Slashdot Mirror

Yes, of course we have to do something about places that have unstable, posssibly insane, unelected leaders, maintain massive nuclear stockpiles, regularly violate international treaties, actively block biological and chemical weapons monitoring, fund active space programs and have had a desire to have weapons in space for years (as long as no-one else can have them).

this article may be relevant.

an explanation for this first post: http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns999 92803

http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns999 92803 This article may be relevant here at slashdot.

Seems trivial when compared to this other New Scientist story

also, they found a fossilzed pile of vomit. check out the story here.

what's up with all the penis news lately? Newscientist.com has an article on the discovery of the oldest fossilized penises here. Must be a slow news week :-/

what's up with all the penis news lately? Newscientist.com has an article on the discovery of the oldest fossilized penises here. Must be a slow news week :-/

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According to this news story at New Scientist

Entering certain keywords into google is knocking out all internet activity for 5 minutes for chinese users.

I wonder if google were using https, if it would happen. Looks like the state is 'inspecting' for 'dangerous' thoughts.

this MPEG video (1.7MB) to see how J002E3 may have been captured by the Earth

Google is now accesible - but if you try to go for certain keywords, the ISP drops your connection for five minutes. See New Scientist story.

the coolest part of genetic AI. It comes up with ways to win that normal people wouldn't even think of

On that note, I can't help but mention this story.

I'm starting to consider the BBC as the National Enquirer of online news.

While it is fantastic that Denmark are investing so much in renewable energy, how long will we have to wait until other countries get the hint?

In this article from New Scientist, it is revealed that the US, Japan, Australia and OPEC "vigorously opposed" any increase in the target proportion of renewable energy. Currently , the proportion of energy that comes from renewable sources is roughly 2%.

So whilst it's great that Denmark are seemingly leading the way, it needs the large industrialised countries to develop a sense of morals and stop thinking of the bottom line..

I think The Onion hit the nail on the head with this article.

for something as simple as www.newscientist.com ?

For fucks sake save some bandwidth and click here.

From The New Scientist A planet with sufficient size will have a gravitational effect on the sun it orbits, causing it to move during each orbit. To a distant observer, this increases the redshift of the spectrum as the star is pulled away, and vice versa.

There is an article about this on the New Scientists's website: http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns999 92760

oops, they aren't the same article. Not sure how I ended up there, but as stated by greenhide #4178771, that article is here

For those of you who want to read that article (or at least one that describes what he's talking about), here it is:
http://www.newscientist.com/hottopics/ai/primordia l.jsp

In a sense, the very thing that makes circuit evolution so potentially powerful is also its weakness -- it evolves to external conditions. In the same way that a hummingbird would be doomed if all the flowers that are shaped for its beak died out or changed their shape, so too are these circuits dependent on the environment in which they evolved. An ideal solution would be to allow these circuit boards to continue to evolve, so that when they are placed in new environments, they will be able to adapt to them.

Another
experiment a few years ago produced a circuit that could recognize the
difference between a 'stop' and 'go', voice commands. Adrian Thompson,
who created the circuit, said- "I don't have the faintest idea how it works"

Given I submitted this three days ago:

2002-08-28 19:40:21 Asteroids and The Giant Airbag (articles,news) (rejected)

However, here's the link to the New Scienctist Article that got the scoop.

Brainwave 'manipulation' (or stimulation) is actually most interresting technology...

See EEG Spectrum International for 'related' articles. Neurofeedback is less 'intrusive' method than those sound/light devices that are sold for 'relaxation' or other purposes.

www.eegspectrum.com

or some neurofeedback applications

It is also possible to manipulate brainwaves with TMS (Transcranial magnetic stimulation).. see for example an article about religious experiences and TMS ;-)

Anonymous BrainWave

Even more practically, according to the article at New Scientist you have to be travelling Mach 5 to even get the engine to ignite. Perhaps this is why they had to launch it on a rocket and then attempt ignition as it re-entered the earth's atmosphere.

I talked with a buddy of mine who is really into aviation, and to the best of his knowledge, even our (i.e. the US) best and newest fighter jets top out around Mach 4. While this jet engine certainly seems amazing (I mean, c'mon, it's Mach 7.6!), it doesn't seem like there are really any practical uses for it on Earth at this time.

there is a very intersting article from new scientist including pics about wind powered buildings..

It seems to me that patents that are issued in the area of computer science are often of similar doubtful validity.

I thought that the purpose of a patent was to encourage innovation and technological advance, whereas what is happening now is quite the reverse.

Would rate of progress in genetics and computing slow if patents were abolished in these fields, copyright provides sufficient protection for the few years until the technology is overtaken by something newer and better.

Here is a link to New Scientist's coverage of the crater. They suggest that, in order to form this kind of multi-ringed crater, you need a brittle layer over a watery layer before it hits the bedrock, and that seabed sludge might have provided this structure.

Besides that, mobile phones are also a "moral minefield", as a NewScientist article points out, because they require components that are arguably fuelling a civil war in Congo that is tearing the country (and its people) apart.

Sure, convenience is nice, but isn't this just a bit much? They offer a $5 rebate to people who bring them back, but I doubt $5 is going to tempt the rich executives who the article suggests these might be marketed at (though it probably will tempt the lower income people it also mentions).

It's also probably going to attract even more kids who don't have ethe money for a phone right now, and who really shouldn't have them for medical (and IMO social) reasons. It's just another case of the predominantly Western consumer looking no farther than his/her own convenience.

....thanks to Sony.
And thanks to kuiken for the leads...

The real problem with "research" like this is that it brings out the very worst in the peer review system which usually serves scientists so well. As soon as a journal dares to publish something so dubious, there is a huge backlash by the establishment, to the extent that real, innovative research can be stifled.

The best-known example of this phenomenon was the cold-fusion debacle of the late '80s. A group of researchers claimed (essentially) to have initiated nuclear fusion in a beaker using heavy water and palladium electrodes. No-one else was able to reproduce the experimental results. The result, however, was not just to discredit the report's authors, but to cause a scepticism so immense that no electro-chemist could publish a paper which mentioned a similar experiment. I can see the same happening to unsuspecting scientists working on superconductors now.

I would link to an interesting editorial in this month's NewScientist, which describes the phenomenon in considerable detail, but it would appear that they only put it in the print version. Shame, that.

Here's an interesting idea. Take this technology (original excerpt here). Use it and figure out how to generate the cancellations in a spherical field, pack it into something lightweight and portable and we've got something to cancel out all the purpoted uses that American Technology Corp. has in store for you.

This has been done before. Back in 1999, five robots had to make their way around the American Assocation for Artifical Intelligence annual meeting in Orlando.

Funny, the U.S. is developing bugs to do just that.

Oh, and useless-karma-whoring link:

Click here for article

I think it is ... but you were right about it being a good read!

I agree, and NewScientist seems to back your opinion. But it's all still speculation at this point.

New Scientist is also running a story about this.

GM doesn't just make crops more plentiful or disease resistant, it introduces a new species. This can cause all sorts of problems. GM plants can destroy biodiversity, become unkillable mutant superweeds, and give corporations more IP power. As an example, I believe there was an old Slashdot story (I searched but couldn't find it) about a Canadian farmer who was being sued because genetically modified seed blew off of passing trucks and cross-fertilized his field.

This doesn't mean that GM is bad, or that Kona coffee growers aren't more concerned with the purity of their brand than their crop, just that we should proceed with care.

Here's the original article at newscientist.com that the Reuters story is referring to: http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns999 92528

Just a small clarification: You're right that we refer to our numerals as "Arabic," but in fact they are Indian in origin, and were brought to the West by Arab traders (as were numerous other inventions, such as chess). I googled up a source for your edification, too (New Scientist).

here.

Bah...I'm blatantly too late, but I read somewhere (new scientist probably) that defense labs were working on reflecting signals of different phase/amplitude/frequency of the surroundings such that the original signal is only recreated at certain points...at which your ally would be sitting. Combine this with chaotic noise addition, and it's a fairly good system. On another note, I read (same placE) that echoes from buildings could be used to seperate transmissions on the same frequency/band by location (different timings etc).

here

Better yet, the manufacturers should be permanently enjoined from using the term "Compact Disc", the familiar logo form of those words, or the abbreviation "CD" anywhere on the disc or packaging, because they deliberately violate the standards specified by the owner of those Distinctive Marks ... Phillips, the only big company in a position to use IP law to protect dilution of its work to fight this crap. I don't believe they have tried to do that just yet, but the company has at least made public statements that sound promising.

According to digi.no (norwegian article), the (encrypted DBaseIV) files will be published Thursday 6th on the museums homepage, Ivar Aasen-tunet.

Ottar Grepstad at the museum have received more than 100 e-mails and phone calls after the problem went public.

The article note the huge interrest in this case and give links to Slashdot and NewScientist.

Drop the cola comparisons - roll ya own.
http://www.newscientist.com/hottopics/copyleft/cop yleftart.jsp

The sun only delivers 2400 watts / m^2 maximum -- do some calculations, you'd need a lot of cells to supply the average household, let alone business!

Hmm, let's see. 1000 W/m^2 * 15% efficiency / 1000 W per average household = 7 m^2 per household. Gee, my roof is only 160 square meters. I don't know where I'll ever find 7 square meters for solar panels.

Also, you don't recall correctly about the composition of solar cells. The most efficient lab cells a little while ago used gallium arsenide, and they may have moved on to something more obscure since then. But the vast majority of commercial solar cells use silicon, which doesn't present much of a disposal problem. Solvents used in manufacturing are also reused within the factory, so solar cell manufacture is not especially dirty.

Wind power: the best solution until it shows up in your backyard.

Wind power goes mostly on open land where there is lots of wind. The farmers and ranchers who own this land love it, because they keep on farming and ranching below the turbines, and they get extra income from their land. There is no reason to put turbines in cities (except maybe this).

The link between mysterious gamma ray bursts and huge supernova explosions has finally been nailed.

Astronomers have wondered for decades what causes gamma ray bursts (GRBs). They are most violent explosions in the Universe, unleashing high-energy gamma rays and originating billions of light years from Earth. Likely culprits were thought to be supernovae, giant stars that explode after running out of fuel, and black holes.

Although astronomers have seen light characteristic of supernovae coming from the same position as GRBs in the sky, they have never been able to confirm this was not a coincidence.

Now a team lead by Kris Stanek at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge and Peter Garnavich of the University of Notre Dame have done this by tracing the afterglow of GRB 011121 which occurred in November 2001.

In work submitted to the Astrophysical Journal, Stanek says the afterglow faded quickly over several hours, but then brightened a couple of weeks later and faded again, just as would be expected if the burst was part of a giant supernovae. "We were thrilled to be the first to catch a supernova 'in the act,'" he says.

When a giant spinning star begins to collapse, theory predicts that it shoots out bright jets, which radiate high-energy gamma rays along the axis, and cool and fade quickly. When the bulk of the star later collapses, atoms will be forced into each other and rebound outwards, causing a second brightening.

"But sometimes the jets aren't pointing towards us and so we just see a normal supernova," explains Tom Matheson of Harvard-Smithsonian.

Imagine an escaped virus destroying the Earth's oil reserves and its whole industrial potential? Curiously, the military may implement the environmentalists' ultimate dream!

Let me clue you in on what it is that the fuel eaten by these bacteria (not viruses) eventually breaks down into - water and carbon dioxide. This is a more controlled form of a process better known as FIRE.

Flame of yet another kind: Timothy, you are an idiot. Even as a joke that was a grade A stupid thing to say. It reflects poorly on you as an editor and as a human being. If you don't know the difference between a virus and a bacterium shut your cornhole.

We, Environmentalists, object to gasoline being burned (turned into Carbon Dioxide) faster than it is deposited in peat marshes and such. I don't want to rehash the global warming argument here, so don't y'all even start.

The fact that the gasoline, while burned, does useful work, instead of, say, fueling the growth of a manmade organism, does not bother anyone.

You can find out more about Hydrocarbon Utilizing Microbes (HUMs) here. The document is fully accessible to a non-scientist. The people at Brooks Air Force base, who are/would be (?) developing these fuel eating microbes for offensive use have already made use of them in a peaceful context. Again, the press release is non technical. Personally, I find this to be admirable work - they're using them to clean up petrochemical contamination of soil and groundwater, which is an underappreciated ecological problem. I'm not terribly worried about these organisms going out of control and eating the world's petrochemical reserves. They exist in nature already in various forms and have not done that.

The New Scientist has an older article about the fuel eating bugs, or, more specifically, about the circumstances surrounding the release of documents discussing the bugs; I think this may have come up on slashdot before but I searched just now and didn't find it. The sunshine project also has an article about there efforts to get the documents released.

The New Scientist estimates three million dead in a limited nuclear war over Kashmir.



I certainly hope it's nobody I know!

Although he does hedge by saying we could only extrapolate some things.
I don't understand how millionaires can be greedy for more money. Why doesn't he just publish his ideas openly and allow peer review like most scientists? He claims that people only understood part of what he had done so he had to go it alone. Talk about ego; And if he couldn't explain it to his colleagues way back when why does he think publishing a book for "everyone" is going to explain it any better?
Going the 'hype' route of mass media, as this seems to be, would be a good strategy to get yourself a bit more famous and make some more bucks. But I don't think it is a good strategy for changing scientific thought.
note: This was my response from his interview last september, not upon reading the book.