krou writes"According the Guardian, some 30 million chip and pin cards in Germany have been affected by a programming failure, which saw the microchips in cards unable to recognize the year change. The bug has left millions of credit and debit card users unable to withdraw money or make purchases, and has stranded many on holiday. French card manufacturer Gemalto accepted responsibility for the fault, 'which it is estimated will cost €300m (£270m) to rectify.' They claim cards in other countries made by Gemalto are unaffected."
Thursday, January 7, 2010
Astronomers Get New Tools for Gravitational-Wave Detection
ScienceDaily (Jan. 7, 2010) — Teamwork between gamma-ray and radio astronomers has produced a breakthrough in finding natural cosmic tools needed to make the first direct detections of the long-elusive gravitational waves predicted by Albert Einstein nearly a century ago. An orbiting gamma-ray telescope has pointed radio astronomers to specific locations in the sky where they can discover new millisecond pulsars.
How People Work ... and the Fingerprint Mystery
ScienceDaily (Jan. 7, 2010) — Why do we chew our food? Research has shown that it is not, as has long been presumed, to make chunks of food small enough to swallow without choking. Biomechanics, who have modelled the cohesive strength of food after a certain amount of chewing, have shown that we actually chew our food to ensure it is in a firm blob and, therefore, safe to swallow.
Wednesday, January 6, 2010
Tipping Elements in the Earth System: How Stable Is the Contemporary Environment?
ScienceDaily (Jan. 6, 2010) — A Special Feature of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences presents the latest scientific insights on so-called tipping elements in the planetary environment. These elements have been identified as the most vulnerable large-scale components of the Earth System that may be profoundly altered by human interference. If one or more of those components is tipped -- especially in the course of global warming -- then the age of remarkably stable environmental conditions on Earth throughout the Holocene may end quickly and irreversibly.
Tuesday, January 5, 2010
Netgear to stream Full HD anywhere in the home over 4x4 MIMO WiFi
By Thomas Ricker 
posted Jan 5th 2010 6:55AM
Hey Netgear, did you have a surprise for us at CES? Say the world's first 4x4 MIMO 802.11n WiFi HD Video bridge? Sorry, but Quantenna just revealed your partnership that promises to deliver Full HD video quality streams across distances of "100 feet or more, regardless of signal interferences and dead zones." According to the Quantenna press release, anyway. That's up to 5x the distance ofexisting wireless HD solutions thanks to Quantenna's 4x4 Multiple Input Multiple Output (MIMO) technology, adaptive transmit digital beamforming, and wireless channel monitoring and optimizing; a lot of scary sounding jargon that should allow the device to carry up to four streams of full HD video pretty much anywhere in the house with claimed "near-perfect transmission performance." While we don't have pics yet you can expect Netgear's baby to be sporting 4 antennas (like the Quantenna reference design pictured) when it's announced proper in the next few days.Loss of Sea Ice Stirs Up Arctic Waters
ScienceDaily (Jan. 4, 2010) — The Arctic Ocean is generally considered a remarkably quiet ocean, with very little mixing, because a cover of sea ice prevents wind from driving the formation of internal waves. To study this effect and investigate how melting sea ice might affect ocean mixing in the Arctic, Rainville and Woodgate analyze data from moorings in the northern Chukchi Sea.
Discovery Aims to Correct Cellular Defects Leading to Diabetes
ScienceDaily (Jan. 4, 2010) — A new research discovery published online in the FASEB Journalmay change the perception and treatment of diabetes. That's because scientists have moved closer toward correcting the root cause of the disease rather than managing its symptoms. Specifically researchers identified a protein (G6PD protein) and its antioxidant product (NAPDH) that both prevent the death and promote the growth of cells which produce and release insulin in the pancreas (beta cells).
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)