Geocaching Shuts Down British Town

Posted by samzenpus on Thursday July 07, @01:44AM 

from the everyone-panic dept.

DaveAtWorkAnnoyingly writes"Many geocachers will be thinking twice when planting their treasure in an urban space as one geocacher found out in England after the police cordoned off the center of a small West Yorkshire town and the Bomb Squad was called in. From the article: 't was a normal busy Friday morning in the small West Yorkshire market town of Wetherby when someone working in a café spotted a man acting a bit suspiciously on the street. He appeared to have a small plastic box in his hand and after fiddling with the container he bent down and hid it under a flower box standing on the pavement. He then walked off, talking to somebody on his phone.'"

Outcomes for Cardiac Valve Procedure Patients Are Affected by Insurance Status, Study Finds

ScienceDaily (July 6, 2011) — The type of primary insurance patients carry affects outcomes of cardiac valve operations in the United States according to a study in the May issue of theJournal of the American College of Surgeons. As a result, the type of primary insurance should be considered as an independent risk factor during preoperative risk stratification and planning, the researchers reported. They found that uninsured and Medicaid patients incur worse unadjusted and risk-adjusted outcomes following cardiac valve operations compared with those who carry private insurance.
Read More

Bill Gates On Energy

Posted by Unknown Lamer on Thursday July 07, @10:00AM 

from the agreeing-with-bill-gates-feels-dirty dept.

Sam the Nemesis submitted an interview in Wired with Bill Gates on the future of energy. Gates sees nuclear as the only feasible option for base load generation. His views on the current direction of energy funding are particularly distressing: "But the economics are so, so far from making sense. And yet that's where subsidies are going now. We're putting 90 percent of the subsidies in deployment — this is true in Europe and the United States — not in R&D. And so unfortunately you get technologies that, no matter how much of them you buy, there's no path to being economical. You need fundamental breakthroughs, which come more out of basic research."

Climate Skeptic Funded By Oil and Coal Companies

Posted by timothy on Thursday June 30, @02:11PM 

from the not-that-I-can-recall-at-this-time-sir-no dept.

Honken writes with a report from The Guardian that"'One of the world's most prominent scientific figures to be sceptical about climate change has admitted to being paid more than $1m in the past decade by major US oil and coal companies.' This somewhat contradicts that [Harvard researcher Willie] Soon in a 2003 US senate hearing said that he had 'not knowingly been hired by, nor employed by, nor received grants from any organisation that had taken advocacy positions with respect to the Kyoto protocol or the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.'"

Why Do We Share Stories, News and Information With Others?

ScienceDaily (June 30, 2011) — People often share stories, news, and information with the people around them. We forward online articles to our friends, share stories with our co-workers at the water cooler, and pass along rumors to our neighbors. Such social transmission has been going on for thousands of years, and the advent of social technologies like texting, Facebook, and other social media sites has only made it faster and easier to share content with others. But why is certain content shared more than others and what drives people to share?

Read More

Did the Chinese Military Use Top Gun Footage?

has the People's Liberation Army signed up Goose and Maverick? Chinese bloggers are accusing state broadcaster CCTV of using re-purposed footage from the 1986 film Top Gun for a story on a recent air force drill.' Is it just me or are communist nations very skilled at embarrassing themselves?"

Assange Handed Sydney Peace Medal

Posted by samzenpus on Thursday May 12, @12:59AM 

from the love-or-hate dept.

hihihihi writes"WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has been awarded the Sydney Peace Foundation's Gold Medal for 'exceptional courage in the pursuit of human rights.' It is only the fourth time in the organization's 14-year history that the prize for extraordinary achievement in promoting peace with justice has been given out. Previous winners are Nelson Mandela, the Dalai Lama and Japanese Buddhist leader Daisaku Ikeda. Foundation director Professor Stuart Rees accused the Australian government of demonizing Mr Assange and aiding US efforts to behave like a totalitarian state."

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