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Earth

Submission + - Winners of Oil Cleanup X CHALLENGE announced (gizmag.com)

cylonlover writes: Last July, in the aftermath of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, the X PRIZE Foundation launched the Wendy Schmidt Oil Cleanup X CHALLENGE. As with previous X PRIZE competitions, this one was intended to encourage private sector scientific research, by offering a cash prize to whichever team could best meet a given challenge. In this case, teams had to demonstrate a system of their own making, that could recover oil from a sea water surface at the highest Oil Recovery Rate (ORR) above 2,500 US gallons (9,463.5 liters) per minute, with an Oil Recovery Efficiency (ORE) of greater than 70 percent. Today, the winning teams were announced with the US$1 million first prize going to Team Elastec/American Marine for their unique grooved disc skimmer.
Privacy

Submission + - 1,000 London CCTV cameras 'solve one crime' (bbc.co.uk)

SpuriousLogic writes: Only one crime was solved by each 1,000 CCTV cameras in London last year, a report into the city's surveillance network has claimed. The internal police report found the million-plus cameras in London rarely help catch criminals. In one month CCTV helped capture just eight out of 269 suspected robbers. David Davis MP, the former shadow home secretary, said: "It should provoke a long overdue rethink on where the crime prevention budget is being spent." He added: "CCTV leads to massive expense and minimum effectiveness. "It creates a huge intrusion on privacy, yet provides little or no improvement in security. "The Metropolitan Police has been extraordinarily slow to act to deal with the ineffectiveness of CCTV."
Microsoft

Submission + - Microsoft FAT Patent Fails in Germany

Askmum writes: "While Microsft has been granted and been reaffirmed a patent on FAT in the US, the German Patent Federal Court ruled that the patent is invalid in Germany, because it is "not based on inventive activity".

Read more (heise.de, in English)"

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