junkmailtrapenator - Slashdot User

Taiwanese Researchers Plug RFIDs As Disaster Recovery Aids 108

Posted by timothy on Friday May 14, 2010 @11:03PM from the one-way-to-look-at-things dept.

Velcroman1 writes "Scientists tag animals to monitor their behavior and keep track of endangered species. Now some are asking whether all of mankind should be tagged too. Looking for a loved one? Just Google his microchip. Taiwanese researchers postulate that the tags could help save lives in the aftermath of a major earthquake. And IBM advocated chips for humans in a speech earlier this week. The ACLU disagrees. 'Many people find the idea creepy,' spokesman Jay Stanley told FoxNews.com."

NHS Should Stop Funding Homeopathy, Says Parliamentary Committee 507

Posted by samzenpus on Tuesday February 23, 2010 @02:57PM from the how-am-I-going-to-align-my-chakras-now dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Homeopathic remedies work no better than placebos, and so should no longer be paid for by the UK National Health Service, a committee of British members of parliament has concluded. In preparing its report, the committee, which scrutinizes the evidence behind government policies, took evidence from scientists and homeopaths, and reviewed numerous reports and scientific investigations into homeopathy. It found no evidence that such treatments work beyond providing a placebo effect." Updated 201025 19:40 GMT by timothy: This recommendation has some people up in arms.

Submission + - Solar Tree Bears Fruit 1

Submitted by

Hugh Pickens

on Friday December 28, 2007 @04:09PM

Hugh Pickens writes: "A solar tree recently passed a key test and went on display on a busy street — the Ringstrasse — in Vienna, Austria providing light during the night-time even when the sun had been covered by clouds for four days in a row. The branches of the solar tree were decorated with 10 solar lamps, each one powered by 36 solar cells.and the tree included rechargeable batteries and electronic systems to measure the amount of light in the atmosphere and trigger the solar lamps to go on. "Not just trees but other objects could be decorated with solar cells and so keep streets well lit at night time," said Christina Werner from Cultural Project Management. Google uses a similar concept to light their parking lots with 3,000 solar panels that provide 10 percent of the Googleplex's power demand."

Submission + - Communities of Mutants Form as DNA Testing Grows (nytimes.com) 1

Submitted by GeneRegulator on Friday December 28, 2007 @02:23PM

GeneRegulator writes: The NY Times is running a story on communities that are forming around kids with rare genetic mutations. New technology that can scan chromosomes for small errors is being applied first to children with autism and other "unexplained developmental delays." It turns out that many of them have small deletions or duplications of DNA, and doctors creating a whole new taxonomy of syndromes with names like 16p11.2 and 7q11.23 that refer to the affected region of the genome. Meanwhile, hundreds of little groups are forming around the banner of their children's shared mutations. As new research shows that many of us have small deletions and duplications of DNA that separate us from our parents, and that many of these "copy number variants" contribute to skills and senses the families described in the story may presage the formation of all sorts of "communities of the genetically rare" in the general population, not just amongst the developmentally delayed.

Submission + - Galapagos Islands environment 'in danger'

Submitted by cagrin on Saturday June 30, 2007 @02:10PM

cagrin writes: The Galapagos Islands on Tuesday were listed 'in danger' by the U.N.'s World Heritage sites in danger from environmental threats or overuse. From the article: "The Galapagos Islands, an Ecuadorian territory situated in the Pacific Ocean some 1,000 kilometers (625 miles) from South America, helped shape Charles Darwin's theory of evolution and in 1978 was the first site placed on UNESCO's World Heritage List." Link: Galapagos Islands, park in Senegal added to UNESCO's in danger heritage list SeaShepherd Info Link: Galapagos Islands Listed as a World Heritage Site in Danger

Submission + - Latest AACS revision defeated a week before releas

Submitted by

stevedcc

on Thursday May 17, 2007 @02:09PM

stevedcc writes: "Ars Technica is running a story about next week's release of AACS, which is intended to fix the current compromises. The only problem is, the patched version has already been cracked. From the article:

Despite the best efforts of the Advanced Access Content System (AACS) Licensing Administration (AACS LA), content pirates remain one step ahead. A new volume key used by high-def films scheduled for release next week has already been cracked.
"

Journal SPAM: 007's creator 'was in plot to frame witch' 3

Journal by Jeremiah Cornelius on Thursday May 17, 2007 @01:19PM

However, during a sitting in Portsmouth on 19 January, 1944, Duncan, 47, fell foul of the security services when a sailor from HMS Barham is alleged to have formed in ectoplasm and greeted his surprised mother sitting in the audience. His death had been kept a secret by the Admiralty, which had been trying to conceal news of the ship's sinking three months earlier.

Microsoft To Dump 32-Bit After Vista 527

Posted by kdawson on Thursday May 17, 2007 @11:17AM from the at-least-it-fixes-Y2K38 dept.

SlinkySausage writes "Microsoft has used its annual hardware engineering conference to announce that Windows Vista and Server 2008 will be the last versions of Windows capable of booting on 32-bit CPUs such as Intel Pentium 4 and Core Duo. AMD, which introduced 64-bit CPUs early — much to the derision of Intel, which said there was no use for them at the time — must be delighted with Microsoft's decision. Owners of first-generation Intel Macs that used (32-bit only) Core Duo CPUs may not be so happy knowing that Vista will be the last Windows they will be able to run."

Submission + - Microsoft votes to add ODF to ANSI standards list

Submitted by

RzUpAnmsCwrds

on Thursday May 17, 2007 @09:32AM

RzUpAnmsCwrds writes: "In a puzzling move, Microsoft today voted to support the addition of the OpenDocument file formats to the American National Standards List. OpenDocument is used by many free-software office suites, including OpenOffice.org. Microsoft is still pushing its own Office Open XML format, which it hopes will also become an ANSI standard. Is Microsoft serious about supporting ODF, or is this a merely a PR stunt to make Office Open XML look more like a legitimate standard?"

Submission + - Google Wins Nude Thumbnail Legal Battle

Submitted by

eldavojohn

on Thursday May 17, 2007 @09:12AM

eldavojohn writes: "Google is currently fighting many fronts in its ability to show small images returned in a search from websites. Most recently, Google won the case against them in which they were displaying nude thumbnails of a photographer's work from his site. Prior to this, Google was barred from displaying copyrighted content, even when linking it to the site (owner) from its search results. The verdict: "Saying the District Court erred, the San Francisco-based appeals court ruled that Google could legally display those images under the fair use doctrine of copyright law." Huge precedence in a search engine's ability to blindly serve content safely under fair use."

Submission + - Cisco routers to blame for huge Japan net outtage

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 17, 2007 @07:15AM

An anonymous reader writes: Cisco routers were the source of a major outage May 15 in an NTT network in Japan, according to an investment firm bulletin. Between 2,000 and 4,000 Cisco routers went down for about 7 hours in the NTT East network after a switchover to backup routes triggered the routers to rewrite routing tables, according to a bulletin from CIBC World Markets. The outage disconnected millions of broadband Internet users across most of eastern Japan. http://www.networkworld.com/news/2007/051607-cisco -routers-major-outage-japan.html

Google Expands to 'Universal' Search 138

Posted by samzenpus on Thursday May 17, 2007 @05:27AM from the triple-awesome-metasearch-coming-soon dept.

ppadala writes "Google today unveiled its uber search which allows you to search for text, images, news etc. together. This is the result of unifying various search engines that Google developed for web, images, news etc. Google's main page and the results page are also sporting a polished look with a top menu bar sporting various search items."

Feed Nicotine Enhances Learning And Memory: Could This Lead To New Alzheimer's Medica (sciencedaily.com)

From feed by sdfeed on Wednesday April 04, 2007 @05:13PM

While nicotine is highly addictive, researchers have also shown the drug to enhance learning and memory -- a property that has launched efforts to develop nicotine-like drugs to treat cognitive deficits in Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases, schizophrenia and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder.

Feed Slow But Sure -- Burned Forest Lands Regenerate Naturally (sciencedaily.com)

From feed by sdfeed on Wednesday April 04, 2007 @05:13PM

A new study of forest lands that burned in the 1990s in northern California and southwestern Oregon has concluded there is a "fair to excellent" chance that an adequate level of conifers will regenerate naturally, in sites that had no manual planting or other forest management. Whether lands should be planted and weed competition controlled is more a question of short-term timber production, tree species control and forest management goals than the regeneration of the forest, the study indicated.

Feed Dieting Does Not Work, Researchers Report (sciencedaily.com)

From feed by sdfeed on Wednesday April 04, 2007 @05:12PM

Dieting does not work, report researchers who analyzed 31 long-term studies on dieting. "You can initially lose five to 10 percent of your weight on any number of diets, but then the weight comes back," said Traci Mann, UCLA associate professor of psychology and lead author of the study. "We found that the majority of people regained all the weight, plus more."

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