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The Courts

Submission + - Warrantlessly wiretapped? Prove it!

Submitted by Hmmm2000
Hmmm2000 writes: With the recent FISA legislation passing the Senate, the vast majority of the lawsuits against telcos will be thrown out of court. However there is a fasinating and mind-boggling tale of a case still winding its way through the court system. The lawyers received proof that their clients were being spied on via the secret warrantless wiretapping program Bush put into place after 9/11: the DOJ accidentally included a top-secret document among some non-classified documents during the discovery phase. When the DOJ realized its mistake, it required all all copy of the document destroyed, or returned to the DOJ. Now the lawyers have to prove their case without using the document, to establish legal standing, before they can re-gain access to it.
Transportation

Submission + - Microcar Gets 235 MPG

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens
Hugh Pickens writes: "Volkswagen is bringing new meaning to the term "fuel efficiency" with a bullet-shaped microcar that gets 235 mpg. Called the One-Liter because that's how much fuel it needs to go 100 kilometers, the body's made of carbon fiber to minimize weight and the One-Liter makes extensive use of magnesium, titanium and aluminum so the entire vehicle weighs in at 660 pounds. Aerodynamics plays a big role in its fuel economy so the car is long and low, coming in at 11.4 feet long, 4.1 feet wide and 3.3 feet tall with a coefficient of drag of 0.16, a little more than half that of an average car. The One-Liter could have a sticker price of anywhere from $31,750 to $47,622 and VW plans to build a limited number in 2010."
Cellphones

Submission + - Apple Gobbles Up 50 Million Samsung NAND Chips (hothardware.com)

Submitted by
MojoKid
MojoKid writes: "Samsung has started spreading the word to its customers that NAND flash memory chips are going to be harder to come by for a little while as Samsung diverts much of its available supply to Apple. When Apple places an order for 50 million 8Gb NAND chips, it shouldn't be a surprise that Apple gets to cut the line and is offered a spot at the front of the queue. What does Apple need with 50 million NAND chips? Two words: iPhone 3G."
Software

Submission + - Why is Firehose so hostile? 15

Submitted by
NewYorkCountryLawyer
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes: "Can anyone explain to me why Slashdot's Firehose is made to be so unfriendly? It's a great idea, but in practice it's infuriating. If you see a submitted article, and click on one of the links, you can't go back to the story. You have to start all over again. If you set the filters to what you're interested in, you have to re-set them all over again. Even if you just RTFA you are punished by losing your settings. Why shouldn't Slashdot encourage people to participate in the Firehose. For a busy person, it's almost impossible to be involved. And this bizarre lack of 'stickiness' makes everything take 10 times as much times as it needs to."
The Internet

Submission + - SPAM: Largest US power co. is a net security black hole

Submitted by
coondoggie
coondoggie writes: "The Government Accountability Office today issued a searing indictment of the network security systems, or lack thereof, guarding the control systems that regulate the country's largest public power company. The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) is a federal corporation that generates power using 52 fossil, hydro and nuclear facilities in an area of about 80,000 square miles and has not fully implemented appropriate security practices to protect the control systems used to operate its critical infrastructures, the GAO concluded. TVA's corporate network infrastructure and its control systems networks and devices at individual facilities and plants reviewed were vulnerable to disruptions that could endanger a good portion of the country's economic security and public health and safety, the GAO said. [spam URL stripped]"
Link to Original Source
Biotech

Submission + - Nanotubes: What Could Possibly Go Wrong? (discovery.com)

Submitted by conlaw
conlaw writes: As we all know, scientists have been all excited about nanotubes and the great forward strides they'll make in our lives. I guess most of them had failed to ask that perennial Slashdot question: whatcouldpossiblygowrong. Discovery News reports on one answer:

May 20, 2008 — Strong, versatile little "nanotubes" made out of carbon are considered future stars in nanotechnology research in medicine and industry. Now a study finds that longer threads of the stuff mimic the toxic qualities of asbestos, renewing questions about how carbon nanotubes can be used safely.
Oops.
Mars

Submission + - SPAM: NASA: Harder, colder picture of Mars emerges

Submitted by
coondoggie
coondoggie writes: "Turns out that the surface of Mars is stiffer and colder than previously thought. New observations from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter indicate that any liquid water that might exist below the planet's surface and any possible organisms living in that water would be located deeper than scientists had suspected.NASA made the discovery was using the Shallow Radar (SHARAD) instrument on the Orbiter, which revealed long, continuous layers stretching up to 600 miles or about one-fifth the length of the United States. The radar pictures show a smooth, flat border between the ice cap and the rocky Martian crust, NASA said. On Earth, the weight of a similar stack of ice would cause the planet's surface to sag. The fact that the Martian surface is not bending means that its strong outer shell, or lithosphere, a combination of its crust and upper mantle, must be very thick and cold. [spam URL stripped]"
Link to Original Source
Education

Submission + - SPAM: A new career: isotope designer 1

Submitted by
Roland Piquepaille
Roland Piquepaille writes: "According to a Michigan State University (MSU) news release, 'Made-to-order isotopes hold promise on science's frontier,' nuclear physicists can now start a new career as isotope designers. These scientists can build specific rare isotopes to solve scientific problems and open doors to new technologies. The lead researcher says this approach has already given us the Positron Emission Tomography (PET) scan technology. He's now going further, saying that he wants to build objects 100,000 times smaller than the atomic nucleus. He calls this 'femtotechnology.' Fascinating, but read more for additional references and pictures of the tools used for this kind of research, picked from a 415-page design paper (no kidding!)."
United States

Submission + - Personality Types Cluster Geographically

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens
Hugh Pickens writes: "Drawing on a database of hundreds of thousands of individual personality surveys, psychologists have mapped the distribution of personality types across the United States and interestingly, America's psychogeography lines up reasonably well with its economic geography. Greater Chicago is a center for extroverts and also a leading center for sales professionals. The Midwest has a prevalence of conscientious types who work well in a structured, rule-driven environment. The South, and particularly the I-75 corridor, where so much Japanese and German car manufacturing is located, is dominated by agreeable and conscientious types who are both dutiful and work well in teams. Regions like Silicon Valley or the high-tech Route 128 corridor around Boston are home to concentrations of open-to-experience types who are drawn to creative endeavor, innovation, and entrepreneurial start-up companies. One potential explanation is that people migrate to places where their psychological needs are easily met or perhaps a process of selective migration drains the agreeable and conscientious regions of the most driven, most creative, and most mobile — only reinforcing their psychogeographic profiles, while magnifying the innovative edge in places where open-to-experience types concentrate."
Medicine

Submission + - Scientists Provide Explanation For Cancer's Spread

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens
Hugh Pickens writes: "Metastasis, the spread of cancer throughout the body, can be explained by the fusion of a cancer cell with a white blood cell in the original tumor, according to Yale School of Medicine researchers, who say that this single event can set the stage for cancer's migration to other parts of the body. The studies, spanning 15 years, have revealed that the newly formed hybrid of the cancer cell and white blood cell adapts the white blood cell's natural ability to migrate around the body, while going through the uncontrolled cell division of the original cancer cell. This causes a metastatic cell to emerge, which like a white blood cell, can migrate through tissue, enter the circulatory system and travel to other organs. "This is a unifying explanation for metastasis," said John Pawelek at Yale Cancer Center. "Although we know a vast amount about cancer, how a cancer cell becomes metastatic still remains a mystery." Although The fusion theory was first proposed in the early 1900s, the team began by fusing white blood cells with tumor cells which were remarkably metastatic and lethal when implanted into mice. "Viewing the fusion of a cancer cell and a white blood cell as the initiating event for metastasis suggests that metastasis is virtually another disease imposed on the pre-existing cancer cell," said Pawelek. "We expect this to open new areas for therapy based on the fusion process itself.""
Biotech

Submission + - SPAM: RoK To Use Cloned Drug Dogs

Submitted by
stoolpigeon
stoolpigeon writes: "The country that created the world's first cloned canine plans to put duplicated dogs on patrol to sniff out drugs and explosives. The Korean Customs Service unveiled Thursday seven cloned Labrador retrievers being trained near Incheon International Airport, west of Seoul. The dogs were born five to six months ago after being separately cloned from a skilled drug-sniffing canine in active service. Due to the difficulties in finding dogs who are up to snuff for the critical jobs, officials said using clones could help reduce costs."
Link to Original Source

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