Years ago, Floridian inventor Michael Powell pitched Home Depot a device that would keep its employees' fingers safe when cutting wood for customers. It worked so well that they stole his idea. Now Powell's getting sweet, $25 million justice. More »
A mathematical model of sentimental dynamics accounting for marital dissolution. "BACKGROUND: Marital dissolution is ubiquitous in western societies. It poses major scientific and sociological problems both in theoretical and therapeutic terms. Scholars and therapists agree on the existence of a sort of second law of thermodynamics for sentimental relationships. Effort is required to sustain them. Love is not enough. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: Building on a simple version of the second law we use optimal control theory as a novel approach to model sentimental dynamics. Our analysis is consistent with sociological data. We show that, when both partners have similar emotional attributes, there is an optimal effort policy yielding a durable happy union. This policy is prey to structural destabilization resulting from a combination of two factors: there is an effort gap because the optimal policy always entails discomfort and there is a tendency to lower effort to non-sustaining levels due to the instability of the dynamics. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: These mathematical facts implied by the model unveil an underlying mechanism that may explain couple disruption in real scenarios. Within this framework the apparent paradox that a union consistently planned to last forever will probably break up is explained as a mechanistic consequence of the ...
3 CAT gen. sets, synchronised, each gen. is 95.9 amps, they have to power a 600kw electric motor, but the starting current for starting the motor is 450-600amps, the user cannot abandon the power station , is there any thing that can be done to amplify the power just for 17 seconds to start the elec
Like a billion other people, I download things illegally. I'm also an actor, writer and director whose income depends on revenue from DVDs, movies and books. This leads to many conflicts in my head, in my heart, and in bars. More »
As BP continues to come up with schemes to slow the Gulf oil spill, new research by NPR suggests that the leak could be far worse than previously thought. Applying particle image velocimetry—basically a computer program that measures the oil geyser particle by particle—to videos of the underwater leak, researchers concluded that the amount of oil spilling into the Gulf of Mexico could be 10 times as great as previously estimated—that's 70,000 barrels a day, as opposed to 5,000. BP bases their estimates on surface measurements, saying there's no way to accurately gauge how much the flow coming out of the pipe, but they would say that. [NPR] More »
The folks behind the iPhone Blower app have given us another gem: An app that lets your iPhone move nuts, scoot pens, and knock over dominoes. Yes, it's freaky. Yes, it's magic. Yes, the way it works is simple. More »
Why is it that we never see a harmonics drive driving an airplane propeller, or other type for that matter.
Find the concept really interesting but never seen it applied.
Thanks everyone.
This Wednesday, the United States District Court in Manhattan came down in favor of the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) in its case against the file-sharing service LimeWire, and founder Mark Gorton, over copyright infringement.
In a fairly unusual move, Judge Wood held Gorton personally liable. “The evidence establishes that Gorton directed and benefited from many of the activities that gave rise to LW’s liability,” she wrote [Wall Street Journal].
The decision was a long time in coming. Nine years have passed (seriously, nine years) since the federal ruling against Napster back in 2001. Most file-sharing services gave up after the 2005 decision against Grokster, the Journal says, but LimeWire held out. So the record companies sued in 2006, and finally won.
This looks like the end for LimeWire.
“It is obviously a fairly fatal decision for them,” said Michael Page, the San Francisco lawyer who represented file sharing service Grokster in the landmark case, MGM Studios vs. Grokster, and also represented LimeWire’s former CTO in the company’s most recent copyright case. “If they don’t shut down, the other side will likely make a request for an injunction and there’s nothing left but to go on to calculating damages” [CNET].
The hearing regarding compensation is scheduled for June 1. The RIAA is pretty clear about what it wants: money.
“We think a high-damage award would be appropriate,” said Steven Marks, the general counsel for the Recording Industry Association of America, a trade group that represents music companies. “I think it’s very clear from the decision that there’s a lot of evidence of willful behavior by LimeWire and its principals” [The New York Times].
But while LimeWire is doomed, that’s not reason to think that legislation will catch up to the Internet, at least according to Eric Garland of BigChampagne. While LimeWire kept operating its peer-to-peer system over the last decade, other systems, like BitTorrent, sprang up.
And if you like permissive Internet laws, just be glad you’re not in Germany. A court there this week found that people can bear some responsibility if they fail to secure their wireless connection and it winds up being used to distribute copyrighted content.
The owner had proof that the householder was on holiday at the time but the court ruled that the network should have been password-protected. The court’s verdict was that the owner could be fined up to 100 euros (about $127) [BBC News].
Related Content:
DISCOVER: A Love Song for Napster
DISCOVER: Emerging Technology: The Internet, a look back on the Web in 2006
DISCOVER: Your Digital Privacy? It Might Already Be An Illusion
Gene Expression: Nature vs. Everyone Else? (on open-access publishing)
Image: LimeWire
Most of us would kill to hitch a ride on Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo, but as this graphic will show you, compared to the ISS or the Space Shuttle, it flies relatively low—*just* 68 miles from the ground. [DVICE] More »
For years, Google Street View cars roamed our neighborhoods, quietly mapping streets, collecting our Wi-Fi network information, and gathering sample payload data. But don't worry, they "never used that data in any Google products" and are sorry about collecting it. More »
We're told that AT&T President and CEO John Stankey announced in New York today that their next gen 3G network—HSPA+, not 4G LTE—should cover around 250m people by the end of the year, pending their software rollout. What does this mean? If you've got a compatible device (you probably don't, right now) AT&T says this'll double your 3G speeds as compared to their HSPA 7.2Mbps network, which is already fairly peppy. More »
Google sure does love its easter eggs, and here in the UK Android fans are treated to a very special sight when "meet Android" is typed and "I'm feeling lucky" hit. More »
"John P. Holdren, the President's Science Advisor and Director of the U.S. Office of Science and Technology Policy was asked to clarify the Administration's space-science priorities during the AAAS Forum on Science and Technology Policy. The question related in particular to sending humans back to the moon. His response was offered 13 May 2010."
hi friends, i have a project about earth leakage detector..please help me in understanding this thing..any help in any form would be great...thank you..
It’s the open ocean, and a small animal is swimming home. Listening out for the hustle and bustle of a coral reef, the creature changes direction and heads straight towards the sound. If it eventually arrives at its destination, it will settle down and add to the reef’s mighty structures. This intrepid traveller is a baby coral.
We’re used to thinking of corals as inert hunks of intricately shaped minerals but these rocky structures are merely the corals’ homes. The animals that live within are small and tentacled, looking a lot like the sea anemones that they’re related to. As larvae, corals look even stranger. Less than a millimetre in length, they swim freely in the open ocean amidst other plankton. Only later do they find a suitable place to settle down and get on with the adult business of reef construction.
These young corals have an unexpectedly amazing way of finding their way to the right site. According to Mark Vermeij from the University of Amsterdam, they ‘listen’ for the sounds of a reef.
Other oceanic babies do the same thing. Stephen Simpson, who was also involved in this new discovery, has previously showed that the larvae of both fish and crustaceans can used sound to find a home. Chemical cues can also lead them down the final leg of the journeys, but the din of a noisy reef carries further and is independent of currents. These acoustic signposts help them point in the right direction at the start of their treks.
Vermeij discovered this uncanny homing ability by collecting newly fertilised coral eggs off the Caribbean island of Curacao. The youngsters were raised in a lab and placed in six Plexiglas tubes pointing towards three underwater speakers. The speakers churned out a compilation album that may well have been called Now That’s What I Call Reef Music 2009 – a mash-up of the crackling beats of snapping shrimps laid over a background of fish calls and grunts, all sampled from local reefs.
If the speakers were silent, the baby corals were evenly spread throughout the tubes. But when the underwater mix started playing, the corals headed towards it, with over 40% of them clustering at the end of the tubes closest to the speakers. And if the tubes were placed half a metre below the speakers, the larvae clustered towards their upper surface.
Many things could affect the movement of a coral larva, including the tides, moonlight and enticing smells. But none of these mattered in the tank, which was isolated from the wider ocean. The fact that all of the tubes were angled like the spokes of a wheel also rules out the possibility that all the corals were swimming in the same direction, influenced by some external pull. It’s clear that these future reef-builders are capable of hearing underwater sounds and swimming towards them.
It seems bizarre that a simple coral larva could hear sound but we’re probably still thinking about these animals as rocky reefs rather than the living animals they encase. Previous studies have shown that coral larvae can see (detect light), touch (respond to textures) and smell (detect chemicals). Now, we know that they can also hear. Vermeij thinks that they do it with tiny hairs called cilia that coat their bodies.
As sound waves move through the sea, they cause water molecules and other particles to move up and down. These jiggling particles waggle the cilia, telling the corals where to head.
For the moment, it’s not clear if the larvae can tell the difference between reef sounds and general underwater noises. That’s an important question because the oceans are becoming noisier places, thanks to shipping, industry, drilling and military tests. This cacophony can easily drown out the sound of shrimps and fish. Underwater noise pollution already poses a problem for many animals including whales and dolphins. Do corals, many of which are already facing extinction, face the same problems?
Reference: PLoS ONE http://dx.plos.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0010660.
More on corals:
Need a remote shutter for your Canon dSLR? One modder hacked up a classic Atari 2600 joystick to focus and fire—making us question, where's that matching laser reticle when you need it? [Thiago Avancini] More »
One pest withers; another takes its place.
The Chinese government in 1997 approved Bt cotton. The crop, produced by U.S. agribusiness giant Monsanto, is genetically modified to produce a toxin that kills the bollworm, which has wreaked havoc on cotton crops. For its intended use, Bt cotton worked great: As DISCOVER covered in 2008, bollworms were in steep decline not only in cotton fields, but also in neighboring fields of corn and soybeans. But nature, as they say, abhors a vacuum, and targeting just one pest opens the door for others to come in. According to a decade-long study published in Science this week, it’s happening.
The new pest plaguing the 4 million hectares of Bt cotton in China is the mirid bug, research leader Kongming Wu says.
Numbers of mirid bugs (insects of the Miridae family), previously only minor pests in northern China, have increased 12-fold since 1997, they found. “Mirids are now a main pest in the region,” says Wu. “Their rise in abundance is associated with the scale of Bt cotton cultivation” [Nature].
Operating in northern China, Wu’s team monitored how much insecticide farmers used from the early 1990s up through 2008. They also tracked the mirid population from the time Bt cotton was introduced up to 2008.
Before switching to GM cotton, farmers used more broad-spectrum insecticides to kill bollworms and other pests. But as more farmers began growing Bt cotton, their use of sprays declined, leading to a steady rise in pests, including mirid bugs [The Guardian].
Farmers have always been playing cat-and-mouse with pests and weeds, of course. The reports last week of weeds becoming increasingly resistant to the weed-killer Roundup was another reminder that nature adapts to our tricks, so while GM crops are often great at the their initial purpose, circumstances change. Cotton itself has been through many cycles of this before.
For example, the boll weevil was once the main worldwide threat to cotton. As farmers sprayed pesticides against the weevils, bollworms developed resistance and rose to become the primary pest. Similarly, stink bugs have replaced bollworms as the primary pest in southeastern United States since Bt cotton was introduced [Nature].
Related Content:
80beats: Genetically Modified Cotton Plants Protect Their Neighbors from Pests
80beats: Evolution in Action: Roundup-Ready Crops Create Roundup-Resistant Superweeds
80beats: Biotech Potato Wins European Approval; May Signal a Larger Shift on GM Crops
80beats: India Says No to Genetically Modified Eggplants
Image: flickr / J. Coelho
We have a 2007 Town and Country. Yesterday we noticed that on the cd player, the button on the right that says "FF Tune RW" is broke. It looks like one of the little plastic circle things that hold it on has busted (when and how, we have no clue). The button is just dangling there.
How hard is
Hello all,
I have a run of stamped parts made out of full hard 1010 strip steel. I am attaching an aluminum hinge to them using aluminum rivets.
My question is: should I have the steel parts zinc plated, nickel plated or black oxide plated. From an environmental standpoint all will
This is without doubt the single greatest thing on Earth, and the very reason the Internet was invented.
Sure, I came for the one about Doctor Who, but stayed for the rest of the magnificence that unfolded before me.
My hat is off to you, sir. Kudos. Kudos, indeed.
Tip o’ the brain and brain, what is brain? to BABloggee Oliver X for making my life so wonderfully better with this.
