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Medicine

Valuable Objects Stimulate Brain More Than Junk 118

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the klepto-addiction dept.
Roland Piquepaille writes "According to researchers at the University of California at San Diego, visual areas of our brain respond more to valuable objects than other ones. In other words, our brain has stronger reactions when we see a diamond ring than we look at junk. Similarly, our brain vision areas are more excited by a Ferrari than, say, a Tata new Nano car. In this holiday season, I'm sure you've received gifts that excited your brain — and others that you already want to resell on an auction site."
Earth

Inside the Active Volcano On Montserrat 42

Posted by kdawson from the magma-sponge dept.
Roland Piquepaille writes "An international team of researchers has begun collecting imaging data on the Soufriere Hills Volcano in Montserrat, which has been erupting regularly since 1995. They're using the equivalent of a CAT scan to understand its internal structure and how and when it erupts. The experiment is dubbed SEA-CALIPSO and 'will use air guns and a string of sensors off the back of a research ship combined with sensors on land to try to image the magma chamber.' Early results are surprising. Quoting one of the leading scientists: 'The interesting thing is that much more magma is erupting than appears represented by the subsiding bowl. ... The magma volume in Montserrat eruptions is much larger than anyone would estimate from the surface deformation, because of the elastic storage of magma in what is effectively a huge magma sponge.'"
Biotech

Submission + - Jennifer Aniston has one neuron 1

Submitted by ferespo
ferespo writes: named after her , at least .

The "Jennifer Aniston neuron", as it has been dubbed, helps explain why we are able to recognise familiar faces so quickly.
When shown a picture of the Friends actress, a particular cell in people's brains is fired up. Photos of other celebrities — such as Halle Berry, Tom Cruise or Oprah Winfrey — spark a reaction in entirely different cells, the study by neuroscientists at the University of Leicester showed.
Professor Quian Quiroga says his research will help the development of "mind-reading" medical technology, such as robotic devices controlled by neural signals for paralysed patients.
Privacy

Maryland Police Put Activists' Names On Terror List 426

Posted by timothy from the bad-incentive-to-remain-peaceful dept.
aaandre writes with word of a Washington Post story which begins: "The Maryland State Police classified 53 nonviolent activists as terrorists and entered their names and personal information into state and federal databases that track terrorism suspects, the state police chief acknowledged yesterday. The police also entered the activists' names into the federal Washington-Baltimore High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area database, which tracks suspected terrorists. One well-known antiwar activist from Baltimore, Max Obuszewski, was singled out in the intelligence logs released by the ACLU, which described a 'primary crime' of 'terrorism-anti-government' and a 'secondary crime' of 'terrorism-anti-war protesters.'" According to the article, "Both [former state police superintendent Thomas] Hutchins and [Maryland Police Superintendent Terrence] Sheridan said the activists' names were entered into the state police database as terrorists partly because the software offered limited options for classifying entries." Reader kcurtis adds "The State Police say they are purging the data, but this is one more example (on top of yesterday's news that datamining for terrorists is not feasible due to false positives) of just how badly the use of these lists can be abused."
Science

Fungus Fire Spores With 180,000 G Acceleration 69

Posted by timothy from the easy-at-that-size dept.
Hugh Pickens writes "Although a variety of spore discharge processes have evolved among the fungi, those with the longest ranges are powered by hydrostatic pressure and include 'squirt guns' that are most common in the Ascomycota and Zygomycota. In these fungi, fluid-filled stalks that support single spores or spore-filled sporangia, or cells called asci that contain multiple spores, are pressurized by osmosis. Because spores are discharged at such high speeds, most of the information on launch processes from previous studies has been inferred from mathematical models and is subject to a number of errors, but now Nicholas Money, an expert on fungi at Miami University, has recorded the discharges with high-speed cameras at 250,000 frames-a-second and discovered that fungi fire their spores with accelerations up to 180,000 g, calling it 'the fastest flight in nature.' Money and his students, in a justified fit of ecstasy, have created a video of the first fungus opera."
Media

MediaDefender's Parent Company Joins P2P Market 40

Posted by Soulskill from the playing-both-sides dept.
An anonymous reader writes with news that ArtistDirect, the company who acquired MediaDefender, has launched another company called PiCast for the purpose of P2P video distribution. The reader says: "This is a strange twist for a company which last year set up a video-sharing site called Miivi in an attempt to entrap users uploading copyrighted content, and was caught launching a DoS attack against Revision3, which we discussed earlier this year."
Earth

China to Build a Zero-Carbon Green City 620

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the tired-of-getting-whined-at-for-beijing dept.
gormanw writes "Just outside Shanghai, there is an island about the size of Manhattan. China is going to build its first-ever 'green city', complete with no gasoline/diesel powered vehicles, 100% renewable energy, green roofs, and recycling everything. The city is called Dongtan and it should house about 5,000 people by the end of 2010, with estimates of 500,000 by 2050. The goal is to build a livable city that is energy efficient, non-polluting, and protects the wildlife in the area."
Transportation

Submission + - TSA in Airports: The New Concentration Camps?

Submitted by PainMeds
PainMeds writes: For those of you who have nightmares about our country turning into a police state, one man has written a short essay comparing the TSA's tactics in airports to those of US concentration camps. The author cites many infractions of the TSA upon basic human rights and the constitution, and seems to suggest that, through fear and gradual transition, the TSA has managed to desensitize most Americans to the moral and ethical issues surrounding their seven-year tenure at our airports.
It's funny. Laugh.

Submission + - Exotic new particle discovered at LHC

Submitted by Screaming Cactus
Screaming Cactus writes: Even though the LHC has only been operational for a matter of days, scientists have already discovered a new particle. While it obeys most of the standard laws of quantum mechanics, this new particle, dubbed the "womon", exhibits several new characteristics unseen in other particles.

The Womon and the Feministic force: The Womon exhibits an intrinsic charge known as "Feminism". While in amorphous substrates, the feministic force generally causes the particles to be attracted to Masculons (a heavier, oppositely charged particle), in crystalline substrates with aligned feministic fields, the womon become attracted to masculons on one side, and repelled by them on the other. This effect is known as Bipolar Feminism.

Womon/womon exchanges: Womon have been observed to transfer information to other womon particles at faster than the speed of light, making womon-womon interactions the fastest known method of information transmission in the universe, and also making the womon the only thing in the universe that doesn't obey the all laws of physics.

Womon/Masculon bindings: When a womon successully binds with a masculon, the resulting aggregate becomes feministically neutral to most other particles. However, they still exhibit the feministic force on nearby masculons, which they may frequently interact with (and occasionally, become briefly entagled with) when their bound counterparticle isn't looking. Additionally, the bound masculon will always have to deal with the womon's bipolar feminism, regardless of its quantum state.

The Womon and the Pauli Exclusion Principle: Womon are fermions, so they obey the Pauli Exclusion Principle. While no two womon may share the same quantum space, more than one womon may bind with the same masculon, as long as they never come in contact. Since a womon is its own antiparticle, such a contact would result in a catastrophic explosion, severly damaging or destroying the masculon.

The Womon and the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle: Because of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, it is impossible to know, at the same time, both what a womon is angry about, and what you have to do to fix it.

Womon/Baryon interactions: The womon is attracted to certain types of matter. These include gold, silver, platinum, and various crystallized substances such as diamond, sapphire, etc. Scientists haven't yet determined what these various substances have in common, except that they're all expensive. A womon will more readily bond with a masculon compound containing these elements.

High-speed Womon particles: Womon travelling at high speeds are considered extremely dangerous. While most particles follow Newton's Laws and travel in a straight line, a high-speed womon may spontanously stop or unexpectedly alter trajectory. They also seem to be unable to organize themselves into coherent, straight lines with other particles.

Womon/Masculon energy transfer: After binding with a masculon, the bipolar feministic force will begin to slowly drain the masculon's intrinsic angular momentum, manifesting itself as an increase in mass of the womon. Scientists say this is the most efficient transformation of energy to mass known in physics. As the masculon particle's angular momentum approaches zero, the probability that the woman will spontaneously unbind increases. An unbound womon will generally shed excess mass before binding with another masculon.

Particle stability: The womon is a highly unstable particle, and requires this constant angular momentum exchange to prevent it from annihilating its bound counterparticle. Womon have been observed to spontanously explode for undetermined reasons.

Decay characteristics: The womon spontaneously decays into the feministically neutral Ol'Lady particle (named after the French scientist Jeane de Ol'Lady). Masculon bindings increase the decay rate. The half-life of a womon is approximately 35 years.

When asked by reporters what they thought of these new, exotic particles, some scientists claimed "We think we can synthesize a stable version of these particles, perhaps a feministic monopole." Others were afraid such a particle may cause worldwide destruction.

Feed The Register: Craigslist supervillain seeks henchmen (theregister.com)

From feed by registerfeed
'Goons. Hired goons.'

Much as we love our belittling, thankless toil rewarding lifes at the Reg, we have from time to time mused that it would be good to find a vocation in which we could fully express our suppressed violent side. And so it is that today we find ourselves tempted by this Craigslist ad, apparently placed by authentic supervillain Jacque (The Zapper) Zerapi, who is in need of tidy sorts to form a 30-strong gang of henchmen.

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