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Education

Submission + - Short Film on the Shameful Quality of Universities

Submitted by SoyChemist
SoyChemist writes: Michael Wesch and his cultural anthropology students at Kansas State University have made a video that brilliantly depicts the shameful quality of education at large academic institutions. Set to haunting music, the short film identifies many of the symptoms of a faulty system. The Wired Science Blog has a response to the short film. The main points from the commentary: chalkboards can't compete with facebook, textbooks should be replaced with Web 2.0 sites, most academic advisers do little more than offer them a checklist of classes to take.
It's funny. Laugh.

Submission + - Email Threats Less Crazy than Snail Mail (wired.com) 2

Submitted by SoyChemist
SoyChemist writes: Psychologists at the University of Nebraska have read 300 threatening letters and 99 angry emails to members of congress. They concluded that the authors of the electronic messages show less signs of serious mental illness, but they are more profane and disorganized. The report was published in the September issue [subscription] of the Journal of Forensic Sciences.
Biotech

Submission + - Chinese Herb Sucks the Fun out of Blow

Submitted by SoyChemist
SoyChemist writes: Levo-Tetrahydropalmatine, a chemical from the Chinese herb Stephanie, which is used to treat insomnia and chronic pain, may also be useful for preventing cocaine addiction. It blocks dopamine receptors, proteins that receive the chemical signal that causes euphoria, making cocaine useless. Scientists at the National Institute on Drug Abuse in Maryland have shown that when cocaine-addicted rats are given large doses of the herbal medicine, they no longer want to get high, but they do get pretty lazy. They reported their findings [subscription] in the journal Neuropharmacology.
Handhelds

Submission + - iPhone Contains Secret Keylogger (tuaw.com)

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes: Not quite a keylogger, but still disturbing. It's been discovered that a file on the iPhone automatically stores new words that are typed on the phone for its auto correction feature. So far, so good, but unfortunately it also appears to store passwords in plain text within the file. With all the methods of accessing the iPhone filesystem, this is bad news for people who lose their iPhones or sell them without a full wipe.
Biotech

Submission + - Using Old Medications to Defeat Tuberculosis

Submitted by TastesLikeCoughSyrup
TastesLikeCoughSyrup writes: Antibiotic resistant tuberculosis is spreading like wildfire in the developing world. While many researchers are looking for new drugs to combat the disease, those efforts could take years to bear fruit. Meanwhile, two scientists at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine have learned how the drug clavulanate can destroy the defenses of tuberculosis, making it vulnerable to medications in the penicillin family. The best part: it has already been approved by the FDA so doctors can start using it immediately.
Software

Submission + - Forty Years of LOGO

Submitted by SoyChemist
SoyChemist writes: Forty years ago, LOGO, a derivative of LISP, was born. Several years later, it became the cornerstone of educational software that simultaneously taught geometry and how to think like a coder. With a plethora of high-end educational software packages to choose from, each with flashy multimedia and trademarked characters, parents and teachers may find the humble turtle a bit outdated. Thankfully, several LOGO programs are available for free through a variety of websites, but perhaps 3D programming environments like Alice will be the wave of the future.
Biotech

Submission + - Fish Poison Makes Hot Feel Cold and Cold feel Hot (wired.com)

Submitted by
SoyChemist
SoyChemist writes: "Ciguatoxin causes bizarre neurological symptoms including temperature reversal, a burning sensation, and an imaginary feeling of loose teeth. It is produced by algae and accumulates in the fatty flesh of tropical fish. While traveling to the tropics, a man from England ate some bad seafood that contained the unusual poison. His story, and the tale of some unfortunate sailors that suffered the same affliction, appeared in the current issue of Practical Neurology and was summarized on the Wired Science Blog. Both the Wired blog and the peer-reviewed journal neglected to mention that the potent neurotoxin has been made from scratch by organic chemists."
Editorial

Submission + - Nobel Prize Gives Dry Chemistry Some Credit (wired.com)

Submitted by
SoyChemist
SoyChemist writes: "Surface science, the field of study that earned Gerhard Ertl the 2007 Nobel Prize in chemistry, is far from glamorous. How often do images of a scientist hovering over a foil-wrapped microscope, or any other classic tool of the dry but important discipline, grace the covers of Scientific American, Wired, or Discover? For thousands of researchers that have studied physical chemistry and materials science with no hope of recognition, the decision to give Ertl the prize should be a pleasant surprise."
Announcements

Submission + - Hoax: Your Mountain Dew is Not a Glowstick (wired.com)

Submitted by
SoyChemist
SoyChemist writes: "A new short film demonstrates what appears to be the coolest trick since making a geyser by dumping Mentos into diet coke, but it's fake. The video claims: Just add a bit of baking soda and several spoonfuls of hydrogen peroxide to some Mountain Dew and it will glow in the dark. Apparently, the prankster used some slight of hand to slip a bit of glow stick fluid into the soda bottle before adding the hydrogen peroxide to activate it. As soon as the video made its way to YouTube, people started posting comments that it's fake. If only it was this easy to spot and disprove bogus claims in peer-reviewed scientific literature. This is why publishers should be obligated to tie every research paper to a message board thread. Some of the open-access journals, like chemistry central, already do this."
Biotech

Submission + - Researchers Tested LSD on Autistic Kids (scienceblogs.com)

Submitted by
SoyChemist
SoyChemist writes: "In the 1960's researchers were feeling a bit too desperate to find a cure for autism. They would try anything at all, even testing hallucinogens on children. A recent report summarizes several risky experiments in which LSD was evaluated as a cure for Autism. The authors point out that there is renewed interest in using psychadelic drugs as medications and thus it is particularly important to study this chapter of history."
Biotech

Submission + - The Chemistry of Tasmanian Opium (wired.com)

Submitted by
SoyChemist
SoyChemist writes: "Tasmania produces massive amounts of opium for the pharmacutical industry. Those crops have been bred to produce massive amounts of thebaine, a precursor to prescription painkillers like oxycontin. However, they contain very little morphine — so that they are useless for making heroin. Despite that, researchers at the University of Newcastle have identified the chemical signature of heroin made from the morphine-deficient poppies. This will allow cops to track breeches in the security of the legal opium farms. If they find a batch of heroin on the street, and it contains the molecular fingerprint of Tasmanian poppies, they will know that some of the crop has been leaked to the black market."
Space

Submission + - Boeing Dreamliner Concerns are Specious (wired.com)

Submitted by SoyChemist
SoyChemist writes: On the most recent edition of his new show, Dan Rather reported that the new 787 Dreamliner aircraft may be unsafe. Since then, dozens of news agencies have jumped on the bandwagon. Most of them are reporting that the carbon fiber frame may not be as sturdy as aluminum. Few have bothered to question Rather's claims that the composite materials are brittle, more likely to shatter on impact, and prone to emit poisonous chemicals when ignited. While there is a lot of weight behind the argument that composite materials are not as well-studied as aircraft aluminum, the reasoning behind the flurry of recent articles may be faulty. The very title of Rather's story, Plastic Planes, indicates a lack of grounding in science. Perhaps the greatest concern should be how well the plane will hold up to water. Because they are vulnerable to slow and steady degradation by moisture, the new materials may not last as long as aluminum. Testing them for wear and tear will be more difficult too.
Biotech

Submission + - An Aerosol Spray to Identify Bombing Suspects (wired.com) 1

Submitted by RedHanded
RedHanded writes: Forensic chemists at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem have developed a color-changing spray that can identify people suspected of making or planting bombs. The chemical turns from yellow to bright red when it comes into contact with urea nitrate, an explosive residue that may be left behind on the hands of someone who has handled an improvised device.
Intel

Submission + - First X38 Express Chipset Motherboard Ships (hothardware.com)

Submitted by
MojoKid
MojoKid writes: "It seems indeed Intel's X38 Express chipset has arrived. Here are pics hot off the press of the new Asus P5E3 Deluxe Motherboard — WiFi AP edition. Emblazoned on the box is a hot pink "supports 45nm CPU" symbol suggesting Penryn is also just around the corner. Interesting notables are the stickers covering the CPU socket and PCIe slots from the retail packaging — claiming functionality like the "EPU" or Energy Processing Unit and Asus Express Gate for internet access in 5 seconds without entering Windows. Probably the most interesting are the board's dual X16 PCI Express 2.0 slots, shown here."
Wireless Networking

Submission + - Latest promise of in-flight Wifi, from Alaska Air (adn.com)

Submitted by lukej
lukej writes: Alaska Airlines announced (more links) it will be the latest of the US domestic carriers to promise wifi+Internet access on all of it's planes. They join a on-again, off-again technology/industry partnership, including the likes of Boing, Quantas, US Air, JetBlue, Lufthansa, and probably others.
Alaska plans to debut Row44's combination satellite/802.11 system on it's Boing 737s, "...the service is intended to work on all its routes, which include flights within the lower 48 states and to Alaska, Hawaii, Canada and Mexico. If it works, Alaska may add the service to all 114 of its aircraft.".

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