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Submission + - Flesh-eating bacteria inspires highly selective instant adhesive (gizmag.com)

Submitted by cylonlover
cylonlover writes: A strong and highly selective instant adhesive inspired by the bacterium Streptococcus pyogenes has been developed by Oxford University researchers. S. pyogenes is a common resident of human throats that is normally kept in check by the body's defenses, but when it gets out of control it can cause diseases ranging from strep throat to toxic shock syndrome or flesh-eating disease. By engineering a protein that is central to S. pyogenes' infectious arsenal, the researchers have developed a new superglue that can't be matched for sticking molecules together and not letting go.

Submission + - EA Making a Command and Conquer MMO? (gamereplays.org)

Submitted by TheProphet92
TheProphet92 writes: Starcraft 2 has a near-unlimited budget thanks to Blizzard's World of Warcraft, but EA's Real-Time Strategy game development has no such luxury. EA has been milking their game engines for all they're worth and then some. They have been using the same "Sage" game engine for the past half-dozen or so RTS games, and they need money to make a new one. Perhaps an MMO is the way to go for EA, using none other than their famous Command and Conquer franchise.
Books

In Trial, Kindles Disappointing University Users 247

Posted by kdawson from the write-on dept.
Phurge writes "When Princeton announced its Kindle e-reader pilot program last May, administrators seemed cautiously optimistic that the e-readers would both be sustainable and serve as a valuable academic tool. But less than two weeks after 50 students received the free Kindle DX e-readers, many of them said they were dissatisfied and uncomfortable with the devices. 'I hate to sound like a Luddite, but this technology is a poor excuse of an academic tool,' said Aaron Horvath, a student in Civil Society and Public Policy. 'It's clunky, slow and a real pain to operate.' 'Much of my learning comes from a physical interaction with the text: bookmarks, highlights, page-tearing, sticky notes and other marks representing the importance of certain passages — not to mention margin notes, where most of my paper ideas come from and interaction with the material occurs,' he explained. 'All these things have been lost, and if not lost they're too slow to keep up with my thinking, and the "features" have been rendered useless.'"

Comment More interestingly... (Score 5, Insightful) 638

by TheProphet92 (#29507973) Attached to: Soviets Built a Doomsday Machine; It's Still Alive
...is the fact that it was designed by the Russians to stop them from making a pre-emptive strike. With an automatic retaliation system in place, Russia gets its revenge whether or not there are any survivors. There was no reason to announce its existence when its purpose is not to prevent your enemy from attacking you, but instead to prevent you from attacking your enemy.
The Military

Soviets Built a Doomsday Machine; It's Still Alive 638

Posted by kdawson from the dead-hand dept.
An anonymous reader points out a story in Wired introducing us to the Doomsday Machine built by the Soviet Union in the 1980s — and that remains active to this day. It was called "Perimeter." The article explains why the device was built, and why the Soviets considered it to be something that kept the peace, even though they never told the US about it. "[Reagan's] strategy worked. Moscow soon believed the new US leadership really was ready to fight a nuclear war. But the Soviets also became convinced that the US was now willing to start a nuclear war. ... A few months later, Reagan... announced that the US was going to develop a shield of lasers and nuclear weapons in space to defend against Soviet warheads. ... To Moscow it was the Death Star — and it confirmed that the US was planning an attack. ... By guaranteeing that Moscow could hit back, Perimeter was actually designed to keep an overeager Soviet military or civilian leader from launching prematurely during a crisis. The point, [an informant] says, was 'to cool down all these hotheads and extremists. No matter what was going to happen, there still would be revenge. Those who attack us will be punished.'"
Real Time Strategy (Games)

Submission + - Red Alert 3 Expansion Announced

Submitted by
TheProphet92
TheProphet92 writes: "Electronic Arts has announced a single-player only add-on to their popular real-time strategy game, Command and Conquer: Red Alert 3. The expansion features new units and more campaign levels to play. Although not a part of the expansion, 25 new multiplayer maps will be released as part of a patch. 12 of them are 1v1 maps and the remaining 13 are 2v2. http://www.gamereplays.org/redalert3/portals.php?show=news&news_id=439889"

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