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Biotech

Self-Destructing Bacteria Create Better Biofuels 139

MikeChino writes "Researchers at Arizona State University have genetically engineered cyanobacteria to dissolve from the inside out, making it easy to access the high-energy fats and biofuel byproducts located within. To do this they combined the bacteria's genes with genes from the bacteriaphage — a so-called 'mortal enemy' of bacteria that cause it to explode. Cyanobacteria have a higher yield potential than most biofuels currently being used, and this new strain eliminates the need for costly and energy intensive processing steps."
Hardware Hacking

Physically-Challenged Gamer Hacks Together Custom PS3 Controller 50

Destructoid has a neat post about a gamer whose condition prevents him from using a standard video game controller. With the help of a company called GimpGear, which markets devices for people with limited mobility, he designed and built a custom input device that makes use of fingers, toes, and even sips or puffs of air to control his favorite games. Pictures and a video of the setup are both available in the post.
Movies

Submission + - Study Finds Film Enjoyment Is Contagious 1

Hugh Pickens writes: "My wife I enjoy watching old movies on a big screen tv in our family room where we can close all the doors and shutter the windows to simulate the ambiance of a theater but there has always been something missing from the experience. Now a report from Science Daily says that scientists have proven that the presence of other people may enhance our movie-watching experiences by influencing one another and gradually synchronizing their emotional responses. This mutual mimicry also affects each participant's evaluation of the overall experience — the more in sync we are with the people around us, the more we like the movie. In a series of experiments, researchers had participants watch a video clip. Some of the participants watched alone, some with other people whose expressions could not be seen due to the presence of a partition, and some with other people whose expressions could be seen. The researchers found that people watching a film together appeared to evaluate the film within the same broad mood and another study found that synchrony of evaluations can be traced to glances at the other person during the film and adoption of the observed expressions. "By mimicking expressions, people catch each other's moods leading to a shared emotional experience. That feels good to people and they attribute that good feeling to the quality of the movie," said one researcher."
Security

Submission + - The Physical Hacks at DefCon (physorg.com)

eldavojohn writes: "As we all know, DefCon is occurring in Vegas this weekend but Saturday held a room that focused on possibly the oldest form of hacking — lockpicking. That's right, as software security becomes better and better, the focus may instead shift towards simple hacking tips like looking over someone's shoulder for their password, faking employment or just picking the locks to gain access to the building where machines are left on overnight. This is nothing to sneeze at, "Medeco deadbolt locks relied on worldwide at embassies, banks and other tempting targets for thieves, spies or terrorists can be opened in seconds with a strip of metal and a thin screw driver, Marc Tobias of Security.org demonstrated for AFP ... Tobias says he refuses to publish details of 'defeating' the locks because they are used in places ranging from homes, banks and jewelers to the White House and the Pentagon. He asked AFP not to disclose how it is done." I'm sure all Slashdot readers are savvy enough to use firewall(s) but do you know and trust what locks 'physically' protect your data from hacks like these?"
Space

Submission + - The Fermi Paradox: Back with a vengeance

nettxzl writes: "(urls fixed) Sentient Developments revisits the Fermi Paradox which is "the contradictory and counter-intuitive observation that we have yet to see any evidence for the existence of Extra Terrestrial Intelligence (ETI) although the size and age of the Universe suggests that many technologically advanced ETI's ought to exist." Sentient Development's blog post on the Fermi Paradox states that "a number of inter-disciplinary breakthroughs and insights have contributed to the Fermi Paradox gaining credence as an unsolved scientific problem" Amongst these are "(1)Improved quantification and conceptualization of our cosmological environment, (2) Improved understanding of planet formation, composition and the presence of habitable zones, (3) The discovery of extrasolar planets, (4) Confirmation of the rapid origination of life on Earth (5) Growing legitimacy of panspermia theories" and more ... So, where is everyone?
Linux Business

Submission + - Advocating Linux / OSS to Management.

An anonymous reader writes: I'm the Senior Developer at a fairly large agency, we're currently a 100% LAMP shop, but I've heard a reliable report through the grapevine that the management a few levels above our office wants to standardize our region on MS .NET. As I'm sure most of you can appreciate, to do such a thing would be... counterproductive, and I could really do with a hand conveying this to a manager whose only real knowledge of Linux is "if it's so good, why would you give it away for free"?

If worst comes to worst, and this decision ends up going ahead, I'll most likely have to continue my career elsewhere, but in the meanwhile, I'd really like to try and save myself from having to go down that route, because I really like this company, it's been a great job with interesting clients and a fantastic work environment. Any advice you can give me, fellow slashdottians?
Patents

Submission + - Brazil voids Merck AIDS drug patent

JoeBackward writes: "Merck has this useful anti-AIDS drug Elfavirenz, and Brazil has lots of poor people with AIDS. So, after trying really hard to get Merck to cooperate on pricing, the Brazilian government has decided to take a "compulsory license" to the patent, and get the drug from a factory in India. This "compulsory license" is basically a way to take the patent by eminent domain. Check out this story from the Reuters news agency."
Security

Submission + - TSA Loses Hard Drive With Personnel Info

WrongSizeGlass writes: a portable hard drive containing personnel data for former and current employees, went missing from a controlled area at the TSA."
From the article:
"The Transportation Security Administration has lost a computer hard drive containing Social Security numbers, bank data and payroll information for about 100,000 employees."

Should we be expect better internal security from a security agency or should everyone just stop putting personnel data on removable media?
The Media

Submission + - Market Share vs Installed Base: iPod, Zune, Mac

redrum writes: Analysts and reporters like to talk about market share statistics, but the conclusions they draw are often misleading, RDM reports. Market Share Myth 2007: iPod vs Zune and Mac vs PC takes a look at how numbers are used to paint grossly inaccurate portrayals of the market share of the Zune among iPods, and alternatively the Mac among PCs. A follow up article, Market Share vs Installed Base: iPod vs Zune, Mac vs PC demonstrates how the conventional wisdom of market share reporting can be turned upside down by simply comparing what vendors actually sell. An eye opening, in depth look at the real numbers behind PCs, music players, and console games.
Linux Business

Submission + - Which Embedded Linux Distribution?

Abhikhurana writes: I work for a company which designs a variety of video surveillance devices (such as MPEG4 video servers). Traditionally, these products have been based on proprietory OSs such as Nucleus and VxWorks. Now we are redesigning a few of our products and I am trying to convince my company to go down the Linux route. Understandably, our management is quite sceptical about that and so I was asked by our CTO to recommend a few RTOSs which have mature Networking stacks and which work well on ARM platform. I know that there are many embedded linux based distributions out there. There are commerical ones such as Montavista, LynuxWorks, free ones such as uclinux, muLinux and some Linux like distros such as Ecos, but which is the most stable and best community supported embedded Linux distribution out there?
Space

Submission + - Astronaut to undertake record breaking spacewalk

MattSparkes writes: "Two residents of the International Space Station will take a spacewalk tomorrow to try to jam a stuck antenna on a docked cargo ship back into place. The spacewalk will set a US record of over 65 hours spacewalk experience. During the spacewalk, the astronauts will "use a hammer and a chisel to try to pound the antenna into place". Precision engineering at its very best I'm sure you'll agree."

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