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Submission + - Russians find "new bacteria" in Lake Vostok (phys.org)

Submitted by tverbeek
tverbeek writes: Russian scientists believe they have found a wholly new type of bacteria in the mysterious subglacial Lake Vostok in Antarctica, the RIA Novosti news agency reported. "After putting aside all possible elements of contamination, DNA was found that did not coincide with any of the well-known types in the global database," he said. "We are calling this life form unclassified and unidentified."
Space

Submission + - Spaceport Development Picks Up Steam in Texas

Submitted by
RocketAcademy
RocketAcademy writes: "The Lone Star State is moving to become a leader in spaceport development.

The Houston Airport System is officially moving ahead with plans to turn Ellington Airport, near NASA’s Johnson Space Center, into an FAA-licensed commercial spaceport. The airport system has completed a feasibility study for turning the field into a spaceport for suborbital spacecraft such as Virgin Galactic's SpaceShip Two and XCOR's Lynx. In the longer term, spacecraft could link Houston to Singapore in as little as three hours, according to airport system director Mario Diaz.

Meanwhile, state Representative Rene Oliveira (D-Brownsville) introduced a bill that would allow county commissioners to close a local beach for launches from the proposed SpaceX launch site in Cameron County. The bill is part of a flood of spaceport-related legislation that has been introduced recently in the Texas legislature."
Science

Submission + - Drug Testing in Mice May Be A Waste of Time, Researchers Warn 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: A group of researchers including Dr. H. Shaw Warren of Mass. General Hospital and Stanford genomics researcher Ronald W. Davis have published a paper challenging the effectiveness of the "mouse model" as a basis for medical research, based on a decade-long study involving 39 doctors and scientists across the country. In clincal studies of sepsis (a severe inflammatatory disorder caused by the immune system's abnormal response to a pathogen), trauma, and burns, the researchers found that certain drugs triggered completely different genetic responses in mice compared with humans. The Warren-Davis paper was rejected by both Science and Nature before its acceptance by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, perhaps suggesting the degree to which the "mouse model" has become entrenched within the medical research community. Ninety five percent of the laboratory animals used in research are mice or rats. Mice in particular are ideal subjects for research: they are cheap to obtain and house, easy to handle, and share at least 80 percent of their genes with humans (by some reckoning, closer to 99 percent). Over the past twenty five years, powerful methods of genetically engineering mice by "knocking out" individual genes have become widely adopted, so that use of mice for drug testing prior to human clinical trials has become standard procedure.
DRM

Submission + - W3C declare DRM in scope for HTML, big business supports Web DRM - Schism looms (w3.org) 1

Submitted by FredAndrews
FredAndrews writes: The W3C has ruled DRM in-scope for their HTML standard. A lot of big businesses have supported advancing the Encrypted Media Extension (EME), including Google, Microsoft, and Netfix. The BBC calls for a solution with legal sanstions. The EME could well be used to implement a DRM HTML engine. A DRM enabled web would break a long tradition of the web browser being the User's Agent, and would restrict user choice and control over their security and privacy. There are other applications that can serve the purpose of viewing DRM video content, and I appeal to people to not taint the web standards with DRM but to please use other applications when necessary.

Submission + - Judge hints at jail time for porn troll Prenda Law (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by rudy_wayne
rudy_wayne writes: A federal judge in Los Angeles has suggested serious penalties for Brett Gibbs, an attorney at porn copyright trolling firm Prenda Law. Facing allegations of fraud and identity theft, Gibbs will be required to explain himself at a March 11 hearing. And if Judge Otis Wright isn't satisfied with his answers, he may face fines and even jail time.

The identity theft allegations emerged late last year, when a Minnesota man named Alan Cooper told a Minnesota court he suspected Prenda Law named him as the CEO of two litigious offshore holding companies without his permission. Worried about exposing himself to potential liability for the firms' misconduct, Cooper asked the court to investigate the situation. Cooper's letter was spotted by Morgan Pietz, an attorney who represents "John Doe" defendants in California. He notified Judge Wright of the allegations.
Blackberry

Submission + - Leaked Memo Says Apple Provides Backdoor to Govern 2

Submitted by Voline
Voline writes: In a tweet early this morning, cybersecurity researcher Christopher Soghoian pointed to an internal memo of India's Military Intelligence that has been liberated by hackers and posted on the Net. The memo suggests that, "in exchange for the Indian market presence" mobile device manufacturers, including RIM, Nokia, and Apple (collectively defined in the document as "RINOA") have agreed to provide backdoor access on their devices.

The Indian government then "utilized backdoors provided by RINOA" to intercept internal emails of the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission, a US government body with a mandate to monitor, investigate and report to Congress on "the national security implications of the bilateral trade and economic relationship" between the US and China. Manan Kakkar, an Indian blogger for ZDNet, has also picked up the story and writes that it may be the fruits of an earlier hack of Symantec.

If Apple is providing governments with a backdoor to iOS, can we assume that they have also done so with Mac OS X?
Microsoft

Submission + - Microsoft scraps 'Where's my phone update?' site (networkworld.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Microsoft disappointed some Windows Phone users on Friday by saying it would stop providing specifics about who will get software updates and when, and announcing vaguely that a new update is "available to all carriers that request it." The update fixes a few issues, including one that caused the on-screen keyboard to disappear and another that caused problems with synching Gmail. Eric Hautala, general manager of customer experience engineering for Windows Phone, said Microsoft will no longer say when people will get updates based on their country, phone model and carrier.
Space

Submission + - Chance to Snap Up Your Own Observatory

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens writes
Hugh Pickens writes writes: "Like to own your own five story observatory equipped with a 12" Meade Schmidt Cassegrain catadioptric telescope and a 20-inch Shafer-Maksutov telescope — the second largest of its kind in the world. Well, there's one for sale at Marina Towers in Swansea at an observatory that could be Wales' largest telescope. The Swansea Astronomical Society moved out two years ago blaming increased rent and other costs so the city council has asked interested parties to submit their proposals and financial offers by the end of March. Brian Spinks, the chair of the society, says the extra rent and running costs meant the society's members would have had to find around £40,000 over the next 10 years. "The members can no longer be expected to finance such a public presence from their annual subscription. If we had to find £40,000 over the next 10 years it would kill the society." The observatory was built in 1988 and includes a domed roof, an access tower that houses a spiral staircase, a stained-glass roof by artist David Pearl and panels of carved poetry by Nigel Jenkins. "We'd like to see a mixed-use development that incorporates features of the existing observatory building," says Coun Gareth Sullivan, Swansea council's cabinet member for regeneration. "Bringing the observatory back into use would add even more vitality to the promenade.""

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