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martyb writes:

According to researchers, WPA2 wireless security can now be cracked. The abstract can be found here.

Wireless security standards have had an uneasy time of it since their inception, WEP (Wired Equivalent Privacy) was the original recommendation for wireless security. Within 2 years' time, cracks were found in the protocol and it is now deprecated. Next came recommendations to use WPA (Wi-Fi Protected Access), but it, too, was later deprecated.

The most recent wireless security recommendation, WPA2, has now met a similar fate.

As part of their purported security protocols routers using WPA2 must reconnect and re-authenticate devices periodically and share a new key each time. The team points out that the de-authentication step essentially leaves a backdoor unlocked albeit temporarily. Temporarily is long enough for a fast-wireless scanner and a determined intruder. They also point out that while restricting network access to specific devices with a given identifier, e.g. their media access control address (MAC address), these can be spoofed.

There are thus various entry points for the WPA2 protocol, which the team details in their paper. In the meantime, users should continue to use the strongest encryption protocol available with the most complex password and to limit access to known devices via MAC address.

Other recommendations include using a tunneling protocol such as IPSec or SSH within a WPA2 connection and/or to replace wireless connections with a wired one. What impact does this revelation have on your communications infrastructure?

janrinok writes:

Ars Technica has a story about the US Navy's planned Littoral Combat Ship (LCS).

From the article:

The Navy's littoral combat ship (LCS) was supposed to be the ship of the future, designed to be easily converted from one role to another with a relatively quick swap-out of "mission modules". But what the Navy got instead was a range of headaches and a ship with significantly less flexibility and capability than the ships the LCS was replacing. Now, as National Defense reports, the Department of Defense has cut the number of ships to be built nearly in half, and it has put future purchases on hold while it considers its options.

But there could still be good news for the defense contractors building the LCS: the options include a beefed-up version of the ship that could raise its cost further and increase the profits of Lockheed Martin and Austal USA in the process. Considering the fact that these ships have already had significant problems (including "aggressive corrosion" of one design's hull because it didn't include cathodic protection), yet another design change could cost the US billions more for a class of ships that has never lived up to its concept.

Stu Slade, warship analyst for Forecast International, told National Defense, "This isn't a done deal. It's certainly a setback for the LCS program viewed in isolation, but it's one that could yet be reversed" because the cuts won't hit until 2016 when the White House gets a new occupant.

lhsi writes:

An investigation into whether selection bias is a reason that religious attendance and depression are related has been conducted and found that "elevated depressive symptoms do not cause religiously affiliated individuals to subsequently decrease attendance at religious services."

Attenders who developed elevated symptoms were less likely to subsequently decrease their attendance (relative risk ratio: 0.55, 95% CI [0.38-0.79]) relative to baseline as compared to those without elevated symptoms. This inverse association remained significant after controlling for health and demographic covariates, and when using multiply imputed data to account for attrition. Non-attenders were unlikely to start attending after elevated depressive symptoms. This study provides counter evidence against previous findings that church attenders are a self-selected healthier group.

janrinok writes:

A report from ScienceDaily indicates that researchers from the University of Auckland have determined that crows understand water displacement at the level of a small child, showing causal understanding of a 5- to 7-year-old. From the report:

Understanding causal relationships between actions is a key feature of human cognition. However, the extent to which non-human animals are capable of understanding causal relationships is not well understood. Scientists used the Aesop's fable riddle in which subjects drop stones into water to raise the water level and obtain an out-of-reach reward to assess New Caledonian crows' causal understanding of water displacement. These crows are known for their intelligence and innovation, as they are the only non-primate species able to make tools, such as prodding sticks and hooks. Six wild crows were tested after a brief training period for six experiments, during which the authors noted rapid learning (although not all the crows completed every experiment). The authors note that these tasks did not test insightful problem solving, but were directed at the birds' understanding of volume displacement.

dx3bydt3 writes:

Researchers at the Fischell Department of Bioengineering, University of Maryland have developed a technique for airbrushing biodegradable PLGA nanofiber mat onto tissue, for use as "a surgical sealant, hemostatic, and buttress for tissue repair." The technique utilizes compressed CO2 and a common commercial airbrush. Nanofiber mats are typically deposited using electrospinning, a slow process involving high voltages and expensive equipment. These characteristics make electrospinning unsuitable for in situ deposition on living tissue. This new technique using simple equipment is more practical for adoption as a surgical aid.

lhsi writes:

Late Pleistocene mammoths from the North Sea had abnormal cervical vertebral numbers while their numbers were declining before extinction, which researchers attributed to inbreeding and adverse conditions.

The incidence of abnormal cervical vertebral numbers in mammoths appears to be much higher than in other mammalian species, apart from exceptional sloths, manatees and dugongs and indicates a vulnerable condition. We argue that the increased incidence of cervical ribs in mammoths is probably caused by inbreeding and adverse conditions that impact early pregnancies in declining populations close to extinction in the Late Pleistocene.

calmond writes:

A story carried by the UK's Dail Mail discusses how scientists from New York University Langone Medical Centre have successfully created a synthetic yeast chromosome. While the research is in its early stages, it could lead to artificial strains of yeast being used in medicine, vaccines and even biofuels.

Chromosomes are tiny packages of DNA that contain the genes in which the 'book of life' is written. Previously, scientists have built artificial versions of bacterial chromosomes, as well as viral DNA, but this is the first time the chromosome of a eukaryote - a higher organism whose cells contain nuclei, unlike bacteria - has been created. From the story:

The seven-year-long project involved piecing together some 273,871 DNA components. The scientists also tweaked nature's design by removing repeated DNA sections thought to be unnecessary to reproduction and growth.

Regions of 'junk' DNA that appeared to perform no function were taken out, as well as 'jumping gene' segments known to move around randomly and introduce mutations. "When you change the genome you're gambling," said Dr Boeke. One wrong change can kill the cell. 'We have made over 50,000 changes to the DNA code in the chromosome and our yeast still alive. That is remarkable. It shows that our synthetic chromosome is hardy, and it endows the yeast with new properties.'

Sixty undergraduate students were recruited to tie together short snippets of the synthetic DNA into stretches 750 to 1,000 units long.

egp writes:

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that SAP and Freddie Mac are examples of companies that are actively seeking to increase the number of autistic employees. They tend to be better at concentrating on detailed work, such as a QA position.

What experiences have you had working with (or being) such individuals?

lhsi writes:

Some recent research has suggested that there is a link between certain foods such as chocolate and obtaining a Nobel prize. New research found dedicating a high proportion of GDP to research and a high number of scientific papers published were more accurate predictors.

From the article:

Several recent studies have described a strong correlation between nutritional or economic data and the number of Nobel awards obtained across a large range of countries. This sheds new light on the intriguing question of the key predictors of Nobel awards chances. However, all these studies have been focused on a single predictor and were only based on simple correlation and/or linear model analysis. The main aim of the present study was thus to clarify this debate by simultaneously exploring the influence of food consumption (cacao, milk, and wine), economic variables (gross domestic product) and scientific activity (number of publications and research expenditure) on Nobel awards. An innovative statistical analysis, hierarchical partitioning, has been used because it enables us to reduce collinearity problems by determining and comparing the independent contribution of each factor. Our results clearly indicate that a country's number of Nobel awards can be mainly predicted by its scientific achievements such as number of publications and research expenditure. Conversely, dietary habits and the global economy variable are only minor predictors; this finding contradicts the conclusions of previous studies. Dedicating a large proportion of the GDP to research and to the publication of a high number of scientific papers would thus create fertile ground for obtaining Nobel awards.

janrinok writes

AlphaGalileo has published a story which outlines how data mining could be a life saver during disasters.

Computer technology that can mine data from social media during times of natural or other disaster could provide invaluable insights for rescue workers and decision makers, according to an international team writing in the International Journal of Emergency Management.

Adam Zagorecki of the Centre for Simulation and Analytics, at Cranfield University, Shrivenham, UK and David Johnson of Missouri State University, Springfield, USA and Jozef Ristvej of the University of Zilina, Zilina, Slovakia, explain that when disaster strikes the situation can change rapidly. Whether that is during flooding, landslide, earthquake or terrorist attack, understanding the complexities of the situation can mean the difference between saving human and animal lives, reducing environmental impact and preventing major economic loss.

The team points out that advances in information technology have had a profound impact on disaster management. First, these advances make unprecedented volumes of data available to decision makers. This, however, brings with it the problem of managing and using that data. The team has surveyed the state of the art in data mining and machine learning in this context. They have found that whereas earlier applications were focused on specific problems, such as modeling the dispersion by wind of plumes whether from a chemical plant leak, fire or nuclear incident and monitoring rescue robots, there are much broader applications, such as constructing situational awareness and real-time threat assessment.

Data mining during a disaster can pull in information from unstructured data from news reports, incident activity reports, and announcements, as well as structured textual data from emergency services, situational reports and damage assessment forms. In addition, it can utilize remote sensing data, as well as more frequently now, mobile phone images and video, and satellite and aerial images.

janrinok writes:

Elsevier have published a report based on research work carried out jointly by British and German universities. The report claims:

A future computer might be a lot slimier than the solid silicon devices we have today. In a study published in the journal Materials Today, European researchers reveal details of logic units built using living slime molds, which might act as the building blocks for computing devices and sensors.

Andrew Adamatzky (University of the West of England, Bristol, UK) and Theresa Schubert (Bauhaus-University Weimar, Germany) have constructed logical circuits that exploit networks of interconnected slime mold tubes to process information. One is more likely to find the slime mold Physarum polycephalum living somewhere dark and damp rather than in a computer science lab. In its "plasmodium" or vegetative state, the organism spans its environment with a network of tubes that absorb nutrients. The tubes also allow the organism to respond to light and changing environmental conditions that trigger the release of reproductive spores.

In earlier work, the team demonstrated that such a tube network could absorb and transport different colored dyes. They then fed it edible nutrients oat flakes to attract tube growth and common salt to repel them, so that they could grow a network with a particular structure. They then demonstrated how this system could mix two dyes to make a third color as an "output".

Using the dyes with magnetic nanoparticles and tiny fluorescent beads, allowed them to use the slime mold network as a biological "lab-on-a-chip" device. This represents a new way to build microfluidic devices for processing environmental or medical samples on the very small scale for testing and diagnostics, the work suggests. The extension to a much larger network of slime mold tubes could process nanoparticles and carry out sophisticated Boolean logic operations of the kind used by computer circuitry. The team has so far demonstrated that a slime mold network can carry out XOR or NOR Boolean operations. Chaining together arrays of such logic gates might allow a slime mold computer to carry out binary operations for computation.

GungnirSniper writes:

Pittsburgh middle school student Suvir Mirchandani started a science fair project looking to cut paper-related costs for his school. Rather than look at the paper itself, Mirchandani looked at the ink, and how it was used with four fonts: Garamond, Times New Roman, Century Gothic and Comic Sans. As first reported by CNN, "by using Garamond with its thinner strokes, his school district could reduce its ink consumption by 24%, and in turn save as much as $21,000 annually."

Encouraged by his teacher, Suvir looked to publish his findings and stumbled on the Journal for Emerging Investigators (JEI), a publication founded by a group of Harvard grad students in 2011 that provides a forum for the work of middle school and high school students. It has the same standards as academic journals, and each submission is reviewed by grad students and academics.

The Journal asked Mirchandani to apply his method to a much larger scale, the US Federal Government.

Using the General Services Administration's estimated annual cost of ink $467 million Suvir concluded that if the federal government used Garamond exclusively it could save nearly 30% or $136 million per year. An additional $234 million could be saved annually if state governments also jumped on board.

Reason.com has a condensed version of CNN's article and the full results and graphics are published by the Journal of Emerging Investigators.

Papas Fritas writes:

Mark Prigg reports on a smartphone app for recovering alcoholics that sounds an alert when they get too close to their favorite bars. The app, nicknamed A-CHESS for the Center for Health Enhancement Systems Studies, has been deemed a success in initial trials as adults who got free sober smartphones reported fewer drinking days and more overall abstinence than those who got the usual follow-up support. The app contains a range of support facilities, including GPS that triggers when the person gets near a favorite bar. If it seems that they are contemplating entering (such as if they stay near the area), the app will play a pre-recorded confessional video of the patient recounting their experience with alcoholism or a recording of one of their children pleading with them not to drink. The app also includes a panic button that can be programmed to notify peers who are nearest to the patient when the button is pushed. "It does seem a little intrusive, but for people who are really battling with alcoholism, they need a lot of this type of monitoring and ongoing support," says Dr. Scott Krakower. "They do well in controlled settings, but when they leave the center and go back into their environment, they are at risk for relapse."

A clinical trial observed 350 participants recently released from rehabilitation centers, with 52 percent using A-CHESS remaining alcohol-free for the following year. Of those participants who received only traditional support methods, only 40 percent remained alcohol-free. Users of A-CHESS also experienced half the risky drinking days of those who did not. A company is being formed to commercialize the app and A-CHESS could soon become available to the public through Android and Apple stores. Dr. Gail Basch says proven methods for helping prevent relapse include patient monitoring and support from family and peers. "A stand-alone mobile app may not be the answer, but one can see how it could fit in nicely. A real-time tool, as well as reminders throughout the day, could be very helpful for a recovering brain."

Fluffeh writes:

Currently in the UK, it is illegal to make a backup of your own media, either as a perfect copy or a format shift. Although plans to amend these laws have been kicking around for years, the government has finally set out a timeline and it is only a few months away. The UK Government stresses that the changes will make current copyright law more reasonable, and doesn't expect that copyright holders will suffer any significant harm. However, the changes could generate extra revenue for the technology sector, increasing revenue by 31 million pounds (US $51 million) per year. People will also be free to sell any media they purchase, however all backup copies will have to be destroyed.

From the consumer guide:

You will be permitted to make personal copies to any device that you own, or a personal online storage medium, such as a private cloud. However, it will be illegal to give other people access to the copies you have made, including, for example, by allowing a friend to access your personal cloud storage.

Torrent Freak also notes:

Besides the new private copying rights, the upcoming amendments will also broaden people's fair use rights. For example, people no longer have to ask permission to quote from or parody the work of others, such as a news report or a book, as long as it's "fair dealing" and the source is recognized.

Circumvention of DRM will still be against the law, but the Secretary of State can be petitioned on a case by case basis if the DRM is "too restrictive".

janrinok writes:

The WSJ is reporting that the U.S. Department of Justice is pushing to make it easier for law enforcement to get warrants to hack into the computers of criminal suspects across the country. The move, which would alter federal court rules governing search warrants, comes amid increases in cases related to computer crimes. Investigators say they need more flexibility to get warrants to allow hacking in such cases, especially when multiple computers are involved or the government doesn't know where the suspect's computer is physically located.

From the article:

The Justice Department effort is raising questions among some technology advocates, who say the government should focus on fixing the holes in computer software that allow such hacking instead of exploiting them. Privacy advocates also warn government spyware could end up on innocent people's computers if remote attacks are authorized against equipment whose ownership isn't clear.

The government's hacking tools such as sending an email embedded with code that installs spying software resemble those used by criminal hackers (sic). The government doesn't describe these methods as hacking (sic), preferring instead to use terms like "remote access" and "network investigative techniques".

Ars Technica cover the same story but offer some useful analysis of the subject.