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Submission + - Researchers Fish Yellowcake Uranium From the Sea With a Piece of Yarn (ieee.org)

Submitted by Wave723
Wave723 writes: Researchers at the U.S. Energy Department’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) and LCW Supercritical Technologies made use of readily available acrylic fibers to pull five grams of yellowcake—a powdered form of uranium used to produce fuel for nuclear power reactors—from seawater.

Submission + - Supreme Court: Warrant generally needed to track cell phone location data (cnn.com)

Submitted by daveschroeder
daveschroeder writes: The Supreme Court on Friday said the government generally needs a warrant if it wants to track an individual's location through cell phone records over an extended period of time. The ruling is a major victory for advocates of increased privacy rights who argued more protections were needed when it comes to the government obtaining information from a third party such as a cell phone company. The 5-4 opinion was written by Chief Justice John Roberts siding with the four most liberal justices. It is a loss for the Justice Department, which had argued that an individual has diminished privacy rights when it comes to information that has been voluntarily shared with someone else. The opinion, which was limited to cell site location data, continues a recent trend at the court to boost privacy rights in the digital era and clarifies court precedent as it applies to data held by a third party.

Submission + - Facebook Will Harass You Mercilessly if You Try to Break Up (slate.com)

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: Breaking up with Facebook is apparently as difficult as breaking up with a bad boyfriend or girlfriend who won’t accept your decision. That’s the experience Henry Grabar of Slate had when he stopped signing on. He stopped logging in on June 6 and stayed off Facebook for ten days. He had been a member for over ten years and this was the longest period he had remained off the social network. But Facebook didn’t leave him alone. He received 17 email messages in a span of nine days urging him to return.

Grabar is not alone in trying to wean himself off Facebook for various reasons. Some do it because they realize it can be a waste of time, while others do it because of the company's inability to protect (or lack of interest in protecting) its members' personal data. The company has mistakenly released data of millions of its members and friends of members to third parties, and many of them have used the data for illicit purposes. While Facebook says they are not losing members, some recent statistics paint a different story. According to a Pew study, only 51 percent of U.S. teenagers use the service now, down from 71 percent in 2015. This was the first time the numbers have fallen.

Submission + - The chickpea that could save civilization, if we let it (thebulletin.org) 1

Submitted by meckdevil
meckdevil writes: Joanne Chory, director of the Plant Molecular and Cellular Biology laboratory at the Salk Institute for Biological Sciences and a Breakthrough Prize recipient, has created an initiative called “Harnessing Plants for the Future” to develop a super plant that will both provide food and store carbon dioxide in its roots. A “super chickpea plant” now in development could remove huge amounts of excess atmospheric carbon dioxide and fix it in the soil, greatly diminishing the impacts of climate change (not to mention producing large amounts of tasty hummus). But fear of anti-GMO activists has so far deterred her from using the Crispr gene-editing tool to speed work on the plant.

Submission + - Justice Department, FBI Are Investigating Cambridge Analytica (cbsnews.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The Justice Department and FBI are investigating Cambridge Analytica, the now-shuttered political data firm that was once used by the Trump campaign and came under scrutiny for harvesting data of millions of users, The New York Times reported on Tuesday. The Times, citing a U.S. official and people familiar with the inquiry, reported federal investigators have looked to question former employees and banks connected to the firm.

The Times reports prosecutors have informed potential witnesses there is an open investigation into the firm, whose profiles of voters were intended to help with elections. One source tells CBS News correspondent Paula Reid prosecutors are investigating the firm for possible financial crimes. A company that has that much regulatory scrutiny is almost guaranteed to have federal prosecutors interested, Reid was told. Christopher Wylie, a former Cambridge Analytica employee who spoke out about the data sharing practices, told the Times federal investigators had contacted him. The American official told the Times investigators have also contacted Facebook as a part of the probe.

Comment Re:Do it, do it now! (Score 5, Informative) 114

by SemperUbi (#53294373) Attached to: Chinese Scientists Become First To Use CRISPR Gene-Editing On Humans
This particular use of CRISPR-Cas9 should be pretty low risk. Tumors are often surrounded by lymphocytes, cells which ordinarily have the power to kill cancer cells -- but many cancers give off signals that cause the lymphocytes to ignore tumors cells and let them grow. It's like the mafia buying off the local cops. Modifying tumor-reactive lymphocytes ex vivo might wake them up and help them do their job and go after the tumor again. In a patient with terminal cancer, this treatment should be pretty low risk and could give him a bit longer to live.

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