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Submission + - Scientists Reverse Memory Decline Using Electrical Pulses (theguardian.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The study focused on a part of cognition called working memory, the brain system that holds information for short periods while we are making decisions or performing calculations. Working memory is crucial for a wide variety of tasks, such as recognizing faces, doing arithmetic and navigating a new environment. Working memory is known to steadily decline with age, even in the absence of any form of dementia. One factor in this decline is thought to be a disconnection between two brain networks, known as the prefrontal and temporal regions. In young people, the electrical brain activity in these two regions tends to be rhythmically synchronized, which scientists think allows information to be exchanged between the two brain areas. However, in older people the activity tends to be less tightly synchronized. This may be as result of deterioration of the long-range nerve connections that link up the different parts of the brain.

In the study, published in the journal Nature Neuroscience, 42 people aged 20–29 and 42 people aged 60–76 were assessed in a working memory task. The older group were slower and less accurate on the tests. The scientists then subjected them all to 25 minutes of non-invasive brain stimulation. This aimed to synchronize the two target brain regions by passing gentle pulses of electricity through the scalp and into the brain. After the intervention, working memory in the older adults improved to match the younger group and the effect appeared to last for 50 minutes after the stimulation. Those who had scored worst to start with showed the largest improvements.

Submission + - We're All Being Judged By A Secret 'Trustworthiness' Score (wsj.com)

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: Nearly everything we buy, how we buy, and where we're buying from is secretly fed into AI-powered verification services that help companies guard against credit-card and other forms of fraud, according to the Wall Street Journal .

More than 16,000 signals are analyzed by a service called Sift, which generates a "Sift score" ranging from 1 100. The score is used to flag devices, credit cards and accounts that a vendor may want to block based on a person or entity's overall "trustworthiness" score, according to a company spokeswoman.

From the Sift website: "Each time we get an event be it a page view or an API event we extract features related to those events and compute the Sift Score. These features are then weighed based on fraud we've seen both on your site and within our global network, and determine a user's Score. There are features that can negatively impact a Score as well as ones which have a positive impact."

The system is similar to a credit score except there's no way to find out your own Sift score

Factors which contribute to one's Sift score (per the WSJ):
  • Is the account new?
  • Are there are a lot of digits at the end of an email address?
  • Is the transaction coming from an IP address that’s unusual for your account?
  • Is the transaction coming from a region where there are a lot of hackers, such as China, Russia or Eastern Europe?
  • Is the transaction coming from an anonymization network?
  • Is the transaction happening at an odd time of day?
  • Has the credit card being used had chargebacks associated with it?
  • Is the browser different from what you typically use?
  • Is the device different from what you typically use?
  • Is the cadence of the way you typed out your password typical for you? (tracked by some advanced systems)

Comment 80% of newspaper income from legal notifications (Score 4, Informative) 167

by Bhrian (#40658399) Attached to: The Fate of Newspapers: Farm It, Milk It, Or Feed It
A local newspaper owner told me last week that 80% of a newspaper's income is from legal notifications. Cities have legal obligations to publish notifications regarding meetings, sales, and such. State law says they much use a local paper that's existed for more than 3 years and has a subscriber base of a certain number. Of course, these same notifications could easily be included in utility bills or other, much less expensive alternatives. Basically taxpayer money is being used to keep newspapers alive.
IT

Submission + - General Motors Will Slash Outsourcing In IT Overhaul (informationweek.com)

Submitted by
gManZboy
gManZboy writes: "GM's new CIO Randy Mott plans to bring nearly all IT work in-house as one piece of a sweeping IT overhaul. It's a high-risk strategy that's similar to what Mott drove at Hewlett-Packard.

Today, about 90% of GM's IT services, from running data centers to writing applications, are provided by outsourcing companies such as HP/EDS, IBM, Capgemini, and Wipro, and only 10% are done by GM employees. Mott plans to flip those percentages in about three years--to 90% GM staff, 10% outsourcers. This will require a hiring binge.

Mott's larger IT transformation plan doesn't emphasize budget cuts but centers on delivering more value from IT, much faster--at a time when the world's No. 2 automaker (Toyota is now No. 1) is still climbing out of bankruptcy protection and a $50 billion government bailout."

Comment Science and engineering isn't valued (Score 1) 433

by Bhrian (#39222515) Attached to: Science and Engineering Workforce Has Stalled In the US
A high school graduate can earn $45,000 working as an assistant manager at a local gas station or restaurant. They could spend 4+ years working hard to get a degree in engineering or science, owe $100,000+ afterward, and earn a starting pay of maybe $55,000. Long term, top pay for a manager anywhere is higher. Why bother with engineering or science? Average pay for science and engineering jobs has been largely stagnant for the last 20 years. While many science and engineering jobs have moved outside the US, workers from other countries have moved to the US, all driving down salaries. Now add that long term research is pretty much gone in the US and even research labs compete for what they can turn out in the next six months.

Comment Mayo clinic: most are viral (Score 5, Interesting) 377

by Bhrian (#39061309) Attached to: Antibiotics Are Useless In Treating Most Sinus Infections
A Mayo clinic study found 70% of sinus infections are viral instead of bacterial, so antibiotics actually make the infection worse. In addition, the antibiotics harm the rest of your immune system, leaving your worse off than before. My ENT introduced me to anti-viral nasal sprays for sinus infections. More of the drug reaches the infection and your GI system is left unharmed. The catch is they must be compounded at a pharmacy, need to be refrigerated, and are only good for 30 days. Many insurance companies cover them, but a lot of doctors don't know that option exists and just prescribe antibiotics.
Security

Terrorists Bomb Moscow Airport 640

Posted by Soulskill from the violence-is-the-last-refuge-of-the-incompetent dept.
jayme0227 writes "Terrorists detonated a bomb at Moscow's busiest airport on Monday, killing 35 people and wounding another 152, Russian authorities said. President Dmitry Medvedev, who called the bombing a terrorist attack, ordered additional security at Moscow's other airports and transportation hubs, and Moscow police went on high alert in case of additional bombs." According to the NY Times, "The airport remained open on Monday evening, and passengers continued to flow through the hall where the bomb had exploded."
Education

America Losing Its Edge In Innovation 757

Posted by Soulskill from the chickens-coming-home-to-flip-burgers dept.
jaywhybee writes "Forbes has an interesting article about America losing its edge in innovation because engineers and scientists in the US are not as respected as they are in other countries, and thus fewer youths aspire to become one. Quoting: 'I’ve visited more than 100 countries in the past several years, meeting people from all walks of life, from impoverished children in India to heads of state. Almost every adult I’ve talked with in these countries shares a belief that the path to success is paved with science and engineering. In fact, scientists and engineers are celebrities in most countries. They’re not seen as geeks or misfits, as they too often are in the US, but rather as society’s leaders and innovators. In China, eight of the top nine political posts are held by engineers. In the US, almost no engineers or scientists are engaged in high-level politics, and there is a virtual absence of engineers in our public policy debates.'"
The Almighty Buck

PayPal Withdraws WikiLeaks Donation Service 794

Posted by timothy from the no-funds-for-you dept.
ItsIllak writes "The BBC are reporting that PayPal is the latest company to abandon WikiLeaks. The list now includes their DNS providers (EveryDNS) and their hosts (Amazon). PayPal's move is unlikely to result in many more people boycotting the company, as most knowledgeable on-line users will have been refusing to use them for years for a wide variety of abusive practices." Adds reader jg21: "As open source freedom fighter Simon Phipps writes in his ComputerWorldUK blog, behavior like this by Amazon and Tableau [and now PayPal] 'informs us as customers of web services and cloud computing services that we are never safe from intentional outages when the business interests of our host are challenged.'"
Image

NHibernate 3.0 Cookbook 72

Posted by samzenpus from the read-all-about-it dept.
RickJWagner writes "Are you a .Net developer? Do you have to persist your application objects to a database? If so, I know of a book you might be interested in, Packt Publishing's NHibernate 3.0 Cookbook. NHibernate is a port of the popular Hibernate object-relational mapper (ORM, for those who like TLAs.) An object-relational mapper is a framework that lets the developer get and retrieve application state from a database, and it does so in an efficient, non-intrusive, and flexible manner. Hibernate is the top of the line ORM implementation, yet it's easy enough to learn that even a newbie will find it easy to get started." Read on for the rest of Rick's review.

Comment Re:Another great step backwards... (Score 1) 594

by Bhrian (#33545084) Attached to: Family To Receive $1.5M+ In Vaccine-Autism Award
Let's see. You inject a vaccine containing mercury or aluminum directory into a child's blood stream and wonder why a neurotoxin like that can cause seizures?

Okay, let's ignore that. Ignore that by injecting the child with the vaccines recommended by the CDC will end up injecting them with 144 times the toxic level of mercury according to the EPA.

Oh, let's also ignore the pediatrician who's child was changed from normal to severely autistic by vaccines. He refused to listen to the 'it can't be vaccines' claims and did his own research. He cured his own child with by a process with chelation he developed that removed the mercury from their system.

Let's also ignore the gene discovered that makes 15% of the population unable to remove heavy metals such as mercury. Do you think that portion of the population have higher instances of autism? Try reading the research and studies.

It's amazing to see all the claims here that there are few or no studies proving dangers of vaccines when in reality they do exist. Does everyone just join the herd with their opinion blindly without checking the studies?

“Make the lie big, make it simple, keep saying it, and eventually they will believe it” -- Adolf Hitler
Communications

Adapting the Post Office To the Digital Age 299

Posted by Soulskill from the relying-on-spam-is-bad-business dept.
Hugh Pickens writes "Paul B. Carroll and Chunka Mui write in the Washington Post that with projected deficits through 2020 of $238 billion, the debate over potential changes at the US Postal Service is like a fight over the dessert bar on the Titanic: email has already supplanted letters, more people will send money via PayPal rather than mail checks, people will download their movies and books, check their bills online, and receive information about their investments electronically. Delivery volume for first-class mail fell 22 percent from 1998 through 2007, tumbled an additional 13 percent last year and was down 3 percent in the first half of this year despite heavy mailings from the Census Bureau. USPS's future lies in things that need to be delivered physically: shoes, computers and other objects, and the USPS has assets that could let it take on UPS and FedEx. 'USPS needs to start with the future and work backward to the present,' write Carroll and Mui. 'It needs to forecast volumes for all types of its business five, 10 and 15 years out and design a business model that will thrive under those scenarios. Only then can it figure out what radical changes need to be made now.'"

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