Catch up on stories from the past week (and beyond) at the Slashdot story archive

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×

Submission + - New Headphones Generate Sound With Carbon Nanotubes (acs.org)

Submitted by MTorrice
MTorrice writes: A new type of headphone heats up carbon nanotubes to crank out tunes. The tiny speaker doesn’t rely on moving parts and instead produces sound through the thermoacoustic effect. When an alternating current passes through the nanotubes, the material heats and cools the air around it; as the air warms, it expands, and as it cools, it contracts. This expansion and contraction creates sound waves. The new nanotube speaker could be manufactured at low cost in the same facilities used to make computer chips, the researchers say.

Submission + - Engineers invent programming language to build synthetic DNA (washington.edu)

Submitted by vinces99
vinces99 writes: Similar to using Python or Java to write code for a computer, chemists soon could be able to use a structured set of instructions to “program” how DNA molecules interact in a test tube or cell. A team led by the University of Washington has developed a programming language for chemistry that it hopes will streamline efforts to design a network that can guide the behavior of chemical-reaction mixtures in the same way that embedded electronic controllers guide cars, robots and other devices. In medicine, such networks could serve as “smart” drug deliverers or disease detectors at the cellular level.

Submission + - Sinkhole Sucks Brains From Wasteful Bitcoing-Mining Botnet (techweekeurope.co.uk) 1

Submitted by judgecorp
judgecorp writes: A sinkhole has taken a quarter of the bots out of the ZeroAcess botnet which was making money for its operators through click fraud and Bitcoin mining. This particular Bitcoin mining operation was only profitable through the use of stolen electricity — according to Symantec, which operated the sinkhole, ZeroAccess was using $561,000 of electricity a day on infected PCs, to generate about $2000 worth of Bitcoin/

Submission + - Fracked Shale Could Sequester Carbon Dioxide (acs.org)

Submitted by MTorrice
MTorrice writes: The same wells that energy companies drill to extract natural gas from shale formations could become repositories to store large quantities of carbon dioxide. A new computer model suggests that wells in the Marcellus shale, a 600-sq-mile formation in the northeastern U.S. that is a hotbed for gas extraction, could store half the CO2 emitted by the country’s power plants from now until 2030.

Submission + - He Fixed 300,000+ machines - America's Oldest Typewriter Repairman Dies at 96 (nytimes.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The New York Times reports, "For eight decades, Manson Whitlock kept the 20th century’s ambient music going: the ffft of the roller, the ding of the bell, the decisive zhoop ... bang of the carriage return, the companionable clack of the keys. From the early 1930s until shortly before his death last month at 96, Mr. Whitlock, at his shop in New Haven, cared for the instruments, acoustic and electric, on which that music was played. Mr. Whitlock was often described as America’s oldest typewriter repairman. He was inarguably one of the country’s longest-serving. Over time he fixed more than 300,000 machines, tending manuals lovingly, electrics grudgingly and computers never. “I don’t even know what a computer is,” Mr. Whitlock told The Yale Daily News, the student paper, in 2010. “I’ve heard about them a lot, but I don’t own one, and I don’t want one to own me.” " (The music linked to by the Times is Leroy Anderson's classic The Typewriter for orchestra.)

Submission + - Computer-designed proteins recognize and bind small molecules (washington.edu)

Submitted by vinces99
vinces99 writes: Computer-designed proteins that can recognize and interact with small biological molecules are now a reality. Scientists have succeeded in creating a protein molecule that can be programmed to unite with three different steroids. The achievement could have far wider ranging applications in medicine and other fields, according to the Protein Design Institute at the University of Washington. “This is a major step toward building proteins for use as biosensors or molecular sponges, or in synthetic biology — giving organisms new tools to perform a task,” said one of the lead researchers, Christine E. Tinberg, a UW postdoctoral fellow in biochemistry.

Submission + - Genetic convergent evolution: stunning gene similarities among diverse animals

Submitted by Toe, The
Toe, The writes: It has long been understood that completely different animals can end up with very similar traits (convergent evolution), and even that genes can converge. But a new study shows an unbelievable level of convergence among entire groups of genes. The study shows that animals as diverse as bats and dolphins, which independently developed echolocation, converge in nearly 200 different genomic regions concentrated in several 'hearing genes'. The implications are rather deep, if you think about it, delving into interesting limitations on diversity or insights into the potential of DNA. And perhaps more importantly, this finding goes a long way toward explaining why almost aliens in the universe look surprisingly identical to humans (though still doesn't explain why they all speak English).

Submission + - Korean 'Armadillo' Electric Car Folds Up, Parks, Controlled By Your Smartphone (greencarreports.com)

Submitted by cartechboy
cartechboy writes: Researchers at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology have unveiled a crazy foldable, compact electric vehicle that, well, folds up like an armadillo. What's more, you can engage the armadillo-like folding process as well as actually park the car with a smartphone. Yes, there's an app for that. Not sure if its the folding part or the idea of people trying to park any car using their cellphones that makes this concerning. The shrinking process takes only around 15 seconds, and reduces the car's 110-inch length to just 65 inches as it essentially curls into a ball. No idea what this non-desert creature does when merely threatened in the wild.

Submission + - Wikipedia Can Predict Box Office Flops (vice.com)

Submitted by Daniel_Stuckey
Daniel_Stuckey writes: Despite a record year though, like every year before it, 2013 remained fraught with its fair share of box office disasters. What if studios could minimize their loses and predict when the next Pluto Nash-level flop was imminent? According to new research published in PLoS One, they may actually be able to. Using data gleaned from Wikipedia articles, researchers measured the likelihood of a film's financial success based on four parameters: number of total page views; number of total edits made; number of users editing; and the number of revisions in the article's revision history, or "collaborative rigor."

Slashdot Top Deals

If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error. -- John Kenneth Galbraith

Close