Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
Power

Stanford's New Solar Tech Harnesses Heat, Light 117

Posted by Soulskill from the doubling-down dept.
An anonymous reader writes with this excerpt from a Stanford news release: "Stanford engineers have figured out how to simultaneously use the light and heat of the sun to generate electricity in a way that could make solar power production more than twice as efficient as existing methods and potentially cheap enough to compete with oil. Unlike photovoltaic technology currently used in solar panels — which becomes less efficient as the temperature rises — the new process excels at higher temperatures. ... 'This is really a conceptual breakthrough, a new energy conversion process, not just a new material or a slightly different tweak,' said Nick Melosh, an assistant professor of materials science and engineering, who led the research group. 'It is actually something fundamentally different about how you can harvest energy.' And the materials needed to build a device to make the process work are cheap and easily available, meaning the power that comes from it will be affordable." The abstract for the researchers' paper is available at Nature.
Piracy

Study Finds 0.3% of BitTorrent Files Definitely Legal 321

Posted by timothy from the can-we-call-that-vanishingly dept.
A user writes "It's common knowledge that the majority of files distributed over BitTorrent violate copyright, though the exact percentage is unclear. The Internet Commerce Security Laboratory of the University of Ballarat in Australia has conducted a study and found that 89% of files examined were in fact infringing, while most of the remaining 11% were ambiguous but likely to be infringing. Ars Technica summarizes the study: 'The total sample consisted of 1,000 torrent files—a random selection from the most active seeded files on the trackers they used. Each file was manually checked to see whether it was being legally distributed. Only three cases—0.3 percent of the files—were determined to be definitely not infringing, while 890 files were confirmed to be illegal. ' The study brings with it some other interesting statistics; out of the 1,000 files, 91 were pornographic, and approximately 4% of torrents were responsible for 80% of seeders. Music, movies and TV shows constituted the three largest categories of shared materials, and among those, zero legal files were found."

Comment This proves AQ are nice guys (Score 5, Funny) 187

by ewn1453 (#33010788) Attached to: Utah State Prof Says Hybrids Don't Kill More Pedestrians
Preliminary data seemed to show that Al-Qaeda were violent terrorists. But now AQ enthusiast Mark Larson (he's also an Emeritus Professor of Spanish at Utah State University) has analyzed some additional data and found this not be the case at all. He used 1988-2001 crime data from the Uniform Crime Report and found that the murder rate in fact fell over that same period.

Comment The revamp (Score 1) 1

by ewn1453 (#32782554) Attached to: Google News revamped, to loud criticism
The revamp appears to be part of the general trend away from hierarchically organized information and towards personalized streams. I personally think this trend is a bad thing, but many others disagree (e.g. http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/gelernter10/gelernter10_index.html). Fortunately the redesign really only affects the top stories section.
Government

Submission + - UK Government launches "Your Freedom" website (newstatesman.com)

Submitted by Firefalcon
Firefalcon writes: The UK Government today launched the "Your Freedom" website, headed by the Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg, to "identify laws that should be repealed" (read more on the BBC).

In a recent tweet, Police State UK pointed out an article in the New Statesman which appeals for people to call on the Government to repeal the ill thought out Digital Economy Act that was rushed through Parliament without sufficient scrutiny.

While part of the Act is regarding the digital TV switchover, other sections allow for users to be restricted or disconnected from the Internet at the behest of copyright owners, which goes against the principle of "innocent until proven guilty" that has been in place since the Magna Carta.
Idle

Submission + - Mom charged for son's dry ice experiment. (omaha.com)

Submitted by formfeed
formfeed writes: This just in from the you-must-be-kidding-me department:


Police was called to a house in Omaha where a 14 year old made some "dry ice bombs" ( dry ice in soda bottles).



Since the mom knew about it, she is now facing felony charges for child abuse and possession of a destructive device.

Comment Start a new website/journal (Score 1) 279

by ewn1453 (#32686722) Attached to: Best Way To Publish an "Indie" Research Paper?
Start a new website, indiepaper.org or something, for people like you. This will take less effort than writing a paper, submitting it, rewriting it, resubmitting it, etc. Also, even if your paper is not a huge it, the website will be. Mention it on Slashdot when it is complete. It will get a huge number of submissions, 90% junk, 9.9% mediocre and 0.1% genius. It will be like the Wikipedia of academic journals.

Comment $1 trillion is not that much (Score 1) 184

by ewn1453 (#32627736) Attached to: Afghan Tech Minerals — Cure, Curse, Or Hype?
The problem is that 1 trillion dollars is not that much. Afghanistan's population is 30 million and assuming the wealth is extracted over 100 years, we get 10^12/30/10^6/100=333 dollars per person per year. Assuming that half goes to foreigners providing capital and expertise, we get 167 dollars. Considering the probably very substantial environmental and opportunity costs, it may not be worth it at all.

Slashdot Top Deals

When we write programs that "learn", it turns out we do and they don't.

Close