Thursday, July 28, 2011

Speed Cameras in Urban Areas Save Millions in Cash, Analysis Finds

ScienceDaily (July 27, 2011) — The deployment of speed cameras in urban areas saves vast amounts of money as well as lives, reveals a two-year financial analysis, published online in Injury Prevention.

Peanuts Rights Holder Shuts Down Peanutweeter, Pisses Off Fans For No Reason At All

from the how-not-to-do-things dept

You may recall, a few years back, all the attention received by a site called Garfield Minus Garfield, in which a guy, Dan Walsh, took Garfield comic strips and "removed" Garfield, creating existentially weird comic strips in their place. We wrote about it three years ago, mainly to point out how nice it was that Garfield creator Jim Davis didn't freak out about it, and noted that he enjoyed it. In fact, Davis and his publisher, Ballantine Books, were so pleased with the attention it got, that they all worked together to put out an official Garfield Minus Garfield book. As we noted, we hoped that others who saw people doing creative things with their works would react similarly. 

BB Death?

I am sad because I think the enterprise management is superior to their competitors but I think the pic may be closer to the truth than I would like to admit.

South Korean Scientists Create Glowing Dog

I can't believe that no one has cracked the obvious jokes yet.  I expect to see this on Conan or Leno within a week.






Posted by samzenpus  
from the how-much-is-that-glowing-dog-in-the-window dept.
cultiv8 writes"A research team from Seoul National University (SNU) said the genetically modified female beagle has been found to glow fluorescent green under ultraviolet light if given a doxycycline antibiotic. The researchers, who completed a two-year test, said the ability to glow can be turned on or off by adding a drug to the dog's food. 'The creation of Tegon opens new horizons since the gene injected to make the dog glow can be substituted with genes that trigger fatal human diseases,' the news agency quoted lead researcher Lee Byeong-chun as saying. He said the dog was created using the somatic cell nuclear transfer technology that the university team used to make the world's first cloned dog, Snuppy, in 2005."

Wednesday, July 27, 2011

State of the Internet

http://www.gizmag.com/akamai-state-of-the-internet-report/19349/

Chinese Couple Sells Kids To Fund Online Gaming

Posted by samzenpus  
from the achievement-unlocked dept.
A Chinese couple who really like to game are under arrest for selling their kids and converting the money into game currency. From the article: "In 2009, Li Lin and Li Juan welcomed their second child, a baby girl, and came up with the idea to sell her for money to fund their online game obsession. They did so, receiving RMB 3,000 (less than $500), which they spent entirely shortly after. The couple then proceeded to sell their first child and got 10 times as much for him -- RMB 30,000, or about $4600. Upon having their third child -- another boy -- the parents followed in their previous footsteps and also got RMB 30,000 for him." I wonder what the "kid seller" achievement looks like?

Tuesday, July 26, 2011

Is Twitter Rendered Obsolete By Google+?

Posted by timothy  
from the imitation-adoption-adaption-repeat dept.
suraj.sun writes with a ComputerWorld piece predicting the end of Twitter, at least in its current form. From the article:"It's only a matter of time before Twitter becomes a ghost town. While Google+ will soon do all the things Twitter does, Twitter can't support a long list of the things Google+ supports. Also on Google+, you can post pictures and videos directly in posts, launch immediately into a video chat, send your posts to nonmembers and even present all your posts marked 'Public' as a blog available to anyone with an Internet."

Heat 'Most Likely Cause' of Pioneer Anomaly

Posted by timothy  
from the that-dog's-not-so-shaggy-after-all dept.
astroengine writes"Everything from clouds of dark matter, weird gravitational effects, alien tampering and exotic new physics have all been blamed for the 'Pioneer Anomaly' — the tiny, inexplicable sun-ward acceleration acting on the veteran Pioneer deep space probes. However, evidence is mounting for a more mundane explanation. Yes, it's the emission of heat from the spacecrafts' onboard radioisotope thermoelectric generators (RTGs), slowly nudging the Pioneers off course, that looks like the most likely culprit. It's unlikely that this new finding will completely silence advocates of more exotic explanations, however."

Monday, July 25, 2011

New Photonic Crystals Have Both Electronic and Optical Properties

ScienceDaily (July 24, 2011) — In an advance that could open new avenues for solar cells, lasers, metamaterials and more, researchers at the University of Illinois have demonstrated the first optoelectronically active 3-D photonic crystal.
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Graphene's 'Quantum Leap' Takes Electronics a Step Closer

ScienceDaily (July 24, 2011) — The Nobel Prize winning scientists Professor Andre Geim and Professor Kostya Novoselov have taken a huge step forward towards creating electronics from wonder material graphene. Writing in the journalNature Physics, the academics, who discovered the world's thinnest material at The University of Manchester in 2004, have revealed more about its electronic properties.
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Kinect-driven tactile bodysuit makes you tingle in eight different places

By   posted Jul 25th 2011 7:45AM

We know the US Army has already experimented with vibrating clothing, and soon it could be our turn. The trendy figure-hugger above is rigged with haptic actuators across the arms and torso, which respond when the wearer's body 'touches' virtual objects created via Microsoft's Kinect platform. The outfit's designers at the University of Aachen spent just a few hundred dollars on components, aside from the cost of the Kinect, so this might well have commercial potential. Click the source link if you're reallykeen to see a concept video -- although it doesn't consist of much beyond a German dude doing the Hey Macarena in his socks.

RIM axes 2000 jobs, changes managers in effort to halt decline

By   posted Jul 25th 2011 8:06AM

Just a month after a disgruntled employee accused RIM's managers of failing to make bold decisions, the latter have responded by boldly sacking 11 percent of their workforce. The company says it will notify affected employees in North America and some other countries this week. It also announced a number of changes to its executive team, with Thorsten Heins taking on the expanded role of COO, Product and Sales. Other personnel changes were generally confined to sales, marketing and operations, which leaves us wondering what, if anything, will change in the way RIM comes up with new products.