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Medicine

Submission + - Chinese passing off fake drugs as 'Made in India' (indiatimes.com)

Submitted by prapu
prapu writes: The Times of India reports "Are fake drugs manufactured in China being pushed into various African countries with the `Made in India' tag? The Indian government has long suspected this to be the case, but it now has definite evidence for the first time. " http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/World/China/Chinese-passing-off-fake-drugs-as-Made-in-India/articleshow/4633377.cms
Social Networks

Submission + - Iranians Prove You Can't Unplug Twitter (channelinsider.com)

Submitted by
dasButcher
dasButcher writes: "Looks as those Iran tried disconnecting the country from the Internet (http://asert.arbornetworks.com/2009/06/iranian-traffic-engineering/), and is still trying to throttle traffic to keep protesters from organizing via Twitter. As Larry Walsh writes (http://blogs.channelinsider.com/secure_channel/content/web_security/iranians_prove_disconnecting_is_not_an_option.html), Iran's futile efforts to block social networking shows that Internet dependency is so high that even a toleration regime cannot simply pull the plug."
The Internet

Submission + - Harvard Study Says Weak Copyright Benefits Society 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Michael Geist summarizes an important new study on file sharing from economists Felix Oberholzer-Gee and Koleman Strumpf. The Harvard Business School working paper finds that given the increase in artistic production along with the greater public access conclude that "weaker copyright protection, it seems, has benefited society." The authors' point out that file sharing may not result in reduced incentives to create if the willingness to pay for "complements" such as concerts or author speaking tours increases.
Image

Frog Species Discovered Living In Elephant Dung 56

Posted by samzenpus from the I've-lived-in-worse-places dept.
rhettb writes "Three different species of frogs have been discovered living in the dung of the Asian elephant in southeastern Sri Lanka. The discovery — the first time anyone has recorded frogs living in elephant droppings — has widespread conservation implications both for frogs and Asian elephants, which are in decline. Apparently the frogs feed on the many invertebrates present in elephant dung."
Education

Submission + - Valedictorian Pressured to Drop WofW Reference

Submitted by
theodp
theodp writes: "Springstead High valedictorian Jem Lugo delivered a watered-down graduation speech after her original address was rejected as too real by school officials. 'Graduation is no longer about the students at all,' complained Harvard-bound Lugo after administrators put the kibosh on her blunt observations, pop culture references and affectionate digs at classmates. Among those finding the original material objectionable was her speech-plagiarizing principal, who was backed-up by a school superintendent who hadn't read Lugo's speech (and didn't see the need to do so). You can check out the attitude and platitude versions of her speech. A sample of what was found objectionable: 'First off, get money. You can't do anything without money. Do something with your life where you're able to have a steady, reliable, source of income. Gamers, I'm sorry, but farming for gold in World of Warcraft is not considered a RELIABLE, or socially-acceptable source of income.' Hardly the stuff of Lenny Bruce."
Education

Submission + - Women Engineers and Workplace Sexism

Submitted by yali
yali writes: Women in traditionally male-dominated fields like math and engineering face the extra burden that their performance, beyond reflecting on them individually, might be taken as broader confirmation of stereotypes if they perform poorly. A newly published series of experiments tested the effects of such stereotype threat among engineering students. Standardized observations showed that male engineering students who had previously expressed subtle sexist attitudes on a pretest were more likely, when talking with a female engineering student about work issues, to adopt a domineering posture and to display signs of sexual interest (such as noticeably looking at the woman's body). In the next 2 experiments, female engineering students were randomly assigned in one experiment to interact with males who had endorsed different levels of subtle sexism, and in a second experiment with an actor who randomly either displayed or did not display the domineering/sexual nonverbal behaviors. Women performed worse on an engineering test after interacting with the randomly-assigned sexist males (or males simulating sexists' nonverbal behavior). In another experiment, women's poorer performance was shown to be limited to stereotype-related tests, not a broad cognitive deficit. In a final experiment, interacting with a domineering/sexually interested male caused women to have temporarily elevated concern about negative stereotypes, which they subsequent attempted to suppress (thought suppression being a well-known resource hog). The results indicate that even subtle sexism can be toxic in workplace environments where women are traditionally targets of discrimination.
The Internet

The Perils of Pop Philosophy 484

Posted by kdawson from the bloggers-beware dept.
ThousandStars tips a new piece by Julian Sanchez, the guy who, in case you missed it, brought us a succinct definition of the one-way hash argument (of the type often employed in the US culture wars). This one is about the dangers of a certain kind of oversimplifying, as practiced routinely by journalists and bloggers. "This brings us around to some of my longstanding ambivalence about blogging and journalism more generally. On the one hand, while it's probably not enormously important whether most people have a handle on the mind-body problem, a democracy can't make ethics and political philosophy the exclusive province of cloistered academics. On the other hand, I look at the online public sphere and too often tend to find myself thinking: 'Discourse at this level can't possibly accomplish anything beyond giving people some simulation of justification for what they wanted to believe in the first place.' This is, needless to say, not a problem limited to philosophy."
Software

Ten Applications That Changed Computing 437

Posted by timothy from the where-are-emacs-and-TeX dept.
bfire writes "The term 'killer app' gets tossed around quite liberally these days. Nearly every piece of software released seems to be pitched as having the potential to send shockwaves throughout the IT world. In reality, there have been precious few applications which have truly changed the computing industry over the years. This article lists some of the top ten true killer apps that changed computing, from Phil Zimmermann's gold standard in encryption, PGP, to Dr Solomon's groundbreaking anti-virus toolkit, to Mitch Kapor who took the idea of VisiCalc for Apple and created Lotus 1-2-3 for DOS." Typical for top-10 lists, the choices seem pretty arbitrary — what changed your corner of the computing world?

Comment free market (Score 1) 3

by CaptYossarian (#28159625) Attached to: Keeping the PC personal at school.
bug them for excessive use of their consumables. like paints or inks or whatever their medium of choice is. theyll get tired of your counter-freeloading. or you could just charge them for access. tell them that the time you spend recovering from their tooling around is costing you too much, so you have to defray those costs on them.
Space

Submission + - The Real British X-Files (x-journals.com)

Submitted by
blakeharris
blakeharris writes: "Nick Pope used to work for the British Ministry of Defense and for 3 years headed up their UFO project. His remit was to investigate UFO sightings reported to the British government, looking for evidence of any potential threat, or anything judged to be of any "defence significance." There's some amazing stuff in amongst the mass of more routine material, says Nick Pope. UFOs seen by police officers and pilots, UFOs tracked on radar, craft seen performing speeds and maneuvers significantly in excess of those of our most advanced military aircraft, intriguing photos and videos"
Privacy

Submission + - Keeping the PC personal at school. 3

Submitted by
Berto Kraus
Berto Kraus writes: "As one of the most tech-oriented students in my art-oriented faculty, I'm usually the one with the laptop. This causes frequent requests from other students to read mail, check some site, or connect it to the projector to project a file from their Flash drive. For the sake of my privacy, the health of my laptop, and my own peace of mind, I'm reluctant, but telling them to go to our building supervisor and ask him for a desktop-on-a-cart, (as they should do), is considered rude and unfriendly. One thought that came to mind was to dual-boot Ubuntu or have a Linux-on-a-stick. Another was to embed the computer in my skull. For many reasons, both are not ideal. So I'm asking you, insightful and funny Slashdotters, what would you do to keep your PC personal, even at school?"
Space

Submission + - Discovery: Even Tiny Stars Have Planets (space.com) 2

Submitted by
Paul server guy
Paul server guy writes: "From a story at http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/090528-exoplanet-small-star.html — A Jupiter-like planet has been discovered orbiting one of the smallest stars known, suggesting that planets could be more common than previously thought.
"This is an exciting discovery because it shows that planets can be found around extremely lightweight stars," said Wesley Traub, the chief scientist for NASA's Exoplanet Exploration Program at Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "This is a hint that nature likes to form planets, even around stars very different from the sun."

Astrometry was first attempted 50 years ago to search for planets outside our solar system, but the method requires very precise measurements over long periods of time, and until now, has failed to turn up any exoplanets.
The technique involves measuring the precise motions of a star on the sky as an unseen planet tugs the star back and forth.
The discovery will be detailed in the Astrophysical Journal.

The newfound exoplanet, called VB 10b, is about 20 light-years away in the constellation Aquila (a light-year is the distance that light travels in a year, about 6 trillion miles or 10 trillion kilometers). It is a gas giant, with a mass six times that of Jupiter, and an orbit far enough away from its star to be labeled a "cold Jupiter" similar to our own.

In reality, though, the planet's own internal heat would give it an Earth-like temperature.

The planet's star, called VB 10, is tiny. It is what's known as an M-dwarf and is only one-twelfth the mass of our sun, just barely big enough to fuse atoms at its core and shine with starlight."
Government

Submission + - First Internet Election Takes Place in Hawaii

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens
Hugh Pickens writes: "The Washington Post reports that voting has ended in what is being touted as the nation's first all-digital election and city officials say it has been a success after some 7.300 voters in Honolulu's neighborhood council election were able to pick winners entirely online or via telephone. Although only 6.3 percent of eligible voters cast ballots, city officials say the experiment appears to have generated few problems and it even saved the financially strapped city around $100,000. "It is kind of the wave of the future," said Bryan Mick, a community relations specialist with the city Neighborhood Commission, "so we're kind of glad in a way that we got to be the ones who initiated it." Before the first day of balloting, voters living in 22 neighborhood board districts with contested races received a passcode that, along with the last four digits of their Social Security number, gave them access to an election Web site created by Everyone Counts. Voting also was conducted by phone, with results electronically fed into the same computer system that collected the Web votes. Lori Steele, head of Everyone Counts, the San Diego-based firm chosen by the commission to run the election, said the computer codes in her firm's system are available for auditing, and that each completed ballot is heavily encrypted and more secure than that used in Internet banking. Web voting, which produces no paper record, cannot be used in city council or state elections because state law bars voting systems that do not include a vote verification process. "The technology side, it works," said Joan Manke, executive secretary of the commission. "So my sense is because it's a change, it's something totally new, it takes time. I think, for people to buy into it, to want to actually try it.""
Earth

Submission + - 50 Days of Indigenous Protests in Peru (amazonwatch.org)

Submitted by
NewYorkCountryLawyer
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes: "The major media in the United States have been eerily silent about it, but there have been 50 days of protests in the Amazon rainforest area of Peru over the Government's possibly illegal decrees authorizing invasion of the rainforest for further oil exploration. Thousands of indigenous rainforest inhabitants have massed in demonstrations throughout the region, and there have been attacks by the police and military, causing a number of injuries and at least one death among the tribespeople. On Tuesday, May 26th, there was a march and protest in Los Angeles, led by actress Q'orianka Kilcher, whose blog post about Tuesday's demonstration includes an 8 minute video. I feel the issue is of such importance, and is receiving such short shrift from the American media, that I've decided I'd better keep my own collection of links on the subject. The Guardian, BBC, and Reuters in the UK are all providing some coverage, including videos of the police riots, but I have to backtrack to locate the links to those stories."
Idle

Submission + - Iowa couple's computer mystery stumps experts 1

Submitted by hero27
hero27 writes: Figured some speculation within the Slashdot community might be interesting...

NE Iowa couple's computer mystery stumps experts
BY ERIK HOGSTROM, Telegraph Herald

ASBURY (AP) — Mary LaMour can't understand why her computer works at other people's homes, and outside, but not inside her house. Neither can a computer technician.

"It's uncanny," said Chuck Freisinger, of Phoenix Computer Services in Dubuque. "My other technician and I looked at that situation. When it's in their house, it doesn't work. When it's outside, it works fine. She took it to a friend's house and it worked fine."

LaMour proved it recently. Standing on her front step, she started her Dell laptop and the computer operated normally. Carrying the computer back across the front door threshold, an ominous blue screen replaces the desktop.

"This particular thing is completely out of the ordinary," Freisinger said.

The error screen reads in part:
"A problem has been detected and Windows has been shut down to prevent damage to your computer. IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL. Check to make sure any new hardware or software is properly installed."

The LaMours aren't computing novices. "I'm not computer crazy, I'm not one of these computer geeks," Mary LaMour said, "but we have had a computer for years."

Dick and Mary LaMour moved into their new Asbury home in February. They soon learned there was only one spot in the house the laptop would work.
"There is one place in the sun room," Mary LaMour said, "but you had to be on your hands and knees."
"The only thing that really springs to mind is electromagnetic interference," Freisinger said.

Electromagnetic interference can interrupt, obstruct or otherwise degrade or limit the effective performance of an electrical circuit.
"Perhaps the laptop is particularly sensitive to electromagnetic interference," Freisinger said.

The LaMours don't reside under any power lines, and Asbury's radio stations are not located nearby.
If there were buried power lines, why would the problem only occur inside the home, not outside?
"Alliant said it couldn't be wires underground," Mary LaMour said.

Someone suggested the LaMours encase their laptop in a combination of cardboard and aluminum foil to mitigate any possible electromagnetic effects.
"It worked for a minute," Dick LaMour said, "then it shut down again."

What else could it be?

"I was asked if I had a plate in my head — I said 'No, do you?'" Mary LaMour said. "I was asked if my bracelets were magnetic, but I took a magnet off the refrigerator and proved that they're not."

What about ghosts?
Jokingly, Freisinger asked Mary if her house home was haunted.
"If we do have ghosts, they are friendly," she said. "So I don't care."

Original Source: http://www.wcfcourier.com/articles/2009/05/16/news/breaking_news/doc4a0ee12d4dc2c915899261.txt

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