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Medicine

Submission + - Alzheimer's Transmission Pathway Discovered (nytimes.com)

Submitted by smitty777
smitty777 writes: Two separate studies by the Taub Institute and Harvard have discovered the pathway used by Alzheimer's Disease to spread throught the brain. The studies indicate it's not a virus, but a distorted protien called Tau which moves from cell to cell. This article further explains that "The latest discovery, proving the latter, may now offer scientists a way to move forward and develop a way to block tau’s spread in Alzheimer’s patients, said Karen Duff, a researcher at Columbia’s Taub Institute for Research on Alzheimer’s disease and co-author of one study published Wednesday in journal PLoS One.

“It’s enlightening for us because it now provides a whole other area for potential therapeutic impact,” said Duff. “It’s possible that you can identify the disease and intervene (with potential tau-blocking drugs) before the dementia actually sets in.”"
DRM

Submission + - Ubisoft Games Won't Work Next Week (itproportal.com) 2

Submitted by hypnosec
hypnosec writes: Several of Ubisoft's biggest titles won't be playable as of next week thanks to a server move by the publisher and the restrictive DRM that was used in their development. This isn't just multiplayer either. Because Ubisoft thought it would be a smart plan to use always on DRM for even the single player portion of games like Assassin's Creed, even the single player portion of that title won't be playable during the server move. Some of the other games affected by this move will be Tom Clancy's HAWX 2, Might & Magic: Heroes 6 and The Settlers 7. The Mac games that will be broken during this period are Assassin's Creed, Splinter Cell Conviction and The Settlers. This move was announced this week as part of a community letter, with Ubisoft describing how the data servers for many of the publisher's online services would be migrated from third party facilities to a new location starting on the 7th February. The publisher didn't reveal how long the transfer would take.
Patents

Submission + - Apple forbidden to sell iPhone 3G, 3GS, 4 and iPad with UMTS in Germany (heise.de)

Submitted by cccc828
cccc828 writes: German news site heise reports that Motorola won an injunction against Apple for violating EU patent 0847654. In this injunction the court in Mannheim forbids Apple to sell iPhone 3G, 3GS, 4 and iPad with UMTS via their online store. The products can still be bought in brick and mortar stores and from other online retailers.
Microsoft

Submission + - Windows Phone 8 detailed, uses Windows 8 kernel (extremetech.com)

Submitted by
MrSeb
MrSeb writes: "Thanks to a leaked video — a video that Microsoft made for Nokia — we now have almost complete details of Windows Phone 8 (WP8). From deep Windows 8, Skype, and SkyDrive integration, through to the addition of NFC “wallet” payments and BitLocker encryption, it sounds like Windows Phone 8 will be close to iOS and Android in terms of features. The exciting stuff is under the hood, though: WP8 will have the Windows 8 kernel instead of the Windows CE kernel of its predecessors. Through the Win 8 kernel, WP8 will support native code and multi-core processors. It will also have the same network stack, security, and multimedia support as Windows 8. While Win 8 apps won't be directly compatible with Windows Phone 8, Windows Phone manager Joe Belfiore says developers will be able to 'reuse — by far — most of their code.'"
Apple

Submission + - Apple Defends Handing Apple Stores To Dixons Boss (techweekeurope.co.uk) 1

Submitted by
judgecorp
judgecorp writes: "Apple boss Tim Cook has been defending the decision to appoint John Browett, CEO of the UK's Dixons Retail, to run the world's Apple stores. Dixons, which also owns the Currys and PC World chains, has generally had a less-than-stellar reputation amongst UK tech buyers over the last several years. UK Apple users have criticised Cook; the defence is that Dixon's has improved under Browett's leadership"
The Internet

Submission + - BT Launches FTTP On Demand (itpro.co.uk)

Submitted by
twoheadedboy
twoheadedboy writes: "BT today announced a Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) ‘on demand’ offering, which will let businesses and individuals ask for up to 300 Mbps services when they want it. It will not be true 'on demand,' however, as customers will not be able to choose short-term contracts when the initiative launches in spring 2013. The announcement came after a successful trial of FTTP on demand in St Agnes, Cornwall. The offering will be available in any area where BT has fibre coverage."
Security

Submission + - Credit Suisse traders manipulated IT systems to hide $500m losses (computerworlduk.com)

Submitted by Qedward
Qedward writes: Two traders at Credit Suisse have pleaded guilty to wire fraud and falsifying data after authorities said they had manipulated the bank's record systems, as the credit crunch approached, in order to help conceal over half a billion dollars' worth of losses.

The traders admitted to circumventing a mandatory real time reporting system introduced by Credit Suisse, manually entering false profit and loss (P&L) figures as the products they handled collapsed in value. They did so, according to the accusations, under heavy pressure from their manager, who has also been charged.

Submission + - British Student Unveils ADzero, A Smartphone Made from Bamboo (itproportal.com)

Submitted by hypnosec
hypnosec writes: A young lad from the UK's Middlesex University is soon going to unveil the first ever mobile phone in the world, to be made largely from bamboo, according to new reports. This unique and brand new offering, dubbed "ADzero" is likely to hit the market some time by the end of this year. According to Kieron-Scott Woodhouse — the 23 year old design student behind this innovation, ADzero will be primarily made from 4 year old organically grown bamboo. Woodhouse, a resident from Shepherds Bush in London, stated that he came up with this innovative idea during his spare time, and started working on it soon after. Apparently, the young genius was fed up with so many similar looking models floating out there in the market, and hence, took the pain of coming up with something entirely new.

Find high-res photos here and video here.
Science

Submission + - Researchers feel pressure to cite superfluous papers (nature.com)

Submitted by ananyo
ananyo writes: One in five academics in a variety of social science and business fields say they have been asked to pad their papers with superfluous references in order to get published. The figures, from a survey published in the journal Science (abstract http://www.sciencemag.org/content/335/6068/542), also suggest that journal editors strategically target junior faculty, who in turn were more willing to acquiesce.
The controversial practice is not new: those studying publication ethics have for many years noted that some editors encourage extra references in order to boost a journal's impact factor (a measure of the average number of citations an article in the journal receives over two years). But the survey is the first to try to quantify what it calls 'coercive citation', and shows that this is “uncomfortably common”. Perhaps the most striking finding of the survey was that although 86% of the respondents said that coercion was inappropriate, and 81% thought it damaged a journal's prestige, 57% said they would add superfluous citations to a paper before submitting it to a journal known to coerce.
However, figures from Thomson Reuters suggest that social-science journals tend to have more self-citations than basic-science journals.
Space

Submission + - Test Firing SpaceX's Launch Escape Rocket (fellowgeek.com) 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: SpaceX testing one of the escape rockets that, in the event of an emergency, will whisk astronauts away from an exploding rocket. On the finished Manned Dragon capsule, there would be 8 of these rockets.

As we’ve seen with the Shuttle program, rockets are quite dangerous. Unlike with the Shuttle, however, stacked rockets like SpaceX’s Falcon 9 keep its passengers away from the main fuel tank. In the event of an emergency, rockets mounted into the nosecone of the manned capsule would boost them away from the wreckage, moving them a safe distance away, before parachuting them to safety as if they had just re-entered the atmosphere.

Submission + - Lumia and iPhone Challenged in UX Battle (mediacity.fi)

Submitted by jones_supa
jones_supa writes: The MediaCity unit of Åbo Akademi did some user experience comparison between Nokia Lumia 800 and iPhone 4S. Lumia made a positive impression the more the phone was used. On the other hand, some flaws of the iPhone were forgiven by the solid reputation of it. The test persons had seven tasks to complete to see how new users perceive these devices, which they had never used before. Both phones had their strong points.

Submission + - Ask Slashdot: GPL Webhosting Control Panel Alternatives 5

Submitted by slydder
slydder writes: With the number of dead, dieing and stale GPL Webhosting Control Panels rising I find myself in the situation where I have to migrate away from WebCP (dieing a slow painful death). I took a look at SysCP (dead) and have pretty much decided to go with Froxlor (http://www.froxlor.org/) which just released it's 0.9.26 version. However, I would like to get some feed back on the matter from the Community here. Below I list the projects that I have checked. If you know of another project that is not listed let me know. Import criteria is as follows:

1. Linux (preferably Debian)
2. No Perl or C(++,#)
3. Apache & NginX support
4. Exim/Dovecot/Courier/Postfix support
5. TinyDNS/Bind support
6. ProFTP/PureFTP
7. Root Jail a plus
8. Cron support
9. AWStats (no Webalizer)
10. libnss or LDAP
11. Support tickets
12. Billing a plus
13. IPv4 & IPv6

Projects I have evaluated:

1. WebCP (dieing)
2. SysCP (dead)
3. DTC (not bad but a bit unstable in my opinion)
4. Froxlor (currently my favorite)
5. GNUPanel (offeres too little)
6. IspCP (perl backend)

If you can come up with some others just let me know. Especially new and upcoming projects with fresh ideas are welcome. Thanks in advance.

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