Slashdot Mirror

Here is another australian science show which is being shown on the discovery channel here in the US. Not sure if anyone is offering podcasts for it however, if anyone finds them let me know :)

http://science.discovery.com/schedule/series.jsp?s eries=115556&gid=0&channel=SCI

http://www.beyond2000.com/

(moreso than the water used to make snow on certain ski slopes)

Hmm...seems some featured articles on Slashdot are like the human foetus--they must gestate for around 40 weeks before making an appearance. (Take a look at the article--last updated 12 APRIL 2002!? I watched a TV program on this EXACT CASE on the Discovery channel AGES ago.

Even before that--some YEARS ago--on (if I recall) the CBC about a site somewhere in the Northern US states or Canada about using snowmaking technology as a final stage in sewage disposal--spraying droplets of wastewater through snowmaker nozzels infused it with oxygen and caused flash-freezing which destroyed a great deal of the remaining bacterial contaminants. It wasn't donr on a ski slope, however, the additional nutrients and moisture made for a really good vegetable crop in the summer.

Mildly interesting as the subject is, recycling wastewater is not the latest, greatest groundbreaking in technology--and it's been happening implictly for ages. My city gets almost all it's drinking water from a river--which is downstream from a nomber of small towns. Our fair city drinks from the piss and crap of not only countless birds, fish, beavers and livestock--it drinks from that of tens of thousands of people as well. I pity those who live downstream of the city--they get to pull water from a river that is essentially the effluent from the waste of 1 MILLION people.

Novel and environmentally consious way of making snow? Sure. Hardly shocking or cutting edge though.

NEXT...

Beyond 2000 used to rock in the 80's and early 90's, and started to suck slightly afterwards, much like computer mags.. after the Internet showed up, everything in print or on TV was either talking about the Internet (boring), or was beaten to the scoop months ago by the Internet (lame; you got a $budget$ guys, surely you can beat Free?)

And I can only assume Channel Nein had the rights to Beyond 2000, since it never had a stable timeslot in the 90's. I gave up trying to watch it cos I could never figure out when the fuck it was on.

I'm sure many here would disagree, but the best science show I've ever seen is PBS' NOVA. If the BBC doesn't already carry this somewhere then they absolutely should. This series totally inspired me as a kid, and now that I'm actually doing science as an adult my admiration for it has only grown. Nothing else on TV comes close to conveying what it's actually like to be a scientist.

For lighter fare I'd recommend either Scientific American Frontiers or the already mentioned Beyond 2000.If New Scientist doesn't already have a TV series, though, they really should.

Does that mean the the show's site has just been left stale all these years? That site seems to imply the show is still in production, despite outliving its title.

As a Brit living in the US, I always found the Australian show "Beyond 2000" to be pretty damned good (and I'd never seen it before arriving in the US).

For what it's worth, I always hated the "studio" format of Tomorrow's World - I think it hurt them more than it helped, although the studio-based demonstrations that didn't work were always good for a laugh.

90% of the articles that contained any info and were the most interesting were the pre-recorded ones out wherever the technology was being applied.

Here is a url to an article about a bio bag. It would at least give you a sterile environment to start with. You would still have to build an air lock and such, but might be worth a look to get the basics done. Beyond 2000: In the bag

I just read an article on why maglev trains weren't living up to their promise. Turns out that the technology (at least that reviewed in the story) is much more expensive than regular trains with only a marginal improvement in performance. One wonders if the proper thought has been put into this Florida design.

What is really needed isn't decomposing upholstery, it's a lot fewer ideas like this.

Did this story remind anyone of the 60s TV series "Emergency!" [halpin.com]?

Fireman John Gage wanted to invent a "Foam Grenade" to throw into fires for the firemans invention contest at one point. He also wanted to invent suction cup boots to walk up walls though, but I'm sure the series writers are grinning at this news.

All he had to do was wait for the GEKKO pads to be invented (also covered in a previous SLASHDOT issue).
http://abcnews.go.com/sections/scitech/DailyNews/g ekkomat010518.html

Now if they managed to emulate a REAL Gecko that would damn neat.
http://beyond2000.com/news_archive/story_656.html

[from the article]
"In fact, the adhesive is so strong that a single seta can lift the weight of an ant. A million setae, which could easily fit onto the area of a dime, could lift a 20-kilo child. Our discovery explains why the gecko can support its entire body weight with only a single finger."

What is more worrying is that the slight advantage China may have is due to their lack of ethical regulation and disregard of human rights. While different cultures have different ethical standards the fact that these women were not fully consulted on the fate of their eggs and that human animal hybrids have been created is a real concern.

But regulations are far less restrictive in China. Lu, who directs a large fertility clinic, simply asked some of the dozens of women who walked through her door each day to donate their leftover eggs. She claims that now five per cent of her cloned embryos develop to blastocysts.

Actually the range of the predator is limited more by the 1998 INF treaty than by their actual range.
The treaty limits them to 5000 Km. I have not seen any info on their actually range which is no dount classified information.

There is a nice write up (and picture) on this rather funky looking bird in this article.

I should check my own site more often - and so should everyone here :)

http://beyond2000.com/news/Aug_01/story_1255.html

The show is apparently been airing continuously in Australia since 1985, and is in its 15th season (or "series" as everyone there calls it). The website has information about it here:

http://www.beyond2000.com/show/index.html

-Julius X

Basically it just had a bait to atract the slugs into the battery and then every few days in would move a 2 or 3 metres into a new area in the hope that there would be more slugs there. I can't find any links - does anyone else know of this?

And if you really care about light pollution, visit the International Dark-Sky Association and you'll find that light pollution starts at home.

(Perth, Australia: sorry, not visible -- D'oh!)

And if you really care about light pollution, visit the International Dark-Sky Association and you'll find that light pollution starts at home.

(Perth, Australia: sorry, not visible -- D'oh!)

The is the Dobelle institute's work with "Jerry". It's actually linked from the article. The Dobelle Institute's webpage about this is here. They've been working on this for over 30 years, and say that they have implanted 15000 other patients, although they don't say whether those patients have a similar system. Jerry's vision is rather limited -- he can only make out very high contrast objects in brightly lit rooms. The website has a lot more information, including an article with xrays of the implant.

Damn foolishness, typing in the dark on a laptop keyboard and not previewing my post. Pretend like there is a couple of breaks in there, B@K = B2K, and 'reach my' = 'reach me'.

At least I got the rdf url right :)
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A RDF newsfeed of B@K, which is updated daily, is at: http://www.beyond2000.com/b2k.rdf, and has been submitted for a slashbox ... Also trying to get an Avantgo inclusion at the moment, so we have a text version working ... just have to wait and see what avantgo says first before we unleash it. Weekly mailing list is up and running too :) (by the way, another way to reach my is webmasteratbeyond2000dotcom) Enjoy!
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Read this article: citing that it's possibly headed to alpha centauri.
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Check out the beyond2000 story on the subject, posted around the same time ... here
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