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Submission + - Facebook Knows if You're Gay, Use Drugs, or Are a Republican 1

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Hugh Pickens writes
Hugh Pickens writes writes: "Not that there's anything wrong with that — as the Guardian reports that Facebook users are unwittingly revealing their sexual orientation, drug use and political beliefs – using only public "like" updates, according to a study of 58,000 Facebook users in the US that found that sensitive personal characteristics about people can be accurately inferred from information in the public domain. Researchers were able to accurately infer a Facebook user's race, IQ, sexuality, substance use, personality or political views using only a record of the subjects and items they had "liked" (PDF) on Facebook – even if users had chosen not to reveal that information. "It is good that people's behaviour is predictable because it means Facebook can suggest very good stories on your news feed," says Michal Kosinski, ""But what is shocking is that you can use the same data to predict your political views or your sexual orientation. This is something most people don't realise you can do." For example, researchers were able to predict whether men were homosexual with 88% accuracy by their likes of Facebook pages such as "Human Rights Campaign" and "Wicked the Musical" – even if those users had not explicitly shared their sexuality on the site. According to the study other personality traits linked to predictive likes include for High IQ — "The Godfather," "Lord of the Rings," "The Daily Show"; for Low IQ — "Harley Davidson," "I Love Being A Mom," "Tyler Perry"; and for male heterosexuality — "Wu Tang Clan," "Shaq," and "Being Confused after Waking Up from Naps." Facebook’s default privacy settings mean that your “likes” are public to anyone and Facebook’s own algorithms already use these likes to dictate what stories end up in users’ news feeds, while advertisers can access them to determine which are the most effective ads to show you as you browse."
Transportation

Submission + - Ohio Judge Rules Speed Cameras are a Scam 1

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Hugh Pickens writes
Hugh Pickens writes writes: "The Columbus Dispatch reports that southwestern Ohio Judge Robert Ruehlman has ordered a halt to a speeding-ticket blitz in a village that installed traffic cameras saying it’s “a scam” against motorists and blasting the cameras and the thousands of $105 citations that resulted. “Elmwood Place is engaged in nothing more than a high-tech game of 3-Card Monty,” Ruehlman wrote. “It is a scam that motorists can’t win.” The village began using the cameras in September, resulting in 6,600 speeding citations in the first month, triple the population of the village of 2,188. Optotraffic installed the Elmwood Place cameras and administered their use, in return for 40 percent of ticket revenue which quickly topped $1 million. But business owners and motorists struck back charging in a lawsuit that the cameras hurt the village's image and said they were put into use without following Ohio law for public notice on new ordinances. “This is the first time that a judge has said, ‘Enough is enough,'" said plaintiffs’ attorney, Mike Allen, called the ruling a victory for the common people. “I think this nationally is a turning point.”"
Science

Submission + - Evolution is Reversible, New Study Shows

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Hugh Pickens writes
Hugh Pickens writes writes: "In evolutionary biology, there is a deeply rooted hypothesis called Dollo's law that evolution is unidirectional and irreversible and that once an organism has evolved specialized traits, it can't return to the lifestyle of its ancestors. According to this hypothesis a structure or organ that has been lost or discarded through the process of evolution will not reappear in exactly the same form in that line of organisms. Now Science Daily News reports that researchers have used a large-scale genetic study of the lowly house dust mite to uncover an example of reversible evolution that appears to violate Dollo's law. The study shows that tiny free-living house dust mites evolved from parasites, which in turn evolved from free-living organisms millions of years ago. "All our analyses conclusively demonstrated that house dust mites have abandoned a parasitic lifestyle, secondarily becoming free-living, and then speciated in several habitats, including human habitations," say Pavel Klimov and Barry OConnor of the U-M Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology. The project used large-scale DNA sequencing, the construction of detailed evolutionary trees called phylogenies, and sophisticated statistical analyses to test the hypotheses about the ancestral ecology of house dust mites. The result was so surprising largely because it runs counter to the entrenched idea that highly specialized parasites cannot return to the free-living lifestyle of their ancestors. "Parasites can quickly evolve highly sophisticated mechanisms for host exploitation and can lose their ability to function away from the host body," says Klimov. "They often experience degradation or loss of many genes because their functions are no longer required in a rich environment where hosts provide both living space and nutrients. Many researchers in the field perceive such specialization as evolutionarily irreversible.""
Transportation

Submission + - Ferrari Unveils World's Fastest (and Most Expensive) Hybrid

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Hugh Pickens writes
Hugh Pickens writes writes: "Fred Meier reports that Ferrari has unveiled its fastest car ever, a nearly 1000 hp. gas-electric hybrid dubbed LaFerrari that does 0-62 mph in less than 3 seconds, 0-124 in less than 7 seconds, 0-186 mph in 15 seconds. "We chose to call this model LaFerrari," says Ferrari's President, Luca di Montezemolo, "because it is the maximum expression of what defines our company – excellence. ...Aimed at our collectors, this is a truly extraordinary car which encompasses advanced solutions that, in the future, will find their way onto the rest of the range." LaFerrari is the company's first hybrid and has a system that incorporates technology developed for the Scuderia Ferrari Formula One race car's KERS (kinetic energy recovery system) setup. In LaFerrari, the hybrid (HY-KERS) version uses a 6.26-liter, non-turbo, V-12 gas engine rated at 800 hp coupled with a 163 hp. electric motor for a combined rating of 963 hp. A second, separate electric motor drives the power accessories. The 60 kilogram battery pack in the cabin floor is charged during braking and also when the gas engine is producing more torque than needed to move the car, in which case that torque is converted to energy and stored. The LaFerrari, priced at over $1 million and limited to 499 buyers fits into Ferrari’s strategy of boosting profitability with ever-more-luxurious offerings while limiting its annual output to about 7,000 cars to maintain exclusivity. “After several depressing years, wealthy drivers in Europe think the worst is behind us, and they’ll start spending again on their favorite cars,” says Fabio Barone, the owner of two Ferraris ."
Science

Submission + - The Science of Hugo Chavez's Long Term Embalming

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Hugh Pickens writes
Hugh Pickens writes writes: "Discover Magazine reports that Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chavez will apparently get an embalming job designed to keep him looking alive for decades similar to that of Russia's Vladimir Lenin, whose body still lies in a mausoleum in Moscow's Red Square, nearly 90 years after his death. So how do you preserve a human body for decades without it turning into a pile of melted tissue? First, get to work quickly. Upon death, the human body starts decomposing immediately. The way to stop it is with formaldehyde, a preservative used for the past century, which inhibits the enzyme decomposition as well as killing bacteria. “You pump the chemical in, and as the formaldehyde hits the cells of the body, it firms up the protein of the cell, or fixates it,” says Vernie Fountain, head of the Fountain National Academy of Professional Embalming Skills in Springfield, Mo. “That’s what makes them stiff.” With a body that will have to be on display for years, it’s likely to require a top-shelf, super-strong solution. “If I were doing Hugo Chavez, I would strengthen the solution and use more preservative product,” says Fountain. Next, get a good moisturizer. Formaldehyde preserves, but it also dries out the body. Vaseline or other moisturizers can preserve the look of skin, according to Melissa Johnson Williams, executive director of the American Society of Embalmers. Finally keep cool. Heat decomposes a body so for long term preservation, the body has to be kept at the temperature of a standard kitchen refrigerator, somewhere in the mid-40s. Lastly, if Venezuelans really want to keep Hugo Chavez around forever, like many other world figures, there’s only one solution that works, according to Fountain. “The best form of preservation is mummification.""
Android

Submission + - Freezing Phones to -10 C Reveals Android's Encrypted Secrets

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens writes
Hugh Pickens writes writes: "BBC reports that freezing an Android phone can help reveal its confidential contents allowing researchers to get at contact lists, browsing histories and photos of phones protected by the data scrambling system with the version of Android known as Ice Cream Sandwich. Researchers Tilo Muller, Michael Spreitzenbarth and Felix Freiling from FAU first put Android phones in a freezer for an hour until the device had cooled to below -10C then discovered that quickly connecting and disconnecting the battery of a frozen phone forced the handset into a vulnerable mode. This loophole let them start it up with some custom-built software rather than its onboard Android operating system. The researchers dubbed their custom code Frost — Forensic Recovery of Scrambled Telephones. The researchers tested their attack against a Samsung Galaxy Nexus handset as it was one of the first to use Android's disk encryption system. While the "cold boot" attack had been tried on desktop PCs and laptops this was the first group to try it on phones. "We thought it would work because smartphones are really small PCs," says Tilo Muller. "but we were quite excited that the trick with the freezer worked so well.""
Space

Submission + - Rare Eclipsing Binaries Provide a New Tape Measure for the Universe

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Hugh Pickens writes
Hugh Pickens writes writes: "Kate Taylor repotrs that astronomers have figured out a way to make much more accurate measurements of the distance to our neighboring galaxy, the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), using rare class of double star known as eclipsing binaries. By tracking changes in the binary's brightness very carefully, and also measuring the stars' orbital speeds, it is possible to work out how big the stars are, their masses and other information about their orbits. When this is combined with careful measurements of the total brightness and colors of the stars, remarkably accurate distances can be found. "I am very excited because astronomers have been trying for a hundred years to accurately measure the distance to the Large Magellanic Cloud, and it has proved to be extremely difficult," says Wolfgang Gieren of the Universidad de Concepción, Chile. "Now we have solved this problem by demonstrably having a result accurate to two percent." Improving the accuracy of the measurement has the side effect of improving knowledge of the Hubble Constant, the rate of expansion of the universe, and therefore of of the mysterious dark energy that is causing the expansion to accelerate. "We are working to improve our method still further and hope to have a one percent LMC distance in a very few years from now," says Dariusz Graczyk of Warsaw University Observatory. "This has far-reaching consequences not only for cosmology, but for many fields of astrophysics.""
United States

Submission + - Ran Paul Launches a Real Life Filibuster Against Drones 1

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens writes
Hugh Pickens writes writes: "The Washington Post reports that at about 11:45 am Kentucky Republican Rand Paul took the floor of the Senate to launch one of the chamber’s rarest spectacles: a genuine filibuster. Paul says he is “alarmed” at the lack of definition over who can be targeted by drone strikes and called Attorney General Eric Holder's refusal to rule out drone strikes to kill an American on U.S. soil “more than frightening” adding “When I asked the president, can you kill an American on American soil, it should have been an easy answer. It’s an easy question. It should have been a resounding, an unequivocal, ‘No.’ The president’s response? He hasn’t killed anyone yet. We’re supposed to be comforted by that.” Any senator can opt to hold the floor to speak on any matter, but the practice of speaking for hours on end is rare, especially in the modern-day Senate, where the chamber’s rules are used more often to block legislation or to hold show votes on trivial matters. Paul has since been joined in his symbolic effort by Republicans Sens. Mike Lee (Utah), Ted Cruz (Tex.), Jerry Moran (Kan.), Marco Rubio (Fla.) and Saxby Chambliss (Ga.). He has also gotten some bipartisan support from Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden (Ore.). Paul suggested that many college campuses in the 1960s were full of people who might have been considered enemies of the state. “Are you going to drop a Hellfire missile on Jane Fonda?”"
Education

Submission + - MIT Offers Charm School for Geeks

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Hugh Pickens writes
Hugh Pickens writes writes: "It's been said that social graces may be just as important as intelligence and engineering prowess to success as an astrophysicist or computer engineer. But how do you take someone who's grown up in the world of pocket protectors and get them thinking about suits, bow ties and the proper way to hold a wine glass. Now Jennifer Lawinski reports that MIT's Charm School just celebrated its 20th birthday with classes in alcohol and gym etiquette, how to dress for work and how to visit a contemporary art museum. "We're giving our students the tools to be productive members of society, to be the whole package," says Alana Hamlett. "It gets them thinking about who they are and what their impact and effect is, whether they're working on a team in an engineering company, or in a small group on a project, or interviewing for a job." At this year's Charm School students were free to drop in and participate in any of the 20-minute mini-courses being offered that day and students who participated in 10 of the mini-courses were awarded doctorates of charm. Computational biology graduate student Asa Adadey said the free meal was a draw and said he learned in one mini-course not to cut up all his meat at once before eating it. "Who knows? Down the line I may find myself at a formal dinner.""
Cellphones

Submission + - User Survey Proves iPhone the Most Reliable

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens writes
Hugh Pickens writes writes: "The NY Times reports that a volunteer technical assistance Web site, FixYa, has analyzed more than 720,000 support requests to calculate complaint-per-phone ratios, which the company says represent reliability. The compilation consisted of issues that users face with phones by four manufacturers; Apple, Samsung, Nokia and Motorola and the results show what users liked and didn't like about each manufacturer. First Apple: The main complaint about the iPhone, 35 percent of total complaints, concerns the iPhone’s battery life followed by lack of new features and no customizability. On the plus side iPhone users like the iPhone's simplicity — it was easy to guess how to use the phone’s main features.Samsung owners made 40 percent of their complaints about microphone problems and 20 percent over speaker problems. Owners say the microphone occasionally cut out so the person on the other end could not hear. Samsung users like the sharp screen quality on the Samsung phones, and the Android operating system’s on-screen controls. Nokia owners, in 35 percent of complaints, say the phones responded slowly in comparison to competing phones. The next most common complaint, at 20 percent, was about a lack of available apps. Nokia users like the durability of the screen, performance of the touch screen, and the Windows “Live Tiles” user interface that uses animated rectangles as controls. Finally the main compliant with Motorola phones was people wanting help with removing preinstalled apps, sometimes known as “bloatware.” Next were problems with the touch screen, such as its refusing to unlock and dissatisfaction with speaker and camera quality. Motorola users liked the design of the phones and their battery life. The bottom line: iPhones were found to be by far the most reliable, almost three times more reliable than the second-place Samsung phones. Third was Nokia, followed by Motorola. Of course, readers of the survey may suffer from cognitive biases in this case confirmation bias — the tendency of people to believe information that confirms their deeply entrenched beliefs even in the face of contrary evidence."
Earth

Submission + - Red Cross Launches Tornado Warning App

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Hugh Pickens writes
Hugh Pickens writes writes: "With the US averaging 1,253 tornadoes a year, Dalton Walker reports that the American Red Cross has launched a tornado app for smartphones and tablets to help better prepare people of possible tornadoes in their area. “Tornadoes happen without much warning, any way to get people information to protect themselves and their family is useful,” says Samantha Hill, The app is available for Apple and Android devices in English and Spanish and includes a high-pitched siren and “tornado warning!” alert that signals when a NOAA tornado warning has been issued in their area – even if users have the app closed. An “all clear!” alert lets users know when a tornado warning has expired or has been cancelled. The app also includes a one-touch “I’m safe” messaging that allows users to broadcast reassurance to family and friends via social media outlets that they are out of harm’s way. “Now, when a tornado warning is issued in the middle of the night, the siren alert can wake people up so they can head to a safe area," says preparedness expert Jim Judge."
Science

Submission + - Physicists Discover a Way Around Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle

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Hugh Pickens writes
Hugh Pickens writes writes: "Science Daily Headlines reports that researchers have applied a recently developed technique to directly measure the polarization states of light overcoming some important challenges of Heisenberg's famous Uncertainty Principle and demonstrating that it is possible to measure key related variables, known as "conjugate" variables, of a quantum particle or state directly. Such direct measurements of the wavefunction had long seemed impossible because of a key tenet of the uncertainty principle — the idea that certain properties of a quantum system could be known only poorly if certain other related properties were known with precision. "The reason it wasn't thought possible to measure two conjugate variables directly was because measuring one would destroy the wavefunction before the other one could be measured," says co-author Jonathan Leach. The direct measurement technique employs a "trick" to measure the first property in such a way that the system is not disturbed significantly and information about the second property can still be obtained. This careful measurement relies on the "weak measurement" of the first property followed by a "strong measurement" of the second property. First described 25 years ago, weak measurement requires that the coupling between the system and what is used to measure it be, as its name suggests, "weak," which means that the system is barely disturbed in the measurement process. The downside of this type of measurement is that a single measurement only provides a small amount of information, and to get an accurate readout, the process has to be repeated multiple times and the average taken. Researchers passed polarized light through two crystals of differing thicknesses: the first, a very thin crystal that "weakly" measures the horizontal and vertical polarization state; the second, a much thicker crystal that "strongly" measures the diagonal and anti-diagonal polarization state. As the first measurement was performed weakly, the system is not significantly disturbed, and therefore, information gained from the second measurement was still valid. This process is repeated several times to build up accurate statistics. Putting all of this together gives a full, direct characterization of the polarization states of the light."
Science

Submission + - New Research Sheds Light on the Evolution of Dogs

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens writes
Hugh Pickens writes writes: "The first dogs descended from wolves about 14,000 years ago but according to Brian Hare and Vanessa Woods humans didn't domesticate dogs — dogs sought out humans and domesticated us. Humans have a long history of eradicating wolves, rather than trying to adopt them which raises the question: How was the wolf tolerated by humans long enough to evolve into the domestic dog? "The short version is that we often think of evolution as being the survival of the fittest, where the strong and the dominant survive and the soft and weak perish. But essentially, far from the survival of the leanest and meanest, the success of dogs comes down to survival of the friendliest." Most likely, it was wolves that approached us, not the other way around, probably while they were scavenging around garbage dumps on the edge of human settlements. The wolves that were bold but aggressive would have been killed by humans, and so only the ones that were bold and friendly would have been tolerated. In a few generations, these friendly wolves became distinctive from their more aggressive relatives with splotchy coats, floppy ears, wagging tails. But the changes did not just affect their looks but their psychology. Protodogs evolved the ability to read human gestures. "As dog owners, we take for granted that we can point to a ball or toy and our dog will bound off to get it," write Hare and Woods. "But the ability of dogs to read human gestures is remarkable. Even our closest relatives — chimpanzees and bonobos — can't read our gestures as readily as dogs can." With this new ability, these protodogs were worth knowing. People who had dogs during a hunt would likely have had an advantage over those who didn't. Finally when times were tough, dogs could have served as an emergency food supply and once humans realized the usefulness of keeping dogs as emergency food, it was not a huge jump to realize plants could be used in a similar way. " This is the secret to the genius of dogs: It's when dogs join forces with us that they become special.," conclude Hare and Woods. "Dogs may even have been the catalyst for our civilization.""
Crime

Submission + - Texas Rangers Use Internet to Breath New Life into Cold Case Homicides

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens writes
Hugh Pickens writes writes: "Katherine Rosenberg reports that the Texas Department of Public Safety has unveiled a new web site dedicated to unsolved cold case homicides to make sure the victims are not forgotten and to try to catch a break in even the coldest of cases. DPS spokeswoman Katherine Cesinger says continual strides in technology make focusing on cold cases more important than ever because there are more opportunities to solve them with each emerging process or device. The web site was created because the more readily available information is the more people may be apt to pick up the phone and report what they know. “It helps to refresh these cases in the public’s mind and hopefully we’ll shed new light on it. In some cases, we can also re-examine evidence if there’s an opportunity or need there as well,” says Cesinger. One featured case from 1993 is Kathleen Suckley who was 29 when her throat was slashed and she was stabbed about 40 times inside her rented duplex, while her two sons, ages 4 and 1, were home. Officials said they interviewed numerous witnesses but never got enough information for an arrest. Capt. Tim Wilson maintains that in any homicide case there always is someone who knows something. At some point, he believes, the murderer will tell someone out of guilt or pride, or simply the pressure of holding it in. Cesinger points out that over time as relationships change, if prompted by something like the website or a news article, that confidant finally may come forward. “I think we owe it to Kathleen to be this tenacious. It drives me nuts that somebody can do this and get away with it," says Kathleen's mother-in-law Luann Suckley. "I think the website is great ... maybe someone will finally speak up because I’m tired of sitting back and waiting.”"

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