34031607
submission
SpuriousLogic writes:
WASHINGTON— They live on your skin, up your nose, in your gut — enough bacteria, fungi and other microbes that collected together could weigh, amazingly, a few pounds.
Now scientists have mapped just which critters normally live in or on us and where, calculating that healthy people can share their bodies with more than 10,000 species of microbes.
Don't say "eeew" just yet. Many of these organisms work to keep humans healthy, and results reported Wednesday from the government's Human Microbiome Project define what's normal in this mysterious netherworld.
One surprise: It turns out that nearly everybody harbors low levels of some harmful types of bacteria, pathogens that are known for causing specific infections. But when a person is healthy — like the 242 U.S. adults who volunteered to be tested for the project — those bugs simply quietly coexist with benign or helpful microbes, perhaps kept in check by them.
The next step is to explore what doctors really want to know: Why do the bad bugs harm some people and not others? What changes a person's microbial zoo that puts them at risk for diseases ranging from infections to irritable bowel syndrome to psoriasis?
Already the findings are reshaping scientists' views of how people stay healthy, or not.
"This is a whole new way of looking at human biology and human disease, and it's awe-inspiring," said Dr. Phillip Tarr of Washington University at St. Louis, one of the lead researchers in the $173 million project, funded by the National Institutes of Health.
"These bacteria are not passengers," Tarr stressed. "They are metabolically active. As a community, we now have to reckon with them like we have to reckon with the ecosystem in a forest or a body of water."
And like environmental ecosystems, your microbial makeup varies widely by body part. Your skin could be like a rainforest, your intestines teeming with different species like an ocean.
Scientists have long known that the human body coexists with trillions of individual germs, what they call the microbiome. Until now, they've mostly studied those that cause disease: You may recall health officials saying about a third of the population carries Staphylococcus aureus harmlessly in their noses or on their skin but can infect others.
But no one knew all the types of microbes that live in healthy people or where, and what they do. Some 200 scientists from nearly 80 research institutions worked together for five years on this first-ever census to begin answering those questions by unraveling the DNA of these microbes, with some of the same methods used to decode human genetics. The results were published Wednesday in a series of reports in the journals Nature and the Public Library of Science.
First, the researchers had to collect tissue samples from more than a dozen body sites — the mouth, nose, different spots of skin, the vagina in women, and from feces. Then they teased apart the bacterial DNA from the human DNA, and started analyzing organisms with some daunting names: Lactobacillus crispatus, Streptococcus mitis, Corynebacterium accolens.
Our bodies are thought to be home to about 10 bacterial cells for every human cell, but they're so small that together microbes make up about 1 percent to 3 percent of someone's body mass, explained Dr. Eric Green, director of NIH's National Human Genome Research Institute. That means a 200-pound person could harbor as much as 6 pounds of bacteria.
There are about 22,000 human genes. But the microbes add to our bodies the power of many, many more — about 8 million genes, the new project estimated.
Those bacterial genes produce substances that perform specific jobs, some of which play critical roles in the health and development of their human hosts, said Dr. Bruce Birren of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, another of the project's investigators. Genes from gut bacteria, for example, lead to digestion of certain proteins and fats. They also produce certain beneficial compounds, like inflammation-fighting chemicals.
Another surprise: There isn't one core set of bacteria that perform those functions. A wide variety can do the same jobs, the researchers found.
That's fortunate considering people carry a customized set of microbes, one that varies dramatically depending on where you live, your diet and a host of other factors. Your microbial zoos also can change, such as when taking antibiotics that kill infection-causing germs as well as good intestinal bacteria that may be replaced with different but equally effective bugs.
"We don't all have the same bacteria although they all seem to have been organized to do the same things," Birren said. It may be that our lifestyle and environment "induces each of us to have arrived at a solution that works for us."
With this first snapshot of what normal looks like, studies now are under way to see how the microbes differ in people with certain diseases, in hopes of learning how to prevent or treat the illnesses.
Consider the intestinal superbug named C. difficile that people all too often catch while they're in the hospital, and that sometimes kills. Washington University's Tarr wants to know what mixture of gut bacteria can fend off the diarrhea-causing germ or make it more likely to infect — so that doctors might one day know who's more vulnerable before they enter a hospital.
Also, researchers at Baylor College of Medicine reported Wednesday that the kind of bacteria living in the vagina changes during pregnancy, perhaps to give the fetus as healthy a passage as possible. Previous research has found differences in what first bacteria babies absorb depending on whether they're born vaginally or by C-section, a possible explanation for why cesareans raise the risk for certain infections.
All new information in some ways is humbling, because it shows how much more work is needed to understand this world within us, noted infectious disease specialist Dr. David Relman of Stanford University, who wrote a review of the project's findings for the journal Nature.
For example, the project included mostly white volunteers who live around Houston and St. Louis. Relman said more work is needed to define a normal microbiome in people with different racial, ethnic and geographic backgrounds.
And there are many remaining questions about how these microbes interact with human genetics.
"We are essentially blind to many of the services that our microbial ecosystems provide — and on which our health depends," Relman wrote.
33691535
submission
miowpurr writes:
Prolific author Ray Bradbury has died at age 91
33690213
submission
dsinc writes:
Ray Bradbury — author of The Martian Chronicles, Fahrenheit 451, Something Wicked this Way Comes, and many more literary classics — died this morning in Los Angeles, at the age of 91
32743371
submission
SpuriousLogic writes:
Internet giant Google has been found guilty of breaching copyright in a case brought by Oracle over its Java programming language.
But the US jury but was unable to agree on whether Google's actions constituted "fair use" under copyright law.
Oracle was asking for $1bn (£630m) in compensation in one of the biggest such technology lawsuits to date.
The language is used by many business applications as well as other software, such as the video game Minecraft.
The jury in San Francisco were asked to consider four questions on Oracle's claim that Google violated several of its patents and copyrights, but could only agree on the three.
Oracle claimed Google's Android system infringes intellectual property rights relating to the programming language.
Java history
The case did not centre on Google's use of Java itself — which is free for anyone to use without licence — but rather the Android-maker's use of 37 application programming interfaces (APIs) that allow developers to write Java-compatible code.
Java was first released in 1995 and allows software to be run across computer platforms, rather than just being limited to one type of operating system.
Oracle — a business hardware and software provider — inherited the intellectual properties when it took over Java's original developer, Sun Microsystems, in 2009.
Oracle argued that by using its intellectual property, and then giving Android away for free, Google undermined the possibility of it licensing Java to mobile phone makers.
32742979
submission
eldavojohn writes:
Details are thin but the long covered Oracle Vs Google trial has at least partially been decided in favor of Oracle against Google violating copyrights in Android when when it used Java APIs to design the system. Google moved for a mistrial after hearing the incomplete decision. The patent infringement accusations have yet to be ruled upon.
31937045
submission
SpuriousLogic writes:
The government's effort to prosecute corporate espionage was dealt a setback today when a federal appeals court ruled that downloaded code did not qualify as stolen under a federal theft statute.
The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York ruled today that former Goldman Sachs programmer Sergey Aleynikov was wrongly charged with theft of property under the National Stolen Property Act, which makes it illegal to steal trade secrets.
Aleynikov, 42, was convicted in December 2010 of downloading code for Goldman Sachs' high-speed computerized trading operations and uploading it to an overseas server before he left the Wall Street investment bank in 2009.
"Because Aleynikov did not 'assume physical control' over anything when he took the source code, and because he did not thereby 'deprive [Goldman] of its use,' Aleynikov did not violate the NSPA," Chief Judge Dennis Jacobs wrote in the three-judge panel's unanimous decision (see below). "We decline to stretch or update statutory words of plain and ordinary meaning in order to better accommodate the digital age."
Aleynikov was sentenced to eight years in prison but was released in February when the judges found that Aleynikov had also been wrong charged with espionage under the Economic Espionage Act of 1996.
While conceding that the code was "highly valuable," Jacobs said the code was never intended to be sold or licensed.
"The enormous profits the system yielded for Goldman depended on no one else having it," Jacobs ruled. "Because [the high-frequency trading system] was not designed to enter or pass in commerce, or to make something that does, Aleynikov's theft of source code relating to that system was not an offense under the EEA."
The ruling comes a day after an appeals court in San Francisco rejected the government's broad interpretation of a nearly 30-year-old anti-hacking law in trying to prosecute a man for misappropriation of trade secrets. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled yesterday that the government's interpretation of the 1984 federal Computer Fraud and Abuse Act could lead to millions of Americans being subjected to prosecution for harmless Web surfing at work.
28856025
submission
SpuriousLogic writes:
Apple has been granted a temporary suspension of a sales ban imposed on some of its products in Germany.
Motorola Mobility had forced Apple to remove several iPad and iPhone models from its online store earlier today after enforcing a patent infringement court ruling delivered in December.
An appeals court lifted the ban after Apple made a new licence payment offer.
However, Germany-based users may still face the loss of their push email iCloud service after a separate ruling.
Patent consultant Florian Mueller, who attended the review, said that the suspension may only last a few days or weeks — but that Apple's revised proposal had been enough to allow it to restart sales.
"The Karlsruhe higher regional court believes that Apple's new offer needs to be evaluated before this injunction can enter into force again," he wrote on his blog.
"A suspension like this is available only against a bond, but Apple is almost drowning in cash and obviously won't have had a problem with obtaining and posting a bond."
He said that the bond amount was likely to have been about 120m euros ($158m, £100m).
Unresolved
A statement from Apple said: "All iPad and iPhone models will be back on sale through Apple's online store in Germany shortly.
"Apple appealed this ruling because Motorola repeatedly refuses to license this patent to Apple on reasonable terms, despite having declared it an industry standard patent seven years ago."
However, Motorola signalled that it would try to restore the ban.
"We are pleased that the Mannheim court has recognized the importance of our intellectual property and granted an enforceable injunction in Germany against Apple Sales International," a statement said.
"Although the enforcement of the injunction has been temporarily suspended, Motorola Mobility will continue to pursue its claims against Apple."
Pulled products
The sales ban relates to Motorola's patent for a "method for performing a countdown function during a mobile-originated transfer for a packet radio system".
Motorola licenses the patent to other companies on Frand (fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory) terms.
Frand-type patents involve technologies that are deemed to be part of an industry standard. In this case Motorola's innovation is deemed crucial to the GPRS data transmission standard used by GSM cellular networks across the world.
Companies must offer Frand-type patents for a reasonable fee to anyone willing to pay.
Apple had previously said it would be willing to pay the fee going forward, but the two firms dispute how much Apple should pay for failing to license the technology up until now. Missed payments are not covered by the "reasonable" rule, and Motorola is able to demand a more expensive price.
Apple's iPhone 3G, iPhone 3GS and iPhone 4 had all been affected — but not its newer iPhone 4S. All 3G models of the iPad were involved, but not their wi-fi-only counterparts.
Email technology
The separate push email ban would only come into effect if Motorola decided to enforce a second judgement that Apple's iCloud and MobileMe infringed another of its innovations.
The patent relates to two-way communications between pagers and other devices and was granted in 2002.
If Motorola decides to enforce the judgement some iPhone users in Germany would lose the ability to automatically receive emails as soon as they have been sent. Instead they would either have to manually check their accounts or set their devices to periodically check for updates.
This patent is not deemed to be critical to an industry standard, so the firm does not have to license the technology to Apple even if the iPhone-maker offered to pay.
Apple said that it believed the patent involved was invalid, adding that it was appealing against the decision.
Although the two cases only apply to Germany they may have implications for other European lawsuits. EU rules say different countries' courts can reach different conclusions, but must explain why.
Mr Mueller Mr Mueller notes on his blog that Apple has brought patent claims of its own against Motorola in Germany, and that Motorola also faces a lawsuit filed by Microsoft which is due to be considered next Tuesday.
28453381
submission
stevegee58 writes:
Just when it seemed like no one in government can agree on anything any more, the US Supreme Court unanimously agreed that police need a warrant before tracking a car with GPS.
A (faint) ray of light in our bleak political landscape.
28338708
submission
Syobon writes:
WASHINGTON – Seven individuals and two corporations have been charged in the United States with running an international organized criminal enterprise allegedly responsible for massive worldwide online piracy of numerous types of copyrighted works, through Megaupload.com and other related sites, generating more than $175 million in criminal proceeds and causing more than half a billion dollars in harm to copyright owners, the U.S. Justice Department and FBI announced today.
28303302
submission
tsu doh nimh writes:
A new service in the cyber underground aims to be the Google search of underground Web sites, connecting buyers to a vast sea of shops that offer an array of dodgy goods and services, from stolen credit card numbers to identity information and anonymity tools. From the story: "A glut of data breaches and stolen card numbers has spawned dozens of stores that sell the information. The trouble is that each shop requires users to create accounts and sign in before they can search for cards. Enter MegaSearch, which lets potential buyers discover which fraud shops hold the cards they're looking for without having to first create accounts at each store.
28302824
submission
SpuriousLogic writes:
As far as I can tell, these iPads are just as useful as the real things...
"As many as 10 fake iPad 2s, all made of slabs of modeling clay, were recently sold at electronic stores in Vancouver, British Columbia. Best Buy and Future Shop have launched investigations into how the scam was pulled off.
The tablet computers, like most Apple products, are known for their sleek and simple designs. But there's no mistaking the iPad for one of the world's oldest "tablet devices." Still, most electronic products cannot be returned to stores. For the the stores and customers to be fooled by the clay replacements, the thieves must have successfully weighed out the clay portions and resealed the original Apple packaging.
Future Shop spokesman Elliott Chun told CTV that individuals bought the iPads with cash, replaced them with the model clay, then returned the packages to the stores. The returned fakes were restocked on the shelve and sold to new, unwitting customers.
"Customers don't expect to receive this kind of product from Future Shop, so it's a very serious matter and something we are addressing right away for anyone who has been impacted," Chun told CTV British Columbia. "It really saddens Future Shop that people stoop to be this opportunistic and make money in this kind of organized way."
The scam was first brought to CTV's attention by a victim of the crime, Mark Sandhu. Sandhu says after purchasing what he thought was an iPad 2 for his wife for Christmas, he tried to return the clay, only to be rebuffed. "Maybe the way I was dressed, I don't know," he said. "She made me feel like I'm trying to scam them out of $700. I was the one getting scammed."
Sandhu contacted Future Shop's head office, Apple and local police, but no one believed his story. Future Shop has since apologized and given Sandhu a full refund along with a free tablet--a real one."
28301264
submission
HopefulIntern writes:
The MPAA's answer to the blackouts today are that they are "dangerous" and "irresponsible" and "an abuse of power given the freedoms these companies enjoy in the marketplace today". That is a bit rich, isn't it?
28299760
submission
ccguy writes:
Los Angeles passed today an ordinance that makes use of condoms mandatory in all porn filmed in the city.
28241592
submission
SpuriousLogic writes:
Motorola Mobility Inc. did not violate Apple's patented technology in making its Droid, Cliq, BackFlip and other smartphones, a judge at the U.S. International Trade Commission said in a preliminary decision issued on Friday.
The full ITC will issue a final decision in March.
Apple had filed a complaint with the ITC in October of 2010, accusing Motorola Mobility of infringing three Apple patents to make its smartphones.
Two of the patents have to do with how the devices accept manual input when users type or handwrite on them while the third relates to ways for consumers to add applications without jumping through hoops like rebooting the smartphone.
The complaint, like many patent battles focusing on smartphones, is part of a larger fight between Apple and Google Inc's fast-growing Android operating system, which Motorola uses.
The ITC is a popular venue for patent disputes because it can order devices made with infringing technology barred from importation.
Google has reached an agreement to buy Motorola Mobility, and is seeking the antitrust approval needed to close the sale.
28002930
submission
SpuriousLogic writes:
True believers have lost faith. Factions squabble. The enemies are not only massed at the gates of the kingdom, but they have also broken through.
This may sound like the back story for an epic trilogy. Instead, it’s the situation faced by the makers of Dungeons & Dragons, the venerable fantasy role-playing game many consider to be the grandfather of the video game industry. Gamers bicker over Dungeons & Dragons rules. Some have left childhood pursuits behind. And others have spurned an old-fashioned, tabletop fantasy role-playing game for shiny electronic competitors like World of Warcraft and the Elder Scrolls.
But there might yet be hope for Dungeons & Dragons, known as D&D. On Monday, Wizards of the Coast, the Hasbro subsidiary that owns the game, is expected to announce that a new edition is under development, the first overhaul of the rules since the contentious fourth edition was released in 2008. And Dungeons & Dragons’ designers are also planning to undertake an exceedingly rare effort for the gaming industry over the next few months: asking hundreds of thousands of fans to tell them how exactly they should reboot the franchise.
The game “is a unique entertainment experience because it’s crafted by the players at the table, and every gaming session is different,” said Liz Schuh, who directs publishing and licensing for Dungeons & Dragons. “We want to take that idea of the players crafting that experience to the next level and say: ‘Help us craft the rules. Help us craft how this game is played.’ ”
Dungeons & Dragons, created by Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson, was the first commercially published role-playing game when it came out in 1974. In the game imagination is the playscape, assisted by graph-paper maps, miniature figurines of orcs and hobbits and a referee called a “dungeon master” who moderates an improvised story with a pretend fellowship of wizards, warriors and rogues.Players toss polyhedral dice and consult tomes of rules to determine outcomes. It has shades of the “Lord of the Rings” movies, except that in the game players assembled around a table get to be the characters.
“There is something fundamental to the D&D role-playing game that answers a need for people,” said Mike Mearls, senior manager of Dungeons & Dragons research and development — that need being telling your own heroic story. Throughout the 1970s and ’80s Dungeons & Dragons grew from a cult sensation into something more, surviving, even thriving, after unfounded accusations that it led teenagers to practice black magic and commit suicide. Since the game’s birth an estimated 20 million people have played it and spent $1 billion on its products. Many computer coders once dabbled in the hobby, which explains why so many video games today use a “run through a dungeon and kill monsters” premise, and borrow concepts — avatars, levels, open-ended stories, cooperative game play — pioneered by Dungeons & Dragons. The nerdy pastime has even become a badge of honor for hipsters and artists, with the likes of the film director Jon Favreau, the comedian Stephen Colbert, the N.B.A. star Tim Duncan and the actor Vin Diesel professing their love of the game, and the NBC comedy “Community” using it as a plot point in a recent episode.
But Dungeons & Dragons has slumped, buffeted by forces external and internal. The company does not release sales figures, but analysts and gaming experts agree that sales of the game, and all tabletop role-playing ones, have been dwindling for years. Ryan Scott Dancey, chief executive of the game company Goblinworks and a former vice president at Wizards of the Coast, said the overall market peaked between 1999 and 2003 and has been in steady decline since 2005. “My instincts are it’s slower than ever,” he said.
Electronic games have done the most damage, as entries like World of Warcraft and the currently hot-selling Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim let players (represented by tricked-out avatars) conquer acres of fantastically rendered digital landscapes without the need for hours of time spent writing the story line and sketching Middle Earth-like maps.
“If all you’re looking for is fulfillment of your wish to be an idealized projection of yourself who gains in wealth and power by overcoming monsters, there are lots of ways to do that nowadays,” said Tavis Allison, a game designer in New York who has made his own role-playing game, Adventurer Conqueror King. “In the ’70s Dungeons & Dragons was the only game in town.”
Edition wars have also wounded the game. Various rules systems have been released over Dungeons & Dragons’ 38-year history: Basic, Advanced, Advanced 2nd edition, 3.0, 3.5, 4.0. Devotion to particular rules can be fanatical. Hostilities about how to best play the game — for example, how a sorcerer casts spells — flare up among the core fan base.
A result, said David M. Ewalt, a senior editor at Forbes and the author of a forthcoming history of Dungeons & Dragons, has been a fractured fan base. The game is a group activity, he said, and playing together is tricky when players use different rules. “Imagine trying to organize a basketball team, if the point guard adheres to modern league rules, but the center only knows how to play ancient Mayan handball.”
When the N.B.A. adopted the 3-point shot in 1979, purists cried foul at rules changes, just as many D&D devotees dismissed the rules of the game’s fourth edition as dumbed down, overeager to mimic multiplayer online games like Warcraft — and favoring killing over the role-playing and storytelling roots of Dungeons & Dragons. Some began playing other role-playing games like Pathfinder, which won over disgruntled players. Miniature war games like Warhammer or Wizards of the Coast’s own trading-card game Magic: The Gathering have also diluted Dungeons & Dragons’ dominance.
With the new edition and the call for feedback, in a “hearts and minds” campaign, Wizards of the Coast is attempting to rally players to the cause . The strategy centers on asking them what they’d like to see in a new version and giving everyday gaming groups the chance to test new rules. “We’re really lucky that we have such passionate fans,” Ms. Schuh said, “and we anticipate they’ll roll up their sleeves and help us in this effort.”
Greg Tito, games editor for The Escapist, an online games culture magazine, will be one of them. “The long open testing period for the next edition, if handled correctly, could be exactly what’s needed to make players feels invested in D&D again,” he said.
The rule changes are part of several efforts to keep the brand relevant. Wizards of the Coast already publishes a steady stream of products set in the D&D universe: fantasy novels (by authors like R. A. Salvatore), comic books and board games. To combat the perception that the game requires hours of planning, the company organizes weekly drop-in sessions called D&D Encounters, run in game shops nationwide; they’re billed as an easy way “to fit your game in after school or work.”
Wizards of the Coast has also made previous forays into the digital realm. Dungeons & Dragons Online was released in 2006. Since becoming free to play, the game has gained over one million new players, an impressive figure for D&D but relatively insignificant compared to World of Warcraft’s 10-million-plus paid subscribers. A Facebook game called Dungeons & Dragons: Heroes of Neverwinter made its debut this fall. Also, a “virtual tabletop” product to allow Dungeons & Dragons acolytes to play online is being Beta-tested.
Still, a new edition could backfire, if the changes requested by hard-core fans can’t be reconciled or if players believe the company is merely paying lip service to their concerns. Nonetheless the company remains “absolutely committed” to the core tabletop game-play, Ms. Schuh said. “People want that face-to-face experience.”
Certainly committed players will remind you that tabletop role-playing games still outperform computer games in one key arena: improvisation. Video games have limits. Some dungeon doors can’t be opened because a programmer didn’t code them to open. Dungeons & Dragons remains a game where anything can happen.
So while Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 and Portal 2 may have their day in the sun, “they can’t compete with a live Dungeon Master for throwing thrills at the players,” James W. Ward, a game designer and former vice president of TSR Inc., the company that originally published D&D, wrote in an e-mail. “The fun of growing a character while your friends do the same thing around a table munching on M&M’s and other snacks is difficult to duplicate.”
Even if players increasingly bring their iPads, loaded with Dungeons & Dragons rulebooks, to the gaming table.
