Wednesday, January 25, 2012
MIT Media Lab Rolls Out Folding Car
Posted by samzenpus
from the sub-sub-compact dept.
kkleiner writes"You think European cars are small now, wait till the Hiriko takes to the roads in Spain's northern Basque country. The two-seater is about the size of a SmartCar, but when parked, the car can actually fold. After folding the car takes up about a third of a normal parking space. The Hiriko, Basque for 'urban car,' folds as the rear of the car slides underneath its chassis. Every square foot counts."
Turning the Hayden Planetarium Into a Giant Videogame
Posted by samzenpus
from the biggest-screen dept.
pigrabbitbear writes"Remember your first visit to the planetarium? Neil DeGrasse Tyson does — it was what inspired him to become an astrophysicist in the first place. That same planetarium, now under Tyson's direction, is currently undergoing a transformation the likes of which Neil's young self couldn't have possibly imagined: It's becoming a giant videogame."
How long do you REALLY have
A distraught senior citizen phoned her doctor's office.
'Is it true,' she wanted to know,
'that the medication
You prescribed has to be taken
For the rest of my life?'
'Yes, I'm afraid so,' the doctor told her.
There was a moment of silence
Before the senior lady replied,
I'm wondering, then,
Just how serious is my condition
Because this prescription is marked
'NO REFILLS'.'
Food Fried in Olive or Sunflower Oil Is Not Linked to Heart Disease, Spanish Study Finds
ScienceDaily (Jan. 24, 2012) — Eating food fried in olive or sunflower oil is not linked to heart disease or premature death, finds a paper published in theBritish Medical Journal online (bmj.com).
Monday, January 23, 2012
Supreme Court says police must get search warrant to use GPS tracking devices
By Donald Melanson 
posted Jan 23rd 2012 11:30AM
The US Supreme Court ruled today that police must first obtain a search warrant before using GPS devices to track a suspect's vehicle, agreeing with an earlier appeals court ruling but rejecting the Obama administration's position on the case. In delivering the decision, Justice Antonin Scalia wrote that the court holds "that the government's installation of a GPS device on a target's vehicle, and its use of that device to monitor the vehicle's movements, constitutes a 'search,'" and therefore violated the individual's Fourth Amendment rights. The case itself concerned a Washington DC nightclub owner and suspected drug dealer, Antoine Jones, who had his car's movements monitored for a month and was eventually sentenced to life in prison, only to see that conviction overturned by the aforementioned appeals court on the grounds that the police did not have a search warrant when they placed the GPS tracking device on his vehicle.New Discoveries in Cell Aging
ScienceDaily (Jan. 23, 2012) — Researchers have quantified with precision the effect of protein aggregation on the cell aging processes using as models the Escherichia coli bacteria and the molecule which is thought to trigger Alzheimer's disease. Scientists have demonstrated that the effect can be predicted before it occurs. Protein aggregation is related to several diseases, including neurodegenerative diseases.
Group Settings Can Diminish Expressions of Intelligence, Especially Among Women, Study Finds
ScienceDaily (Jan. 22, 2012) — Research has found that small-group dynamics -- such as jury deliberations, collective bargaining sessions, and cocktail parties -- can alter the expression of IQ in some susceptible people.
The Coda Electric Car at the Detroit International Auto Show (Video)
Posted by Roblimo
from the maybe-enough-battery-life-to-get-you-to-work-and-back dept.
Last week Timothy Lord looked at the Tesla Model S. He also took a quick look at the CODA electric car. Like Tesla, CODA is based in California. Like Tesla, CODA is building purely electric, "plug-in" cars. But unlike Tesla, CODA is making a bland but practical sedan that can go up to 150 miles on a charge and costs about $37,000. That's not exactly a Kia-competitive price, even though Tim says it looks kind of like a Kia. But it's 100% electric and costs less than a Tesla -- really, hardly more than a Nissan Leaf. And it has a fully-usable back seat and a decent-sized trunk. And unlike the Nissan Leaf, it's made right here in the good old USA.
YouTube hits 4 billion views per day, deals with 60 hours of uploaded content every minute
By Mat Smith posted Jan 23rd 2012 7:45AM
It looks like that redesign was worth it. The Google-owned video site has recently revealed that it's now streaming 4 billion videos every day, up 25 percent on daily views from eight months earlier. According to Reuter's report, the site now has to deal with around 60 hours of uploaded video every minute. As long as those education videos are kept separate and the cat content keeps coming, we'll be happy.
Russian Scientist Claims Signs of Life Spotted On Venus
Posted by samzenpus
from the we-are-not-alone dept.
flergum writes"Leonid Ksanfomaliti, an astronomer based at the Space Research Institute of Russia's Academy of Sciences, analyzed photographs taken by a Russian landing probe during 1982 and claims to have found signs of life. Ksanfomaliti says the Russian photographs depict objects resembling a 'disk,' a 'black flap' and a 'scorpion.'"
Nano-Scale Terahertz Antenna May Make Tricorders Real
Posted by samzenpus
from the welcome-to-the-future dept.
MrSeb writes"Researchers from Imperial College London and A*STAR in Singapore have shown off a terahertz antenna that's just 100 nanometers across — about 30,000 times smaller than existing terahertz antennae — and two orders of magnitude stronger than other T-ray beam-forming techniques. T-rays are a lot like EHF (extremely high frequency), which is used by millimeter wave scanners in airports, medical imaging, and emerging wireless networking standards like WiGig — but stronger, faster, and more detailed. Where EHF radiation can see through your clothes, T-rays can penetrate a few millimeters of skin. Furthermore, because atoms and molecules have a unique terahertz-range signature, T-ray scanners can detect toxic substances, bombs, drugs — or even cancerous tumors under your skin. Most importantly, though, due to the nano scale of these antennae, it's possible to create huge antennae arrays on a single silicon chip, meaning hand-held T-ray scanners are now a possibility. In the not so distant future, every household might have a Star Trek-like tricorder capable of detecting cancer or other diseases."
What Happens To Your Files When a Cloud Service Shuts Down?
Posted by Soulskill
from the apocalypse-and-doom dept.
MrSeb writes"Megaupload's shutdown poses an interesting question: What happens toall the files that were stored on the servers? XDA-Developers, for example, has more than 200,000 links to Megaupload — and this morning, they're all broken, with very little hope of them returning. What happens if a similar service, like Dropbox, gets shut down — either through bankruptcy, or federal take-down? Will you be given a chance to download your files, or helped to migrate them to another similar service? What about data stored on enterprise services like Azure or AWS — are they more safe?"And if you're interested, the full indictment against Megaupload is now available.
CEOs of RIM Step Down
Posted by samzenpus
from the so-long-farewell-aufwiedersehn-goodbye dept.
An anonymous reader writes"After two decades of leading the BlackBerry maker, Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balisillie are stepping downfrom their roles as Co-CEOs at Canada's Research In Motion Limited. Thorsten Heins, will now lead the BlackBerry maker as it attempts to beat the likes of Apple and Google."
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