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New Technology Produces Cheaper Tantalum and Titanium

Billy the Mountain writes “A small UK company is bringing new technology online that could reduce the prices of tantalum and titanium ten-fold. According to this piece in The Economist: A tantalising prospect, the key is a technique similar to smelting aluminum with a new twist: The metallic oxides are not melted as with aluminum but blended in powder form with a molten salt that serves as a medium and electrolyte. This technology is known as the FFC Cambridge Process. Other metals include Neodymium, Tungsten, and Vanadium.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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New Technology Produces Cheaper Tantalum and Titanium

Grammarly Checks the Grammar and Spelling of Any Document and Helps You Fix It

Grammar can be a tough nut to crack, and there are times when a few mistakes here and there can determine whether or not you get a job or an A on your paper. Grammarly is a web app that scrutinizes your sentence structure to find errors and help you correct them. More »

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Grammarly Checks the Grammar and Spelling of Any Document and Helps You Fix It

Human Rights Watch: Petition Against Robots On the Battle Field

First time accepted submitter KublaCant writes “‘At this very moment, researchers around the world – including in the United States – are working to develop fully autonomous war machines: killer robots. This is not science fiction. It is a real and powerful threat to humanity.’ These are the first words of a Human Rights Watch Petition to Presdient Obama to keep robots from the battlefield. The argument is that robots possess neither common sense, ‘real’ reason, any sense of mercy nor — most important — the option to not obey illegal commands. What with the fast-spreading use of drones et al. , we are allegedly a long way off from Asimov’s famous Three Laws of Robotics being implanted in autonomous fighting machines, or into any ( semi- ) autonomous robot. A ‘Stop the Killer Robots’ campaign will also be launched in April at the British House of Commons and includes many of the groups that successfully campaigned to have international action taken against cluster bombs and landmines. They hope to get a similar global treaty against autonomous weapons. The Guardian has more about this, including quotes from well-known robotics researcher Noel Sharkey from Sheffield University.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Human Rights Watch: Petition Against Robots On the Battle Field

Islamists In Bangladesh Demand Murder of More Bloggers

An anonymous reader writes “Days after the killing of leftist blogger Thaba Baba, mosques throughout Bangladesh called for a popular uprising to demand the killing of other bloggers who had held a rally calling for the death of Jama’at-e-Islami leaders convicted of war crimes. This happens in an atmosphere of ongoing tension between Left and Right, with the leftist government threatening to outlaw rightist parties while the right uses violence to quiet selected enemies.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Islamists In Bangladesh Demand Murder of More Bloggers

Circular Beam of Electrons

Beam of electrons moving in a circle, due to the presence of a magnetic field. Purple light is emitted along the electron path, due to the electrons colliding with gas molecules in the bulb. (Photo: Marcin Bialek ) Oh, how I love you guys. In our recent post A Fiery Dance on the Sun , Neatoramanaut PlasmaGryphon kindly took the time to explain to us the physics behind solar flares. In the explanation , there was a link to Wikipedia article on Lorentz force , where I found this fascinating image of a circular beam of electrons in a Teltron tube . Neat, huh? ( Thanks PlasmaGryphon! )

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Circular Beam of Electrons

Huawei Claims It Has the World’s Fastest 4G Phone—But Who Really Cares?

Huawei could add a waffle-maker to its Ascend P2, and I doubt even that would be enough to pull people over to its side of the phone stores. Unlike the Ascend D2 unveiled at CES, there’s no 3,000mAh battery lurking here (you’ll have to “make do” with a 2420 one), but there’s a CAT 4LTE chipset, meaning 4G speeds can reach 150Mbps (the iPhone 5 and S3 LTE only have CAT 3, FYI). More »

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Huawei Claims It Has the World’s Fastest 4G Phone—But Who Really Cares?

Taking Notes Will Feel A Lot More Biblical On Paper Made Of Stone

Recycling is great, but it would nice if trees didn’t have to be involved at all in paper production. More oxygen, more animal hangouts, good stuff. The Italian notebook maker Ogami agrees, so they’ve developed a line of paper products made out of rocks . More »

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Taking Notes Will Feel A Lot More Biblical On Paper Made Of Stone

Six of Hanford’s Nuclear Waste Tanks Leaking Badly

SchrodingerZ writes “A recent review of the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Washington state (where the bulk of Cold War nuclear material was created) has found that six of its underground storage tanks are leaking badly. Estimations say each tank is leaking ‘anywhere from a few gallons to a few hundred gallons of radioactive material a year.’ Washington’s governor, Jay Inslee, said in a statement on Friday, ‘Energy officials recently figured out they had been inaccurately measuring the 56 million gallons of waste in Hanford’s tanks.’ The Hanford cleanup project has been one of the most expensive American projects for nuclear cleanup. Plans are in place to create a treatment plant to turn the hazardous material into less hazardous glass (proposed to cost $13.4 billion), but for now officials are trying just to stop the leaking from the corroded tanks. Today the leaks do not have an immediate threat on the environment, but ‘there is [only] 150 to 200 feet of dry soil between the tanks and the groundwater,’ and they are just five miles from the Colombia River.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Six of Hanford’s Nuclear Waste Tanks Leaking Badly

Google Releases Chrome 25 With Voice Recognition Support

An anonymous reader writes “Google on Thursday released Chrome version 25 for Windows, Mac, and Linux. While Chrome 24 was largely a stability release, Chrome 25 is all about features, including voice recognition support via the newly added Web Speech API and the blocking of silent extension installation. You can update to the latest release now using the browser’s built-in silent updater, or download it directly from google.com/chrome.” But if you’re more interested in the growing raft of Google-branded hardware than running Google OSes, some good news (via Liliputing) about the newly released Pixel: Bill Richardson of Google posted on Thursday that the Pixel can boot Linux Mint, and explained how users can follow his example, by taking advantage of new support for a user-provided bootloader. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Google Releases Chrome 25 With Voice Recognition Support

Millionaire Plans Mission To Mars In 2018

littlesparkvt writes in with news about the possibility of a privately funded Mars mission. “Millionaire Dennis Tito became the first paying customer to make a trip to the International Space Station and now he wants to launch a privately funded mission to Mars in 2018. Dennis paid a reported 20 Million to ride aboard a Russian rocket to the International Space Station and has since stayed out of the spotlight, until now. There’s no word whether the trip will include humans, there will be more information on that fact next week. Considering there is little time to train a crew for the mission the flight in 2018 will most likely be an unmanned probe. There’s also a possibility that the first mission to Mars from this private investor will harbor supplies for future astronauts. Plants and food are a possibility as they would take much less space than a full human crew.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Millionaire Plans Mission To Mars In 2018