Applications
of Virtual Environments Technology
- "John N
Sutherland, Senior Lecturer in Virtual Environments,
University of Abertay Dundee, surveys the games,
virtual reality and multimedia markets and provides a
forecast of things to come. There are three different
hardware platforms for developing virtual
environments: high-power/high-cost,
medium-power/low-cost, and games consoles. The overlap
– and largest field – is on the
medium-power/low-cost platform – the PC. The power
on the desktop approximately doubles each year. This
past year has seen ex-magazine purchasable PCs for VE
work with close to 1GHz processor speed, 0.5GB RAM,
ever-improving 3D accelerator cards, and vastly
improved audio cards and speaker systems..."
Solar
Flare Leaves Sun Quaking - "Scientists have
shown for the first time that solar flares produce
seismic waves in the Sun's interior that closely
resemble those created by earthquakes on our planet.
The researchers observed a flare-generated solar quake
that contained about 40,000 times the energy released
in the great earthquake that devastated San Francisco
in 1906. The amount of energy released was enough to
power the United States for 20 years at its current
level of consumption, and was equivalent to an 11.3
magnitude earthquake, scientists calculated..."
South
Pole is moved - Scientists working in Antarctica have
repositioned the special marker post that records the exact
location on the Earth's surface of the South Pole. The special
ceremony, which is always carried out on 1 January every year, is
necessary because the ice pack is shifting. Over the course of 12
months, the pole, which has an inscribed plaque on top, moves by
approximately 10 metres...
Difficult
to become a hacker? It's easier than you think - Ever
wonder how hard it is to become a hacker? I can tell you firsthand
it's probably easier than you may think. It all started when I was
testing Symantec's Web clients for pcANYWHERE on my office
network. I downloaded the software from Symantec's site and ran
it. Wonder of wonders, it worked perfectly -- way cool and very
impressive...
Alcohol-Brain Cell Link Found
-
"A single drinking binge by a pregnant woman can be enough to permanently damage the brain of her unborn child,
according to a new study of the effects of alcohol on babies. Although experiments in the study were conducted on laboratory
rats, experts said the findings offer an explanation of why children born to drinking mothers can suffer learning disabilities
and other brain disorders..."
Supercomputing
- "For many hours of the day and night millions of computers in
homes and offices around the world remain switched on but
essentially idle, with nothing better to do than run a screen
saver of flying toasters. So why not make use of all that spare
capacity, by joining as many of these computers together as
possible and creating immense computing power in new
internet-based supercomputers?"
Small
Sunspot, Big Flare - The eruption was bright across the
electromagnetic spectrum. It registered the maximum rating of
"B" (for brilliant) on the 3-level scale of optical
intensity for solar flares. At X-ray wavelengths the
Earth-orbiting GOES 8 satellite also detected a bright surge that
put the flare in the most powerful X-class. Large flares like this
one can emit up to 1032 ergs of energy. This energy is ten million
times greater than the energy released from a volcanic explosion.
On the other hand, it is less than one-tenth of the total energy
emitted by the Sun every second...
Solar
Smoke Rings - In J.R.R. Tolkien's well-known fantasy The
Hobbit, the diminutive inhabitants of the Shire loved to smoke
pipe-weed and blow intricate rings to delight their visitors. Only
the powerful wizard Gandalf could best a Hobbit in that difficult
art. Here in the real world, the best way to enjoy an enchanting
tobacco-free smoke ring may surprise you. Simply tune in to the
Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO), an Earth-orbiting
observatory with an eye on the biggest puffer in the solar system
- the Sun...
The
Andromeda Drain
- "The Chandra X-ray Observatory has spied a peculiar
black hole at the center of the Andromeda galaxy. When NASA's
Chandra X-ray Observatory was launched in 1999, many astronomers
were understandably anxious to view the first high resolution X-ray
pictures of the Milky Way's nearest galactic neighbor. Earlier data
from the Hubble Space Telescope had revealed a black hole candidate
in Andromeda's nucleus weighing in at 30 million solar masses. If
there really was a supermassive black hole there, then there should
be an X-ray source betraying its presence..."
Never
Say Die - "Listen
in Real Audio - Mars
Polar Lander, After receiving weak
signals that may have come from Mars Polar Lander on Dec. 18 and
Jan. 4, Stanford radio astronomers are again listening for murmurs
from the missing spacecraft..."
Genetically Identical Monkeys Made
- Researchers using a technique called embryo splitting hope to grow genetically identical rhesus monkeys in the laboratory
- a breakthrough that would enable experiments such as growing new organs from stem cells to be tested on monkeys rather than mice. Monkeys are closer to human biology...
