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Elderly To Get Satellite Navigation To Find Their Way Around Supermarkets 80

Posted by samzenpus from the too-many-aisles dept.
Three government centers in the UK have been working on a way to use digital technology to help the elderly and the disabled. One of their ideas is a supermarket satellite navigation system to help elderly people who get confused by changing layouts in the aisles. Professor Paul Watson, of Newcastle University, said: "Many older people lack the confidence to maintain 'normal' walking habits. This is often due to worries about getting lost in unfamiliar, new or changing environments." A kitchen for Alzheimer's patients packed with hidden sensors and projectors is also in the works.
Science

Some Large Dinosaurs Survived the K-T Extinction 269

Posted by kdawson from the hid-under-a-rock dept.
mmmscience sends along coverage from the Examiner on evidence that some dinosaurs survived the extinction event(s) at the end of the Cretaceous period. Here is the original journal article. "A US paleontologist is challenging one of the field's greatest theories: the mass extinction of dinosaurs at the end of the Cretaceous period. Jim Fassett, a paleontologist who holds an emeritus position at the US Geological Survey, recently published a paper in Palaeontologia Electronica with evidence that points to a pocket of dinosaurs that somehow survived in remote parts New Mexico and Colorado for up to half a million years past the end of the Cretaceous period. If this theory holds up, these dinosaurs would be the only ones that made it to the Paleocene Age."
The Internet

Using the Internet To Subvert Democracy 202

Posted by kdawson from the you-thought-diebold-was-bad dept.
david_adams writes "All the recent talk about various polls and elections being pranked or hijacked, serious and silly alike, prompted me to write an article about the technical realities behind online polling, and the political fallout of ever becoming subject to online voting for serious elections. Even if we were to be able to limit voting to legitimate, legal voters, the realities of social networking and the rise of Internet-based movements would dramatically alter the political landscape if online voting were to become commonplace."
Image

Tokyo Scientists Create Mobile Slime 111

Posted by samzenpus from the godzilla's-newest-foe dept.
Sockatume writes "Shingo Maeda and colleagues at Waseda University have created a polymer gel that walks under its own chemical power. The team exploited the oscillating Belousov-Zhabotinsky reaction to create periodic changes in the size of the polymer, and built a tensed structure that would amplify those small movements into a horrifically potent gait. The current version only walks across a notched surface, but the team are working on a terrible new form that will cross smooth surfaces like a snail. The team say they intend to apply it in the self-assembly of small structures. Suddenly, I can't stop screaming."
The Internet

A Look At the Wolfram Alpha "Search Engine" 216

Posted by kdawson from the computational-knowledge-engine dept.
An anonymous reader points out a ReadWriteWeb piece on an hour-long demo of Wolfram|Alpha (which we discussed at its announcement). Stephen Wolfram does not like to call it a "search engine," preferring instead the term "computational knowledge engine." It will open to the public in May. "The hype around Wolfram|Alpha, the next 'Google killer' from the makers of Mathematica, has been building over the last few weeks. Today, we were lucky enough to attend a one-hour web demo with Stephen Wolfram, and from what we've seen, it definitely looks like it can live up to the hype — though, because it is so different from traditional search engines, it will definitely not be a 'Google killer.' According to Stephen Wolfram, the goal of Alpha is to give everyone access to expert knowledge and the data that a specialist would be able to compute from this information."
Government

The Woman Who Established Fair Use 226

Posted by kdawson from the one-of-a-kind dept.
The Narrative Fallacy writes "The Washington Post has an interesting profile on Barbara A. Ringer, who joined the Copyright Office at the Library of Congress in 1949 and spent 21 years drafting the legislation and lobbying Congress before the Copyright Act of 1976 was finally passed. Ringer wrote most of the bill herself. 'Barbara had personal and political skills that could meld together the contentious factions that threatened to tear apart every compromise in the 20 year road to passage of the 1976 Act,' wrote copyright lawyer William Patry. The act codified the fair use defense to copyright infringement. For the first time, scholars and reviewers could quote briefly from copyrighted works without having to pay fees. With the 1976 act that Ringer conceived, an author owned the copyright for his or her lifetime plus 50 years. Previously under the old 1909 law, an author owned the copyright for 28 years from the date of publication and unless the copyright was renewed, the work entered the public domain, and the author lost any right to royalties. Ringer received the President's Award for Distinguished Federal Civilian Service, the highest honor for a federal worker. Ringer remained active in copyright law for years, attending international conferences and filing briefs with the Supreme Court before her death earlier this year at age 83. 'Her contributions were monumental,' said Marybeth Peters, the Library of Congress's current register of copyrights. 'She blazed trails. She was a heroine.'"
Music

Music Copyright In EU Extended To 70 Years 395

Posted by kdawson from the how-about-residuals-for-my-lines-of-code dept.
rastos1 writes "The European Parliament extended the copyright in the EU for the performers of musical works from 50 to 70 years. The legislation will be reviewed in 3 years. The European Commission will consider extending the scope to audiovisual works too." So performers will collect for 20 more years from the date of performance; composers' rights already extend to 70 years beyond their deaths. Update: 4/26 at 12:15 GMT by SS: Reader rimberg points out that while the copyright extension was passed in the European Parliament, it is now being held up in the Council of Ministers awaiting further debate on the issue.
Space

Submission + - NASA Researchers Worried About Huge Sun Flares (wired.com) 1

Submitted by resistant
resistant writes: Wired reported recently that a group of researchers assembled by NASA issued a "chilling" report expressing great concern about the potential for solar flares in 2012 to coincide with "the presence of an unusually large hole in Earth's geomagnetic shield", potentially virtually collapsing national power grids. Complicating the matter is the lack of current plans to replace the sole early warning satellite on which power grid operators rely, and the poor state of readiness in general. Full recovery from such a catastrophe might take four to ten years, and cost trillions of dollars.

The report was largely ignored at first because of the unfortunate overlap with an ancient Mayan prediction of a major "turning point" in the year 2012 (by the Western calendar).
Medicine

Submission + - Doctors in the UK May Have Discovered an HIV Cure

Submitted by Nakor BlueRider
Nakor BlueRider writes: A patient in the UK was treated with a bone marrow transplant for his leukemia. The donor of this marrow is one of the roughly 3% of people born with a natural resistance to the HIV virus. In the three years since, the patient has been completely cured of the HIV virus.

The immunity is caused by a genetic mutation, where one of the two receptors in the marrow that HIV interacts with is missing. Experts hope that they can grow a permanent stem cell supply from a few donors' bone marrow. Medics are saying this treatment may become common as soon as five years from now. With only 3% of the world bearing that mutation, the need of a compatible donor for a transplant to work, and the risks involved with a transplant, it may not be perfect, but I believe we can all be overjoyed that we have proven HIV can be beaten.
Sci-Fi

Submission + - Bruce Sterling on Design (acm.org)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Bruce Sterling, one of the original cyberpunks, offers his thoughts on design; he takes designers, technologists, and even science fiction writers to task with their lack of imagination: "We have entered an unimagined culture. In this world of search engines and cross-links, of keywords and networks, the solid smokestacks of yesterday's disciplines have blown out. Instead of being armored in technique, or sheltered within subculture, design and science fiction have become like two silk balloons, two frail, polymorphic pockets of hot air, floating in a generally tainted cultural atmosphere." View the original article here.
Moon

Submission + - Steve Eve's 1:10 Saturn 5 Successful!

Submitted by Darren Wright
Darren Wright writes: Steve Eve's 1:10 Saturn V took flight today at 1:00PM at Higgs Farm, Price, MD. The 9 motors, made by Loki Research, produced
8800lbs of thrust. The rocket pulled 7g's at Max Q, 465 mph, and apogee was at 4441ft. The rocket descended on 3
28ft man rated chutes, and stuck the landing.
Television

Submission + - Economist on television over broadband (economist.com)

Submitted by zxjio
zxjio writes: The Economist has two articles discussing television over broadband, and the effects of DVR use:


"Cable-television companies make money by selling packages of channels. The average American household pays $700 a year for over 100 channels of cable television but watches no more than 15. Most would welcome the chance to buy only those channels they want to watch, rather than pay for expensive packages of programming they are largely not interested in. They would prefer greater variety, toosomething the internet offers in abundance. A surprising amount of video is available free from websites like Hulu and YouTube, or for a modest fee from iTunes, Netflix Watch Instantly and Amazon Video on Demand. ... Consumers new-found freedom to choose has struck fear into the hearts of the cable companies. They have been trying to slow internet televisions steady march into the living room by rolling out DOCSIS 3 at a snails pace and then stinging customers for its services. Another favourite trick has been to cap the amount of data that can be downloaded, or to charge extortionately by the megabyte. Yet the measures to suffocate internet television being taken by the cable companies may already be too late. A torrent of innovative start-ups, not seen since the dotcom mania of a decade ago, is flooding the market with technology for supplying internet television to the living room."

"Families with DVRs seem to spend 15-20% of their viewing time watching pre-recorded shows, and skip only about half of all advertisements. This means only about 5% of television is time-shifted and less than 3% of all advertisements are skipped. Mitigating that loss, people with DVRs watch more television."
Businesses

Drug Company Merck Drew Up Doctor "Hit List" 281

Posted by kdawson from the i'll-have-your-job-young-man dept.
Philip K Dickhead sends in a piece from the Australian media, a couple of weeks old, that hasn't seen much discussion here. In a class-action lawsuit in Australia against Merck for its Vioxx anti-arthritis drug, information has come out that the company developed a "hit list" of doctors who had expressed anything but enthusiasm for the drug. Vioxx was withdrawn from the market in 2004 because it causes heart attacks and strokes. Merck settled a class action in the US for $4.85 billion but did not admit guilt. "An international drug company made a hit list of doctors who had to be 'neutralized' or discredited because they criticized the anti-arthritis drug the pharmaceutical giant produced. Staff at US company Merck & Co. emailed each other about the list of doctors — mainly researchers and academics — who had been negative about the drug Vioxx or Merck and a recommended course of action. The email, which came out in the Federal Court in Melbourne yesterday as part of a class action against the drug company, included the words 'neutralize,' 'neutralized,' or 'discredit' against some of the doctors' names. It is also alleged the company used intimidation tactics against critical researchers, including dropping hints it would stop funding to institutions and claims it interfered with academic appointments. 'We may need to seek them out and destroy them where they live,' a Merck employee wrote, according to an email excerpt read to the court by Julian Burnside QC, acting for the plaintiff."
Cellphones

Why AT&T Wants To Keep the iPhone Away From Verizon 237

Posted by Soulskill from the all-about-the-benjamins dept.
Hugh Pickens writes "Saul Hansell of the NY Times has an interesting post analyzing AT&T's earnings report and highlighting the enormous stakes involved in the renewal of its exclusive contract to distribute Apple's iPhone in the United States. Hansell does some rough calculations: 'If the average iPhone customer brings in $90 a month, or $1,080 a year in revenue, and the operating profit margin stays constant at 26 percent, that means an iPhone customer represents at least $561 in operating profit over a two-year contract,' says Hansell. 'Put another way, if the company gets 2.5 million new customers a year because of its iPhone exclusivity, the deal represents at least $700 million a year in operating profits — profits that it could lose if Verizon sold the iPhone, too.' With those sort of numbers, AT&T has every reason to make Apple an offer it can't refuse to keep its exclusive deal for another few years. Of course, the incentives for Verizon are presumably the mirror image, so expect Verizon to come to Cupertino, checkbook in hand, to see what sort of deal they can make. 'The benefit of somewhat more iPhone sales from wide distribution is likely to be swamped by a huge bid from AT&T to keep exclusivity, and an equally high bid from Verizon to win some (or maybe even all) of the business for itself.'"
Networking

Time Warner Shutting Off Austin Accounts For Heavy Usage 591

Posted by Soulskill from the somebody-threw-them-a-shovel dept.
mariushm writes "After deciding to shelve metered broadband plans, it looks like Time Warner is cutting off, with no warning, the accounts of customers whom they deem to have used too much bandwidth. 'Austin Stop The Cap reader Ryan Howard reports that his Road Runner service was cut off yesterday without warning. According to Ryan, it took four calls to technical support, two visits to the cable store to try two new cable modems (all to no avail), before someone at Time Warner finally told him to call the company's "Security and Abuse" center. "I called the number and had to leave a voice mail, and about an hour later a Time Warner technician called me back and lectured me for using 44 gigabytes in one week," Howard wrote. Howard was then "educated" about his usage. "According to her, that is more than most people use in a year," Howard said.'"

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