'iPods could make you hallucinate'Listening to an iPod could leave you with psychological problems, an expert warns.
He says exposure to music is causing more cases of musical hallucination, where a song "plays" constantly in the head.
"People find they can't sleep and can't think properly," said Dr Victor Aziz, a psychiatrist at Whitchurch hospital in Cardiff.
In May, a Bristol audiology expert warned that listening to music at high volume could cause tinnitus and inner ear damage. ... (more)
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The World's Worst Internet Laws Sneaking Through the Senate[Update: The Cybercrime Treaty was ratified by the Senatelate last night. The U.S. will now have to comply to requests for assistance from fifteen countries, and growing.]
The Convention on Cybercrime is a sweeping treaty that has been waiting in the wings of the Senate for nearly three years. Now the administration is putting pressure on the Senate to ratify it in the next two days. If it does, it would mean the U.S. would enforce not just our own, but the rest of the world's bad... (more)
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US DU Bunker Busters Arrive In IsraelThe Israeli Committeefor a Middle East Free From Atomic, Biological & Chemical Weapons PO Box 16202 Tel Aviv 61161 Israel
The Government of Israel has recently purchased from the United States bunker-busting bombs (GBU-28), for use in its war in Lebanon. These bombs contain depleted uranium - a carcinogenic substance that spreads in the form of a toxic and radioactive dust, which enters the lungs and bones and is especially harmful to babies and young children.
We... (more)
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Some convinced insects could be used to detect bombsWASHINGTON - Montana researchers' vision of honeybees swarming across a field to detect landmines in Afghanistan or roadside bombs in Iraq may get a $5 million boost after Sen. Conrad Burns, R-Mont., included the funding in a Defense Department spending bill.
The researchers believe they are on the verge of perfecting a briefcase-size system that can be carried around and deployed easily, using laser technology to track bees that have been trained to find explosives.
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Hackers Clone E-PassportsLAS VEGAS -- A German computer security consultant has shown that he can clone the electronic passports that the United States and other countries are beginning to distribute this year.
The controversial e-passports contain radio frequency ID, or RFID, chips that the U.S. State Department and others say will help thwart document forgery. But Lukas Grunwald, a security consultant with DN-Systems in Germany and an RFID expert, says the data in the chips is easy to copy.
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US begins building treaty-breaching germ war defence centreConstruction work has begun near Washington on a vast germ warfare laboratory intended to help protect the US against an attack with biological weapon, but critics say the laboratory's work will violate international law and its extreme secrecy will exacerbate a biological arms race.
The National Biodefence Analysis and Countermeasures Centre (NBACC), due to be completed in 2008, will house heavily guarded and hermetically sealed chambers in which scientists simulate potential ter... (more)
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Men Act Like Dogs to Determine DominanceA male dog will whine and beg in deference to a stronger dog, but will lower its voice into a guttural growl if it thinks it has a fighting chance.
Men unconsciously do a similar thing, scientists say.
A new study finds that the lower the pitch of a man's voice, the more physically dominant other men think he is. And men lower their voice pitch when addressing a man they believe to be less dominant than themselves, but raise it when speaking to someone they think is... (more)
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Heatwave hits vegetable suppliesSupermarket vegetable aisles may be the latest victim of the hot summer.
High temperatures mean vegetables are maturing faster than farmers can pick and package them, an agricultural body has warned.
The extreme heat has struck down crops across Europe, with economies in the east suffering in particular.
In Poland and Hungary some crops are expected to be 40% below normal yields, the Association of European Fruit and Vegetable Processing Industries wa... (more)
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Israel backed by army of cyber-soldiersWHILE Israel fights Hezbollah with tanks and aircraft, its supporters are campaigning on the internet.
Israel’s Government has thrown its weight behind efforts by supporters to counter what it believes to be negative bias and a tide of pro-Arab propaganda. The Foreign Ministry has ordered trainee diplomats to track websites and chatrooms so that networks of US and European groups with hundreds of thousands of Jewish activists can place supportive messages.
In ... (more)
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Human Eggs As Currency?LONDON, July 27, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A UK fertility clinic has been given the green light by the country’s fertility authority to allow women undergoing in-vitro fertilization to trade costs of the treatment in exchange for any surplus eggs. The eggs are to be fertilized, and the resulting embryonic babies mined for cells to be used in research.
The decision marks the first instance where human eggs are being legally sold as items of commerce.
The ... (more)
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United States cedes control of the internet - but what now?In a meeting that will go down in internet history, the United States government last night conceded that it can no longer expect to maintain its position as the ultimate authority over the internet.
Having been the internet's instigator and, since 1998, its voluntary taskmaster, the US government finally agreed to transition its control over not-for-profit internet overseeing organisation ICANN, making the organisation a more international body.
However, assistant ... (more)
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NASA Aims to Open Moon for BusinessBut how do you make money on the moon?
According to experts, there are spaceships to build, moon metals to mine, and energy resources to harness. Not to mention movies to make, low-gravity games to create, and advertising to sell.
"There's every opportunity, from the more serious side of human behavior … to the more fun side of human behavior," said Jeff Krukin, the executive director of the Space Frontier Foundation, a Nyack, New York-based space-advocacy or... (more)
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Nanodog that can sniff out explosivesWELSH scientists have developed a sensor they call a nanodog which is capable of "sniffing" out microscopic low levels of explosives.
It is hoped the technology will be used in the fight against terrorism, with airports and governments already showing an interest.
The nanodog was developed by a team from the University of Wales, Bangor's school of chemistry, led by Professor Maher Kalaji.
The team developed the biosensor, patented the technology and a... (more)
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'Synthetic Gecko' material paves the way for real-life Spider-MenKey quote: "We have demonstrated we can do multiple attachments with this material - you can stick it down once and stick it down again. Having a Spider-Man glove is a long way down the road, but in principle, you might have something like that." - Dr Jeff Sargent
Story in full: SOLDIERS and spies of the future could be given special "Spider-Man" suits, enabling them to climb up sheer surfaces and even stick to the ceiling, according to a leading British engineering firm.
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China to test its 'artificial sun'The first plasma discharge from China's experimental advanced superconducting research center -- the so-called "artificial sun" -- is set to occur next month.
The discharge, expected about Aug. 15, will be conducted at Science Island in Hefei, in east China's Anhui Province, the Peoples Daily reported Monday.
Scientists told the newspaper a successful test will mean the world's first nuclear fusion device of its kind will be ready to go into actual operation, the ... (more)
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AI set to exceed human brain power(CNN) -- Mention Artificial Intelligence and most people are immediately transported into a distant future inspired by popular science fiction.
Humankind either co-exists in blissful peace with subservient robots and conscious computers or faces a battle for survival against ultra-smart psychotic machines set on its destruction.
Yet Artificial Intelligence (AI) has already been with us for half a century. The phrase was first coined by Professor John McCarthy for a ... (more)
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Designer ice cream anyone?A new designer ice cream, made possible by genetic modification, threatens to set off a "time bomb" in the health of British children, scientists are warning.
The scientists, from Britain and Canada, have alerted an official committee which this month will rule on the safety of the ice cream, being sold increasingly worldwide by the food giant Unilever.
It contains an artificial protein copied, through a GM process, from a fish living in the frigid waters of the bot... (more)
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Meacher: GM will ruin organic farmsMichael Meacher, the former Labour environment minister, said last night that the Government's "arrogant" decision to pave the way for genetically modified food to be produced commercially in Britain would lead to organic farms being wiped out "within a few years".
Mr Meacher said that GM crops would "contaminate" organic farms and make it impossible for the fast-growing organic food industry to survive.
Ian Pearson, the Environment Minister, said last week that org... (more)
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India "accidentally" cuts access to blogsThe Indian government is now saying it simply meant to block a small number of inflammatory blog postings, but that overeager ISPs went too far. ABC News reports this morning that in "scrambling" to comply with an order to block 17 anti-Muslim web sites, "some of India's Internet service providers have simply blocked users from looking at entire domains such as blogspot.com - and the thousands of blogs, or online web journals, hosted there."
When it comes to censorship, bloggers a... (more)
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US risks 'behaving like China' in internet betting blitzInternet experts rounded on United States legislators and law enforcers in their attempts to crack down on internet gambling, saying at best they faced an uphill struggle and at worst they were behaving like the thought police.
The Department of Justice won a major coup yesterday by forcing BetonSports to close the website to American users, following the dramatic arrest of the company's British chief executive and charges levelled at 10 other former employees of the company.
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Government orders 12 new NimrodsThe Government today signed a contract worth about £3 billion with UK aerospace company BAE Systems for 12 new Nimrod maritime reconnaissance aircraft.
The contract, delayed since the early part of this decade, was announced at the Farnborough Air Show by Defence Secretary Des Browne.
The deal involves the next generation of Nimrod, the MRA4 which will succeed the in-service Nimrod MR2.
After Mr Browne announced the deal, the MRA4 made its first... (more)
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Robots: The Future is HereOn June 5, 2006, the Heritage Foundation held an event titled "Robots: the Future is Here." The discussion, part of the 2006 Competitive Technology for National Security Policy series, brought together representatives from industry, academia, and government to discuss the current state, and future direction, of robotics technology for national security.
Helen Greiner, the chairman and founder of iRobot, described robots as a disruptive technology, which has the possibility to chan... (more)
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