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Biotech

Submission + - Chili Pepper Sauce tested on surgical wounds

Submitted by
Ponca City, We Love You
Ponca City, We Love You writes: "Bite a hot pepper, and after the burn your tongue goes numb. The Baltimore Sun reports that Capsaicin, the chemical that gives chili peppers their fire, is being dripped directly into open wounds during highly painful operations bathing surgically exposed nerves in a high enough dose to numb them for weeks so that patients suffer less pain and require fewer narcotic painkillers as they heal. "We wanted to exploit this numbness," says Dr. Eske Aasvang, a pain specialist who is testing the substance. Capsaicin works by binding to C fibers called TRPV1, the nerve endings responsible for long-lasting aching and throbbing pain. Experiments are under way involving several hundred patients undergoing various surgeries, including knee and hip replacements using an ultra-purified version of Capsaicin to avoid infection. Volunteers are under anesthesia so they don't scream at the initial burn."
Biotech

Submission + - First Fossil Evidence that Raptors Hunted in Packs

Submitted by
Ponca City, We Love You
Ponca City, We Love You writes: "The New Scientist reports that palaeontologists have excavated a fossil trackway in Shandong Province in China 100 to 120 million years old that contains footprints left by six Dromeosaurs, the more formal name for raptors, showing evidence of group behavior. Up until now, the popular stereotype from Jurassic Park of raptors hunting in packs has had no fossil evidence to back it up. The paths of the six 90 kilo raptors do not overlap where the animals walked alongside a river or stream. "The odds of these tracks being made by different individuals that just happen to be moving in the same direction, without their tracks stepping on one another, are small," said Jerry D. Harris, director of paleontology at Dixie State College. "Groups that do that usually have relatively sophisticated behavior, and they're relatively intelligent," Harris added. "By moving together in groups, it's entirely possible that they hunted in groups.""
The Internet

Submission + - Wikipedia begets Veropedia

Submitted by
Ponca City, We Love You
Ponca City, We Love You writes: "October saw the launch of Veropedia, a collaborative effort to collect the best of Wikipedia's content, clean it up, vet it, and save it in a quality stable version that cannot be edited. To qualify for inclusion in Veropedia, a Wikipedia article must contain no cleanup tags, no "citation needed" tags, no disambiguation links, no dead external links, and no fair use images after which candidates for inclusion are reviewed by recognized academics and experts. One big difference with Wikipedia is that Veropedia is registered as a for profit corporation and earns money from advertising on the site. Veropedia is supposed to help improve the quality of Wikipedia because contributors must improve an article on Wikipedia, fixing up all the flaws, until a quality version can be imported to Veropedia. To date Veropedia contains about 3,800 articles."
The Almighty Buck

Submission + - Apple makes $831 on each iPhone 3

Submitted by
Ponca City, We Love You
Ponca City, We Love You writes: "The New York Times reports that Gene Munster, an analyst at Piper Jaffray, has studied Apple's financial statement and come to the conclusion that AT&T appears to be paying Apple $18 a month, on average, for each iPhone activated on its network or up to $432 over a two year contract. This shows how much incentive Apple has to maintain its exclusive deal with AT&T rather than to sell unlocked phones or cut deals with multiple carriers. Last week Apple disclosed that 250,000 iPhones had been purchased but not registered with ATT that Apple thinks are being unlocked so Apple has now taken action to curb unauthorized resellers by limiting sales of the iPhone to two per customer and requiring that purchases must now be made with a credit or debit card — cash will not be accepted. The original story on what was happening to the unlocked phones was discussed on Slashdot."
Biotech

Submission + - Crime Reduction linked to Lead Free Gasoline

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens
Hugh Pickens writes: "Even low levels of lead can cause brain damage increasing the likelihood of behavioral and cognitive traits such as impulsivity, aggressivity, and low IQ that are strongly linked with criminal behavior. The New York Times has a story on how the phase out of leaded gasoline starting with the Clean Air Act in 1973 may have led to a 56% drop in violent crime in the United States in the 1990s. Amherst Economics Professor Jessica Wolpaw Reyes discovered the connection and wrote a paper comparing the reduction of lead from gasoline between states (pdf file) and the reduction of violent crime by constructing a panel of state-year observations linking crime rates in every state to childhood lead exposure in that state 20 or 30 years earlier. If lead poisoning is a factor in the development of criminal behavior, then countries that didn't switch to unleaded fuel until the 1980s, like Britain and Australia, should soon see a dip in crime as the last lead-damaged children outgrow their most violent years."
Communications

Submission + - Apple says 250,000 iPhones Sold to Unlockers 1

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens
Hugh Pickens writes: "Timothy D. Cook, Chief Operating Officer at Apple, disclosed during Apple's conference call to discuss their fourth quarter earnings that they estimate that 250,000 of the 1.4 Million iPhones that have been sold were bought by people intending to unlock the phone.

[The elasticity in demand with the price drop] enabled us to far surpass our expectation of hitting around a million units cumulatively by the end of the quarter. Some number of these were sold to people that have an intention to unlock and [while] we don't know precisely how many people are doing that, our current guess is there is probably 250,000 of the 1.4 million that we sold where people had bought them with the intention of doing that. Many of those happened after the price cut.
Apple knows how many iPhones have been sold and how many have been activated with ATT. The difference is the number that are unlocked."
NASA

Submission + - Space Elevator Teams Compete for NASA Prizes

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens
Hugh Pickens writes: "The University of Saskatchewan's has the first place climb in the Second Annual Space Elevator Games being held this weekend at the Davis County Event Center in Salt Lake City with teams competing for $1,000,000 in NASA prize money. Although the idea of a space elevator has been around for decades, the space technologies needed to support it have yet to be created so the non-profit Spaceward Foundation has hosted an annual competition since 2005, supported by a cash prize from NASA, to build a super-strong tether similar to what would be needed to support a real elevator, or get a robot to climb a suspended ribbon. In the robot climber competition, teams have to get their device to hurtle up a 100-metre-long ribbon, suspended from a crane, at an average speed of two metres per second. The climber must be powered from the ground: strategies include reflecting sunlight from huge mirrors on the ground to solar panels on the climber; shining lasers from the ground up to similar panels on the robot; or firing microwaves up at the climber. Qualifying rounds have been taking place all week, and although high winds and rain have caused delays, four out of eight teams have made it into the finals. There are no outdoor climbs today because of bad weather but that some of the tether competitions will happen indoors later this afternoon."
Space

Submission + - Crashed Spacecraft Yields Data on Solar Wind

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens
Hugh Pickens writes: "After the Genesis mission spent 27 months in space gathering tiny samples from different types of solar wind, Hollywood stunt pilots swooped in with a helicopter to catch the falling capsule when it returned to earth. Unfortunately the spacecraft's parachute did not open, and the spacecraft ploughed a hole into the desert. Now scientists are starting to recover data from the salvageable pieces of Genesis. Nature Magazine reports that an analysis of isotopes of neon and argon shows that the elements of main interest to the researchers have the same isotopic signature in the solar wind as in the Sun itself. Because dirt contains relatively little neon and argon, the current Science study wasn't affected too much by contamination and the the team remains hopeful that they will be able to get results on oxygen and nitrogen isotopes from the mission."
Networking

Submission + - Neuro-Reckoning may Reduce MMOG Time Lag

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens
Hugh Pickens writes: "Time lag can cause some very strange behavior in massively multiplayer online games when players' actions onscreen become slow and jerky. New techniques are on the way to reduce the problem of lag time in MMOGs when a player's computer can't keep up with changes in a shared online world. Games like Quake use a technique called dead reckoning and while traditional dead-reckoning systems that assume that a game character will maintain the velocity and direction that it has at the moment an update is sent to all other participating computers; dead reckoning works best for movement and shooting and less well for erratic actions such as interacting with objects or with other players. Read the abstract of new technique called "neuro-reckoning" that may improve the predictive process by installing a neural network in each player's computer to predict fast, jerky actions."
Communications

Submission + - New GPS Navigator shows Traffic Jams Ahead

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens
Hugh Pickens writes: "The New York Times is running an article on Dash Express, a new navigation system for automobiles that not only receives GPS location data, but broadcasts information about its travels back to Dash over a cellular data network where it is shared with other users to let them know if there are slowdowns or traffic jams on the road ahead and propose an alternate route. The real benefit of the system isn't apparent until enough units are collecting data so Dash distributed over 2,000 prototype units to test drivers in 25 large cities. The continuous two-way reporting lets the system measure how fast traffic travels on a given road, and use that information to compile a highly detailed and accurate database of traffic information so Dash units can warn each other through the network the second they hit a traffic slowdown."
Biotech

Submission + - Evidence found for Earliest Modern Humans

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens
Hugh Pickens writes: "Researchers at Arizona State University report that they have pushed back the date for the earliest modern humans to 164,000 years ago, far earlier than previously documented. Paleoanthropologists now say that genetic and fossil evidence suggests that modern human species — Homo sapiens — evolved in Africa between 100,000 and 200,000 years ago and in seeking the "perfect site" to explore for remains of the earliest populations, researchers analyzed ocean currents, climate data, geological formations and other data to pin down a location. "The world was in a glacial stage 125,000 to 195,000 years ago, and much of Africa was dry to mostly desert; in many areas food would have been difficult to acquire. The paleoenvironmental data indicate there are only five or six places in all of Africa where humans could have survived these harsh conditions," said Curtis Marean, a professor in ASU's School of Human Evolution and Social Change. Photos from the cave at Pinnacle Point in South Africa show where the team found ochre, bladelets and evidence of shellfish — findings that reveal the earliest dated evidence of modern humans."
The Internet

Submission + - Infrequent Anonymous Cowards Reliable on Wikipedia

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens
Hugh Pickens writes: "Researchers at Dartmouth University have recently discovered that infrequent anonymous contributors, so called "Good Samaritans," are as reliable as registered users who update constantly and have a reputation to maintain.

By subdividing their analysis by registered versus anonymous contributors, the researchers found that among those who contribute often, registered users are more reliable. And they discovered that among those who contribute only a little, the anonymous users are more reliable. The researchers were most surprised to find that the reliability of Good Samaritans' contributions were at least as high as that of the more reputable registered users' contributions. "This finding was both novel and unexpected," says Denise Anthony, associate professor of sociology. "In traditional laboratory studies of collective goods, we don't include Good Samaritans, those people who just happen to pass by and contribute, because those carefully designed studies don't allow for outside actors. It took a real-life situation for us to recognize and appreciate the contributions of Good Samaritans to web content."
A graph from page 31 of the group's original paper (pdf file) shows that the quality of contributions of anonymous users goes down as the number of edits increases while quality goes up with the number of edits for registered users."
Networking

Submission + - Attacking Criminal Networks on the Internet

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens
Hugh Pickens writes: "Computer Scientists at Carnegie Mellon University are developing techniques to analyze and disrupt black markets on the internet, where criminals sell viruses, stolen data and attack services estimated to total more than $37 million for the seven-month period under study. To stem the flow of stolen credit cards and identity data, researchers have proposed two technical approaches to reduce the number of successful market transactions. One approach to disrupting the network is a slander attack where an attacker eliminates the verified status of a buyer or seller through false defamation. Another approach undercuts the cyber-crooks' network by creating a deceptive sales environment. "Just like you need to verify that individuals are honest on E-bay, online criminals need to verify that they are dealing with 'honest' criminals," says Jason Franklin, one of the researchers. "The scary thing about all this is that you do not have to be in the know to find black markets, they are easy to find, easy to join and just a mouse click away," Franklin added."
Space

Submission + - The Dark Side of Iapetus 1

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens
Hugh Pickens writes: "The difference in coloring between Iapetus' leading and trailing hemispheres is striking. NASA's Jet Propulsion Labs has just released a report on a bizarre "runaway" process that may explain the strange and dramatically two-toned appearance recently revealed in images collected during a close flyby by the Cassini spacecraft. Scientists believe that initially dark material on one side of Iapetus may have come from other moons orbiting Saturn in the opposite direction. Since Iapetus is locked in synchronous rotation about Saturn, as dusty material from the outer moons spiraled in and hit Iapetus head-on, the forward-facing side began to look different. Once the forward side began to darken, it absorbed more sunlight, its surface water evaporated, and vapor was transported from the dark side to the white side of Iapetus. Thermal segregation then proceeded in a runaway process as the the dark side lost its surface ice and got darker."
Google

Submission + - Google Hopes to Disaggregate Carriers with gPhone

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens
Hugh Pickens writes: "The New York Times is publishing a story about Google's plan to loosen the carriers' control over their mobile phone networks in an effort to bring the dynamics of the PC-oriented Internet to the mobile Internet hoping that it can beat competitors in an open environment. The Google Phone or gPhone which is expected to be unveiled later this year will not compete with the iPhone but will help Google distribute their online services. Google intends to provide software that will be built into phones sold by many manufacturers and, unlike Microsoft's Windows Mobile, Google is not expected to charge phone makers a licensing fee for their software. Google will make its money brokering ads on the mobile phones and even envisions a free phone service one day supported entirely through ad revenue, people familiar with the matter say. But Google's plans are a double-edged sword for mobile operators. While Google's brand and services could help operators sign up more subscribers to data packages, on which they increasingly rely as voice revenue declines, operators have been wary about losing control over the mobile-ad market."

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