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Submission + - Chemists discover new way to harness energy from ammonia (phys.org) 1

Submitted by fahrbot-bot
fahrbot-bot writes: A research team at the University of Wisconsin-Madison has identified a new way to convert ammonia to nitrogen gas through a process that could be a step toward ammonia replacing carbon-based fuels.

The discovery of this technique, which uses a metal catalyst and releases—rather than requires—energy, was reported Nov. 8 in Nature Chemistry and has received a provisional patent from the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation.

The scientists were excited to find that the addition of ammonia to a metal catalyst containing the platinum-like element ruthenium spontaneously produced nitrogen, which means that no added energy was required. Instead, this process can be harnessed to produce electricity, with protons and nitrogen gas as byproducts. In addition, the metal complex can be recycled through exposure to oxygen and used repeatedly, all a much cleaner process than using carbon-based fuels.

"We figured out that, not only are we making nitrogen, we are making it under conditions that are completely unprecedented," says Berry, who is the Lester McNall Professor of Chemistry and focuses his research efforts on transition metal chemistry. "To be able to complete the ammonia-to-nitrogen reaction under ambient conditions—and get energy—is a pretty big deal."

Ammonia has been burned as a fuel source for many years. During World War II, it was used in automobiles, and scientists today are considering ways to burn it in engines as a replacement for gasoline, particularly in the maritime industry. However, burning ammonia releases toxic nitrogen oxide gases.

The new reaction avoids those toxic byproducts. If the reaction were housed in a fuel cell where ammonia and ruthenium react at an electrode surface, it could cleanly produce electricity without the need for a catalytic converter.
Programming

More Than Coding Errors Behind Bad Software 726

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the bad-decisions-go-all-the-way-up dept.
An anonymous reader writes "SANS' just-released list of the Top 15 most dangerous programming errors obscures the real problem with software development today, argues InfoWeek's Alex Wolfe. In More Than Coding Mistakes At Fault In Bad Software, he lays the blame on PC developers (read: Microsoft) who kicked the time-honored waterfall model to the curb and replaced it not with object-oriented or agile development but with a 'modus operandi of cramming in as many features as possible, and then fixing problems in beta.' He argues that youthful programmers don't know about error-catching and lack a sense of history, suggesting they read Fred Brooks' 'The Mythical Man-Month,' and Gerald Weinberg's 'The Psychology of Computer Programming.'"

Comment New Battery Not All That Innovative (Score 1) 1079

by dmyurych (#26349113) Attached to: Apple Intros 17" Unibody MBP, DRM-Free iTunes

I worked in retail selling batteries for a spell so I took a look at the Apple website at what they had to say about the new battery for the MacBook Pro. I would say Apple doesn't seem to be doing anything new other than making it bigger (in part by eliminating the ability to easily remove it).

The entire notebook industry has been moving to Lithium Polymer for the last several years. Li-Poly is still classified as Lithium Ion technology but with advancements over the previous generation of Li-Ion. One of these advancements is the shape of the cells from the cylindrical form to pretty much any form desirable. So this is hardly innovative unless your comparing it to batteries from five year old notebooks.

Adaptive charging also doesn't seem to be new. Li-Ion batteries have always required special circuitry in the chargers to ensure a safe charge as well as prolong the life of the battery (you're asking for trouble if you try and charge a Li-Ion with a straight trickle charge with no feedback from the battery). Maybe Apple's new adaptive charging has made significant advances over it's competitors, but they certainly didn't invent it like they seem to imply.

There are only a handful of large manufacturers of Li-Ion cells in the world (all in the far east I believe). Apple may be assembling these cells into their own batteries but I'm sure there is nothing special about the cells that any of the other notebook manufacturers couldn't incorporate into their own Notebooks as well. Yet from the Apple's website you'd think they had their own chemists and engineers developing batteries from scratch.

So it seems that they crammed a bigger battery into the new MacBook Pro and therefore it has a longer life over a single charge. Which not being able to easily remove does not bother me as long as it is still serviceable (that is replace the cells like you would RAM or the hard-drive by opening up the case) five years from now when it might make a useful second-hand computer. It doesn't sound like they've come up with anything special that would prolong the overall life of the battery either. Or are they exaggerating this claim as well. Does anyone know the typical recharge cycle ratings on any recent and up-to-date Li-Poly notebook batteries?

Since this is something I know a little about, it seems to me to be another example of how companies get away with deceiving people about how something is supposedly so innovative and better than everyone else's.

By the way I have a two year old MacBook running OSX and Ubuntu so I'm not an Apple hater by a long shot.
Operating Systems

What Needs Fixing In Linux 865

Posted by CmdrTaco from the or-what-needs-breaking-in-windows dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Infoweek's Fixing Linux: What's Broken And What To Do About It argues that the 17-year-old open-source operating system still has problems. Leading the list is author Serdar Yegulap's complaint that the kernel application binary interfaces are a moving target. He writes: 'The sheer breadth of kernel interfaces means it's entirely possible for something to break in a way that might not even show up in a fairly rigorous code review.' Also on his list of needed fixes are: a consistent configuration system, to enable distribution; native file versioning; audio APIs; and the integration of X11 with apps. Finally, he argues that Linux needs a committee to insure that all GUIs work consistently and integrate better on the back-end with the kernel."
Businesses

Can You Be Denied the Right To Support OSS? 212

Posted by Soulskill from the oss-enterprise dept.
jerico.dev writes "I am currently selecting a CM tool for a project. Important condition: the software must be OSI compliant. I considered Alfresco, since they call themselves 'open source.' Then I heard from several of Alfresco's partners that they are not allowed to do projects based on Alfresco's GPL edition because their partnership contract denied them the right to do so. They only can support Alfresco's enterprise edition. But Alfresco's VP of business development Matt Asay told me that their enterprise edition is not OSI compliant. Does anyone in the Slashdot crowd have experience with partner contracts of other OSS vendors? Is it normal that Sun, Red Hat, etc. force their partners to decline projects based on their open source editions? It's probably legal to do so, but do you think it is legitimate and fair?"

Is Windows 7 Faster Or Just Smarter? 619

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the perception-is-reality dept.
Barence writes "The Windows 7 unveiling garnered largely positive coverage, with many hands-on testers praising it for being faster than Vista. But is it actually? To find out, this blogger ran a suite of benchmarks to see just how much quicker Windows 7 really is — and the results weren't quite what he expected. 'The actual performance gap between Vista and Windows 7 is ... nada. Absolutely nothing. Our Office benchmarks and video encoding tests complete in precisely the same time regardless of which OS is installed. [...] It's tempting to see this as a bit of a con. They've sped up the front end so it feels like you're getting more done, but in terms of real productivity it's no better than Vista."
Upgrades

NVIDIA Makes First 4GB Graphics Card 292

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the making-everything-else-cheaper dept.
Frogger writes to tell us NVIDIA has released what they are calling the most powerful graphics card in history. With 4GB of graphics memory and 240 CUDA-programmable parallel cores, this monster sure packs a punch, although, with a $3,500 price tag, it certainly should. Big-spenders can rejoice at a new shiny, and the rest of us can be happy with the inevitable price shift in the more reasonable models.
The Almighty Buck

$700 Billion Bailout Signed Into Law 857

Posted by kdawson from the how-4-pages-becomes-400 dept.
Many readers reminded us of what no-one can have failed to hear: that the Congress passed and the President signed a $700B bailout bill in an attempt to avert the meltdown of the US economy. The bill allocates $700 billion to the Treasury Department for the purchase of so-called "toxic assets" that have been weighing down Wall Street balance sheets. This isn't particularly a tech story, though tech will be affected as will virtually all parts of the economy, and not just in the US. Among the $110B in so-called pork added to the bill to sway reluctant legislators are extensions of popular tax benefits for business R&D and alternative energy, relief for the growing pool of people subject to the alternative minimum tax, and a provision raising the FDIC's ceiling of guaranteed deposits to $250,000. Some limits were also imposed on executive compensation, though it's unclear whether they will be effective.

Comment How Can One Block thiese Military Topics? (Score 1) 148

by dmyurych (#24771237) Attached to: "Shimmer Vision" Scopes See Better Using Heat

Anyone know how I can block these Military type topics from my Slashdot view? It appears under the technology section which I don't want to block as a whole.

If there is no way and someone of power is reading this, do you think the military topics could be moved to their own section. The slashdot of old rarely had such articles whereas they seem to becoming more and more common these days. I'm sure I'm not the only one who is not interested in the US military's latest and greatest tools to maim and kill.
Space

Cassini Probes the Hexagon On Saturn 280

Posted by kdawson from the monoliths dept.
Riding with Robots sends us to a NASA page with photos of a little-understood hexagonal shape surrounding Saturn's north pole. "This is a very strange feature, lying in a precise geometric fashion with six nearly equally straight sides," said Kevin Baines, member of Cassini's visual and infrared mapping spectrometer team. "We've never seen anything like this on any other planet." This structure was discovered by the Voyager probes over 20 years ago (here's an 18-year-old note on the mystery). The fact that it's still in place means it is stable and long-lived. Scientists have no idea what causes the hexagon. It's nearly big enough to fit four earths inside — comfortably larger than Jupiter's Great Red Spot. The article has an animation of clouds moving within the hexagon captured in infrared light.
AMD

The CPU Redefined: AMD Torrenze and Intel CSI 200

Posted by Hemos from the i-believe-the-children-are-our-future dept.
janp writes "In the near future the Central Processing Unit (CPU) will not be as central anymore. AMD has announced the Torrenza platform that revives the concept of co-processors. Intel is also taking steps in this direction with the announcement of the CSI. With these technologies in the future we can put special chips (GPU's, APU's, etc. etc.) directly on the motherboard in a special socket. Hardware.Info has published a clear introduction to AMD Torrenza and Intel CSI and sneak peaks into the future of processors."
Red Hat Software

Raymond Knocks Fedora, Switches to Ubuntu 608

Posted by Zonk from the one-unhappy-penguin dept.
narramissic writes "After 13 years as a loyal Red Hat user, Eric Raymond, co-founder of the Open Source Initiative, is switching to the Ubuntu distribution. In a message distributed to Linux mailing lists and news organizations, Raymond cited technical issues with Red Hat, such as the way repositories are maintained, the submission process and 'stagnant' development of Red Hat's packaging technology, as well as governance problems, the failure to gain desktop market share and the failure to include proprietary media formats. 'Over the last five years, I've watched Red Hat/Fedora throw away what was at one time a near-unassailable lead in technical prowess, market share and community prestige,' Raymond wrote. 'The blunders have been legion on both technical and political levels.'"

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