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Submission + - Male Scent May Be Compromising Biomedical Research (sciencemag.org)

Submitted by sciencehabit
sciencehabit writes: Scientists have found that mice feel 36% less pain when a male researcher is in the room, versus a female researcher. The rodents are also less stressed out. The effect appears to be due to scent molecules that male mammals (including humans, dogs, and cats) have been emitting for eons. The finding could help explain why some labs have trouble replicating the results of others, and it could cause a reevaluation of decades of animal experiments: everything from the effectiveness of experimental drugs to the ability of monkeys to do math. Male odor could even influence human clinical trials. If a male doctor injects you with a new kind of pain medication, do you feel better because of the drug—or because of his gender?

Submission + - Astronomers Discover Pair of Black Holes in Inactive Galaxy

Submitted by William Robinson
William Robinson writes: The Astronomers at XMM-Newton have detected a pair of supermassive black holes at the center of an inactive galaxy. Most massive galaxies in the Universe are thought to harbor at least one supermassive black hole at their center. And a pair of black holes is indication of strong possibility that the galaxies have merged. Finding black holes in quiescent galaxies is difficult because there are no gas clouds feeding the black holes, so the cores of these galaxies are truly dark. It can be only detected by this ‘tidal disruption event’,.

Submission + - YouTube to Remove Scientist's Account who Debunked AIDS Deniers Movie (ibtimes.co.uk)

Submitted by EwanPalmer
EwanPalmer writes: YouTube is threatening to remove the account of a scientist who made a series of videos debunking claims made in an Aids denialist movie over copyright infringement disagreement.

Myles Power is claiming the producers of controversial 2009 documentary House of Numbers are attempting to censor him by submitting bogus DMCA claims against him. He says his movies do not breach copyright laws because his films are educational and therefore fair use. The 'AIDS denialist' documentary makers say they instead amounted to “propaganda”.

Submission + - Google Apps licence unsurprisingly forbids forking, promotes Google services 1

Submitted by Sockatume
Sockatume writes: If you want to ship a phone with Google's apps on it, you need to licence them. A copy of the OEM licencing agreement from 2011 was recently leaked, and Ars Technica provides a summary. Amongst the rules: a company licencing Google Apps can't act in a way that would fragment Android, but must also maintain the platform's open-ness; most of Google's services must be included; Google apps must be defaults, and placed within a couple of clicks of the default home screen. No surprises but it's interesting to see the details laid out.

Submission + - Vikings' Secret Code Cracked (sciencemag.org)

Submitted by sciencehabit
sciencehabit writes: What may look like mere scratches is much more. A 900-year-old Viking code known as jötunvillur has been cracked. The code-cracker, runologist Jonas Nordby from the University of Oslo, deciphered the system after realizing he needed to replace the original runic character with the last sound used to pronounce it. For instance, the runic character ‘k’ is pronounced ‘kaun,’ so k becomes n. Nordby believes secret messages were created by the Vikings for entertainment. One piece of wood reads: "Kiss me".

Submission + - Open Source -- The Last Patent Defense? (outercurve.org)

Submitted by dp619
dp619 writes: A developer might fly under the patent troll radar until she makes it big, and then it's usually open season. Apple just shared that it has faced off 92 lawsuits over just 3 years. Even Google's ad business is at risk. Well known FOSS attorney Heather Meeker has blogged at the Outercurve Foundation on what to consider and what to learn if you're ever sued for patent infringement. Meeker examined how provisions of open source licenses can deflate a patent troll's litigation and shift the balance in favor of the defense.

Submission + - Celebrating Dungeons & Dragons' 40th Anniversary

Submitted by disconj
disconj writes: With the 40th anniversary of the release of Dungeons & Dragons coming up this weekend, the Internet is ablaze with reflections on its legacy. Dave Ewalt gives an intro for the uninitiated. Ethan Gilsdorf explains how "all I need to know about life I learned from 'Dungeons & Dragons.'" Jon Peterson presents a video show-and-tell of rare artifacts from D&D's development. How did D&D change your life, and what will you be doing to celebrate this Sunday?

Submission + - Swarms of small satellites set to deliver close to real-time imagery of Earth (nature.com) 1

Submitted by ananyo
ananyo writes: A swarm of small satellites set to deliver close to real-time imagery of swathes of the planet is launching today. San Francisco-based Planet Labs, founded in 2010 by three former NASA scientists, is scheduled to launch 28 of its ‘Doves’ on 9 January. Each toaster-sized device weighs about 5 kilograms and can take images at a resolution of 3–5 metres.
Meanwhile Skybox Imaging plans to launch a swarm of 24 satellites, each weighing about 100 kilograms, which will take images of 1 metre resolution or better. Skybox launched its first satellite on 21 November (and captured the first HD video of the world from space) and plans to launch another this year, followed by the remainder between 2015 and 2017. In a first — at least for civilian satellites — Skybox’s devices will also stream short segments of near-live high-resolution video footage of the planet. So, too, will UrtheCast, a start-up based in Vancouver, Canada, whose cameras will hitch a ride on the International Space Station.
Because the swarms are still to be launched, scientists have yet to fully assess the quality of the imagery. But the satellites’ spatial resolutions of 1–5 metres are much higher than those of most scientific satellites. Landsat, NASA’s Earth-observation workhorse, for example, has a resolution of 15–100 metres depending on the spectral frequency, with 30 metres in the visible-light range.

Submission + - Auction houses to be removed from Diablo III (battle.net)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Both the RMAH and the Gold Auction Houses are being removed from the game as part of Blizzards revamp of the loot system in Diablo III. The target date is well ahead of us, at March 18, 2014, and according to Blizzard, "We feel that this move along with the Loot 2.0 system being developed concurrently with Reaper of Souls will result in a much more rewarding game experience for our players." Unexpected news, to be sure.

Submission + - Jimmy Carter Calls Snowden Leak Ultimately "Beneficial" (rt.com)

Submitted by eldavojohn
eldavojohn writes: According to RT, the 39th president of the United States made several statements worth noting. Carter said that 'America has no functioning democracy at this moment' and 'the invasion of human rights and American privacy has gone too far.' The second comment sounded like the Carter predicted the future would look favorably upon Snowden's leads — at least those concerning domestic spying in the United States — as he said: 'I think that the secrecy that has been surrounding this invasion of privacy has been excessive, so I think that the bringing of it to the public notice has probably been, in the long term, beneficial.' It may be worth noting that, stemming from Zurcher v. Stanford Daily, Jimmy Carter signed the Privacy Protection Act of 1980 into law and that Snowden has received at least one nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize.

Submission + - TSA orders searches of valet parked car at airport (whec.com)

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: Laurie Iacuzza walked to her waiting car at the Greater Rochester International Airport after returning from a trip and that's when she found it — a notice saying her car was inspected after she left for her flight. She said, “I was furious. They never mentioned it to me when I booked the valet or when I picked up the car or when I dropped it off.”

Iacuzza's car was inspected by valet attendants on orders from the TSA.

Submission + - Generic TLDs Threaten Name Collisions and Information Leakage (darkreading.com) 1

Submitted by CowboyRobot
CowboyRobot writes: As the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) continues its march toward the eventual approval of hundreds, if not more than 1,000, generic top-level domains (gTLDs), security experts warn that some of the proposed names could weaken network security at many companies. Two major issues could cause problems for companies: If domain names that are frequently used on a company's internal network — such as .corp, .mail, and .exchange — become accepted gTLDs, then organizations could inadvertently expose data and server access to the Internet. In addition, would-be attackers could easily pick up certificates for domains that are not yet assigned and cache them for use in man-in-the-middle attacks when the specific gTLD is deployed.

Submission + - Quantum-Tunneling Electrons Could Make Semiconductors Obsolete (slashdot.org)

Submitted by Nerval's Lobster
Nerval's Lobster writes: The powerful, reliable combination of transistors and semiconductors in computer processors could give way to systems built on the way electrons misbehave, all of it contained in circuits that warp even the most basic rules of physics. Rather than relying on a predictable flow of electrons that appear to know whether they are particles or waves, the new approach depends on quantum tunneling, in which electrons given the right incentive can travel faster than light, appear to arrive at a new location before having left the old one, and pass straight through barriers that should be able to hold them back. Quantum tunneling is one of a series of quantum-mechanics-related techniques being developed as possible replacements for transistors embedded in semiconducting materials such as silicon. Unlike traditional transistors, circuits built by creating pathways for electrons to travel across a bed of nanotubes are not limited by any size restriction relevant to current manufacturing methods, require far less power than even the tiniest transistors, and do not give off heat or leak electricity as waste products, according to Yoke Khin Yap of Michigan Technological University, lead author of a paper describing the technique, which was published in the journal Advanced Materials last week.
Earth

Submission + - Wind Map of US Will Blow You Away

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens writes
Hugh Pickens writes writes: "Talk about visualizations. Ever wondered what the wind would look like if you could see it in action from above? A new project posted online by a pair of Google computer scientists, called simply Wind Map, has to be seen to be believed. "It can be quite hypnotizing to watch the gusty trails blast across the American continent, skitter over the Sierras, get roughed up by the Rockies, and whoosh over the great plains on its way to Canada," writes Chris Taylor. Wind Map is the brainchild of Fernanda Viégas and Martin Wattenberg, the co-leaders of Google’s “Big Picture” visualization research group in Cambridge, Mass. Wind patterns are constantly changing, of course, which is why the Wind Map designers have also given us a moving-image gallery of previous blustery days."
The Internet

Submission + - Akamai to offer IPv6 to all in April (networkworld.com)

Submitted by
netbuzz
netbuzz writes: "Akamai says that it will offer IPv6 services to its entire customer base beginning next month – a long-awaited move that is expected to be a major boon to the adoption rate of the next-generation Internet Protocol. Akamai hoped to release its production-grade IPv6 services by the end of 2011, but the task proved more difficult than originally anticipated. Akamai has been beta testing its IPv6 services with key customers since last fall."

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