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Submission + - US Drone "Hijacked" By Iran Claims Engineer (msn.com)

Submitted by clm1970
clm1970 writes: An Iranian engineer claims the recent drone that crashed in Iran was actually hijacked by the military exploiting a well known weakness in GPS technology. It was as simple as reprogramming the coordinates to think it was landing in Afghanistan and not Iran.
Security

Submission + - AMZN is rebooting servers like crazy (lightreading.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Something has prodded Amazon Web Services LLC into scheduling reboots for possibly thousands of virtual machines in its Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2). Is there some sort of security issue?
Medicine

Submission + - Vaccine developed against Ebola (bbc.co.uk)

Submitted by Lurching
Lurching writes: Scientists have developed a vaccine that protects mice against a deadly form of the Ebola virus.

First identified in 1976, Ebola fever kills more than 90% of the people it infects.

The researchers say that this is the first Ebola vaccine to remain viable long-term and can therefore be successfully stockpiled.

The results are reported in the journal Proceedings of National Academy of Sciences.
Science

Submission + - Shocking Revelation from the Core of the Earth (fellowgeek.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Scientists carrying out research into the composition of the makeup of the Earth’s liquid core have recently announced that they have some interesting news about the Earth’s core. They are confused because the core isn’t quite composed of what they thought it was.

Traditional scientific theory suggests that there should be some lighter elements thrown into the liquid mix composing the outer core, otherwise it would be a different density. Up to this point, specialists in those areas hypothesized that the lighter element mixed in with the iron was probably oxygen, which is the next most abundant element in the world. But it looks as if this is not the case.

“The research revealed a powerful way to decipher the identity of the light elements in the core. Further research should focus on the potential presence of elements such as silicon in the outer core,”

Submission + - SCADA "Attack" Was No Attack Afterall (washingtonpost.com)

Submitted by clm1970
clm1970 writes: "A water-pump failure in Illinois that appeared to be the first foreign cyberattack on a public utility in the United States was in fact caused by a plant contractor traveling in Russia, according to a source familiar with a federal investigation of the incident.

After analyzing the incident it was determined that "no indicators of malicious activity were found". A plant contractor was traveling in Russia on personal business at the time."
Earth

Submission + - Did Fracking Cause Recent Oklahoma Earthquakes?

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens writes
Hugh Pickens writes writes: "Oklahoma is typically seismically stable with about 50 small quakes a year but in 2009, that number jumped up to more than 1,000 and on November 5 a 5.6-magnitude tremor rattled Oklahoma — one of the strongest to ever hit the state — leading scientists to wonder if the increasingly common use of fracking, the controversial practice of blasting underground rock formations with high-pressure water, sand, and chemicals to extract natural gas, may have put stress on fault lines. Human intervention has caused earthquakes before with one "textbook case" occurring in 1967 in India, says Peter Fairley at IEEE Spectrum, when the reservoir behind the hydroelectric Koyna Dam was filled up. The added water "unleashed a magnitude 6.3 quake" by placing stress "on a previously unknown fault, killing 180 people and leaving thousands homeless." Last week’s earthquakes and aftershocks are centered in rural Lincoln County in an area about 30 miles east of Oklahoma City and there are 181 injection wells In Lincoln County. But a recent study by Austin Holland, a seismologist with the Oklahoma Geological Survey, says that it’s possible that hydraulic fracking caused a series of small earthquakes, peaking at 2.8, in an area south of Oklahoma City but doesn’t believe fracking caused the big Nov. 5, 6 and 8 earthquakes comparing a man-made earthquake to a mosquito bite. "It's really quite inconsequential," says Holland."
Privacy

Submission + - UK Police by covert cellphone surveillance system (guardian.co.uk) 1

Submitted by digitig
digitig writes: UK Metropolitan Police have purchased a "covert surveillance technology that can masquerade as a mobile phone network, transmitting a signal that allows authorities to shut off phones remotely, intercept communications and gather data about thousands of users in a targeted area."

Other customers apparently include "the US Secret Service, the Ministry of Defence and regimes in the Middle East."
Government

Submission + - Ohio Emergency Responders Stage Mock Zombie Invasi (nbc4i.com)

Submitted by destinyland
destinyland writes: An Ohio Emergency Management Agency staged a mock zombie attack Monday using more than 225 volunteers dressed as zombies at an Ohio college. "Organizers hoped the theme would attract more volunteers than previous simulations of industrial accidents or train crashes," the AP reports, quoting a spokesman for the agency as saying that "People got zombie fever here in Delaware." The exercise included decontamination procedures for hazardous materials, and was inspired by an "emergency preparedness" post on the CDC web site citing the popular fascination with zombies. (The number of zombie ebooks in Amazon's Kindle store has increased by 13.9% in just the last two months.) Now, "Dozens of agencies have embraced the idea," the AP reports, "spreading the message that if you're prepared for a zombie attack, you're prepared for just about anything."
Hardware

Submission + - Who Stole 40 ton Bridge? Metal Theft on the Rise

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens writes
Hugh Pickens writes writes: "Time Magazine reports that police in North Beaver Township, Pa are searching for a missing steel bridge weighing 40-tons with an estimated value of $100,000. The most likely scenario is that the thieves used a blowtorch to cut apart the bridge and haul it away. "I thought that with the rain it got washed away," says New Castle Development spokesman Gary Bruce. The theft highlights the growing crime of metal theft caused by rapid industrialization in Asia that has inflated the international demand for scrap metals. Aluminum guardrails. Brass fittings. Bronze plaques. Aluminum siding. Sprinkler fittings. Catalytic converters on church vans. Bronze urns. Storm drain grates. Street signs. Copper downspouts. The US is the No. 1 exporter of scrap metal, and because of increasing demand, its annual exportation to developing nations tripled from 6 million to 18 million tons between 2002 and 2007. "Because of the massive amount of construction that's happening, there's a need for building supplies. Meanwhile the U.S. has been industrialized for quite some time, which allows our trash to become their gold, so to speak," says Brandon Kooi, a professor of criminal justice at Aurora University in Chicago. Scott Berinato believes frequent media reports of metal thefts also have contributed to the rise. "Thieves have caught on: There's metal everywhere and much of it is, understandably, unguarded," writes Berinato. "You don't notice how much metal there is for the taking until it starts getting taken.""

Submission + - Could "Assortive Mating" Explain Autism? (time.com) 1

Submitted by
clm1970
clm1970 writes: "Researcher Simon Barone-Cohen has put forth the theory that "how we mate and marry" could explain the increase in rates of Autism Spectrum Disorders particularly Aspergers. When two technically minded people marry and have children, so the provocative theory goes, they are more apt to produce a child who crosses the line into mild autism."

Submission + - New Drug Treatment Could Cure All Viral Infections (medicalxpress.com)

Submitted by Scottingham
Scottingham writes: TFA states that in a development that could transform how viral infections are treated, a team of researchers at MIT's Lincoln Laboratory has designed a drug that can identify cells that have been infected by any type of virus, then kill those cells to terminate the infection.
Android

Submission + - Android Takes Almost 50% Of The Smartphone Market (muktware.com)

Submitted by sfcrazy
sfcrazy writes: Android has achieved a global market share of 48%. Asia Pacific (APAC) remained the largest regional market, with 39.8 million units shipping there, compared with 35.0 million in Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA), and 32.9 million in the Americas. Apple has 19% of the market.
Cloud

Submission + - Law: Students, Teachers Can't Be Facebook Friends

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Teachers can be friendly with their students, but they can’t be their friends, at least when it comes to social networks such as Facebook. State Governor Jay Nixon has signed Senate Bill 54, which goes into effect on August 28, 2011 in the state of Missouri. In other words, later this month it will be illegal for students and teachers to be friends online.

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