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Science

Submission + - Studies Suggest Massive Increase in Scientific Fraud (nytimes.com)

Submitted by Titus Andronicus
Titus Andronicus writes: Scientific fraud has always been with us. But as stated or suggested by some scientists, journal editors, and a few studies, the amount of scientific “cheating” has far outpaced the expansion of science itself. According to some, the financial incentives to “cut corners” have never been greater, resulting in record numbers of retractions from prestigious journals.

From the article: “For example, the journal Nature reported that published retractions had increased tenfold over the past decade, while the number of published papers had increased by just 44 percent.”
Canada

Submission + - Canadian bureacracy can't answer simple question: What's this study with NASA? (ottawacitizen.com)

Submitted by
Saint Aardvark
Saint Aardvark writes: "It seemed like a pretty simple question about a pretty cool topic: an Ottawa newspaper wanted to ask Canada's National Research Council about a joint study with NASA on tracking falling snow in Canada. Conventional radar can see where it's falling, but not the amount — so NASA, in collaboration with the NRC, Environment Canada and a few universities, arranged flights through falling snow to analyse readings with different instruments. But when they contacted the NRC to get the Canadian angle, "it took a small army of staffers— 11 of them by our count — to decide how to answer, and dozens of emails back and forth to circulate the Citizen’s request, discuss its motivation, develop their response, and “massage” its text." No interview was given: "I am not convinced we need an interview. A few lines are fine. Please let me see them first," says one civil servant in the NRC emails obtained by the newspaper under the Access to Information act. By the time the NRC finally sorted out a boring, technical response, the newspaper had already called up a NASA scientist and got all the info they asked for; it took about 15 minutes."
Facebook

Submission + - Invisible Children uses social media to popularize Kony the psychopath.

Submitted by dumuzi
dumuzi writes: Invisible Children, lead by film maker Jason Russell, is using social media to make Kony, the leader of a child abducting and abusing army in Uganda, famous so as to facilitate his capture. With an orcestrated combination of Facebook, Twitter, a viral youtube video, the blogosphere,mainstream media, and celebrities the goal is to cover the night on April 20th and to help capture Kony before December 31st 2012.
Books

Submission + - Amazon Patents Annotating Books, Digital Works 1

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: On Tuesday, the USPTO granted Amazon a patent on its Method and System for Providing Annotations of a Digital Work, which covers 'receiving an annotation of the digital work, storing the annotation, and providing the annotation to a user.' This includes annotations received in a graphical or handwriting format, as well as highlighting of text.

Comment Re:Paying Microsoft and Apple for Android ? (Score -1, Troll) 240

by dumuzi (#39270543) Attached to: Google, Motorola Ordered To Provide Android Info To Apple
I don't contest that the system is screwed. I do contest that Google is innocent. Even this company that strives to do no evil falls into the same pattern as everyone else, as that is the only course of action that allows survival in todays market. There is indeed no chance in hell for us.
The Almighty Buck

Submission + - Obama Pushes for Cheaper Pennies

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens writes
Hugh Pickens writes writes: "Time Magazine reports that hidden deep inside in the White House’s $3.8 trillion, 2,000-page budget that was sent to Congress this week is a proposal to make pennies and nickels cheaper to produce. Why? Because it currently costs the federal government 2.4 cents to make a penny and 11.2 cents for every nickel. If passed, the budget would allow the Treasury Department to “change the composition of coins to more cost-effective materials” resulting in changes that could save more than $100 million a year. Since 1982, our copper-looking pennies have been merely coppery. In the 1970s, the price of copper soared, so President Nixon proposed changing the penny’s composition to a cheaper aluminum. Today, only 2.5% of a penny is copper (which makes up the coin’s coating) while 97.5% is zinc. The mint did make steel pennies for one year — in 1943 — when copper was needed for the war effort and steel might be a cheaper alternative this time. What about the bill introduced in 2006 that the US abandon pennies altogether.? At the time, fifty-five percent of respondents considered the penny useful compared to 43 percent who agreed it should be eliminated. More telling, 76 percent of respondents said they would pick up a penny if they saw it on the ground."
Medicine

Submission + - Why People Don't Live Past 114 (singularityhub.com) 1

Submitted by
kkleiner
kkleiner writes: "Average life expectancy has nearly doubled in developed countries over the 20th century. But a puzzling part to the equation has emerged. While humans are in fact living longer lives on average, the oldest age that the oldest people reach seems to be stubbornly and oddly precisely cemented right at 114. What will it takes for humans to live beyond this limit?"
Businesses

Submission + - Why Love Stinks on the Internet

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens writes
Hugh Pickens writes writes: "In olden times, the ability to find someone compatible in the world was assisted by natural filters (friends of friends of friends) or time-specific filters (you can't stay in college forever). But Connor Clarke writes that the market for mates on the internet is structured to fail due to "asymmetrical information" — daters know more about themselves than their prospective mate. creating "quality uncertainty" as all suppliers can present their wares as first-rate, and this has negative consequences: The bad tend to drive out the good. This "lemon market" phenomenon was first studied by George Akerlof in the used-car market where there are good cars and there are lemons, and the prospect of getting a lemon drives down the price of used cars and pushes good cars out of the market. In online dating everyone is presenting themselves as a good type and some of them are probably lying. But you don't know which ones, so you'll value every potential date a little bit less than as good as they look. On the other hand, non-lemons will think they're much better than the tepid replies they get from other singles, and they'll respond by leaving the dating market. "The need for some sort of quality control is one reason why people join curated dating sites like eHarmony rather than OkCupid. In some industries, you have solutions in the form of licensing and regulation, or quality "guarantees" like brand names and warranties," writes Clarke. "In the real world, however, dating is a dangerously free market.""
Privacy

Submission + - Female Passengers Say They Were Targeted for TSA Body Scanners (wired.com)

Submitted by wiedzmin
wiedzmin writes: TSA agents in Dallas singled out female passengers to undergo screening in a body scanner, according to complaints filed by several women who said they felt the screeners intentionally targeted them to view their bodies. Allegedly, women with "cute bodies" were directed through the body scanners up to three times over by female agents, who appeared to be acting on a request from male agents viewing the scans in a separate room. Apparently this was done because the scans were "blurry", possibly due to autofocus problems with agents' smartphone cameras.

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