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Ranchers Have Beef With USDA Program To ID Cattle 376

Ponca City, We Love You writes "The NY Times reports that farmers and ranchers oppose a government program to identify livestock with microchip tags that would allow the computerized recording of livestock movements from birth to the slaughterhouse. Proponents of the USDA's National Animal Identification System say that computer records of cattle movements mean that when a cow is discovered with bovine tuberculosis or mad cow disease, its prior contacts can be swiftly traced. Ranchers say the extra cost of the electronic tags places an onerous burden on a teetering industry. Small groups of cattle are often rounded up in distant spots and herded into a truck by a single person who could not simultaneously wield the hand-held scanner needed to record individual animal identities. The ranchers also note that there is no Internet connection on many ranches for filing to a regional database. 'Lobbyists from corporate mega-agribusiness designed this program to destroy traditional small sustainable agriculture,' says Genell Pridgen, an owner of Rainbow Meadow Farms. The notion of centralized data banks, even for animals, has also set off alarms among libertarians who oppose NAIS. One group has issued a bumper sticker that reads, 'Tracking cattle now, tracking you soon.' 'They can't comprehend the vastness of a ranch like this,' says Jay Platt, the third-generation owner of a 22,000 acre New Mexico ranch. 'This plan is expensive, it's intrusive, and there's no need for it.'"
Medicine

Submission + - How Common is Scientific Misconduct?

Hugh Pickens writes: "The image of scientists as objective seekers of truth is periodically jeopardized by the discovery of a major scientific fraud. Recent scandals like Hwang Woo-Suk's fake stem-cell lines or Jan Hendrik Schön's duplicated graphs showed how easy it can be for a scientist to publish fabricated data in the most prestigious journals. Daniele Fanelli has an interesting paper on PLOS One where she performs a meta-analysis synthesizing previous surveys to determine the frequency with which scientists fabricate and falsify data, or commit other forms of scientific misconduct. A pooled weighted average of 1.97% of scientists admitted to have fabricated, falsified or modified data or results at least once -a serious form of misconduct by any standard- and up to 33.7% admitted other questionable research practices. In surveys asking about the behavior of colleagues, admission rates were 14.12% for falsification, and up to 72% for other questionable research practices. Misconduct was reported more frequently by medical/pharmacological researchers than others. "Considering that these surveys ask sensitive questions and have other limitations, it appears likely that this is a conservative estimate of the true prevalence of scientific misconduct," writes Fanelli. "It is likely that, if on average 2% of scientists admit to have falsified research at least once and up to 34% admit other questionable research practices, the actual frequencies of misconduct could be higher than this.""
Power

Submission + - Fusion experiment delayed

An anonymous reader writes: The old joke is that fusion is the power of the future and always will be. But it's not looking so funny for ITER, an EU10 billion fusion experiment in France. According to Nature News, ITER will not conduct energy-producing experiments until at least 2025--five years later than what had been previously agreed to. The article adds that the reactor will cost even more than the seven parties in the project first thought:

...Construction costs are likely to double from the 5-billion (US$7-billion) estimate provided by the project in 2006, as a result of rises in the price of raw materials, gaps in the original design, and an unanticipated increase in staffing to manage procurement. The cost of ITER's operations phase, another 5 billion over 20 years, may also rise.

Comment Re:Sounds about right (Score 1) 198

The whole idea of copyrighting something 1000s of years old just seems absolutely ridiculous. It doesn't seem legal either, at least not in the somewhat-international copyright system. I miss the days when the purpose of a museum was to showcase artifacts that would benefit man's knowledge of history. It's sad that it's become just shopping mall/tourist trap/circus show with a cover charge. :(

Comment Re:It's a battle and not the war.. (Score 1) 406

I love the irony in the implication that you consider it perfectly acceptable to physically abuse somebody to force upon them your own completely irrational interpretation of "morality".

See, my definition of "moral" behavior includes not beating on somebody smaller than you for no good reason. But that's just me.

I'll have to respectfully disagree with you then. There is nothing wrong with swift, corporal punishment. "Abuse" is hardly the word for it. But then again, I am not a social worker, or nanny shrink, and my conservative viewpoints don't follow slashdot's typically liberal stances. My apologies.

Comment Re:It's a battle and not the war.. (Score 1) 406

I bet this little girls won't be "sexting" any more! It's sad to see that these kids didn't get charged, but it's a good thing they've been (at least) taught a lesson. I wish it was their parents weren't the one teaching it to them in this case. I wonder why criminal charges were not brought up against the parents for this? The parents should be held responsible for failing to teach their kids morals, and what responsibility and accountability means. If this was my kid, he/she would never own a cell phone again, and wouldn't be able to sit for a week.

Comment Re:In other countries... (Score 2, Interesting) 695

Yeah, no one is really being hurt by this.

Heck, if prostitution moves entirely online, it'll be a good thing. The "bad image" caused by streetwalkers and such will go away, since the actual "marketing" of services happens invisibly online, and those involved can meet up in private.

It'll make law enforcement easier. It's far easier to track someone online that in real life, at least in the US it is.

Comment Re:Yum (Score 1) 146

Liver and Onions...love the stuff. Hopefully this means I can now get a green/environmentally-friendly/low-glycemic/soy-based/fair-trade version of liver, and a California tax rebate! We'll see...

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