A group of eight former employees of the Santa Barbara News-Press who claim they were illegally fired for supporting efforts to unionize the newsroom have decided to keep on reporting via a website they set up for themselves. They're covering all sorts of local news, including school relocation plans and property taxes. They claim that this is only until they get their jobs back -- but if the conditions at their old newspaper job were so bad, it makes you wonder why they don't just go ahead and make this new project a full-time effort and do things right. If the Santa Barbara News-Press really is treating its employees as badly as is being made out in reports about the labor dispute, why not create some competition and bring on the best employees from the newspaper to show the management of that paper what happens when you treat employees poorly?

Scientists have untangled two similar disabilities that often afflict stroke patients, in the process revealing that one may be treatable with drugs for Parkinson's disease. Researchers showed that stroke damage in a brain region known as the putamen is strongly linked to motor neglect, a condition that makes patients slow to move toward the left side.

The concept of "pretexting" got a lot of attention when HP's CEO used it to spy on the phone calls of board members and the press in trying to stop information leaks from the board. However, it's been a problem for quite some time. Of course, the real problem was that the mobile operators were leaking this data without any protections to make sure that the person they were giving the info to was authorized to have it. However, every time such a story came out, the mobile operators tried to blame everyone else for their own failure to protect the data. The FCC has taken its time, but has finally ruled that mobile operators cannot release data over the phone without a password and need to let customers know if there are changes to their account. Why the operators hadn't done this already to protect their customers isn't readily explained. Of course, all this really means is that pretexters will need to come up with a new scheme to figure out how to get passwords out of people before accessing their phone records.

There is one other interesting side note in the FCC's ruling. Matthew Lasar notes that the ruling also includes that the operators need to inform the FBI about data leaks quickly, but can take their time informing the customers whose data was actually leaked. Apparently, the FBI lobbied for this particular rule, because they were afraid if customers involved in illegal activities found out their data was leaked, it would cause them to destroy evidence, potentially ruining investigations. This doesn't make much sense... unless it turned out that the FBI was using pretexting itself, rather than going through the process of getting subpoenas and search warrants. You would think that as long as the FBI went through the proper channels to get the info they needed, investigations wouldn't be harmed -- but perhaps we should know better than to expect such things.

The University of Delaware's Institute of Energy Conversion has developed new technology for the manufacture of flexible solar cells, which could reduce the costs associated with the use of photovoltaic energy while at the same time expanding possible applications. The system, in which there has been commercial interest, enables the more efficient manufacture of the flexible solar cells in long sheets using roll-to-roll reactors, much like newsprint speeding through a press.

Intimidation and threats are common throughout society, whether it's in the school playground, sporting arena or boardroom. Threatening behavior is equally widespread among nonhuman animals. Individuals signal their superior strength to competitors to obtain food, resolve territorial disputes and acquire mates. Current theory insists that signals of strength should be honest. Surprisingly researchers have found that dishonest signals are used routinely during dominance disputes by male Australian crayfish.