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Comment Re:The cat's out of the bag (Score 2) 299

by Dr. Zim (#49300533) Attached to: Scientists: It's Time To Resolve the Ethics of Editing Human Genome

Before you can perfect editing the genome without side effects you are going to mess things up. That is the ethical dilemma that needs to be answered who do you practice on.

Certainly! But our* corporations have a pretty crappy record of balancing ethics and profits.

* Humankind's. No country or race has any claim to superior ethical behavior.

Submission + - Some Biodegradable Plastics Don't Live Up To Their Claims (acs.org) 1

Submitted by ckwu
ckwu writes: From bread bags to beverage bottles, many plastics now contain additives designed to make the materials biodegradable. But a new study shows that plastics made with such additives do not biodegrade in the environment significantly faster than those without the compounds. Researchers prepared films of commercial plastics with three different types of additives supplied by their manufacturers. The researchers then treated the film samples to mimic disposal of such plastics in a compost pile, a landfill, and soil. After about six months of composting, a year and a half of landfill-like conditions, and three years of soil burial, the plastics with additives did not show any more evidence of biodegradation than plastics without them.

Submission + - Tag Heuer partners with Google and Intel to create luxury Apple Watch rival (thestack.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Luxury Swiss watchmaker Tag Heuer has announced that it will be designing a smartwatch in partnership with U.S. tech giants Google and Intel. The watch is to rival similar devices in the consumer wearables market, specifically the much-anticipated Apple Watch. Tag is the first watchmaker to join with Google, however it is thought that the deal will also welcome collaborations with other high-quality LVMH brands such as, Hublot and Zenith. The watch will be available towards the end of the year, with price structures and functionality details announced shortly before its release.

Submission + - Open source robots help sick kids visit the zoo (opensource.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Robots for Good is a spinoff of two projects on Wevolver, the Inmoov Robot and OpenWheels. The Inmoov project was already quite big when we heard about it, and we got in contact with creator Gael Langevin to see if we could help him with the documentation.

We decided it would be great to connect the robot to hospitalized children so they could use the robot as their personal avatar and visit the London Zoo.

The main problem is Inmoov's legs—they aren't finished yet. To solve that, we connected with the OpenWheels project, another project on Wevolver created by Boris Landoni. It's basically an open source Segway that will allow the robot to move around.

Submission + - Why the USA is stuck at the gates of a telecommuting revolution (thestack.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: "For the vast majority of potential remote workers, the daily commute is the only way to get to the job and keep the job" says Michael Shear of the Broadband Planning Initiative in Washington DC., in this in-depth look at the governmental and infrastructural bottlenecks that keep the vast economic and societal advantages of remote working at bay in the United States- despite the ongoing and predicted crises implicated in retaining a 19thC model of a working and productive society.

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