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Submission + - Beware of the Radioactive Bunny! (tri-cityherald.com)

Submitted by richardkelleher
richardkelleher writes: It turns out that the character Anya (Emma Caulfield) had it right in the season 4 episode of Buffy (Fear Itself — IMDB link). Bunny's are scary! According to this article in the Tri-City Herald, a radioactive rabbit has been trapped and killed. They were unable to locate any rabbit droppings in areas of Hanford that are accessible to the public.

"A radioactive rabbit was trapped on the Hanford nuclear reservation, and Washington state health workers have been searching for contaminated rabbit droppings.

The regional director of the Office of Radiation Protection, Earl Fordham, said Thursday that no contaminated droppings have been found in areas accessible to the public.
Medicine

Skin-Tight Bodysuits Could Protect Astronauts From Bone Loss 158

Posted by Soulskill from the wink-wink-you-bet-they-will dept.
jamie passes along a report about research from MIT's Man-Vehicle Laboratory into using "superhero-style" skinsuits to combat the effects of extended stays in microgravity on bone density in astronauts. (Abstract.) Quoting: "Astronauts lose 1 to 2 percent of their bone mass for each month they spend in space. As far back as the Gemini missions, conditioning exercise regimes have been used to slow the rate of bone loss, but a 2001-2004 NASA-sponsored study showed that crew members aboard the International Space Station were still losing up to 2.7 percent of their interior bone material and 1.7 percent of outer hipbone material for each month they spent in space. ... With stirrups that loop around the feet, the elastic gravity skinsuit is purposely cut too short for the astronaut so that it stretches when put on — pulling the wearer's shoulders towards the feet. In normal gravity conditions on Earth, a human's legs bear more weight than the torso. Because the suit's legs stretch more than the torso section, the wearer's legs are subjected to a greater force — replicating gravity effects on Earth." See? Seven of Nine's outfit was inspired by science after all.
Microsoft

Submission + - Microsoft's Silverlight damage control intensifies (infoworld.com)

Submitted by GMGruman
GMGruman writes: Microsoft exec Bob Muglia freaked out Silverlight developers when he suggested Microsoft's rich Internet application (RIA) technology was to be limited to Microsoft's own platforms sch as Windows Phone 7, and that Microsoft would rely on HTML5 to support the very-growing range of devices out there. He also seems to have freaked out Microsoft, so he backpedaled a bit. And this week, more Microsoft executives backpedaled on Muglia's statement, saying Microsoft is committed to Silverlight. But as Paul Krill reports in this InfoWorld story, they agree with Muglia's sentiment that when it comes to supporting the wide universe of devices, HTML5 is the way to go.
Security

Submission + - Evaluating or Testing Utility SCADA Security?

Submitted by EncryptedBit
EncryptedBit writes: I am a local elected official involved in bringing new water and waste water treatment plants online in a small town. The new plants will incorporate SCADA, which can be used to change operational aspects at the plants, up to forcing a shutdown or changing operational parameters. Can any Slashdotters recommend ways to make sure it is secure? Any testing recommendations? The operational engineers are oblivious to security and SCADA is a new factor, so this concerns me. Thanks for any pointers!
Firefox

Firefox 4 Beta For Mobile Now Faster and Sleeker 70

Posted by Soulskill from the almost-like-some-sort-of-fox dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Mozilla has released Beta 2 of Firefox 4 for Mobile. Some notable improvements over the initial beta release include 'reduced memory usage, improved text rendering and a 60% install size reduction on Android (from around 43 MB to 17 MB).' Mozilla also makes mention that 'actions like panning and zooming are faster and smoother, and page load times are reduced from our previous beta. On Android 2.2, we're now around 25% faster on the SunSpider JavaScript benchmark than the stock browser.' A future beta release will enable GL acceleration, which should further improve the performance of the browser."
Math

Scientists Overclock People's Brains 314

Posted by Soulskill from the time-to-install-some-extra-fans dept.
arshadk writes with this excerpt from the BBC about researchers at Oxford University who found that inducing a small current in a subject's parietal lobe boosted their capacity for numerical learning: "The current could not be felt, and had no measurable effect on other brain functions. As it was turned on, the volunteers tried to learn a puzzle which involved substituting numbers for symbols. Those given the current from right to left across the parietal lobe did significantly better when given, compared to those who were given no electrical stimulation. The direction of the current was important — those given stimulation running in the opposite direction, left to right, did markedly worse at these puzzles than those given no current, with their ability matching that of an average six-year-old. The effects were not short-lived, either. When the volunteers whose performance improved was re-tested six months later, the benefits appear to have persisted. There was no wider effect on general maths ability in either group, just on the ability to complete the puzzles learned as the current was applied."
Security

Submission + - Malware's long tail: parked domains (threatpost.com)

Submitted by Paul-Threatpost
Paul-Threatpost writes: Security experts are divided over what to do about the millions of unmanaged parked Web domains, which have become a platform for Web based attacks. While some say that traffic to the sites is minuscule, a new analysis from Armorize suggests that scammers are still doing pretty well by mining traffic from the Web's "long tail."

Submission + - New Images Reveal That the Moon is Shrinking (gizmag.com)

Submitted by Zothecula
Zothecula writes: The moon is shrinking according to a team analyzing new images from NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO). The images reveal previously unknown cliffs, called lobate scarbs. These are thrust faults that occur primarily in the lunar highlands that indicate the moon shrank globally in the geologically recent past and might still be shrinking today. Although they were first recognized in photographs taken near the moon's equator by the panoramic cameras flown on the Apollo 15, 16 and 17 missions, the fourteen previously unknown lobate scarbs revealed by the very high resolution images taken by the LRO camera indicate that the thrust faults are globally distributed and not clustered near the moon’s equator.
Microsoft

Submission + - Want Windows 7 to support ISO Mount, Vote for it

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Just about everyone including Microsoft uses ISO files. As popular as ISO files are I still have to download software for every PC I own to mount an ISO image. With each release of windows I think this is the year they will include the option to mount a drive in their OS. Searching for the latest freeware I stumbeled upon a vote at the MS connect site to add this feature to Windows 7. I am hoping the slashdot community can make this happen.
http://connect.microsoft.com/WindowsServerFeedback/feedback/details/351231/mount-iso-files
User Journal

Journal Journal: "Swedish law does not protect Wikileaks sources"

Journal by Xerfas

When Wikileaks urge people all over the world to disclose sensitive information, the online publisher refers to the Swedish constitutional laws on source protection. But experts claim this is an empty promise, as Wikileaks has no licence to publish material in Sweden.

Sweden's protection of informants is among the strongest in the world. Authorities are banned from investigating the source of a leak.
Politics

Submission + - Swedish law does not protect Wikileaks sources (sydsvenskan.se)

Submitted by Xerfas
Xerfas writes: When Wikileaks urge people all over the world to disclose sensitive information, the online publisher refers to the Swedish constitutional laws on source protection. But experts claim this is an empty promise, as Wikileaks has no licence to publish material in Sweden.
Businesses

Submission + - Is There an Engineer Shortage or Misallocation?

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: While the conventional wisdom these days seems to be that every new start-up is good for the USA, VC Roger Ehrenberg makes the case against the 'fund every start-up' approach. Because so many start-ups are getting funded as seed stage capital has become increasingly plentiful, engineers that could be helping scale successful companies are instead pursuing their own gigs, creating a bunch of mediocre start-ups that soak up scarce talent, creating a shortage. Ehrenberg argues this is neither good for long-term job creation nor perhaps even for the aspiring engineer/entrepreneur, who might enjoy greater wealth and achievement as an integral member of a rapidly growing and successful company.
Piracy

Submission + - DRM-Free Game Suffers 90% Piracy, Offers Amnesty (arstechnica.com) 2

Submitted by bonch
bonch writes: Independent game Machinarium, released without DRM by developer Amanita Design, has only been paid for by 5-10% of its users according to developer Jakub Dvorsky. To drive legitimate sales, they are now offering a 'Pirate Amnesty' sale until August 12, bundling both the cross-platform game and its soundtrack for $5. Ron Carmel, designer of DRM-free puzzle game World of Goo, stated that his game also had about a 90% piracy rate, claiming that the percentage of those pirating first and purchasing later was 'very small.' He said, 'We're getting good sales through WiiWare, Steam, and our website. Not going bankrupt just yet!'

Submission + - Can Apple's Magic Trackpad be used for UNIX xterm?

Submitted by slasher_steve
slasher_steve writes: Can anyone suggest how to configure the Apple Magic Trackpad to do cut-and-paste operations on UNIX xterm windows? My UNIX xterm windows use the simultaneous-left-and-right button click on a "normal" 3-button mouse to paste text. I have my Apple Magic Mouse configured to do that with "one finger middle axis click". I have had the Magic Trackpad a week and I have not figured out how to do that yet. I love it otherwise, but I find that I have to use the Magic Mouse to paste text into xterm windows on UNIX. (On the Mac itself, there is no problem cutting and pasting in xterm or terminal windows, since I can use the Trackpad's 2 finger tap to open a context menu with cut and paste options. However, when I use VPN to reach out to some corporate UNIX hosts running xterm, that 2 finger click does not work. Nothing happens. The drag feature will cut, but I have no Trackpad gesture that will paste.)
NASA

Submission + - NASA in search of small Moon robots (networkworld.com)

Submitted by coondoggie
coondoggie writes: NASA today began looking for small robotic landers it can send and operate on the Moon. NASA said the idea behind its Innovative Lunar Demonstrations Data (ILDD) program is to "obtain data and gather knowledge that reduces risks for future human and robotic lander designs by employing these missions as unique demonstration testbeds." The ILDD announcement will result in multiple small contracts with a total value up to $30.1 million through 2012, NASA stated.

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