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Beer

Submission + - Cold beer: Soft-serve Head Keeps Brew Chilled (msn.com)

Cazekiel writes: Sticking a mug in your freezer to ensure a cold beer may be made obsolete, if the Japanese brewing giant Kirin has anything to do about it. How? Kirin came up with a creative, delectable way to create frozen beer foam, dispensed the way you would a soft-serve ice cream cone.

Gizmag gives us the details:

"To make the topping, regular Ichiban beer is frozen to -5 degrees Celsius (23 degrees Fahrenheit) while air is continuously blown into it. It's kind of like when a child makes bubbles in their drink, except inside a blast freezer. Once the topping is placed onto regular, unfrozen beer though, it acts as an insulating lid and keeps the drink cold for 30 minutes."

Submission + - Scientists Develop Reliable Mobile Tool for Diagnosing Autism (nature.com)

samazon writes: Harvard researchers using a series of machine-learning algorithms have determined that the Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule, used to diagnose autism, can be condensed to an eight question survey without compromising accuracy (abstract). The approach will make it significantly easier to diagnose autism at an early stage, when behavioral treatments can be most effective. In addition, the survey is ideal for use in a mobile platform to add to the expanding list of apps geared toward people with autism and their families.
Businesses

Submission + - Survey Says Bosses Fear Being Filmed by Employees (cnet.com)

Cazekiel writes: If you think your boss is a fearless, miserable beast whose only worries lie in how well his company or business competes, think again. The 'Business Video Behavior Project' survey conducted by Qumu reveals that those in-charge are growing more and more paranoid about something the Average Joe fears just walking down the street nowadays: employees who will "secretly film him with his metaphorical pants down and then post the footage for public delectation.", as this article describes. It would seem that it doesn't matter if you're powerful, wealthy and lording over hundreds of cubicles; they know the internet exists, everyone has a cell phone camera and thick wallets don't make discarded banana peels magically move out of their path.
ISS

Submission + - A tool to be notified on cell phone and email about Space Station sightings

An anonymous reader writes: The web site N2YO.com, dedicated to satellite tracking has launched a cool alerting service to send alerts on mobile devices (SMS or texting) and email minutes before the Space Station comes over the horizon for a visible pass. At this time the SMS notification is available only for cell phones in Unites States and Canada.
Science

Submission + - After Anesthesia, Deep, Primitive Brain Awakens First (world-science.net)

Cazekiel writes: Studies using PET (positron emission tomography) scans on those waking from the effects of anesthesia show that the more primitive structures in the human brain start the process of regaining consciousness. Leading the study was Harry Scheinin of the University of Turku in Finland; he employed twenty-two volunteers who were administered dexme-detomidine or propofol (propofol being famous for its misuse by Michael Jackson). The PET scans showed that the primitive areas of the brain--brain stem, thalamus, hypothalamus and the anterior cingulate cortex as Scheinin explained--start connecting to the advanced sections through electrical nerve activity before full awareness occurs.

Submission + - Amyvid is Approved by FDA for Alzheimer's Disease (lilly.com)

bjwhitcher writes: Eli Lilly has obtained approval for their 18F-PET tracer (developed by Avid Pharmaceuticals) that binds to amyloid plaques, a major component in the disease progression of Alzheimer's disease (AD). Although there are various biomarkers associated with AD, amyloid is believed to play a key role. The ability to image the burden of amyloid plaque is a major advancement towards drug development efforts to find a prevention/cure for AD.

"A negative Amyvid scan indicates sparse to no amyloid plaques are currently present, which is inconsistent with a neuropathological diagnosis of Alzheimer's Disease and reduces the likelihood that a patient's cognitive impairment is due to Alzheimer's Disease."

Idle

Submission + - Emergency Landing Due to Snakes on the Plane (msn.com) 3

Cazekiel writes: Braden Blennerhassett, 26, probably could have used a purple lightsaber but more-than-likely used Samuel L Jackson's infamous cursing before making an emergency call to air-traffic controllers. The mayday-message?

"Look, you're not going to believe this. I've got snakes on a plane."

Indeed, it was not a belated April Fool's Day joke. The Air Frontier flight from Warren to the small town of Peppimenarti was put on hold to make an emergency landing, due to a snake suddenly appearing in the cockpit. Blennerhassett was particularly spooked when the snake crawled up his leg while landing: "My blood pressure and heart rate was a bit elevated — it was an interesting experience," he told Nine News.

If that wasn't odd enough, those inspecting the plane after its landing found a green tree frog as well. They deduced that the snake had been hunting the amphibian and--thankfully--the snake was non-venomous.

And if THAT wasn't odd, or even disturbing enough, Air Frontier's director Geoffrey Hunt told ABC News, "I have heard of crocodiles being loose in planes, but not snakes."

Submission + - Facebooking 'God Does Not Exist' in Indonesia = Jail Time (zdnet.com)

Cazekiel writes: It's not news that religious-extremists in power will occasionally conjure up severe consequences for non-believers (or other religious groups that disagree with them), but a new case out of Indonesia takes it to new lows. 31-year-old Alexander Aan may face five years of imprisonment for the simple act of declaring himself as an atheist on facebook in Ateis Minang ('Minang Atheist'), a group Aan had started. Indonesia recognizes and allows the religious practices of Islam, Protestant, Catholic, Hindu, Buddhism and Confucianism, but atheism isn't just reviled, but considered illegal. Aan, a Dharmasraya Development Planning Board civil servant had been placed in police protective custody after a mob in the dozens went to his office directly to attack and beat him.

Dharmasraya Police Chief Sr. Comr. Chairul Aziz was quoted as saying that in Aan's use of Koran passages referencing his atheism, "it meets the criteria of tainting religion, in this case Islam." Aan had accepted that he'd more than likely be fired but decided to take the hit in order to defend his beliefs in an outspoken way. He went so far as to ask the police investigators handling his case, quote, "if God really exists and has absolute power, why doesn’t God prevent bad things from happening in this world?"

Comment Re:Occam's Razor (Score 1) 2

An implication of the corn syrup link is that bees might be exposed to imidacloprid (via HFCS) even if the pesticide is not used on flowering plants in the hive's foraging range. But, as you say, the story isn't clear about whether imidacloprid has been conclusively found in HFCS, and to what level, or if that conclusion is based on the apparent correlation between the use of imidacloprid on corn, and an increase in colony collapse. The study is at least suggestive enough to warrant further investigation, though.
The Internet

Submission + - The Internet IS for porn. (extremetech.com)

Reeses writes: It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a person in possession of a fast internet connection must be in want of some porn.

While it’s difficult domain to penetrate — hard numbers are few and far between — we know for a fact that porn sites are some of the most trafficked parts of the internet. According to Google’s DoubleClick Ad Planner, which tracks users across the web with a cookie, dozens of adult destinations populate the top 500 websites. Xvideos, the largest porn site on the web with 4.4 billion page views per month, is three times the size of CNN or ESPN, and twice the size of Reddit. LiveJasmin isn’t much smaller. YouPorn, Tube8, and Pornhub — they’re all vast, vast sites that dwarf almost everything except the Googles and Facebooks of the internet.

Idle

Submission + - One-Man Wyoming Town Sold for $900,000 in Auction (msn.com)

Cazekiel writes: Buford, Wyoming, going once... going twice... SOLD!... to the two Vietnamese men who put up $900,000 to own the one-man town (literally) between Laramie and Cheyenne, on Highway 80. That one-man resident, 61-year-old Don Sammons, had "managed the town's liquor sales, hardware sales, gas pump and hot dog warmer".

Buford, the state's second oldest town, was established in 1866 and had up to 2,000 residents, and had hosted Ulysses S. Grant, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Butch Cassidy. It did well as a railway town, but faded along with the railway itself.

You're still stuck thinking about how good the population of this town had it with all those hot dogs and kegs he'd "tend to", aren't you?

Censorship

Submission + - Decentralized and Open DNS To Defeat Censorship and bypass Internet filters (torrentfreak.com)

SolKeshNaranek writes: For the last couple of years discussion around censorship of websites in the West has become as prolific as the that around already established blockades in countries such as China and Iran. While meddling with the Internet’s DNS is the weapon of choice for censors, a new P2P system called ODDNS hopes to put control back in the hands of the people.

The Internet’s Domain Name System, which translates human-readable URLs into IP addresses so that web users can more easily find Internet sites, has become a battle ground for censorship during the last couple of years.

From residing almost exclusively in the awareness of computer engineers and nerds, recent attempts by various copyright holders to censor sites such as The Pirate Bay and introduce even more broad powers with the introduction of the SOPA legislation in the US, the existence and mechanisms of the Internet’s DNS have now broken through into the mainstream.

In a response to growing attempts at censorship, various alternative DNS systems have been proposed with an emphasis on those that can’t be meddled with by the authorities. The latest, called ODDNS, comes out of France.

As its name suggests, ODDNS (Open and Decentralized DNS) is an open and decentralized DNS system running on the P2P (Peer-to-Peer) model. It’s creator, web developer Jimmy Rudolf, told PCinpact he invented the system with two specific aims in mind.

The first, and of most interest to people fighting censorship, is to “show governments that it is not possible to prevent people from talking.”

The second, of interest to anyone who owns and maintain their own domain names, is to take back control of them. “I find it absurd to have to regularly pay for a domain name,” Rudolf explained.

ODDNS is an application which allows everyone running the software to share information about domain names with each other, a bit like how a P2P network functions. ODDNS can supplement or even replace regular DNS.

Because domain names and related IP addresses are shared among peers in the network, they can no longer be censored. Furthermore, buying a domain name from a registrar is no longer required since people running ODDNS can create and maintain their own.

Still under development, as expected the source code to ODDNS is licensed under GNU GPLv3. PCinpact reports that the current ODDNS website will be updated next week and the first beta release of the software will follow shortly after.

Of course the success of the project will sit on the developers’ ability to overcome the technical hurdles and, crucially, if they can encourage enough people to come on board and stay on board. The desire to stick with this kind of system will be driven by need so more censorship will become this and similar projects’ lifeblood.

Originally submitted to TorrentFreak by "enigmax".

Related article: http://torrentfreak.com/domain-blocking-will-encourage-yet-more-fraud-and-scams-111230/

Idle

Submission + - Chinese Kid Sells His Kidney for an iPad and iPhone, Suffers Renal Failure (gizmodo.com) 2

assertation writes: Though you might say you'd give your left arm for an iPad, you only mean it figuratively. But one Chinese teen actually sold his kidney to make enough money to buy the Apple tablet and an iPhone. Today, Wang suffers from renal deficiency, meaning his kidneys can no longer filter out toxins from his blood. Doctors say he's going to need a transplant of his own

Submission + - Colony Collapse Disorder Linked to...High-Fructose Corn Syrup? (mongabay.com) 2

hondo77 writes: Researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health "...have re-created the mysterious Colony Collapse Disorder in several honeybee hives simply by giving them small doses of a popular pesticide, imidacloprid." This follows recently-reported studies also linked the disorder to neonicotinoid pesticides. What is really interesting is the link to when the disorder started appearing, 2006. "That mechanism? High-fructose corn syrup. Many bee-keepers have turned to high-fructose corn syrup to feed their bees, which the researchers say did not imperil bees until U.S. corn began to be sprayed with imidacloprid in 2004-2005. A year later was the first outbreak of Colony Collapse Disorder."
Space

Submission + - High School Juniors Create 'Flavor Strips' For Astronauts (space.com)

Cazekiel writes: The sense of taste for astronauts is dulled by microgravity, but four high schoolers, participating in the Spirit of Innovation Challenge have come up with a solution: Flavor Strips. They put a little more kick into space-food; from simple salt-and-pepper to Asian spices, astronauts get to add more taste to their meals without the space traveler, as Myra Halpin, a chemistry and research instructor at the North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics says of one tale told to her, "spinning himself around to get the hot sauce out of the bottle." Never mind taste buds--hot sauce in the eyes? I'll pass.

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