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World's Northernmost Town Gets Nightlights 144

Posted by samzenpus from the goodbye-darkness-my-old-friend dept.
Velcroman1 writes "On October 26, 2,000 Norwegians watched the sun set. The next time they'll see it rise? Sometime in February. Extended nighttime is an annual occurrence for the residents of Longyearbyen, Norway — Earth's northernmost town. Located at 78 degrees north latitude in the Arctic circle, Longyearbyen experiences a phenomenon called Polar Night, in which the town remains in perpetual darkness for four months each winter. To lighten up the seemingly endless night, Philips has started an experiment called 'Wake Up the Town.' And anyone who's complained about the brief daylight hours in winter will want to know how it works."

Submission + - Boy of 15 fitted with robotic heart (geek.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: What do you do when a 15-year-old boy is close to death and ineligible for a heart transplant? If you’re Dr Antonio Amodeo you turn to an artificial solution and transplant a robotic heart giving the boy another 20-25 years of life.

The Italian boy in question suffers from Duchenne muscular dystrophy which rapidly degenerates the muscles and eventually leads to death. Having such a disease renders the boy ineligible for a heart transplant meaning almost certain death without an alternative solution.

Dr Amodeo found such an alternative in the form of a 90 gram fully-robotic heart that took 10 hours to fit inside the boy’s left ventricle. It is a permanent solution offering as much as 25 years of life and is powered by a battery worn as a belt and connected to behind his left ear.
Image

Stewart and Colbert Plan Competing D.C. Rallies 696

Posted by samzenpus from the power-of-the-internet dept.
Lev13than writes "In a direct retort to Glenn Beck's Restoring Honor rally, Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert have announced competing rallies on October 30th. Stewart plans to host a 'Rally To Restore Sanity' on Oct. 30 on the National Mall in D.C. for the Americans he says are too busy living normal, rational lives to attend other political demonstrations. Colbert, meantime, will shepherd his fans in a 'March To Keep Fear Alive.' 'Damn your reasonableness!' Colbert said. 'Now is not the time to take it down a notch. Now is the time for all good men to freak out for freedom!' Stewart, meanwhile, has promised to provide attendees with signs featuring slogans such as 'I Disagree With You But I'm Pretty Sure You're Not Hitler' and 'I'm Afraid of Spiders.'"
Earth

Scientists Cut Greenland Ice Loss Estimate By Half 414

Posted by samzenpus from the not-so-bad-after-all dept.
bonch writes "A new study on Greenland's and West Antarctica's rate of ice loss halves the estimate of ice loss. Published in the journal Nature Geoscience, the study takes into account a rebounding of the Earth's crust called glacial isostatic adjustment, a continuing rise of the crust after being smashed under the weight of the Ice Age. 'We have concluded that the Greenland and West Antarctica ice caps are melting at approximately half the speed originally predicted,' said researcher Bert Vermeeersen."
Biotech

Submission + - Did Sea Life Arise Twice? (dailymail.co.uk) 1

Submitted by eldavojohn
eldavojohn writes: Dr. Adam Maloof has found fossils of sea sponges in Australia from 650 million years ago. You might think this is no big deal unless you consider that sea sponges were thought to have arisen 520 million years ago. These fossils predate the oldest hard bodied fossils we have by a hundred million years. Dr. Maloof is now wondering if life might have arisen twice after the first attempt was quashed 635 million years ago: 'Since animals probably did not evolve twice, we are suddenly confronted with the question of how some relative of these reef-dwelling animals survived the Snowball Earth.' So how is it that life survived the Marinoan glaciation? The BBC has a video on the topic and Wikipedia has a time line of the Proterozoic Eon into the Paleozoic Era.
Medicine

A Million Kids Misdiagnosed with ADHD? 711

Posted by CmdrTaco from the i-wasn't-one-of-them dept.
Jamie was one of several people who submitted links to a story proclaiming that as many as a million kids were misdiagnosed with ADHD simply for being the youngest and therefore least mature in their classes. Worse still, I wonder how many of those kids are permanently put on drugs.

Comment Re:Air Conditioning? (Score 2, Interesting) 195

by zurkog (#27598271) Attached to: Florida To Build Solar-Powered City

Modern folks think they are required to have air conditioning

Tallahassee resident and former South Florida resident here. Sure, A/C isn't required. Neither is an internet connection. Neither is electricity, if you want to debate the meaning of "required". But all of those are necessary for modern life. Summers in Florida without A/C consist primarily of sitting on a porch, fanning yourself and drinking iced tea. It makes for a nice "Andy Griffith" tableau, but for those of us not benefiting from coastal breezes (like Jacksonville), we'd rather get some work done.

As far as older folk and kids "keeling over", heat strokes do still happen, and they happened more frequently before air conditioning became commonplace. Sure, most of them are northern transplants who don't know you can suffer from dehydration without feeling thirsty.

All that being said, I think you're 100% correct about home design and landscaping. The amount of land here that has had its native live oaks bulldozed to make way for a subdivision with puny little trees in their front yards is mind boggling. I'd love to see more houses look like this, or at least landscaped according to this.

Comment Re:What's in that paper? (Score 1) 571

by zurkog (#27556667) Attached to: I prefer to consume my caffeine from a vessel of ...

we prefer to sip sweet things (like liqueurs) out of small glasses, and quaff bitter things (like beer) in pint glasses

There's something in what you say, evidenced by the tall thin shape of champagne flutes, but don't you think that liqueurs are sipped out of small glasses primarily because they're only served in small quantities? One shot of a liqueur in a pint glass would look ridiculous, and a pint glass full of a liqueur would... I'm getting a headache trying to imagine the near-fatal hangover that would cause.

Likewise, espresso is served in tiny quantities only. A full mug of espresso would be a recipe for cardiac arrest.
Internet Explorer

IE8 Will Be Standards-Compliant By Default 383

Posted by kdawson from the browsers-on-acid dept.
A number of readers wrote in to make sure we know about Microsoft's change of heart regarding IE8. The new version of the dominant browser will render in full standards mode by default. Developers wishing to use quirks mode for IE6- and IE7-compatible rendering will have to opt in explicitly. We've previously discussed IE8's render mode a few times. Perhaps Opera's complaint to the EU or the EU's record antitrust fine had something to do with Redmond's about-face.
Science

Large Sheets of Carbon Nanotubes Produced 155

Posted by Soulskill from the series-of-nanotubes dept.
StCredZero brings news that scientists have developed sheets of nanotubes that measure up to three feet by six feet, and they promise "slabs 100 square feet in area as soon as this summer." The developers see uses for the sheets in electromagnetic shields and airplane construction, and according to the Next Big Future blog, the sheets could also impact the development of solar sails. "The sheets, which the company can produce on its single machine at a rate of one per day, are composed of a series of nanotubes each about a millimeter long, overlapping each other randomly to form a thin mat. The tensile strength of the mat ranges from 200 to 500 megapascals--a measure of how tough it is to break. A sheet of aluminum of equivalent thickness, for comparison, has a strength of 500 megapascals. If Nanocomp takes further steps to align the nanotubes, the strength jumps to 1,200 megapascals."
Robotics

Artificial Intelligence at Human Level by 2029? 678

Posted by Zonk from the i-need-me-an-implanted-robot-buddy dept.
Gerard Boyers writes "Some members of the US National Academy of Engineering have predicted that Artificial Intelligence will reach the level of humans in around 20 years. Ray Kurzweil leads the charge: 'We will have both the hardware and the software to achieve human level artificial intelligence with the broad suppleness of human intelligence including our emotional intelligence by 2029. We're already a human machine civilization, we use our technology to expand our physical and mental horizons and this will be a further extension of that. We'll have intelligent nanobots go into our brains through the capillaries and interact directly with our biological neurons.' Mr Kurzweil is one of 18 influential thinkers, and a gentleman we've discussed previously. He was chosen to identify the great technological challenges facing humanity in the 21st century by the US National Academy of Engineering. The experts include Google founder Larry Page and genome pioneer Dr Craig Venter."

Feed Engadget: Incandescent light bulbs be to shelved by 2012 in US (engadget.com)

From feed by engfeed

Filed under: Household

Better late than never, right? Regardless of your feelings on said mantra, the United States of America has finally passed a law barring stores from selling incandescent light bulbs after 2012. 'Course, the EU and Australia have already decided to ditch the inefficient devices in the not-too-distant future, but a new energy bill signed into law this week throws the US into the aforementioned group. Better grab a pack of the current bulbs while you still can -- soon you'll be holding a sliver of history.

[Image courtesy of HD]

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Comment Why? (Score 1) 378

by PulledPorkNacho (#15999338) Attached to: Original Star Trek Getting CGI Makeover
IMHO, the effects were great for their time and were/are an important part of what the show was/is. Simply because we have the technology to change the show doesn't mean that we should. Now, maybe using all that money to hire some new writers and new blood to the Trek family, well, that might be worthwhile, IMHO

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