may the force be with you

The first evidence that some of the basic organic building blocks of life can exist in an Earth-like orbit around a young Sun-like star has been provided by NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope.

Spitzer took infrared spectrograms of 100 very young stars in a nearby stellar nursery, a huge cloud of dust and gas 375 light years away in the constellation Ophiuchus. And one of those stars showed signs of the organic molecules, acetylene and hydrogen cyanide.

These gases, when combined with water, can form several different amino acids. These are needed to form proteins, as well as one of the four chemical letters, or bases, in DNA, called adenine.

The organic molecules were detected in a ring of dust and gas circling a young star called IRS 46. Such dust rings, found around all of the young stars that were examined by the Spitzer telescope, are believed to be the raw material for planetary systems.

The spectrographic data showed that the gases were so hot that they must be orbiting close to the star, approximately in its "habitable zone", the region where Earth orbits the Sun and where water is just at the borderline between liquid and gaseous states.

The detection supports the widely held theory that many of the molecular building blocks of life were present in the solar system even before planets formed, thus assisting the initial formation of complex organic molecules and the start of life itself.

Planet forming

Observations earlier in 2005 by a different team using Spitzer showed that simpler organic molecules, called polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, were present in galaxies as much as 10 billion years ago.

The star IRS 46 and its emerging planetary system "might look a lot like ours did billions of years ago, before life arose on Earth", said Fred Lahuis of Leiden Observatory in the Netherlands, who led the research team.

Acetylene and hydrogen cyanide have been detected before in places closer to home, such as the atmospheres of the giant planets Jupiter and Saturn, and in comets. Observations by the European Infrared Space Observatory have also shown the compounds to exist around massive stars.

But the new findings are the first to show they can occur around other Sun-like stars, and in a region where planets are likely to form. Follow-up observations with the Keck Observatory in Hawaii suggest that a stellar wind is beginning to blow away the dust surrounding IRS 46. This may be the start of what is thought to be a final stage in the formation of planets.

The research will be published in the Astrophysical Journal in January 2006.

"Googles Summer of Code has born fruit with the Blender 2.40 release. Thanks to their support and the hard work of the coders they supported Blender has fluid dynamics simulation done by Nils Thuerey, a powerful inverse kinematics system done by Brecht Van Lommel, and much improved boolean tools done by Marc Freixas. Of course Blender has had a huge number of improvements aside from the work supported by Google. The animation system got a complete rewrite by Ton Roosendaal, as well as other major improvements like flive UV unwrapping LSCM, and a Modifier stack system. It also has seen greatly improved ease of use since the last Slashdot announcement addressing all of the complaints raised- things like 3d manipulators, full undo system, etc. There is also a quick start guide for new users, and nice video and written tutorials on new features and a fairly up to date manual."

source:http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/12/23/0148256&tid=164&tid=217&tid=152&tid=185&tid=8

No, your eyes are not deceiving you. Jack Thompson has purchased shares in Take-Two interactive - otherwise known as the publisher behind the Grand Theft Auto series of games. So has JT suddenly become a financial supporter of the company he's long campaigned against? Not a chance. JT has purchased stock in the company in order that he might attend Take-Two's shareholder meetings and face up to the company's CEO, Paul Eibeler.

In advance of attending the shareholder's meeting, he sent a ranting letter to Eibeler, outlining his plan to attend the meeting and visit several issues that have been on our favorite lawyer's mind as of late. In the letter, JT questions Eibeler's handling of the "Hot Coffee" sex scandal (which won an award, by the way) and mentions a report by MarketWatch naming Eibeler as the "worst CEO of 2005". Up until this point, the letter raises legitimate concerns that any shareholder could have regarding the company's CEO.

But, as JT's letters always do, it degrades into a messy rant against the video game industry in general. At one point, JT refers to Microsoft's Flight Simulator as a training simulator for the 9/11 terrorists: "What's next, Paul, a game in which players can practice flying commercial jetliners into the World Trade Towers? Oh, I forgot. Microsoft already did that." We're not going to dignify that statement with a retort. As these kind of statements demonstrate: Jack Thompson is, and will forever remain, a childish attention seeker. We hope the organisers of the next Take-Two shareholder's meeting refuse to obey JT's request for a "cordless microphone at the shareholders meeting." That's all he needs: a voice.

source:http://www.joystiq.com/2005/12/22/take-two-gets-a-new-shareholder-jack-thompson/

"It seems that Python creator Guido van Rossum has received an offer from Google, and accepted it. Here is also some confirmation."

source: http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/12/22/1832226&tid=217

The first stem cell trial with widespread public health implications is set to begin in Houston. From the article: "Trauma is far and away the main cause of death and disability among children, and the main reason children die from trauma is brain injury...The clinical trial is the first to apply stem cells to treat traumatic brain injury. It does not involve embryonic stem cells.

source:http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/12/22/0133224&tid=191&tid=99