74229455
submission
LeadSongDog writes:
The Royal Astronomical Society advises that, the Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR) has confirmet the long suspected: many SMBHs are obscured by a surrounding cloud. Observing nine known black holes at X-ray energies not previously visible, they found that five of the nine were emitting much more energetic X-rays than had been known. They so conclude that the SMBHs are much more common than had been known.
70856853
submission
LeadSongDog writes:
Heat engines using the "leidenfrost" effect can exploit the gas expansion as CO2 sublimates to drive turbines.
Article in Nature Communications: http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2...
An interview at The Conversation: https://theconversation.com/ho...
61303139
submission
LeadSongDog writes:
The venerable Freecode site has today gone static, blaming low traffic. No new content is being accepted, but they continue to serve existing content. They recommend projects consider moving to Sourceforge.
50863553
submission
LeadSongDog writes:
A piece in yesterday's Forbes offers arguments on why not all "Non-Practicing Entities" are "Patent Trolls". Comments here on such businesses are often critical. Is there a right way to trade in patents for profit without abusing the process?
50083839
submission
LeadSongDog writes:
Space.com is reporting on a 60km comet-like body in Lagrangian orbit around the Sun, locked to Uranus. This means a distant, but fairly accessible supply of water-ice, hence reaction mass, hydrogen and oxygen for robotic miners if we can just get them there with an energy source.
49729767
submission
LeadSongDog writes:
From our Now-I've-Heard-Everything department, the Ottawa Citizen reports on an enterprising private contractor who's doing preemptive strikes on beach-waddling geese as a countermeasure against the evil denizens of guano.
48516901
submission
LeadSongDog writes:
Germany's TerraSAR-X satellite is showing that the Antarctic's Pine Island ice shelf has calved a 'berg of 720 square kilometres, "the size of Hamburg".
Angelika Humbert says "The Western Antarctic land ice is on land which is deeper than sea level. Its "bed" tends towards the land. The danger therefore exists that these large ice masses will become unstable and will start to slide". The article extrapolates that "If the entire West Antarctic ice shield were to flow into the Ocean, this would lead to a global rise in sea level of around 3.3 metres."
Goodbye Florida.
46599203
submission
LeadSongDog writes:
The Globe and Mail is reporting that the "Pebble" smartwatch has matched the $15M record for Kickstarter funding after initially being panned by the VC crowd.
45619447
submission
LeadSongDog writes:
El Reg reports that UK privacy campaigners Big Brother Watch are unhappy with Siri's retentiveness, calling Apple's decision to keep voice queries for two years "intrusive".
