Court Rules Autism Not Caused By Childhood Vaccine 1056

Posted by timothy on Thursday February 12, 2009 @03:00PM from the thanks-court dept.

wiredog writes "From The Washington Post comes word that three special masters have decided that MMR vaccines do not cause autism. 'Special master George Hastings said the parents ... had "been misled by physicians who are guilty, in my view, of gross medical misjudgment." ... "the evidence advanced by the petitioners has fallen far short of demonstrating ... a link."'

Comment Re:This is a bait and switch scam (Score 2, Informative) 294

by Myrano on Tuesday February 03, 2009 @09:35PM (#26719965) Attached to: NASA and Google To Back New "Singularity University"

[The hubris of calling your potential clients 'c-level' boggles my mind]

I have no idea about the bait-and-switch-ness of this whole thing, but one minor point: a "c-level executive" refers to an executive whose acronym begins with a "C", e.g. CEO, CTO, etc. etc. So the hubris is not in demeaning their own clients, but rather in inflating their importance (which, I guess, was already obvious).

ESA Embraces Open Source With New SAR Toolbox 62

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Monday January 05, 2009 @04:07PM from the other-applications dept.

phyr writes "The European Space Agency (ESA) has released its Next ESA SAR Toolbox (NEST) freely as GPL for Linux and Windows. It provides an integrated viewer for reading, calibrating, post-processing and analysis of ESA (ERS 1&2, ENVISAT) and 3rd party (Radarsat2, TerraSarX, Alos Palsar, JERS) SAR level 1 data and higher. ESA has chosen to distribute the software as fully open source to allow the remote sensing community to easily develop new readers/writers and post-processors for SAR data with their NEST Java API. The software provides both a command line interface and GUI for all features including data conversion, graph processing, coregistration, multilooking, filtering, and band arithmetic."

The Unforgettable Amnesiac 120

Posted by kdawson on Sunday December 07, 2008 @12:14AM from the every-20-seconds-a-new-day dept.

jamie found an account in the NYTimes of the life and death of one of the most important figures in modern neuroscience, Henry Gustav Molaison — a man who could not form memories. Molaison became an amnesiac after a brain operation in 1953. Known worldwide as H.M., Molaison was studied intensively for 55 years. Dr. Brenda Milner, a psychologist from Montreal, was the first researcher to visit Molaison. In 1962 she authored a landmark study demonstrating that a part of Molaison's memory was fully intact. "The implications were enormous. Scientists saw that there were at least two systems in the brain for creating new memories. One, known as declarative memory, records names, faces and new experiences and stores them until they are consciously retrieved. ... Another system, commonly known as motor learning, is subconscious and depends on other brain systems. This explains why people can jump on a bike after years away from one and take the thing for a ride, or why they can pick up a guitar that they have not played in years and still remember how to strum it. Soon 'everyone wanted an amnesic to study,' Dr. Milner said..."

Final Judgment — SCO Loses, Owes $3,506,526 265

Posted by timothy on Friday November 21, 2008 @03:15PM from the seems-charitable-to-sco dept.

Xenographic writes "SCO has finally lost to Novell, now that Judge Kimball has entered final judgment against SCO. Of course, this is SCO we're talking about. There's still the litigation in bankruptcy court, which allowed this case to resume so that they could figure out just how much SCO owes, which is $3,506,526, if I calculated the interest properly, $625,486.90 of which will go into a constructive trust. And then there's the possibility that SCO could seek to have the judgment overturned in the appeals courts, or even the Supreme Court when that fails. Of course, they need money to do that and they don't really have much of that any more. Remember how Enderle, O'Gara and company told us that SCO was sure to win? I wonder how many people have emailed them to say, 'I told you so.'"

Comment Re:Magnitude scale incorrect on Wikipedia? (Score 1) 276

by Myrano on Thursday October 25, 2007 @10:42AM (#21113519) Attached to: Comet Unexpectedly Brightens a Millionfold

Oh, right. That's just a mistake. I completely missed that... sorry. I really should be more careful about reading stuff... I thought it was enough to RTFA, but I guess I need to RTFCTIATRT (comment that I'm about to reply to) as well. For the record, it appears that Saturn's max brightness has an apparent magnitude of around -0.3, so it's that it's out of place on the table rather than off by a minus sign.

Feed Science Daily: Bees Seem To Benefit From Having Favorite Colors (sciencedaily.com)

From feed by sdfeed on Sunday June 24, 2007 @03:12PM

A bee's favourite colour can help it to find more food from the flowers in their environment, according to new research. Scientists studied nine bumblebee colonies from southern Germany, and found that the colonies which favoured purple blooms were more successful foragers. The team's findings suggest that bumblebees have developed their favourite colour over time, to coincide with the most profitable, nectar-rich flowers available.

Feed Science Daily: Surprisingly, Harvesting Prey Boosts Predator Fish (sciencedaily.com)

From feed by sdfeed on Sunday June 24, 2007 @02:13PM

Cod, salmon, and salmon trout have in many cases disappeared from our seas and lakes because of overfishing. New research findings show that these predator fish would be able to recover if both recreational and professional fishers focused their fishing on the fish these predators prey on.

Feed Engadget: Virtual bubblewrap: the best / worst gadget ever made (engadget.com)

From feed by engfeed on Sunday June 24, 2007 @01:52PM

Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

Bandai Asovision has taken possibly the most enjoyable side benefit of having a gadget obsessed life and made it 100% legitimate with the PuchiPuchi, a gadget that emulates the joy of popping bubble wrap. The PuchiPuchi simply features eight buttons that each make a popping sound when you press them: for extra enjoyment, the creators have sought to include bonus popping sounds like "door chime" and "sexy voice" every 100 pops, and there's also a one-in-a-thousand chance that your PuchiPuchi will be a super special "puchi lucky" toy with a heart shaped bubble. Frankly, the concept is so absurd -- and, well, Japanese -- that it might just work. Still, we've got to admit to hoping that each PuchiPuchi includes a healthy portion of real bubble wrap on the side.

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

Journal Journal: Executive Orders Are Not Laws 6

Journal by pudge on Sunday June 24, 2007 @01:42PM

In the recent flap over Cheney and the Executive Order for the National Archives, there's been talk that Cheney violated the law.

He didn't. At least, not by virtue of not following an Executive Order.