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Domain: rl.ac.uk
Stories and comments across the archive that link to rl.ac.uk.
Stories · 4
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Giant Laser Transmutes Nuclear Waste
paulnuyu writes "NewScientist is reporting that scientists have transmuted nuclear waste with the Vulcan Glass Laser, cutting iodine-129's half-life from 15.7 million years down to just 25 minutes (as iodine-128). The advance is remarkable, but not practical: the laser would need power from a number of power plants to transmute the waste produced from just one nuclear plant." -
Distributed Climate Prediction For Linux: Pending
saintp writes "Inspired by earlier discussions about distributed computing initiatives, I emailed the good folks at Climateprediction.net to inquire about a linux client. And, the good news: There will be one. No update yet to their system requirements, but here's what they told me: 'There is certainly a Linux version planned (in fact, already existing), but we are a small team and can only set up the infrastructure to support distributed experiments under one O/S at a time. Running climate models is substantially more ambitious in terms of machine requirements, data generated, security headaches etc than any other distributed computing project we know of, so developing a generic O/S independent client is simply not feasible. As soon as the Windows version is safely launched, the Linux version will be our next priority.' Hopefully, we'll see it sometime in November or December." -
Distributed Computing Applied to Medical Research
Troodon writes " BBCnews SCI/TECH has an item: Screensavers could save lives , anouncing the team up between Parabon Computation and the US National Cancer Institute to apply the idle time of home computers in a Seti@homeesque manner, simulating the responce of cancer cells to potential drugs. The sweetner being the _option_ to receive a payment for your troubles. Other new start ups are jumping on the bandwagon, e.g. Popular Power's choice of contributing to research on Influenza Vaccination, or making a little money with big business. But with these companies potentially looking forward to a healthy cut in the profits of any new drugs developed etc., should us plebs look towards more honourable projects, such as trying to help research into the global warming, that all these boxes dug out retirement are going to contribute to?" -
Donate Spare Cycles for Climate Prediction
gampid writes "The BBC has a story about the Casino-21 project which is running a SETI@home type program for climate prediction. " I'm a booster of Distributed.net, but this looks pretty cool as well. I dunno global warming just gives me the creeps anyway and I'd like to know if my house will be underwater.