eldavojohn writes"Both the EU and US are using a strategy to merge what used to be two separate searches: the search for exoplanets that may harbor life and the search for dark energy. In an effort to develop 'robust, low-risk missions that maximize the scientific return,' the article analyzes how, without any changes, a space-based dark energy telescope could also check for microlensing events indicating an exoplanet."
Friday, November 20, 2009
EA Shuts Down Pandemic Studios, Cuts 200 Jobs
Posted by Soulskill on Friday November 20, @12:01AM
from the say-goodnight-folks dept.
from the say-goodnight-folks dept.
lbalbalba writes"Electronic Arts is shutting down its Westwood-based game developer Pandemic Studios just two years after acquiring it, putting nearly 200 people out of work. 'The struggling video game publisher informed employees Tuesday morning that it was closing the studio as part of a recently announced plan to eliminate 1,500 jobs, or 16% of its global workforce. Pandemic has about 220 employees, but an EA spokesman said that a core team, estimated by two people close to the studio to be about 25, will be integrated into the publisher's other Los Angeles studio, in Playa Vista.' An ex-developer for Pandemic attributed the studio's struggles to poor decisions from the management."
Thursday, November 19, 2009
Pig out More at Thanksgiving and You May Shop Less
ScienceDaily (Nov. 19, 2009) — Forthcoming research from two University of Utah marketing professors suggests how eating a traditional Thanksgiving dinner with turkey and mashed potatoes makes consumers less likely to buy on impulse, which might affect the outcome of their shopping on Black Friday, historically one of the busiest retail shopping days of the year.
Bomb-Proof Wallpaper Developed
Posted by samzenpus on Thursday November 19, @01:31AM
from the radiation-shielding-curtains dept.
from the radiation-shielding-curtains dept.
MikeChino writes"Working in partnership with the US Army Corp of Engineers, Berry Plastics has rolled out a new breed of bomb-proof wallpaper. Dubbed the X-Flex Blast Protection System, the wallpaper is so effective that a single layer can keep a wrecking ball from smashing through a brick wall, and a double layer can stop blunt objects (i.e. a flying 2×4) from knocking down drywall. According to its designers, covering an entire room takes less than an hour."
Tracking the World's Great Unsolved Math Mysteries
Posted by samzenpus on Wednesday November 18, @07:06PM
from the another-piece-of-pi dept.
from the another-piece-of-pi dept.
coondoggie writes"Some math problems are as old as the wind, experts say, and many remain truly unsolved. But a new open source-based site from the American Institute of Mathematics looks to help track work done and solve long-standing and difficult math problems. The Institute, along with the National Science Foundation, has opened the AIM Problem Lists site to offer an organized and annotated collection of unsolved problems, and previously unsolved problems, in a specialized area of mathematics research. The problem list provides a snapshot of the current state of research in a particular research area, letting experts track new developments, and newcomers gain a perspective on the subject."
Smart Grid Could Pose Threat To Privacy
Posted by samzenpus on Wednesday November 18, @08:26PM
from the lets-take-a-look dept.
from the lets-take-a-look dept.
Presto Vivace writes"Brian Krebs of the Washington Post reports on a study jointly released Tuesday by the Ontario Information and Privacy Commissioner and the Future of Privacy Forum. It seems that in the process of collecting all that feedback about energy use, utility companies will inevitably collect a great deal of information about us. From the article: 'Instead of measuring energy use at the end of each billing period, smart meters will provide this information at much shorter intervals, the report notes. Even if electricity use is not recorded minute by minute, or at the appliance level, information may be gleaned from ongoing monitoring of electricity consumption such as the approximate number of occupants, when they are present, as well as when they are awake or asleep. For many, this will resonate as a "sanctity of the home" issue, where such intimate details of daily life should not be accessible.'"
Monday, November 16, 2009
Public School Teachers Selling Lesson Plans Online
Posted by kdawson on Monday November 16, @01:46AM
from the pin-money dept.
from the pin-money dept.
theodp writes"Thousands of teachers are using websites like Teachers Pay Teachers and We Are Teachers to cash in on a commodity they used to give away, selling lesson plans online for exercises as simple as M&M sorting and as sophisticated as Shakespeare. While some of this extra money is going to buy books and classroom supplies, the new teacher-entrepreneurs are also spending it on dinners out, mortgage payments, credit card bills, vacation travel and even home renovation, raising questions over who owns material developed for public school classrooms."
Friday, November 13, 2009
$2 million Bugatti crashes into lagoon
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Youths See All Parental Control Negatively When There's A Lot Of It
ScienceDaily (Nov. 13, 2009) — A new study has found that young people feel differently about two types of parental control, generally viewing a type of control that's thought to be better for their development more positively. However, when parents are very controlling, young people no longer make this distinction and view both types of parental control negatively.
Thursday, November 12, 2009
Great White Sharks Visiting San Francisco
Posted by samzenpus on Thursday November 12, @03:11AM
from the I-left-my-harp-seal-in-San-Francisco dept.
from the I-left-my-harp-seal-in-San-Francisco dept.
Ponca City, We love you writes"Juliet Eilperin writes in the Washington Post that while for years, humans have thought of great white sharks as wandering the sea at random, only occasionally venturing close to shore, it turns out we were wrong. Scientists lured 179 great white sharks to their boat with a carpet decoy designed to look like a seal, and used a lance to attach satellite tags with the aid of 2.3-inch titanium darts to track the sharks and discovered that Pacific white sharks spend months near the northern and central California coast between August and February, foraging among elephant seals, sea lions, and other prey. The sharks were spotted as far inland as the mouth of the San Francisco Bay, east of the Golden Gate Bridge. 'It shows you how wild it is off our West Coast of North America. This is Yellowstone,' says Stanford University marine sciences professor Barbara A. Block. The fact that 'a major concentration' of great whites can ignore humans 'shows us the sharks are really minding their own business. The number of interactions with people is very small, considering,' says Salvador J. Jorgensen."
Bing To Use Wolfram Alpha Results
Posted by samzenpus on Thursday November 12, @12:02AM
from the taking-a-look dept.
from the taking-a-look dept.
angry tapir writes"Microsoft is rolling out some enhancements to its Bing search engine, including some that rely on computational information delivered by Wolfram Alpha. That means that people will be able to search for some complicated information, and the search engine will be able to compute the answers. In a blog post, Tracey Yao, program manager, and Pedro Silva, product manager at Microsoft, give some examples."
Ferrari-styled OutRun arcade machine set for crazy scooter transformation? (video)
by Tim Stevens 
posted Nov 12th 2009 at 7:46AM
If you're a child of the '80s and a gamer to boot you surely remember OutRun, the game that rocked a generation with only some parallax effects and pixelated blonde hair -- though the giant arcade cabinet with gold wheels certainly didn't hurt. Now "contemporary artist" Garnet Hertz (creator of the twitching, crunchy frog server) is proposing to give that very cabinet a new lease on life, and a motorized one at that. Hertz wants to take an arcade machine and merge it with an EVT America Electric Trike, making those stylized five-spoke rims actually move. But that's only half of it. He plans to power the display with an iPhone 3GS and use it to render a sort of halcyon 16-bit view of the world ahead, with every road a 64-color dream lined with palm trees. A recent video showing off some of the tech is embedded below, and while we think this is about as likely to turn a wheel as aTeenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cabinet is to travel in time, we'll certainly be first in line with four quarters if it ever does.
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
Avatars Can Surreptitiously And Negatively Affect User In Video Games, Virtual Worlds
ScienceDaily (Nov. 11, 2009) — Although often seen as an inconsequential feature of digital technologies, one's self-representation, or avatar, in a virtual environment can affect the user's thoughts, according to research by a University of Texas at Austin communication professor.
Thursday, November 5, 2009
Green Tea Shows Promise As Chemoprevention Agent For Oral Cancer
ScienceDaily (Nov. 5, 2009) — Green tea extract has shown promise as cancer prevention agent for oral cancer in patients with a pre-malignant condition known as oral leukoplakia, according to researchers at The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center.
Low-Energy Laser Etching May Replace Fruit Labels
Posted by samzenpus on Thursday November 05, @07:57AM
from the tattooed-fruit dept.
from the tattooed-fruit dept.
MikeChino writes"How many times have you bit into a piece of fruit only to find that you're also chomping on a sticker label? The small sticky labels have long been the bane of waste-conscious fruit and vegetable eaters, but that might all change thanks to new technology that uses a low-energy carbon dioxide laser beam to etch information directly onto produce. No more peeling those annoying labels! So far the technology is being used on a number of fruits and vegetables in New Zealand, Australia, and Pacific Rim countries, and it's currently going through the final stages of review by the FDA. Once the technology is approved in the US, researchers from the University of Florida and the USDA Agricultural Research Service hope that it will be used in Florida's massive grapefruit industry."
Volcanic Activity May Split Africa In Two
Posted by samzenpus on Thursday November 05, @04:04AM
from the spit-up dept.
from the spit-up dept.
An anonymous reader writes'Volcanic activity may split the African continent in two, creating a new ocean, say experts. This is due to a recent geological crack which has appeared in northeastern Ethiopia.'
Wednesday, November 4, 2009
Secret Copyright Treaty Leaks. It's Bad. Very Bad.
Jamie found a Boing Boing story that will probably get your blood to at least a simmer. It says"The internet chapter of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, a secret copyright treaty whose text Obama's administration refused to disclose due to 'national security' concerns, has leaked. It's bad."You can read the original leaked document or the summary. If passed, the internet will never be the same. Thank goodness it's hidden from public scrutiny for National Security.
Placebo Effect Caught In the Act In Spinal Nerves
Posted by kdawson on Wednesday November 04, @08:07AM
from the time-to-shut-down dept.
from the time-to-shut-down dept.
SerpensV passes along the news that German scientists have found direct evidence that the spinal cord is involved in the placebo effect (whosediminishing over time we discussed a bit earlier)."The researchers who made the discovery scanned the spinal cords of volunteers while applying painful heat to one arm. Then they rubbed a cream onto the arm and told the volunteers that it contained a painkiller, but in fact it had no active ingredient. Even so, the cream made spinal-cord neural activity linked to pain vanish. 'This type of mechanism has been envisioned for over 40 years for placebo analgesia,' says Donald Price, a neuroscientist at the University of Florida in Gainesville, who was not involved in the new study. 'This study provides the most direct test of this mechanism to date.'"
New Theory On Fairness In Economics Targets CEO Pay
ScienceDaily (Nov. 4, 2009) — Chief executives in 35 of the top Fortune 500 companies were overpaid by about 129 times their "ideal salaries" in 2008, according to a new type of theoretical analysis proposed by a Purdue University researcher to determine fair CEO compensation.
Children Who Often Drink Full-fat Milk Weigh Less, Swedish Research Finds
ScienceDaily (Nov. 4, 2009) — Eight-year-old children who drink full-fat milk every day have a lower BMI than those who seldom drink milk. This is not the case for children who often drink medium-fat or low-fat milk. This is one conclusion of a thesis presented at the Sahlgrenska Academy.
Firefox Passes IE6 In Browser Share
Posted by kdawson on Wednesday November 04, @04:52AM
from the die-already dept.
from the die-already dept.
Jared sends word of Ars Technica coverage of Net Applications' monthly browser share numbers. What's significant this time is that Firefox has finally passed IE6 in worldwide share."Internet Explorer remains ahead of the rest of the competition, but since month after month it continues to lose ground to all other browsers, Firefox has now finally surpassed IE6, which is easily the most hated version of Microsoft's browser. ... In October, all browsers except for IE and Opera showed positive growth. Between October and September, Internet Explorer dropped a significant 1.07 percentage points (from 65.71 percent to 64.64 percent) and Firefox moved up a sizeable 0.32 percentage points (from 23.75 percent to 24.07 percent). ... Although IE's decline seems to be unceasing, the real shame is that the old versions have more share than the newer ones (we can only hope that as Windows 7 gains popularity, this trend will reverse)."Ars presents a graph with their own site's browser share picture, and as you might expect it's very different from the general population's.
Monday, November 2, 2009
Skins Funnies
HEADLINE: "D.C. Police are "cracking" down on speeders. For the first
offense, they give you two Redskins tickets. (If you get stopped a second
time, they give you two Nationals tickets.)"
Q. What do you call 47 millionaires sitting around a TV watching the Super Bowl?
A. The Washington Redskins.
Q. How do you keep the Redskins out of your yard?
A. Put up a goal post.
Q. Where do you go in D.C. in case of a tornado?
A. To FedEx Field - they never have a touchdown there!
Q. What do you call a Redskin with a Super Bowl ring?
A. Senior Citizen
Q. What's the difference between the Redskins and a dollar bill?
A. You can still get four quarters out of a dollar bill.
Q. How many Redskins does it take to win a Super Bowl?
A. We may never find out in the 21st century.
Q. What do the Redskins and possums have in common?
A. Both play dead at home and get killed on the road.
offense, they give you two Redskins tickets. (If you get stopped a second
time, they give you two Nationals tickets.)"
Q. What do you call 47 millionaires sitting around a TV watching the Super Bowl?
A. The Washington Redskins.
Q. How do you keep the Redskins out of your yard?
A. Put up a goal post.
Q. Where do you go in D.C. in case of a tornado?
A. To FedEx Field - they never have a touchdown there!
Q. What do you call a Redskin with a Super Bowl ring?
A. Senior Citizen
Q. What's the difference between the Redskins and a dollar bill?
A. You can still get four quarters out of a dollar bill.
Q. How many Redskins does it take to win a Super Bowl?
A. We may never find out in the 21st century.
Q. What do the Redskins and possums have in common?
A. Both play dead at home and get killed on the road.
Find DARPA's Balloons, Win $40K
coondoggie writes"The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency today offered up a rather interesting challenge: find and plot 10 red weather balloons scattered at undisclosed locations across the country. The first person to identify the location of all the balloons and enter them on the challenge Web site will win a $40,000 cash prize. According to the agency, the balloons will be in readily accessible locations, visible from nearby roadways and accompanied by DARPA representatives. All balloons are scheduled to go on display at all locations at 10:00AM (ET) until approximately 4:00 PM on Saturday, December 5, 2009."
Toyota Develops New Flower Species To Reduce Pollution
teko_teko writes"Toyota has created two flower species that absorb nitrogen oxides and take heat out of the atmosphere. The flowers, derivatives of the cherry sage plant and the gardenia, were specially developed for the grounds of Toyota's Prius plant in Toyota City, Japan. The sage derivative's leaves have unique characteristics that absorb harmful gases, while the gardenia's leaves create water vapour in the air, reducing the surface temperature of the factory surrounds and, therefore, reducing the energy needed for cooling, in turn producing less carbon dioxide (CO2)."
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