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walktalker · 31-08-01, 01:10 PM

She Makes Genes Cool for School
Watch out, university students: If you're not careful, Molly Fitzgerald-Hayes will teach you about the human genome when you're not paying attention. Fitzgerald-Hayes, a professor of biochemistry and molecular biology at the University of Massachusetts is testing out a class called "You and Your Genome" on a group of students this fall. She is working with the university to make a similar class available this spring to undergraduate non-science majors as part of their general education requirement. "The idea is to try to make it as friendly and non-threatening as possible, and get people sort of hooked on the idea that DNA is really cool and it's not scary," she said. "Then when they're not looking you slip some molecules in."
http://www.wired.com/news/school/0,1383,45801,00.html

Heart Patient Achieves Milestone
When Robert Tools became the world's first recipient of a self-contained artificial heart, the company that makes the device set a 60-day survival goal and cautioned that the patient might not make it that far. Tools reached that mark Thursday and has given his medical team at Jewish Hospital no reason to believe that he won't continue to improve. The team shared their stories about the former telephone company worker this week, describing him as a gregarious patient who wants to help others with terminal heart failure. His nurses say Tools does his exercises and eats properly, but sometimes isn't thrilled to see them. They say he is well-informed and aware of his surroundings. He likes to gently joke and tease.
http://www.wired.com/news/medtech/0,1286,46470,00.html

Cracker Tries Law's Right Side
Dennis Moran, an 18-year-old high school dropout, earned international notoriety and a nine-month jail sentence last year for his computer-hacking exploits. He was accused by the FBI of hacking into a computer security firm's website and the computer systems of four U.S. military bases. He also hacked into an anti-drug site connected to the Los Angeles Police Department, adding a cartoon of Donald Duck with a hypodermic needle in his arm. Now Moran, who went by the online-name Coolio, runs a computer services company that a mentor helped him set up while in jail. He is chauffeured to jobs on work-release during the day and returned to jail each night. He completes his sentence on Tuesday.
http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,46472,00.html

Did This Musician 'Cell' Out?
Imagine attending a symphony in which everyone's cell phone -– 200 phones, to be exact –- rings at once. Sounds dreadful, right? To American composer Golan Levin, the ringing cell phone is music to his ears, and he's dedicating an entire concert to the mobile phone. Levin, currently an artist-in-residence at the Ars Electronica Center in Linz, Austria, is actually composing music in which all 200 instruments are the audience's ringing cell phones. Even if his "Dialtones Telesymphony" doesn't alter most classical musicians' view that cell phones should be shut off before a concert, Levin, 29, from New York City, is confident the concert will resonate well with the audience and eliminate some public pessimism surrounding the mobile phone.
http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,46273,00.html

Security danger found in web postings
A new way to highjack internet sites to attack individual web users, with just a single line of code, has been discovered by a US researcher. The trick uses Cross Site Scripting (CSS), a technique identified by security experts in 1997. This exploits the ability of internet sites and web applications to contain embedded scripts and links to other web pages in order to execute dangerous code. The new trick was discovered by Jeremiah Grossman, a consultant for US company Whitehat Security. He found that just one line of code was enough to fool many web sites into running rogue code. Among these sites was Microsoft's popular web email service Hotmail, as well as other undisclosed commercial web sites.
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99991221

Astronaut warns of Earth impact
The commander of the International Space Station (ISS) has expressed his concern to the BBC at the impact mankind is having on the Earth's environment. Commander Frank Culbertson - who has just begun a four-month tour on the ISS - told the Radio 4 Today programme he and fellow astronauts had witnessed signs of climatic change. "We see storms, we see droughts, we saw a dust storm a couple of days ago, in Turkey I think it was, and we have seen hurricanes," he said. "At night you see cities well lit up in populated parts of the world."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci...00/1518232.stm

Millionaires take aim at Mars

Several dot-com millionaires have formed a foundation to bankroll space shots aimed at putting humans on Mars, a founding member tells MSNBC.com. Internet entrepreneur Elon Musk says the first mission should get off the ground as early as 2003. That mission could involve putting mice in Earth orbit to test an artificial-gravity system. The experiment in artificial gravity is also being pursued by the Mars Society, a nonprofit advocacy group that has received contributions from Musk for other projects in the past. The society’s steering committee gave its go-ahead for the mission last weekend, Mars Society President Robert Zubrin told MSNBC.com on Wednesday.
http://www.msnbc.com/news/621237.asp

Ultrafast wireless technology set to lift off
Later this year, the Federal Communications Commission will decide whether to give the green light to so-called ultra-wideband transmission. If approved, UWB could have a dramatic impact on short-range wireless communications for the enterprise. UWB is almost two decades old, but is used mainly in limited radar or position-location devices. Only recently has UWB been applied to business communications. It's a different type of transmission that will lead, proponents say, to low-power, high-bandwidth and relatively simple radios for local- and personal-area network interface cards and access points. At higher power levels in the future, UWB systems could span several miles or more.
http://www.cnn.com/2001/TECH/ptech/0...idg/index.html

Law enforcers report spike in cybercrime
Cybercrime cases are rising in high-tech regions, say U.S. law-enforcement officials. Prosecutors and investigators are seeing more cases related to computer hacking, theft of trade secrets and hardware, and other tech crimes. In Silicon Valley, the Santa Clara District Attorney's Office is tackling almost 30 tech-related cases this year — twice as many as last year, investigator John McMullen says. In Boston, federal prosecutor John Grossman's high-tech unit is juggling 10 cybercrime cases — "a marked increase" from last year. In Austin, Texas, incidents of tech crime have "skyrocketed," says Detective Paul Brick of the Austin Police Department. Its cases are up 30%, to 84, for the first 8 months of this year from last year.
http://www.usatoday.com/life/cyber/t...crime-wave.htm

Argentina ISP Shoots for Stars
When the news that an American multimillionaire was going to travel to outer space made headlines, many Argentineans overwhelmingly said they wished they could go on such an adventure. On Friday, one Argentinean will be selected to go on such a journey as the prize in a contest sponsored by Sion, an ISP based in Buenos Aires. The "Sion takes you to the stratosphere" contest is also an example of the bold measures that Internet companies are taking here despite a crumbling economy. To have a chance of winning the draw, participants have to subscribe to the service or ask for a free 24-hour demo. The winner -- who has to be an inhabitant of Buenos Aires or the greater Buenos Aires area, as those are the only areas covered by the company -- will fly to Russia to board a Mig-25 that will take this lucky individual 25,000 meters above sea level.
http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,46450,00.html

Regulating Minors' Access to the Internet Can Backfire
Headed for the Supreme Court in March 2002, ACLU lawyer Ann Beeson and her colleagues will argue the unconstitutionality of the Child Internet Protection Act (CHIPA), a law passed by Congress last year stipulating that libraries and schools will lose their federal funds if they don't install blocking software like NetNanny or CyberPatrol. While blocking programs are supposed to serve as filters against child pornography and content that might be harmful to minors, in reality this software tends to block sites in a way ACLU representative Emily Whitfield describes as "capricious."
http://www.sfgate.com/technology/bios/

GM's Ultrahybrid Vehicles
When General Motors' electric buses hit New York City's streets for a test run a couple of years ago, the company found that the new hybrid vehicles—propelled by a diesel generator and electric motors—burned less than half the fuel of a conventional diesel and created 90 percent less pollution. One hitch: the roughly 5,000 dollars' worth of batteries that mediated the flow of electricity between the generator and motor burned out after only a year. Now, GM plans to keep its hybrid buses rolling by replacing the batteries with a high-tech cousin of the capacitors that regulate power in electronic devices. The same technology may soon help make hybrid cars more efficient and affordable.
http://www.techreview.com/magazine/s...nnovation4.asp

More news later on

31-08-01, 01:10 PM	#2
walktalker The local newspaper man Join Date: Aug 2000 Location: Montreal Posts: 2,036	She Makes Genes Cool for School Watch out, university students: If you're not careful, Molly Fitzgerald-Hayes will teach you about the human genome when you're not paying attention. Fitzgerald-Hayes, a professor of biochemistry and molecular biology at the University of Massachusetts is testing out a class called "You and Your Genome" on a group of students this fall. She is working with the university to make a similar class available this spring to undergraduate non-science majors as part of their general education requirement. "The idea is to try to make it as friendly and non-threatening as possible, and get people sort of hooked on the idea that DNA is really cool and it's not scary," she said. "Then when they're not looking you slip some molecules in." http://www.wired.com/news/school/0,1383,45801,00.html Heart Patient Achieves Milestone When Robert Tools became the world's first recipient of a self-contained artificial heart, the company that makes the device set a 60-day survival goal and cautioned that the patient might not make it that far. Tools reached that mark Thursday and has given his medical team at Jewish Hospital no reason to believe that he won't continue to improve. The team shared their stories about the former telephone company worker this week, describing him as a gregarious patient who wants to help others with terminal heart failure. His nurses say Tools does his exercises and eats properly, but sometimes isn't thrilled to see them. They say he is well-informed and aware of his surroundings. He likes to gently joke and tease. http://www.wired.com/news/medtech/0,1286,46470,00.html Cracker Tries Law's Right Side Dennis Moran, an 18-year-old high school dropout, earned international notoriety and a nine-month jail sentence last year for his computer-hacking exploits. He was accused by the FBI of hacking into a computer security firm's website and the computer systems of four U.S. military bases. He also hacked into an anti-drug site connected to the Los Angeles Police Department, adding a cartoon of Donald Duck with a hypodermic needle in his arm. Now Moran, who went by the online-name Coolio, runs a computer services company that a mentor helped him set up while in jail. He is chauffeured to jobs on work-release during the day and returned to jail each night. He completes his sentence on Tuesday. http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,46472,00.html Did This Musician 'Cell' Out? Imagine attending a symphony in which everyone's cell phone -– 200 phones, to be exact –- rings at once. Sounds dreadful, right? To American composer Golan Levin, the ringing cell phone is music to his ears, and he's dedicating an entire concert to the mobile phone. Levin, currently an artist-in-residence at the Ars Electronica Center in Linz, Austria, is actually composing music in which all 200 instruments are the audience's ringing cell phones. Even if his "Dialtones Telesymphony" doesn't alter most classical musicians' view that cell phones should be shut off before a concert, Levin, 29, from New York City, is confident the concert will resonate well with the audience and eliminate some public pessimism surrounding the mobile phone. http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,46273,00.html Security danger found in web postings A new way to highjack internet sites to attack individual web users, with just a single line of code, has been discovered by a US researcher. The trick uses Cross Site Scripting (CSS), a technique identified by security experts in 1997. This exploits the ability of internet sites and web applications to contain embedded scripts and links to other web pages in order to execute dangerous code. The new trick was discovered by Jeremiah Grossman, a consultant for US company Whitehat Security. He found that just one line of code was enough to fool many web sites into running rogue code. Among these sites was Microsoft's popular web email service Hotmail, as well as other undisclosed commercial web sites. http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99991221 Astronaut warns of Earth impact The commander of the International Space Station (ISS) has expressed his concern to the BBC at the impact mankind is having on the Earth's environment. Commander Frank Culbertson - who has just begun a four-month tour on the ISS - told the Radio 4 Today programme he and fellow astronauts had witnessed signs of climatic change. "We see storms, we see droughts, we saw a dust storm a couple of days ago, in Turkey I think it was, and we have seen hurricanes," he said. "At night you see cities well lit up in populated parts of the world." http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci...00/1518232.stm Millionaires take aim at Mars Several dot-com millionaires have formed a foundation to bankroll space shots aimed at putting humans on Mars, a founding member tells MSNBC.com. Internet entrepreneur Elon Musk says the first mission should get off the ground as early as 2003. That mission could involve putting mice in Earth orbit to test an artificial-gravity system. The experiment in artificial gravity is also being pursued by the Mars Society, a nonprofit advocacy group that has received contributions from Musk for other projects in the past. The society’s steering committee gave its go-ahead for the mission last weekend, Mars Society President Robert Zubrin told MSNBC.com on Wednesday. http://www.msnbc.com/news/621237.asp Ultrafast wireless technology set to lift off Later this year, the Federal Communications Commission will decide whether to give the green light to so-called ultra-wideband transmission. If approved, UWB could have a dramatic impact on short-range wireless communications for the enterprise. UWB is almost two decades old, but is used mainly in limited radar or position-location devices. Only recently has UWB been applied to business communications. It's a different type of transmission that will lead, proponents say, to low-power, high-bandwidth and relatively simple radios for local- and personal-area network interface cards and access points. At higher power levels in the future, UWB systems could span several miles or more. http://www.cnn.com/2001/TECH/ptech/0...idg/index.html Law enforcers report spike in cybercrime Cybercrime cases are rising in high-tech regions, say U.S. law-enforcement officials. Prosecutors and investigators are seeing more cases related to computer hacking, theft of trade secrets and hardware, and other tech crimes. In Silicon Valley, the Santa Clara District Attorney's Office is tackling almost 30 tech-related cases this year — twice as many as last year, investigator John McMullen says. In Boston, federal prosecutor John Grossman's high-tech unit is juggling 10 cybercrime cases — "a marked increase" from last year. In Austin, Texas, incidents of tech crime have "skyrocketed," says Detective Paul Brick of the Austin Police Department. Its cases are up 30%, to 84, for the first 8 months of this year from last year. http://www.usatoday.com/life/cyber/t...crime-wave.htm Argentina ISP Shoots for Stars When the news that an American multimillionaire was going to travel to outer space made headlines, many Argentineans overwhelmingly said they wished they could go on such an adventure. On Friday, one Argentinean will be selected to go on such a journey as the prize in a contest sponsored by Sion, an ISP based in Buenos Aires. The "Sion takes you to the stratosphere" contest is also an example of the bold measures that Internet companies are taking here despite a crumbling economy. To have a chance of winning the draw, participants have to subscribe to the service or ask for a free 24-hour demo. The winner -- who has to be an inhabitant of Buenos Aires or the greater Buenos Aires area, as those are the only areas covered by the company -- will fly to Russia to board a Mig-25 that will take this lucky individual 25,000 meters above sea level. http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,46450,00.html Regulating Minors' Access to the Internet Can Backfire Headed for the Supreme Court in March 2002, ACLU lawyer Ann Beeson and her colleagues will argue the unconstitutionality of the Child Internet Protection Act (CHIPA), a law passed by Congress last year stipulating that libraries and schools will lose their federal funds if they don't install blocking software like NetNanny or CyberPatrol. While blocking programs are supposed to serve as filters against child pornography and content that might be harmful to minors, in reality this software tends to block sites in a way ACLU representative Emily Whitfield describes as "capricious." http://www.sfgate.com/technology/bios/ GM's Ultrahybrid Vehicles When General Motors' electric buses hit New York City's streets for a test run a couple of years ago, the company found that the new hybrid vehicles—propelled by a diesel generator and electric motors—burned less than half the fuel of a conventional diesel and created 90 percent less pollution. One hitch: the roughly 5,000 dollars' worth of batteries that mediated the flow of electricity between the generator and motor burned out after only a year. Now, GM plans to keep its hybrid buses rolling by replacing the batteries with a high-tech cousin of the capacitors that regulate power in electronic devices. The same technology may soon help make hybrid cars more efficient and affordable. http://www.techreview.com/magazine/s...nnovation4.asp More news later on __________________ This post was sponsored by Netcoco, who wants cookies, cookies, cookies and, you guessed it, more cookies