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Submission + - Hacker Posts British Police Logins Online (paritynews.com)

Submitted by hypnosec
hypnosec writes: A hacker, going by the name ‘0x00x00’, has posted credentials of what seems to be login credentials of police officers from two constabularies in the UK — Hertfordshire and Nottinghamshire. The hacker posted the information on Pastebin yesterday and the top of the post contains the banner 'OpFreeAssange'. The hacker however has stressed that he/she is not a member of the notorious hacktivist group Anonymous. There are a total of 5 posts that start with the name #OpFreeAssange.

Submission + - Funky Flying Wing Rotates 90degrees to go Supersonic (space.com)

Submitted by
Big Hairy Ian
Big Hairy Ian writes: "An aircraft that resembles a four-point ninja star could go into supersonic mode by simply turning 90 degrees in midair. The unusual "flying wing" concept has won $100,000 in NASA funding to trying becoming a reality for future passenger jet travel.

The supersonic, bidirectional flying wing idea comes from a team headed by Ge-Chen Zha, an aerospace engineer at Florida State University. He said the fuel-efficient aircraft could reach supersonic speeds without the thunderclap sound produced by a sonic boom — a major factor that previously limited where the supersonic Concorde passenger jet could fly over populated land masses."
Patents

Submission + - Tokyo court deals win for Samsung (bbc.co.uk)

Submitted by
AmiMoJo
" rel="nofollow">AmiMoJo writes: "A court in Tokyo has ruled that Samsung Electronics did not infringe on a patent was related to transferring media content between devices. Tokyo District Judge Tamotsu Shoji dismissed the case filed by Apple in August, finding that Samsung was not in violation of Apple patents related to synchronising music and video data between devices and servers."
Medicine

Submission + - University of Cape Town announces cure for Malaria (gizmocrazed.com)

Submitted by Diggester
Diggester writes: Researchers at the University of Cape Town in South Africa have developed a pill that can wipe out malaria with a single dose. It's a development that could save millions of lives in Africa alone, not to mention the rest of the world. But there's a teensy weensy little hurdle that must first be overcome: human testing.
Programming

Submission + - The Truth About 'Rock-Star' Developers (infoworld.com)

Submitted by
snydeq
snydeq writes: "You want the best and the brightest money can buy. Or do you? Andrew Oliver offers six hard truths about 'rock-star' developers, arguing in favor of mixed skill levels with a focus on getting the job done: 'A big, important project has launched — and abruptly crashed to the ground. The horrible spaghetti code is beyond debugging. There are no unit tests, and every change requires a meeting with, like, 40 people. Oh, if only we'd had a team of 10 "rock star" developers working on this project instead! It would have been done in half the time with twice the features and five-nines availabilty. On the other hand, maybe not. A team of senior developers will often produce a complex design and no code, thanks to the reasons listed below.'"
Science

Submission + - Calorie restriction does not seem to lengthen lifespan in primates (nature.com)

Submitted by
ananyo
ananyo writes: "Drastically cutting back on calories does not seem to lengthen lifespan in primates. The verdict, from a 25-year study in rhesus monkeys fed 30% less than control animals, represents another setback for the notion that a simple, diet-triggered switch can slow ageing. Instead, the findings suggest that genetics and dietary composition matter more for longevity than a simple calorie count (abstract)."

Submission + - Wordpress Blogs have blanket ban in India (wordpress.com)

Submitted by damitr
damitr writes: Citing that some of the blogs spread hatred and violence, some of the ISPs in India on directions from the Government have made a blanket ban on all wordpress blogs.
Australia

Submission + - World first bionic eye goes live! (theage.com.au)

Submitted by djjockey
djjockey writes: From the article:
A blind woman can now see spots of light after being implanted with an early prototype bionic eye, confirming the potential of the world-first technology.
Open Source

Submission + - Makerplane aims to create the first open source aircraft (gizmag.com)

Submitted by cylonlover
cylonlover writes: MakerPlane plans to do for the aviation industry what Firefox and Linux did for computers. By adopting open source design and digital manufacturing, MakerPlane's founder John Nicol hopes to overcome the frustration and disappointment that most kit plane builders encounter. Over 60 percent of all kitplanes started end up collecting dust and those that are finished must overcome the challenges of complicated plans, the need for special tools and thousands of hours of labor with little or no manufacturer support.

Nicol believes that a more community-oriented design approach will overcome many of these obstacles. Israel-based aeronautical engineer Jeffrey Meyer is leading the MakerPlane charge to develop a safe, inexpensive kitplane that can be built at home or at a “makerspace” through the efforts of people volunteering their efforts and ideas. MakerPlane intends to make the plans and avionics software for the plane available for free, but will sell parts and support services to fund the project.
Space

Submission + - Space Sugar Discovered in Binary System Star (msn.com)

Submitted by
SchrodingerZ
SchrodingerZ writes: "Sweet tooths rejoice! 400 light years from Earth in the constellation Ophiuchus, sugar molecules have been confirmed in a gas cloud surrounding a young star. The star, IRAS 16293-2422, though early in its life is relativity close to the size of our Sun. It is part of a Binary star system. "'In the disk of gas and dust surrounding this newly formed star, we found glycolaldehyde, which is a simple form of sugar, not much different to the sugar we put in coffee,' study lead author Jes Jorgensen, of the Niels Bohr Institute in Denmark, said in a statement." Glycolaldehyde has been found before in space, but never this close to a Sun-like planet. In fact "the molecules are about the same distance away from the star as the planet Uranus is from our sun." This discovery proves that the building blocks of life could have possibly existed in the earlier parts of our own solar system. This particular sugar reacts with propenal to form ribose, which is a major component for organic life on Earth."
Power

Submission + - Harvesting Uranium from Seawater Using Shrimp Shells

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens writes
Hugh Pickens writes writes: "Uranium is currently mined from ore deposits around the world, but there are fears that demand may outstrip the supply of ore as nuclear power becomes more widespread and while the world's oceans hold billions of tons of uranium at tiny concentrations of three parts per billion, extracting uranium from seawater has up to now been uneconomical. Now BBC reports that a new technique using uranium-absorbing mats made from discarded shrimp shells containing plastic fibers impregnated with molecules that both lock onto the fibers and preferentially absorb uranium has culminated in a field test that has netted a kilogram of uranium. "We began working with the Gulf Coast Agricultural and Seafood Co-operative... and with the shrimpers and crabbers there, and found they were paying hundreds of thousands of dollars to get rid of their waste [shells]" says Robin Rogers of the University of Alabama who outlined an improvement developed in his own group: seafood shells. Research has focussed on improving both the braided fibers of the mat and the "ligand" that captures the uranium, which has most often been a molecule called poly-acrylamidoxime. "We discovered an 'ionic liquid' — a molten salt — could extract a very important polymer called chitin directly from shrimp shells," Rogers added. Although the extraction process has not reached parity with the more mature — but more environmentally damaging — technology of mining uranium ores, work is promising enough to begin to remove a concern about the sustainability of those terrestrial sources and any stumbling block they may present to growth in the nuclear power industry. "This uncertainty around whether there's enough terrestrial uranium is impacting the decision-making in the industry because it's hard to make long-term research and development or deployment decisions in the face of big uncertainties about the resource," says Erich Schneider, Ph.D. "So if we can tap into uranium from seawater, we can remove that uncertainty.""
Piracy

Submission + - PC has a Piracy Rate of 93-95%, says Ubisoft (gamesindustry.biz) 1

Submitted by silentbrad
silentbrad writes: From GamesIndustry International: "Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot has told GamesIndustry International that the percentage of paying players is the same for free to play as it is for PC boxed product: around five to seven per cent. ... 'On PC it's only around five to seven per cent of the players who pay for F2P, but normally on PC it's only about five to seven per cent who pay anyway, the rest is pirated. It's around a 93-95 per cent piracy rate, so it ends up at about the same percentage. The revenue we get from the people who play is more long term, so we can continue to bring content.' ... 'We must be careful because the consoles are coming. People are saying that the traditional market is declining and that F2P is everything — I'm not saying that. We're waiting for the new consoles — I think that the new consoles will give a huge boost to the industry, just like they do every time that they come. This time, they took too long so the market is waiting.'
News

Submission + - Studies suggest rape victims are more likely to be pregnant (washingtonpost.com)

Submitted by
ndogg
ndogg writes: "Todd Akin's comments were not merely wrong and anti-scientific, they seem to be almost completely the opposite of the science that's out there. A study, "Are per-incident rape-pregnancy rates higher than per-incident consensual pregnancy rates?", published in the journal Human Nature by Jonathan A. Gottschall and Tiffani A. Gottschall, two professors at St. Lawrence University in Canton, N.Y. seemed to indicate that rape victims are actually twice as likely to become pregnant than women that had consensual sex. One of the hypotheses put forward as to why is that rapists are attracted to fertile women."

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