Rtersieva

"If the only tool you have is a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail."

How do you know if a baby has geek parents? He oe she will be probably be riding in an AT-AT stroller, sitting in an iPad chair or using one of the other cool and questionable gadgets on this list.

Sometimes my paper towels get out of hand and I have to put them in their place. If you’d like to see some process videos and behind the scenes, be sure to check out my snapchat: hombremcsteez.

A dog in Seattle, US regularly rides the bus alone to take herself to the park

West pushes for influence on Europe's frontier

We're always happy when an ingredient we love turns out to be even healthier than we imagined. And today there's good news for avocado lovers.

A study was released last week showing that eating an avocado a day can help lower bad cholesterol in overweight patients.

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Many of us have seen a 22º halo, that surreal circle of rainbow-colored light around the sun, in real life. Some of us have seen a sun pillar in real life. A lucky few have seen a sun dog in real life. But I doubt any of you have seen them all of these super rare phenomena—and more!—in one sunrise.

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This week NASA published new astonishing high definition images of the famous Pillars of Creation—two 4-light-year-tall columns located in the Eagle Nebula, 7,000 light years from here, first photographed in 1995. The only problem is that the pillars don't exist—they were destroyed more than a thousand years ago.

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From amazing PR stunts to simple yet awesome email responses, take a look at some cool stories of companies showing love for their customers.

KentuckyFC writes: Physicists have long hoped to unify the two great theories of the 20th century: general relativity and quantum mechanics. And yet a workable theory of quantum gravity is as far away as ever. Now one theorist has discovered that the uniquely quantum property of entanglement does indeed influence a gravitational field and this could pave the way for the first experimental observation of a quantum gravity phenomenon. The discovery is based on the long-known quantum phenomenon in which a single particle can be in two places at the same time. These locations then become entangled — in other words they share the same quantum existence. While formulating this phenomenon within the framework of general relativity, the physicist showed that if the entanglement is tuned in a precise way, it should influence the local gravitational field. In other words, the particle should seem heavier. The effect for a single electron-sized particle is tiny — about one part in 10^37. But it may be possible to magnify the effect using heavier particles, ultrarelativistic particles or even several particles that are already entangled.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

jones_supa writes: As you may have heard, the NSA has had some success in cracking Secure Shell (SSH) connections. To respond to these risks, a guide written by Stribika tries to help you make your shell as robust as possible. The two main concepts are to make the crypto harder and make stealing keys impossible. So prepare a cup of coffee and read the tutorial carefully to see what could be improved in your configuration. Stribika gives also some extra security tips: don't install what you don't need (as any code line can introduce a bug), use the kind of open source code that has actually been reviewed, keep your software up to date, and use exploit mitigation technologies.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Qedward writes: The UK government's Department for Work and Pensions is on the hunt for a new £135,000-a-year CTO, with part of their annual budget of £1 billion and responsibility for DWP's "digital transformation" to oversee the migration of the department's legacy systems which are still run on Fujitsu mainframes using the VME operating system installed in 1974.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

vinces99 writes Researchers are installing three seismometers in Seattle's CenturyLink stadium to monitor shaking from Seahawks fans during Saturday's NFL playoff game. The new, faster data transmission will show crowd motion on the website before a touchdown shows up on the 10-second delayed TV broadcast. Researchers dub these "Early Earthquake Rowdiness Warnings." A guaranteed shaking and intense public interest gives the seismologists a unique opportunity to test new technology that gives seconds to minutes warning of a real earthquake.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

On January 4, Jo Schüftan of Horns Up Rocks! conducted an interview with vocalist Mikael Stanne of Swedish melodic death metallers DARK TRANQUILLITY before the band's concert at Gramercy Theatre in New York City. You can now watch the chat below. Asked about DARK TRANQUILLITY's plans for the rest of 2015 after the completion of the band's current North American headlining tour, Stanne said: "This actually really concludes the 'Construct' touring cycle. [We will have played] 160 shows for this album — something like that — so once we're done and we're back [home in Sweden], we'll start working on a new album. [We'll play] a few festivals, but mainly, it's about writing. So I really, really look forward to that." Regarding whether DARK TRANQUILLITY has already begin compiling ideas for its next album, Stanne said: "You need to kind of clear your mind and kind of get away from the whole madness of being on tour to focus on writing. But we started, and we have a lot of ideas and a of things [to work on], so I think we're gonna hit the ground running when we get home." DARK TRANQUILLITY's tenth studio album, "Construct", was released on May 27, 2013 via Century Media Records. The CD was mixed by Jens Bogren (PARADISE LOST, OPETH, KATATONIA) at his Fascination Street studios in Örebro, Sweden. DARK TRANQUILLITY filmed a music video for the song "Uniformity" in April 2013 with Patric Ullaeus of Revolver Film Company, who has previously worked with DIMMU BORGIR, LACUNA COIL, IN FLAMES, SONIC SYNDICATE and KAMELOT, among others.

If you’ve read any science news over the past day or so, you’ll have noticed it’s been dominated by stories about the discovery of a new antibiotic, teixobactin. There’s a reason that the scientific community is so excited by its discovery, but in truth, it’s the method which was used to discover it as much as the compound itself that’s drawn attention. Today’s graphic gives you a run-down of the key points.

Teixobactin’s discovery has the potential to be a big deal. If it eventually gets approval for clinical use, it’d become the initial member of the first new major class of antibiotics for at least a decade. A lot of news outlets have touted it as ‘the first new antibiotic for 30 years'; this isn’t strictly the case, however, as new drugs in existing antibiotic classes have been discovered more recently. Whether it’s the first new class of antibiotics for a decade rather depends on how they are defined. The summary graphic below, from a previous post on antibiotics, shows a selection of the main classes and their discovery dates:

Of course, it’s not just the fact that it’s the first major antibiotic discovery for a little while that’s got people interested. Another factor is that the researchers who published the study suggest that, due to the manner in which teixobactin acts on bacteria, it should prove difficult for them to quickly become resistant to it. Teixobactin works by binding to lipid (fat) molecules that the bacteria use to build cell walls, thus rendering them unable to do so. This results in a weakened cell wall, which eventually leads to bacteria bursting and dying. Due to the fact that the target of the antibiotic isn’t easily modifiable by the bacteria, it’s thought that resistance would take much longer to develop – perhaps as long as 30 years – though it would eventually appear to some extent.

Teixobactin does have its drawbacks, primarily that it’s still only been tested in mice. It was so effective in killing bacteria, that the researchers working on it were concerned that it would also be toxic to mammalian cells, but this was not the case. Still, years of clinical trials in humans await before teixobactin will be available for medical use in humans. Additionally, the research in mice was carried out using intravenous injection of the compound, and it seems likely that in humans, too, the antibiotic would have to be injected rather than taken as an oral tablet.

Another issue is that teixobactin isn’t effective against all bacteria. There are two classifications of bacteria, gram-positive and gram-negative, and the extra membrane around the cell wall that the gram-negative bacteria possess means that teixobactin has no effect on them. This is unfortunate, as harmful bacteria such as E. coli are included in the gram-negative group – though MRSA is a gram-positive bacteria, so teixobactin could be used to combat antibiotic-resistant strains.

Whilst the discovery of teixobactin is great news, perhaps even better is the method used to discover it. We know bacteria produce their own antibacterial compounds, to combat other competing bacteria. However, since 99% of bacteria can’t be grown in lab conditions, this greatly limits the number of these compounds that we can investigate. The method used to discover teixobactin overcomes this, by diluting soil samples, then placing small samples containing single bacterium cells in a device they named an ‘iChip’.

The ‘iChip’ is essentially just a device with a large number of small channels, into which bacteria can be deposited. The channels are then covered with a semi-permeable membrane, which allows environmental factors which influence bacterial cell growth to diffuse across to the bacterium cells. Using this method, the researchers were able to cultivate bacteria which were not previously grown in lab conditions, as once a culture is formed it is easier to entice them to do so. The researchers isolated 25 different antibiotic compounds, of which teixobactin is the most promising. This method has the potential to be a huge advance, and could lead to more possible antibiotic candidates in the future.

We won’t know how effective this method for producing antibiotics is for some time, but the number of compounds produced by various bacteria is vast, so the potential is there. If you want to read more about both teixobactin and the method used to produce it, the paper itself is open access.

The graphic in this article is licensed under a  Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. See the site’s content usage guidelines.

References & Further Reading

• Study: A new antibiotic kills pathogens without detectable resistance – L Ling & others
• A new antibiotic that resists resistance – Ed Yong, National Geographic
• Novel bacteria-fighter unearthed – Bethany Halford, C&EN

You know how it's easier to enjoy fast food when you don't have any idea what goes into making it? It turns out the same holds true with vehicle pedestrian collision systems.

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The Internet Archive just dumped nearly 2,400 old MS-DOS video games into an easy-to-navigate repository. Every single one of the games is free to play in your browser. Some of the games are classics from your youth. Some of them are hilariously obscure. And some of them are porn—which is something you probably didn't realize existed on MS-DOS.

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"The Romans would never have found time to conquer the world if they had been obliged first to learn Latin."

   Вокалистът Till Lindemann от немската индъстриъл метъл "машина" RAMMSTEIN и шведският продуцент и мултиинструменталист Peter Tagtgren (HYPOCRISY, PAIN) обединяват ...

schwit1 (797399) writes "Suspiciously high radiation levels around the Austrian town of St. Georgen an der Gusen had long fueled theories that there was a buried bunker nearby where Nazis had tested nuclear weapons during WWII. Those suspicions came one step closer to being confirmed last week after the opening of a 75-acre underground complex was dug out from below the earth and granite used to seal off the entrance, the Times of Israel reports. The excavation team was led by Austrian filmmaker Andreas Sulzer, who says the site was "likely the biggest secret weapons production facility of the Third Reich" — a facility that probably relied on forced labor from the nearby Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp and may have even been the testing location for a nuclear bomb, the Daily Mirror reports. The weapons facility was believed to have been manned by SS General Hans Kammler and situated near the B8 Bergkristall factory, where the first working jet-powered fighter was created, International Business Times reports; Sulzer first got wind of the site after seeing references to it in an Austrian physicist's diary. The Washington Post cautions that while "the full scope of what occurred inside those reported chambers in the Austrian town of St. Georgen remains unclear and Sulzer’s conclusions are speculative, some analysts are already trumpeting the findings. ... The reported findings, if corroborated by further inquiry, could add fresh fodder to an ongoing debate over the Third Reich’s ultimately failed attempt to secure an atomic weapon."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Yippee! Let's poison ourselves with beverages that will make us violently ill! It was your battle cry last night, and today you're paying the price. But what is that hangover you're experiencing, exactly?

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Filed under: Machinima, WoW Moviewatch

WoW Moviewatch: Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies style trailer originally appeared on WoW Insider on Sun, 28 Dec 2014 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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From the paramedic whose racially charged Instagram post put his job in jeopardy to the criminal who posted his haul on the photo sharing site, check out these 10 instances where Instagrammers ran afoul of the law.