches. Trying to remember anything is no easy task for most of us out there.

But it can be done! All it takes is a little effort, focus, and dedication."
Medicine

Submission + - Polymer Patches Could Replace Needles and Enable More Effective DNA Vaccines (gizmag.com)

Submitted by Zothecula
Zothecula writes: Taking a two-month-old in for vaccination shots and watching them get stuck with six needles in rapid succession can be painful for child and parent alike. If the work of an MIT team of researchers pans out, those needles may be thing of the past thanks to a new dissolvable polymer film that allows the vaccination needle to be replaced with a patch. This development will not only make vaccinations less harrowing, but also allow for developing and delivering vaccines for diseases too dangerous for conventional techniques.

Submission + - Climate-Change Misdirection (wsj.com)

Submitted by
bricko
bricko writes: "Historical analysis of wildfires around the world shows that since 1950 their numbers have decreased globally by 15%. Estimates published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences show that even with global warming proceeding uninterrupted, the level of wildfires will continue to decline until around midcentury and won't resume on the level of 1950—the worst for fire—before the end of the century.

The National Wind Technology Center outside Boulder, Colo.

Claiming that droughts are a consequence of global warming is also wrong. The world has not seen a general increase in drought. A study published in Nature in November shows globally that "there has been little change in drought over the past 60 years." The U.N. Climate Panel in 2012 concluded: "Some regions of the world have experienced more intense and longer droughts, in particular in southern Europe and West Africa, but in some regions droughts have become less frequent, less intense, or shorter, for example, in central North America and northwestern Australia."

As for one of the favorites of alarmism, hurricanes in recent years don't indicate that storms are getting worse. Measured by total energy (Accumulated Cyclone Energy), hurricane activity is at a low not encountered since the 1970s. The U.S. is currently experiencing the longest absence of severe landfall hurricanes in over a century—the last Category 3 or stronger storm was Wilma, more than seven years ago.

While it is likely that we will see somewhat stronger (but fewer) storms as climate change continues, a March 2012 Nature study shows that the global damage cost from hurricanes will go to 0.02% of gross domestic product annually in 2100 from 0.04% today—a drop of 50%, despite global warming."
Education

Submission + - 5 year old suspended for talk of playing with toy gun (nydailynews.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: A 5 year old girl was suspended from school for talking to another student about playing with a Hello Kitty bubble gun. The exact wording used seems to vary from source to source. The suspension form signed by the principal used text similar to "terrorist threat" to describe the behavior. There a few variations of the text on the slip, depending on the source, but the message is the same.

http://www.cnn.com/2013/01/21/us/pennsylvania-girl-suspended/index.html?hpt=hp_bn1

http://www.newser.com/story/161327/girl-5-suspended-in-hello-kitty-threat.html
Biotech

Submission + - Hidden Viral Gene CaMV IV in GMO Crops Discovered by Researchers (independentsciencenews.org)

Submitted by Jeremiah Cornelius
Jeremiah Cornelius writes: Researchers with the European Food Safety Authority discovered variants of the Cauliflower mosaic virus 35S in the most widely harvested varieties of genetically-modified crops, including Monsanto's RoundupReady Soy and Maze. According to researchers, Podevin and du Jardin, the particular "Gene IV" is responsible for a number of possible consequences that could affect human health, including inhibition of RNA silencing and production of proteins with known toxicity. The EFSA is endorsing "retrospective risk assessment" of CaMV promoter and its Gene VI sequences — in an attempt to give it a clean bill of health. It is unknown if the presence of the hidden viral genes were the result of laboratory contamination or a possible recombinant product of the resultant organism. There are serious implications for the production of GMO for foodstuffs, given either possibility.

Submission + - New island appears off coast of Germany (telegraph.co.uk) 4

Submitted by quantumghost
quantumghost writes: Despite its youthful age the sickle-shaped island lying 16 miles off the coast of the German state of Schleswig Holstein is already home to around 50 different plant species and proved popular with sea birds such as herring gulls and oyster catchers, eager to take advantage of its unspoilt and pristine environment.

Formed over just 10 years, the rapid appearance of the island has surprised scientists familiar with the strong winds and shifting shifts that characterise Germany's North Sea coast.
Medicine

Submission + - Public Health Nightmare as First Cases of 'Incurable Gonorrhea' Emerge 5

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens writes
Hugh Pickens writes writes: "Jason Koebler reports that the fears of major health organizations have come true with the detection of Gonorrhea that is immune to the last remaining effective oral antibiotic in at least nine North American patients, meaning the era of "incurable" gonorrhea could be close. Scientists have found that 6.7 percent of patients with gonorrhea at a Toronto clinic still had the disease after a round of cephalosporins, the last effective oral antibiotic used to treat the disease. This is the first time cephalosporin-resistant gonorrhea has been found in humans in North America. "These are the clinical cases we've been waiting for," says Vanessa Allen of Public Health Ontario. "This is the translation of the lab information into what the clinical consequence is." Gonorrhea is estimated to infect close to 700,000 Americans each year with symptoms including painful urination, abdominal pain, genital discharge, itching, and infertility in women. Less than a year ago, Gail Bolan, director of the CDC's sexually transmitted disease prevention program, wrote that the "threat of untreatable gonorrhea is emerging rapidly." At the time, just 1.7 percent of gonorrhea isolated in the lab were considered resistant to cephalosporins. Allen says her study shows just how fast antibiotic resistance is evolving in the organisms. "Our results aren't generalizable to the overall population because they all came from one clinic," concludes Allen. "But basically, the problem appears worse than we originally thought.""
Software

Submission + - Ask Slashdot: How to 4Escape the Golden Handcuffs

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: I have been a software engineer for about 8 years. I have an advanced computer science degree from a very good university.

I make pretty good money, but I hate my job.

I used to like programming okay, but I never really loved it. I got my degree because I really enjoyed the theory, but didn't end up as an academic.

Now I can't stand to go to work. Siting in front of an IDE for 8 hours a day is torture. I have some experience as a consultant and a product manager, but not nearly as much as I have development experience. I really enjoy working with customers and figuring out how to solve their problems.

The problem is that tons of companies want to hire me as a developer. Few even give me a call back for other roles.

For various reasons, I'll never move to another position in my current company, but I don't want to take a dev job somewhere else with the vague notion that it might lead somewhere else.

For those slashdotters who have made the jump from a technical to a more requirements focused role, how did you do it?

Submission + - World Wide shortage of Barium (blogspot.com)

Submitted by redhat_redneck
redhat_redneck writes: The US and Canada has been experiencing a shortage of barium sulfate which is used as contrast for upper and lower GI studies. To the point,Doctors are being asked not to order these exams except in emergencies and some exams are being cancelled. Here's the letter that's been put out by the manufacturer. The longer this drags on the more serious this issue becomes, eventually impacting patients and healthcare providers in both cost and quality of care. Some sources point to a dramatic drop in Chinese production. In their defense, it seems that China is changing safety regulations. I'm all for China respecting humans rights, but could this be an engineered shortage to drive the price of barium up?
Medical use only make a fraction of the uses of barium sulfate, but it's going to be disproportionately affected by this shortage.
We can't go back to our old contrast Thorotrast. It's horrible stuff and it cause cancer.Does anybody have a stockpile of barium or a barite mine? Or do you have an alternative to barium?

Submission + - The 4 Toughest Things About Heading To North Dakota For An Oil Job (blogspot.ca)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: A buddy of mine had headed out to Williston, North Dakota to try his hand at landing a high paying job in the Oil Boom occuring out there. He wound up landing a job, a few weeks later got angry with the company and left. He wound up landing another job that started two weeks later, however he wound up giving up and heading back to Chicago before the job started.
Sci-Fi

Submission + - German Laser Destroys Targets More Than 1Km Away (singularityhub.com)

Submitted by
kkleiner
kkleiner writes: "A German company has brought us one step closer to the kinds of shootouts only seen in Sci-Fi films. Düsseldorf-based Rheinmetall Defense recently tested a 50kW, high-energy laser at their proving ground facility in Switzerland. First, the system sliced through a 15mm- (~0.6 inches) thick steel girder from a kilometer away. Then, from a distance of two kilometers, it shot down a handful of drones as they nose-dived toward the surface at 50 meters per second."

Slashdot Top Deals

An authority is a person who can tell you more about something than you really care to know.

Close