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Submission + - Tesla, Intel, Ford and others waging a new war against Qualcomm over its patents (bbc.co.uk)

Submitted by concertina226
concertina226 writes: A group of carmakers and tech firms is urging US regulators to take further action against chipmaker Qualcomm over its sales practices.

Tesla, Ford, Honda, Daimler, Intel and MediaTek have asked the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to fight a recent court ruling in favour of Qualcomm.

Qualcomm has a practice of requiring customers to sign patent licence agreements before selling them chips.

Prof Mark Lemley of Stamford Law School thinks that the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has misunderstood "the definition of antitrust law" in reversing the judgement against Qualcomm.

"It says for instance that it can ignore most of the district court findings because those findings show harm to downstream customers, and anti-trust law only concerns competitors," he explained.

"That's exactly backwards — for decades antitrust law has said we're not out to protect competitors, we're out to protect the competitive process and protect consumers."

Submission + - Nasa hack: AnonSec attempts to crash $222m drone, releases secret flight videos (ibtimes.co.uk)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Hackers from the AnonSec group who spent several months hacking Nasa have released a huge data dump and revealed they tried to bring down a $222m Global Hawk Drone into the Pacific Ocean. The hack included employee personal details, flight logs and video footage collected from unmanned and manned aircraft.

The 250GB data dump contained the names, email addresses and phone numbers of 2,414 Nasa employees, 2,143 flight logs and 631 videos taken from Nasa aircraft and radar feeds, as well as a self-published paper (known as a "zine") from the group explaining the extensive technical vulnerabilities that the hackers were able to breach.

Every time a drone mission took off, Nasa drone operators were uploading specific flight paths, so the hackers realised that they could simply replace the Global Hawk drone route file, and that would cause the drone to deviate from its set flight path and do whatever the hackers wanted them to do.

Submission + - Graphene: Reversible method of magnetic doping paves way for semiconductor use (ibtimes.co.uk)

Submitted by concertina226
concertina226 writes: A team of physicists at University of California, Riverside have discovered how to induce magnetism in graphene in a way that still preserves the material's electronic properties, which paves the way for graphene to be used as a semiconductor.

The researchers grew a sheet of yttrium iron garnet using laser molecular beam epitaxy in a laboratory. Magnetic substances like iron are known to disrupt graphene's electrical conduction properties, but yttrium iron garnet works well as it is an electric insulator.

When a graphene sheet was placed on top of an atomically smooth sheet of yttrium iron garnet, the graphene borrowed the magnetic properties from the yttrium iron garnet and became magnetised without the need for doping.

Submission + - Researchers Discover an 'Off Switch' For Pain in the Brain (ibtimes.co.uk) 1

Submitted by concertina226
concertina226 writes: Scientists working together from several international universities have discovered that it is possible to block a pathway in the brain of animals suffering from neuropathic pain, which could have a huge impact on improving pain relief in humans.

So far, the most successful ways to treat chronic pain from a pharmacological point of view are to create drugs that that interact or interfere with various channels in the brain to decrease pain, including adrenergic, opioid and calcium receptors.

However, there is another way – a chemical stimulator called adenosine that binds to brain receptors to trigger a biological response.

Adenosine has shown potential for killing pain in humans, but so far, no one has managed to harness this pain pathway successfully without causing a myriad of side effects.

Led by Dr Daniela Salvemini of SLU, the researchers discovered that by activating the A3 adenosine receptor in the rodents' brains and spinal cords, the receptor was able to prevent or reverse pain from nerve damage (the cause of chronic pain).

Submission + - Kim Dotcom: I Regret Not Taking Threat of Copyright Law and MPAA More Seriously (ibtimes.co.uk)

Submitted by concertina226
concertina226 writes: Kim Dotcom has spoken out about his long battle over copyright with the US government and his regrets about the events that have led to his arrest ahead of his bail breach hearing on Thursday that could see him return to jail in New Zealand.

"Would I have done things differently? Of course. My biggest regret is I didn't take the threat of the copyright law and the MPAA seriously enough," Dotcom said via live video link from his mansion in Auckland, New Zealand at the Unbound Digital conference in London on Tuesday.

"I thought that due to court decisions we were monitoring from our competitors like RapidShare who did exactly what we did and were winning in civil court proceedings, and YouTube was winning against Viacom – our sense was that we were protected by the DMCA law.

"We never for a minute thought that anyone would bring any criminal actions against us. We had in-house legal counsel, we had three outside firms working for us who reviewed our sites, and not once had any of them mentioned any form of legal risk, so I wish I had known that there was a risk."

Submission + - Scientists Discover a Virus That Changes the Brain to 'Makes Humans More Stupid' (ibtimes.co.uk) 1

Submitted by concertina226
concertina226 writes: Scientists at the Johns Hopkins Medical School and the University of Nebraska have discovered an algae virus that makes us more stupid by infecting our brains.

The researchers were conducting a completely unrelated study into throat microbes when they realised that DNA in the throats of healthy people matched the DNA of a chlorovirus virus known as ATCV-1.

ATCV-1 is a virus that infects the green algae found in freshwater lakes and ponds. It had previously been thought to be non-infectious to humans, but the scientists found that it actually affects cognitive functions in the brain by shortening attention span and causing a decrease in spatial awareness.

For the first time ever, the researchers proved that microorganisms have the ability to trigger delicate physiological changes to the human body, without launching a full-blown attack on the human immune system.

Submission + - Scout SV is British Army's Smart-Tank of the Future, to be Driven By Videogamers (ibtimes.co.uk)

Submitted by concertina226
concertina226 writes: The UK branch of global defence firm General Dynamics is working on a futuristic state-of-the-art smart-tank to replace the British Army's ageing armoured vehicle fleet, to be delivered to the Ministry of Defence (MoD) in 2020.

The Scout SV armoured vehicle is the first fully-digitised armoured fighting vehicle to have been built for the British Army, and is far bigger and more durable than any of its existing tanks, which are now at least 20 years old.

The tank comes in six variants that can be customised with a tools for different missions, and has numerous sensors, cameras, and sights to offer real-time intelligence on weather conditions, target acquisition, and reconnaissance — all crucial battlefield data required by commanders to access and direct situations.

Submission + - PrintAlive: 3D Bioprinter Creates 'Living Bandage' Skin Grafts For Burn Victims (ibtimes.co.uk)

Submitted by concertina226
concertina226 writes: Engineering students from the University of Toronto have developed a 3D bioprinter that can rapidly create artificial skin grafts from a patient's cells to help treat burn victims.

In severe burn injuries, both the epidermis (outer layer of the skin) and the dermis (inner layer) are severely damaged, and it usually takes at least two weeks for skin cells to be grown in a laboratory to be grafted onto a patient.

As both layers of skin are made from completely different cells that have different structures, it is very difficult for the body to regenerate itself and burn victims can die if their wounds cannot be closed quickly enough.

So instead of trying to replicate a real human skin graft, the PrintAlive Bioprinter creates a type of "living bandage" from hydrogel.

Submission + - Scientists Twist Radio Beams to Send Data at 32 Gigabits p/s, Faster Than LTE (ibtimes.co.uk) 1

Submitted by concertina226
concertina226 writes: Scientists from three international universities have succeeded in twisting radio beams in order to transfer data at the speed of 32 gigabits per second, which is 30 times faster than 4G LTE wireless technology in use today.

The researchers, led by Alan Willner, an electrical engineering professor with the University of Southern California Viterbi School of Engineering, successfully demonstrated data transmission rates of 32 gigabits per second across 2.5m of free space in a basement laboratory.

Millimetre waves occupy the 30GHz to 300GHz frequency bands. They are found in the spectrum between microwaves, which take up the 1GHz to 30GHz bands, and infrared waves, which are sometimes known as extremely high frequency (EHF).

Submission + - Artificial Spleen Removes Ebola, HIV Viruses and Toxins From Blood Using Magnets (ibtimes.co.uk)

Submitted by concertina226
concertina226 writes: Harvard scientists have invented a new artificial spleen that is able to clear toxins, fungi and deadly pathogens such as Ebola from human blood, which could potentially save millions of lives.

When antibiotics are used to kill them, dying viruses release toxins in the blood that begin to multiply quickly, causing sepsis, a life-threatening condition whereby the immune system overreacts, causing blood clotting, organ damage and inflammation.

To overcome this, researchers have invented a "biospleen", a device similar to a dialysis machine that makes use of magnetic nanobeads measuring 128 nanometres in diameter (one-five hundredths the width of a single human hair) coated with mannose-binding lectin (MBL), a type of genetically engineered human blood protein.

Submission + - 'Terror Cam' Which Scans Crowd for Would-be Killers Invented in China (ibtimes.co.uk)

Submitted by concertina226
concertina226 writes: Scientists at China's Southwest University in Chongqing are working on a new type of camera that takes Big Brother to a whole new level – the camera is meant to detect highly stressed individuals so that police can catch them before they commit a crime.

The camera makes use of hyperspectral imaging, i.e. a "stress sensor" that measures the amount of oxygen in blood across visible areas of the body, such as the face.

Chinese authorities are deeply concerned about the recent spate of deadly attacks occurring in public places, such as the mass stabbing attack by eight knife-wielding extremists in the city of Kunming, Yunnan in March, which left 29 civilians dead and over 140 others injured.

Submission + - Study: Stop Being So Cynical, You Could Give Yourself Dementia (ibtimes.co.uk)

Submitted by concertina226
concertina226 writes: Scientists from the University of Eastern Finland have found that people who have high levels of cynical distrust are three times as likely to suffer from dementia in later life, than those who have more faith in other people.

Their study is the first of its kind to look at the relationship between cynicism and dementia. Entitled: "Late-life cynical distrust, risk of incident dementia, and mortality in a population-based cohort", it is published in the latest issue of the journal Neurology.

Over a period of eight years, the researchers studied 1,499 people, who all had an average age of 71. The participants were given tests for dementia and a questionnaire to measure their level of cynicism, based on the Cook-Medley Scale.

Submission + - Iran Court Summons Mark Zuckerberg (securityweek.com)

Submitted by wiredmikey
wiredmikey writes: An Iranian judge has summoned Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg to answer allegations that his company's apps have breached people's privacy, it was reported Tuesday. The court in Fars province ordered that Zuckerberg address unspecified "violation of privacy" claims made by Iranians over the reach of Facebook-owned apps, ISNA news agency reported.

"Based on the judge's verdict, the Zionist manager of Facebook... should report to the prosecutor's office to defend himself and make compensation for damages," Rouhollah Momen-Nasab, a senior Iranian Internet security official, told ISNA.

Access to social networks, including Twitter and Facebook, are routinely blocked by Iranian authorities, as are other websites considered un-Islamic or detrimental to the regime.

Submission + - Should Killer Robots be Banned in Policing? (ibtimes.co.uk)

Submitted by concertina226
concertina226 writes: The United Nations will debate the use of killer robots for the first time at the UN Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW) this week, but human rights activists are calling for the robots to be banned.

Human Rights Watch and Harvard Law School's International Human Rights Clinic have published a new report entitled "Shaking the Foundations: The Human Rights Implications of Killer Robots", which calls for killer robots to be banned to prevent a potential arms race between countries.

Killer robots, or fully autonomous weapons, do not yet exist but would be the next step after remote-controlled armed drones used by the US military today. Fully autonomous weapons would have the ability to identify and fire on targets without human intervention, putting compliance with international humanitarian laws in doubt.

Among the problems with killer robots highlighted in the report is the risk of criminal liability for a military officer, programmer or weapons manufacturer who created or used an autonomous weapon with intent to kill.

If a robot killed arbitrarily, it would be difficult to hold anyone accountable.

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[A computer is] like an Old Testament god, with a lot of rules and no mercy. -- Joseph Campbell

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