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Comment Re:What's better than... (Score 1) 213

by tscot (#65318685) Attached to: Trump-Branded 'Lab Leak' Page Replaces US Covid Information Sites
Masks. We figured out 100 years ago during during the "Spanish" Flu pandemic that masks are effective. 100 years is a long time to forget history and feel the fate. Of course, as has been illustrated in far more recent times, it has taken a much shorter time to forget much more recent history and suffer ridiculous and unnecessary repetition. “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” -- George Santayana

Comment Re:Silent Running... (Score 1) 1222

by tscot (#54253251) Attached to: Slashdot Asks: What's Your Favorite Sci-Fi Movie?
I also always thought it was very unrealistic to have overlooked the plants' need for light. BUT, the movie was ahead of the curve (movie-wise) in several areas including the spacecraft design, depiction of the spacecraft interiors (other than the need for willing suspension of disbelief in regard to gravity) and the use of the utilitarian robots that needed programming updates for new tasks (even if this was oddly accomplished). And, k6mfw, the robots *were* cute and sassy before R2-D2.
Space

15-Year-Old Student Discovers New Pulsar 103

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the sky-isn't-the-limit dept.
For the second time in as many years, a student has made a discovery while participating in the Pulsar Search Collaboratory (PSC), a joint program between the National Radio Astronomy Observatory and West Virginia University designed to get students and teachers involved in analyzing data from the Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope (GBT). This time it was high school sophomore Shay Bloxton, who discovered a brand new pulsar. "For Bloxton, the pulsar discovery may be only her first in a scientific career. 'Participating in the PSC has definitely encouraged me to pursue my dream of being an astrophysicist,' she said, adding that she hopes to attend West Virginia University to study astrophysics. Late last year, another West Virginia student, from South Harrison High School, Lucas Bolyard, discovered a pulsar-like object called a rotating radio transient. His discovery also came through participation in the PSC."
Transportation

Carefully Timed Jerks Could Power Space Elevator 270

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the pull-harder-and-faster dept.
Hugh Pickens writes "BBC has an interesting article on the long-standing issue of how to power the 'climber' that would ascend a space elevator into space. Previous ideas have included delivering microwave or laser power to the climber beamed from the Earth's surface, but now European Space Agency ground station engineer Age-Raymond Riise has demonstrated a device that could provide a "lift into space" for cheaper space missions along a 100,000-km long tether anchored to the Earth. Riise demonstrated sending power mechanically by providing carefully timed jerks of the cable at its base with a broomstick to represent the cable held in tension, an electric sander to provide a rhythmic vibration to the bottom of the stick, and three brushes representing the climber with their bristles pointing downwards allowing the climber assembly to slide upward along the broomstick as it moved slightly downward, but grip it as it moved slightly upward. 'It would be possible to make a suspension system that completely decouples the cabin where the passengers are,' says Riise. 'For them it would be a linear movement with very little disturbance.' Riise says that he has been approached by commercial elevator companies, who are researching new ideas for elevators in superscrapers where the simplicity of the approach makes it attractive when compared to other ideas for powering lifts, such as compressed air."
Windows

32bit Win7 Vs. Vista Vs. XP 641

Posted by kdawson from the getting-a-feel-for-it dept.
An anonymous reader writes "ZDNet's Adrian Kingsley-Hughes tested the latest Win7 build against XP and Vista and came to a surprising conclusion: Win7 performs better than the other 2 OSs in the vast majority of the 23 tasks tested. Even installation. 'Rather than publish a series of benchmark results for the three operating systems (something which Microsoft frowns upon for beta builds, not to mention the fact that the final numbers only really matter for the release candidate and RTM builds), I've decided to put Windows 7, Vista and XP head-to-head in a series of real-world tests...'" This review shows only a 1-2-3 ranking for each test, so there's no sense of the quantitative level of improvement.
Hardware Hacking

Scientists Hack Cellphone To Detect Diseases 100

Posted by kdawson from the blue-blood dept.
Dave Bullock (eecue) plugs his piece up at Wired on a cellphone modded into a portable blood tester. This could become a significant piece of medical technology. "A new MacGyver-esque cellphone hack could bring cheap, on-the-spot disease detection to even the most remote villages on the planet. Using only an LED, plastic light filter, and some wires, scientists at UCLA have modded a cellphone into a portable blood tester capable of detecting HIV, malaria, and other illnesses. Blood tests today require either refrigerator-sized machines that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars or a trained technician who manually identifies and counts cells under a microscope. These systems are slow, expensive and require dedicated labs to function. And soon they could be a thing of the past."

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