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gawdonblue writes:

In the early 1960s, the US began setting up deep-space tracking stations in Australia. Doug Rickard found himself tracking missions to Mars and the moon. Friendly scientific rivalry and those small but spectacular mistakes in space exploration made for a rich episode in Doug's life. These are stories from his memoirs.

AnonTechie writes:

Beer—is there anything it can't do?

You can chug it to improve the watchability of baseball, use it to de-ice roads, and now even power your car with it, thanks to the New Zealand biofuel "Brewtroleum." The ethanol used in the greener gas, which was dreamed up by DB Export, is derived from leftovers of the brewing process, chiefly grain and yeast.

The company calls it the "world's first commercially available biofuel" derived from beer, and an Internet search seems to confirm the boast. However, researchers have long dreamed of manufacturing a suds-based fuel. The stuff produces a lot fewer greenhouse gases than petroleum. And making ethanol with fermentation waste is reportedly better for the planet than relying on standard production methods, such as growing vast fields of corn.

This week, drivers in Auckland lined up at a gas station to fill their tanks with the brew juice, which DB Export claims emits 8 percent less carbon than gasoline. (Though the customers might have been environmentalists, the offer of a free $50 fill-up probably helped improve the turnout.) Stocks of "Brewtroleum" are expected to run out in about six weeks, though the company is toying with making more. Reports Stuff: "This is a genuinely exciting opportunity. It's a world-first, we're helping Kiwis save the world by doing what they enjoy best—drinking beer... If you were to fuel your car with biofuel over a year it would be over 250 tonnes of carbon emission you would be saving."

takyon writes:

Work by scientists at the Oak Ridge and Los Alamos National Laboratories has led to an explanation of the "missing" magnetism of plutonium. Plutonium had been predicted to be magnetic by conventional theories, which successfully predicted the element's structural properties, but its magnetism had never been observed experimentally. Until now:

Finally, after seven decades, this scientific mystery on plutonium's "missing" magnetism has been resolved. Using neutron scattering, researchers from the Department of Energy's Los Alamos and Oak Ridge (ORNL) national laboratories have made the first direct measurements of a unique characteristic of plutonium's fluctuating magnetism. In a recent paper in the journal Science Advances, Marc Janoschek from Los Alamos, the paper's lead scientist, explains that plutonium is not devoid of magnetism, but in fact its magnetism is just in a constant state of flux, making it nearly impossible to detect.

"Plutonium sort of exists between two extremes in its electronic configuration—in what we call a quantum mechanical superposition," Janoschek said. "Think of the one extreme where the electrons are completely localized around the plutonium ion, which leads to a magnetic moment. But then the electrons go to the other extreme where they become delocalized and are no longer associated with the same ion anymore."

Phoenix666 writes:

Heavy rainfall events setting ever new records have been increasing strikingly in the past thirty years. While before 1980, multi-decadal fluctuations in extreme rainfall events are explained by natural variability, a team of scientists detected a clear upward trend in the past few decades towards more unprecedented daily rainfall events.

They find the worldwide increase to be consistent with rising global temperatures which are caused by greenhouse-gas emissions from burning fossil fuels. Short-term torrential rains can lead to high-impact floodings.

Extreme rainfall in Pakistan 2010 caused devastating flooding which killed hundreds and lead to a cholera outbreak. Other examples of record-breaking precipitation events in the period studied include rainstorms in Texas in the US, 2010, which caused dozens of flash-floods. And no less than three so-called 'once-in-a-century' flooding events in Germany all happened in just a couple of years, starting 1997. "In all of these places, the amount of rain pouring down in one day broke local records -- and while each of these individual events has been caused by a number of different factors, we find a clear overall upward trend for these unprecedented hazards," says lead-author Jascha Lehmann.

The average increase is 12 percent globally -- but 56 percent in South East Asia

Heavy rainfall saves me money on car washes.

Phoenix666 writes:

The game originated in the early 1990s in the mind of Richard Garfield, at the time a graduate student working towards a PhD in combinatorial mathematics at the University of Pennsylvania. A life-long tabletop gamer, he had approached a publisher to pitch an idea for a game about programming robots, only to be told that the company needed something more portable and cheaper to produce.

Magic was Garfield's response, and it involved one major innovation that set it apart from any game previously released.
...
Magic's latest set marks a turning point for the game. Magic Origins focuses on five of the game's most popular recurring characters – a move that provides a jumping-on point for new players intimidated by over two decades' worth of accumulated storylines.

I played D&D, Gamma World, Traveller, and many RPG's avidly into college, but when I first saw Magic and its $20 price for a single card I discovered there were lines I would not cross. As an adult I have a civil engineering friend whom I've watched over the last decade and a half disappear and then emerge, going cold turkey, only to re-submerge for another year. For those who took up Magic, why did you take it up and do you still play?

takyon writes:

Duke University neuroscientists have linked the brains of three rhesus macaque monkeys together using a brain-to-brain interface:

The neural network created, which the researchers call a 'Brainet', lets the animals share both sensory and motor information with one another, enabling them to complete tasks via their collective thoughts. This means they could potentially outperform a regular brain, because they now have access to the resources of a hive mind.

"Essentially, we created a super-brain," Miguel Nicolelis, the lead author of the study, told Hannah Devlin at The Guardian. "A collective brain created from three monkey brains. Nobody has ever done that before."

In the monkeys experiment, the researchers wired together three rhesus macaque monkeys and implanted receptors in their motor and somatosensory cortices to capture and transmit the brain activity. Once connected, the three monkeys were able to control the movements of a virtual avatar's arm on a computer screen in front of them. Each monkey had control over only two dimensions of movement, requiring the concentration of at least two of the three animals to successfully move the arm.

A separate experiment linked four rat brains together. From the abstract:

Cortical neuronal activity was recorded and analyzed in real time, and then delivered to the somatosensory cortices of other animals that participated in the Brainet using intracortical microstimulation (ICMS). Using this approach, different Brainet architectures solved a number of useful computational problems, such as discrete classification, image processing, storage and retrieval of tactile information, and even weather forecasting. Brainets consistently performed at the same or higher levels than single rats in these tasks. Based on these findings, we propose that Brainets could be used to investigate animal social behaviors as well as a test bed for exploring the properties and potential applications of organic computers.

Phoenix666 writes:

The Netherlands could become the first country to pave its streets with plastic bottles after Rotterdam city council said it was considering piloting a new type of road surface touted by its creators as a greener alternative to asphalt.

The construction firm VolkerWessels unveiled plans on Friday for a surface made entirely from recycled plastic, which it said required less maintenance than asphalt and could withstand greater extremes of temperature– between -40C and 80C. Roads could be laid in a matter of weeks rather than months and last about three times as long, it claimed.
...
The plastic roads are lighter, reducing the load on the ground, and hollow, making it easier to install cables and utility pipelines below the surface.

Sections can be prefabricated in a factory and transported to where they are needed, reducing on-site construction, while the shorter construction time and low maintenance will mean less congestion caused by roadworks. Lighter materials can also be transported more efficiently.

Can plastic really last that long, exposed to loads and UV? I've had the plastic cases of electronics literally crumble to dust because they were sitting next to sunny windows...

Phoenix666 writes:

Man's hierarchy of needs has changed:

A man attending a performance of the Broadway play Hand to God decided that he needed a little more juice on his iPhone—just before the play started. So, because any outlet is fair game when your battery icon is flashing red, he climbed up onto the stage and plugged his phone into a prop wall with a prop outlet and walked away. Of course, the outlet—like the wall—was fake.

According to the New York Post, the crew had to stop the pre-show music and make an announcement to the audience that that sort of thing isn't allowed. One audience member copped to "loudly heckling the idiot" when the ushers removed the phone and asked him to take it back.

After Hurricane Sandy legions of iPhone and other smart phone owners camped out in the Long Island malls, recharging at outlets normally used for floor waxers. What's the most desperate scene of Dying Battery Panic Syndrome you've witnessed?

Phoenix666 writes:

In the study of about 1,400 US youths, 47% of middle-school boys and 61% of high school boys agreed that women are treated as sex objects too often in games.

The findings, gathered by education consultant Rosalind Wiseman and games writer Ashley Burch, counter familiar assumptions that boys will voraciously consume media images of scantily clad women without a second thought.

For many years in the mainstream games industry, there has been an apparent assumption that the male teen demographic was the only one that mattered. Much of the time this meant beefy male protagonists (to identify with – or aspire to) and sexualised women (too gaze at or rescue).

The survey questions and methodology used are not disclosed in the article.

HughPickens.com writes:

W. J. Hennigan reports at the LA Times that as diplomats rush to reach an agreement to curb Iran's nuclear program, the US military is stockpiling conventional bombs so powerful that strategists say they could cripple Tehran's most heavily fortified nuclear complexes. The bunker-busting bombs are America's most destructive munitions short of atomic weapons and at 15 tons, each is 5 tons heavier than any other bomb in the US arsenal. "The Pentagon continues to be focused on being able to provide military options for Iran if needed," says a senior US official. "We have not taken our eyes off the ball."

Obama has made it clear that he has no desire to order an attack, warning that US airstrikes on Iran's air defense network and nuclear facilities would spark a destabilizing new war in the Middle East, and would only delay Iran by several years should it choose to build a bomb. "A military solution will not fix it," says Obama. An attack "would temporarily slow down an Iranian nuclear program, but it will not eliminate it." That being said the latest iteration of the massive ordnance penetrator (MOP) was successfully tested on a deeply buried target in January at the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico. The test followed upgrades to the bomb's guidance system and electronics to stop jammers from sending it off course. B-2 stealth bombers would be required to drop the MOP, which is designed to burrow 200 feet underground before it detonates. Multiple MOPs probably would be aimed at the same target to bore deeper and achieve maximum destruction. A US attack could spark a broader war in the world's most volatile region. Iran has hundreds of medium-range missiles capable of hitting Israel, Jordan and other American allies, according to defense intelligence estimates. "It would create huge problems," says Michael E. O'Hanlon. "That said, it's hard to rule out if talks fail."

AnonTechie writes:

Indian scientists on Friday night launched five British satellites into orbit from the Sriharikota space port. The lift-off at 9:58 pm was successful, the space agency said.

For this special launch, Britain not only rented premium space from the Indian Space Research Organisation or ISRO, but its Surrey Satellite Technology Limited also hired an entire rocket for the first time.

The 320 tonne (320,000 kilograms) rocket is as tall as a 15-storey building and will hoist, apart from a constellation of three disaster-monitoring satellites, two smaller experimental satellites into space. The total weight of the British satellites is 1440kg, making this the heaviest commercial launch ever to be undertaken by India.

Horse With Stripes writes:

The Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Time and several other news sources are reporting that Ellen Pao is resigning as CEO of Reddit. Pao will be replaced by Steve Huffman, a Reddit co-founder and its first CEO.

Pao has had a stormy and controversial stint as interim chief executive officer of Reddit which culminated in a mass user protest in recent weeks, as previously reported on SN.

el_oscuro writes:

According to The Washington Post:

The massive hack last year of the Office of Personnel Management's system containing security clearance information affected 21.5 million people, including current and former employees, contractors and their families and friends, officials said Thursday.

That is in addition to a separate hack – also last year — of OPM's personnel database that affected 4.2 million people. That number was previously announced.

Together, the breaches arguably comprise the most consequential cyber intrusion in U.S. government history. Administration officials have privately said they were traced to the Chinese government and appear to be for purposes of traditional espionage.

Update: Office of Personnel Management Director Katherine Archuleta finally resigned mid-Friday.

SpaceMan writes:

Disney has won control of the star-wars.co.uk domain (and several others) from a costume retailer that was using it to sell "legitimate and licensed" Star Wars-themed costumes. Disney bought Lucasfilm and all of its intellectual property for $4.1 billion in 2012. The retailer's parent company, Abscissa, had used two of the domains for the last 10 years.

However, at the tail of the BBC story: "Abscissa itself has also benefited from the dispute-resolution process, by wresting control of jokers.co.uk from a fancy-dress rival in 2007".

AnonTechie writes:

With the 46th anniversary of humanity's first steps on the surface of the Moon 11 days away, NASA has announced the names of the astronauts that could be the first to fly into space aboard commercially-produced spacecraft. The quartet will now prepare to do something NASA has lacked the capability to do since the end of the Shuttle Program in 2011 – fly to low-Earth orbit (LEO).

Each of the four astronauts selected has already traveled to orbit at least once. They include Robert Behnken, Eric Boe, Douglas Hurley, and Sunita Williams. Each will work with Boeing and SpaceX, the two companies producing private spacecraft to travel to and from the International Space Station (ISS ).

SpaceX is currently working to prepare a crewed version of their Dragon spacecraft while Boeing is developing its Commercial Space Transportation (CST-100) capsule. It is hoped that these two vehicles will be ready to fly by 2017.

http://www.spaceflightinsider.com/missions/human-spaceflight/nasa-announces-first-commercial-crew-astronauts/

[Also Covered By]: Popular Science, Universe Today