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Comment Have they checked the floor-mats? It's happened b4 (Score 1) 179

by buzzazz (#59642612) Attached to: 127 Tesla Owners Complain The Cars Accelerate On Their Own
I had the same happen to a #VW #Jetta #Trek I owned in the late 90's. I learned that the floor-mat was deep, and the accelerator got caught in it when it was moved by my feet. This is the kind of use-case scenario that would turn up in extensive User Acceptance Testing, but unfortunately got overlooked - maybe because the mats were added later in the product release process. I don't have a reference/URL, but I did later read an article about that having been resolved. The floor-mat was discovered as a cause of Jetta accelerators being depressed and causing accidents. How did I get out of the quandary I was in? Simple: when nothing else worked & the car kept accelerating, I moved the gear from Drive to Neutral. The engine kept revving higher, but in the process, I was able to figure out that the cause was the mat, which I then moved out of the way. Fortunately, more serious consequences were avoided.
Biotech

How Norway Fought Staph Infections 595

Posted by timothy from the they-fired-adrian-monk dept.
eldavojohn writes "Studies are showing that Norway's dirtiest hospitals are actually cleaner than most other countries', and the reason for this is that Norwegians stopped taking antibiotics. A number of factors like paid sick leave and now restrictions on advertising for drugs make Norway an anomaly when it comes to diseases like Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA). A Norwegian doctor explains, 'We don't throw antibiotics at every person with a fever. We tell them to hang on, wait and see, and we give them a Tylenol to feel better.' Norway is the most MRSA free country in the world. In a country like Japan, where 17,000 die from MRSA every year, 'doctors overprescribe antibiotics because they are given financial incentives to push drugs on patients.'"
NASA

Buzz Aldrin's Radical Plan For NASA 519

Posted by timothy from the he-was-there-when-it-happened dept.
FleaPlus writes "Apollo 11 astronaut (and MIT Astronautics Sc.D.) Buzz Aldrin suggests a bolder plan for NASA (while still remaining within its budget), which he will present to the White House's Augustine Commission; he sees NASA heading down the wrong path with a 'rehash of what we did 40 years ago' which could derail future exploration and settlement. For the short-term, Aldrin suggests canceling NASA's troubled and increasingly costly Ares I, instead launching manned capsules on commercial Delta IV, Atlas V, and/or SpaceX Falcon 9 rockets. In the medium-term, NASA should return to the moon with an international consortium, with the ultimate goal of commercial lunar exploitation in mind. Aldrin's long term plan includes a 2018 comet flyby, a 2019 manned trip to a near-earth asteroid, a 2025 trip to the Martian moon Phobos, and one-way trips to colonize Mars."
Education

Student Faces Expulsion for Facebook Study Group 554

Posted by Soulskill from the our-way-or-the-highway dept.
Pickens brings news that a student at Ryerson University is facing 147 counts of academic misconduct after helping to run a chemistry study group through Facebook. School officials have declined to comment, but students are claiming that it is simply a valid studying technique in the information age. Quoting: "Avenir, 18, faces an expulsion hearing Tuesday before the engineering faculty appeals committee. If he loses that appeal, he can take his case to the university's senate. The incident has sent shock waves through student ranks, says Kim Neale, 26, the student union's advocacy co-ordinator, who will represent Avenir at the hearing. 'That's the worst part; it's creating this culture of fear, where if I post a question about physics homework on my friend's wall (a Facebook bulletin board) and ask if anyone has any ideas how to approach this - and my prof sees this, am I cheating?' said Neale, who has used Facebook study groups herself."

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