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Submission + - Quirky Four-Quark Quantum Monster Discovered (discovery.com)

Submitted by astroengine
astroengine writes: While looking for a strange state of matter in two particle accelerators, another, totally unexpected particle has been discovered. Say hello to the Zc(3900) particle, a particle that physicists had little clue could exist. What makes the Zc(3900) unique is that it is apparently composed of four quaks (charm, anti-charm quark, down and anti-down) — the first 4-quark hadron to be discovered experimentally. It was detected by two particle accelerators — the Belle experiment in Japan and the BESIII experiment in China — during studies of the Y(4260) particle that was discovered in 2005. Physicists noticed an excess at 3.9 GeV in the debris of the decay of the Y(4260) and 460 detections of the Zc(3900) have now been made. Some work needs to be done in characterizing the particle, but two papers have been published in Physical Review Letters.

Submission + - FBI "Most Wanted" list names its 500th fugitive (networkworld.com)

Submitted by coondoggie
coondoggie writes: t's a list one would never aspire to be on. The FBI today said it named the 500th criminal to its iconic "Ten Most Wanted Fugitives," program — a list that has been kept since 1950. The idea behind the Ten Most Wanted was to get the names and faces of criminals out to the public and ultimately lead to their capture. And the FBI says the list has done just that in a major way: Of the 500 fugitives who have been named to the list, 469 have been apprehended or located. Of those, 155 fugitives have been captured or located as a direct result of citizen cooperation, the agency says.

Submission + - Double Standards! (cnn.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: A former sixth-grade teacher and mother of two pleaded guilty to having sex with a student, Southern California authorities said Friday.
Malia Brooks, who taught at Garden Grove Elementary in Simi Valley, pleaded guilty Thursday to three counts of lewd conduct with a child under 14, said Ventura County Deputy District Attorney Erin Meister.
The judge indicated that Brooks will likely receive a six-year prison term when sentenced on August 23, Meister said. Bail was set at $2 million for the 32-year-old Brooks, who remains in custody.
"Malia Brooks has a mental illness. For 31 years, she was a law-abiding citizen," her attorney, Ron Bamieh, said. "Something had to occur for her to drastically change who she was. It's not like she is attracted to 12 year-old boys."
Brooks agreed to the plea deal because she did not want to put the victim through a trial, Bamieh said.
A police investigation into allegations that Brooks carried on an inappropriate relationship with a male student began in February. Authorities say the relationship occurred during a four month period in 2012.
Brooks, who had been on administrative leave, resigned from the Simi Valley Unified School District earlier this month.
She was arraigned on charges Wednesday and plead guilty on Thursday, Bamieh said.
Georgia teacher accused of having sex with students.

----------------------------------------

Rant:
Why the double standards? Only 6 years of jail and she will get off on good behavior, no registry, no community service, etc.
If a male teacher did this (and does), he gets hung by his neck, sent away for 15yrs, made to register, and has monitoring.

Apparently in this society, it's okay for little boys to get 'lucky' with women, pathetically sick.

What is your opinion?
Source: http://www.cnn.com/2013/06/14/justice/california-teacher-sex-case/index.html?hpt=hp_t5

Submission + - PGP - Hacked or not? 1

Submitted by SuperCharlie
SuperCharlie writes: I have been a windows desktop tech since 3.1 and around the early 2000's took the web developer direction. I am somewhat ashamed to admit that until the recent spat of news I have never investigated encryption.

After a few nights of drinking from the PGP firehose and discussing encrypting my emails and such with a fellow web developer who has about as much knowledge as me in the PGP arena we have come to a loggerhead.

He believes that some time shortly after 1996 PGP was basically compromised by the U.S. government and that any versions afterwards can quite easily be decrypted, basically making the process a waste of time.

I explained that Gpg4win and other open source PGP versions would be obvious to the community if they were compromised.

Maybe I am so uninformed that I am not even asking the right questions, so, I present this question to the /. community at large: PGP — Hacked or not?

Submission + - Supremes nix gene patents

Submitted by ColdWetDog
ColdWetDog writes: The ongoing story of Myriad Genetics versus the rest of the world has come to an end. In a 9-0 decision, the US Supreme Court has decided that human genes cannot be patented. From a brief Bloomberg article:

Writing for the court, Justice Clarence Thomas said isolated DNA is a “product of nature and not patent eligible merely because it has been isolated.” At the same time, Thomas said synthetic molecules known as complementary DNA, or cDNA, can be patented because they require a significant amount of human manipulation to create.

Seems perfectly sane. Raw genes, the ones you find in nature are, wait for it — natural. Other bits of manipulated DNA / RNA / protein which take skill and time to create are potentially patentable. Oddly, Myriad Genetics stock actually rose on that information.

Medicine

Submission + - New Program Detects Alzheimer's 6 Years Before Symptoms With 100% Accuracy (counselheal.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Being able to diagnose people with Alzheimer's disease years before debilitating symptoms appear is now a step closer to reality. Researchers behind Neurotrack, the technology startup that took the first health prize at this year's South by Southwest (SXSW) startup accelerator in Austin, says their new technology can diagnose Alzheimer's disease up to six years before symptoms appear with 100 percent accuracy.

Comment Re:Better off enforcing an EA boycott (Score 2) 469

by emkyooess (#43155355) Attached to: Is It Time To Enforce a Gamers' Bill of Rights?

- DRM done right and not invasive
No such thing.

- Fast download of new release games
Irrelevant. Not specific to Valve. Plenty of other pro-consumer vendors have it.

- Ability to install your games as many times as you like?
Irrelevant without DRM.

- Super cheap specials and multi-packs
Irrelevant. Not specific to Valve. Plenty of other pro-consumer vendors have it.

- Offline modes
Irrelevant without DRM.

- Simple game install and patch deployment
Possibly. I prefer standalone patch downloads that I can opt out of or run the version I choose, if I want to run an old version.

But it's otherwise all downside: Valve's a gigantic gaping back door to social acceptance of DRM. They are the ones who began the erosion of consumer rights in the video game sector. They are the ones who implanted in the popular mind that it's okay to require a game to have an online connection before you can play it. Even the pros you mention above are all Trojan horses at best to convince you to accept their DRM practices in the name of "sales!".
Science

Submission + - Take a Deep Breath – Scientists Working on a Stress Breath Test (gizmag.com)

Submitted by Zothecula
Zothecula writes: Most of us are able to let other people know that we’re stressed, simply by telling them. For people such as those suffering from Alzheimer’s, however, it can be difficult to express such a thought. That’s why UK scientists at Loughborough University and Imperial College London are developing a new test that can determine someone’s stress levels by analyzing their breath.
Science

Submission + - Sunstone Unearthed From Sixteenth Century Shipwreck (sciencemag.org)

Submitted by sciencehabit
sciencehabit writes: In 1592, a British ship sank near the island of Alderney in the English Channel carrying an odd piece of cargo: a small, angular crystal. Once it was brought back to land, a few European scientists began to suspect the mysterious object might be a calcite crystal, a powerful "sunstones" referred to in Norse legends which they believe Vikings and other European seafarers used to navigate before the introduction of the magnetic compass. Now, after subjecting the object to a battery of mechanical and chemical tests, the team has determined that the Alderman crystal is indeed a calcite and, therefore, could have been the ship's optical compass. Today, similar calcite crystals are used by astronomers to analyze the atmospheres of exoplanets—perhaps setting the stage for a whole new age of exploration.
Ubuntu

Submission + - Wayland vs Mir: It's more about control than technology (muktware.com)

Submitted by sfcrazy
sfcrazy writes: Most of the communication Canonical has sent out to justify why they dropped Wayland focusses on the problems plaguing Wayland, including the security issues. Which doesn’t seem to be true. If we look at the IRC discussion between Wayland/X developers and a Canonical employee it turns out that none of the reasons cited on Mir wiki page are valid and the one reason that's missing from the wiki is about CLA and control. Canonical wanted complete control of the project instead of 'collaborating' with Wayland. But that reason would make them look bad.

What is Canonical up to? Why are they manipulating everything?
Government

Submission + - U.S. lawmaker introduces bill to legalize cellphone unlocking (networkworld.com)

Submitted by alphadogg
alphadogg writes: A U.S. senator has proposed a bill that will allow consumers to unlock cellphones for use in other networks, after the Obama backed over 114,000 petitioners http://www.networkworld.com/community/blog/petition-legalize-cell-phone-unlocking-tops-100000-signatures http://www.networkworld.com/community/blog/petition-legalize-cell-phone-unlocking-tops-100000-signatures who asked the government to legalize the unlocking of smartphones. "You bought it, you should be able to use it. My Wireless Device Independence Act ensures you can unlock your device," said Senator Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat, in a Twitter message on Tuesday. https://twitter.com/RonWyden/status/309074335040159745

Submission + - New type of silicone exhibits both viscous and elastic properties (gizmag.com)

Submitted by cylonlover
cylonlover writes: Looking for a more effective solution to the all-too-common wobbly table dilemma than a folded up bit of cardboard or piece of rubber under the leg, University of Virginia physicist Lou Bloomfield created a new type of silicone rubber called Vistik – it's malleable enough to take on any shape when pressed, but is still resilient enough to offer support, as it gradually starts to return to its original shape as the pressure is released. The material could have many applications ... beyond just steadying up wobbly tables.
DRM

Submission + - SimCity Launch Failure: A good case for DRM being bad for business (pcgamer.com)

Submitted by
earlzdotnet
earlzdotnet writes: "The SimCity release happened, yet there are many people incapable of playing the game. Many can't install the game because the Origin servers providing the downloads are overloaded. This is to be expected. But, one cited reason for this is because they didn't allow preloading of the game at all. Even if you decided to buy a disk set instead of download it, you'll still have problems installing it because it still needs a few files from their servers that wasn't provided

One of it's primary features is multiplayer support. However, single player support appears to have taken a back seat. So, now even the lucky few that have managed to get it installed are having to wait in a queue to play the single player game because it requires a slot on their servers.

Although it's a best guess at this point, but one of the probable causes of all this happening is because they were trying really hard to prevent piracy. It's not easily possible to pirate a game if all the logic goes through their servers. However, by doing it in this manner, they have (like most DRM schemes) harmed the paying customers primarily. As a result of these failures, many people are steering clear of buying the game and even requesting refunds from EA."

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