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Submission + - Israeli cave offers clues about when humans mastered fire (sciencemag.org)

Submitted by sciencehabit
sciencehabit writes: Mastering fire was one of the most important developments in human prehistory. But it’s also one of the hardest to pin down, with different lines of evidence pointing to different timelines. A new study of artifacts from a cave in Israel suggests that our ancestors began regularly using fire about 350,000 years ago—far enough back to have shaped our culture and behavior but too recent to explain our big brains or our expansion into cold climates.

Submission + - 3D map of DNA reveals hidden loops that allow genes to work together (sciencemag.org)

Submitted by sciencehabit
sciencehabit writes: Every genome is a miracle of packaging. Somehow a human cell crams two meters of DNA into its tiny nucleus, and yet this tangled mess can carry out the complex task of building and maintaining our bodies. Now, the most detailed look yet at this genomic jumble reveals loops of DNA that bring distant parts of chromosomes together, allowing them to act in concert. The work could help researchers pin down the genetic causes of diseases and help clarify how the genome functions.

Submission + - Newcastle University study: Men are bigger idiots

Submitted by BarbaraHudson
BarbaraHudson writes: The study, which first appeared in the British Medical Journal, has attracted media attention .

For their analysis, the researchers reviewed all Darwin Award nominations from 1995 to 2014. They relied on confirmed accounts only. Overall, males made up 88.7% of Darwin Award winners over the study period, a “highly statistically significant” sex difference in idiotic risk-taking behaviour.

Of 332 nominations, men and women, typically "over-adventurous couples in compromising positions," shared 14. Of the 318 valid cases remaining, 282 awards were awarded to men, and just 36 to women. The finding, they conclude, supports their working hypothesis "that men are idiots and idiots do stupid things."

Submission + - Why women's bodies abort males during tough times (sciencemag.org)

Submitted by sciencehabit
sciencehabit writes: In times of trouble, multiple studies have shown, more girls are born than boys. No one knows why, but men need not worry about being overrun by women. An analysis of old church records in Finland has revealed that the boys that are born in stressful times survive better than those born during less challenging periods. The work helps explain why women may have evolved a tendency to abort certain males and could lead to a better understanding of miscarriages.

Submission + - New compilation of banned Chinese search-terms reveals curiosities (thestack.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Canada’s Citizen Lab has compiled data from various research projects around the world in an attempt to create a manageable Github repository of government-banned Chinese keywords in internet search terms and which may appear in Chinese websites. Until now the study of such terms has proved problematic due to disparate research methods and publishing formats. A publicly available online spreadsheet which CCL have provided to demonstrate the project gives an interesting insight into the reactive and eccentric nature of the Great Blacklist of China, as far as outside research can deduce. Aside from the inevitable column listings of dissidents and references to government officials and the events in Tiananmen Square in 1989, search terms as basic as 'system' and 'human body' appear to be blocked.

Submission + - "Fat-Burning Pill" Inches Closer to Reality (gizmag.com)

Submitted by Zothecula
Zothecula writes: Researchers at Harvard University say they have identified two chemical compounds that could replace "bad" fat cells in the human body with healthy fat-burning cells, in what may be the first step toward the development of an effective medical treatment – which could even take the form of a pill – to help control weight gain.

Submission + - DOJ Launches New Cybercrime Unit, Claims Privacy Top Priority (threatpost.com)

Submitted by msm1267
msm1267 writes: Leslie Caldwell, assistant attorney general in the criminal division of the Department of Justice announced on Thursday the creation of a new team within its Computer Crime and Intellectual Property Section (CCIPS) during a talk at a Georgetown Law conference titled, “Cybercrime 2020: The Future of Online Crime and Investigations.” Known as the Cybercrime Unit, the team is tasked with enhancing public-private security efforts.

A large part of the Cybersecurity Unit’s mission will be to quell the growing distrust many Americans have toward law enforcement’s high-tech investigative techniques. Even if that lack of trust, as Caldwell claimed, is based largely on misinformation about the technical abilities of the law enforcement tools and the manners in which they are used.

“In fact, almost every decision we make during an investigation requires us to weigh the effect on privacy and civil liberties, and we take that responsibility seriously,” Caldwell said. “Privacy concerns are not just tacked onto our investigations, they are baked in."

Submission + - NASA Orion Capsule Succesfully Lifts off from Florida Space Coast (nbcnews.com)

Submitted by PaisteUser
PaisteUser writes: NBC News writes: America's most powerful rocket launched a robotic test version of NASA's Orion deep-space capsule on its first flight on Friday, a day after a series of snags forced a scrub of the first attempt. The United Launch Alliance Delta 4 Heavy rocket's liftoff from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station had to be postponed on Thursday — at first due to gusty winds, and later due to a balky fuel valve. But on Friday, no technical issues or weather snags got in the way of an on-time 7:05 a.m. ET launch, even though the clouds were thick over Florida's Space Coast.

"Liftoff at dawn! The dawn of Orion, for a new era of American space exploration!" launch commentator Mike Curie said as the rocket blasted through the clouds just after sunrise.

Article include a live feed from the NASA TV channel, NTV-1.

Comment Technically, that isn't West (Score 2) 327

by hydrodog (#48511401) Attached to: You're Doing It All Wrong: Solar Panels Should Face West, Not South
The article overstates the difference in angle -- not due west, you mean adjust west of due South. If you are in the northern hemisphere, there is an optimal angle depending on latitude. If you want to shift to later in the day, that is Southwest. If you live in Australia, that would be Northwest.

Submission + - Child abuse database containing millions of images to launch 1

Submitted by mrspoonsi
mrspoonsi writes: Data taken from tens of millions of child abuse photos and videos will shortly be used as part of a new police system to aid investigations into suspected paedophiles across the UK. The obscene material was seized during previous operations. The project, called the Child Abuse Image Database (Caid), will be launched by the Prime Minister at an internet safety event on Thursday 11 December. To help compare the images, Caid makes use of a unique signature assigned to each one — known as a hash value — the equivalent of a "digital fingerprint". Detectives will be able to plug seized hard drives into the system so they can be scanned and their contents similarly encoded to see if the resulting signatures match. Other techniques, including object matching and visual similarity analysis, are also employed. Caid will also be able to use GPS data from photographs to pinpoint where they were taken. Detectives will also be able to upload new, unfamiliar images of child abuse to a central computer server so that colleagues elsewhere in the UK can help try and identify those involved.

Submission + - Open hardware and Software AMD64 Laptop (openlunchbox.com) 24

Submitted by LuxuryYacht
LuxuryYacht writes: Open Lunchbox is an Open Hardware and Software Laptop Project. Some of the problems with other open laptop projects in the past have been either not being x86, not being open or not being an actual laptop.

Open Lunchbox will have all the design and fabrication files open and free. Uses a 4-core AMD64 CPU with HD8400 series graphics. Is an actual laptop mainboard and laptop. It's powerful enough for everyday use and a low cost design without sacrificing quality and reliability. The design is flexible enough to be used in several laptops with different sets of features or as an open development platform. The coreboot source will be hosted at coreboot.org GIT repo. Open Lunchbox will also provide complete assembled mainboards and laptops.

Submission + - Football Concussion Lawsuits Start to Hit High Schools

Submitted by HughPickens.com
HughPickens.com writes: Michael Tarm reports that a former high school quarterback has filed a lawsuit against the Illinois High School Association saying it didn't do enough to protect him from concussions when he played and still doesn't do enough to protect current players. This is the first instance in which legal action has been taken for former high school players as a whole against a group responsible for prep sports in a state. Such litigation could snowball, as similar suits targeting associations in other states are planned. "In Illinois high school football, responsibility — and, ultimately, fault — for the historically poor management of concussions begins with the IHSA," the lawsuit states. It calls high school concussions "an epidemic" and says the "most important battle being waged on high school football fields ... is the battle for the health and lives of" young players. The lawsuit calls on the Bloomington-based IHSA to tighten its head-injury protocols. It doesn't seek damages. "This is not a threat or attack on football," says attorney Joseph Siprut, who reached a $75 million settlement in a similar lawsuit against the NCAA in 2011. "Football is in danger in Illinois and other states — especially at the high school level — because of how dangerous it is. If football does not change internally, it will die. The talent well will dry up as parents keep kids out of the sport— and that's how a sport dies."

Previous research has shown that far from innocuous, invisible injuries, concussions confer tremendous brain damage. Individuals with chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) may show symptoms of dementia, such as memory loss, aggression, confusion and depression, which generally appear years or many decades after the trauma. "The idea that you can whack your head hundreds of times in your life and knock yourself out and get up and be fine is gone," says Chris Nowinski. "We know we can't do that anymore. This causes long-term damage."

Submission + - Black Friday: E-commerce Pages Were 20% Slower On Desktop, 57% Slower On Mobile

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Black Friday news kicked off this weekend quite early when Best Buy was hit with a massive outage, but it turns out that was only half the story. The top 50 e-commerce websites were slower overall this year compared to last, suggesting customers were frustrated even if they could get to their favorite shopping site. Web performance monitoring company Catchpoint Systems looked at aggregate performance this weekend and compared it to the same timeframe in 2013. The results are notable: desktop webpages were 19.85 percent slower, while mobile webpages were a whopping 57.21 percent slower.

Submission + - Science Confirms The Bigger The Belly, The Better The Lover (thescienceworld.com)

Submitted by Diggester
Diggester writes: Researchers at Erciyes University in Kayseri, Turkey have just completed a yearlong study that looked at the correlation between body mass index (BMI) and male sexual performance. Their findings: Overweight men with obvious bellies lasted an astounding five minutes — five minutes! — longer in the sack than their thinner brethren.

A total of 200 men were surveyed. Researchers ultimately found that men with a higher BMI (i.e. bellies) lasted an average of 7.3 minutes in bed. The slimmer of the group barely lasted two minutes, and were more likely to suffer from premature ejaculation.

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