Every time we hear of yet another plan for the government to set up yet another database of information about people, we wonder about how it will be misused. Supporters always talk about how helpful such databases are (which is debatable), but rarely are willing to take into account how such systems are going to be abused -- and they're always abused. The latest such case involves an employee at the Department of Commerce who used a Department of Homeland Security database to track an ex-girlfriend. This wasn't just a one-off thing either. He apparently used the database 163 times to check up on her. Then he threatened to have the woman deported and her family killed. So, as the government continues to push the boundaries in trying to collect more and more data on everyone, it's at least worth asking if the potential for abuses is taken into consideration and how they're dealt with (if they're dealt with at all).

The neurotransmitter dopamine is believed to influence the development and/or maintenance of alcoholism. Findings regarding the dopamine D2 receptor gene, however, have been inconsistent. New research suggests that a neighboring gene, ankyrin repeat and kinase domain containing 1, may also be involved in addictive behaviors.

Researchers think there is a way to determine whether some black holes are not actually black. Astronomers cannot say for sure whether all black holes are actually black, having never fully penetrated the obscuring outward matter surrounding such objects, but now they propose a way to find out.

We've pointed out for a long time that the DMCA is bad for innovation and needlessly inconveniences users. It seems the point is becoming so obvious that even senior executives in the movie industry are beginning to tacitly acknowledge (via Ars Technica) that the DMCA is unreasonable. At a conference on DRM last week, Scott Smyers, VP of network and systems architecture for Sony Electronics, admitted that he makes backup copies of his kids' DVDs. For those keeping score at home, not only is copying DVDs illegal under the DMCA, but Sony itself participated in a lawsuit to shut down a company making precisely the sort of DVD-backup software Smyers is presumably using to copy his kids' movies. Meanwhile, Jim Helman, the chief technology officer of MovieLabs, a research organization funded by the major studios, says that one of the most promising new devices on the horizon is a video jukebox that will let you rip your DVD collection onto a hard drive and then stream your movies to all the devices around your house. That is, unless the studio-backed DVD-CCA uses the DMCA to prohibit the creation of DVD jukeboxes. Helman and Smyers are absolutely right. If only their bosses would listen to them. They should point out to their bosses at the major studios that allowing people to create useful hardware and software products could be good for their bottom line, because it would make the movies they sell more useful to consumers.

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Physicists have found that magnetic particles suspended in water and subjected to an alternating magnetic field will form snake-shaped structures that can control the flow of the surrounding fluid. Current incarnations of the magnetic snake are a few centimeters long, but the team envisions much smaller versions as pumps to manipulate liquids on microscopic scales or precursors for next-generation magnetic recording media in future computers.