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Submission + - When Reporting On Piracy Becomes Ethically Irresponsible, If Not Illegal (celluloidjunkie.com)

Submitted by sperlingreich
sperlingreich writes: The leak of "Expendables 3" more than three weeks before its theatrical release made me question whether reporting on the news was the right thing to do.

Freedom of the press laws may "allow" media outlets and journalists to report on pirated titles without becoming financially culpable for a producer's losses, though doesn't such activity actually publicize the availability of specific content, thus increasing illegal downloading and ultimately the economic damage it causes?

Submission + - Hackers Steal Data On 4.5 Million US Hospital Patients (itworld.com)

Submitted by itwbennett
itwbennett writes: Community Health Systems said the attack occurred in April and June of this year, but it wasn't until July that it determined the theft had taken place. Working with a computer security company, it determined the attack was carried out by a group based in China that used 'highly sophisticated malware' to attack its systems. The hackers got away with patient names, addresses, birthdates, telephone numbers and Social Security numbers of the 4.5 million people who were referred to or received services from doctors affiliated with the company in the last five years. The stolen data did not include patient credit card, medical or clinical information.

Submission + - Feds: Red light camera firm paid for Chicago official's car, condo

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The former CEO of Redflex, a major red light camera vendor, and John Bills, former Managing Deputy Commissioner at the Department of Transportation, have been indicted on federal corruption charges stemming from a contract with the City of Chicago. According to the indictment, a friend of Bills was hired as a contractor and paid $2 million. Much of that money was then kicked back to Bills, who also got a Mercedes and a condominium via Redflex employees. The defendants are facing 23 counts including: mail fraud, wire fraud, and bribery. Each fraud count carries a maximum sentence of 20 years.

Submission + - Google protects undersea cables against potential shark attacks (theweathernetwork.com)

Submitted by brunes69
brunes69 writes: When you plan for the costs to span the entire Pacific Ocean with fibre optic communication cable, you need to account for a lot of different factors to ensure that cable will remain protected and intact. Google, for one, is apparently taking no chances with its cables, even going so far as to protect them against shark attack.

Submission + - Processors and the Limits of Physics (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: As our CPU cores have packed more and more transistors into increasingly tiny spaces, we've run into problems with power, heat, and diminishing returns. Chip manufacturers have been working around these problems, but at some point, we're going to run into hard physical limits that we can't sidestep. Igor Markov from the University of Michigan has published a paper in Nature (abstract) laying out the limits we'll soon have to face. "Markov focuses on two issues he sees as the largest limits: energy and communication. The power consumption issue comes from the fact that the amount of energy used by existing circuit technology does not shrink in a way that's proportional to their shrinking physical dimensions. The primary result of this issue has been that lots of effort has been put into making sure that parts of the chip get shut down when they're not in use. But at the rate this is happening, the majority of a chip will have to be kept inactive at any given time, creating what Markov terms 'dark silicon.' Power use is proportional to the chip's operating voltage, and transistors simply cannot operate below a 200 milli-Volt level. ... The energy use issue is related to communication, in that most of the physical volume of a chip, and most of its energy consumption, is spent getting different areas to communicate with each other or with the rest of the computer. Here, we really are pushing physical limits. Even if signals in the chip were moving at the speed of light, a chip running above 5GHz wouldn't be able to transmit information from one side of the chip to the other."

Submission + - Fukushima's Biological Legacy (eurekalert.org) 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Scientists began gathering biological information only a few months after the disastrous 2011 meltdown of the Fukushima power plant in Japan. Results of these studies are now beginning to reveal serious biological effects of the Fukushima radiation on non-human organisms ranging from plants to butterflies to birds. A series of articles summarizing these studies has been published in the Journal of Heredity describing impacts ranging from population declines to genetic damage (abstract 1, abstract 2, abstract 3, abstract 4). Most importantly, these studies supply a baseline for future research on the effects of ionizing radiation exposure to the environment. Common to all of the published studies is the hypothesis that chronic (low-dose) exposure to ionizing radiation results in genetic damage and increased mutation rates in reproductive and non-reproductive cells.

Submission + - Lucid Dreams may be better in solving problems (scienceworldreport.com)

Submitted by Taco Cowboy
Taco Cowboy writes: According to a study of University of Lincoln, UK, lucid dreamers have better problem-solving abilities

In the first empirical study on the subject, "Lucid Dreamers”, those who actually know they are dreaming while the dreams play out, exhibit better problem-solving abilities in their day-to-day lives

"It is believed that for dreamers to become lucid while asleep, they must see past the overwhelming reality of their dream state, and recognise that they are dreaming," said Patrick Bourke, senior lecturer at the Lincoln School of Psychology. "The same cognitive ability was found to be demonstrated while awake by a person's ability to think in a different way when it comes to solving problems"

For the study, the researchers observed the cognitive ability in 68 participants, aged between 18 and 25 years, who had experienced different levels of lucid dreaming, ranging from never to several times a month. The participants were asked to solve 30 problems intended to test their insight.The researchers said that each problem comprised of three words and a solution word. Each of the three words could be combined with the solution word to form a new compound word. For example, with the words 'sand', 'mile' and 'age', the linking word would be 'stone'

They found that frequent lucid dreamers solved 25 per cent more of the insight problems than non-lucid dreamers

Submission + - Stem cell research breakthrough from transparent fish 1

Submitted by brindafella
brindafella writes: Australian scientists have accidentally made one of the most significant discoveries in stem cell research, by studying the transparent embryos of Zebrafish (Danio rerio). The fish can be photographed and their development studied over time, and the movies can be played backwards, to track back from key developmental stages to find the stem cell basis for various traits of the fish. This fundamental research started by studying muscles, but the blood stem cell breakthrough was a bonus. They've found out how hematopoietic stem cells (HSC), among the most important stem cells found in blood and bone marrow, is formed. The scientishs are based at the Australian Regenerative Medicine Institute at Monash University. The research has been published in the Nature medical journal. This discovery could lead to the production of self-renewing stem cells in the lab to treat multiple blood disorders and diseases.

Submission + - DARPA contemplates vast ocean network (networkworld.com)

Submitted by coondoggie
coondoggie writes: Probably one of the last and perhaps unforgiving areas of the world not truly “wired” is above and below the ocean. Researchers at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) want to explore the possibility of seriously changing that notion and develop what it calls “a system-of-systems architecture and critical components to support networked maritime operations, to include undersea, surface, and above surface domains.”

Submission + - San Onofre nuclear power plant dismantling will cost $4.4 billion, take 20 years (nanaimodailynews.com)

Submitted by mdsolar
mdsolar writes: Dismantling the San Onofre nuclear power plant in Southern California will take two decades and cost $4.4 billion.

Southern California Edison on Friday released a road map that calls for decommissioning the twin-reactor plant and restoring the property over two decades, beginning in 2016.

U-T San Diego (http://bit.ly/1oZUoTU ) says it could be the most expensive decommissioning in the 70-year history of the nuclear power industry. But Edison CEO Ted Craver says there's already enough money to pay for it.

Edison shut down the plant in 2012 after extensive damage was found to tubes carrying radioactive water. It was closed for good last year.

Submission + - The five greatest space hacks of all time

Submitted by Esther Schindler
Esther Schindler writes: Space missions are amazingly well-prepared affairs, every action and procedure is followed, right down to the most minute detail. But sometimes mishaps and emergencies occur. Some can be dealt with by sophisticated sensors and equipment. Some can be dealt with on Earth from Mission Control. But sometimes the only option is for an astronaut to get their hands dirty, using whatever comes to hand and a bit of DIY know-how. It’s amazing what has been grabbed, bent and improvised to save red faces – or, indeed, the lives of astronauts.

Submission + - SpaceX executive calls for $22-25 billion NASA budget (examiner.com)

Submitted by MarkWhittington
MarkWhittington writes: While participating in a panel called “The US Space Enterprise Partnership” at the NewSpace Conference that was held by the Space Frontier Foundation on Saturday, SpaceX Chief Operating Officer Gwynne Shotwell opined that NASA’s budget should be raised to $22-25 billion, according to a tweet by Space Policy Online’s Marcia Smith. The theory is that a lot of political rancor has taken place in the aerospace community because of the space agency’s limited budget. If the budget were to be increased to pay for everything on the space wish list, the rancor will cease.

The statement represents something of a departure of the usual mutual antagonism that exists between some in the commercial space community and some at NASA. Indeed Space Politics’ Jeff Foust added a tweet, “Thought: a panel at a Space Frontier Foundation conf is talking about how to increase NASA budget. Imagine that in late 90s.” The Space Frontier Foundation has been a leading voice for commercializing space, sometimes at the expense of NASA programs.

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