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Justifying Death Panels

12:07 AM Friday, September 3, 2010

Millions of patients with advanced disease in palliative care settings receive oxygen therapy to help them breathe more easily. But a new study from Duke University Medical Center says roughly half of them don’t benefit from the intervention, and among those who do benefit, it doesn’t make a bit of difference whether they get pure oxygen or just plain old room air – both offer equal benefit.

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MIT Inventing the Supercomputer Cell Phone?

12:04 AM Friday, September 3, 2010

Researchers in MIT’s Department of Mechanical Engineering have developed software that can simulate complicated physical phenomena — how cracks form in building materials, for instance, or fluids flow through irregular channels — on an ordinary smartphone.

Although the current version of the software is for demonstration purposes, the work could lead to applications that let engineers perform complicated calculations in the field, and even to better control systems for vehicles or robotic systems.

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Twitter for iPad – I’m So Pumped

9:49 PM Thursday, September 2, 2010

Twitter is the best thing going for communiqués of 140 characters or less, and third-party developers have created a sea of apps to keep conversations flowing when users are away from the PC. Twitter itself has crafted apps for a variety of mobile phones, including the Apple iPhone ($199, ), but left a space for third parties to thrive by not developing its own Apple iPad ($829, ) app.

That has all changed, however, with the introduction of Twitter for iPad. The free app isn’t just the long-awaited first-party Twitter client—it’s one of the best Twitter tools available for reading feeds, surpassing TweetDeck for iPad (Free, ). Creating new messages can be a bewildering due to a cluttered composition screen, but if you’re a Twitter devotee it’s worth a look.

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Octo Macs

9:45 PM Thursday, September 2, 2010

These days, the consumer-oriented iMacs stand on their own against (and in some cases, surpass) the Mac Pro in day-to-day performance. Does that mean that the Mac Pro has lost its relevance in today’s work environment? Hardly.

The Mac Pro continues to be all about expandability and customization. There are literally billions of configuration combinations available, from four to 12 processing cores, from one to four hard drives or SSDs, up to 32GB of RAM, an Apple RAID card, multiple graphics cards, and more. Anyone who’s struggled to install anything more than RAM in the rest of Apple’s Mac lineup can appreciate how easily these components can be accessed, swapped and installed on the Mac Pro.

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Not To Worry! They’re Going at Night!

8:07 PM Thursday, September 2, 2010

We know it’s hot up there, but NASA wants to know a bit more about the sun and its atmosphere. And so sometime before 2018, the agency intends to send a spacecraft into the solar atmosphere.

This will mark the first time that a spacecraft from Earth will actually visit a star.

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Ford’s Tech Utility Vehicle

8:05 PM Thursday, September 2, 2010

Ford revealed on Wednesday its newest pursuit-rated vehicle: the company’s first-ever specially designed Police Interceptor utility vehicle. The new utility vehicle is based on the updated Ford Explorer, which was unveiled earlier this year. The utility vehicle isn’t the first Ford offering for police forces this year.

A Police Interceptor sedan modeled after the Ford Taurus also made its debut earlier this year. The sedan will be a replacement for the venerable Crown Victoria-based car. Both cars are scheduled to take to the streets next year.

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Stephen Hawking Isn’t Necessary

6:31 PM Thursday, September 2, 2010

Theoretical physicist and official World’s Cleverest Chap Stephen Hawking says there’s no reason to think that God created the universe. In his new book, The Grand Design, he says that physics alone is enough to explain the Big Bang.

“Because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing. Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist,” writes Hawking. “It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the universe going.”

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Unigine Working on Naval Strategy Game

4:04 PM Thursday, September 2, 2010

Unigine announced their first game, a naval real-time strategy game named OilRush. It will be released for Windows and Linux in Q4 2010, and a PSN version will follow later.

OilRush is a real-time strategy game based on the group control. It offers mechanics of a classical RTS combined with a Tower Wars genre: control construction and upgrading of production platforms as well as their defence forces, and send battle groups of naval and air units to capture enemy’s platforms and oil rig.

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Toshiba Laptops Are Smokin’!

4:00 PM Thursday, September 2, 2010

Thursday, the US Consumer Product Safety Commission and Health Canada announced a recall of three Toshiba Satellite T-series notebook computers: T135, T135D and ProT130, for reports that the units’ AC adaptors cause them to overheat and melt.

Though there have been no injuries reported, the CPSC said it received 129 reports of the computer cases melting and deforming, presenting a fire and burn hazard.

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Shooting Water

3:58 PM Thursday, September 2, 2010

For some reason I expected a bit more explosion (thanks, Hollywood!), but these high speed photography shots capture the fantastic moment when a bullet passes through a drop of water, slicing it in half with a bit of a splash.

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The Royal Wee

12:32 PM Thursday, September 2, 2010

IN NOVEMBER 2005, three senior aides to Britain’s royal family noticed odd things happening on their mobile phones. Messages they had never listened to were somehow appearing in their mailboxes as if heard and saved. Equally peculiar were stories that began appearing about Prince William in one of the country’s biggest tabloids, News of the World.

The stories were banal enough (Prince William pulled a tendon in his knee, one revealed). But the royal aides were puzzled as to how News of the World had gotten the information, which was known among only a small, discreet circle. They began to suspect that someone was eavesdropping on their private conversations.

The most distracting of these messages indicated that Prince Harry had a tenderloin and circulation rose 74%.

Tipped through TechNudge Royal Listener Gyro

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Deja Oil Vu

11:59 AM Thursday, September 2, 2010

An oil rig has reportedly exploded in the Gulf of Mexico. FOX News, citing a television affiliate in Louisiana, reports there were 13 people aboard the rig and 12 have been accounted for. So far, there is no sign of oil spilling into the Gulf, according to FOX News. The explosion comes several months after the largest oil spill in the history of the U.S. was caused by the explosion of another oil rig owned by oil giant BP. MyFoxNY.com is updating this story.

Well, at least the skimmers and booms are already there…

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Maingear F131

11:40 AM Thursday, September 2, 2010

Intel has done a credible job of defining the target markets for its current series of Core processors in desktop PCs: The Core i3 aims for the entry-level crowd, the Core i5 is for mainstream computing, and the Core i7 courts gamers and serious productivity hounds alike. So when Maingear updated its venerable F131 computer line (“F131″ was the name of Maingear’s first-ever PC line), we were a bit surprised to find a 3.2GHz Intel Core i5-655K processor—a dual-core chip—inside.

The machine’s 4GB of memory, 1TB hard drive, multiformat flash-card reader, and 24x DVD burner make it sound like a reasonable mainstream PC, but its $1,999 tally in our test configuration pushes this machine well into the neighborhood of enthusiast-grade PC towers—a neighboorhood we’re not sure this machine merits living in.

Moi

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Was Edison the Precursor to the RIAA?

11:30 AM Thursday, September 2, 2010

It was a dark and stormy night on December 18, 1908. Okay—maybe it wasn’t so dark and stormy. But it should have been, because that was the night Thomas Edison tried to hijack the motion picture industry.

“With his beetle brows, long wispy hair, and beatific look, Edison might have seemed the addled inventor,” writes the historian Neil Gabler, “but he was a shrewd businessman and a fearsome adversary who was never loath to take credit for any invention, whether he was responsible or not.”

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Duracell Charging Ahead

11:27 AM Thursday, September 2, 2010

From The Inquirer:

ENERGIZER BUNNY BATTERY MAKER Duracell has started flogging its Mygrid wireless charging pad in Blighty.

The product allows drop-and-go charging for up to four devices at once, and prevents the need for lots of cords when you are recharging your gear.

All you do is stick a Duracell Power Sleeve or Power Clip onto your device and plonk it on the pad to start it charging, all wirelessly.