hellgate - Slashdot User

Submission + - Obesity linked to gut bacterial population

Submitted by

krishn_bhakt

on Wednesday February 14, 2007 @01:45AM

krishn_bhakt writes: "Joel Elmquist (The University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, USA), a Physiology Faculty 1000 Member, comments "This is one of the most provocative papers to be published in the field of obesity research in some time. The evidence provided in this paper demonstrates that obese and non-obese mice have alterations in bacterial populations that apparently affect energy availability and utilization and the body weight of the host."

The nature article is available at http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v444/n7122/ab s/nature05414.html ."

Submission + - Neural "extention chord" developed

Submitted by moon_monkey on Tuesday January 23, 2007 @09:04AM

moon_monkey writes: Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania have developed a 'neural extention chord' by growing neurons attached to a microchip. The chord is made by gradually moving two batches of neurons apart, as they naturally grow towards one another. This biological 'data cable' could then naturally interface with the brain once implanted, the researchers say.

Submission + - Whatever happened to Aerogel?

Submitted by

BK117

on Sunday January 21, 2007 @12:15AM

BK117 writes: "When I first saw the news releases for this amazing material (in the early 1990's) they said it would revolutionize refrigerators, hot water heaters and many other devices needing lightweight insulation. Well, I have yet to see any consumer-level appliances using aerogels. Why not?"

Submission + - OpenMoko Schedule Announced

Submitted by

levell

on Saturday January 20, 2007 @09:22AM

levell writes: "The schedule for the OpenMoko Open source, Linux based Neo1973 smart phone was posted to the community mailing list by Sean Moss-Pultz this morning. On Feb 11, free phones will be sent to key community developers and the community websites/wiki/bug tracker will be available. Then on March 11 ("official developer launch") we'll be able to buy an OpenMoko for $350 (+p&p) (worldwide from openmoko.com). After allowing some time for innovative, slick software to be created there will be a "Mass market launch" at which point Sean hopes that "your mom and dad will want one too"."

Submission + - KDE on Windows

Submitted by

AlanS2002

on Monday January 15, 2007 @03:05AM

AlanS2002 writes: "This week's KDE Commit Digest tells about an installer for KDE on Windows and the problems the developers encountered setting up a working environment for KDE to run on. Many screenshots included, showing the first applications (such as Konqueror) running natively."

Submission + - MacFUSE: write to NTFS partitions from OS X

Submitted by

Beiden Baeren

on Monday January 15, 2007 @02:01AM

Beiden Baeren writes: "After an announcement at MacWorld, Amit Singh from Google has released the code for MacFUSE http://code.google.com/p/macfuse/. While FUSE has been available to Linux users for a while, MacFUSE means that OS X users have now support for a variety of filesystems:

Windows NTFS includes write support

FTP includes write support

WebDAV

SSHFS

BeagleFS

etc... (PicasaFS, GoogleFS)

While installing and configuring the software requires use of the command line and compiling from source, users are quickly stepping forward to provide more user-friendly installation packages such as this one by Jeff McCune of The Ohio State University's mathematics department. Personally, as a switcher to Mac from Windows, I find the ability to write to Windows NTFS invaluable, but MacFUSE provides significantly more than this. Thanks to Amit Singh and his team!"

Submission + - Carmack Blasts Vista, Questions Direct X 10.

Submitted by

222

on Friday January 12, 2007 @10:57PM

222 writes: "Apparently id's John Carmack is also having trouble finding a reason to upgrade to Vista. ""Nothing is going to help a new game by going to a new operating system. There were some clear wins going from Windows 95 to Windows XP for games, but there really aren't any for Vista," Carmack told Game Informer." He also seems to feel that Direct X 10 is more of a gimmick than anything. "They're artificially doing that by tying DX10 [DirectX 10] so close it, which is really nothing about the OS. It's a hardware-interface spec. It's an artificial thing that they're doing there." With this coming from an industry leader, will you be upgrading?"

Submission + - Why blurring sensitive information is a bad idea

Submitted by

Rub3X

on Sunday January 07, 2007 @03:18AM

Rub3X writes: "For the most part this is all fine with peoples' faces as there isn't a convenient way to reverse the blur back into a photo so detailed that you can recognize the photo. So that's good if that is what you intended. However, many people also resort to blurring sensitive numbers and text. I'll illustrate why that is a BAD idea."

Submission + - scientific basis for race: genome Hamming distance

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 06, 2007 @06:50PM

An anonymous reader writes: Physics professor describes how genetic clustering corresponds to racial identity. Individual genetic data, when plotted in an abstract genome space, tends to cluster into groups corresponding to traditional continental ethnic groups (Europeans, Africans, Asians, etc.). Race is more than a matter of pigmentation or other superficial traits: it determines the likelihood an individual is carrying a particular gene variant.

Submission + - Map of the Internet

Submitted by

Wellington Grey

on Monday December 11, 2006 @03:43AM

Wellington Grey writes: "Author of the popular webcomic xkcd has put up a hand made map of the internet as today's comic. He also has an interesting blog entry detailing some of the work that went into it, such a pinging servers and creating a method of fractal mapping to display related regions as contiguous sections on the grid."

Submission + - The Environmental Cost of Your MMORPG Avatar

Submitted by

markmcb

on Sunday December 10, 2006 @01:08PM

markmcb writes: "Taking into consideration that people in developing countries use less than 2400 kWh a day; your MMORPG avatar may be consuming more energy to exist than a real person. Given the vast array of servers that must keep avatars in the newest games like Second Life alive, an MMORPG Avatar's Eco-Footprint is large, very large. Some math from the article, 'If the average PC uses 120 watts, and a server uses 200 watts, plus 50 more for air-conditioning, then (4,000 servers x 250 watts x 24 hours) + (12,500 avatars x 120 watts x 24 hours) = 60,000,000 watt-hours or 60,000 kilowatt-hours. That gives a per-capita usage of 60,000 / 12,500 = 4.8 kWh. Over a year's time that equates to 1752 kWh per avatar.'"

Submission + - Giant tent to be built in Astana, Kazakhstan

Submitted by aitsu on Sunday December 10, 2006 @05:02AM

aitsu writes: The BBC reports :"Kazakhstan has unveiled a new architectural project for its capital Astana — a giant transparent tent that will contain an indoor city. The 150m-high (500ft) dome, designed by UK architect Norman Foster, will be built in just over a year...Underneath, in an area larger than 10 football stadiums, will be a city with squares and cobbled streets, canals, shopping centres and golf courses.The idea is to recreate summer, so that when the outside temperature is -30C, the residents of the Kazakh capital can play outdoor tennis, take boat rides or sip coffee on the pavement cafes."

Journal Journal: Michelin and Dean Kamen Team up to End Tire Punctures 7

Journal by Philip K Dickhead on Friday December 08, 2006 @03:14AM

Enter the "Tweel" - the next generation of tires. Billed dramatically as "the first tire innovation for a century", the Tweel was designed by Michelin for Dean Kamen of Segway fame. They are "airless" and invulnerable to puncture and most wear. A pair of these made their public debut at the Philadelphia Ca

Submission + - Malaysian Open Source Procurement Policy Reversed

Submitted by

Ditesh

on Friday December 08, 2006 @02:06AM

Ditesh writes: "The Malaysian Open Source Masterplan, which favoured open source over proprietary public sector procurements when all other evaluations are equal, has been reversed to a purely "neutral technology platform" policy due to "negative reaction towards open source (from the IT market)". This comes after months of hard lobbying by Microsoft Malaysia. This reversal is certainly unfortunate, as the policy has helped raise comfort levels of other policy makers worldwide in pursuing similar goals. The Malaysian Open Source Alliance has published a position statement asking for clarification of the term "neutrality", and has received support from MNC's, local companies and free software developers in Malaysia."

Submission + - VC says Second Life is not sustainable

Submitted by

skoobafly

on Thursday December 07, 2006 @03:55PM

skoobafly writes: "Some VC calls Second Life an incredible innovator but won't be able to get mass market adoption and probably isn't sustainable. She's apparently an old text MUD developer and says that Second Life might be like Prodigy — a walled garden service that ultimately didn't have any long term staying power. Philip Rosedale, Second Life's CEO responds to the blog posts and admits that Second Life has some design flaws. What do you think? Do you think Second Life is all marketing hype? Do you think this is what the mass market wants? What do you think comes next in the virtual world space?"

Slashdot Top Deals