Cha Sa-soon, SKorean Woman, Passes Driver's Exam On 950th Try

November 6, 2009 22:48:50

AP:

SEOUL, South Korea — A woman in South Korea who tried to pass the written exam for a driver's license with near-daily attempts since April 2005 has finally succeeded on her 950th time. The aspiring driver spent more than 5 million won ($4,200) in application fees, but until now had failed to score the minimum 60 out of a possible 100 points needed to get behind the wheel for a driving test.

Cha Sa-soon, 68, finally passed the written exam with a score of 60 on Wednesday, said Choi Young-chul, a police official at the drivers' license agency in Jeonju, 130 miles (210 kilometers) south of Seoul.

Read the whole story: AP

USAF Scramjet Hits Mach 6, Sets Record

Posted by CmdrTaco on Thursday May 27, @10:59AM
from the get-where-yer-going dept.

military

transportation

technology

s122604 writes"The [X-51A Waverider]'s scramjet engine accelerated the vehicle to Mach 6, and it flew autonomously for 200 seconds before losing acceleration. At that point the test was terminated. The Air Force said the previous record for a hypersonic scramjet burn was 12 seconds. Joe Vogel, Boeing's director of hypersonics, said, 'This is a new world record and sets the foundation for several hypersonic applications, including access to space, reconnaissance, strike, global reach and commercial transportation.' "

Ribbon at Edge of Our Solar System: Will the Sun Enter a Million-Degree Cloud of Interstellar Gas?

ScienceDaily (May 24, 2010) — Is the Sun going to enter a million-degree galactic cloud of interstellar gas soon?

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Mutant Gum Disease Bacteria Provide Clue to Treatment for Alzheimer's

ScienceDaily (May 25, 2010) — A defective, mutant strain of the bacterium that causes gum disease could provide a clue to potential treatments for Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and a number of other diseases. Researchers from the University of Florida College of Dentistry report their findings May 25 at the 110th General Meeting of the American Society for Microbiology in San Diego.

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“Artificial life” created in lab

Written by Will on May 23rd, 2010

We knew the time was coming. The first “artificial” life has been created in a lab. The positive potential to society will be astounding as this technology progresses (as will the potential negatives).

Scientists in the US have succeeded in developing the first living cell to be controlled entirely by synthetic DNA.

The researchers constructed a bacterium's “genetic software” and transplanted it into a host cell.

The resulting microbe then looked and behaved like the species “dictated” by the synthetic DNA.

via BBC News – ‘Artificial life’ breakthrough announced by scientists.

Below is a video interview with Dr. Venter:

Can Bacteria Make You Smarter?

ScienceDaily (May 24, 2010) — Exposure to specific bacteria in the environment, already believed to have antidepressant qualities, could increase learning behavior, according to research presented at the 110th General Meeting of the American Society for Microbiology in San Diego.

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Mark Twain To Reveal All After 100 Year Wait

Posted by CmdrTaco on Monday May 24, @11:50AM
from the bruce-willis-is-dead dept.

books

Hugh Pickens writes"The Independent reports that one of Mark Twain's dying wishes is at last coming true: an extensive, outspoken and revelatory autobiography which he devoted the last decade of his life to writing is finally going to be published one hundred years after his death. Twain, the pen name of Samuel Clemens, left behind 5,000 unedited pages of memoirs when he died in 1910, together with handwritten notes saying that he did not want them to hit bookshops for at least a century, but in November, the University of California, Berkeley, where the manuscript is in a vault, will release the first volume of Mark Twain's three-volume autobiography. Scholars are divided as to why Twain wanted his autobiography kept under wraps for so long, with some believing it was because he wanted to talk freely about issues such as religion and politics. Michael Shelden, who this year published Man in White, an account of Twain's final years, says that some of his privately held views could have hurt his public image. 'He had doubts about God, and in the autobiography, he questions the imperial mission of the US in Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Philippines,' says Shelden. 'He's also critical of [Theodore] Roosevelt, and takes the view that patriotism was the last refuge of the scoundrel. Twain also disliked sending Christian missionaries to Africa. He said they had enough business to be getting on with at home: with lynching going on in the South, he thought they should try to convert the heathens down there.' Interestingly enough, Twain had a cunning plan to beat the early 20th century copyright law with its short copyright terms. Twain planned to republish every one of his works the moment it went out of copyright with one-third more content, hoping that availability of such 'premium' version will make prints based on the out-of-copyright version less desirable on the market."

School bus takes wrong students on field trip

LITTLE FERRY, N.J. - Officials say a mix-up led a school bus driver in northern New Jersey to start to take students to an amusement park instead of school.

About 30 Ridgefield Park High School students boarded the bus around 7:45 a.m. Wednesday, thinking it was the bus they ride every day. But the driver had shown up early to take seventh- and eighth-graders to Six Flags Great Adventure at 9 a.m.

The students became worried when the bus reached the New Jersey Turnpike and called their parents and the school when the driver wouldn't stop.

Homeless woman lived in man's closet for year

TOKYO - A homeless woman who sneaked into a man’s house and lived undetected in his closet for a year was arrested in Japan after he became suspicious when food mysteriously began disappearing.

Police found the 58-year-old woman Thursday hiding in the top compartment of the man’s closet and arrested her for trespassing, police spokesman Hiroki Itakura from southern Kasuya town said Friday.

The resident of the home installed securitycameras that transmitted images to his mobile phone after becoming puzzled by food disappearing from his kitchen over the past several months.

Toyota Partners With Tesla To Make Electric Cars

Posted by timothy on Friday May 21, @08:12AM
from the is-a-new-tesla-greener-than-an-existing-hummer? dept.

earth

transportation

news

An anonymous reader writes"Toyota just announced that it will invest $50 million in Tesla Motors and the two companies will partner to manufacture electric vehicles to meet California's growing demand for greener cars. Bay Area residents should be especially excited, as this venture is expected to create thousands of new jobs in the San Francisco Bay Area, and is sure to be a boon to California's flagging economy. Tesla fans as well should rejoice as the new partnership will allow the EV start-up to bring its highly coveted, iconic design to into more affordable electric vehicles like the Model S sedan, which will sell for $49,900 and gets 300 miles on a 3-5 hour charge."

Washington establishing timeline for sales of 'loud' EVs

By Joseph L. Flatley posted May 20th 2010 3:19PM

Whenever we test drive an EV, we try to bring along a passenger who screams things out the window like "Beware! Silent car!" and "Electric vehicle! Don't get hit!" But we understand that for some of you this might not be an option. Luckily, it looks like initiatives to outfit electric vehicles with warning sounds have been picking up steam, from the Pedestrian Safety Act last year to a new bill that would have the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration establish a three year timeline for auto manufacturers. According to Autoblog, "there's no word as to how loud the noise would be or what it will sound like," although drivers would not be able to turn it off, and it would likely be variable, depending on your speed -- not unlike the system Brabus uses in its Smart High Voltage EV. As for your car-lovin' Engadget editors, we're already looking for one that emulates the growl of the '68 Ford Mustang that Steve McQueen drove in Bullitt.

National Academy of Science Urges Carbon Tax

Posted by samzenpus on Wednesday May 19, @08:04PM
from the let-the-flamewar-begin dept.

earth

government

news

science

eldavojohn writes"Moving for the first time from a cautious message to a message of urgency, the National Academy of Science has advised the United States government to either adopt a carbon tax or cap and tradelegislation. This follows their most comprehensive study in three parts released today from the National Academies that, for the first time, urges required action from the government to curb climate change."

SSD power consumption reduced by 86 percent, speeds of 9.5GBps achieved by Japanese researchers

By Vladislav Savov posted May 20th 2010 6:53AM

You know, the thing about the future is, it'll probably come from Japan. Only yesterday we saw mammoth 50TB magnetic tapes, and today we're hearing the home of Nikon has come up with a new writing method for NAND flash memory that dramatically reduces the already humble power requirements of SSDs. Using their hot new single-cell self-boost technique, University of Tokyo researchers have been able to lower operational voltages down to 1V and thereby facilitate parallel writing to over 100 NAND chips at a time, resulting in the bombastic 9.5GBps writing speed claim. The whole thing has only just been announced, so don't go raiding your local tech store just yet, but we can at least start preparing ourselves for this madness whenever it does show up.

10,000 Cows Can Power 1,000 Servers

Posted by samzenpus on Thursday May 20, @03:37AM
from the cattle-computing dept.

power

hp

science

CWmike writes"Reducing energy consumption in data centers, particularly with the prospect of a federal carbon tax, is pushing vendors to explore an ever-growing range of ideas. HP engineers say that biogas may offer a fresh alternative energy approach for IT managers. Researchers at HP Labs presented a paper (download PDF) on using cow manure from dairy farms and cattle feedlots and other 'digested farm waste' to generate electricity to an American Society of Mechanical Engineers conference, held this week. In it, the research team calculates that 'a hypothetical farm of 10,000 dairy cows' could power a 1 MW data center — or on the order of 1,000 servers. One trend that makes the idea of turning organic waste into usable power for data centers is the moves by several firms to build facilities in rural locations, where high-speed networks allow them to take advantage of the cost advantages of such areas. But there are some practical problems, not the least of which is connecting a data center to the cows. If it does happen, the move could call for a new take on plug and play: plug and poo."

Marine Mammals Used to Fight Terrorism

Posted by samzenpus on Wednesday May 19, @11:11AM
from the jones-the-enhanced-dolphin dept.

military

pinkstuff writes"The Navy unveiled its terror-fighting marine mammals at a two-day homeland security and disaster preparedness exercise in California this week. From the article: 'A Navy seal — actually a sea lion — took less than a minute to find a fake mine under a pier near San Francisco's AT&T Park. A dolphin quickly located a terrorist lurking in the black water before another sea lion, using a device carried in its mouth, cuffed the pretend saboteur's ankle so authorities could reel him in.' Queue the 'frickin lasers' jokes."

Students accelerate cubicle arms race with PlayStation Eye-tracked, iPhone-guided coilgun (video)

By Sean Hollister posted May 19th 2010 7:37AM

DIY weaponry gets more lethal with each passing year; where once we were content with a simple foam missile launcher, technology has progressed such that our automated turrets now spew screwdriver bits,airsoft and paintballs. As progress forges ahead, two engineering students at the University of Arkansas have added injury to insult with this four-stage DIY coilgun. Using an Arduino microcontroller to actuate the firing mechanism and steer the monstrous wooden frame, they nimbly control the badass kit with an iDevice over WiFi, and line up targets using a repurposed PlayStation Eye webcam. While we'd of course prefer to have our phone SSH into the gun over 3G, we're not going to argue with success. We'd like to keep our lungs un-perforated, thank you very much. See it in action after the break.

PC World Hack A Day

The Onion: Google 'whisper ads' detect keywords in phone calls (video)

By Thomas Ricker posted May 18th 2010 3:53AM

Oh man, The Onion really outdid itself this time. Its latest tech parody takes on ad-supported phones from Google meant to drive down the device's cost. Funny, because it's true. Users won't even remember a time when they didn't have a second voice whispered in their ear.

P.S. The Yahoo dig at the end is classic.

http://www.engadget.com/2010/05/18/the-onion-google-whisper-ads-detect-keywords-in-phone-calls/

German User Fined For Having an Open Wi-Fi

Posted by CmdrTaco on Thursday May 13, @10:59AM
from the half-of-you-are-guilty dept.

security

wireless

it

Kilrah_il writes"A German citizen was sued for copyright infringement because copyrighted material was downloaded through his network while he was on vacation. Although the court did not find him guilty of copyright infringement, he was fined for not having password-protected his network: 'Private users are obligated to check whether their wireless connection is adequately secured to the danger of unauthorized third parties abusing it to commit copyright violation,' the court said."

North Korea Announces Achieving Nuclear Fusion

Posted by samzenpus on Wednesday May 12, @01:36PM
from the kim-jong-illin dept.

aftertaf writes"North Korea claims to have achieved nuclear fusion by building what it describes as a 'unique thermo-nuclear reaction device.' This announcement was met by skepticism on just about every news website this side of Saturn. Pyongyang claims its latest scientific breakthrough coincides with the birthday of the country's founder and eternal president Kim Il-sung. This is not the first time it seems that the laws of nature have been bent in his honor. According to official biographies, when his son, Kim Jong-il, was born, a new star appeared in the sky."No doubt the Dear Leader combined the atomic nuclei by hand.

Genetic Testing Coming To a Drugstore Near You

Posted by kdawson on Wednesday May 12, @08:05AM
from the your-privacy-is-assured dept.

biotech

business

medicine

Hugh Pickens writes"The Chicago Sun-Times reports that Walgreens is slated to begin selling genetic-testing kits priced from $20 to $30 apiece that can tell people whether they're likely to get breast cancer, Alzheimer's disease, become obese, or suffer from a range of other maladies. However, to get the results of various tests, shoppers will have to fork over an additional $79 for drug-response results, $179 for 'pre-pregnancy planning' results, $179 for health condition results, or $249 for a combination of the three. Pathway Genomics and other companies already offer such tests online, but Walgreens will be the first brick-and-mortar retailer to sell them. FDA spokeswoman Karen Riley says Pathway overstepped its bounds when it announced its plans to market the tests directly to the consumer at 6,000 of Walgreen's 7,500 stores and wants Pathway Genomics to submit data showing that its tests give accurate results.'The claims have limitations based on existing science,' says Riley, 'and consumers should not be making important medical and lifestyle decisions based on these tests without first consulting a health-care professional.' Walgreen responded that FDA clearance is not required to sell the kit in its stores; and anyway, the drugstore chain already sells other diagnostic and testing products such as pregnancy tests, paternity tests, and drug tests."

Biofuel Chemistry More Complex Than Petroleum, Say Researchers

ScienceDaily (May 12, 2010) — Understanding the key elements of biofuel combustion is an important step toward insightful selection of next-generation alternative fuels.

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Evidence Growing of Air Pollution's Link to Heart Disease, Death

ScienceDaily (May 10, 2010) — The scientific evidence linking air pollution to heart attacks, strokes and cardiovascular death has "substantially strengthened," and people, particularly those at high cardiovascular risk, should limit their exposure, according to an updated American Heart Association scientific statement.

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Untangling the Quantum Entanglement Behind Photosynthesis

ScienceDaily (May 10, 2010) — The future of clean green solar power may well hinge on scientists being able to unravel the mysteries of photosynthesis, the process by which green plants convert sunlight into electrochemical energy. To this end, researchers with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)'s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and the University of California (UC), Berkeley have recorded the first observation and characterization of a critical physical phenomenon behind photosynthesis known as quantum entanglement.

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Flaxseed-Fed Chickens Shed Light on Ovarian Cancer

ScienceDaily (May 4, 2010) — In the race to find answers about ovarian cancer, researchers now have something to cluck about. For five years, University of Illinois researchers have been using the chicken as a model to study this deadly disease and have recently discovered that a diet enriched with flaxseed decreases severity of ovarian cancer and increases survival in hens.

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Zero Tolerance Ineffective in Schools, Study Finds

ScienceDaily (May 10, 2010) — Zero tolerance policy in schools -- which can mandate automatic punishment for weapons, drugs, profanity and various forms of disruptive behavior -- is failing to make students feel safe, contends a new study by two Michigan State University researchers.

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