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Submission + - Methane-trapping ice may have triggered gulf spill (sciencemag.org)

Submitted by sciencehabit
sciencehabit writes: Science reports: Methane-trapping ice of the kind that has frustrated the first attempt to contain oil gushing offshore of Louisiana may have been a root cause of the blowout that started the spill in the first place, according to University of California, Berkeley, professor Robert Bea, who has extensive access to BP p.l.c. documents on the incident. If methane hydrates are eventually implicated, the U.S. oil and gas industry would have to tread even more lightly as it pushes farther and farther offshore in search of energy.
Science

Submission + - Biggest Detector Ever to Find Gravitational Waves

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens
Hugh Pickens writes: "Einstein's theory of general relativity predicts that when large objects such as black holes collide, ripples in space and time flow outwards called gravitational waves. Now the Telegraph reports that the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA) consisting of a fleet of three spacecraft flying in formation three million miles apart, will be able to detect gravitational waves of very low frequencies due to the huge distance between the three spacecraft in the largest scientific instrument ever built. "Gravitational waves are the last piece of Einstein's theory of general relativity that has still to be proved correct," says Professor Jim Hough, an expert on gravitational waves at Glasgow University and a member of the committee that drew up the plans. "Unfortunately we haven't been able to detect them yet because they are very weak. However, the new experiments we are working on have great potential to allow detection." A small test mission will be launched next year to demonstrate the technology to be used to detect the waves paving the way for the more ambitious mission to be launched after 2020. Each spacecraft will house floating cubes of gold platinum and laser beams fired between the spacecraft will measure minute changes in the distance between each of the cubes caused by the weak waves of gravity that ripple out from catastrophic events in deep space. "Black holes are so dense that no light or radiation escapes from inside them. Gravitational waves from the warped spacetime around black holes could give us new ways of looking at them," says Professor Sheila Rowan. "We could also learn about the state of matter inside collapsed stars.""
Cellphones

Submission + - New phone allows bosses to snoop on staff

Submitted by tad001
tad001 writes: The Japanese phone giant KDDI has developed a way to track users movements in fine detail. It works by analysing the movement of accelerometers, found in many handsets. Activities such as walking, climbing stairs or even cleaning can be identified, the researchers say. The company plans to sell the service to clients such as managers, foremen and employment agencies.

"Technically, I think this is an incredibly important innovation," says Philip Sugai, director of the mobile consumer lab at the International University of Japan. "For example, when applied to the issue of telemedicine, or other situations in which remotely monitoring or accessing an individual's personal movements is vital to that service. But there will surely be negative consequences when applied to employee tracking or salesforce optimisation."

The full article is available on the BBC news site.

Is it just me or does this strike anyone as being overtly Orwellian?
Idle

Submission + - Wired highlights 10 absurd scientific papers (wired.co.uk) 1

Submitted by Lanxon
Lanxon writes: It's true: "Effects of cocaine on honeybee dance behaviour," "Fellatio by fruit bats prolongs copulation time," and "Are full or empty beer bottles sturdier and does their fracture-threshold suffice to break the human skull?" are all genuine scientific research papers, and all were genuinely published in journals or similar publications. Wired's presentation of a collection of the most bizarrely-named research papers contains seven other gems, including one about naval fluff and another published in The Journal of Sex Research.

Comment Re:Learn to read your own Bills (Score 1) 242

by MarkDennehy (#27859255) Attached to: New Irish Internet Tax?
The problem is that this definition doesn't apply. As pointed out on the boards.ie discussion thread on this topic,

The RTE Player is not an Internet Service in that it is a Timeshift service derived from a programme that was Broadcast . That is the opinion the minister has.

As it's not an internet service (and through the interplay of a few other definitions we've not listed here but which are in the act), the RTE.ie server basicly drags all of us into this...

Comment Re:Welcome to the club. (Score 1) 2

by MarkDennehy (#27852465) Attached to: New Irish Internet Tax?
In Ireland you also have to have a TV licence if you have anything capable of receiving a TV signal - one licence per household at â160 per year. But this new requirement is for watching stuff over the net, so it's expanding beyond TV tuner cards and the like. I originally thought it was some sort of joke, but no, it's there in the Oireachtas documents :(
Debian

Submission + - Debian switching from glibc to eglibc

Submitted by
ceswiedler
ceswiedler writes: "Aurelien Jarno has just uploaded a fork of glibc called eglibc, which is targeted at embedded systems and is source- and binary-compatible with glibc. It has a few nice improvements over glibc, but the primary motivation seems to be that it's a "more friendly upstream project" than glibc. Glibc's maintainer, Ulrich Drepper, has had a contentious relationship with Debian's project leadership; in 2007 the Debian Project Leader sent an email criticizing Drepper for refusing to fix a bug on glibc on the ARM architecture because in Drepper's words it was "for the sole benefit of this embedded crap"."
Networking

Submission + - New Irish Internet Tax? (wordpress.com) 2

Submitted by
MarkDennehy
MarkDennehy writes: "The Broadcasting Bill 2009 (currently in the last stages of becoming the Broadcasting Act 2009 and then being commenced into law in Ireland) has thrown up a rather unpleasant little nugget for broadband users in Ireland. It now defines a television set as being electronic apparatus able to receive TV signals or "any software or assembly comprising such apparatus" which would mean that even if you haven't got a television set, even if you don't watch streaming content from RTE.ie (the state broadcaster's website), you'd still have to pay 160 euro a year for a television licence for your iPhone, or netbook, or laptop or desktop if you have fixed or mobile broadband. Outrage and confusion here and here and here..."

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It isn't easy being the parent of a six-year-old. However, it's a pretty small price to pay for having somebody around the house who understands computers.

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