110121576
submission
Rei writes:
On the face of it, sodium seems like about the worst thing you could make a wire out of — it oxidizes rapidly in air, releases hot hydrogen gas in water, melts at 97,8C, and has virtually no tensile strength. Yet, in the late 1960s and early 1970s, the Nacon Corporation did just that — producing thousands of kilometers of high-gauge sodium wiring for electrical utilities — and it worked surprisingly well.
While sodium has three times the (volumetric) resistivity of copper and nearly double that of alumium, its incredibly low density gives it a gravimetric resistivity less than a third of copper and half of alumium. Priced similar to alumium per unit resistivity (and much cheaper than copper), limitless, and with almost no environmental impact apart from its production energy consumption, sodium wiring proved to be much more flexible without the fatigue or installation damage risks of alumium. The polyethylene insulation proved to offer sufficient tensile strength on its own to safely pull the wire through conduits, while matching its thermal expansion coefficient. The wiring proved to have tamer responses to both over-current (no insulation burnoff) and over-voltage (high corona inception voltage) scenarios than alumium as well. Meanwhile, "accidental cutting" tests, such as with a backhoe, showed that such events posed no greater danger than cutting copper or alumium cabling. Reliability results in operation were mixed — while few reliability problems were reported with the cables themselves, the low-voltage variety of Nacon cables appeared to have unreliable end connectors, causing some of the cabling to need to be repaired during 13 years of utility-scale testing.
Ultimately, it was economics, not technical factors, that doomed sodium wiring. Lifecycle costs, at 1970s pricing, showed that using sodium wiring was similar to or slightly more expensive for utilities than using alumium. Without an unambiguous and significant economic case to justify taking on the risks of going larger scale, there was a lack of utility interest, and Nacon ceased production.
100770608
submission
schwit1 writes:
A new kind of power source, which combines a novel structure with a nickel isotope to pack ten times more power than an electrochemical cell of the same size. The only question is, are we ready to go nuclear?
A team of Russian researchers have put a new spin on technology that uses the beta decay of a radioactive element to create differences in voltage.
Nickel-63 has a half-life of just over 100 years, which in an optimised system like this adds up to 3,300 milliwatt-hours of energy per gram: ten times the specific energy of your typical electrochemical cell.
It's a significant step up from previous nickel-63 betavoltaic devices, and while it isn't quite enough to power your smart phone, it does bring it into a realm of being useful for a wide variety of tasks.
78977807
submission
the_Bionic_lemming writes:
Recently Joel Hodgson, the creator of Mystery Science 3000 that had a successful run of over 197 shows has after 15 years launched a kickstarter to relaunch the series. Previous MST3K Is Kickstarting Back To Life, MST3K Successfully Crowdsources Its Comeback.
In just over two weeks Joel has been wildly successful in not only having over 25000 fans contribute, but actually scoring the second highest show kickstarter on record — he has just under two weeks to shoot past the Number 1 kickstarter, Veronica Mars.
Additionally , Joel had an eight year old girl write in during the long series run , and they did her letter on the air (something the fans loved — having their mail on the air) . A few days ago, Freezepop's Ashley (who was that 8 year old girl) sang a wonderful tribute with Joel for the Kickstarter .
76479213
submission
jbernardo writes:
Microsoft has built a Linux distro, and is using it for their Azure data centres:
"It is a cross-platform modular operating system for data center networking built on Linux"
Apparently, the existing SDN (Software Defined Network) implementations didn't fit on Microsoft's plans for the ACS (Azure Cloud Switch), so they decided to roll their own infrastructure. No explanation why they settled on Linux, though — could it be that there is no windows variant that would fit the bill?
On other news, Lucifer has been heard complaining of the sudden cold.
74528481
submission
AmiMoJo writes:
It will be more difficult to find "abhorrent" content posted to community news site Reddit, the site has announced. It stopped short of banning the material outright and instead will require users to log-in to access it. The company reiterated its existing complete bans of illegal content, including child abuse images and so-called "revenge porn". chief executive and co-founder Steve Huffman told users: "We've spent the last few days here discussing, and agree that an approach like this allows us as a company to repudiate content we don't want to associate with the business, but gives individuals freedom to consume it if they choose."
74496309
submission
ErnieKey writes:
Doctors in China have just successfully performed a groundbreaking surgery on a 3-year-old little girl named Han Han. Han Han was suffering from congenital hydrocephalus which caused her head to grow to four times the normal size. If something wasn't done, she probably wouldn't have lived much longer. This is when surgeons at the Second People’s Hospital of Hunan Province elected to remove a large portion of her skull and replace it with a 3d printed titanium mesh skull. The results were truly amazing, and Han Han is expected to make a full recovery.
70917457
submission
An anonymous reader writes:
Video games are among the most computationally intensive applications. The amount of calculation achieved in a few milliseconds can sometimes be mind-blowing.
This post about the breakdown of a frame rendering in "Deus Ex: Human Revolution" takes us through the different steps of the process.
It explains in detail the rendering passes involved, the techniques as well as the algorithms processed by a computer — 60 times per second.
60839747
submission
sciencehabit writes:
Plastic may be with us a lot longer than we thought. In addition to clogging up landfills and becoming trapped in Arctic ice, some of it is turning into stone. Scientists say a new type of rock cobbled together from plastic, volcanic rock, beach sand, seashells, and corals has begun forming on the shores of Hawaii. The new material--which the researchers are calling a "plastiglomerate"--may be becoming so pervasive that it actually becomes part of the geologic record.
60660291
submission
Rambo Tribble writes:
Writing in the American Journal of Epidemiology, researchers have found that sleeping with high ambient light levels may contribute to obesity [Abstract; paywall]. In a large survey, of 113,000 women, a high correlation was found between higher bedroom light levels and increased propensity to overweight or obesity. Excess light in the sleeping environment has long been known to adversely affect melatonin production and circadian rhythms. It is posited that such an interference with the "body clock" may be behind these results. Although there is not yet enough evidence to call this a smoking gun, as one researcher put it, 'Overall this study points to the importance of darkness.' The BBC offers its take on the story, here.
60660027
submission
Byteme writes:
A number of Zazzle.com users have had their art and products removed from the site due to Paul Ingrisano, of Brooklyn New York, and a trademark under "Pi Productions" for a logo which consists of this freely available version of the pi symbolÏfrom the Wikimedia website combined with a period.
57588439
submission
probain writes:
The engine that powers the Crysis series, CryEngine, is headed to Linux. That means games like Crysis 3 and Ryse: Son of Rome could see ports on Valve's forthcoming Linux-powered platform, SteamOS. At very least, it means that developers already working with CryEngine have a shortcut to porting their work to Steam Machines; Crytek will show it off in detail next week at the annual Game Developers Conference in San Francisco. Linux support was long-rumored for CryEngine, with job listings as far back as last July hinting that it was coming. It's unclear when the engine will get updated to support the new platform, but we expect it'll be long before Valve's Steam Machines initiative gets seriously underway.
