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Medicine

Seagulls Spreading Resistant Bacteria On Beaches 94

Posted by samzenpus from the just-when-you-thought-it-was-safe-to-go-into-the-water dept.
bs0d3 writes "Dr. Patrice Nordmann has disclosed the results of a small study that looked for resistant bacteria in seagull poop landing on Miami Beach in Florida. During April 2010, they collected 52 stool samples and found within them 83 isolates of gut bacteria such as E. coli. Wired's Maryn McKenna writes, 'Seven of the E. coli carried genes that direct production of CTX-M enzymes, a troublesome resistance factor that protects bacteria from the very broad category of drugs called extended-spectrum beta-lactams and that has recently spread worldwide. In addition, 14 of the E. coli were also carrying the gene for the CMY-2 enzyme, which confers the same ESBL resistance on Salmonella. Nine of the isolates were multi-drug resistant.' This has led some scientists to the conclusion that this is one avenue these bacterias are taking in human infections worldwide. The resistance factors identified in the seagull feces match ones that cause highly resistant infections in humans, and correlate with data collected on beaches in Portugal, Sweden, and France."
Star Wars Prequels

Why Star Wars Should be Left to the Fans 425

Posted by samzenpus from the don't-make-us-shoot-first dept.
Aguazul writes "The BBC has an interesting take on George Lucas's meddling with our memories: 'Fans of Star Wars are not happy. Someone has been tampering with their movie history.' They speculate on who really owns a piece of art. Even the artist doesn't really know what he's created, and a work doesn't become 'something' until given value by an audience: 'the artist is merely the medium for his or her work.' Many people contributed to the Star Wars trilogy. Is Lucas' over-inflated idea of his own importance in the process the reason he is stopping people seeing the unmodified originals?"
Space

First Exoplanet Discovered Orbiting Two Stars 88

Posted by timothy from the good-to-visit-not-to-live dept.
astroengine writes "For the first time, astronomers have discovered an exoplanet orbiting binary stars. Kepler-16b, a Saturn-sized world approximately 200 light-years away, orbits Kepler-16, two stars locked in a mutual dance. Although other exoplanets are known to exist in binary systems, they have only been known to be orbiting one star of the binary pair; Kepler-16b orbits both. No doubt Kepler-16b will excite memories of Tatooine, Luke Skywalker's homeworld, but the double sunset is where the similarities end. Kepler-16b would be anything but a desert world; it is the approximate size of Saturn, it is extremely cold, and its average density is that of water."
Government

How the Webb Space Telescope Got So Expensive 133

Posted by timothy from the pity-we-can't-short-the-stock dept.
First time accepted submitter IICV writes "Ethan Siegel of Starts with a Bang has done some research on how and why the James Webb Space Telescope's price tag ballooned. Quoting: 'Something wasn't adding up. How could the telescope be more than three-quarters complete after $3.5 billion, but require more than double that amount to finish it? Also, how did the launch date get bumped by three years, to 2018? And how did 6.5 billion become a disastrous $8.7 billion so quickly? So I did a little digging around, and perhaps a little investigative reporting as well, and got ahold of a Webb Project Scientist who's also a member of the Webb Science Working Group.'" Whether or not you buy the argument that the money's well-spent (at $5 billion or $8 billion, or either side of these), even the work in progress is beautiful.
Medicine

Is There a Hearing Aid Price Bubble? 698

Posted by timothy from the what's-it-worth-to-ya? dept.
An anonymous reader writes "The price of a pair of hearing aids in the U.S. ranges from $3,000 to $8,000. To the average American household, this is equivalent to 2-3 months of income! While the price itself seems exorbitant, what is even more grotesque is its continuous pace of growth: in the last decade the price of an average Behind the Ear hearing aid has more than doubled. To the present day, price points are not receding — even though most of its digital components have become increasingly commoditized. Is this a hearing aid price bubble?"
United States

Tech Company To Build Science Ghost Town In New Mexico 198

Posted by Soulskill from the who-you-gonna-call dept.
Charliemopps sends this excerpt from an AP report: "New Mexico, home to several of the nation’s premier scientific, nuclear and military institutions, is planning to take part in an unprecedented science project — a 20-square-mile model of a small U.S. city. A Washington, D.C.-based technology company announced plans Tuesday to build the state’s newest ghost town to test everything from renewable energy innovations to intelligent traffic systems, next-generation wireless networks and smart-grid cyber security systems. Although no one will live there, the replica city will be modeled after a typical American town of 35,000 people, complete with highways, houses and commercial buildings, old and new."
Businesses

Carol Bartz Is Out As Yahoo's CEO 200

Posted by Soulskill from the didn't-leverage-cloud-synergies-enough dept.
itwbennett sends word that Carol Bartz is no longer the CEO of Yahoo. Company CFO Tim Morse will take up the job's responsibilities temporarily. In an email to Yahoo staff, Bartz said she had been fired over the phone by the chairman of the board. The AllThingsD blog sums up the situation thus: "[When Bartz replaced Jerry Yang], she presented a take-no-prisoners image and was touted as someone with a reputation as a professional manager who could clean up the place. Not so, as it has turned out. While Bartz has streamlined certain areas and made some strong management hires, her performance has been decidedly bumpy and mostly downhill. The share price has settled in at about $12.50 (just about where it was when Bartz took over), Yahoo’s recent financial results have been weak, its key advertising business is struggling, its attrition rate among engineers and others is startlingly high and its product innovation cycle seems stopped up."
Books

What Is the Most Influential Programming Book? 624

Posted by samzenpus from the best-of-class dept.
First time accepted submitter AlexDomo writes "If you could go back in time and tell yourself to read a specific book at the beginning of your career as a developer, which book would it be? Since it was first posed back in 2008, this question has now become the second most popular question of all time on StackOverflow. The top 5 results are: Code Complete (2nd Edition), The Pragmatic Programmer: From Journeyman to Master, Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs, The C Programming Language, and Introduction to Algorithms."
Space

Cryogenic Truck Services Remote Telescopes 38

Posted by samzenpus from the telescope-repair-option dept.
coondoggie writes "Moving a 115-ton telescope down a mountain and 40 miles on the back of a humongous truck to a servicing facility is no task for the timid. It's a job the caretakers of the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), an international astronomy facility, no longer have to worry about thanks to a new custom designed truck that can transport and service ALMA's temperature-sensitive astronomical equipment without removing a telescope from the working array at 16,500 feet in the Chilean mountains."
Encryption

Submission + - Wikileaks dead man password leaked. (twitlonger.com) 1

Submitted by MaxBooger
MaxBooger writes: From @wikileaks

A Guardian journalist has, in a previously undetected act of gross negligence or malice, and in violation a signed security agreement with the Guardian's editor-in-chief Alan Rusbridger, disclosed top secret decryption passwords to the entire, unredacted, WikiLeaks Cablegate archive. We have already spoken to the State Department and commenced pre-litigation action. We will issue a formal statement in due course.
Open Source

Only Idiots Don't Give Back To Free Software 326

Posted by Unknown Lamer from the contribute-or-die dept.
Julie188 writes "Downstream projects who take without contributing back to the upstream project defeat the benefit of open source and sooner or later, all organizations developing on top of open source code will realize this, contends Jim Zemlin, executive director of the nonprofit Linux Foundation. So the time for cajoling those users — even commercial projects like Canonical — into participating is over. Contributing is 'not the right thing to do because of some moral issue or because we say you should do it. It's because you are an idiot if you don't,'" he says." Update: 08/30 21:40 GMT by S : Reworded summary to clarify that Zemlin wasn't referring to end users.

Submission + - When did Irene stop being a hurricane? (blogspot.com)

Submitted by jamesl
jamesl writes: Cliff Mass, a climate researcher at the University of Washington and popular Seattle blogger asks, "When did Irene stop being a hurricane?"

" ... there is really no reliable evidence of hurricane-force winds at any time the storm was approaching North Carolina or moving up the East Coast."

"I took a look at all the observations over Virgina, Maryland, Delaware, New Jersey, and New York. Not one National Weather Service or FAA observation location, not one buoy observations, none reach the requisite wind speed. Most were not even close."

"Surely, one of the observations upwind of landfall, over Cape Hatteras or one of the other barrier island locations, indicated hurricane-force sustained winds? Amazingly, the answer is still no."

Cliff supports his statement with data from NOAA/NWS/NDBC presented in easy to understand charts.
Open Source

Submission + - Linux at 20: New Challenges, New Opportunities (infoworld.com)

Submitted by
snydeq
snydeq writes: "InfoWorld's Neil McAllister examines the challenges and opportunities ahead for Linux as it enters its third decade, and finds that the rise of cloud computing and mobility could elevate the open source OS to a level of unprecedented dominance. 'The last 20 years haven't always been easy. Linux has made a few enemies, Microsoft foremost among them. It has faced its share of challenges, too, both technical and legal, and there are more hurdles ahead. Nonetheless, as Linux enters its third decade, its opportunities have never been greater. Computing is changing, and Linux is not only benefiting from this change but is enabling it. Thanks to a shift beyond the PC, Linux is poised to become more than just an OS, but one of the most transformative forces in computing history — and it's happening right under everyone's nose.'"

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