Please create an account to participate in the Slashdot moderation system

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
The Courts

Submission + - Canadian Cops won't target music/movie downloaders (torrentfreak.com)

Submitted by rdoherty
rdoherty writes: Canadian police will stop targeting people who download copyrighted material for personal use. Polce will focus on organized crime and copyright theft that affects the health and safety of consumers instead of the cash flow of large corporations. It is inefficient to track down individuals who download music or movies off the Internet, and the police do not have the time nor the resources to go after filesharers. Article: Torrentfreak Original article en francais: Le Devoir
Biotech

Submission + - SPAM: Microbes churn out hydrogen at record rate 1

Submitted by
FiReaNGeL
FiReaNGeL writes: "By adding a few modifications to their successful wastewater fuel cell, researchers have coaxed common bacteria to produce hydrogen in a new, efficient way. Using starter material that could theoretically be sourced from a salad bar, the researchers have coaxed microbes to generate hydrogen. "We achieved the highest hydrogen yields ever obtained with this approach from different sources of organic matter, such as yields of 91 percent using vinegar (acetic acid) and 68 percent using cellulose"."
Link to Original Source
United States

Submission + - SPAM: Deadly virus is killing Honey Bees

Submitted by
FiReaNGeL
FiReaNGeL writes: "Between 50 and 90 percent of the commercial honey bee (Apis mellifera) colonies in the United States have been disappearing, a problem named Colony Collapse Disorder. Few, if any, dead bees are found around the hive. The disorder is making it difficult for U.S. commercial beekeepers to pollinate crops. About a quarter of beekeeping operations were affected by CCD during the 2006-2007 winter alone. Recently, scientists have found a probable cause : a virus. "Our extensive study suggests that the Israeli Acute Paralysis Virus (IAPV) may be a potential cause of Colony Collapse Disorder" said scientists from Columbia University. "Our next step is to ascertain whether this virus, alone or in concert with other factors such as microbes, toxins and stressors, can induce CCD in healthy bees". CCD is a puzzling phenomenon occurring in the United States in which all adult bees disappear from the hive, leaving the honey and pollen behind."
Link to Original Source
United States

Submission + - SPAM: Common virus may cause obesity in humans

Submitted by
FiReaNGeL
FiReaNGeL writes: "Scientists today reported new evidence that infection with a common virus may be a contributing factor to the obesity epidemic sweeping through the United States and other countries. In laboratory experiments they showed that infection with human adenovirus-36 (Ad-36), long recognized as a cause of respiratory and eye infections in humans, transforms adult stem cells obtained from fat tissue into fat cells. Stem cells not exposed to the virus, in contrast, were unchanged. In the past, Ad-36 was shown to cause fat accumulation in chicken, but this study brings evidence that the same phenomenon could be true for humans. So go out and eat that fastfood!"
Link to Original Source
It's funny. Laugh.

Submission + - SPAM: Golf courses -- The new wildlife refuge?

Submitted by
FiReaNGeL
FiReaNGeL writes: "Golf courses are known as centers for human recreation, but if managed properly, they also could be important wildlife sanctuaries, a University of Missouri-Columbia researcher has found. "There are more than 17,000 golf courses in the United States, and approximately 70 percent of that land is not used for playing. These managed green spaces aren't surrogates for protected land and ecosystems, but they can include suitable habitat for species native to the area. Golf courses could act as nature sanctuaries if managed properly." Just make your best to avoid hitting a cute little birdie with your ball!"
Link to Original Source
Announcements

Submission + - "new" 7 wonders of the world declared (new7wonders.com)

Submitted by
freakxx
freakxx writes: ""New" 7 wonders of the worlds have been announced today at Lisbon, Portugal. People throughout the world have voted actively to elect the new 7 out of 21 finalists. As a summery, these are: Chichen Itza, Mexico; Christ Redeemer, Brazil; The Great Wall, China; Machu Picchu, Peru; Petra, Jordan; The Roman Colosseum, Italy; and The Taj Mahal, India. "Pyramids of Giza, Egypt" was the only candidate which also used to be among old 7 wonders before. However, it couldn't make into the list of final 7 and hence we have a complete new set of "seven wonders of the world".

Finally, a question: should the wonders be decided by polling or by a group of experts in this field coming from every part of the world?!"
Biotech

Submission + - SPAM: Chemical injections could make you slim... or fat

Submitted by
FiReaNGeL
FiReaNGeL writes: "In what they call a "stunning research advance", scientists have been able to use simple, non-toxic chemical injections to add and remove fat in targeted areas on the bodies of laboratory animals. They say the discovery could revolutionize human cosmetic and reconstructive plastic surgery and treatment of diseases associated with human obesity. Investigators say these findings may also, over the long-term, lead to better control of metabolic syndrome, which is a collection of risk factors that increase a patient's chances of developing heart disease, stroke, and diabetes. Sixty million Americans were estimated to be affected by metabolic syndrome in 2000, according to a study funded by the Centers for Disease Control in 2004. Find details in the complete article."
Link to Original Source
Biotech

Submission + - SPAM: Cure for Hepatitis C announced!

Submitted by
FiReaNGeL
FiReaNGeL writes: "The use of peginterferon alone, or in combination with ribavirin, points to a cure for hepatitis C, the leading cause of cirrhosis, liver cancer and the need for liver transplant, a Virginia Commonwealth University researcher said today. Nearly all — 99 percent — of patients with hepatitis C who were treated successfully with peginterferon alone, or in combination with ribavirin, had no detectable virus up to seven years later. Researchers say this data validates the use of the word "cure" when describing hepatitis C treatment as successful treatment is defined as having undetectable hepatitis C virus in the blood six months following treatment."
Biotech

Submission + - SPAM: Herpes could save your life from plague

Submitted by
FiReaNGeL
FiReaNGeL writes: "Mice with chronic herpes virus infections can better resist the bacterium that causes plague and a bacterium that causes one kind of food poisoning, researchers report in this week's Nature. Scientists at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis attributed the surprising finding to changes in the immune system triggered by the long-term presence of a latent herpes virus infection. In latent viral infections, the virus is present for the lifetime of the host in a relatively quiescent form that does not cause overt symptoms."
Biotech

Submission + - SPAM: 100% pregnant women have pesticide in the placenta

Submitted by
FiReaNGeL
FiReaNGeL writes: "A doctoral thesis published recently analyzes the presence of organochlorine pesticides — normally used as pesticides — in the organisms of pregnant women. The results are alarming: 100% of these pregnant women had at least one pesticide in their placenta, but the average rate amounts to eight different kinds of chemical substances! According to the researchers, "we do not really know the consequences of exposure to disruptive pesticides in children, but we can predict that they may have serious effects, since this placenta exposure occurs at key moments of the embryo's development"."
Biotech

Submission + - SPAM: Nanoscale pores as tiny analysis labs

Submitted by
FiReaNGeL
FiReaNGeL writes: "Imagine being able to rapidly identify tiny biological molecules such as DNA and toxins using less than a drop of salt water in a system that can fit on a microchip. It's closer than you might believe: in a paper appearing next week in PNAS, a team of researchers proves for the first time that a single nanometer-scale pore in a thin membrane can be used to accurately detect and sort different-sized polymer chains (a model for biomolecules) that pass through or block the channel. This could lead to rapid detection systems for pathogens and toxic chemicals."
Displays

LG.Philips Develops World's First Color E-Paper 188

Posted by Zonk from the i'd-love-me-some-of-that dept.
An anonymous reader writes "LG.Philips LCD has announced it has developed the world's first 14.1-inch flexible color E-paper display, equivalent in size to an A4 sheet of paper. The 14.1-inch flexible color E-paper uses electronic ink from E-Ink Corp. to produce a maximum of 4,096 colors. It can be viewed from a full 180 degrees, so that images always appear crisp, even when the display is bent."
Biotech

Submission + - SPAM: Quit smoking = reduce risk of lung cancer by 70%

Submitted by
FiReaNGeL
FiReaNGeL writes: "Giving up smoking is highly effective in preventing death from lung cancer and can reduce the risk of dying from the disease by up to 70%, new research from the Asia-Pacific region have shown. In the study of 500,000 adults, the Asia-Pacific Cohort Studies Collaboration (APCSC) shows that the risks of dying from lung cancer were about twenty times higher among women who smoke compared with male smokers, a worrying finding given the increasing trend for women to take up the habit in many countries. So quit today! There's really no excuses now..."
Biotech

Submission + - SPAM: An architectural plan of the cell

Submitted by
FiReaNGeL
FiReaNGeL writes: "Researchers at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) and the University of Colorado have now obtained the first 3D visualization of a complete eukaryotic cell at a resolution high enough to resolve the cytoskeleton's precise architectural plan in fission yeast. The image of this unicellular organism reveals remarkable insights into the fine structure of the cytoskeleton as well as its interactions with other parts of the cell. "Our 3D image of fission yeast can serve as a reference map of the cell for all biologists interested in its architecture," says Johanna Höög. "You can extract information about all sorts of cellular structures and processes from it or use it to place findings into the spatial context of the cell.""
The Internet

Submission + - What does it take to survive the Slashdot effect?

Submitted by
Dave
Dave writes: "How much hardware, bandwidth, etc. does it take for a server to survive the Slashdot effect? Is the Fark or Digg effect worse than Slashdot? Is there a guaranteed way to avoid these effects?"

Slashdot Top Deals

"Experience has proved that some people indeed know everything." -- Russell Baker

Close