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Biotech

Engineered Bacteria Glows To Reveal Land Mines 248

Posted by kdawson from the lamp-unto-your-feet dept.
MikeChino writes "Sifting through minefields to remove hidden threats is a dangerous, tedious, and expensive process. Scientists at the University of Edinburgh recently announced that they have engineered a strain of bacteria that glows green in the presence of explosives, making mine detection a snap. The new strain of bacteria can be sprayed onto local affected areas or air-dropped over entire fields of mines. Within a few hours the bacteria strain begins to glow wherever traces of explosive chemicals are present."

Comment Re:NOT the first European ISP to break net neutral (Score 1) 343

by JackassJedi (#29166277) Attached to: First European Provider To Break Net Neutrality
Yes, this is true. I am a customer of Kabel Deutschland, and in the past, they've already admitted to doing it, but have now taken back that statement. However, there is clear evidence when using traffic monitoring that this is actually taking place. Sources (in German): http://www.klamm.de/partner/unter_news.php?l_id=5&news_id=35204&a_datum=20.07.2009 http://www.onlinekosten.de/forum/showthread.php?t=121367
First Person Shooters (Games)

Crysis 2 Confirmed For Multiple Platforms 61

Posted by Soulskill from the specifically,-roadrunner-and-blue-gene dept.
EA and Crytek teamed up for an announcement at E3, confirming that Crysis 2 was under development for the PC, PS3, and Xbox 360. Details are scarce (and the trailer is no help), but the game will use CryENGINE 3, which will be able to scale performance such that it will look good on consoles while still pushing the limits of PC graphics. Quoting: "When asked if that sounded like a contradiction, [Crytek's Cevat Yerli] responded that you have to think of technology as a tool that can scale. He said the game's content scales to the platform it's on. 'The PC version will look better, because of the fact that the PC can do more. It will be scaling up. But on the consoles, you're competing with console games,' he said. 'The goal is to be the best looking game on PS3 [and] the best looking game on 360 in the entire market.' On the PC front, Crysis 2 will compete with the original Crysis, which still sets the bar for PC graphics."
Biotech

Scientists Create RNA From Primordial Soup 369

Posted by timothy from the that's-notional-primordial-soup-to-you dept.
Kristina at Science News writes "The RNA world hypothesis proposed 40 years ago suggested that life on Earth started not with DNA but with RNA. Now a team of scientists bolsters this hypothesis, having assembled RNA in the lab from a mixture that resembles what was likely the primordial soup. 'Until now,' Science News reports, 'scientists couldn't figure out the chemical reactions that created the earliest RNA molecules.' The new work started the RNA assembly chemistry from a different angle than what earlier work had tried."
Programming

Can rev="canonical" Replace URL-Shortening Services? 354

Posted by Soulskill from the snds-lk-a-pln dept.
Chris Shiflett writes "There's a new proposal ('URL shortening that doesn't hurt the Internet') floating around for using rev="canonical" to help put a stop to the URL-shortening madness. In order to avoid the great linkrot apocalypse, we can opt to specify short URLs for our own pages, so that compliant services (adoption is still low, because the idea is pretty fresh) will use our short URLs instead of TinyURL.com (or some other third-party alternative) replacements."

Comment Re:Hmmmm. (Score 2, Informative) 444

by JackassJedi (#27151693) Attached to: Could Fuller Take Trek Back To TV?
A friend of mine and me (over- and over-)analyzed Voyager over the years. In fact we found it so involutarily ridiculous that we wrote around 30 parody episodes of Voyager in the absurd humor style, here's an excerpt:

(Janeway and Tuvok are in a room; there's a door on one of the walls.)
Janeway: We're trapped. What should we do now?
Tuvok: I could try to modify the door in such a way that it is open.
Janeway: How do you want to do that?
Tuvok: I will pull this lever.
Janeway: I don't have any better idea myself (hesitates) Try it.
(Tuvok pulls the lever, the door opens.)
Janeway: Well done. I will add a positive record to your personel file, but now we've got to get out of here.

Anyway my point is that a lot was due to the bad acting, a terrible lot. Some stories weren't actually so bad, but the bad execution made it look like nonsense. The same stories with the actors of DS9 would have been actually somewhat decent.

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