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Earth

Engineers Devise a Way To Harvest Wind Energy From Trees (vice.com) 75

Posted by yaelk from the harvesting-energy dept.
derekmead writes: Harvesting electrical power from vibrations or other mechanical stress is pretty easy. Turns out all it really takes is a bit of crystal or ceramic material and a couple of wires and, there you go, piezoelectricity. As stress is applied to the material, charge accumulates, which can then be shuttled away to do useful work. The classic example is an electric lighter, in which a spring-loaded hammer smacks a crystal, producing a spark. Another example is described in a new paper in the Journal of Sound and Vibration, courtesy of engineers at Ohio State's Laboratory of Sound and Vibration Research. The basic idea behind the energy harvesting platform: exploit the natural internal resonances of trees within tiny artificial forests capable of generating enough voltage to power sensors and structural monitoring systems.

Comment Re:A more interesting question... (Score 1) 889

by mikrus (#50485403) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: What Windows-Only Apps Would You Most Like To See On Linux?

What Linux-only apps would you like to see available on Windows?

I really love my wobbly windows on linux. Not necessarily an app. But there is something about the wobbliness that I really like. Even the name is perfect. :)
It would be great if it became available on MS windows.
Encryption

More Encryption Is Not the Solution 207

Posted by Soulskill from the more-cowbell-still-in-the-running dept.
CowboyRobot writes "Poul-Henning Kamp argues that the 'recent exposure of the dragnet-style surveillance of Internet traffic has provoked a number of responses that are variations of the general formula: "More encryption is the solution." This is not the case. In fact, more encryption will probably only make the privacy crisis worse than it already is.' His argument takes a few turns, but centers on a scenario that is a bit too easy to imagine: a government coercing software developers into disabling their encryption: 'There are a whole host of things one could buy to weaken encryption. I would contact providers of popular cloud and "whatever-as-service" providers and make them an offer they couldn't refuse: on all HTTPS connections out of the country, the symmetric key cannot be random; it must come from a dictionary of 100 million random-looking keys that I provide. The key from the other side? Slip that in there somewhere, and I can find it (encrypted in a Set-Cookie header?). In the long run, nobody is going to notice that the symmetric keys are not random — you would have to scrutinize the key material in many thousands of connections before you would even start to suspect something was wrong.'"
Google

Bug Bounty Hunters Weigh In On Google's Vulnerability Reporting Program 24

Posted by samzenpus from the professional-swatter dept.
An anonymous reader writes "InfoWorld reached out to three security researchers who participate in Google's vulnerability reporting program, through which the company now offers as much as $20,000 for bug reports. They provided some insightful perspectives on what Google (and other companies, such as Mozilla) are doing right in paying bounties on bugs, as well as where there's some room for improvement."
NASA

Submission + - NASA's "arsenic microbe" science under fire

Submitted by radioweather
radioweather writes: The cryptic press release NASA made last week that set the blogosphere afire with conjecture, which announced: "NASA will hold a news conference at 2 p.m. EST on Thursday, Dec. 2, to discuss an astrobiology finding that will impact the search for evidence of extraterrestrial life." may be a case of "go fever" science pushed too quickly by press release. A scathing article in Slate.com lists some very prominent microbiologists who say the NASA backed study is seriously flawed and that the finding may be based on something a simple as poor sample washing to remove phosphate contamination. One of the scientists, Shelley Copley of the University of Colorado said “This paper should not have been published,” while another, John Roth of UC-Davis says: "I suspect that NASA may be so desperate for a positive story that they didn't look for any serious advice from DNA or even microbiology people," The experience reminded some of another press conference NASA held in 1996. Scientists unveiled a meteorite from Mars in which they said there were microscopic fossils. A number of critics condemned the report (also published in Science) for making claims it couldn't back up.
NASA

Submission + - Dying Man Shares Unseen Challenger Video (nycaviation.com) 1

Submitted by longacre
longacre writes: An amateur video of the 1986 Space Shuttle Challenger explosion has been made public for the first time. The Florida man who filmed it from his front yard on his new Betamax camcorder turned the tape over to an educational organization a week before he died this past December. The Space Exploration Archive has since published the video into the public domain in time for the 24th anniversary of the catastrophe. Despite being shot from about 70 miles from Cape Canaveral, the shuttle and the explosion can be seen quite clearly. It is unclear why he never shared the footage with NASA or the media. NASA officials say they were not aware of the video, but are interested in examining it now that it has been made available.
Biotech

Journal Journal: So Long, Baiji 175

Journal by ozmanjusri
After 20 million years, Baiji (Yangtze River Dolphin) are now officially extinct http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,292932,00.html.

"It's a relic species, more than 20 million years old, that persisted through the most amazing kinds of changes in the planet," said marine biologist Barbara Taylor at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Fisheries Service. "It's been here longer than the Andes Mountains have been on Earth."

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