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Editorial

Submission + - Plastic solar cells on a nano scale (examiner.com)

Submitted by
Johnathan Martinez
Johnathan Martinez writes: "We are all awaiting that smoking gun breakthrough that is going to help us solve our energy problems for the coming century. We see images of a green economy while the oil executives fry in the electric chair (solar or wind electricity perhaps). Many Interesting new developments in nanotechnology have raised some eyebrows. David Ginger, who is an associated professor of chemistry at the University of Washington, is working with a team of researchers on nano plastic solar cells."
Education

Submission + - The swine flu vaccine more deadly than the flu its (freemindsmedia.org)

Submitted by
Toby Iselin
Toby Iselin writes: "Complications from the swine flu vaccine which is scheduled to be administered to millions of people has been linked to fatal nerve damage. In a confidential letters leaked to the Daily Mail, over 600 of the world's top neurologists have been warned that the vaccine could cause a brain disorder called Guillain-Barre Syndrome (GBS)."
Windows

Submission + - Windows 7 "Official" Torrent on People.com (people.com.cn) 1

Submitted by
euyis
euyis writes: "Looks like some editors made a terrible mistake: Copying without Thinking. The torrent file of "Windows 7 Professional x86 Official Simplified Chinese Edition" was posted on People.com.cn, website of the People's Daily — the CCP's mouthpiece. Maybe this explains why the Chinese government was enraged when WGA black screen came for pirated Windows users in China."
Hardware Hacking

Submission + - Fatty foods affect memory and exercise (nytimes.com)

Submitted by
Death Metal
Death Metal writes: "Eating fatty food appears to take an almost immediate toll on both short-term memory and exercise performance, according to new research on rats and people.

Other studies have suggested that that long-term consumption of a high-fat diet is associated with weight gain, heart disease and declines in cognitive function. But the new research shows how indulging in fatty foods over the course of a few days can affect the brain and body long before the extra pounds show up."
Medicine

Submission + - Doctors Perform Brain Surgery without a Scalpel

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens
Hugh Pickens writes: "Researchers working at the MR-Center of the University Children's Hospital in Zürich are using magnetic resonance-guided focused ultrasound non-invasively to produce small thermal ablations with extreme precision and accuracy deep in the brain to provide treatment for patients suffering from neuropathic pain. The ultrasound treatment replaces a procedure called radiofrequency ablation that involves making an incision in the scalp, drilling a hole in the skull, inserting an electrode through normal brain tissue into the thalamus, and using radiofrequency to create a lesion. "This study showed that we can perform successful operations in the depth of the brain without opening the cranium or physically penetrating the brain with medical tools, something that appeared to be unimaginable only a few years ago," says Daniel Jeanmonod M.D. The major challenge in using ultrasound in the brain has been figuring out how to focus the beams through the skull, which absorbs energy from the sound waves and distorts their path. The High-intensity focused ultrasound (HIFU) consists of an array of more than 1,000 ultrasound transducers, each of which can be individually focused. The treatment avoids the complications of infection, hemorrhage, and collateral damage to normal brain structures and paves the way for further research into the treatment of a variety of other brain disorders, including Parkinson's disease and essential tremor, epilepsy, brain tumors and stroke. "By eliminating any physical penetration into the brain, we hope to duplicate the therapeutic effects of invasive deep brain ablation without the side effects, and for a wider group of patients," adds Jeanmonod."
Earth

Submission + - Global Warming Tipping Point? (sciencedaily.com) 2

Submitted by wisebabo
wisebabo writes: All of the predictions regarding global warming seem to be (necessarily?) more or less linear projections of various inputs (amount of man-made carbon dioxide, increase/decrease in forestation, cloud cover changes due to pollution etc.). Unfortunately what's missing is when there are previously unforseen effects that are caused by feedback loops. For example, scientists are still trying to figure out how much CO2 will be released by the thawing permafrost. Higher temperatures -> more permafrost thawing -> more CO2 released -> higher temperatures; you get the picture.

One MAJOR feedback loop that's always been on the back of my mind has been the possibility of the release of the 500-2500 GIGATONS of methane stored as methane clathrates on the ocean floor. Not only is this substantially larger than the total amount of CO2 in the atmosphere (700 gigatons) but methane is a much stronger greenhouse gas than CO2. So potentially dangerous is the global warming effect from the worldwide release of it that it has been proposed as a major factor in the Permian extinction which killed 96% of all sea life (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clathrate_gun_hypothesis) and most (90%) of all terrestrial life (as described in the book "When Life nearly died").

So anyway I was not very happy to read of the discovery of "more than 250 plumes of bubbles of methane gas are rising from the seabed of the West Spitsbergen continental margin in the Arctic, in a depth range of 150 to 400 metres". Evidently caused by a warming ocean current, it shows that the methane is coming out of its crystalline ice cages at deeper and deeper depths. While the authors of the study say that if it becomes widespread it will (only) release an additional 5-10% of the methane coming from other global sources, they only give that figure for the methane from the artic sources. Unfortunately methane clathrates are located throughout the deep oceans (it's cold down there; everywhere). Let's hope it stays that way, for our lives and almost every other living creature on earth (remember when scientists say 90% of all life went extinct during the Permian extinction, they mean 90% of all species vanished, not individual creatures. The death rate of individual creatures was likely much higher.) This is one feedback loop that could kill us all.
Portables

Submission + - Dell selling ARM based SmartBooks? (pcworld.com)

Submitted by wonkavader
wonkavader writes: According to the Article: "In an effort to expand its Linux offerings, Dell is researching new netbook-type devices and will soon offer netbook Linux OS upgrades, a company official said on Wednesday. ... The company is researching the possibility of offering new Linux-based mobile devices called smartbooks, said Todd Finch, senior product marketing manager for Linux clients, at the OpenSourceWorld conference in San Francisco. ... Smartbooks are netbook-type devices that are powered by chips designed by Arm."

I don't think Finch said "ARM" but he apparently did say "SmartBook". Then again, he also said "researching the possibility".
Space

Submission + - New planet 'goes round star the wrong way'

Submitted by
Smivs
Smivs writes: "BBC News is reporting that Astronomers have discovered the first planet that orbits in the opposite direction to the spin of its star. Planets form out of the same swirling gas cloud that creates a star, so they are expected to orbit in the same direction that the star rotates. The new planet is thought to have been flung into its "retrograde" orbit by a close encounter with either another planet or with a passing star. The work has been submitted to the Astrophysical Journal for publication. Co-author Coel Hellier, from Keele University in Staffordshire, UK, said planets with retrograde orbits were thought to be rare. "With everything [in the star system] swirling around the same way and the star spinning the same way, you have to do quite a lot to it to make it go in the opposite direction." Professor Hellier said a near-collision was probably responsible for this planet's unusual orbit. "If you have a near-collision, then you'll have a large gravitational slingshot from that interaction," he explained. "This is the likeliest explanation. But it might be possible you can do it by gradually perturbing the orbit through the influence of a second planet. So far, we haven't found any evidence of a second planet there.""

Comment Re:Fool me once, shame on you (Score 1) 417

by daniel23 (#26821619) Attached to: MS To Offer Free Windows 7 Upgrade To Vista Users

peripher interchange program. I remember an awful lot of ctrl/c though that got better with cpm+. Cpm+ also allowed me to use all of the 128 MB RAM that came with my CPC6128 as it allowed bank switching. Those were the days of WordStar, I used to know the adresses of all the free spots in the program code where you could put your own additions like printer control codes to allow WordStar to use italic or letter quality printing. That was programming in hex.

GP forgot to mention NT4.

Comment things that are up (Score 1) 1397

by daniel23 (#26707739) Attached to: Why Do We Name Servers the Way We Do?

I once worked at a company named "virtual heaven" and while the desktops had names from star trek like odo, picard the servers took their names from greek and egyptian gods, ra, nuit, isis, pan, seth. Coincidentially, the company went broke not too long after we got that file server named eris.

I still name computers after things up in the sky, using bird names. Spatz, fink, star, triel, dohle, I soon run out of short names in German, luckily I discovered Maori birds: tui, kea, weka kaki, moa, tara,kiwi, beo - ample suply of short pronouncable names.

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