Huge Supernova Baffles Scientists

Posted by timothy on Thursday March 26, @07:37PM

from the like-laser-pointers-to-cats dept.

Iddo Genuth writes"Scientists from the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel and San Diego State University have observed an explosion of a star 50 times larger than the sun. In what they call a 'first observation of its kind' the scientists were able to notice that most of the star's mass collapsed in on itself, resulting in a creation of a large black hole. While exploding stars, or 'supernovae,' aren't unprecedented, this star, which lay about 200 million light years away from earth and was million times brighter than the Sun, has exploded as a supernova at a much earlier date than the one predicted by astronomers."

MIT To Make All Faculty Publications Open Access

Posted by Soulskill on Thursday March 26, @12:23PM

from the take-that-conyers dept.

Death Metal writes with this excerpt from Ars Technica:"If there were any doubt that open access publishing was setting off a bit of a power struggle, a decision made last week by the MIT faculty should put it to rest. Although most commercial academic publishers require that the authors of the works they publish sign all copyrights over to the journal, Congress recently mandated that all researchers funded by the National Institutes of Health retain the right to freely distribute their works one year after publication (several foundations have similar requirements). Since then, some publishers started fighting the trend, and a few members of Congress are reconsidering the mandate. Now, in a move that will undoubtedly redraw the battle lines, the faculty of MIT have unanimously voted to make any publications they produce open access."

GMail Adds 5 Second Send Rule

Posted by CmdrTaco on Thursday March 26, @09:26AM

from the still-good-still-good dept.

theatrecade was one of a few folks to note that Google Labs has added the five second rule to email. Once upon a time this rule only applied to delicious food stuffs dropped on the floor, but at long last you can change your mind on that email to your boss or ex. We shall see peace in our lifetimes.

Pilgrims' Progress: Genetic Data From 1630s Backs Health Benefits Of Cancer Screening

ScienceDaily (Mar. 26, 2009) — In the 1630s, the Fry family came to the New World with more than just dreams of prosperity and freedom — they also came with a genetic mutation that increased the likelihood of colon cancer in hundreds, if not thousands, of their descendants. The scientists who traced that gene back almost 370 years are now reporting that routine screening and education can prevent people with the mutated gene from developing cancer.

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Social Skills, Extracurricular Activities In High School Pay Off Later In Life

ScienceDaily (Mar. 26, 2009) — It turns out that being voted “Most likely to succeed” in high school might actually be a good predictor of one’s financial and educational success later in life.

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Bad News For Insomniacs: 'Hunger Hormones' Affected By Poor Sleep

ScienceDaily (Mar. 26, 2009) — Insomnia has long been associated with poor health, including weight gain and even obesity. Now researchers at UCLA have found out why.

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Mythbusters Accidentally Bust Windows In Near By Town

Posted by CmdrTaco on Thursday March 26, @10:18AM

from the good-thing-it-wasn't-mirrors dept.

Thelasko writes"In an effort to knock Buster's socks off, the Mythbusters accidentally created an explosion so large it shattered windows in a small town over a mile from the blast site. The Mythbusters had the broken windows replaced the very same day. The Esparto, California fire chief says that several firefighters were on hand for the blast, but he didn't notify residents because, "Mythbusters is supposed to be a really popular show. Everybody would have been out there. We would have had to cancel it because it would have been too dangerous.""

Ikea Enters the Green Car Biz?

by JOSH LOPOSER
Mar 25th 2009 @ 1:30PM

Filed under: Cars and Transportation, Home

A new eco-friendly flat-pack car from Ikea? Could it really be true? The Swedish furniture store of furniture stores -- famous for being as kitschy as it is socially-conscious -- is now showing off a teaser video of a new car-shaped product. We know that Ikea is in the middle of rolling out an energy conscious product line, is it time for them to market a cute new, fuel-sipper of its own? Could Ikea make a decent car? Would it come in a box?

To find out, we going to have to wait until April 1st for the great unveiling. I can picture it now: a stylish 40mpg hatchback with wood laminate siding and avocado green hubcaps. Honestly, Ikea should probably start selling a super cute tiny fuel-sipper like the Tata Nano or the Fiat 500 in their stores. God knows that people come out of there with more than they can shove into the vehicle they showed up in. As hip and trendy as Ikea is, they're still down for some good old fashioned holiday humor. Or, maybe their serious ... who knows?

Gallery: Ikea's Upcoming Solar Lamps

EcoDrain heat exchanger makes good use of warm waste water

by Darren Murph, posted Mar 26th 2009 at 5:59AM

File this one directly in the "why didn't I think of that?" folder. As the bathroom gets more and more eco-friendly, the EcoDrain is stepping in to take advantage of all the hot water that goes to waste each time you shower. Put simply, this user-installed heat exchanger transfers heat from hot shower waste water to cold incoming water, essentially cutting water heater usage by as much as 40 percent. Of course, we've never seen a plumbing job that was anything close to simple, but for savings like this, it may just be worth the trouble.

Best Buy sued for violating its Price Match policy on purpose

by Laura June, posted Mar 24th 2009 at 1:13PM

Last Thursday, the U.S. District Court, Southern District approved a motion for a class-action suit filed by plaintiff Thomas Jermyn in New York State against Best Buy. Essentially, this suit will claim that Best Buy is in "extreme" violation of its own Price Match policy, and that it uses the advertised policy as a way to scam consumers into the stores and purchase gear. Best Buy's Price Match policy is "undisclosed," meaning that we don't know how it actually operates -- and the suit claims that the company routinely denies the Price Match policy -- as a matter of a lesser known, less cooler policy. The law offices charged with filing the suit are asking that consumers who have been affected by the policy get on the bandwagon. Next up: we file suit against them for using the name "Best Buy" when they are totally not.

New Service Aims To Replace Consoles With Cloud Gaming

Posted by Soulskill on Tuesday March 24, @09:05AM

from the who-needs-new-hardware-anyway dept.

ThinSkin writes"Imagine playing bleeding-edge games, yet never again upgrading your hardware. That's the ambitious goal of OnLive's Internet delivered gaming service. Using cloud computing, OnLive's goal is to 'make all modern games playable on any system,' thanks in large part to OnLive's remote servers that do all the heavy lifting. With a fast enough Internet connection, gamers can effectively stream and play games using a PC, Mac, or a 'MicroConsole,' 'a dedicated gaming client provided by OnLive that includes a game controller.' Without ever having to worry about costly hardware upgrades or the cost of a next-gen console, gamers can expect to fork over about $50 yearly just for the service. If this thing takes off, this can spell trouble for gaming consoles down the road, especially if already-established services like Steam and Impulse join the fray."

Synthesizing The Most Natural Of All Skin Creams

ScienceDaily (Mar. 24, 2009) — Even after nine months soaking in the womb, a newborn’s skin is smooth – unlike an adult’s in the bath. While occupying a watery, warm environment, the newborn manages to develop a skin fully equipped to protect it in a cold, dry and bacteria-infected world.

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Reflected Gravitational Waves

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday March 24, @05:33AM

from the could-prove-useful dept.

WSOGMM sends in an arXiv blog post about reflecting gravity waves. The speculation is that reflected gravity could go some ways toward explaining the odd readings being returned by Gravity Probe B."In the couple of weeks since he introduced the idea that superconducting sheets can reflect gravity waves, Raymond Chiao from the University of California, Merced, has been busy with a couple of buddies working out how big this effect is... Chiao and co. ask how big the effect of a gravitational wave on a thin superconducting sheet is compared to the effect on an ordinary conducting sheet. The answer? 42 orders of magnitude bigger."

NASA Tests Heaviest Chute Drop Ever

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday March 24, @02:48AM

from the not-so-fast dept.

Iddo Genuth writes"NASA and the US Air Force have successfully tested a new super-chute system aimed at reclaiming reusable Ares booster rockets. On February 28, 2009 a 50,000-pound dummy rocket booster was dropped in the Arizona desert and slowed by a system of five parachutes before it crashed to the ground. The booster landed softly without any damage. This was possibly the heaviest parachute drop ever, and NASA is planning to perform even heavier drops of up to 90,000 pounds in the next few months."

Botnet Worm Targets DSL Modems and Routers

Posted by kdawson on Monday March 23, @08:12PM

from the new-vector dept.

CoreDuo writes"The people who bring you the DroneBL DNS Blacklist services, while investigating an ongoing DDoS incident, have discovered a botnet composed of exploited DSL modems and routers. OpenWRT/DD-WRT devices all appear to be vulnerable. What makes this worm impressive is the sophisticated nature of the bot, and the potential damage it can do not only to an unknowing end user, but to small businesses using non-commercial Internet connections, and to the unknowing public taking advantage of free Wi-Fi services. The botnet is believed to have infected 100,000 hosts."A followup to the article notes that the bot's IRC control channel now claims that it has been shut down, though the ongoing DDoS attack on DroneBL suggests otherwise.

Maggot Therapy Similar To Standard Care For Leg Ulcers

ScienceDaily (Mar. 23, 2009) — Larval (maggot) therapy has similar health benefits and costs compared with a standard treatment for leg ulcers, find two studies published on the British Medical Journal website.

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Researchers Demo BIOS Attack That Survives Disk Wipes

Posted by CmdrTaco on Monday March 23, @09:37AM

from the can't-believe-it-took-this-long dept.

suraj.sun writes"A pair of Argentinian researchers have found a way to perform unveil a BIOS level malware attack capable of surviving even a hard-disk wipe. Alfredo Ortega and Anibal Sacco from Core Security Technologies — used the stage at last week's CanSecWest conference to demonstrate methods for infecting the BIOS with persistent code that will survive reboots and re-flashing attempts. The technique includes patching the BIOS with a small bit of code that gave them complete control of the machine. The demo ran smoothly on a Windows machine, a PC running OpenBSD and another running VMware Player."

World's Cheapest Car Goes On Sale In India

Posted by timothy on Monday March 23, @08:18AM

from the wish-it-had-a-monorail-socket-too dept.

Frankie70 writes"The Tata Nano — the car that caught the world's imagination as the cheapest ever — will finally be rolled out commercially on Monday in Mumbai in a mega event organised by Tata Motors. Ben Oliver, contributing editor, Car Magazine, London test drove the car in December, 08.These were his first impressions. This was his verdict: 'CAR's first ride in the Tata Nano felt far more significant and exciting than a first drive in a Ferrari or Lamborghini, because this car's importance is immeasurably greater. It won't compete on dynamics or quality with European or Japanese city cars, but it doesn't have to. What Tata has achieved at an unprecedented price is astonishing, although we'd guess it will cost Indian consumers closer to £1700 when it finally goes on sale, six months late, in March 2009.'"

Northrop Grumman creates 100 kilowatt laser, could usher in World War III

by Darren Murph, posted Mar 23rd 2009 at 9:12AM

Northrop Grumman's been plugging along on this little project for years now, and at long last, the company has surpassed the milestone that it's been striving for. According to a new release that's just beaming with pride, the defense company has reportedly achieved 100 kilowatts from a solid-state laser. For those unfamiliar with the back story, 100 kilowatts is the level needed to create a laser gun that could actually do more than cause temporary blindness on the battlefield. Sadly, it seems that lethal laser pointers are still a good ways away, with Dan Wildt, vice president of Northrop's directed energy systems program, noting that "it is still a little heavy and a little big." It's all good, Northrop -- we're down with backpack weapons, too.