Journal Journal: Stomach transplant 3
Over the last year or so, my Roomba became very ill and wouldn't eat. Charging it just made the battery hot, and it would only run a few minutes. Without treatment, it was not going to have a normal life.
Submission + - Free global virtual scientific library
An anonymous reader writes: More than 20,000 signatures, including several Nobel prize winners and 750 education, research, and cultural organisations from around the world came together to support free access to government funded research, "to create a freely available virtual scientific library available to the entire globe.
The European Commission responded by committing more than $100m (£51m) towards facilitating greater open access through support for open access journals and for the building of the infrastructure needed to house institutional repositories that can store the millions of academic articles written each year.
From the BBC article:
"Last month five leading European research institutions launched a petition that called on the European Commission to establish a new policy that would require all government-funded research to be made available to the public shortly after publication.
That requirement — called an open access principle — would leverage widespread internet connectivity with low-cost electronic publication to create a freely available virtual scientific library available to the entire globe."
Isn't this the way its suppose to be?
Patent Office Head Lays Out Reform Strategy 253
jeevesbond writes to tell us that Jon Dudas, the Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and Director of the US Patent and Trademark Office has laid out a plan for patent reform. "Speaking at the Tech Policy Summit in San Jose, Dudas said that characterizing the patent system as hurting innovation is a 'fundamentally wrong' way to frame the debate. 'I have traveled around the world, and every nation is thinking how it can model [intellectual property governance] after the U.S,' Dudas said. 'It's a proven system, over 200 years old. The Supreme Court, Congress and policy makers are involved [in cases and legal reforms] not because the system is broken. It's not perfect, and we should be having the debate on how to improve.'"
Submission + - First graphene transistor
An anonymous reader writes: UK researchers are announcing the first ever workable transistor made of graphene — that's one layer of carbon atoms. It's thinner and smaller than a silicon transistor can ever be, and it works at room temperature. When silicon electronics are dead, this is what's going to take over. There's slight controversy as they decided to announce their results via a review article, rather than wait for their (submitted) peer review paper to come out.
This has been covered in Nature (nice explanation of how it works): http://www.nature.com/news/2007/070226/full/070226 -10.html
and in Chemistry World (account of controversy/who else has claimed it, + some more about graphene): http://www.rsc.org/chemistryworld/News/2007/Februa ry/28020703.asp
and in New Scientist: http://www.newscientisttech.com/article/dn11276-at omthick-carbon-transistor-could-succeed-silicon.ht ml
This has been covered in Nature (nice explanation of how it works): http://www.nature.com/news/2007/070226/full/07022
and in Chemistry World (account of controversy/who else has claimed it, + some more about graphene): http://www.rsc.org/chemistryworld/News/2007/Febru
and in New Scientist: http://www.newscientisttech.com/article/dn11276-a
Canada Rejects Anti-Terror Laws 507
Coryoth writes "The Canadian parliament has voted against renewing anti-terror laws that had been introduced after September 11, 2001. The rejected laws included provisions to hold terror suspects indefinitely, and to compel witnesses to testify, and were in some sense Canada's version fo the Patriot Act. The laws were voted down in the face of claims from the minority Conservative government that the Liberal Party was soft on terror, and despite the fact that Canada has faced active terrorist cells in their own country. The anti-terror laws have never been used, and it was viewed that they are neither relevant, nor needed, in dealing with terrorist plots. Hopefully more countries will come to the same conclusion."
Submission + - Watermark web spider starts crawling
DippityDo writes: A new web tool is scanning the net for signs of copyright infringement. Digimarc's patented system searches video and audio files for special watermarks that would indicate they are not to be shared, then reports back to HQ with the results. It sounds kind of creepy, but has a long way to go before it makes a practical difference. "For the system to work, players at multiple levels would need to get involved. Broadcasters would need to add identifying watermarks to their broadcast, in cooperation with copyright holders, and both parties would need to register their watermarks with the system. Then, in the event that a user capped a broadcast and uploaded it online, the scanner system would eventually find it and report its location online. Yet the system is not designed to hop on P2P networks or private file sharing hubs, but instead crawls public web sites in search of watermarked material."
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Karl's version of Parkinson's Law: Work expands to exceed the time alloted it.
