james writes "What do you get when you combine a MSI Wind U100 notebook with liquid nitrogen? The new Intel Atom frequency World Record ... and some damn cool pictures! A large copper pot is used, sitting on top of the GPU and chipset, and cold transfer through the original heatsink plate to the CPU. This was cooled down to about -20 C to achieve the new world mark. (Intel Atom N270 @ 2315mhz) For more information you can check out the original forum thread.

Matt_dk writes "Today, Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft has successfully reached its intended operational orbit at a height of about 100 km from the lunar surface. This followed a series of three orbit reduction manoeuvres conducted during the past three days by repeatedly firing the spacecraft's 440 Newton Liquid Engine. The next major event of Chandrayaan-1 mission planned in the coming days is the release of Moon Impact Probe (MIP) from the spacecraft and its eventual hitting of the moon's surface."

fprintf writes "As much as I hate to admit it, it looks like my 13-year-old son is following in my footsteps and preferring interesting, science-based toys. In the past he has been really interested in Lava Lamps, Newton's Cradle, and anything magnetic. It seems the knick-knacks that have generated the most interest were small and relatively inexpensive. For example, a small laser pointer keychain I bought him a couple of years ago still provides tons of entertainment. Yesterday I showed him ThinkGeek and he really liked the Levitron. I wanted to ask the Slashdot crowd what were some other really neat, interesting gadgets? Is there anything cool in the under-$50 range that you would like in your stocking this year?"

In 24 hours, many of you will be able to vote. So as we come down to the wire, this is really our last chance to talk about the issues. We've already discussed Health Care, the War, and the Economy. Today I'm opening up the floor to discuss education. Perhaps no other issue will matter more in 50 years. Which candidate will make the next generation smarter?

SEAActionFund writes "Vint Cerf, Google's Chief Internet Evangelist who also happens to be credited with co-founding the Internet, submitted a video to our AVoteforScience YouTube challenge. In it he discusses the importance of net neutrality and endorses Barack Obama specifically because he supports net neutrality (John McCain does not.) The AVoteForScience challenge calls upon scientists to upload videos to YouTube explaining who they are voting for and why. The first two videos were by Cerf and the 2008 Nobel Prize winner in Chemistry Marty Chalfie. Any Slashdotters game for explaining who they are voting for and why?" Still waiting for one of the campaigns to ask for my endorsement, which is totally available to whichever campaign offers me the better cabinet seat.

davidmwilliams writes "Microsoft followed their major annual Tech-Ed event in Australia with a week-long programming contest called 'DevSta,' to find 'star developers.' While the quantity and quality of submissions suggest a poor turnout, it certainly caught the attention of at least two hackers who left their mark. Here is the low-down on the contest, what happened, by whom, and screen shots for posterity in case it's been fixed by the time you read this. And unless the volume of submissions increase dramatically within the next few hours, someone may be awarded an Xbox for doing nothing more than rewriting the Windows calculator as a .NET app."

Hugh Pickens writes "For more than a century, ranchers in the West have kept cattle in place with fences of barbed wire, split wood and, more recently, electrified wires. Now, animal science researchers with the Department of Agriculture are working on a system that will allow cowboys to herd their cattle remotely via radio by singing commands and whispering into their ears and tracking movements by satellite and computer. A video of Dean Anderson, a researcher at the USDA's Jornada Experimental Range at Las Cruces, NM., shows how he has built radios that attach to an animal's head that allow a person at the other end to issue a range of commands — gentle singing, sharp commands, or a buzz like a bee or snake — to get the cattle to move where one wants them to. Anderson says it would cost $900 today to put a radio device on one head of cattle, but he says costs will fall and the entire herd wouldn't have to be outfitted, just the 'leaders.' Much of the research has focused on how cattlemen can identify which cattle in their herds are the ones that the others follow."

himicos was one of many readers to point out one recent success of scientists working to develop working brain-machine interfaces, writing "A team at the university of Pittsburgh has finally advanced a 2002 technology enough for use in prosthetic limbs, the targeted application all along. Training computer models to the firing patterns of the neurons in the parts of the brain that control motion, they are able to project the intentions of a monkey to a robotic arm, which follows the will of the animal. The sad thing about the articles is that the beauty of the mathematics used to create and train the models is totally ignored." Reader phpmysqldev adds a link to coverage at the BBC, and writes "This of course brings significant hope to amputees and other other people with physical disabilities." (Note that this research has been going on for quite some time.)

Jamie stumbled upon a very choice video this morning called I Will Derive. To the tune of some song you've never heard before, singing about subjects you know nothing about... oh and a a TI-84 cameo. It features the dopiest dancing you'll see on YouTube today. I promise.

dratcw writes "An article was posted this week to ComputerWorld, detailing the frustrations faced by blind people struggling to use the Web. The piece shows how little progress has been made and the inadequacy of solutions such as Microsoft's Narrator screen reader. While the article generated many positive comments, one reader said the disabled should 'get a grip' and maintained they 'have no more right to demand that others provide for their needs than I, as a diabetic, have a right to demand that sugar no longer be used.' Should Web sites and software makers do more, or does the reality of today's economics dictate that the blind/disabled will continue to struggle and learn to live with it?"

canadacow writes "iPhone developers enrolled and active in the iPhone OS 2.0 beta program got a nasty surprise today when Apple inadvertently 'expired' the recently released version. While for a beta program this typically would not be an issue, Apple has yet to release a new deployment of the iPhone OS. So developers like myself who use their iPhone for both actual phone and iPod use are bricked. Of note, this particular expired build is just 11 days old."

kumasame writes "The Sci Fi Channel has announced it will create a prequel to Battlestar Galactica, as the series enters its final season. The two-hour pilot for the production, called Caprica, is expected to be shot in Vancouver this spring with shooting for the series to follow. The first episodes are expected to air this fall. In a Q&A session held yesterday, the creators and stars of the show revealed a number of tidbits of information about the new show and last season of BSG."