By Soulskill from
Slashdot's much-cooler-than-using-regular-tweezers department:
MTorrice writes
"A beam of electrons can pick up and carry nanoparticles, according to a new study (abstract). The so-called electronic tweezers could help scientists in diverse tasks, such as building up new materials nanoparticle-by-nanoparticle, and measuring the forces between nanoparticles and living cells, the researchers say. In the past, scientists have manipulated microsized particles, including single cells, using a beam of laser light called optical tweezers. But the force required to trap a particle with optical tweezers increases as the particle gets smaller, making grappling with nanoparticles difficult. Researchers at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory developed an alternative to optical tweezers by modifying a transmission electron microscope, which produces images by passing a stream of electrons through a sample."Reader Sven-Erik adds news of
a tractor beam generated with laser light that can pull microscopic particles over distances of 30 micrometers (
abstract).
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By Soulskill from
Slashdot's there-are-never-enough-app-stores department:
SternisheFan sends this quote from ZDNet:
"Mozilla has opened its Firefox Marketplace, with Android device owners and developers getting the first access to the browser's app store. The access arrived on Thursday, in the release of the latest 'Aurora' build of Firefox for Android. Aurora is meant for developers and early adopters, as it is the test stream of Mozilla's browser. The storefront lets people find and install web applications delivered via the browser, and gives developers a place to publicize their apps. 'We're hoping that Aurora users, our awesome early adopters, will go experience the Firefox Marketplace on their Android phones and let us know what they think,' Mozilla Labs engineering manager Bill Walker said in a blog post. 'Our goal is to collect as much real-life feedback as possible about the Marketplace's design, usability, performance, reliability, and content.' ... Mozilla said it expects to follow with a Marketplace for the Firefox browser beta and Firefox OS launches next year."Read Replies (0)
By Roblimo from
Slashdot's second-time's-a-charm department:
Yesterday we ran a
video interview with Eben Moglen,
who according to Wikipedia, "is a professor of law and legal history at Columbia University, and is the founder, Director-Counsel and Chairman of [the]
Software Freedom Law Center." And as we also said yesterday, since 2011 he's been working with
FreedomBox, a project working toward "a personal server running a free software operating system, with free applications designed to create and preserve personal privacy." Prof. Moglen is also one of the most polished speakers anywhere, on any topic, in our opinion. So please enjoy this second video of him speaking to (and answering questions from) Slashdot readers.
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By Soulskill from
Slashdot's now-i-can-play-games-and-be-hip-at-the-same-time department:
SquarePixel writes
"The nostalgic games seller Good Old Games has added Mac OS X support to its platform and a catalog of games to go with it. 'During its much-ballyhooed news-a-thon, GOG drew back the curtain on a new version of its service tailored to Macs, which brings with it 50 games (eight of which you receive free just for signing up) and some rather tempting deals. Speaking of, there's this insane 32-game pay-what-you-want Interplay special leading the charge in celebration of GOG's fourth anniversary.'"Unfortunately, Linux support doesn't seem to be in the cards just yet. On a list of requested site features,
Linux support has gotten quite a few votes, but a GOG employee said, "Linux is a great platform, and we love how much passion you guys are showing for it here on our wishlist. ... If we're able to bring GOG.com games to Linux--and we're constantly evaluating ways that we can do this--we want to make sure that we're doing it the GOG.com way: simple, easy, and it 'just works.' I'm not telling you guys to give up hope--we know how much you want this--but what I am saying is that this is harder to support than it might seem initially, and we're not ready to move to support Linux officially just yet."
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Carbon Dating Gets an Update
Posted by News Fetcher on October 18 '12 at 08:30 PM
By samzenpus from
Slashdot's looking-back department:
ananyo writes
"Climate records from a Japanese lake are set to improve the accuracy of carbon dating, which could help to shed light on archaeological mysteries such as why Neanderthals became extinct. Carbon dating is used to work out the age of organic material. But the technique assumes that the amount of carbon-14 in the atmosphere was constant — any variation would speed up or slow down the clock. Since the 1960s, scientists have started accounting for the variations by calibrating the clock against the known ages of tree rings. The problem is that tree rings provide a direct record that only goes as far back as about 14,000 years. Now, using sediment from bed of Lake Suigetsu, west of Tokyo, researchers have pushed the calibration limit back much further. Two distinct sediment layers have formed in the lake every summer and winter over tens of thousands of years. The researchers collected roughly 70-meter core samples from the lake and painstakingly counted the layers to come up with a direct record stretching back 52,000 years. The re-calibrated clock could help to narrow the window of key events in human history. Take the extinction of Neanderthals, which occurred in western Europe less than 30,000 years ago. Archaeologists disagree over the effects changing climate and competition from recently arriving humans had on the Neanderthals' demise. The more accurate carbon clock should yield better dates for any overlap of humans and Neanderthals, as well as for determining how climate changes influenced the extinction of Neanderthals."Read Replies (0)