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Submission + - Magnetic 'rust' controls brain activity (sciencemag.org)

Submitted by sciencehabit
sciencehabit writes: Deep brain stimulation, which now involves surgically inserting electrodes several inches into a person's brain and connecting them to a power source outside the skull, can be an extremely effective treatment for disorders such as Parkinson's disease, obsessive compulsive disorder, and depression. The expensive, invasive procedure doesn't always work, however, and can be risky. Now, a study in mice points to a less invasive way to massage neuronal activity, by injecting metal nanoparticles into the brain and controlling them with magnetic fields. The technique could eventually provide a wireless, nonsurgical alternative to traditional deep brain stimulation surgery, researchers say.

Submission + - Huge ocean confirmed underneath solar system's largest moon (sciencemag.org)

Submitted by sciencehabit
sciencehabit writes: The solar system’s largest moon, Ganymede, in orbit around Jupiter, harbors an underground ocean containing more water than all the oceans on Earth, according to new observations by the Hubble Space Telescope. Ganymede now joins Jupiter’s Europa and two moons of Saturn, Titan and Enceladus, as moons with subsurface oceans—and good places to look for life. Ceres, the largest object in the asteroid belt, may also have a subsurface ocean. The Hubble study suggests that the ocean can be no deeper than 330 kilometers below the surface.

Submission + - Powdered Alcohol Approved by Feds, Banned by States

Submitted by StikyPad
StikyPad writes: Powdered alcohol was approved for sale by the U.S. Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau, but that hasn't stopped several states from introducing their own legislation to ban the substance, including Alaska, Louisiana, South Carolina, Vermont, New York, Virginia, Ohio, and Iowa. The utility of powdered alcohol is said to be in weight reduction, particularly for transport on foot when hiking and camping, but lawmakers cite fears about the potential of abuse by minors and spiked drinks.

Submission + - My Roommate, the Darknet Drug Lord (vice.com)

Submitted by sarahnaomi
sarahnaomi writes: I first met Ross Ulbricht, the 29-year old found guilty last month of creating and operating the deep web marketplace Silk Road, at a craft beer bar on Haight Street.

He arrived wearing a red sweatshirt and blue jeans, his face bearded. He was there for an interview, a sit-down with myself and the married couple I shared a townhouse with in Glen Park. We had a room for rent, and Ross had responded to the classified we posted online.

We did not know, really, what type of person he was, but, as we chatted over lambics and IPAs, I felt relieved: gone was the posturing so obvious in the previous candidates. They worked in advertising, at startups—Twitter employees who talked about how much money they made and the exotic locales where they took their vacations. Ross was a techie, but he didn't act like one. He seemed eloquent, optimistic, down-to-earth. He seemed trustworthy.

Submission + - Highly efficient LED Filament Bulbs look almost exactly like an icandescent.

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: A recent article posted on a green building site gives a detailed analysis of a creative new kind of LED bulb that has been popping up Europe and Asia over the last year. They look almost exactly like Tungsten filament bulbs, require no heat sink, and offer extremely high efficiencies in the 100-120 lm/W range. The article describes their construction, compares them to conventional LED bulbs, and describes the result of a report by the Swedish Energey Agency that analyzed the performance of several brands of these these bulbs on the European market. Particularly interesting are links to teardown videos.

Submission + - Google is closing Google Code (blogspot.com)

Submitted by Kohenkatz
Kohenkatz writes: Citing increasing spam and abuse, as well as the rise of Github and Bitbucket, Google has announced the closure of Google Code. Effective today, Google Code is no longer accepting new projects, and it will become read-only in August. After that, tarballs of all project data will be available until June 2016. To help project owners migrate, Google has added an "Export to Github" button to every project.

Submission + - Rendering a Frame of "Deus Ex: Human Revolution"

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Video games are among the most computationally intensive applications. The amount of calculation achieved in a few milliseconds can sometimes be mind-blowing.
This post about the breakdown of a frame rendering in "Deus Ex: Human Revolution" takes us through the different steps of the process.
It explains in detail the rendering passes involved, the techniques as well as the algorithms processed by a computer — 60 times per second.

Submission + - Berkeley builds a heart simulator

Submitted by LeadSongDog
LeadSongDog writes: A bioengineering group has put human heart cells on a silicon wafer to test the action of different drugs. Within a day, they started beating on their own. This isn't a functional heart replacement, but it falls somewhere between in-vivo and in-vitro testing, so it should help speed new drugs to market.

Press release: https://newscenter.berkeley.ed...
Nature: http://www.nature.com/srep/201...

Submission + - Obama Administration Wants More Legal Power to Disrupt Botnets

Submitted by Trailrunner7
Trailrunner7 writes: The federal government is seeking more legal power to step in and shut down botnets through an amendment to the existing criminal law, which would allow the Department of Justice to obtain injunctions to disrupt these malicious networks.

The Obama administration has proposed an amendment to existing United Stated federal law that would give it a more powerful tool to go after botnets such as GameOver Zeus, Asprox and others. In recent years, Justice, along with private security firms and law enforcement agencies in Europe, have taken down various incarnations of a number of major botnets, including GameOver Zeus and Coreflood. These actions have had varying levels of success, with the GOZ takedown being perhaps the most effective, as it also had the effect of disrupting the infrastructure used by the CryptoLocker ransomware.

In order to obtain an injunction in these cases, the government would need to sue the defendants in civil court and show that its suit is likely to succeed on its merits.

“The Administration’s proposed amendment would add activities like the operation of a botnet to the list of offenses eligible for injunctive relief. Specifically, the amendment would permit the department to seek an injunction to prevent ongoing hacking violations in cases where 100 or more victim computers have been hacked. This numerical threshold focuses the injunctive authority on enjoining the creation, maintenance, operation, or use of a botnet, as well as other widespread attacks on computers using malicious software (such as “ransomware” ),” Caldwell wrote.

Submission + - There are two companies fighting to call themselves Arduino; here's what we know (hackaday.com)

Submitted by szczys
szczys writes: Arduino is a household name in hobby electronics. But now there are two companies calling themselves Arduino and as you've probably guessed this is going to play out in the courts. How can this be? One company started the Arduino movement and used the other company, a contract manufacturer, to actually make the hardware. This went on for a few years before the trademark was actually granted. Elliot Williams did dome digging to help figure out how this all might shake out.

Submission + - Why Canadian Anti-Terror Bill Eviscerates Canadian Privacy Protection (michaelgeist.ca)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Nearly twenty years ago, Stephen Harper, then a Reform Party MP, warned against the privacy implications of an electronic voter registry and the fear that information sharing within government raised significant privacy concerns. Today, as Canadian Prime Minister, Harper is fast-tracking a bill that eviscerates privacy protections within the public sector that Michael Geist says represents the most significant reduction in public sector privacy protection in Canadian history. If that weren't enough, Harper is even blocking the Privacy Commissioner of Canada from appearing as a witness at the committee studying the bill.

Submission + - Cody Wilson Wants to Destroy Your World (medium.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: In 2013 Cody Wilson posted online the design files needed to 3D print weapons. The files were downloaded at least 100,000 times before the U.S. State Department ordered him to take them down. Last fall he reemerged with a new project, the Ghost Gunner--a relatively small and affordable CNC milling machine that could easily manufacture the lower receiver of an AR-15. It was a different approach toward the same goal of multiplying the number of firearms in the world. But are we really facing a world where backyard bunker-builders are manufacturing their own gun components? Reporter Andrew Zaleski visited Wilson to check on the status of his project. What he found was a man in the throes of small-business hell. As Wilson puts it, “It’s like the nightmare of a startup with the added complication that no one will allow you to do it anyway.”

Submission + - Billionaire teams up with NASA to mine the moon (cnbc.com)

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: Moon Express, a Mountain View, California-based company that's aiming to send the first commercial robotic spacecraft to the moon next year, just took another step closer toward that lofty goal. Earlier this year, it became the first company to successfully test a prototype of a lunar lander at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The success of this test—and a series of others that will take place later this year—paves the way for Moon Express to send its lander to the moon in 2016.

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