Slashdot Mirror

gregg writes "HM Cancri has been confirmed as a binary system of two white dwarfs orbiting each other so closely that they complete one orbit every 5.4 minutes; they are separated by a mere 8 Earth diameters. 'These are the burnt-out cinders of stars such as our Sun, and contain a highly condensed form of helium, carbon and oxygen. The two white dwarfs in HM Cancri are so close together that mass is flowing from one star to the other. HM Cancri was first noticed as an X-ray source in 1999, showing a 5.4 minutes periodicity, but for a long time it has remained unclear whether this period also indicated the actual orbital period of the system. It was so short that astronomers were reluctant to accept the possibility without solid proof. '"

tugfoigel writes "Astrophysicists at the University of Warwick and Kiel University have discovered two bodies the size of earth with oxygen-rich atmospheres — however, there is a disappointing snag for anyone looking for a potential home for alien life, or even a future home for ourselves. These are not planets, but are actually two unusual white dwarf stars." The objects, 220 and 400 light-years distant, are believed to be remnants of stars between 7 and 10 solar masses. Such stars, the largest that evolve to white dwarves, have been sought for years. If the stars were a little more massive they would collapse to neutron stars, or so the theory goes. Here is the paper on the arXiv.

eldavojohn writes "First stated by al-Karaji about a thousand years ago, the congruent number problem is simplified to finding positive whole numbers that are the area of a right triangle with rational number sides. Today, discovering these congruent numbers is limited only by the size of a computer's hard drive. An international team of mathematicians recently decided to push the limits on finding congruent numbers and came up with the first trillion. Their two approaches are outlined in detail, with pseudo-code, in their paper (PDF) as well as details on their hardware. For those of you familiar with this sort of work, the article provides links to solving this problem — from multiplying very large numbers to identifying square-free congruent numbers."

An anonymous reader writes "British biologists have received government approval to create the world's first human stem cells from hybrid embryos, part pig, part human. The Warwick Medical School team, led by Justin St. John of the Clinical Sciences Research Institute, was granted the country's third animal-human embryo license from the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority, which goes into effect today (July 1)." The above link requires (free) registration; the Telegraph's coverage does not.

joe 155 writes "The Register is reporting that ' the PS3 will cost £425 in the UK - over $800'. SCE UK Managing Director Rat Maguire said: 'I don't think it's an expensive machine - I think actually, it's probably a cheap machine. If you think a Blu-Ray player by itself might be £600-700, and we're coming in at just £425, it's a bargain.' Can a console really be viable at this price?"

FhnuZoag writes "Google Video is hosting the short film 'Fear of Girls', written and directed by Ryan Wood. The film is a hilarious 'documentary' dealing with a pair of self-declared elite table-top roleplayers. The film has already appeared at a variety of fringe events, but here's a chance to see it for free and online from a server that probably can survive a slashdotting." Allright, so it's not that funny, but since I'm off to play D&D this afternoon, it tickled me.

FhnuZoag writes "Nature is reporting that Buddhist monks, highly trained in meditation, were better able to maintain focus in a set of computer generated illusions designed to confuse the brain. The particular illusions involved showing different images to each eye, and maintaining a state of motion-induced blindness. This may be scientific proof of the efficacy of meditative study. The full, original article may be downloaded here. (500 KB PDF)"

FredFnord writes "Well, here's an interesting one: the fine folks at Science Magazine have done an analysis of the last ten years' published scientific articles (articles from crank or non-peer-reviewed publications were not counted) on the subject of global climate change. The results themselves are interesting, but the most remarkable part was that, of the 928 papers they found, 75% accepted that global warming was caused by human activities, either explicitly or implicitly. 25% made no mention either way. And not a single paper asserted otherwise." JamesBell submits this article by a geologist which suggests that the Earth is in serious, imminent, unavoidable danger.

Neurowiz writes "Tired of your cell phone and lusting after the new model with all the geek-gadgets? Worried about the effect that throwing away your cell phones may have on the environment? Worry not! 'Researchers at the University of Warwick's Warwick Manufacturing Group, in conjunction with PVAXX Research & Development Ltd, have devised a novel way to recycle discarded mobile telephones - bury them and watch them transform into the flower of your choice.' What's next? Plant your PC/Mac and watch a house grow?"

Jaroslaw Zachwieja writes "The Druantia Virtual Trip to Mars Project has made access to MOLA data simplier than ever. The data is served as 16bit PNG files. A bash script and interpolation program is available to automate the retrieving process. Druantia project (still a little baby in need of developers) aims to allow anyone with decent graphic card and broadband internet connection to explore Mars and interact with other participants connected. The data served is the highest publicly available set with one pixel for approx. 460 meters and (uncompressed) takes 2GB of disk space. Meet you at Olympus Mons? :)"

johndoejersey writes "Students in England have developed a tool which could bring the end to broken links. Peridot, developed by UK intern students at IBM scans company weblinks and replaces outdated information with other relevant documents and links. IBM have already filed 2 patents for the project. The students said Peridot could protect companies by spotting links to sites that have been removed, or which point to wholly unsuitable content. 'Peridot could lead to a world where there are no more broken links,' James Bell, computer science student at the University of Warwick, told BBC News Online. Here is another story on it." See also the BBC story.

Jaroslaw Zachwieja writes "Stefan van der Eijk, the autor of Slbd - automated tool to rebuild distributions to different architectures/processors in a sanitized environment, has published set of RPMS of URPMI for Fedora Core 2. The only usage difference is that it uses hdlist instead of compressed hdlist.cz known from Mandrake. Are we one step further towards Cross-distro RPMS?"

oogamrm writes "Everyone knows the main problem with Wi-Fi: Security. It's relatively easy for intruders to sniff packets out of the air and even connect to the wireless net. While most wireless companies have responded by trying to beef up the encryption, the University of Warwick's engineering department has developed an optical antenna that operates in the infrared band. This means almost no energy leaking through walls, and simple filters to block it from exiting through windows. The antennas can be so well tuned that several networks can be co-located in the same physical space. The whole story is available at news.com.com."

Shisha asks: "I'm looking for some Voice over IP solution for Unix (Linux, and Solaris in particular). I want to call friends in Prague from the UK. Is there any way how to make the phone call go over the net?" I know there are programs like CCFAudio, Ethernet Phone, FreeWebFone and Speak Freely, however I haven't used any of these programs so I can't say to how well they perform. Have any readers out there tried any of these or have other VoIP solutions that they use that deserve mention?

This is one of those stories of Russian research, originally belittled by serious Western Scientists... until one of them finds out the same thing. This time, the late Professor Herbert Fröhlich FRS of Liverpool University and his PhD student Dr Hyland of Warwick University shows that all living beings emit coherent light of very low intensity. Given that he ties this to the health of a metabolism, it makes me wonder whether enlightenment does not have a literal meaning too. Apparently the Russian laws take this phenomenon into account, with laws 1000 times more stringent than those of the US/UK, for any manufacturer of microwave emitting devices. For all those that did not see the URL, I'd like to point out that this is a University press release, not a piece of journalism. It's a pretty poorly worded press release, but Warwick University has a pretty large physics department, and this guy is quite high up in it. Look at their Physics department page for more info.