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Submission + - Bioelectrical signals turn stem cells' cancerous

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Biologists at Tufts University School of Arts and Sciences have discovered that a change in membrane voltage in newly identified "instructor cells" can cause stem cells' descendants to trigger melanoma-like growth in pigment cells. The Tufts team also found that this metastatic transformation is due to changes in serotonin transport. The discovery could aid in the prevention and treatment of diseases like cancer and vitiligo as well as birth defects.
Software

Submission + - Ford Releases SDK For Sync Apps (socialcarnews.com)

Submitted by thecarchik
thecarchik writes: Ford has announced the release of a software develoment kit (SDK) for the Sync system. Along with the SDK came news that Ford is also developing an application programming interface (API), which will facilitate and standardize the interaction between Sync and the various apps built for it. According to SyncMyRide.com, the API will ultimately allow developers to:
1. Create a voice UI for your application using the in-vehicle speech recognition system.
2. Write information to the radio head display or in-vehicle touchscreen
3. Speak text using text-to-speech engine.
4. Use the in-vehicle menu system to provide commands or options for your mobile application
5. Get button presses from the radio and steering wheel controls.
6. Receive vehicle data (speed, GPS location, fuel economy, etc.)

Submission + - Florida Town Builds Data Center in Water Tank (computerworld.com)

Submitted by miller60
miller60 writes: The Florida town of Altamonte Springs has converted an old water storage tank into a new data center. The decommissioned tank previously held up to 770,000 gallons of water, but its 18-inch thick walls provided a hurricane-proof home for the town's IT gear, which had to be relocated three times in 2004 to ride out major storms. The Altamonte Springs facility is the latest example of data centers in strange places, including chapels, shopping malls, cargo ships, old particle accelerators and caves.
Government

Submission + - More than 2Bil records in US monitoring database (bbc.co.uk)

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes: "Thousands of US sex offenders, prisoners on parole and other convicts were left unmonitored after an electronic tagging system shut down because of data overload. BI Incorporated, which runs the system, reached its data threshold — more than two billion records — on Tuesday. This left authorities across 49 states unaware of offenders' movement for about 12 hours."

2 Billion records??

Submission + - Who gets your Twitter account when you die? (badlanguage.net)

Submitted by mstibbe
mstibbe writes: Death is inevitable but the law decides what happens to our goods when we go. The new question is: what happens to our virtual identity and our online assets? The law says nothing about our ‘digital legacy’. What can we do about it? Do you need a sort of digital will? Also, a link to a detailed legal analysis and summary of several companies' policies.
The Media

This Is a News Website Article About a Scientific Paper 193

Posted by Soulskill from the turning-the-scientific-world-on-its-head-or-maybe-not dept.
jamie passes along a humorous article at The Guardian which pokes fun at the shallow and formulaic science journalism typical of many mainstream news outlets. Quoting: In this paragraph I will state the main claim that the research makes, making appropriate use of 'scare quotes' to ensure that it's clear that I have no opinion about this research whatsoever. ... If the research is about a potential cure, or a solution to a problem, this paragraph will describe how it will raise hopes for a group of sufferers or victims. This paragraph elaborates on the claim, adding weasel-words like 'the scientists say' to shift responsibility for establishing the likely truth or accuracy of the research findings on to absolutely anybody else but me, the journalist. ... 'Basically, this is a brief soundbite,' the scientist will say, from a department and university that I will give brief credit to. 'The existing science is a bit dodgy, whereas my conclusion seems bang on,' she or he will continue."

Submission + - Aliens monitoring our nukes (reuters.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Found this on reuters. "Witness testimony from more than 120 former or retired military personnel points to an ongoing and alarming intervention by unidentified aerial objects at nuclear weapons sites, as recently as 2003. In some cases, several nuclear missiles simultaneously and inexplicably malfunctioned while a disc-shaped object silently hovered nearby. Six former U.S. Air Force officers and one former enlisted man will break their silence about these events at the National Press Club and urge the government to publicly confirm their reality."

Submission + - State of Montana Using Data Center "Heat Wheel" (helenair.com)

Submitted by miller60
miller60 writes: The State of Montana has become the first data center in the United States to deploy a heat wheel to cool its data center. The heat wheel — also known as a rotary heat exchanger or Kyoto Cooling — is a refinement of cooling systems using outside air (discussed here on Slashdot back in 2008). The state says it expects its facility to have one of the lowest data center cooling costs in the nation.
Mars

Submission + - Mars' Methane Levels Adumbrate A Short Half-Life. (astrobio.net)

Submitted by tetrahedrassface
tetrahedrassface writes: Two Italian scientists have analyzed Martian methane, and discovered that it only sticks around for a year or so before being bound up by wind driven oxidizers such as perchlorate. Their study, which was presented today to the European Planetary Science Congress in Rome, is the first to put a time frame on how long methane resides in the atmosphere of Mars.Levels of methane are highest in autumn in the northern hemisphere, with localized peaks of 70 parts per billion, although methane can be detected across most of the planet at this time of year From the article: ' The source of the methane could be geological activity or it could be biological — we can't tell at this point. However, it appears that the upper limit for methane lifetime is less than a year in the martian atmosphere.'

Submission + - Orion Spacecraft on the Path to Future Flight.

Submitted by gilgsn
gilgsn writes: Preparations for Orion’s first mission in 2013 are well under way as a Lockheed Martin-led crew begins lean assembly pathfinding operations for the spacecraft. The crew is conducting simulated manufacturing and assembly operations with a full-scale Orion mockup to verify the tools, processes and spacecraft integration procedures work as expected.
Yahoo!

Submission + - Yahoo Unveils ‘Chicken Coop’ Green Dat (eweekeurope.co.uk)

Submitted by geek4
geek4 writes: A chicken shed design lets Yahoo equal the world record for data centre efficiency, and cuts energy costs by 40 percent

Yahoo has opened a data centre which takes the design of a chicken coop as its inspiration, and promises to match the current world record for data centre efficiency.

The data centre is located in Lockport, in upstate New York near Niagara Falls, and follows current best practice in using outside air for most of its cooling, instead of running chillers to cool the server racks. Chillers are normally one of the most power-hungry devices in a conventional data centre.
Security

Submission + - Polish hacker hits US Defence site (techeye.net)

Submitted by bossanovalithium
bossanovalithium writes: There is one movie every Polish person knows. It's a cult comedy from the 80s called "Mi" — meaning "Teddy Bear". Now, thanks to a hacker going by a name "Porkythepig", everyone can see it — but not on YouTube where you would expect it, but on the USA military Defence Logistics Agency website.

If you go the site and just type "porkythepig", a fragment of a movie begins to play. It's in Polish, of course — for those not fluent in Polish the man with a guitar sings: "I'm a Happy Romek..." * It's funny but the story is much more serious.

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