DesignSpark, um novo Minério, e vacina contra o Tabaco!

Designspark volta a mostrar-nos um mundo de coisas boas, como, por exemplo, CPUs de Open Source, nem sabia que se estavam a desenvolver...

This week, Andrew Back blogs about Julius Baxter, a core member on the OpenRISC project, that focuses on developing a family of open source 32 and 64-bit RISC CPU architectures, and with power consumption being an important factor for many designers, Simon Holt has been looking into the latest families of 7 series FGPAs at each stage of the development cycle.

Ou então...
Transformar o RaspberyPi num tocador de Media!

Raspberry Pi as a media player

The System On Chip (SOC) used by the Raspberry Pi looks like it was designed for set top boxes, and gives it some pretty impressive video performance. The first thing I wanted to do with my Pi was see if it could replace a venerable Kiss DP-600 as my living room media player.

There are now two projects out there that turn the RPi into a media appliance - Raspbmc and OpenELEC. Both are vehicles for XBMC, an application for playing video, music files and viewing pictures.

 http://www.designspark.com/content/raspberry-pi-media-player

 

Para impressionarem o Pessoal, descobriu-se um novo Minério, num Meteorito!

New mineral, panguite, discovered in 1960s meteorite

By James Holloway

A new mineral, named panguite, has been discovered by Caltech researchers examining the Allende meteorite that broke up in the skies over northern Mexico on February 8, 1969. Panguite, an oxide of titanium, becomes the ninth new mineral to be discovered in the meteorite by the team since 2007.

Panguite was discovered using an electron microscope, examining what is known as an ultra-refractory inclusion, a scientific term for the oldest, least volatile objects within meteorites. Panguite's discoverers have therefore concluded that the mineral would have been one of the first solid materials in the solar system and is therefore in the order of 4.5 billion years old.

"Panguite is an especially exciting discovery since it is not only a new mineral, but also a material previously unknown to science," said Caltech's Chi Ma, an author of the paper in which the discovery was described.

http://www.gizmag.com/panguite-discovery/23109/

E boas notícias, uma Vacina para curar o Vício do Tabaco... Para toda a vida!

New vaccine could provide lifetime immunity to nicotine addiction

By Darren Quick

Researchers at Weill Cornell Medical College have developed a vaccine that could help existing smokers quit for good and prevent those yet to try cigarettes from ever becoming addicted. The vaccine turns the recipient’s kidney into a factory continuously churning out antibodies that clear the bloodstream of nicotine before it has a chance to reach the brain and deliver it’s addictive rush. Unlike previously tested nicotine vaccines that only last a few weeks, the effects of a single dose of this new vaccine should last a lifetime.

http://www.gizmag.com/nicotine-vaccine/23130/