Scientists say they have disproved the theory that fingerprints improve grip by increasing friction between people’s hands and the surface they are holding. Nobody is sure of the exact function of fingerprints, but improved grip has long been a favoured theory. However, in a series of tests to measure friction between a finger and a piece of acrylic glass, it was debunked by a University of Manchester team
Four nonprofit groups devoted to investigative journalism will have their work distributed by The Associated Press, The AP will announce on Saturday, greatly expanding their potential audience and helping newspapers fill the gap left by their own shrinking resources. Starting on 1 July, the AP will deliver work by the Centre for Public Integrity, the Investigative Reporting Workshop at American University, the Centre for Investigative Reporting, and ProPublica to the 1,500 American newspapers that are AP members, which will be free to publish the material. The AP called the arrangement a six-month experiment that could later be broadened to include other investigative nonprofits, and to serve its nonmember clients, which include broadcast and Internet outlets
The US Justice Department today unsealed indictments against three Filipino residents accused of hacking into thousands of private telephone networks in the United States and abroad, and then selling access to those networks at call centers in Italy that advertised cheap international calls. The indictment alleges that between October 2005 and December 2008, Manila residents Mahmoud Nusier, Paul Michael Kwan and Nancy Gomez broke into PBX systems, mainly by exploiting factory-set or default passwords on the voicemail systems. The government charges that the Italian call centre operators paid the hackers $100 for each hacked PBX system they found
Development of offshore wind farms has been restricted to places where turbines can be attached to the sea bed. But earlier this week, Siemens and energy company StatoilHydro installed what they call the first large-scale floating turbine. The installation is off the coast of Norway, and testing is expected to last for two years. The Hywind turbine will still have a ballast that is tied to the sea floor with cables. Wires will transfer the electricity produced to the mainland grid starting in July
Banksy has pulled off his most daring stunt yet by staging his biggest-ever British exhibition in complete secrecy. The covert graffiti artist snuck into Bristol’s City Museum and Art Gallery and replaced many of the artefacts on display there with 100 pieces of his own work, including a burnt-out ice-cream van. The spray-painted van, which sits under a giant melted cone, appears alongside dozens of sculptures, oil paintings and his trademark stencils from today. Despite Banksy’s international notoriety, the exhibition remained a closely-guarded secret with only two officials at the council-owned museum aware of the installation. The reason the museum was closed was even kept secret from top council officials
Pinned prominently on Orion’s shoulder, the bright red star Betelgeuse hardly seems like a wallflower. But a new study suggests the giant star has been shrinking for more than a decade. Betelgeuse is nearing the end of its life as a red supergiant. The bright, bloated star is 15 to 20 times more massive than the sun. If it were placed at the centre of the solar system, the star would extend out to the orbit of Jupiter. But the star’s reach seems to be waning. New observations indicate the giant star has shrunk by more than 15 per cent since 1993. This could be a sign of a long-term oscillation in its size or the star’s first death knells. Or it may just be an artefact of the star’s bumpy surface, which may appear to change in size as the star rotates
The Nintendo Wii may help treat symptoms of Parkinson’s disease, including depression, a Medical College of Georgia researcher says. Parkinson’s disease is a degenerative disease that impairs motor skills. Dr Herz theorised that the popular computer game console, which simulates various sports and activities, could improve coordination, reflexes and other movement-related skills, but he found additional benefits as well
There can be little doubt that the provision of an effective and free service for BitTorrent anonymity would prove hugely popular. Today we bring you a detailed report on BitBlinder — a brand new open source project which promises to cloak your torrents, hide your browsing and get round many obstructive filters
In November 2008, Caroline Moore, a 14-year-old student from upstate New York, discovered a supernova in a nearby galaxy, making her the youngest person ever to do so. Additional observations determined that the object, called SN 2008ha, is a new type of stellar explosion, 1000 times more powerful than a nova but 1000 times less powerful than a supernova. Astronomers say that it may be the weakest supernova ever seen
The ubiquitous periodic table will soon have a new addition — the super-heavy
element 112. More than a decade after experiments first produced a single atom of the element, a team of German scientists has been credited with its discovery. The team, led by Sigurd Hofmann at the Centre for Heavy Ion Research, must propose a name for their find, before it can be formally added to the table
Security firms Symantec and McAfee have both agreed to pay $375,000 to US authorities after they automatically renewed consumers’ subscriptions without their consent. The firms have agreed to settle the case with the New York Attorney General, who says the companies must be more up front about subscription renewals in the future
Like something out of Terminator 2, researchers are developing techniques for warfare of the future to create materials that self-assemble or alter their shape, perform a function and then disassemble themselves. These capabilities offer the possibility for morphing aircraft and ground vehicles, uniforms that can alter themselves in any climate, and soft
robots that flow like mercury through small openings to enter caves and bunker complexes
Five years after Fox canceled the animated comedy, 20th Century Fox TV has officially struck a deal with Comedy Central to produce 26 original episodes of the Matt Groening series. It will return as early as mid-2010. The studio doesn’t have a broadcast network deal yet, but it said it might yet reach an agreement for a network window
The Constitutionnal Council, highest jurisdiction in France gave its decision1 concerning the HADOPI three strikes
law, final stage before the promulgation of the law. It decided that presumption of innocence is more important than the idiotic schemes from the entertainment industries to artificially prolong their obsolete models. All sanctioning power (ie. disconnecting internet users) has been removed from the HADOPI
Mozilla is readying a program that will allow companies to build their own customised browsers based on the next version of Firefox, which will be out in a few weeks. The Build Your Own Browser program is a good fit for enterprises that want to create a customised browser that can be easily installed across multiple corporate desktops, said Mike Beltzner, director of Firefox at Mozilla
In the seminal science fiction book Dune
, Frank Herbert envisioned the Fremen collecting water from the air via moisture traps and dew collectors. Science Daily reprints a press release from the Fraunhofer Institute in Stuttgart, where scientists working with colleagues from Logos Innovationen have developed a closed-loop and self-sustaining method, no external power required, for teasing the humidity out of desert air and into potable water via Slashdot
Sweden’s Pirate Party has won a seat in the European Parliament. The group — which campaigned on reformation of copyright and patent law — secured 7.1% of the Swedish vote. The result puts the Pirate Party in fifth place, behind the Social Democrats, Greens, Liberals and the Moderate Party
The third contaminated pet food scare in six months has upset veterinarians and prompted calls for stronger regulations. The Australian company Virbac has pulled some products from veterinarians’ shelves after small-animal specialists established a possible link between Vietnamese-made dog dental chews and an outbreak of mysterious illnesses in dogs
The Pirate Party has won a huge victory in the Swedish elections and is marching on to Brussels. After months of campaigning against well established parties, the Pirate Party has gathered enough votes to be guaranteed a seat in the European Parliament
Xunlight, a startup in Toledo, Ohio, has developed a way to make large, flexible solar panels. It has developed a roll-to-roll manufacturing technique that forms thin-film amorphous silicon solar cells on thin sheets of stainless steel. Each solar module is about one metre wide and five and a half metres long
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