Don't Show, Don't Tell? Direct Instruction Can Thwart Independent Exploration

ScienceDaily (June 30, 2011) — Suppose someone showed you a novel gadget and told you, "Here's how it works," while demonstrating a single function, such as pushing a button. What would you do when they handed it to you?
Read More

A Solar-Powered 3D Printer Prints Glass From Sand

Posted by Unknown Lamer on Tuesday June 28, @03:41PM 

from the print-your-dishes-off-the-grid dept.

Tx-0 writes in with a story in Colossal Art & Design. From the article:"Industrial designer and tinkerer Markus Kayser spent the better part of a year building and experimenting with two fantastic devices that harness the sun's power in some of the world's harshest climates. The first he calls a Sun Cutter, a low-tech light cutter that uses a large ball lens to focus the sun's rays onto a surface that's moved by a cam-guided system. ... Next, Kayser began to examine the process of 3D printing. Merging two of the deserts most abundant resources, nearly unlimited quantities of sand and sun, he created the Solar Sinter, a device that melts sand to create 3D objects out of glass."

Fidgeting Your Way to Fitness

ScienceDaily (June 28, 2011) — Walking to the photocopier and fidgeting at your desk are contributing more to your cardiorespiratory fitness than you might think.

Read More

The Enterprise Is Wrong, Not Mozilla

Posted by CmdrTaco on Tuesday June 28, @11:40AM 

from the beam-me-up-snotty dept.

There's been a lot of noise about Mozilla's new rapid release leading to conflict with Enterprise users. Kethinov found an Ars article that points out that"Now that Mozilla has released Firefox 5, version 4, just three months old, is no longer supported. Enterprise customers aren't very pleased with this decision, and are claiming it makes their testing burden impossible. We're not convinced: we think Mozilla's decision is the right one for the Web itself.'"

Happy Tau Day

The actual site had an interesting argument about why Tau is right and Pi is wrong.


Posted by samzenpus on Tuesday June 28, @10:48AM 

from the look-how-round-it-is dept.

Forget about Pi Day, today we celebrate something twice as good: Tau Day. For far too long, Pi has been the bride and Tau has been the bridesmaid. As Michael Hartl points out in The Tau Manifesto, "Pi is a confusing and unnatural choice for the circle constant." He is giving a talk at the California Institute of Technology based on the Manifesto, with pie served at the end. "Twice as many as you might expect," he says.

Surprising Drop in Physicians' Willingness to Accept Patients With Insurance, U.S. Study Finds

ScienceDaily (June 27, 2011) — As required under the U.S. Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010, millions of people will soon be added to the ranks of the insured. However, this rapid expansion of coverage is colliding with a different, potentially problematic trend that could end up hampering access to health care.

Read More

Brain Rhythm Associated With Learning Also Linked to Running Speed, Study Shows

ScienceDaily (June 24, 2011) — Rhythms in the brain that are associated with learning become stronger as the body moves faster, UCLA neurophysicists report in a new study.

Read More

New Solar Cell: Engineers Crack Full-Spectrum Solar Challenge

ScienceDaily (June 26, 2011) — In a paper published in Nature Photonics, U of T Engineering researchers report a new solar cell that may pave the way to inexpensive coatings that efficiently convert the sun's rays to electricity.

Read More

Video: Intriguing BioShock Infinite Tears Up the Shooter Rulebook

Don't be fooled by the franchise. The only thing BioShock Infinite shares with its predecessor is a captivating aura of mystery.

http://feeds.wired.com/~r/wired/index/~3/8Ozor8guZwo/

Sunspot Drop Won't Cause Global Cooling

News that solar activity might fizzle for a few decades has prompted talk of a new "Little Ice Age," even a quick fix for global warming. But that??s just not going to happen.

http://feeds.wired.com/~r/wired/index/~3/WT3bSzuv7mg/

Scientists study orca ears, employ lasers to create hyper-sensitive underwater microphone

By Brian Heater  posted Jun 27th 2011 5:13AM

There are plenty of reasons to want to monitor what's going on in the ocean, from whale migration, to the recent stylistic resurgence of hot crustacean bands. There are certain inherent difficulties, however, in creating a powerful underwater microphone, namely all of that water you've got to contend with. A team of scientists has taken cues from the design of orca ears, in order to develop a powerful microphone that can work far beneath the waves. The researchers developed membranes 25 times thinner than plastic wrap, which fluctuate as sound is made. In order to operate at extreme depths, however, the microphone must fill with water to maintain a consistent pressure. So, how does one monitor the minute movements of a membrane hampered by the presence of water? Lasers, of course! The hydrophone can capture a 160-decibel range of sounds and operate at depths of 11,000 meters, where the pressure is around 1,100 times what we're used to on earth. So if the orcas themselves ever master the laser, at least we'll be able to hear them coming.

The Top Five Actions Parents Can Take to Reduce Child Exposure to Toxic Chemicals at Home

ScienceDaily (June 15, 2011) — Controlling house dust tops a list of five ways parents can protect their children from toxic substances in and around the home, say leading health and environmental experts in Canada.
Read More

Does Driving a Porsche Make a Man More Desirable to Women?

ScienceDaily (June 16, 2011) — New research by faculty at Rice University, the University of Texas-San Antonio (UTSA) and the University of Minnesota finds that men's conspicuous spending is driven by the desire to have uncommitted romantic flings. And, gentlemen, women can see right through it.

Read More

Fathers Still Matter to Kids Who Have Moved out

ScienceDaily (June 13, 2011) — BYU family life professor Larry Nelson's oldest daughter Jessica graduated from high school this spring, so his career researching the transition to adulthood is starting to get personal.
Read MOre

What’s your Android ‘Fiddling ratio’?

By James Kendrick | June 10, 2011, 12:47pm PDT

A thoughtful article on MobileUnwrapped today addressed a factor the author termed “Android fatigue”, and the observation was so right on the money it got me thinking. Once I get thinking about something an article is almost always the result, so now everyone must pay.

The reference article covered the author’s growing dissatisfaction with Android and subsequent realization that iOS 5 looks to offer a complete system that functions well. I have been growing uneasy with Android myself recently, the result of a system software update on my HTC EVO. Since the update have used the EVO with the stock user interface and not customize the phone as heavily as I normally would. This leads me to the realization that the Android ‘fiddling ratio’ is extremely high.

What is the Android fiddling ratio? That’s the amount of time owners of Android devices spend fiddling with the interface to customize it just so. The beauty of Android is that every aspect of the system and interface can be tweaked by the user to make it look and work in just the desired way. Unfortunately, while users are busily customizing the device, they aren’t doing anything productive with it. That’s what I discovered was happening to me without even realizing it until I stopped and just used my phone like it is.

Looking back, I spent a tremendous amount of time tweaking my devices. My situation is worse than most uers as I use a lot of different devices. I regularly spent hours at a time installing different apps that let me customize the look and feel of the phone. Additional hours were spent on top of that experimenting with the tools to get them to look a certain way. Then came the search for additional apps and widgets to do other things related to making the phone work just so.

The simple fact is while I was doing the nearly constant fiddling with Android to fit my “needs”, I wasn’t using the device to get anything done. Sure I’d end up with a feeling of accomplishment once I got a new tweak to work just so, but I really wasn’t getting anything of substance done. The fiddling ratio was off the chart, and not the correct side of the chart.

Since leaving my phone alone and using it as is, I have been frankly amazed how useful it is. Now every time I pick up the phone I actually do something with it, and that has positively impacted my routine. I find myself thinking about things that really matter, and not just about how something looks. It’s like I have recovered a lot of time each day that would have been lost not that long ago. The ability to customize a device is a good thing don’t misunderstand me, but when you take it so far that it’s all you do the fiddling ratio is much too high.

I’m interested to hear from Android device owners, smartphones or tablets, about your thoughts on fiddling with Android. Give it some earnest thought about how you use it and let me know in the Talkback if you find your fiddling ratio to be as high as mine was.

Image credit: Flickr user mogmismo

Beam of X-Ray Laser Light With Shortest Wavelength Successfully Produced

ScienceDaily (June 13, 2011) — RIKEN and the Japan Synchrotron Radiation Research Institute (JASRI) have successfully produced a beam of X-ray laser light with a wavelength of 1.2 Angstroms, the shortest ever measured. This record-breaking light was created using SACLA, a cutting-edge X-ray Free Electron Laser (XFEL) facility unveiled by RIKEN in February 2011 in Harima, Japan. SACLA (SPring-8 Angstrom Compact free electron LAser) opens a window into the structure of atoms and molecules at a level of detail never seen before.


Read More

How Journalists Data-Mined the Wikileaks Docs

Posted by samzenpus on Sunday June 12, @11:15PM 

from the reading-between-a-million-lines dept.

meckdevil writes"Associated Press developer-journalist extraordinaire Jonathan Stray gives a brilliant explanation of the use of data-mining strategies to winnow and wring journalistic sense out of massive numbers of documents, using the Iraq and Afghanistan war logs released by Wikileaks as a case in point. The concepts for focusing on certain groups of documents and ignoring others are hardly new; they underlie the algorithms used by the major Web search engines. Their use in a journalistic context is on a cutting edge, though, and it raises a fascinating quandary: By choosing the parameters under which documents will be considered similar enough to pay attention to, journalist-programmers actually choose the frame in which a story will be told. This type of data mining holds great potential for investigative revelation — and great potential for journalistic abuse."

Share this story

Cool clip on how a HDD works

Clever Commercial

Man Tries to Patent His "Godly Powers"

Posted by samzenpus on Wednesday June 08, @10:17AM 

from the this-patent-brought-to-you-by-shampoo dept.

KWInt1601 writes"A man who believes he is Christ files a patent application — and the formal dance of responding to office actions from the USPTO begins. Invoking the 1998 State Street decision, the applicant argues, 'like software, godly powers is a method, and affects a machine. Like business methods, godly powers produces a useful, concrete, and tangible result, and that should be all that's needed for statutory material.'"

New 'semi-solid' battery for EVs could recharge as fast as pumping gas

By Sharif Sakr  posted Jun 8th 2011 12:59PM

Researchers at MIT reckon they've struck oil. In fact, you're looking at what they call "Cambridge crude" -- a substance that could halve the weight and cost of EV batteries and make them quicker to charge too. The black goo is packed with a high concentration of energy in the form of particles suspended in a liquid electrolyte. When separated by a filter, these particles function as mobile electrodes that can be pumped into and around a system before the energy is released. So instead of waiting up to 20 hours to juice your Nissan Leaf, you could potentially just pump this pre-charged substance into it -- rather like dirty old gas. Until now, no such "semi-solid flow cell" has been able to hold useful quantities of energy, but this stuff literally oozes with it. Not only could it power EVs, it could even be used for large-scale electricity storage for utilities. The researchers insist this energy revolution is years off -- but when it comes, there will be blood.

Kinect integration in Ghost Recon: Future Soldier, hands-off (video)

By Sean Buckley  posted Jun 8th 2011 7:49AM

Hands-On

Microsoft's E3 keynote may have exploded with deeper Kinect support, but nothing caught our eyes quite as sharply as Ghost Recon: Future Soldier's rifle-exploding Gunsmith demo. A Ubisoft representative showed us how it's done: separating your arms separates your deadly firearm into a gorgeous display of floating screws, components, and accessories, which can be effortlessly modified, swapped, and replaced with gesture and voice commands. Too picky to decide for yourself? Then don't: just tell Gunsmith what you're looking for. For instance, saying "Optimize for range" produces a weapon any sniper should be proud of -- even better, we found that commanding Gunsmith to "optimize for awesome" birthed a rifle (pictured above) sporting an underbarrel shotgun attachment. A gun attached to a gun? Yeah, that works. Weapons can be tested in Gunsmith's gesture-controlled firing range, an engaging shooting mode exclusive to the Gunsmith weapon editor and not usable in regular gameplay. Head past the break for a hands-on (figuratively speaking) video.

Zach Honig and Sean Hollister contributed to this report.

Kogan Beats Samsung and Acer With World's First Chrome OS Laptop

Posted by timothy on Monday June 06, @03:40AM 

from the not-counting-the-cr-48-of-course dept.

cylonlover writes"Australian manufacturer Kogan will ship the world's first notebook featuring Google's open source Chrome OS from June 7. The release date for the 11.6'' Agora Chromium Laptop means that Kogan has pipped Samsung and Acer by just over a week in the race to be the first company to offer a Chromium OS notebook."

English Teenager Invents a Better Doorbell

Posted by timothy on Sunday June 05, @11:32PM 

from the it's-coming-from-inside-the-house dept.

Several readers have written with word of a new doorbell, invented by 13-year-old Laurence Rook. What's so special about a doorbell? This one lets you answer the door from wherever you can receive a call from its embedded 3G chip; to your in-person caller (facing the doorbell), that means it sounds like you're answering the door over an intercom system, even if you're really across town. Pretty clever way to make it harder for a thief to know if a home is actually occupied, though Rook says that he initially just wanted a system to avoid missed packages.

Windows Logo on the Apple store in Hamburg

I wonder what else you can get away with if you have a workbelt and a hardhat on?