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Submission Summary: 0 pending, 90 declined, 32 accepted (122 total, 26.23% accepted)

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Submission + - A Molecule-Sized Switch

Submitted by
lee1
lee1 writes: "The ultimate stage of electronic miniaturization will require the use of
molecule-sized switches and other components. A molecular-scale switch
has now been developed that is "flipped" in the laboratory with a
voltage applied by a scanning tunneling microscope. In an actual
application, the STM would be replaced by another part of the nanoscale
circuit. The tiny switch is made from gold atoms and an organic molecule
called PTCDA, deposited onto a thin film of sodium chloride on top of a
copper surface. While it is being operated by the STM, its dynamics are
studied using an atomic force microscope. In addition to the potential
practical applications, this was the first time in which both an STM and
AFM were used simultaneously to characterize an atom-molecule complex,
crossing a new threshold in spatial resolution."

Submission + - The woman who cannot feel fear

Submitted by
lee1
lee1 writes: "Being threatened with a knife and held at gunpoint did not frighten her.
Neither horror films nor haunted houses scare her. She handles dangerous
snakes without concern, and had to be restrained from reaching out to
touch a tarantula, because she was overcome with curiosity. She has
experienced fear as a child and knows that she should be afraid, but
simply is not. She is the first known case of someone who is unable to
process fear. Researcher Justin Feinstein at the University of Iowa
said "Because she is missing her amygdala, she is also missing the
ability to detect and avoid danger in the world [...] It is quite
remarkable that she is still alive." The researchers hope that by
studying the woman they can learn more about how the brain processes
fear, which might prove useful in treating patients suffering from post
traumatic stress disorder, whose lives, according to Feinstein, are
"marred by fear and they are often-times unable to even leave their home
due to the ever-present feeling of danger." By studying this unique
subject, researchers hope to develop therapies that selectively target
the brain areas that can sometimes allow fear to take over."
Space

Submission + - Optical Lift

Submitted by
lee1
lee1 writes: "Radiation pressure, whose effects can be seen in comet tails, has now
been been used to generate aerodynamic-like lift for the first time.
The technique takes advantage of the refraction of light, and might be
used to power micromachines, transport microscopic particles in a
liquid, or to improve the design of solar sails for interstellar space
travel. Solar sail prototypes are made as reflective as possible, but
does not allow the sails to be easily steered. The newly-discovered lift
effect would allow the craft to change direction by changing the shape
of the sail's surface and its refractive index — the angles of the
incoming and outgoing light would control the direction of the sail's
movement. The scientists demonstrated the effect in the lab with
something smaller: semi-circular plastic rods, each just a fraction of
the size of a human hair."
Politics

Submission + - Unwashed Masses to Judge Research Spending

Submitted by
lee1
lee1 writes: "The Republican majority in the House of Representatives has established
something they call 'YouCut Citizen Review', in which citizens are being
encouraged to identify 'wasteful spending that should be cut', voting by
text message and email on proposed spending cuts. Each of the 'winners'
has been put to the floor of the House for a vote. Eric Cantor, the
incoming House majority leader, has asked people to search the records
of individual granting agencies for examples of 'waste.' While there is
no immediate threat from this to research programs, as Congress merely
establishes the agencies' overall budgets and does not usually get
involved with individual grants, there is tremendous potential for
political theater and eventual influence on research priorities as
agency heads inevitably find themselves called to hearings on Capitol
Hill."
Idle

Submission + - Two Letters of the Law

Submitted by
lee1
lee1 writes: "Like most places outside of New York City, Virginia has a law requiring
drivers to stop for a school bus picking up or discharging students.
Here is Virginia’s law, unchanged since 1970:

'A person is guilty of reckless driving who fails to stop, when
approaching from any direction, any school bus which is stopped on any
highway, private road or school driveway for the purpose of taking on or
discharging children.'

Don’t feel bad if you failed to notice a critical missing word (it
should say ‘at any school bus’). Neither did the presumably hundreds of
people convicted of passing a school bus in the past 40 years, and their
attorneys, until a sharp-eyed lawyer got his client acquitted recently in
Fairfax County Circuit Court.

This was an appeal; the original trial judge said that she 'wasn't
buying it.'

The issue is so important the the Virginia state legislators will look
into it real soon — some time in January, after their vacation.

I advise my fellow Virginians to resist whizzing past the yellow
kidmobiles, however. Not only would that be reckless, but the State has
a few arguments up its sleeve that might work in court next time. For
example, according to a U.S. Supreme Court case from 1892, 'If a literal
construction of the words of a statute be absurd, the act must be so
construed as to avoid the absurdity.'"
Politics

Submission + - North Korea could make two nuclear bombs per year

Submitted by
lee1
lee1 writes: "An engineer and two nuclear policy experts from Stanford
University encountered a 'modern, clean centrifuge plant of more than
1000 centrifuges all neatly aligned' in a recent visit to North Korea.
It is estimated that this facility could make one or two bombs' worth of
enriched uranium per year. The North Korean government remains opaque
and irrationally violent, recently subjecting the South Korean island of
Yeonpyeong to an artillery barrage that amounted to one of the heaviest
attacks on South Korea since the Korean war in the 1950s. Although
North Korea is thought to already possess plutonium-based nuclear
weapons, uranium weapons are more efficient and produce more powerful
explosions. Uranium can also be used to make much more powerful
thermonuclear fusion weapons. Analysts suspect North Korea has revealed
their new capability in order to influence any future negotiations over
its nuclear activities."
Politics

Submission + - Stuxnet hit Iran nuclear plans

Submitted by
lee1
lee1 writes: "About 160 centrifuges (essential for uranium enrichment for power or for
weapons) in Iran's nuclear plants were taken offline recently over the
course of only a couple of months.
Iran has denied that the Stuxnet worm had anything to do with the
problems and delays its nuclear power programme. However, Olli Heinonen,
former deputy director at the International Atomic Energy Agency, said
the virus might have caused Iran's problems with uranium enrichment.
Analysis by Symantec shows that a Stuxnet-infected controller would make
the devices it was connected to run at very high speeds almost
indefinitely. This would destroy a centrifuge.
Symantec's research also suggests that Stuxnet was designed to hit motors controlling centrifuges and thus disrupt the creation of uranium fuel pellets. 60% of all the infections caused by Stuxnet were on machines in Iran."
Politics

Submission + - Chinese woman gets a year in jail for Twitter post

Submitted by
lee1
lee1 writes: "A woman in China has been sentenced to a year in of 'oere-education' in
  a labour camp for the crime of 'oedisrupting social order' after retweeting a joke on Twitter
  (which is entirely banned in China, but popular nontheless).

Cheng Jianping had repeated a Twitter comment suggesting that nationalist protesters
smash Japan's pavilion at the Shanghai Expo, adding the words 'Charge, angry youth.'

At the time, China and Japan were feuding over a group of uninhabited
islands in the East China Sea, and groups of young Chinese had been
demonstrating against Japan, smashing Japanese products; the
tweet amounted to gentle chiding of the protesters.

Ms Cheng may also have been targeted because she is a human rights
activist: she had signed petitions calling for the release of China's jailed Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo.

She has been detained in the past for several other 'crimes,' including criticising China's Communist Party."

Submission + - Death by iPod

Submitted by
lee1
lee1 writes: ""The 'iPod zombie trance' people get into when walking, driving or pedalling around listening to their mobile devices is being blamed for an increase in collisions and even deaths in Europe and the US. Recent examples include people struck by ambulances with lights flashing and sirens wailing. Examples of recent 'pedestrian inattention' insurance claims include 'man on phone stepped out, wasn't looking', 'pedestrian just walked out', 'she looked the wrong way', and 'he walked into the side of a car'. 'Whether on two feet, two wheels or four, too many people are suffering from so-called
"iPod oblivion",' accordoing to the president of the U.K. Automobile Association. I've noticed this increasingly myself lately: can't walk down the street without being blocked or bumped into by a doofus on a cellphone or staring at an electronic display.""

Submission + - Scott Adams Discovers Non-Hostile Computing

Submitted by
lee1
lee1 writes: "Adams describes his joy in using his new iPad: he is amazed that it 'turns on instantly' instead of laboring through a 'boot-up sequence' or making him wait for it to 'snap out of its energy saving mode'. He adds, 'Interestingly, I don't recall the instant-on feature being a prominent element of Apple's advertisements for the iPad.' What is interesting is that here is a very intelligent guy, generally tech-savvy, who thinks this is actually worthy of note. It's as if someone wondered why Toyota didn't make a big deal out of the electric windows in the Prius."
Apple

Submission + - Regulators Consider Antitrust Probe of Apple

Submitted by
lee1
lee1 writes: "The Federal Trade Commission and the Justice Department are locked in negotiations over which agency will handle a possible inquiry into anticompetitive practices by Apple Computer. The main issue is Apple's new policy requiring that only its programing tools be used to write applications for the iPad and iPhone, excluding other technologies such as Flash. In the words of David Balto, a former FTC policy director, 'What they're doing is clearly anticompetitive ... They want one superhighway and they're the tollkeeper on that superhighway.'"
Idle

Submission + - Protecting Traditional Divorce

Submitted by
lee1
lee1 writes: "The Texas Attorney General is determined to help protect the traditional
definition of divorce, which is the dissolution of the union between a
man and a woman. Therefore any gay married couples who find their way
into his state had better stay married."
Biotech

Submission + - Detection of Parkinson's by Voice Analysis 1

Submitted by
lee1
lee1 writes: "The early diagnosis of Parkinson’s disease can slow down or even stop
its progression, but established methods, such as brain
imaging, are expensive, and inappropriate for screening large
populations. Prof. Shimon Sapir at the University of Haifa has developed a new technique
for early diagnosis that is reliable, non-invasive, simple, and inexpensive.
The technique merely requires the patient to read a few simple
sentences, which are acoustically analyzed by a computer program.
The analysis detects subtle abnormalities in speech that are present
in the early stages of the disease but are not perceptible to listeners.
This appears to be an application of the author’s technique for
extracting vowel sounds from short phrases and analysing them to detect nervous system disorders."
Google

Submission + - Google to Use Site Speed in Pagerank Calculation 4

Submitted by
lee1
lee1 writes: "Google is now taking into account how fast a page loads in calculating its pagerank. In their own words: “[W]e're including a new signal in our search ranking algorithms: site speed. Site speed reflects how quickly a website responds to web requests.[...]our users place a lot of value in speed — that's why we've decided to take site speed into account in our search rankings[...]While site speed is a new signal, it doesn't carry as much weight as the relevance of a page. Currently, fewer than 1% of search queries are affected by the site speed signal in our implementation and the signal for site speed only applies for visitors searching in English on Google.com at this point.” Considering the increasing dilution of high-ranking results by endless series of plagiarizing "blogs," brainless forums, and outright scam sites, anything that further reduces the influence of the quality of the content is something I would rather not have. Not that Google asked me."

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