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Submission + - Kickstarter project anonabox has been suspended for potential fraud (washingtonpost.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Anonabox is a project on Kickstarter to build a self-contained Tor router. It proved very popular, exceeding its funding threshold within days. Rumors and accusations started flying almost immediately. On 17 October, email went out from Kickstarter that the project had been suspended and the contributions would be refunded to backers. The official reason is "A review of the project uncovered evidence that it broke Kickstarter's rules." Early indications are that the project claimed to be building original hardware but was actually repacking cheaper hardware from elsewhere. They are accused of requesting a $51 pledge for a $20 router.

Submission + - Chemists Grow Soil Fungus On Cheerios, Discover New Antifungal Compounds (acs.org)

Submitted by MTorrice
MTorrice writes: Many drugs that treat bacterial and fungal infections were found in microbes growing in the dirt. These organisms synthesize the compounds to fend off other bacteria and fungi around them. To find possible new drugs, chemists try to coax newly discovered microbial species to start making their arsenal of antimicrobial chemicals in the lab. But fungi can be stubborn, producing just a small set of already-known compounds.

Now, one team of chemists has hit upon a curiously effective and consistent trick to prod the organisms to start synthesizing novel molecules: Cheerios inside bags. Scientists grew a soil fungus for four weeks in a bag full of Cheerios and discovered a new compound that can block biofilm formation by an infectious yeast. The chemists claim that Cheerios are by far the best in the cereal aisle at growing chemically productive fungi.

Submission + - How Nigeria Stopped Ebola

Submitted by HughPickens.com
HughPickens.com writes: Pamela Engel writes that Americans need only look to Nigeria to calm their fears about an Ebola outbreak in the US. Nigeria is much closer to the West Africa outbreak than the US is, yet even after Ebola entered the country in the most terrifying way possible — via a visibly sick passenger on a commercial flight — officials successfully shut down the disease and prevented widespread transmission. If there are still no new cases on October 20, the World Health Organization will officially declare the country "Ebola-free." Here's how Nigeria did it.

The first person to bring Ebola to Nigeria was Patrick Sawyer, who left a hospital in Liberia against the wishes of the medical staff and flew to Nigeria. Once Sawyer arrived, it became obvious that he was ill when he passed out in the Lagos airport, and he was taken to a hospital in the densely packed city of 20 million. Once the country's first Ebola case was confirmed, Port Health Services in Nigeria started a process called contact tracing to limit the spread of the disease and created an emergency operations center to coordinate and oversee the national response. Health officials used a variety of resources, including phone records and flight manifests, to track down nearly 900 people who might have been exposed to the virus via Sawyer or the people he infected. As soon as people developed symptoms suggestive of Ebola, they were isolated in Ebola treatment facilities. Without waiting to see whether a "suspected" case tested positive, Nigeria's contact tracing team tracked down everyone who had had contact with that patient since the onset of symptoms making a staggering 18,500 face-to-face visits. The US has many of these same procedures in place for containing Ebola, making the risk of an outbreak here very low. Contact tracing is exactly what is happening in Dallas right now; if any one of Thomas Eric Duncan's contacts shows symptoms, that person will be immediately isolated and tested. “That experience shows us that even in the case in Nigeria, when we found out later in the timeline that this patient had Ebola, that Nigeria was able to identify contacts, institute strict infection control procedures and basically bring their outbreak to a close,” says Dr. Tom Inglesby. “They did a good job in and of themselves. They worked closely with the U.S. CDC. If we can succeed in Nigeria I do believe we will stop it here.”

Submission + - Is the E-Cat just the work of a charlatan?

Submitted by StartsWithABang
StartsWithABang writes: Last week, outlets reported an independent test of the E-cat, an alleged cold fusion device that could revolutionize energy for our world. Or, alternatively, it could simply be a hoax perpetrated by a charlatan and a team of either accomplices or incompetents. How would you distinguish between the two? When you look at the scientific standards, the results of the "independent test" leave a lot to be desired.

Submission + - Massachusetts city council blocks Comcast from entering the area

Submitted by _AustinPowell
_AustinPowell writes: Comcast is gunning for a cable television license in Worcester, Mass., as part of its purchase ofTime Warner Cable. In response, the City Council voted 8-3 to urge Worcester's city manager to let the companys license request die. The deadline for the decision is Wednesday, but the manager is not bound by the vote of the Council. "Its a terrible company," City Councilor Gary Rosen said. "In my opinion, they should not be welcome in this city. Comcast is a wolf in wolfs clothing; its that bad."

Submission + - Journalists Route Around White House Press Office

Submitted by Tailhook
Tailhook writes: Pool reports written by White House correspondents are distributed to news organizations via the White House Press Office. Reporters have alleged that the Obama White House exploits its role as distributor to `demand changes in pool reports' and has used this power to `steer coverage in a more favorable direction.' Now a group of 90 print journalists has begun privately distributing their work through Google Groups, independent of the Press Office. Their intent is to `create an independent pool-reporting system for print and online recipients.'

Submission + - Skunk Works Reveals Compact Fusion Reactor Details (aviationweek.com) 1

Submitted by Reddog99
Reddog99 writes: Hidden away in the secret depths of the Skunk Works, a Lockheed Martin research team has been working quietly on a nuclear energy concept they believe has the potential to meet, if not eventually decrease, the worldâ(TM)s insatiable demand for power.

Dubbed the compact fusion reactor (CFR), the device is conceptually safer, cleaner and more powerful than much larger, current nuclear systems that rely on fission, the process of splitting atoms to release energy. Crucially, by being âoecompact,â Lockheed believes its scalable concept will also be small and practical enough for applications ranging from interplanetary spacecraft and commercial ships to city power stations. It may even revive the concept of large, nuclear-powered aircraft that virtually never require refuelingâ"ideas of which were largely abandoned more than 50 years ago because of the dangers and complexities involved with nuclear fission reactors.

Submission + - My shitty phone (myshittyphone.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: I hate my phone so much that I created a website for it.

Submission + - In defense of the BYOdeveloper (citeworld.com)

Submitted by rfran
rfran writes: It's more than clear that BYODev and the user developer movement are here to stay — and that they're a benefit to companies and organizations that adopt them.

Submission + - 1/10 Scale Model Cray Supercomputer built from FPGA (chrisfenton.com)

Submitted by bmurray7
bmurray7 writes: Chris Fenton has built a model Cray-1 supercomputer from an FPGA. The Cray-1 was the iconic supercomputer of the 1970s. It featured a then staggering 32 MB of RAM and could perform ~100 million floating point operations per second. To build his model, Fenton designed a Verilog-200 FPGA implementation of the Cray 1. The FPGA circuit board wasn't pretty, so he built case at 1/10 scale. The model runs at 50 mhz, close to the original's 80 mhz clock speed.

Submission + - Scientific Linux 7.0 x86_64 released

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Scientific Linux has released version 7.0 of its enterprise Linux clone. "Fermilab's intention is to continue the development and support of Scientific Linux and refine its focus as an operating system for scientific computing.". You can grab an ISO images by visiting this url. It is recommended to read both the Scientific Linux release notes and the RHEL7 release notes.

Submission + - Keystone Be D-mned: Canada Finds Oil Route To Atlantic

Submitted by HughPickens.com
HughPickens.com writes: Bloomberg reports that Canadians have come up with an all-Canadian route to get crude oil sands from Alberta to a refinery in Saint John, New Brunswick, operated by a reclusive Canadian billionaire family, that would give Canada’s oil-sands crude supertanker access to the same Louisiana and Texas refineries Keystone was meant to supply. The pipeline, built by Energy East, will cost $10.7 billion and could be up and running by 2018. Its 4,600-kilometer path, taking advantage of a vast length of existing and underused natural gas pipeline, would wend through six provinces and four time zones. "It would be Keystone on steroids, more than twice as long and carrying a third more crude," writes Bloomberg. "And if you’re a fed-up Canadian, like Prime Minister Stephen Harper, there’s a bonus: Obama can’t do a single thing about it." So confident is TransCanada Corp., the chief backer of both Keystone and Energy East, of success that Alex Pourbaix, the executive in charge, spoke of the cross-Canada line as virtually a done deal. “With one project,” Energy East will give Alberta’s oil sands not only an outlet to “eastern Canadian markets but to global markets,” says Pourbaix. “And we’ve done so at scale, with a 1.1 million barrel per day pipeline, which will go a long way to removing the specter of those big differentials for many years to come.”

The pipeline will also prove a blow to environmentalists who have made central to the anti-Keystone arguments the concept that if Keystone can be stopped, most of that polluting heavy crude will stay in the ground. With 168 billion proven barrels of oil, though, Canada’s oil sands represent the third-largest oil reserves in the world, and that oil is likely to find its way to shore one way or another. “It’s always been clear that denying it or slowing Keystone wasn’t going to stop the flow of Canadian oil,” says Michael Levi. What Energy East means for the Keystone XL pipeline remains to be seen. “Maybe this will be a wake up call to President Obama and U.S. policymakers to say ‘Hmmm we’re going to get shut out of not just the energy, but all those jobs that are going to go into building that pipeline. Now they are all going to go into Canada," says Aaron Task. “This is all about ‘You snooze, you lose.’”

Submission + - "Phony Cell Phone Tower" Stories Were PR For A Secure Cell Phone Company (itworld.com) 1

Submitted by jfruh
jfruh writes: Last month, a spooky story was making the rounds on tech news sites: mysterious cell phone towers popping up all over the country claimed by nobody. In fact, the towers are almost certainly run by law enforcement agencies, while unsettling, aren't new; and almost every story includes quotes from Les Goldsmith, the CEO of ESD America, the company that sells the phones that detected the towers — stock Galaxy S IIIs turned into hardened phones with numerous exploits removed and all kinds of security added. Was the whole kerfuffle a masterful act of PR?

Submission + - The CDC Is Carefully Controlling How Scared You Are About Ebola 2

Submitted by HughPickens.com
HughPickens.com writes: Russell Berman writes in the Atlantic that the Obama administration is trying to navigate a tricky course: Can officials increase public vigilance about the deadly virus without inciting a panic? "Ebola is scary. It's a deadly disease. But we know how to stop it," says Dr. Thomas Frieden, the CDC director. speaking "calmly and clearly, sticking to an even pitch and avoiding the familiar political image of the whip-smart fast-talker." International groups wanted the US to step in sooner to help fight the outbreak in west Africa, while more recently some Republicans have called on the administration to ban travel from the most affected countries but Frieden and other officials say such a move would be counterproductive, citing lessons learned from the SARS outbreak a decade ago. "The SARS outbreak cost the world more than $40 billion, but it wasn't to control the outbreak," says Frieden. "Those were costs from unnecessary and ineffective travel restrictions and trade changes that could have been avoided." The government announced Wednesday that it was stepping up protective measures at five airports, where authorities will screen travelers from Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea with targeted questions and fever checks, an action, officials acknowledge that was taken not only to stop the spread of the disease but simply to make people feel safer. According to Berman the message, it seems to be, is this: Be afraid of Ebola. Just not too afraid.

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