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Science

Submission + - Scientist removed from EPA panel due to industry opposition (pbs.org)

Submitted by Beeftopia
Beeftopia writes: The relationship between regulator and regulated is once again called into question as industry pressure leads to a scientist's removal from an EPA regulatory panel. From the article:

"In 2007, when Deborah Rice was appointed chair of an Environmental Protection Agency panel assessing the safety levels of flame retardants, she arrived as a respected Maine toxicologist with no ties to industry. Yet the EPA removed Rice from the panel after an intense push by the American Chemistry Council (ACC), an industry lobbying group that accused her of bias. Her supposed conflict of interest? She had publicly raised questions about the safety of a flame retardant under EPA review."

Submission + - Computers Shown to be Better Than Docs at Diagnosing, Prescribing Treatment (computerworld.com)

Submitted by Lucas123
Lucas123 writes: Applying the same technology used for voice recognition and credit card fraud detection to medical treatments could cut healthcare costs and improve patient outcomes by almost 50%, according to new research. The research by Indiana University found that using patient data with machine-learning algorithms can drastically improve both the cost and quality of healthcare through simulation modeling.The artificial intelligence models used for diagnosing and treating patients obtained a 30% to 35% increase in positive patient outcomes, the research found. This is not the first time AI has been used to diagnose and suggest treatments. Last year, IBM announced that its Watson supercomputer would be used in evaluating evidence-based cancer treatment options for physicians, driving the decision-making process down to a matter of seconds.
The Internet

Submission + - Internet Still Under Attack by UN, FCC Comish Fears (foxnews.com)

Submitted by Velcroman1
Velcroman1 writes: At a United Nations conference in December, 89 countries voted in favor of international government regulation of the Internet. Specific regulations have not been agreed upon, but FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell said he fears the U.N. may seek further rulings at a 2014 conference in Busan, Korea. "You’ll have international bureaucrats making engineering and business decisions," McDowell said. The U.N. has no power to force the United States to adopt any Internet regulation, and the U.S. refused to sign the December treaty, along with 55 others countries. But if a large number of countries agree on regulations, the Internet could become fragmented, with very different rules applying in different regions of the world. "That becomes an engineering nightmare," McDowell said.

Comment Re:About time but is it enough (Score 2) 53

by dstates (#42636783) Attached to: Patient Access To Electronic Medical Records Strengthened By New HHS Rules
And they will come back at you for a HIPAA privacy violation. Your scenario implies that to save IT complexity and expense, you are willing to risk patient confidentiality. You are not going to come across as a sympathetic defendant, especially when they say the only reason they were looking was to test the system security which they found wanting but were afraid to report to their greedy boss looking for an excuse to fire people.
Privacy

Submission + - Patient Access to Electronic Medical Records Strengthened by New HHS Rules (hhs.gov)

Submitted by dstates
dstates writes: The Department of Health and Human Services has released newly revised rules for the Health Information Privacy and Accountability Act (HIPAA) to insure patient access to electronic copies of their electronic medical records. Several years ago, there was a great deal of excitement about personalized health information management (e.g. Microsoft HealthVault and Google Health). Unfortunately, patients found it difficult to obtain their medical records from providers in formats that could easily be imported. Personalized health records were time consuming and difficult to maintain so these initiatives have not lived up to their expectations (e.g. Google Health has been discontinued). The new rules should address this directly and hopefully will revitalized interest personal health information management.

The new HIPAA rules also greatly strengthen patient privacy, the ability of patients to control who sees their medical information, and increases the penalties for leaking medical records information. “Much has changed in health care since HIPAA was enacted over fifteen years ago,” said HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius. “The new rule will help protect patient privacy and safeguard patients’ health information in an ever expanding digital age.”
Technology

Submission + - Cool Technology - Smart ice cubes tell you when you have had enough (thenextweb.com)

Submitted by dstates
dstates writes: In just 6 weeks an MIT researcher created smart ice cubes that monitor your drinking. After an alcohol induced blackout motivated a bit of introspection, Dhairya Dand pulled together a coin cell battery, an ATtiny microcontroller, and an IR transceiver molded into gelatin to create self-aware glowing ice-cubes. The cubes glow and beat to the ambient music, but more importantly, they know how fast and how much you are drinking, and they change color from green to orange to finally red as you reach your safe limit. If things go too far, the ice cubes can connect to your smartphone and send a text message for a friend come get you. Of course, you have to remember not to swallow them. Interesting implications for addressing the input side of dieting, weight loss and moderation.

Comment Re:Isn't it obvious... (Score 1) 337

by dstates (#42387489) Attached to: How Do You Give a Ticket To a Driverless Car?
Ah yes, the faultless red light camera ticketing the guaranteed to obey the law driverless car. Proof that machines are fallible. Of course, this would probably escalate into a lawsuit between the traffic cam vendor and the driverless car service, both claiming that the other was falsely impugning the reputation of their product...
Security

Submission + - Hacked review system leads to fake reviews and retraction of scientific papers (wordpress.com)

Submitted by dstates
dstates writes: Retraction Watch reports that fake reviewer information was placed in Elsevier's peer review database allowing unethical authors to review their own or colleagues manuscripts. As a result, 11 scientific publications have been retracted. The hack is particularly embarrassing for Elsevier because the commercial publisher has been arguing that the quality of its review process justifies its restrictive access policies and high costs of the journals it publishes.
Hardware

Submission + - GE develops ultra-thin, almost-silent cooler for next-gen laptops and tablets (extremetech.com) 1

Submitted by
MrSeb
MrSeb writes: "General Electric has unveiled what seems to be the thinnest, high-performance cooler for the next-generation of ultra-thin tablets and laptops. While this cooler obviously allows for slimmer designs (or more space for other components), it also uses just half the power of a comparable fan, granting a significant boost to battery life. Oh, it’s almost silent, too. The technology behind GE’s cooler is called DCJ — Dual Piezoelectric Cooling Jets. DCJ basically acts as a miniature pair of bellows: Expanding to suck in cool air, and then contracting to expel hot air. GE originally invented DCJ to help cool commercial jet engines, but two years ago it seems someone had the clever idea of miniaturizing the tech for use in computers — and so here we are. GE’s cooler is roughly the size and thickness of a credit card, and the complete cooling solution (presumably including a heat sink/pipe) is 50% thinner than existing fan-based solutions. Perhaps most importantly, though, according to GE VP Chris Giovanniello, “DCJ can be made so quiet that users won’t even know it’s running.”"
Censorship

Submission + - Google.com safesearch filter now mandatory (google.com) 3

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The US version of Google search no longer seems to feature the three options concerning safesearch (Off, Moderate and Strict) Instead, they've opted for what seems to be mandatory moderate search with the option of filtering explicit content (ie. strict filtering). There does not seem to be a lay-man quality way of turning safesearch off anymore. google.ca and possibly other country specific domains related to Google seem unaffected. Some complaints have already started appearing on Google's product forum: http://productforums.google.com/forum/#!category-topic/websearch/google-images/WIPzdBq6E4Y Answers so far, have been rather vague.
Space

Submission + - Parallel processing in the brain's maps of the external environment (nature.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Neuroscientists at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology have shown that the system that keeps track of an animal's self motion and location (read: brain map) is composed of several independent subsystems or modules. The entorhinal cortex contains polygonal representations of space made up of 'grid cell' activity patterns [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grid_cell]. Stensola et al show in the latest issue of Nature that each module's grid map has specifically set geometric properties, such as mesh size, and respond independently to changes in the environment. http://www.ntnu.edu/news/2012-news/mental-maps
Crime

Submission + - Using mains hum to authenticate audio recordings (bbc.co.uk)

Submitted by another random user
another random user writes: A hum that comes from mains electricity has allowed forensic scientists to establish whether recordings are genuine.

For the last seven years, at the Metropolitan Police forensic lab in south London, audio specialists have been continuously recording the sound of mains electricity.

It is an all pervasive hum that we normally cannot hear. But boost it a little, and a metallic and not very pleasant buzz fills the air.

"The power is sent out over the national grid to factories, shops and of course our homes. Normally this frequency, known as the mains frequency, is about 50Hz," explains Dr Alan Cooper, a senior digital forensic practitioner at the Met Police.

Any digital recording made anywhere near an electrical power source, be it plug socket, light or pylon, will pick up this noise and it will be embedded throughout the audio.

This buzz is an annoyance for sound engineers trying to make the highest quality recordings. But for forensic experts, it has turned out to be an invaluable tool in the fight against crime.
Wireless Networking

Submission + - FCC Moving to Launch Dynamic Spectrum Sharing (technologyreview.com)

Submitted by dstates
dstates writes: The FCC is considering one of the biggest regulatory changes in decades: allowing a newly available chunk of wireless spectrum to be leased by different users at different times and places, rather than being auctioned off to one high bidder. The plan is to open a new WiFi with spectrum in the 3.550 to 3.650 gigahertz band now used by radar systems. Under the proposed rule to be voted on Wednesday, users could reserve pieces of that spectrum in different regions and at different time managed by a central database. Spectrum sharing is a dramatic change with a potential to make bandwidth accessible to many users. The plan has met with mixed reviews from the cellular carriers.
Science

Submission + - Scientists Use Electrical Hum to Fight Crime

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens writes
Hugh Pickens writes writes: "A suspected terrorist has been taped planning a deadly attack and the police want to use this evidence in court or someone has been captured on CCTV threatening an assault. Increasingly, recordings like these are playing a role in criminal investigations but how can the police be sure that the audio evidence is genuine and has not been tampered with or cleverly edited? Now Rebecca Morelle writes on BBC that a technique known as Electric Network Frequency (ENF) analysis is helping forensic scientists separate genuine, unedited recordings from those that have been tampered with and the technique has already been used in court. Any digital recording made anywhere near an electrical power source will pick up the noise from electricity supplied by the national grid and it will be embedded throughout the audio. This buzz is an annoyance for sound engineers trying to make the highest quality recordings but for forensic experts, it has turned out to be an invaluable tool in the fight against crime. Due to unbalances in production and consumption of electrical energy, the ENF is known to fluctuate slightly over time rather than being stuck to its exact set point so if you look at the frequency over time, you can see minute fluctuations and the pattern of these random changes in frequency is unique over time providing a digital watermark on every recording. Forensic Scientist Philip Harrison has been logging the hum on the national grid in the UK for several years. "Even if [the hum] is picked up at a very low level that you cannot hear, we can extract this information," says Dr. Harrison. "If we have we can extract [the hum] and compare it with the database, if it is a continuous recording, it will all match up nicely.""

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