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Comment: Angry homebrewer corrects Angry homebrewer (Score 1) 157

by Alien7 (#45529599) Attached to: Beer Drinking Networks In Amazon Tribe Help Explain Altruism

' in which yeast eat the sugar and excrete ethanol.'.

This is not exactly correct either, the yeast do not 'eat sugar and poop alcohol', in actuality the yeast, after running out of oxygen in the air (or without access to air in the case of bottom fermenting yeast) 'breath' the exposed oxygen off of the sugar molecule, what's left behind is alcohol.

Comment: Fine by me (Score 1) 409

by Alien7 (#45468967) Attached to: Boston Cops Outraged Over Plans to Watch Their Movements Using GPS

Think of the implications when criminals and everyday citizens get ahold of the police GPS data. How convenient would it be to have a map of the city with a little blip showing the position of each cop car if you were say, trying to plan a murder, or smuggling methamphetamine. You could track the rounds each squad car takes over the course of weeks and plan the perfect route to avoid any intervention. Not to mention the end of speed traps as we know it.

Comment: Thwart telecomm companies (Score 1) 2

The free point to point mesh internet needs to become a reality. The internet will never be free and open if it is controlled by massive telecommunications conglomerates, we need an internet that relies on a P2P network of high powered wireless devices. The original computer networking relied on direct ham radio connections between points, if this method could be improved with higher bandwidth and disseminated on citizens band frequencies so the FCC couldn't touch it we could make the internet as untraceable as a Tor network. This is a challenge for engineers concerned with the direction internet regulation is going. With private space travel becoming a reality one could even foresee a network that relies on private satellites outside the jurisdiction of any nation, and the only cost to access it would be that of the devices you use to connect.

+ - Schneier: The US government has betrayed the internet. We need to take it back.-> 2

Submitted by wabrandsma
wabrandsma writes "Quoting Bruce Schneier in the Guardian:

The NSA has undermined a fundamental social contract. We engineers built the internet – and now we have to fix it

Government and industry have betrayed the internet, and us. This is not the internet the world needs, or the internet its creators envisioned. We need to take it back. And by we, I mean the engineering community.

Yes, this is primarily a political problem, a policy matter that requires political intervention. But this is also an engineering problem, and there are several things engineers can – and should – do."
Link to Original Source

+ - The Chromochord: Biotech's First Musical Instrument Plays Proteins Like A Piano ->

Submitted by Josiah Zayner
Josiah Zayner writes "The Chromochord allows a musician to vibrate proteins quantum mechanically with light just like they would a piano string. The basis of the Chromochord is the engineered Light-Oxygen-Voltage protein domain from Avena sativa(Oat). Absorption of light causes the chromophore in the protein to undergo a quantum mechanical energy transition that reversibly changes the absorption spectra and whose measurement modulates the pitch of notes being played. Josiah Zayner, the inventor of the Chromochord, has been working with the composer Francisco Castillo Trigueros to create complex musical compositions based on this protein nanotechnology."
Link to Original Source

+ - Universal Genome Sequencing at Birth?-> 1

Submitted by sciencehabit
sciencehabit writes "In a few years, all new parents may go home from the hospital with not just a bundle of joy, but with something else—the complete sequence of their baby’s DNA. A new research program funded at $25 million over 5 years by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) will explore the promise—and ethical challenges—of sequencing every newborn’s genome."
Link to Original Source

+ - Are Young Adults Getting Over Weed?->

Submitted by Daniel_Stuckey
Daniel_Stuckey writes "For the first time in four decades of polling, a national survey showed that a 52 percent of Americans want to legalize the sticky stuff. With 20 states already having approved medical marijuana, another sixteen states decriminalizing possession, and two states, Colorado and Washington, legalizing bud outright for recreational use, the US is going greener and greener country as we roll out of first decade of the new millennium. But another national poll conducted this summer hints at a cultural trend seemingly at odds with this mass population shift towards drug love. A Gallup report published at the beginning of August says that while general support of cannabis has been increasing, experimentation and use among 18- to 29-year-olds is actually decreasing."
Link to Original Source

+ - What's Causing the Rise In Obesity? Everything.->

Submitted by Mr_Blank
Mr_Blank writes "We all know — because we are being constantly reminded — that we are getting fat. Americans are at the forefront of the trend, but it is a transnational one. Apparently, it is also trans-species: Over the past 20 years, as the American people were getting fatter, so were America’s laboratory macaques, chimpanzees, vervet monkeys and mice, as well as domestic dogs, domestic cats, and domestic and feral rats from both rural and urban areas. Researchers examined records on those eight species and found that average weight for every one had increased. The marmosets gained an average of 9% per decade. Lab mice gained about 11% per decade. Chimps are doing especially badly: their average body weight had risen 35% per decade. What is causing the obesity era? Everything."
Link to Original Source

Comment: Re:FIghting the system is a mental health issue (Score 1) 319

by Alien7 (#42682873) Attached to: Clay Shirky On Hackers and Depression: Where's the Love?

Depression isn't the common cold, it's a MENTAL health problem. This means that if a placebo makes you not depressed it's an effective medicine regardless of whether or not it has any physiological effect. If doing X makes you feel better and doesn't have any negative side effects then you have no reason not to do it, especially in this case because we know Vitamin D has other positive health effects. Studies or nay there's no reason not to try it.

Cloud

+ - FileRock, a secure Dropbox clone, goes Open Source->

Submitted by filerock
filerock writes "FileRock, an Italian startup company providing synchronization & backup service à la Dropbox, has released the source code for its client. The FileRock service has its focus on security: all files are encrypted client-side, encryption keys are never revealed to the service itself, and integrity of the data stored in the cloud is checked whenever a file is retrieved. Many have complained of Dropbox security and were looking for an open source alternative: now there is one, and the code is available on GitHub."
Link to Original Source

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