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Medicine

Child Psychotherapist: Easy and Constant Access To the Internet Is Harming Kids 353

Posted by samzenpus from the there's-something-wrong-with-my-brain dept.
First time accepted submitter sharkbiter sends note that one of the UK's foremost psychotherapists has concerns that smartphones may be harmful to the mental health of children. "Julie Lynn Evans has been a child psychotherapist for 25 years, working in hospitals, schools and with families, and she says she has never been so busy. 'In the 1990s, I would have had one or two attempted suicides a year – mainly teenaged girls taking overdoses, the things that don't get reported. Now, I could have as many as four a month.'.... Issues such as cyber-bullying are, of course, nothing new, and schools now all strive to develop robust policies to tackle them, but Lynn Evans’ target is both more precise and more general. She is pointing a finger of accusation at the smartphones - “pocket rockets” as she calls them – which are now routinely in the hands of over 80 per cent of secondary school age children. Their arrival has been, she notes, a key change since 2010. 'It’s a simplistic view, but I think it is the ubiquity of broadband and smartphones that has changed the pace and the power and the drama of mental illness in young people.'”
Google

FTC's Internal Memo On Google Teaches Companies a Terrible Lesson 121

Posted by samzenpus from the I've-learned-nothing dept.
schwit1 writes FTC staffers spent enormous time pouring through Google's business practices and documents as well as interviewing executives and rivals. They came to the conclusion that Google was acting in anti-competitive ways, such as restricting advertisers from working with rival search engines. But commissioners balked at the prospect of a lengthy and protracted legal fight. For a big company, that process may have been enlightening. Agency staffers might find evidence of anti-competitive behavior. But that doesn't mean the firm will face the music in the end. Previous attempts to go after big companies — such as the Justice Department's long-running antitrust case against Microsoft in the 1990s — loomed large in regulators' minds at the time of the Google probe, according to a former official who worked at the agency then. "Even if we were in the right and could win," said the former official, "it could take a lot of resources away from other enforcement."

Comment Re:Why not a Mac? (Score 1) 385

by frisket (#49296939) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: Choosing a Laptop To Support Physics Research?

Also, I think TexShop is the best LaTex editor.

"Some people think Buckingham Palace a fine building." (Nicholas Freeling)

I tries some for Windows, and they universally suck, IMHO.

AquaMacs (Emacs for Macs) works perfectly for LaTeX, as it does everywhere.

I can't believe how much time I wasted trying to use word for technical stuff when I was in school.

I run LaTeX courses and I hear this every time, especially from science students.

Learn Latex. I will save you life.

It will certainly save you time and effort. You might even get a life :-)

--
"Learn LaTeX?" Sure

Comment One reason (Score 1) 320

by frisket (#49295067) Attached to: Why I Choose PostgreSQL Over MySQL/MariaDB
We have a lot of XML publishing workflows. MySQL provides a -X commandline option which returns the results of a query in XML. I don't know if PostgreSQL, MSSQL, or Oracle have the equivalent (perhaps someone who knows can post). Right now, it's a pain-free way to get what we need in the form we want, with zero additional effort. If it exists in other rDBMSs, that makes our choices wider.
Cloud

"Hello Barbie" Listens To Children Via Cloud 163

Posted by samzenpus from the can't-talk-now-the-doll-is-listening dept.
jones_supa writes For a long time we have had toys that talk back to their owners, but a new "smart" Barbie doll's eavesdropping and data-gathering functions have privacy advocates crying foul. Toymaker Mattel bills Hello Barbie as the world's first "interactive doll" due to its ability to record children's playtime conversations and respond to them, once the audio is transmitted over WiFi to a cloud server. In a demo video, a Mattel presenter at the 2015 Toy Fair in New York says the new doll fulfills the top request that Mattel receives from girls: to have a two-way dialogue. "They want to have a conversation with Barbie," she said, adding that the new toy will be "the very first fashion doll that has continuous learning, so that she can have a unique relationship with each girl." Susan Linn, the executive director of Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood, has written a statement in which she says how the product is seriously creepy and creates a host of dangers for children and families. She asks people to join her in a petition under the proposal of Mattel discontinuing the toy.
Displays

Valve's SteamVR: Solves Big Problems, Raises Bigger Questions 124

Posted by Soulskill from the like-why-do-i-need-three-dimensions-of-candy-crush dept.
An anonymous reader writes: When Valve debuted its SteamVR headset recently, it came as somewhat of a surprise — it certainly hasn't gotten the same level of hype as the Oculus Rift. But people who got to try out the new headset almost universally impressed with the quality of the hardware and software. Eurogamer has an article about the device expressing both astonishment at how far the technology has come in three short years, as well as skepticism that we'll find anything revolutionary to do with it. Quoting: "R demands a paradigm shift in the thinking of game designers and artists about how they build virtual space and how players should interact with it. We're only at the very beginning of this journey now. ... but this process will likely take years, and at the end of it the games won't resemble those we're currently used to. In short, they won't be Half-Life 3."

The author thinks simulation games — driving, piloting, and space combat — will be the core of the first wave, and other genres will probably have to wait for the lessons learned making sims good. He adds, "...the practical challenges are great, too — not least in persuading players to clear enough space in their homes to use this device properly, and the potential for social stigma to attach to the goofy-looking headsets and the players' withdrawal into entirely private experiences. I still think that these present major obstacles to the widespread adoption of VR, which even more practical and commercially realistic offerings like Morpheus will struggle against."
Medicine

World's 1st Penis Transplant Done In South Africa 221

Posted by samzenpus from the new-equipment dept.
PolygamousRanchKid writes The world's first successful penis transplant has been performed by surgeons in South Africa, Bloomberg News reported Friday. The 21-year-old recipient has made a full recovery and regained all functions in the transplanted organ. The nine-hour operation was done Dec. 11 by surgeons from Stellenbosch University and Cape Town's Tygerberg Hospital, the university said Friday in a statement. The unidentified patient had his penis amputated three years ago in a life-saving procedure after he developed complications from a traditional circumcision. "Our goal was that he would be fully functional at two years and we are very surprised by his rapid recovery," said Dr. Andre van der Merwe, head of the university's urology division, who led the surgical team.
Biotech

New Molecular 3D Printer Can Create Billions of Compounds 132

Posted by Soulskill from the go-big-or-go-home dept.
ErnieKey writes: University of Illinois researchers have created a device, called a Molecular-Machine, which essentially manufactures on the molecular compound level. Martin Burke, the lead researcher on this project says that they are already able to synthesize over a billion different compounds with the machine, compounds which up until now have been very difficult to synthesize. The impact on the pharmaceutical industry could be staggering.
Businesses

Why Israel Could Be the Next Cybersecurity World Power 163

Posted by Soulskill from the necessity-is-the-mother-of-invention dept.
jfruh writes: Beersheba is a small town in southern Israel, more than an hour's drive away from Tel Aviv and the bulk of the country's population. But the city is a hotbed of cybersecurity startups driven in part by a graduate program at the local university and the country's military and intelligence apparatus's keen interest in the subject. "To become such a cyber nexus, any place has to have several ingredients: A great university with a solid computer science department with a penchant for security research. Check. Several industry partners who have set up their own research and innovation laboratories nearby, to take advance of the cheap labor pool of graduate students. Check. An active venture capitalist operation that can fund startups is also essential, along with mentors who can help entrepreneurs along. Double check. And finally some solid support for local and national government to grease the wheels of progress. Check."

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