Hungry crows may be behind exploding toads: "Local environmental workers in Hamburg have described it as a scene out of a horror or science fiction movie, with the bloated frogs agonizing and twitching for several minutes, inflating like balloons before they suddenly burst."

posted by Farookh at 1:11 PM Comment (0)

Wi-Fly beats ADSL! An Israeli test confirms PEI (Pigeon Enabled Internet) is faster than ADSL. (Old article, Mar'04)

posted by Amit at 10:14 PM Comment (0)

School creates its own Sim City: "Children use the game to learn about environmental and transport issues while redesigning their home town."

posted by Farookh at 12:44 AM Comment (0)

Samsung and Microsoft to 'flash' hard drives: "When the flash memory is full, the hard disk drive is spun up and the data is written to disk."

This is interesting. Seems more like an L3 cache of sorts. Though, I wonder, why not have it such that Windows auto-detects this and places the pagefile on flash. That might significantly reduce the need for the disk to be spinning.

posted by Farookh at 11:05 PM Comment (2)

Intel gives man $10,000 for old magazine: "The chip giant, which had been searching high and low for a 1965 copy of Electronics Magazine that featured Intel co-founder Gordon Moore's thoughts on how silicon technology would evolve, has hit payola.

David Clark, an engineer in Surrey, England, had a copy of the coveted issue and has sold it to Intel, reaping the chip giant's $10,000 bounty."

-K

posted by Kaushik at 2:05 PM Comment (0)

Scientists solve unpopped popcorn: "Unpopped kernels, it turns out, have leaky hulls that prevent the moisture pressure buildup needed for them to pop and lack the optimal hull structure that allows most kernels to explode."

posted by Farookh at 3:13 PM Comment (0)

Eggs found inside dinosaur fossil: "A dinosaur that died just before it was about to lay two eggs has been found by an international team of scientists. "

posted by Farookh at 3:03 PM Comment (0)

DNA project to trace human steps: "The Genographic Project will collect DNA samples from over 100,000 people worldwide to help piece together a picture of how the Earth was colonised."

posted by Farookh at 2:56 PM Comment (0)

Robot walks, balances like a human: "Instead, its legs end like stilts so that it pivots on a point when it moves forward, meaning that if you nudge the Rabbit, it steps forward and catches its balance, much like a human would."

posted by Farookh at 2:28 PM Comment (0)

Yale Researchers Use Laser Light To Remote Control Flies: "The authors demonstrate that even headless flies take mindful flight if the correct set of neurons is photo-activated."

Spooky!

posted by Farookh at 2:25 PM Comment (0)

Observing Einstein's Gravitational Waves: "The LISA mission is one of the most ambitious ever undertaken: positioning and flying three spacecraft in a triangular formation, 5 million kilometres apart. The constellation will orbit the Sun, following the Earth at a distance of 50 million kilometres so as not to be perturbed by its gravity.

Infrared lasers will be beamed between the spacecraft, arriving on small 2-kilogram proof masses, 4-centimetre cubes made of gold and platinum."

posted by Farookh at 2:21 PM Comment (0)

America's newest national park: "The [Lewis and Clark National and State Historical Park] straddles the Columbia River and stretches along 40 miles of coastline in Washington and Oregon, allowing visitors to walk in the footsteps of the moccasin-shod explorers."

posted by Farookh at 2:13 PM Comment (1)

Images: Iceberg strikes Antarctica
Dang, that thing is huge - 115 kms long!

posted by Farookh at 1:37 PM Comment (0)

C++ creator upbeat on its future
Anecdotally, Stroustrup's claim seem incorrect. Almost all the campus candidates I interview have learnt Java at school rather than C++. Many of them have never used C++ and if they have it is something they did by themselves.

posted by Farookh at 1:36 PM Comment (0)

Time to kill netNatter on blogspot! :) And create one on http://del.icio.us/. It works much better for the kind of postings we add and aha, the tags.
I am hoping Farookh will pull the trigger (Ok maybe not the best analogy since he is almost a pacifist like The Dude) and create a new one.

Checkout
http://del.icio.us/amitc

which I created in maybe 10 minutes.

Amit

posted by Amit at 3:47 PM Comment (2)

Qatar to Use Robots As Camel Riders: "With the reins in one hand and a whip in the other, the purple-jerseyed rider prodded a camel around the track. But this jockey wasn't the usual underfed boy. The jockey was a robot.

Under the watchful eyes of his Swiss developer and Qatari owners, the robot — dubbed Kamel — rode a racing camel for 1.5 miles, reaching speeds of 25 miles per hour in a non-competitive trial run. By 2007, rulers of this energy-rich emirate say all camel racers will be mechanical.

In Qatar, ruling sheiks have responded to calls for banning the use of boy jockeys by embracing robots as the best solution."

-K


posted by Kaushik at 12:43 AM Comment (0)

CNN.com - Car that runs on compressed air: "'The compressed air is used when the car needs a lot of energy, such as for starting up the car and acceleration. The electric motor comes to life once the car has gained normal cruising speed.'"

(Forwarded by a colleague at work)

-K

posted by Kaushik at 11:36 AM Comment (0)

Jewel beetle flies into the inferno: "There is a beetle that, instead of fleeing like most other animals when confronted with fire, spreads its wings and flies in droves straight towards the inferno."
...
"When they arrive, they are guaranteed sex and a safe place to lay their eggs with a great supply of food laid on for the next generation."
...
"It does not come as any surprise that the Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa) in the US can see the massive military potential for a new generation of supersensitive, miniature, robust, uncooled, infrared detectors inspired by a humble heat-seeking beetle."

posted by Farookh at 4:07 PM Comment (0)

Space venture has West Texas county abuzz: "'[Jeff Bezos] told me their first spacecraft is going to carry three people up to the edge of space and back,' Simpson said. 'But ultimately, his thing is space colonization.'"

Kinda old news, but just got to it in my queue. Rockets and rocket science is the "plastic" of the next few decades looks like.

posted by Farookh at 3:41 PM Comment (0)

Mendel's Law May Be Flawed: "In the Purdue experiment, researchers found that a watercress plant sometimes corrects the genetic code it inherited from its flawed parents and grows normally like its grandparents and other ancestors."

This is interesting. It is like we all come with a strongbox containing our ancestors template besides the genes transferred from our parents.

posted by Farookh at 1:08 PM Comment (0)

Quarter of primates face abyss: "'If you took all the remaining individuals from the 25 primate species on this list and gave them a seat in a football stadium, they'd all fit,' said Russell Mittermeier, president of Conservation International."

posted by Farookh at 12:22 PM Comment (1)

Guardian Unlimited | Life | Life lessons: "What is the one thing everyone should learn about science? Spiked asked 250 scientists - here we bring you some of the most provocative responses "

Some really good responses.

-K

posted by Kaushik at 12:10 AM Comment (2)

Technology to help goal-or-not decisions: "Was that a goal?" is a question that always seems to be on the lips of fans, players, coaches and referees, and not just since England's infamous third goal during the 1966 FIFA World Cup™ final at Wembley.

FIFA has decided to try out the new "Smartball" system which involves placing a microchip sensor in a ball which sends a signal to the referee whenever the ball crosses the goal line.

IMHO, decisions based on the referee's good judgement are all part of the game. In any case, ball landing a few millimetres here or there doesn't make a team any better or worse than the other. Still, there are winners and losers, and in such gray cases the decisions should be left to the referees. That is why we have referees.

-K

posted by Kaushik at 10:45 PM Comment (1)

Earth's 'oldest thing ever' gets viewing: "Zircon crystal sample believed to date back 4.4 billion years"

How on earth did they find that thing?

posted by Farookh at 4:11 PM Comment (1)

'Star Wars' fans wait at wrong theater - Apr 6, 2005: "Seven weeks before its release, 'Star Wars' fanatics started lining up outside Grauman's Chinese Theater for the sixth installment of the popular George Lucas movie series. The vigil began Saturday.
But there's a problem: 'Star Wars: Episode III -- Revenge of the Sith' won't be showing at the Hollywood landmark when the movie is released May 19. The studio, 20th Century Fox, opted instead to open the film a mile away at the ArcLight theater."

They are unfazed! Still waiting at the wrong place...

-K

posted by Kaushik at 12:42 AM Comment (0)

Outsourcing glitch:
Citibank outsourced some of its customer support operations to Mphasis BPO in Pune, 135 kilometers southeast of Bombay.
Three employees at that call center transferred cash (nearly $350,000) from the accounts of customers and shared financial information with friends outside the company. The three later quit Mphasis.

posted by Anonymous at 1:09 PM Comment (0)

InfoWorld: Transmeta cashes in its chips, eyes services, licensing: " Transmeta will cease production of all but a few of its low-power processors, shifting its focus to building new businesses around engineering services and intellectual property licensing, the company announced Thursday. "


posted by Kaushik at 11:47 PM Comment (4)

New Scientist Breaking News - Classic maths puzzle cracked at last: A number puzzle originating in the work of self-taught maths genius Srinivasa Ramanujan nearly a century ago has been solved. The solution may one day lead to advances in particle physics and computer security.

Karl Mahlburg, a graduate student at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, US, has spent a year putting together the final pieces to the puzzle, which involves understanding patterns of numbers.

-K

posted by Kaushik at 11:41 PM Comment (0)

Lion Returns To Zoo After Unique Medical Procedure At Hebrew University Veterinary Hospital: "This type of damage is known to occur in lions living in captivity and is expressed in abnormal skull growth, exerting pressure on the rear portion of the brain, said Dr. Shamir. A CT exam confirmed that the lion was indeed suffering from a serious distortion of the rear portion of his skull and subsequent brain pressure."

It is sad to see the kind of health damage that captive animals suffer.

posted by Farookh at 10:07 AM Comment (0)

USPS - The 2005 Commemorative Stamp Program: The United States Postal Service has released a bunch of new stamps. These include two featuring von Neumann and Richard Feynman.



posted by Kaushik at 12:03 AM Comment (0)

The History of the Universe in 60 seconds or less: The video requires RealPlayer. You can also read the text transcript, but that isn't much fun.

-K


posted by Kaushik at 2:43 PM Comment (1)

Splashing drops: When a drop of liquid strikes a surface, the splash it makes normally raises a tiara-like crown of droplets. It has now come to light that if you remove the surrounding atmosphere, the drop just spreads flat without a splash.

Check out the two videos on this site. It looks lovely!

-K

posted by Kaushik at 2:25 PM Comment (2)

Pentagon Redirects Its Research Dollars: "The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency at the Pentagon - which has long underwritten open-ended 'blue sky' research by the nation's best computer scientists - is sharply cutting such spending at universities, researchers say, in favor of financing more classified work and narrowly defined projects that promise a more immediate payoff."

posted by Kaushik at 11:40 PM Comment (0)