41072773
submission
dstates writes:
Retraction Watch reports that fake reviewer information was placed in Elsevier's peer review database allowing unethical authors to review their own or colleagues manuscripts. As a result, 11 scientific publications have been retracted. The hack is particularly embarrassing for Elsevier because the commercial publisher has been arguing that the quality of its review process justifies its restrictive access policies and high costs of the journals it publishes.
41062419
submission
dstates writes:
The FCC is considering one of the biggest regulatory changes in decades: allowing a newly available chunk of wireless spectrum to be leased by different users at different times and places, rather than being auctioned off to one high bidder. The plan is to open a new WiFi with spectrum in the 3.550 to 3.650 gigahertz band now used by radar systems. Under the proposed rule to be voted on Wednesday, users could reserve pieces of that spectrum in different regions and at different time managed by a central database. Spectrum sharing is a dramatic change with a potential to make bandwidth accessible to many users. The plan has met with mixed reviews from the cellular carriers.
41019797
submission
dstates writes:
Bloomberg reports that Google is using Bermuda shell companies to avoid paying billions of dollars in taxes world wide. By routing payments and recording profits in zero tax havens, multinational companies have been avoiding double digit corporate taxes in the US and Europe. Congressional hearings were held in July on the destructive consequences of off shoring profits. Why aren't the US and Europe exerting more diplomatic pressure on these tax havens that are effectively stealing from the US and European treasuries by allowing profits that did not result from activities in Bermuda or the Cayman Islands to be recorded as occurring there?
41018687
submission
dstates writes:
Apple plans to double the fuel cell generating capacity at its North Carolina data center. Ebay also has a fuel cell powered data center. Fuel cell powered data centers could ultimately become buffers for the power grid relying on the grid mainly for backup power and even selling excess power back to the utilities. Fuel cells offer high efficiency and avoid the ~7% transmission losses for long distance electrical transmission lines, and importantly for data centers, local generation is not susceptible to all the disruptions of the power grid.
40201079
submission
dstates writes:
Apple built tremendous customer loyalty based on a simple pact, “Buy our stuff, and it will do what you want it to without invading your life”. I.e., we won’t push advertising at you, we won’t push buggy half-baked illogical software at you, and we won’t use our stuff to invade your privacy or sell your data to the highest bidder. Increasingly, the user experience is dominated by third party apps, but these apps do not live up to the quality and design standards Apple has traditionally set for its own products. Apple just passed 1 million app approvals and 25 billion app downloads. Assuming 200 million iPhones have been sold, that comes to something like 125 app downloads per phone. The result of this deluge is a user experience fail. Free downloads dominate paid apps, but more and more freeware is laden with advertising and pushes to upgrade to paid versions. "In app purchases" has become a closely followed metric. I.e. the “without invading your life” part of the deal never really made it to the apps where users now spend the vast majority of their time. Reliability is also suffering. Many apps are buggy, including Apple’s, and even iCloud has crashed repeatedly in recent days. Bottom line, the App Store is destroying Apple’s core value proposition.
39637917
submission
dstates writes:
Want a good job in IT? Detroit of all places may be the place to be. GM is bringing IT development back in house to speed innovation. Among other initiatives, a self driving Cadillac is planned by mid decade. Ford is also actively developing driver assist technology and is betting big on voice recognition. Ann Arbor has thousands of smart cars wirelessly connected on the road. Think about all those aging baby boomers with houses in the burbs and no desire to move as their vision and reflexes decline. The smart car is a huge market. Seriously, Detroit and SE Michigan have good jobs, great universities, cheap housing and easy access to great sports and outdoors activities.
39635471
submission
dstates writes:
The human body is a complex system, and the bacteria in our gut modifies the way we process food. Taking antibiotics early in life changes which bacteria we carry and appears to increase lifetime risk of obesity. For many years, antibiotics have been added to animal feed to increase weight gain in farm animals. Looks like the same thing happens to us.
39369455
submission
dstates writes:
One Laptop Per Child reports encouraging results of a bold experiment to reach the millions of students worldwide who have no access to primary school. OLPC delivered tablets to two Ethiopian villages in unmarked boxes without instructions or instructors. Within minutes the kids were opening the boxes and figuring out how to use the Motorola Zoom tablets, within days they were playing alphabet songs and withing a few months how to hack the user interface to enable blocked camera functionality. With the Kahn Academy and others at the high school level and massive open online courses at the college level, the teaching profession is under assault as never before.
37283739
submission
dstates writes:
The Wall Street Journal reports that Google is in a legal fight with the FBI over access to passwords that will unlock the data on a cell phone. Earlier this year Google refused to unlock an alleged pimp's Android cellphone even after the Federal Bureau of Investigation obtained a search warrant. The problem is that the FBI may have a warrant for a very specific piece of information, but once they have unrestricted access to a person's smartphone, they have access to information about vast swaths of the individual's life. Apple has taken a different strategy burning a unique encryption key into the silicon of each iPhone which neither Apple nor its suppliers retain. As a result, once someone makes 10 unsuccessful unlock attempts on an iPhone, the data is irretrievably gone.
35431875
submission
dstates writes:
An industry has grown up around patents guaranteeing exclusive access to testing of mutations in specific genes, but recently the Supreme Court rejected a biotechnology patent saying laws of nature cannot be patented, and threw the issue of patents on genes back to the lower courts. The Court of Appeals is now preparing to hear arguments on whether genes can be patented. The results will have major implications. On the one hand, restricting access to whole regions of the human genome will stifle scientific progress. On the other, companies like Myriad Genetics and Optimal Medicine use the patents to protect years of work invested in research, but this also means preventing other companies from offering diagnostics based on competing faster and lower cost technologies to analyze mutations in these genes.
35243397
submission
dstates writes:
A strong solar storm eruption on July 12, 2012, resulted in a large solar flare, and a wave of plasma stoked by this X-class solar flare, the most intense type, is headed towards Earth. This blast of charged particles, known as a coronal mass ejection (CME), is forecast to ignite a geomagnetic storm on Earth over the weekend. Unfortunately, the two main Federal agencies responsible for monitoring and predicting the consequences of such an event cannot agree on how big an impact the storm will have on earth. NOAA predicts it will be minor, maybe moderate. NASA says it will be moderate to severe. The intensity of the storm matters. If NOAA’s right, and the storm is minor, people living at high latitudes could be treated to some brilliant auroras over the weekend, but otherwise no big deal. If NASA’s right, and the geomagnetic storm is strong to severe, Earth-orbiting satellites could get disoriented and the electrical grid could experience widespread voltage control problems among other issues. I guess we will see soon who is right!
33210911
submission
dstates writes:
You paid for it, you should be able to read the results of publicly funded research. The National Institutes of Health have had a very successful open access mandate requiring that the results of federally funded biomedical research be published in open access journals. Now there is a White House petition to broaden this mandate. This is a jobs issue. Startups and midsize business need access to federally funded technology research. It is a health care issue, patients and community health providers need access, not a few scientists in well funded research institutes, and even wealthy institutions like Harvard are finding the prices of proprietary journals unsustainable.
29987711
submission
dstates writes:
Technology Review reports a chilling demonstration at the RSA security conference in which George Kurtz and colleagues from security startup CrowdStrike showed on stage that a real, unmodified Android phone could be hacked by a single web click. Kurtz, acted as a busy user who received a text message asking him to download an update to his phone's software. When he clicked on the link in that message, the phone's browser crashed and the device rebooted. Once restarted, the device appeared unchanged, but a silent, malicious app had been installed that relayed all his phone calls and text messages to the attacker, who could also track his location on a map. The bugs exploited are present in the distributions used by 90% of Android users worldwide.
29091131
submission
dstates writes:
In response to publishing industry attempts to choke off public access to publicly funded research, Representative Doyle has introduced the Federal Research Public Access Act to broaden and strengthen open access to federally funded research. Open access is critical for patients seeking to learn the latest about their disease as well as nurses and physicians treating them. It is critical for people in start ups and small businesses who do not have access to university subscriptions, and it is critical for universities that are now paying millions in subscription fees. Show your support for enhanced public access to federally funded research, sign the White House petition supporting the Federal Research Public Access Act of 2012.
