Slashdot Mirror

I couldn't find the /. version of the story, but a couple years ago there was a filing for a patent for an LCD panel with thousands of built in image sensors. Perhaps they are finally using it.

Here's the New Scientist article. http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn9059

This is the second time I've asked this question: Are we reading the same FA? I'm reading this one where the author makes an argument based on probability theory. In most circles, probability theory is considered a branch of math, and thus a science.

Your argument seems to be "TFA has an argument I don't understand, therefore it has no argument."

From the story, there's a link that says "2 more pictures". http://www.newscientist.com/articleimages/mg20126936.900/1-across-the-ocean-in-a-pedalpowered-submarine.html (total of 3). Picture 1 can be seen in the article. Picture 2 is a drawing. Picture 3 is a blue-line.

From the article, he's going to dive to 20 meters for about 45 minutes periodically (full article link: http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20126936.900-across-the-ocean-in-a-pedalpowered-submarine.html?full=true scrollbar about 1/2 way).

full article
STOP posting multipage versions of articles !!!

Most scientific papers are probably wrong. That being so, then the cited paper is also probably wrong. Aside: are black holes a planetary civilization IQ test?

Bullshit. Parent is spreading disinformation.

Cord blood yields 'ethical' embryonic stem cells

Indeed, and don't regret not getting the hotties, because masturbation is good for you too!

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn3942-masturbating-may-protect-against-prostate-cancer.html

There was a study that suggested that Cannabinoids increases neurogenesis (growth of new brain cells) by up to 40%.

Thanks for the link, I haven't seen that article before. I am interested in and have done some research into neurogenesis because I am a surviver of a Traumatic Brain Injury, TBI.

Falcon

There was a study that suggested that Cannabinoids increases neurogenesis (growth of new brain cells) by up to 40%. http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn8155

Nope. The galaxy will be impacted by a giant hydrogen cloud and everything will be wiped out in 20-40 million years. Not enough time for another intelligent species to evolve. We get one shot, that's it.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn13179-giant-gas-cloud-to-crash-into-our-galaxy.html

I guess once we finally have affordable and perfectly silent electric cars, instead of breathing a sight of relief and listen to birds when you walk down the streets, those same asswipes will force them to be just as noisy...

All for your (and your children's) security, of course.

If they were willing to speak truthfully with an honest heart about where the facts lead, a requirement to point out the weaknesses of evolution wouldn't be a bad thing. I read a fascinating article at New Scientist yesterday, Why Darwin was wrong about the tree of life, on how hibridization is rampant in life. It would be a fantastic thing to discuss in class.

But here's what would happen. Jim Bob would use that article as his talk on the weaknesses of evolution. No later than about two days he would be called to the principal's office and the discussion would go something like this: "Jim Bob, there have been some concerns about your commitment as a teacher. Do you feel you have the sort of character and motivation for teaching our youth?" And next round of contracts Jim Bob is asking whether you'd like fries with that. _That_ is how our honorable principal would handle the problem of Jim Bob bringing up actual science in discussion of Darwin.

Which comes to the second problem America has in this area: local control. Unfortunately, local control is a sacred cow in our society but as long as a couple crazy parents can sit outside a principal's door every day driving him crazy with their demands for this or that curriculum addition, we will have problems with American education. If we had a national curriculum like so many other countries at least much of the discussion would be above-board.

How does this fit into the http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20126911.300-our-world-may-be-a-giant-hologram.html?full=true giant hologram?

I read an article in New Scientist about this and was confused about the mechanism described. The networkworld article linked to in the summary is slightly better because in talks about an electric pulse, implying that it's not steady state.

It sounds like the there is an electrode on the back on the boat, and when a potential is applied to that electrode it changes the surface from hydrophobic to hydrophilic. This change causes the boat to tilt in the water and it is propelled slightly forward. The potential is then turned off, the boat relaxes to a flat position, the potential is turned back on again, and so on. The net result is a forward motion.

The main advantage won't be efficiency but rather it is a mechanism well suited to very small boats where surface tension is relatively much more important.

A comment on this article from New Scientists 'online technology reporter' suggests that the actual quantity of plutonium is less than 400mg.

The New Scientist article on this topic is more informative. Among other things, it's got a video of the test mini-robot boat in action.

The water in the testing tank is very still -- there are few or no ripples. I wonder if the approach will actually work on, say, the ocean? If your propulsion system depends on steady contact with the water surface, waves are going to be a problem.

Apparantly the stuff was actually discovered in 2004, but it's taken them this long to do the scientific detective work to figure out where this particular sample came from.

Scary picture of the rusty unearthed safe & dirty glass bottle full of 99.96% pure plutomium here:
http://www.newscientist.com/gallery/dn16447-hanford-site/

Myth.

Note the Care Bears on the monitor in the mobile command center in photo 8. Gives me the chuckles. :)

How does this relate to the beam splitting, noise-plagued GEO600 gravity wave detector that recently made the news for possibly showing the universe to be a hologram?

Well, I would imagine that it is both difficult and expensive to string underwater cable when compared to over land... This.. http://www.newscientist.com/data/images/ns/cms/dn16394/dn16394-1_1458.png picture, is of course over simplified.. but it is apparent that going over land would not be an extreme cost increase.. I think the article nailed the real reason it is not over land.. and that's because it would have to go through countries like Iran, and Iraq... can you say.. "snip snip you damn infidels !" ?

Here is an article in New Scientist about the new process. It explains it fairly well and even defines what a ZMW is.

How many of me? Just me, I'm the real BillSF..... If you mean how many are against the 'leap second' a quick search turned up this general article: http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20026875.400-calls-to-scrap-the-leap-second-grow.html and there is quite a bit more. In fact the first comment to the New Scientist article almost sounds like me. (Its a coincidence, I'd not seen it before.)

And that those same chemicals are released during sex, helping to bond the partners together?

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg18925365.500

Your argument doesn't quite work either.

Some monkeys pay for non-estrous sex
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg19726374.100-macaque-monkeys-pay-for-sex.html

Some use sex as a greeting
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonobo

I just get picky when people say "Humans are different ....". We aren't that different.

He reminded me that most human scientific articles are wrong and not to listen to anything unless I got it straight from the horse's mouth.

fruey sends in a New Scientist analysis that questions the Long Tail theory. The theory, first described in Wired, describes how retailers with low stocking and distribution costs can profit by selling a large number of unique products to very small niche markets. But the four studies summarized in the article examine different markets and conclude that this business model may be harder to exploit than originally expected. In fact, the importance of blockbuster products which are sold to an enormous number of buyers may be growing rather than shrinking. One possible reason is that recommendation services, like those provided my Amazon and Netflix, may concentrate interest on a few items and take market share away from the niche items.

You're confused because 1998 was an unusually warm year. The globe is still warming. You can read this article that explains in more detail. Of course, it would have been the news century of the story if global warming was over. Wouldn't we have all heard it already?

Then you can't be asking the right people.

If you look at this graph, you get the answer: it'd have a be a pretty big pause. Decades, even.

http://www.newscientist.com/data/galleries/dn16254-damage-that-derailed-higgs-hunt/two.jpg/
No wonder they had a problem- they couldn't even build the thing in a straight line. All that money and they couldn't even afford a level?

The pictures aren't appearing in my browser. Unclear why; some CSS botch or attempt at DRM, I expect. Anyway, here are the actual picture links:

• Picture 1
• Picture 2
• Picture 3

HTML 3.1 - it just works.

The pictures aren't appearing in my browser. Unclear why; some CSS botch or attempt at DRM, I expect. Anyway, here are the actual picture links:

• Picture 1
• Picture 2
• Picture 3

HTML 3.1 - it just works.

The pictures aren't appearing in my browser. Unclear why; some CSS botch or attempt at DRM, I expect. Anyway, here are the actual picture links:

• Picture 1
• Picture 2
• Picture 3

HTML 3.1 - it just works.

This is similar to how stars may form around a black hole as well, no?

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn14582

Of course it's possible to accelerate payloads gradually, using a .

Using the numbers given in that article I calculate that in order to reach an escape velocity of 11.2 km/second on a 2 km wide track you would have a centripetal acceleration (a = v^2/r) of around 12,800 g just before you sent your payload off into space. That's a considerable amount of acceleration and even though military hardware is designed to handle similar accelerations for short periods I'm not sure how they would react to sustained high-g forces while the launch platform got up to speed.

Of course larger tracks are an option but those would cost more to build. You also run into wind resistance issues on open-air tracks and so a covered track with a vacuum would be best. Again, this adds to the cost even more for a large track.

No matter what, there would be a large amount of payloads that could not use such a setup. This would, of course, include astronauts but it would also include many delicate instruments such as telescopes. I'm not saying that launch loops shouldn't be used but no matter what we would still need to pursue lower acceleration launch methods to cover the full range of payloads. I agree that airship launches are a great idea that should be investigated.

Of course it's possible to accelerate payloads gradually, using a launch ring.

Another cool idea: airship to orbit. More. Still more.

In any case, we need something beyond standard chemical rockets to get cheap access to orbit.

So yes, we are probably seeing the beginning of the end of performance gains using general-purpose CPU interconnects and have to go back to vector processing. Unless we are somehow able to jump the heat dissipation barrier and start raising GHz again.

That's what the superconducting FETs are for, just wait a few years / couple decades for them to get something that can be made on an IC and works at liquid nitrogen temperatures.

If they can make superconducting FETs that can be manufactured on ICs, I could see there being a very big difference that will last until they can reach liquid nitrogen temperatures (at which point it goes mainstream and cryogenics turns into a boom industry for a while).

The idea that the sun is the dominant factor in global warming has been resoundingly debunked.

And the idea that warming has increased carbon dioxide (and that somehow carbon dioxide is just an innocent bystander in the whole affair) is frankly facile. Carbon dioxide is the dominant cause of global warming (with methane coming in second). Global warming is increasing the release of some natural carbon dioxide sources. However, these natural releases are DWARFED by industrial releases, a fact commonly ignored by "global warming causes increased CO2" reality deniers. It's a theory that only holds up if you completely toss large amounts of data out the window, which frankly isn't uncommon among the "global warming is a myth" crowd.

I won't be drawn on inter-denominational rivalries, there's enough of that sort of bickering in the world, and I don't believe its relevant.

I agree that ID is perceived as (and intended to be) 'Creationism evolved' (good pun!), but there is a fundamental difference: Literal biblical creationism (for some people) follows from belief in the existance of God. Of a specific, known God. ID does not. Even if accepted, it offers no clues as to who that designer is, whether they are omiscient and omnipotent or merely more advanced than us, and crucially, offers nothing to indicate that this designer is in any way interested in human affairs. Or even that they're still around.

If evolution is a result of materialistic philosophy, "X evolved from Y"; then ID is equally materialist, "We know of no Y from which X could have evolved from, and we cannot envisage what function component parts of X could play before being incorporated into X, ergo X cannot have evolved."

Creationism is clearly not a materialistic argument, but I hold that ID is. Furthermore, if used as a grounds for theology, that theology is based on a God-of-the-Gaps argument (we don't know how that works, so it must be God) which is always liable to crumble. Claiming that something has an irreducable complexity also requires faith (in a materialistic theory) that no scientific advance will ever refute such a claim. (For instance, claims that the bacterial phlagellum could not have evolved as its components could serve no useful purpose were significantly undermined when one of those components was found to play a role in one of the offensive mechanisms of Salmonella - reference here if you can stand the annoying tone) Lastly, yes, I agree, evolution only makes sense if you take 6-day creationism off the table, as the timescales required for anything but the most basic speciation require significantly more than several thousand years. But what takes that off the table, I believe, is the evidence of our own eyes and minds. To paraphrase Galileo, "I do not feel compelled to believe that the same God who endowed me with reason and intellect, intended me to forego their use."

What company provides a man-rated LEO launch vehicle? Nobody.

Lockheed Martin's Atlas V will soon be man-rated, and Bigelow Aerospace is planning on signing an agreement with them to provide transportation of humans to Bigelow's private space stations.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn13290
http://selenianboondocks.blogspot.com/2006/09/lm-atlas-v-man-rating-paper.html

Also, SpaceX's Falcon 9 is designed from the get-go to be man-rated.

He's actually starting to have trouble communicating, as the movements he used for it back then (blinking I think?) are starting to become harder.

Perhaps the next step would be to monitor his brain waves. I don't know what the progress is in passive external electrodes, but fMRI has achieved some amazing things, like like Voice recognition software reads your brain waves . This article is about decoding what people are listening to or looking at - maybe because it's easier to correlate experimentally - rather than what they want to communicate, but perhaps looking at other regions of the brain might achieve the latter. I think I've read something about being able to detect whether a person is telling the truth (kind of eerie). There's also the problem of the huge size of the machines, although there's some work on handheld fMRI (from 2005, not sure of the current state of the art).

i agree across all points, using a ranged weapon against a fixed position or massed enemies makes sense. fast running animals are a little trickier to hit, though. but i would posit that armies using spears historically were mostly using metal tipped spears, javelins, pikes, and what-have-you. and hopefully had developed swords, as you are unarmed after throwing your spear.

in the case being discussed it would be a stone-tipped spear held together with sinew or fiber. this is more susceptible to damage by throwing, much heavier, and far less accurate over distance. apparently real scientists join slashdot users in arguing over whether or not neanderthals threw or stabbed with their spears.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg19626251.800-death-special-the-plan-for-eternal-life.html

And yet, although there are many studies that show that eating lots of fruits full of vitamin C &c is good for you, when they've tried done studies that aimed to show that taking vitamin supplements is good for you, they've found no such thing. Some in fact have found that vitamin supplements appear to be bad for you. http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg19325934.000-can-vitamin-supplements-do-more-harm-than-good.html

What do you call it if to hits the ground and comes out the other side back into space?

Dark Matter

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn6933

A few of quibbles...

First, size is only very loosely correlated to position on the food chain. Consider the elephant, only one step up on the ladder, or the sequoia at the very bottom. In fact the biggest organisms on Earth are fungi (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armillaria_ostoyae). This doesn't really address whether size has anything to do with ecological vulnerability though. As it happens vulnerability is more closely correlated to a species' degree of specialization and to the resiliency of its ecosystem.

Second, if nothing you've read suggests abundant water in Mars' past, you must have missed this: http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/11/18/146252. Also you should not assume a thick atmosphere is a requirement for higher life forms. It's accepted that the higher life forms on Earth arose first in the oceans.

Third, although we know the surface of Mars to be cold, we also know that it has a molten core (http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9E0CE3D8133FF934A35750C0A9659C8B63). Somewhere between these extremes may well be a habitable zone within the rock. Mind you, I'd have to agree that any life found there would have to be of a very basic nature. Even on Earth, we only find bacteria in such niches (http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn10336-gold-mine-holds-life-untouched-by-the-sun.html).

[/q]The Higgs field creates mass out of the quantum vacuum too, in the form of virtual Higgs bosons. So if the LHC confirms that the Higgs exists, it will mean all reality is virtual. http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn16095-its-confirmed-matter-is-merely-vacuum-fluctuations.html Good to know that my pain isnt real!

As per scientific research, social rejection massively reduces the intelligence and injects aggressiveness in Kids.
http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn2051