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Cellphones

The Software Router As MiFi Killer 192

Posted by timothy from the my-mifi-makes-me-happy dept.
An anonymous reader writes "The MiFi Mobile Router has been getting a lot of positive reviews these days, for combining a cellular modem, WiFi radio and battery pack in a portable device. But playing with a beta release of a software based wireless router for Windows 7 has me wondering if there's any future to these dedicated, multi-radio routers. Is the future that every PC should be a router? Or is that a job best left to a cell phone?" I just drove across the country and back with a MiFi (using Verizon's service, which was not zippy but very reliable); it strikes me that being nicely cross-platform and not requiring a laptop with its own cell-network connection is a serious advantage for the MiFi or any similar device.
Google

Android 2.0 SDK Released, Google Maps Navigation Announced 121

Posted by Soulskill from the android-will-find-a-way-home dept.
stoolpigeon writes "The Android 2.0 SDK is now available from Google. This puts to bed concerns about Google not releasing the SDK or perhaps being in some kind of exclusivity deal with Verizon around 2.0. The release notes give a nice overview of what is there. Those who already have the SDK can grab the updated tools as SDK components; everyone else will pick up everything when downloading the new SDK." Relatedly, reader riffzifnab reports that Google has also announced Google Maps Navigation, a GPS application for Android 2.0 that takes voice input and integrates with internet searches and Street View.
Transportation

Tesla Roadster Breaks Distance Record For Electric Car 392

Posted by Soulskill from the eternal-sunshine-and-a-spotless-road dept.
An anonymous reader writes "The CEO of an Australian ISP has driven his Tesla Roadster into the record books, completing 501km on a single electric charge in the 2009 Global Green Challenge — beating the Roadster's official specifications, which rate the all-electric sports car as being capable of a maximum of 390km per charge. The previous record was held by another Roadster in the 387km Rallye Monte Carlo d'Energies Alternatives in April this year. In a race specifically designed for alternative energy vehicles (such as hydrogen and electricity), the Roadster was the only vehicle to complete the entire course. Though to be fair, that race course was a mixture of twists, turns and hills."
Media

Submission + - Higgs territory continues to shrink (symmetrymagazine.org)

Submitted by
PhysicsDavid
PhysicsDavid writes: "Announced this morning by Fermilab, the possible territory for the Higgs boson has shrunk even further. Combined results from the CDF and DZero experiments at the Tevatron have ruled out the existence of the Higgs with a mass between 160 GeV/c^2 and 170 GeV/c^2 with 95% confidence. At 90% confidence the Higgs is ruled out between about 157 GeV/c^2 and 185 GeV/c^2. Fermilab also has a press release. If the Higgs is to be found at the lighter end of the currently allowed 114 GeV/c^2 to 185 GeV/c^2 range, its detection is harder than at the heavier end due to the kinds of signals that the Large Hadron Collider and the Tevatron will see. Some physicists think that a lighter Higgs will be easier to spot at the Tevatron as the background processes which obscure the faint signal are not as prevalent in those experiments."
Media

Submission + - Making magnetic monopoles and physics exotica (symmetrymagazine.org)

Submitted by
PhysicsDavid
PhysicsDavid writes: "Physicists have been searching for magnetic monopoles pretty much since they knew about magnetism and definitely since Maxwell unified electricity and magnetism. Now some researchers have shown that using some weird mirror materials will allow them to create something indistinguishable from a monopole in a lab experiment. A paper about it was published today in the journal Science as an advance online publication. The technique looks like it could be used to create these analog systems of other kinds of exotic particles that haven't yet been observed, such as axions. The theorists who proposed this are working with experimenters to try to create these systems and study them in depth this year."
Media

Submission + - First definitive Higgs result in 7 years (symmetrymagazine.org)

Submitted by
PhysicsDavid
PhysicsDavid writes: "In a suite of new results about the Higgs boson, Fermilab presents the first new definitive evidence on the (lack of) existence of the Higgs boson since the Large Electron Positron collider shut down in 2000. Fermilab hasn't found the Higgs but can rule out a certain range of masses for the particle that is expected to create mass for all the other particles of nature. Other Higgs news suggests a new likeliest mass range for the Higgs. These results were among those presented at the ICHEP 2008 conference currently underway."
Media

Submission + - New particle: the bottom-most bottomonium (symmetrymagazine.org)

Submitted by
PhysicsDavid
PhysicsDavid writes: "Collaborators on the BaBar experiment at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center have detected and measured, for the first time after a 30-year search, the lowest energy particle of the "bottomonium" family, called the eta-sub-b. The discovery fills in a missing piece of quark physics that will help reveal the nature and behavior of the quarks and the strong force."
Space

Submission + - Pioneer anomaly a step closer to resolution (symmetrymagazine.org)

Submitted by
PhysicsDavid
PhysicsDavid writes: "A news report discusses the results of a new model of the Pioneer spacecraft, in an attempt to explain why it is accelerating slightly toward the sun. The reasons for the anomalous acceleration have been debated for years but this result says that about a third of the acceleration can be explained by heat emissions from the spacecraft."

Comment Why did Nature publish this? (Score 1) 25

by PhysicsDavid (#3265606) Attached to: Solution to the 'Spinning Egg' Problem
There is nothing wrong with the research in the paper but why did Nature publish this? Seeing as it is so selective and only publishes papers of the greatest significance, this paper seems an odd choice for such a prestigious journal.

If no other work had been done on this problem before then there would be no issue here but other papers have been written, and they are referenced in the Nature paper. Curiously, those other papers also make the point that friction is necessary to make the spinning object stand up. The only real difference here is that the egg is chosen rather than a tippy-top (which is more like half an egg with a stick on it).

Overall, this paper seems to be an incremental contribution and a small one at that. (The general ideas as reported widely are well-known - for many years I have taught classes that the reason a tippy-top, spun football, etc. stand on end is because of friction+conservation of angular momentum, etc.)

Or maybe Nature was just caught up in the Easter spirit...or maybe looking for good publicity... I wonder how long they had been sitting on the paper waiting for the Easter issue to come out...

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