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Blackberry

Submission + - NTSB Dumps BlackBerry in Favor of iPhone 5 (slashdot.org)

Submitted by
Nerval's Lobster
Nerval's Lobster writes: "The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) plans on replacing its existing stock of BlackBerry devices with Apple’s iPhone 5. Research In Motion’s BlackBerry smartphones, the government entity wrote in a Nov. 13 notice of intent, “have been failing both at inopportune times and at an unacceptable rate.” The NTSB’s use of iPads means it has the operational support for iOS; consequently, the decision was made to go with Apple. “The iPhone 5 has been determined to be the only device that meets the dual requirement of availability from the existing wireless vendor and is currently supportable by existing staff resources,” the notice added. RIM is fighting to retain the government and enterprise contracts that originally made it such a mobile powerhouse. If agencies and boards such as the NTSB begin to embrace alternative platforms, however, that could critically weaken RIM’s business model just as the company attempts a comeback behind the upcoming BlackBerry 10 platform."
EU

Submission + - Climate change evident across Europe, says report (bbc.co.uk)

Submitted by Dupple
Dupple writes: Following on from a world bank report of 4 degree C warmer world, comes this story from the BBC

The effects of climate change are already evident in Europe and the situation is set to get worse, the European Environment Agency has warned.

"Every indicator we have in terms of giving us an early warning of climate change and increasing vulnerability is giving us a very strong signal," observed EEA executive director Jacqueline McGlade.
Google

Submission + - Google releases raw election polling results (google.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Last week, Nate Silver ranked Google Consumer Surveys as one of the most accurate polling firms of the 2012 US election. This week, Google has released the raw data that went into its election-day prediction, and is running a contest for interesting visualizations of that data. They provide a few examples of their own, including a WebGL globe view.
Transportation

Submission + - With Pot Legal, Scientists Study Detection of Impaired Drivers

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens writes
Hugh Pickens writes writes: "A recent assessment by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, based on random roadside checks, found that 16.3% of all drivers nationwide at night were on various legal and illegal impairing drugs, half them high on marijuana. Now AP reports that with marijuana soon legal under state laws in Washington and Colorado, setting a standard comparable to blood-alcohol limits has sparked intense disagreement because unlike portable breath tests for alcohol, there's no easily available way to determine whether someone is impaired from recent pot use and if scientists can't tell someone how much marijuana it will take for him or her to test over the threshold, how is the average pot user supposed to know? "We've had decades of studies and experience with alcohol," says Washington State Patrol spokesman Dan Coon. "Marijuana is new, so it's going to take some time to figure out how the courts and prosecutors are going to handle it." Driving within three hours of smoking pot is associated with a near doubling of the risk of fatal crashes. However, THC can remain in blood and saliva for highly variable times after the last use of the drug. Although the marijuana “high” only lasts three to five hours, studies of heavy users in a locked hospital ward showed THC can be detected in the blood up to a week after they are abstinent, and the outer limit of detection time in saliva tests is not known. "A lot of effort has gone into the study of drugged driving and marijuana, because that is the most prevalent drug, but we are not nearly to the point where we are with alcohol," says Jeffrey P. Michael, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration's impaired-driving director. "We don't know what level of marijuana impairs a driver.""

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