Garabito writes "A spider that had been sent to the International Space Station for a school science program was lost. Two arachnids were sent in order to know if spiders can survive and make webs in space, but now only one spider can be seen in the container. NASA isn't sure where the other spider could have gone. I, for one, welcome our new arachnid overlords."

Roland Piquepaille writes "Today, Ileana Buhan, a Romanian computer scientist, is presenting her PhD Thesis at the University of Twente in the Netherlands. She is using biometrics to protect confidential information when it is exchanged between two mobile devices. This is a very innovative approach to security. Buhan's biometric application will generate almost unbreakable passwords from photos taken by the connected users. Here is how it works. 'To do this, two users need to save their own photos on their PDAs. They then take photos of each other. The PDA compares the two photos and generates a security code for making a safe connection.'"

neo writes "Chris Rapier has presented a paper describing how to dramatically increase the speed of SCP networks. It appears that because SCP relies on a single thread in SSH, the crypto can sometimes be the bottleneck instead of the wire speed. Their new implementation (HPN-SSH) takes advantage of multi-threaded capable systems dramatically increasing the speed of securely copying files. They are currently looking for potential users with very high bandwidth to test the upper limits of the system."

WirePosted tips us to a story about a group of scientists who are heading to Antarctica to study organisms that thrive in climates too extreme for most other life forms. The team will be visiting a lake that has a pH "like strong Clorox," the sediments of which "produce more methane than any other natural body of water on our planet." The scientists hope to learn about the potential for life in other unforgiving climates, such as those on Mars or the various ice-covered moons in the Solar System. Expedition leader Richard Hoover was quoted saying, "This will help us decide where to search for life on other planets and how to recognize alien life if we actually find it." We've previously discussed Antarctic microbes as they related to conditions on Mars.

An anonymous reader writes "I have code that I've written for my current company that I'd like to open-source. The only problem is that my company has the usual clause that says that anything I write belongs to them. Now that they've decided to abandon my code for another product that replaces its function, I'd like to continue working on my project as well as open it up to the world. The easy part is cleaning it up and posting it on SourceForge and Freshmeat. The hard part is making sure that I am free of any legal complications in the future. I've looked online to try to find a legal document I could present to my employer to get them to sign off on it, but I'm not having any luck. Has anyone else been in this boat or can refer me to some legal documentation that may help out?"

jd writes "An international consortium of specialists in genetics has announced the 1000 Genomes Project, in which at least 1,000 people from around the world will have their genomes fully sequenced as part of an effort to discover the relationship between genetics and disease. At present, over 100 regions of DNA are known to be related to illnesses, but the maps that exist are vague and are drawn from an extremely small population pool. According to the article, this results in the need for slow, expensive, and laborious studies to pinpoint causes, especially for rarer conditions. This project aims to find conditions that might only appear once in every 2,000 people (though how they intend to do that with half that number is unclear). The researchers hope to massively speed up the diagnosis of genetically linked illnesses and to improve the reliability of such diagnoses."

flutterecho writes "A sophomore at Valdosta State University was expelled after criticizing his university's plan to build two new parking garages with student fees. In a letter apparently slipped under his dorm room door, Ronald Zaccari, the university's president, wrote that he 'present[ed] a clear and present danger to this campus' and referred to an image on the student's Facebook page which contained a threatening description. 'As additional evidence of the threat posed by Barnes, the document referred to a link he posted to his Facebook profile whose accompanying graphic read: "Shoot it. Upload it. Get famous. Project Spotlight is searching for the next big thing. Are you it?" It doesn't mention that Project Spotlight was an online digital video contest and that "shoot" in that context meant "record."' In a post-Virginia Tech world, has university surveillance of online identities gone too far?"

Westech writes "Multiple indications of vote fraud are beginning to pop up regarding the New Hampshire primary elections. Roughly 80% of New Hampshire precincts use Diebold machines, while the remaining 20% are hand counted. A Black Box Voting contributor has compiled a chart of results from hand counted precincts vs. results from machine counted precincts. In machine counted precincts, Clinton beat Obama by almost 5%. In hand counted precincts, Obama beat Clinton by over 4%, which closely matches the scientific polls that were conducted leading up to the election. Another issue is the Republican results from Sutton precinct. The final results showed Ron Paul with 0 votes in Sutton. The next day a Ron Paul supporter came forward claiming that both she and several of her family members had voted for Ron Paul in Sutton. Black Box Voting reports that after being asked about the discrepancy Sutton officials decided that Ron Paul actually received 31 votes in Sutton, but they were left off of the tally sheet due to 'human error.'"