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Hugh Pickens writes:

Catherine Saint Louis reports at the NYT that according to a survey of 534 primary care physicians, a wide majority of pediatricians and family physicians acquiesce to parents who wish to delay vaccinating their children, even though the doctors feel these decisions put children at risk for measles, whooping cough and other ailments. One-third of doctors said they acquiesced “often” or “always”; another third gave in only “sometimes.” According to Dr. Paul A. Offit, such deference is in keeping with today’s doctoring style, which values patients as partners. “At some level, you’re ceding your expertise, and you want the patient to participate and make the decision,” says Offit, a pediatrician specializing in infectious diseases. “It is sad that we are willing to let children walk out of our offices vulnerable to potentially fatal infections. There’s a fatigue here, and there’s a kind of learned helplessness.”

Part of the problem is the lack of a proven strategy to guide physicians in counselling parents. “Unfortunately, we don’t have a solid evidence base in terms of how to communicate to patients about vaccines,” says Saad Omer adding that although he does not sanction the use of alternative vaccine schedules, he understands why primary care physicians keep treating these patients — just as doctors do not kick smokers out of their practices when they fail to quit. Dr. Allison Kempe, the study’s lead author and a pediatrician at Children’s Hospital Colorado, thinks the time has come to acknowledge that the idea that “vaccine education can be handled in a brief wellness visit is untenable” and says that we may need pro-vaccine parents and perhaps even celebrities to star in marketing campaigns to help “reinforce vaccination as a social norm.” "Whether the topic is autism or presidential politics," says Frank Bruni, "celebrity trumps authority and obviates erudition."

frojack writes:

The Scientist has published an opinion article for the classification and regulation of genetic modified organism (GMO) based loosely on the "What Could Possibly go Wrong" meme.

After studying many different GMO projects, the authors suggest categorizing projects and prioritizing regulations based on how the genetic modification was accomplished is more important than what the intended outcome was.

We are all familiar with the "Gene splicing" principal in GMO, as it seems to get the most press. This is where a trait from one species is spliced into another species. Called HDR: homology-directed repair, a short segment or an entire gene from some other species is introduced.

Just as common is :Gene Editing", which attempts to knock out certain pre-existing genes, and or, insert (or move) segments that also occur naturally in that species. Also known as NHEJ: non-homologous end-joining. (cutting and deleting or splicing from some other place in the organism).

Both methods can introduce a Gain of Function, or a Loss of Function into the GMO crop. Regulators, and the public fears of human / fly cross-breeds (by way of hyperbole) lead to regulations that largely miss the mark. It turns out that Gene Editing may pose the greater risk. And, most Gene Editing falls outside of regulation. Why: Because nothing foreign is added.

Continued...

hendrikboom writes:

What free software is there in the way of organizing lots of documents?

To be more precise, the ones I *need* to organize are the files on hard drives, though if I could include documents I have elsewhere (bookshelves and photocopy files) I wouldn't mind. They are text documents in a variety of file formats and languages, source code for current and obsolete systems, jpeg images, film clips, drawings, SVG files, files, object code, shared libraries, fragments of drafts of books, ragged software documentation, works in progress ...

Of course the files are already semi-organized in directories, but I haven't yet managed to find a suitable collection of directory names. Hierarchical classification isn't ideal -- there are files that fit in several categories, and there are a lot files that have to be in a particular location because of the way they are used (executables in a bin directory, for example) or the way they are updated or maintained. Taxonomists would advise setting up a controlled vocabulary of tags and attaching tags to the various files. I'd end up with a triples store or some other database describing files.

More down the page...

tonyPick writes:

Scientific American blogs are reporting that the Best Illusion of the Year Contest is now open for submissions, and the voting will be held online:

...the Contest will become an annual online event, in which anybody with an internet connection can participate! No matter where you live, you can participate as a contestant, and/or vote for the Top 3 winners yourself!

Contestants are invited to submit 1-minute videos featuring novel illusions (unpublished, or published no earlier than 2014) of all sensory modalities (visual, auditory, etc.), in mp4 format. The content of the 1-minute video presenting your illusion is solely up to you, and the only requirement is that it wows all viewers!

The main website for the competition (plugin heavy to view the illusions, obviously) also includes links to the finalists from 2005 to 2014, and associated publications providing the details behind many of the illusions.

Appalbarry writes:

Over the last few weeks I've found myself watching an interesting trio of films: The Internet's Own Boy, Citizen Four, and The Fifth Estate.

More and more I'm finding that my heroes are people that I follow on Twitter, or who are doing the kind of serious work that gives us Tor, and GnuPG, and all of the other important tools, and the people who are actually putting their necks on the line to tell us things that the overlords don't want us to know.

So Soylentils, what other good films about your heroes should I be checking out?

Hugh Pickens writes:

The Globe and Mail reports that Edward Snowden's Russian lawyer Anatoly Kucherena says the fugitive former US spy agency contractor who leaked details of the government’s mass surveillance programs was working with American and German lawyers to return home. “I won’t keep it secret that he … wants to return back home. And we are doing everything possible now to solve this issue. There is a group of U.S. lawyers, there is also a group of German lawyers and I’m dealing with it on the Russian side.” Kucherena added that Snowden is ready to return to the States, but on the condition that he is given a guarantee of a legal and impartial trial. The lawyer said Snowden had so far only received a guarantee from the US Attorney General that he will not face the death penalty. Kucherena says that Snowden is able to travel outside Russia since he has a three-year Russian residency permit, but "I suspect that as soon as he leaves Russia, he will be taken to the US embassy."

frojack writes:

ScienceMag.org reports that salt is preferentially deposited at the site of skin wounds.

The scientists wondered if the higher salt concentration near wounds might affect immune responses, so they cultured macrophages from mice, and added salt to raise the level to what they saw in skin near wounds. They then challenged the macrophages with a common infectious agents.

The effect was seen even in salt levels found in mice on low-salt diets. They then went on to compare the effect in mice fed either a high or low salt diet, and found that the higher salt mice fought infections much better.

They also caution that there may be better ways to increase salt in the skin than adding it to your diet, such as applying it to wounds directly as part of the treatment.

Hugh Pickens writes:

The NY Times reports that Hillary Rodham Clinton exclusively used a personal email account to conduct government business as secretary of state, according to State Department officials. She may have violated federal requirements that officials' correspondence be retained as part of the agency's record.

Clinton did not have a government email address during her four-year tenure at the State Department. Her aides took no actions to have her personal emails preserved on department servers at the time, as required by the Federal Records Act. "It is very difficult to conceive of a scenario — short of nuclear winter — where an agency would be justified in allowing its cabinet-level head officer to solely use a private email communications channel for the conduct of government business," said attorney Jason R. Baron. A spokesman for Clinton defended her use of the personal email account and said she has been complying with the "letter and spirit of the rules."

takyon writes:

The Mobile World Congress is showcasing brilliant innovations in mobile technology and marketing from March 2-5.

Products announced so far at MWC 2015 include: the Samsung Galaxy S6, S6 Edge, and HTC One M9 flagship smartphones; the HTC VIVE, a Valve VR headset, and the HTC Grip; Ikea electrified furniture with wireless charging; the Sony Xperia M4 Aqua And Xperia Z4 Tablet; a 200 GB microSD, USB Type-C flash drive, and SLC/TLC Hybrid eMMC SSD from SanDisk; the Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 SoC, featuring "the Zeroth cognitive computing platform", as well as Snapdragon Sense ID fingerprint scanning; Microsoft's Lumia 640 and 640 XL mid-range smartphones, and an 84-inch touchscreen called the Microsoft Surface Hub; an HP Spectre x360 ultrabook; an Archos tablet that combines microSD with internal storage; and finally, smartwatches from Huawei and LG.

Qualcomm also demonstrated Cat 11 LTE hardware. Intel gave more details about its new 14nm "Cherry Trail" Atom SoCs, which have recently been renamed using x3, x5, x7 designations to mimic the i3, i5, i7 naming scheme of Core chips. MediaTek announced the MT8173 SoC; The Register details MediaTek's moves to compete with Qualcomm. Imagination detailed its PowerVR G6020 GPU for low power devices. Audience announced the NUE N100 multisensor processor for voice and "contextual motion" recognition. Google shared details about its plans to resell wireless service and provide Internet connectivity using balloons. Broadcom announced two new Wi-Fi combo chips for mobile devices.

For the latest coverage, check these pages at Anandtech, Tom's Hardware, The Register, and Ars Technica.

Re-Initializer writes:

In work published in Nature, researchers at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) describe how postmortem brain slices can be "read" to determine how a rat was trained to behave in response to specific sounds. Press release.

To do this, the team focused on how rats translate sound cues into behavior. The researchers trained rats to associate a specific tone with a reward. Changes in the tone – like the difference between a tuba and a flute – signaled the animal to look for the reward either on the left or right side of a training box.

In previous work, the team discovered that activity in specific population of neurons was crucial for animals to perform the task. This neuronal population transmitted information from one auditory brain region (the auditory cortex) to another (the auditory striatum).

In the current work, the team measured the strength of the connections between these two populations of neurons, as animals learned the task. “We found that there was a gradient in activity across the auditory striatum that corresponded to whether the animal was trained to go left or right for their reward.” explains Zador.

Based upon this information, the team reasoned that they might be able to use post mortem brain slices to “predict” (obviously, in retrospect) how these or other rats had been trained. As Zador describes, “We were amazed that in all cases, our predictions – left or right – were correct. We had deciphered a tiny piece of the neural code with which the animal encoded these memories. In essence, we could read the minds of these rats.”

mechanicjay writes:

Hackaday news has a story on VCF East, coming up from April 17-19 in New Jersey. This is pretty much the premier East Cost display of Vintage Tech. It's rumored that there will be 5 (five) running PDP-8 computers on display this year, in addition to all sorts of Home Micros and whatnot.

There are also a host of talks and classes about different topics. The exhibit hall usually has a ton of hands on exhibits, great for the old nerd and their kids alike!

frojack writes:

BREAKING NEWS

ArsTechnica is reporting that a new / old attack vector haunts mobile phones due to a 20 year old export regulation.

The problem is caused by another encryption down-grade request that most phones honor. Web sites capable of using the weaker standards can can be tricked into downgrading the encryption protocol, and the phones will dutifully follow.

At the time of this posting, the security flaw has only been known for several hours. I recommend everyone read the ARS article, which explains it better than I can.

You will see many more stories on this in coming days. It wasn't the only vulnerability released today.

Edit: Added a link to the the National Vulnerability Database post per request. ~mrcoolbp

tonyPick writes:

phys.org has a report on the first ever photograph of light as both a particle and wave, from scientists at Ecole polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne (EFPL), one of the Swiss Federal Institutes of Technology.

Light behaves both as a particle and as a wave. Since the days of Einstein, scientists have been trying to directly observe both of these aspects of light at the same time. Now, scientists at EPFL have succeeded in capturing the first-ever snapshot of this dual behavior.

[...] When UV light hits a metal surface, it causes an emission of electrons. Albert Einstein explained this "photoelectric" effect by proposing that light – thought to only be a wave – is also a stream of particles. Even though a variety of experiments have successfully observed both the particle- and wave-like behaviors of light, they have never been able to observe both at the same time.

A research team led by Fabrizio Carbone at EPFL has now carried out an experiment with a clever twist: using electrons to image light. The researchers have captured, for the first time ever, a single snapshot of light behaving simultaneously as both a wave and a stream of particles.

also covered at Popular Science and Science Daily, using material from the original press release of Ecole polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne

gishzida writes:

A newly published study is the first to report an association between bisphenol-A (BPA), a common plasticizer used in a variety of consumer food and beverage containers, with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in children.

"It has been suspected for a lot of years that BPA is involved in autism, but there was no direct evidence," said T. Peter Stein, of RowanSOM and the study's lead author. "We've shown there is a link. The metabolism of BPA is different in some children with autism than it is in otherwise healthy children."

The research team -- which included Margaret Schluter and Robert Steer, of RowanSOM who were responsible for laboratory analysis, and child neurologist Xue Ming, of NJMS who recruited and ascertained the study populations -- examined urine specimens from 46 children with ASD and 52 healthy control children for both free BPA and total BPA concentrations. Like many chemicals, BPA becomes water soluble when it is bound to glucose in the liver -- a process called glucuronidation. Conversion to a glucuronide and then excretion of the glucuronide in the urine is a major pathway for removing toxins from the body.

Back in the day some major chemical companies were telling everyone "Better living through Chemistry" (duPont) and wanted to build everyone plastic houses (Monsanto)... now it appears they are building chemically modified humans. The part of the (evil) back story about BPA can be found in a story from 2009 at Fast Company: http://www.fastcompany.com/1139298/real-story-behind-bisphenol

Encryption-by-Default in Android 5.0 "Lollipop" Actually Optional

takyon writes:

The Register and Ars Technica report that Google has backtracked on its promise that all Android Lollipop devices would feature full-disk encryption by default, due to differences in hardware:

For example, the Qualcomm Snapdragon 805 system-on-chip in the Motorola Nexus 6 will do AES encryption and decryption of data in hardware – which should be fast and power efficient. However, the driver for that feature is not available to the Android project, so Android 5 must do the file encryption and decryption in software, which is terribly slow – forcing people to switch it off. Some manufacturers may not bother turning encryption on in the first place if there's no acceleration available for whatever reason, and Google's allowing them to do just that. Meanwhile, the Google Nexus 9 fondleslab uses an Nvidia Tegra K1 processor with a 64-bit ARMv8-compatible processor. This architecture has standardized AES encryption/decryption instructions that can be used by Android 5 without a specialized driver. That means Lollipop happily encrypts-by-default on the Nexus 9. This whole mess will make Apple fans very smug. Apple has had a separate coprocessor for accelerating encryption for years, and as a result iOS encryption is a much easier process.

Google expects that "recommended" full-disk encryption will become a requirement in future versions of Android.

Previously, the FBI and Director James B. Comey have spoken out against encrypted devices.

XPosed Framework for Android Lollipop released

stormwyrm writes:

XPosed is a framework for modules that can be used to customise the behaviour of Android devices without needing to flash a custom ROM. There is a large selection of modules available for XPosed that do all kinds of nifty things like unlock using NFC tags, change the battery icon to something more informative, or even add advanced privacy and app controls.

This has been a godsend for those who like to retain a level of control over their devices. However, the change from the original Dalvik runtime system to ART starting with Android 5.0 (Lollipop) broke the XPosed framework, and it had taken some time for the developer to make the necessary changes to get XPosed to work with the new runtime system. That time has finally come. It's still considered alpha software however and there are some reports of incompatibilities and instability but it seems to be already usable.