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Medicine

New Flu Strain Appears In the US and Mexico 315

Posted by Soulskill
from the fluent-in-english-and-spanish dept.
Combat Wombat writes with this excerpt from Reuters: "A strain of flu never seen before has killed up to 60 people in Mexico and also appeared in the United States, where eight people were infected but recovered, health officials said on Friday. Mexico's government said at least 20 people have died of the flu and it may also be responsible for 40 other deaths. [The government] shut down schools and canceled major public events in Mexico City to try to prevent more deaths in the sprawling, overcrowded capital. ... Close analysis showed the disease is a mixture of swine, human and avian viruses, according to the CDC. Humans can occasionally catch swine flu from pigs but rarely have they been known to pass it on to other people. Mexico reported 1,004 suspected cases of the new virus, including four possible cases in Mexicali on the border with California.
Patents

How Do I Put an Invention Into the Public Domain? 233

Posted by Soulskill
from the co2-powered-self-replicating-gravity-detector dept.
Nefarious Wheel writes "I have a couple of inventions — mechanical devices, based on physical principles — that I believe could transform certain aspects of industry. The trouble is, I can't afford to file patents, and even if I could, I'm not sure that would be the best way for these devices to be made available as widely as I'd like. Is there some way to publish the details of these innovations in the public domain in such a way as to protect them from being snaffled away by some patent troll? I'd be happy with a contribution (or simple attribution) model for recompense, which could be zero to whatever, but that's not as important to me as getting the ideas out there for anyone who wants to use them. This isn't copyright, and I know of no patent equivalent to Creative Commons. In short, what's the best way to protect an invention against someone filing a patent on it, short of patenting the device yourself? Can this be done?"
Television

+ - TiVo announces DVR-SuperAdvance

Submitted by mark0
mark0 writes "TiVo has announced the TiVo DVR-SuperAdvance. The PC World review says, 'Familiar TiVo interface; DVR can record not-yet-broadcast programming; potentially useful as a wagering aid,' though, '[it is] expensive; access to programming is limited; footage is displayed in standard definition only.'"
Security

+ - Massive threat to instant messaging unveiled

Submitted by SecurityConcious
SecurityConcious writes "Security researchers reported on the bugtraq security mailing list that they have found a way to exploit instant messaging applications by encoding shellcodes into smileys. "This would make massive attacks against instant messaging applications impossible to catch by anti-virus, IDS or similar signature based technologies. Moreover, it is possible to conduct attacks with plausible deniability." they said. They are urging chat network operators to disable smileys to mitigate the threat. Is this the end of friendly IM ?"
Red Hat Software

+ - Red Hat Readying RHEL 5 Real-Time Product

Submitted by
GeekGal
GeekGal writes "Red Hat is preparing its Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 real-time product for release later this year. The decision to release a separate real-time version of RHEL 5 marks a significant shift for Red Hat, which initially planned to bundle the technology into RHEL 6, the next version of its enterprise server operating system software. The current plan currently for the software, referred to internally as Red Hat Enterprise Linux RT, is to have a capability set that is primarily a kernel drop and replacement for standard RHEL 5, eWeek is quoting (http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,2121656,00.a sp)Tim Burke, Red Hat's director of emerging technologies as saying. The RT product will also be priced separately from standard RHEL 5 and will not be included as part of the normal customer contract for that server software. Red Hat also plans to productize its implementation of the Advanced Message Queuing Protocol, Burke said, noting that most of those users also have high-speed messaging needs. "But our AMQP offering will not require customers to be running RHEL RT," he said."
Math

Ramanujian's Deathbed Problem Cracked 205

Posted by kdawson
from the mock-theta-soup dept.
Jake's Mom sends word of the serendipitous solution to a decades-old mathematical mystery. Researchers from the University of Wisconsin have unraveled a major number theory puzzle left at the death of one of the twentieth century's greatest mathematicians, Srinivasa Ramanujan. From the press release: "Mathematicians have finally laid to rest the legendary mystery surrounding an elusive group of numerical expressions known as the 'mock theta functions.' Number theorists have struggled to understand the functions ever since... Ramanujan first alluded to them in a letter written [to G. H. Hardy] on his deathbed, in 1920. Now, using mathematical techniques that emerged well after Ramanujan's death, two number theorists at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have pieced together an explanatory framework that for the first time illustrates what mock theta functions are, and exactly how to derive them."

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