53440
submission
Vicissidude writes:
At the National Targeting Center, the ATS program harvests up to 50 fields of passenger data from international flights, including names, e-mail addresses and phone numbers, and uses watchlists, criminal databases and other government systems to assign risk scores to every passenger. When passengers deplane, Customs and Border Protection personnel then target the high scorers for extra screening. Data and the scores can be kept for 40 years, shared widely, and be used in hiring decisions. Travelers may neither see nor contest their scores. The ATS program appears to fly in the face of legal requirements Congress has placed in the Homeland Security appropriations bills for the last three years, which states, "None of the funds provided in this or previous appropriations Acts may be utilized to develop or test algorithms assigning risk to passengers whose names are not on government watch lists." The prohibition most recently appeared in section 514(e) of Congress' 2007 appropriation, which was signed into law by President Bush on Oct. 4th. Marc Rotenberg, the director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, said he was unaware of the language but that it clearly applies to the Automated Targeting System, not just Secure Flight, the delayed successor to CAPPS II. "Bingo, that's it — the program is unlawful," Rotenberg said. "I think 514(e) stands apart logically (from the other provisions) and 514 says the restrictions apply to any 'other follow-on or successor passenger prescreening program'. It would be very hard to argue that ATS as applied to travelers is not of the kind contemplated (by the lawmakers)."
47704
submission
Vicissidude writes:
General Motors has begun work on a mass-produced plug-in hybrid vehicle as part of what the world's biggest car maker sees as an inexorable shift towards electrically-powered cars and trucks. The concept of plug-in hybrids, with more powerful batteries than the conventional hybrid petrol-electric vehicles already on the road, has enjoyed growing attention in recent years. The batteries of plug-in hybrids would typically be recharged at night. Plug-in supporters estimate fuel costs at half those of conventional hybrids. The vehicles would cut greenhouse gas emissions in half. A small number of conventional hybrids have been converted to plug-ins, but the cost and weight of the batteries have so far discouraged commercial production. Rick Wagoner, GM's chief executive, said that GM aimed to mass produce a plug-in hybrid version of the Saturn Vue crossover utility vehicle.
33875
submission
Vicissidude writes:
Software industry body Nasscom has warned that India faces a shortfall of half a million skilled workers by 2010. Nasscom President Kiran Karnik told a conference in the city of Hyderabad that the IT industry in India needed 350,000 engineers per annum, but no more than 150,000 of the most highly-skilled engineers were available each year. This was creating severe shortages of talent, Mr Karnik said. There was a huge number of graduates and engineers, but people with the technical, communications, and team-working skills that were required were often lacking.
31693
submission
Vicissidude writes:
Earlier this year, responding to citizen complaints, Everett Police discovered that on-line marketplace Craigslist has become a popular selling vehicle for the world's oldest profession.
Now it has become part of the Everett vice detective's everyday tools for finding and arresting prostitutes. The ads are on Craigslist by the thousands. Listed under "erotic services," listed by city, listed by county — you can find anything, anyone, and any sexual service you might want.
So officers merely answer the explicit ads the ladies have placed on-line, set up a meeting, and arrest them once an offer of sex-for-money is made.
25758
submission
Vicissidude writes:
Millions of viewers of NBC's Heroes know actor Masi Oka as Hiro Nakamura, the bored young Japanese office worker who discovers he has the power to alter time and teleport. What they probably don't know is that Masi Oka's been working behind the scenes for years as one of Industrial Light & Magic's top programmers. Since graduating from Brown University in 1997, Oka has worked on more than 30 big-budget Hollywood films at ILM. During that time he has written more than 20 programs and 100 plug-ins for the leading special-effects house. While audiences might not have known his name or face until Heroes, they've seen his programming magic on the big screen in films like The Perfect Storm, Star Wars: Episode II, Terminator 3 and the first two Pirates of the Caribbean movies.
22229
submission
Vicissidude writes:
A team of American and British researchers has made a cloak of invisibility. In their experiment the scientists used microwaves to try and detect a copper cylinder. Like light and radar waves, microwaves bounce off objects making them visible and creating a shadow, though it has to be detected with instruments. If you can hide something from microwaves, you can hide it from radar and visible light. In effect the device, made of metamaterials — engineered mixtures of metal and circuit board materials, which could include ceramic, Teflon or fiber composite materials — channels the microwaves around the object being hidden. When water flows around a rock, co-author David R. Smith explained, the water recombines after it passes the rock and people looking at the water downstream would never know it had passed a rock. The first working cloak was in only two dimensions and did cast a small shadow, Smith acknowledged. The next step is to go for three dimensions and to eliminate any shadow.
10275
submission
Vicissidude writes:
A 3-D reference atlas of the genes that are active in the mouse brain is now complete. The atlas was declared finished on Tuesday, although scientists have been using it regularly for more than a year. The project began in 2002 with $100 million from Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen. "Since mice and humans share more than 90 percent of genes, the Allen Brain Atlas has enormous potential for understanding human neurological diseases and disorders affecting more than 50 million Americans each year," the Allen Institute for Brain Science said. These include Alzheimer's disease, which affects 4.5 million Americans, autism, which may occur in one in every 175 births, epilepsy, which affects 2.7 million Americans, schizophrenia and Parkinson's disease.
3742
submission
Vicissidude writes:
In a species of fruit fly, the frequencies of so-called inversions, in which a piece of chromosome is flipped around, were observed decades ago to correspond to the latitude at which the flies were found. In nearly all the sites where the flies have recently been sampled — a span of three continents — the frequency of specific inversions has increased hand in hand with climbing temperatures. "It's a very clear signal that climate warming is going to have a big impact on our environment," says Raymond Huey of the University of Washington.
136
submission
Vicissidude writes:
A study by Hamburg Sex Researcher Professor Dr Werner Habermehl looked at the sex lives of hundreds of German women and compared them with their hair color. Habermehl says, "The sex lives of women with red hair were clearly more active than those with other hair color, with more partners and having sex more often than the average. The research shows that the fiery redhead certainly lives up to her reputation." Finally! Some science that actually helps the Slashdot geek's everyday life. Go forth and search out the redheads!
