Wanted in Israel: Top geeks to aid state securityJERUSALEM -- Israel's shadowy security service is looking for a few good geeks.
Normally shrouded in secrecy, the Shin Bet launched its first public recruitment drive Tuesday, unveiling a Web site and buying online ads in Israel and abroad in a bid to attract top computer programmers to its cutting-edge tech division.
Though widely associated with undercover espionage and tough interrogation tactics, the security service, whose main task is to prevent attacks by Pal... (more)
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Are Physicists Smart? Disciplined Professionals serve PowerIt is generally assumed that physicists are smart people. Even some chemists look up to physicists. Physics is reputed to be a difficult subject, the stuff of nightmares in high school. The greatest scientists that come to mind are often the physicists Einstein and Newton. The inventors of the atomic bomb are held in awe, as are the cosmologists that gave us black holes and worm holes into parallel universes. The proverbial rocket scientists are physicists. It is generally assumed that anyone wh... (more)
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Untested GM rice found in food, says GreenpeaceTraces of genetically modified rice from China have been found in products on sale in the UK, green groups claimed today.
Three packets of noodles bought from two stores tested positive for genetically modified content, Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace said.
The campaign groups warn that experimental GM rice has not been cleared for human consumption and could spark allergic reactions.
Researchers found traces of insect-resistant rice in two brands... (more)
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Iran claims AIDS research breakthroughTEHRAN, Sept. 6 (UPI) -- Iran's Ministry of Health claimed to have made a medical breakthrough with a formula to control symptoms of AIDS.
The state-controlled IRNA news agency quoted an unidentified ministry employee as saying, "The research studies to find out a formula to cure AIDS was initiated during the tenure of two former health ministers and have led to useful results."
Former Minister of Health and Medical Education Dr. Mohammad Farhadi said the chemical a... (more)
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State Supreme Court To Hear Internet Libel CaseThe California Supreme Court is set to hear arguments in San Francisco Tuesday on whether someone who posts a defamatory comment by another person on the Internet can be sued for libel.
Two civil liberties groups say the court’s eventual ruling, due in three months, could have far-reaching implications for free speech on the Internet.
While the case before the court concerns individuals—a Canadian doctor seeking to sue a women’s health activist for... (more) "the court’s ruling could also determine whether Internet service providers can be held liable when they knowingly allow defamatory remarks to be posted" |
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Net Neutrality Wins More SenatorsThe Net Neutrality movement is gaining support among U.S. senators. At the close of the August recess, the SaveTheInternet.com coalition added four previously uncommitted legislators to the cause.
According to the website, that brings the tally to 26 senators in favor of the Snowe-Dorgan amendment to Senator Ted Stevens' sweeping telecom bill. There is ground left to make up, though, with half the Senate still uncertain.
The split is almost entirely according to par... (more)
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What Scientists Aren’t Telling You About Stem Cell TechnologyIt’s said that Bible believers set back scientific progress when they asserted a few centuries back that the world is flat. Actually the Bible describes a circular Earth and it was the scientific community that mistakenly asserted the world is flat. [Book of Isaiah 40:22]
With that said, we now hyperspace in time to the ethical and scientific issues surrounding stem cell technology. The claim is that Christians are needlessly confining paralytics to wheelchairs and the b... (more)
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Robots that will change your lifeThe robots are on the move — leaping, scrambling, rolling, flying, climbing. They are figuring out how to get here on their own. They come to help us, protect us, amuse us — and some even do floors.
Since Czech playwright Karel Capek popularized the term ("robota" means "forced labor" in Czech) in 1921, we have imagined what robots could do. But reality fell short of our plans: Honda Motor trotted out its Asimo in 2000, but for now it's been relegated to temping as a r... (more)
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UK examines civilian use of UAVsThe UK is examing the possible deployment of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) within 10 years across Britain's airspace for a range of civilian tasks including traffic control and environmental monitoring, The Guardian reports.
UAVs cannot currently operate in UK skies, except in "restricted conditions". Accordingly, the government has pumped £32m into Astraea - "a national programme that focuses on the technologies, systems, facilities and procedures that will allow UAVs to ... (more)
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Half a billion RFID tags shipped in 2005More than 565 million high-frequency RFID integrated circuits were shipped in 2005, according to the latest findings of ABI Research's RFID Tag IC Market Sizing Database.
Sara Shah, RFID industry analyst at ABI Research, said: "In the year from the first quarter of 2005 to the first quarter of 2006, shipments of HF ISO14443 tag integrated circuits increased 104 per cent, the highest growth rate of any segment we measured.
"This growth can be attributed to an increas... (more)
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Supposed New Embryonic Stem Cell Research Technique Killed All Embryos A supposedly new method of obtaining embryonic stem cells for research without destroying any human embryos appeared to be untrue. Upon further examination of the research paper making the claims, it appears all of the 16 human embryos Advanced Cell Technology used to come up with the process died during the procedure.
The biotech firm made amazing claims that produced a media sensation around the world when it said it had developed a morally ethical method of obtaining th... (more)
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These men think they're about to change the worldHeard the one about the two Irishmen who say they can produce limitless amounts of clean, free energy? Plenty of scientists have - but few are taking them seriously. Steve Boggan investigates
Do you remember that awful feeling as a child on Christmas Day when Santa left you the toy you wanted . . . without any batteries? This feeling comes to me as I meet Sean McCarthy and Richard Walshe, two men making the claim that they are about to change the world - for ever.
T... (more)
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CRTC asked to block access to U.S. websitesOne of two U.S.-based hate websites was taken offline Wednesday as an Ottawa lawyer and a Jewish lobby group asked Canada's telecommunications regulator to take the unprecedented step of blocking access to the sites from north of the border.
The website, hosted by Google's weblog service Blogger, was one of two that human rights lawyer Richard Warman has asked the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission to review.
In an application to the CRTC, W... (more) First they come for the Neo-nazi's... |
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Cat parasite affects everything we feel and doAugust 11, 2006 - Kevin Lafferty is a smart, cautious, thoughtful scientist who doesn't hate cats, but he has put forth a provocative theory that suggests that a clever cat parasite may alter human cultures on a massive scale.
His phone hasn't stopped ringing since he published one of the strangest research papers to come out of the mill in quite awhile.
The parasite, Toxoplasma gondii, has been transmitted indirectly from cats to roughly half the people on the plan... (more)
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Lebanon's month-old oil slick sinks down to blanket Mediterranean marine lifeBEIRUT - Videotape released Tuesday showed dead fish bobbing along the Mediterranean seabed off the Lebanese coast, as a sunken oil slick slid ominously toward a lone red sea urchin, rooted in the sand, its tentacles waving in the current.
A scuba diver's video made public by Greenpeace graphically detailed some of the environmental destruction a month after an oil spill unleashed by Israeli bombardment began sinking - blanketing marine life with a tar-like sludge in what experts ... (more)
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Ozone hole has stabilised, say scientistsEfforts to stop the hole in the ozone layer over the Antarctic from growing have worked, leading US scientists said today.
Two decades after research began, the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) said the level of ozone-depleting gases was decreasing and it seemed the hole over the Antarctic had been stabilised.
David Hofmann, director of NOAA's global monitoring division, said: "We can say the patient isn't getting any sicker because the ozon... (more)
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Congress Poised to Unravel the Internet Lured by huge checks handed out by the country's top lobbyists, members of Congress could soon strike a blow against Internet freedom as they seek to resolve the hot-button controversy over preserving "network neutrality." The telecommunications reform bill now moving through Congress threatens to be a major setback for those who hope that digital media can foster a more democratic society. The bill not only precludes net neutrality ... (more)
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Scientists flock to test 'free energy' discoveryA man who claims to have developed a free energy technology which could power everything from mobile phones to cars has received more than 400 applications from scientists to test it.
Sean McCarthy says that no one was more sceptical than he when Steorn, his small hi-tech firm in Dublin, hit upon a way of generating clean, free and constant energy from the interaction of magnetic fields. 'It wasn't so much a Eureka moment as a get-back-in-there-and-check-your-instruments moment, a... (more)
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Engineered Grass Found Growing in WildPORTLAND, Ore. Aug 16, 2006 (AP)— Grass that was genetically engineered for golf courses is growing in the wild, posing one of the first threats of agricultural biotechnology escaping from the farm in the United States, a new study says.
Creeping bentgrass was engineered to resist the popular herbicide Roundup to allow more efficient weed control on golf courses. But the modified grass could spread that resistance to the wild, becoming a nuisance itself, scientists say.
... (more)
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U.S. Gov't Maintains Control of NetThe Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) said Tuesday that it had reached a new agreement with the U.S. Department of Commerce that would technically keep the group under American control through 2011.
Although the initial agreement is for one year, the Commerce Department has the option to extend the agreement by an additional year over the next four years. The agreement would take effect on October 1, the day after the current contract expires. The new agr... (more)
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