Vixens win a thriller

The Vixens lasted the distance to win 53-52 in a pulsating trans-Tasman netball clash against New South Wales at the Newcastle Entertainment Centre on Monday evening.

The Swifts recovered from a sluggish start and looked in control during the second half but the Melbourne side dug deep for a thrilling victory.

Extra time almost beckoned for the exhausted sides but a late shot from the home side bounced off the rim to leave the margin at one.

Captain Sharelle McMahon was influential all over the court for the visitors and had the poise to nail all 12 of her shots at goal.

She told Fox Sports after the game that even after holding a seven-goal lead after a storming start, she was always wary of the Swifts side.

“We weren’t surprised because the Swifts are a fantatic team,” she said.

“One of the things we’ve been trying to work on is a consistent four quarters and we couldn’t do that tonight again, but a one-goal win under those pressure circumstances is a great result.”

“The pressure situation always makes it tougher and the adrenalin was rushing.”

The Vixens must be disappointed with their own inconsistency, and if they had played with their mid-game form throughout a home win would have theirs for the taking.

Costello ignored inflation warnings: Swan

Federal Treasurer Wayne Swan has stepped-up his attack on the Opposition’s economic credibility, ahead of next week’s Budget.

It has been revealed that six months before last year’s Budget, Treasury warned former treasurer Peter Costello to curb spending, or risk fuelling inflation.

Mr Swan says that advice fell on deaf ears and it now falls to the new Government to deal with that legacy.

“These documents prove conclusively that Peter Costello ignored warnings,” he said.

The Treasury warning has been released in response to a Freedom of Information (FOI) request by Channel Nine.

An ABC request last week on the impact of Labor’s workplace laws was blocked by Treasury. Opposition treasury spokesman Malcolm Turnbull is calling that double standards and has defended the Opposition’s record.

“Treasury said that the surplus should be 1 per cent of GDP. Peter Costello took that advice,” he said.

He says Mr Swan is being misleading by not releasing the requested Labor documents, but the Treasurer says FOI requests are controlled by bureaucrats, not ministers.

Nelson’s approval rating drops: poll

Support for Federal Opposition Leader Brendan Nelson has slipped back into single figures in the latest opinion poll.

The Newspoll in the Australian newspaper has Dr Nelson’s rating as preferred prime minister down one point to 9 per cent, while Prime Minister Kevin Rudd maintains a massive lead on 72 per cent.

In the two party-preferred stakes, support for the Opposition has jumped four points to 43 per cent, which is the highest rating since Dr Nelson took on the leadership.

The Government has secured 57 per cent of the vote.

Microsoft pulls XP SP3 over corruption fears

Researchers at Hewlett-Packard have developed a working unit of a memory circuit that has existed in theory for 37 years, which could ultimately replace RAM and make computers more intelligent by tracking data it has retained.

The technology, called memristor, could allow computers to make decisions by understanding past patterns of data it has collected, similar to human brains collecting and understanding a series of events.
For example, a memristor circuit could be capable of telling a microwave the heating time for different food types based on the information it has collected over time, said Stanley Williams, senior fellow at HP.
A memristor circuit requires lower voltage and less time to turn on than competitive memory like DRAM and flash, Williams said. “Because it [uses] less voltage and less time, of course, it uses much less power,” Williams said. Denser cells also allow memristor circuits to store more data than flash memory.
Through prototypes, HP is trying to show circuit designers what memristor is capable of doing. “What we have done is confirmed a concept for a new electronic device that was originally proposed nearly 40 years ago,” Williams said.
Memristor is the fourth fundamental circuit element, joining the other three – resistor, capacitor and inductor – that had been known for 150 years, Williams said. The element has properties that cannot be duplicated by any combination of the other three elements, Williams said.
“It is as fundamental to electronic engineering as a chemical element is to chemistry or an electron is to physics,” Williams said.
In a 1971 academic paper, Leon Chua, a mathematician and professor at the University of California at Berkeley, wrote that memristor would have properties similar to a synapse in a brain. The synapse makes connections between two neurons, and the more often a signal is sent to a synapse, the stronger the synapse gets.
“That is a very different type of behaviour than anything that had been observed before in circuit elements,” Williams said.

LG – The Evolution of Audio

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