Slashdot Mirror

Scott_Marks writes: "Science magazine has a review by Pamela Samuelson on the effect of anticircumvention rules on the pursuit of scientific knowledge. The abstract: 'Scientists who study encryption or computer security or otherwise reverse engineer technical measures, who make tools enabling them to do this work, and who report the results of their research face new risks of legal liability because of recently adopted rules prohibiting the circumvention of technical measures and manufacture or distribution of circumvention tools. Because all data in digital form can be technically protected, the impact of these rules goes far beyond encryption and computer security research. The scientific community must recognize the harms these rules pose and provide guidance about how to improve the anticircumvention rules.'"

The Evil Dwarf from Hell writes: "This weeks Science has an article on ZnO nanowire base UV lasers, abstract ( paid subscritption required for article). The 70 to 100 nm diameter wires lase at 386nm, line width .3 nm. The growth takes place on a thin Au film on a sapphire surface, and the wires reach lengths of 2 to 10 m. What makes this lasing unusual is it occurs without the use of mirrors. Apparently ZnO forms a natural lasing cavity. (The lasing is optically pumped from a Nd:YAG laser)." The link above is registration-required, but there's another article which describes the whole process.

The Evil Dwarf from Hell writes: "This weeks Science has an article on ZnO nanowire base UV lasers, abstract ( paid subscritption required for article). The 70 to 100 nm diameter wires lase at 386nm, line width .3 nm. The growth takes place on a thin Au film on a sapphire surface, and the wires reach lengths of 2 to 10 m. What makes this lasing unusual is it occurs without the use of mirrors. Apparently ZnO forms a natural lasing cavity. (The lasing is optically pumped from a Nd:YAG laser)." The link above is registration-required, but there's another article which describes the whole process.

graxrmelg writes: " The Washington Post reports that Science magazine has made a special agreement with Celera Genomics to allow publication of an article about its research without the requirement that the raw data be made publicly available (through an NIH database), as is done with all other articles. (Celera's patent-happiness has been discussed earlier on Slashdot.) Science has put out a statement on the matter."

Alphamike writes "This story was spotted on BBC SCI/TECH. Studies of the Y chromosome in more than 1000 men from Europe and the Middle East have enabled scientists (writing in Science) to trace the lineage of 95% of European men to 10 common ancestors (!). The story also talks about how the data was used to date early migrations from Asia and the Middle East. "

Reinnette Marek writes "Nanotechnology is no longer fiction; it is fact. Rick Smalley, Nobel laureate, has announced the formation of a company to commercialize the production of single wall carbon nanotubes. These nanotubes are 100 times stronger than steel, have the electrical conducticity of copper OR the semiconductivity of silicon, and the thermal conductivity of diamond. The technology promises to revolutionize flat panel displays, conductive polymers, molecular computers, biomedical devices, and ultra high capacity lithium ion batteries. See article in Science, http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/290/5490/246b."

xemu writes: "This 670 m small robot designed to manipulate single cells inside your body reminds me of the noocytes in Blood Music by Greg Bear. Both the complete article from Science and an abstract are available online; the first link xemu points out has Quicktime videos of the beast in action, for those so equipped. According to the article, "[t]his microrobotic arm can pick up, lift, move, and place micrometer-size objects within an area of about 250 micrometers by 100 micrometers." That's small.

xemu writes: "This 670 m small robot designed to manipulate single cells inside your body reminds me of the noocytes in Blood Music by Greg Bear. Both the complete article from Science and an abstract are available online; the first link xemu points out has Quicktime videos of the beast in action, for those so equipped. According to the article, "[t]his microrobotic arm can pick up, lift, move, and place micrometer-size objects within an area of about 250 micrometers by 100 micrometers." That's small.

leb writes: "Researchers at Harvard have developed "a concept for molecular electronics exploiting carbon nanotubes as both molecular device elements and molecular wires for reading and writing information. Each device element is based on a suspended, crossed nanotube geometry that leads to bistable, electrostatically switchable ON/OFF states. The device elements are naturally addressable in large arrays by the carbon nanotube molecular wires making up the devices. These reversible, bistable device elements could be used to construct nonvolatile random access memory and logic function tables at an integration level approaching 1012 elements per square centimeter and an element operation frequency in excess of 100 gigahertz." Unfortunately to read the entire article in Science Online you need a subscription, but you can still take a look at the abstract."

leb writes: "Researchers at Harvard have developed "a concept for molecular electronics exploiting carbon nanotubes as both molecular device elements and molecular wires for reading and writing information. Each device element is based on a suspended, crossed nanotube geometry that leads to bistable, electrostatically switchable ON/OFF states. The device elements are naturally addressable in large arrays by the carbon nanotube molecular wires making up the devices. These reversible, bistable device elements could be used to construct nonvolatile random access memory and logic function tables at an integration level approaching 1012 elements per square centimeter and an element operation frequency in excess of 100 gigahertz." Unfortunately to read the entire article in Science Online you need a subscription, but you can still take a look at the abstract."

Weedhopper writes: "This is a news item in reference to an article in the latest issue of Science about a reptile with feathers that predates archeopteryx by 75 million years - predating most dinosaurs in fact. Though I am suspicious of any claim that a particular biological structure is too complex to have evolved twice, the case may be that birds may not have descended from dinosaurs as is commonly believed."

An article this week in the journal Science , as reported in this CNN story, reveals that in addition to volcanos, Io is also home to vast mountain ranges, lakes of lava and sulfuric geysers up to 50 miles high. Photographs and thermal measurements from the keep-on-chuggin' Galileo enabled the discoveries. See the NASA press release for slightly more detail, as well as for newly released images (May 18th) from Galileo. (You can read the full Science article here, but it requires either a subscription or a fee.)

Bruce Hollebone writes "Last week, chemists at the University of Rochester reported they had figured out how to get optical plastics to self-assemble (Abstract from Science ,requires login. non-technical summary from ABC News). This material could be an important step towards better photonics, including an optical computer. This is real nano-tech, with precise molecular control. The molecular structure of the plastic was engineered to be a precise shape from the human scale right down to the atomic level. The point here is that this was done with boring old chemicals in test tubes rather than the exotic "nano-machines", proposed by the Drexlerites, shrouded in their mists of vapour. "

The web has grown so much that even the best search-engines only cover a third of it. Although this might suggest that sites such as metacrawler would become more popular since they combine the results of many search-engines together, the result may be quite the opposite: sites such as devsearch which target a particular topic only. A full gory analysis is here.