|
|
OLPC Signs Up With Amazon
08 09 2008 | The One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) organization has signed a deal with Amazon to sell its low cost laptops. The online retailer will help with its next Give 1 Get 1 (G1G1) program that is due to begin in late November. Under this scheme people can buy one of the XO laptops for themselves and donate the other to a school child in a developing nation. It is hoped the deal with Amazon will iron out the problems OLPC encountered when it ran the G1G1 program itself. |
|
|
|
|
|
Intel Roadmap Shows Next-Gen Atom in Q3 2009
08 09 2008 | Next-gen Atom CPU will integrate a GPU core and memory controller. The netbook world today has many different systems available for consumers. The common thread among many of today's most popular netbooks like the ASUS Eee PC and the new Dell Inspiron Mini 9 is that most use the Intel Atom processor. An Intel roadmap that surfaced at the Intel Developers Forum 2008 shows that Intel plans to bring the next generation Atom processor to market in Q3 2009 -- roughly a year from now. |
|
|
|
|
|
Bad Sign For Global Warming
08 09 2008 | Permafrost blanketing the northern hemisphere contains more than twice the amount of carbon in the atmosphere, making it a potentially mammoth contributor to global climate change depending on how quickly it thaws. So concludes a group of nearly two dozen scientists in a paper appearing this week in the journal Bioscience. The lead author is Ted Schuur, an associate professor of ecology at the University of Florida. |
|
|
|
|
|
Newly Found Genetic Link May Neutralize HIV
08 09 2008 | Scientists from the Gladstone Institute of Virology and Immunology (GIVI) and the National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) have identified a gene that may influence the production of antibodies that neutralize HIV. This new information will likely spur a new approach for making an HIV vaccine that elicits neutralizing antibodies. Neutralizing antibodies, once produced in the host, can attack and checkmate an infecting virus. |
|
|
|
|
|
Sun Upgrades Desktop Virtual Machine
07 09 2008 | VirtualBox enables a developer to develop code on a Mac, a Windows, Linux or Solaris machine and then run it in a virtual machine that mimics its target environment.Sun has released the second version of its xVM VirtualBox open source desktop virtualization software and claims it is finding traction for its use among Apple Macintosh users. VirtualBox enables a developer to develop code on a Mac, a Windows, Linux or Solaris machine and then run it in a virtual machine. |
|
|
|
|
|
Theory of the Sun's Role in Solar System
07 09 2008 | A strange mix of oxygen found in a stony meteorite that exploded over Pueblito de Allende, Mexico nearly 40 years ago has puzzled scientists ever since. Small flecks of minerals lodged in the stone and thought to date from the beginning of the solar system have a pattern of oxygen types, or isotopes, that differs from those found in all known planetary rocks, including those from Earth, its Moon and meteorites from Mars. |
|
|
|
|
|
MIT Probe Could Aid Quantum Computing
07 09 2008 | MIT researchers may have found a way to overcome a key barrier to the advent of super-fast quantum computers, which could be powerful tools for applications such as code breaking. Ever since Nobel Prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman first proposed the theory of quantum computing more than two decades ago, researchers have been working to build such a device. One approach involves superconducting devices that, when cooled to temperatures of nearly absolute zero (-459 deg F, -273 deg C). |
|
|
|
|
|
'Rosetta Stone' For Understanding Evolution
06 09 2008 | Yale molecular and evolutionary biologists in collaboration with Department of Energy scientists produced the full genome sequence of Trichoplax, one of nature's most primitive multicellular organisms, providing a new insight into the evolution of all higher animals. The findings reported in the online edition of the journal Nature show that while Trichoplax has one of the smallest nuclear genomes found in a multi-cellular creature, it contains signature sequences for gene regulation. |
|
|
|
|
|
Sony rolls out three new all-in-one Vaio PCs
06 09 2008 | Sony on Wednesday announced three new all-in-one PCs, the 20-inch Vaio JS, the 24-inch Vaio LS, and the 25.5-inch Vaio RT. The Vaio JS starts at $1,000 and boasts a simple, sparse design. A silver (or a black or a pink) bezel with rounded corners surrounds the 20.1-inch screen, which features a 1,680x1,050 resolution. Above the display is a Webcam and below is a speaker bar.Inside, the Vaio JS uses a 3.0GHz Core 2 Duo E8400 processor, 4GB of 800MHz memory, integrated Intel GMA 4500HD graphics. |
|
|
|
|
|
Fermilab Discover 'Doubly Strange' Particle
06 09 2008 | Physicists of the DZero experiment at the U.S. Department of Energy's Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory have discovered a new particle made of three quarks, the Omega-sub-b (Ωb). The particle contains two strange quarks and a bottom quark (s-s-b). It is an exotic relative of the much more common proton and weighs about six times the proton mass. The discovery of the doubly strange particle brings scientists a step closer to understanding exactly how quarks form matter. |
|
|
|
|
|
Firefox 3.1 Alpha 2 Officially Released
06 09 2008 | Mozilla has officially announced the availability of the second Firefox 3.1 alpha. This release includes support for the highly-anticipated HTML 5 "video" element and a handful of other features that move the browser forward. Mozilla has been planning the 3.1 roadmap since before the launch of Firefox 3. Version 3.1 is expected to provide a strong incremental improvement and will include many of the features that were deferred for various reasons during the 3.0 development cycle. |
|
|
|
|
|
Climate Computer Modeling Heats Up
06 09 2008 | New "petascale" computer models depicting detailed climate dynamics, and building the foundation for the next generation of complex climate models, are in the offing. University of California at Berkeley are using a $1.4 million award from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to generate the new models. The development of powerful supercomputers capable of analyzing decades of data in the blink of an eye marks a technological milestone, say the scientists. |
|
|
|
|
|
Oldest Gecko Fossil Ever Discovered
05 09 2008 | Scientists from Oregon State University and the Natural History Museum in London have announced the discovery of the oldest known fossil of a gecko, with body parts that are forever preserved in life-like form after 100 million years of being entombed in amber. Due to the remarkable preservative power of being embalmed in amber, the tiny foot of this ancient lizard still shows the tiny 'lamellae,' or sticky toe hairs, that to this day give modern geckos their unusual ability to cling to surface. |
|
|
|
|
|
Closest Look Ever at a Black Hole's Edge
05 09 2008 | Astronomers have taken the closest look ever at the giant black hole in the center of the Milky Way. By combining telescopes in Hawaii, Arizona, and California, they detected structure at a tiny angular scale of 37 micro-arcseconds - the equivalent of a baseball seen on the surface of the moon, 240,000 miles distant. 'This technique gives us an unmatched view of the region near the Milky Way's central black hole,' said Sheperd Doeleman of MIT, first author of the study. |
|
|
|
|
|
05 09 2008
|
|
|
|
|
Hurricanes Are Getting Fiercer
05 09 2008 | As this year's Atlantic hurricane season becomes ever more violent, scientists have come up with the firmest evidence so far that global warming will significantly increase the intensity of the most extreme storms worldwide. The maximum wind speeds of the strongest tropical cyclones have increased significantly since 1981, according to research published in Nature this week. |
|
|
|
|
|
LED Drumsticks
05 09 2008  | The California based Company TAC (The Ant Commandos), a provider of wireless video game music peripherals and accessories, has developed illuminated drumsticks for Rock Band and Guitar Hero World Tour Drum Sets. When a player strikes them, the entire body of the drumstick lights up in either flame red or electric blue, thus providing a visual stimulation in the form of a light show that compliments the sound created. |
|
|
|
|
|
Panasonic Updates Blu-Ray Players
05 09 2008 | Panasonic kicked off the official opening of the 2008 CEDIA Expo a day early with a press conference to announce a new three-chip 1080p front projector as well as two Blu-ray disc players that feature BD-Live support for movies that incorporate interactive online features. The Panasonic PT-AE3000 is a self-described evolution of the company's highly regarded PT-AE2000 LCD front projector. |
|
|
|
|
|
IEEE's 802.11r - a New Wi-Fi Standard
05 09 2008  | The IEEE has formally approved and published the future Wi-Fi standard: 802.11r, also called Fast Basic Service Set Transition. This standard was in development for four years and unravels performance challenges related to VoIP over Wi-Fi implemented in large-scale networks. This would allow Wi-Fi devices to roam rapidly between access points, enhancing the operation of VoIP on enterprise LANs. |
|
|
|
|
|
Chemists Create 'Powdered Methane'
05 09 2008 | Methane and natural gas are usually shipped around in pressurized pipelines and canisters. But chemists have now developed a new way to transport the gases: as a powder. Andrew Cooper and his colleagues at the University of Liverpool, UK, have found that they can trap methane in a bizarre material dubbed 'dry water', a mixture of silica and water that looks and acts like a fine white powder. |
|
|
|
|
|
Broadband to 'Skip a Generation'
05 09 2008 | Communities bypassed by broadband should be the first to get even faster services, says an Ofcom advisory group. The regulator's Consumer Panel said excluded areas of the UK should "leapfrog" to next generation access. Consumer Panel chair Anna Bradley admitted that the areas concerned were likely to be the least cost-effective places for such services. But, she said, the step was vital to prevent Britain's digital divide deepening. |
|
|
|
|
|
Aroma-Emitting Digital Signal Developed
05 09 2008 | The possibility of bringing scents to the Internet experience continues to tantalize marketers. During the dot-com boom, a company called DigiScents promised and failed to make scented e-mails and Web sites commonplace with a scent synthesizer (called iSmell) that hooked up to personal computers. It flopped, but that didn't stop NTT Communications in Japan from releasing its own version of the idea. |
|
|
|
|
|
Are 68 Molecules the Key to Cure Diseases?
05 09 2008 | Why is it that the origins of many serious diseases remain a mystery? In considering that question, a scientist at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine has come up with a unified molecular view of the indivisible unit of life, the cell, which may provide an answer. Jamey Marth, Ph.D., UC San Diego Professor of Cellular and Molecular Medicine, realized that only 68 molecular building blocks are used to construct the four fundamental components of cells. |
|
|
|
|
|
Hyper-Sub Powerboat
05 09 2008  | Marion Hyper-Submersible Powerboat Design, a privately-held Company formed in 2005 and located in Florida, has developed a revolutionary Hyper-Sub. The vessel is capable of cruising at speeds of 45 mph on the surface with its standard twin 440 horsepower diesel engines, as well as diving at submarine depth with a standard pressure hull rated to 600 feet with a safety factor of 7. With room for 4 people plus a "pilot," the possible applications are numerous - rig and infrastructure maintenance, security applications, research or salvage operations, as well as recreational and tourism use. |
|
|
|
|
|
Chemists Create 'Powdered Methane'
05 09 2008 | Methane and natural gas are usually shipped around in pressurized pipelines and canisters. But chemists have now developed a new way to transport the gases: as a powder. Andrew Cooper and his colleagues at the University of Liverpool, UK, have found that they can trap methane in a bizarre material dubbed 'dry water', a mixture of silica and water that looks and acts like a fine white powder. |
|
|
|
