Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror

Submission + - scientists discover diamond nanothreads (cnn.com)

Submitted by sokol815
sokol815 writes: Penn State University scientists discovered diamond nanothreads can be created from benzene when compressed. The compression brings the benzene molecules into a highly reactive state. It was expected that the molecules would create a non-ordered glass-like material, but due to the slow speed of decompression used, the benzene molecules ordered themselves into a naturally repeating crystal. The experiment took place at room-temperature. Early results indicate that these nanothreads are stronger than previously produced carbon nanotubes, and may have applications throughout the engineering industry.

Submission + - Internet Sales Tax Bill Dead In Congress (itworld.com)

Submitted by jfruh
jfruh writes: Last year, a bipartisan coalition helped get the Main Street Fairness Act, which would allow state and local governments to collect sales taxes on Internet sales by companies in different jurisdictions, approved by the U.S. Senate. But House Speaker John Boehner, a longtime opponent of Internet taxes, won't bring the matter to a vote in the House before the end of the year, which should kill it for the immediate future.

Submission + - Blind people can echolocate like bats (sciencemag.org)

Submitted by sciencehabit
sciencehabit writes: Blind from infancy, Daniel Kish learned as a young boy to judge his height while climbing trees by making rapid clicking noises and listening for their echoes off the ground. No one taught him the technique, which is now recognized as a human form of echolocation. Like Kish, a handful of blind echolocators worldwide have taught themselves to use clicks and echoes to navigate their surroundings with impressive ease—Kish can even ride his bike down the street. A study of sighted people newly trained to echolocate now suggests that the secret to Kish’s skill isn’t just supersensitive ears. Instead, the entire body, neck, and head are key to “seeing” with sound—an insight that could assist blind people learning the skill.

Submission + - How Baidu Tracked The Largest Seasonal Migration of People on Earth

Submitted by KentuckyFC
KentuckyFC writes: During the Chinese New Year earlier this year, some 3.6 billion people travelled across China making it the largest seasonal migration on Earth. These kinds of mass movements have always been hard to study in detail. But the Chinese web services company Baidu has managed it using a mapping app that tracked the location of 200 million smartphone users during the New Year period. The latest analysis of this data shows just how vast this mass migration is. For example, over 2 million people left the Guandong province of China and returned just a few days later--that's equivalent to the entire population of Chicago upping sticks. The work shows how easy it is to track the movement of large numbers of people with current technology--assuming they are willing to allow their data to be used in this way.

Slashdot Top Deals

Maternity pay? Now every Tom, Dick and Harry will get pregnant. -- Malcolm Smith

Close