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lhsi writes:

From Eurekalert:

When it comes to science, socioeconomic status may widen confidence gaps among the least and most educated groups in society, according to a new study by researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison's Science, Media and the Public research group.

The findings, published in June in the journal Science Communication, show that similar levels of attention to science in newspapers and on blogs can lead to vastly different levels of factual and perceived knowledge between the two groups.

Notably, frequent science blog readership among low socioeconomic-status groups actually lowered their scores on factual tests of scientific knowledge while high levels of attention to science in newspapers caused them to feel they were less knowledgeable compared to those who read less or those from higher socioeconomic backgrounds.

"The science section of The New York Times is not written for audiences with little or no prior knowledge of science and technology," explains study co-author Dominique Brossard, professor and chair in the Department of Life Sciences Communication. "Just putting more science in front of less-educated people may therefore confuse them rather than help them grasp complex science."

The team also found that how science knowledge is measured matters, too adding clarity to the science of science communication. Basing policy, public engagement and education efforts on just one measure of science knowledge may not be reliable.

Abstract can be found here.

c0lo writes:

Many sites are reporting the retraction of the Qualcomm DMCA request, which affected even some of their own repositories. The "qca" user in the prior link stands for Qualcomm Atheros, a division of the very company whose IP its source code is alleged to infringe.

However, it doesn't offer any explanation on why it happened in the first place. I suspect a certain web intelligence outfit is about to lose a contract.

Robotron writes:

Yesterday, twenty heavily armed robbers descended upon a large Samsung facility north of Sao Paulo. By using two workers they'd taken hostage, the thieves subdued security at the plant before comprehensively looting the place clean of finished goods in three hours of sustained theft. No one was harmed.

Though insured, Samsung said they were "very worried" about the incident.

In total police suspect that 20 robbers participated, carting out more than 40,000 finished products in seven trucks in the early hours of Monday. Samsung said it was still trying to find out how much money it had lost.

Given this is the latest (and largest) in a long line of Brazilian tech robberies, is optimism about the nation being the new Silicon Valley misplaced?

cafebabe writes:

The New Scientist reports that a non-existent film inspired mathematicians to find 177,147 method to tie a tie.

In 1999, Thomas Fink and Yong Mao of the University of Cambridge published a mathematical language describing tie knots ... to show that only 85 knots were possible.

Now mathematician Mikael Vejdemo-Johansson of the KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, Sweden, has vastly broadened the tie landscape.

[Fink and Mao's formal language theory] ... described the process of tying a knot as a sequence of motions between the left, centre and right of the chest, moving the tie either away or towards the chest. Vejdemo-Johansson's team realised they could just describe moves as windings either clockwise or anticlockwise around the passive end of the tie, plus a tuck move. This freed them up to include much more elaborate ties.

They also changed an important rule: the limit to how many winding moves you can make before your tie gets embarrassingly short. Fink and Mao placed the limit at 8 for classical ties, but Vejdemo-Johansson's team chose 11 instead, as that is how many the Eldredge knot needs. Counting up all the possible windings and tucks before you hit this limit gives a total of 177,147 different tie knots.

cafebabe writes:

The Daily Mail reports that children in the UK may receive school lessons about sexting.

Children as young as nine could be taught in school about the dangers of sexting.

New sex education packs produced by a charity warn girls not to send 'sexy and pouting' pictures using their mobile phones.

They suggest telling children of seven not to email photos of themselves in swimming costumes in case they fall into the hands of paedophiles.

The article goes on to say:

The lessons are part of a pack, launched last week, that schools can download for £299 a year.

Norman Wells, director of the Family Education Trust, said it was 'symptomatic of a mindset that thinks young children should take responsibility for their own safety, when in reality it is the job of parents to protect them'.

He added: 'To address such issues in the classroom runs the risk of introducing ideas and thoughts that many children are not ready for. In some cases [it] is likely to breed an unhealthy distrust and suspicion of adults.'

Meanwhile, UK polticians are calling for lessons to "tackle the rise of sexist abuse fuelled by internet porn" and the UK, Australia and the Philippines are currently engulfed in pedophile scandals.

AnonTechie writes:

Wired reports on some new programming languages.

People are constantly creating new programming languages, but because the software world is already saturated with so many if them, the new ones rarely get used by more than a handful of coders-especially if they're built by an ex-Symantec engineer without the backing of a big-name outfit. But Bright's new language, known as D, was much further along than the one Alexandrescu was working on, dubbed Enki, and Bright said they'd both be better off if Alexandrescu dumped Enki and rolled his ideas into D. Alexandrescu didn't much like D, but he agreed. "I think it was the beer", he now says.

The result is a programming language that just might defy the odds. Nine years after that night in Seattle, a $200-million startup has used D to build its entire online operation, and thanks to Alexandrescu, one of biggest names on the internet is now exploring the new language as well. Today, Alexandrescu is a research scientist at Facebook, where he and a team of coders are using D to refashion small parts of the company's massive operation. Bright, too, has collaborated with Facebook on this experimental software, as an outsider contractor. The tech giant isn't an official sponsor of the language-something Alexandrescu is quick to tell you- but Facebook believes in D enough to keep him working on it full-time, and the company is at least considering the possibility of using D in lieu of C++, the venerable language that drives the systems at the heart of so many leading web services.

In fact, Facebook is working to bridge this gap with not one but two languages. As it tinkers with D, the company has already revamped much of its online empire with a new language called Hack, which, in its own way, combines speed with simplicity. While using Hack to build the front-end of its service- the webpages you see when you open the service in your web browser-Facebook is experimenting with D on the back-end, the systems that serve as the engine of its social network. Certainly, D still faces a long road to success. But this new language has already come further than most.

mendax writes:

As the New York Times is reporting, it seems the Feds managed to arrest a Russian hacker for, among other things, breaking into cash register systems and stealing credit card data. From the article:

Roman Valerevich Seleznev was arrested on charges that he hacked into cash register systems at retailers throughout the United States from 2009 to 2011. The Secret Service would not say whether he was tied to the recent attacks that affected the in-store cash register systems at Target, Neiman Marcus, Michaels and other retailers last year.

The arrest of Mr. Seleznev provides a lens onto the shadowy world of Russian hackers, the often sophisticated programmers who seem to operate with impunity. As long ago as March 2011, the United States attorney's office in Washington State identified Mr. Seleznev, a Russian citizen, in a sealed indictment as "Track2", an underground alias that is an apparent reference to the data that can be pulled off the magnetic strips of credit and debit cards.

That data includes enough basic information--like account numbers and expiration dates--to make fraudulent purchases.

The indictment accuses Mr. Seleznev of hacking into the cash register systems of businesses across the United States and of operating computer servers and international online forums in Russia, Ukraine and elsewhere where such stolen data is traded in the digital underground.

It was not yet clear how the Secret Service arrested Mr. Seleznev, and the United States attorney's office in Washington State declined to elaborate.

In other words, the Secret Service is mum about how they got this guy to do something as foolish as going to Guam, an American territory.

cafebabe writes:

From The Daily Mail:

Researchers followed the lives of adolescents for ten years and discovered the ones who were considered 'geeks' went on to outperform the others by the time they reached early adulthood.

The study, which examined 184 teenagers from the age of 13, found those considered popular in their early and mid-teens were more likely to suffer drug abuse problems and social isolation as adults. Academics at the University of Virginia also said that the group's definition of 'cool' changed over time. They said boys aged 13 who exhibited 'pseudo-mature behaviour' such as kissing girls and committing minor vandalism were considered popular. However, ten years on, many of them found it difficult to interact with their peers and engage in meaningful relationships.

The findings of the study - published in the journal Child Development - will be familiar to fans of the Lindsay Lohan film Mean Girls, which charts the fall from grace of high school pupils who are obsessed with their image and popularity.

cafebabe writes:

The BBC reports that:

A contraceptive computer chip that can be controlled by remote control has been developed in Massachusetts.

The chip is implanted under a woman's skin, releasing a small dose of levonorgestrel, a hormone.

This will happen every day for 16 years, but can be stopped at any time by using a wireless remote control.

The project has been backed by Bill Gates, and will be submitted for pre-clinical testing in the US next year - and possibly go on sale by 2018.

The 20mm×20mm×7mm device releases daily 30µg doses, so it isn't a general solution for administering medication. However, people are questioning what happens if the device crashes. Others question the motives of a billionaire who advocates population reduction.

cafebabe writes:

From The Daily Mail:

iPhone maker Foxconn has revealed Apple's new iPhone 6 could be the first to be made using its 'robot army'. The firm has pledged to have a million robot workers by the end of the year - and CEO Terry Gou has revealed the robots, dubbed 'Foxbots', are in the final stages of testing. It is believed Foxconn will install 10,000 robots as a test.

Each $25,000 Foxbot can complete an average of 30,000 devices per year it has been claimed.

Foxconn, which currently employs more than 1.2 million workers at its various factories across China. However, the firm's robot initiative has been delayed since it was first announced in 2011. At the time, Gou said the company had about 10,000 units already in operation, a number that was supposed to rise to 300,000 in 2012, then one million by 2014. However, the firm is also ramping up human workers for the iPhone 6, with 100,00 being hired according to some reports.

Dozens of pictures have leaked online claiming to show Apple's iPhone 6. They all show a thin, curved device with distinctive white 'bars' across the back. However, a Japanese news agency has claimed that in fact, the finished product will look very different - and that it could even have a curved screen.

AnonTechie writes:

Washington DC-area residents with a hankering for lion meat lost a valuable source of the (yes, legal) delicacy last year when a restaurant called the Serbian Crown closed its doors after nearly 40 years in the same location. The northern Virginia eatery served French and Russian cuisine in a richly appointed dining room thick with old world charm. It was best known for its selection of exotic meats -- one of the few places in the U.S. where an adventurous diner could order up a plate of horse or kangaroo. "We used to have bear, but bear meat was abolished," says proprietor Rene Bertagna. "You cannot import any more bear."

But these days, Bertagna isn't serving so much as a whisker. It began in early 2012, when he experienced a sudden 75 percent drop off in customers on the weekend, the time he normally did most of his business. The slump continued for months, for no apparent reason. Bertagna's profits plummeted, he was forced to lay off some of his staff, and he struggled to understand what was happening. Only later did Bertagna come to suspect that he was the victim of a gaping vulnerability that made his Google listings open to manipulation. He was alerted to that possibility when one of his regulars phoned the restaurant. "A customer called me and said, 'Why are you closed on Saturday, Sunday and Monday? What's going on?'" Bertagna says. It turned out that Google Places, the search giant's vast business directory ( http://www.washingtonpost.com/gog/restaurants/serbian-crown,1147678.html ), was misreporting the Serbian Crown's hours. Anyone Googling Serbian Crown, or plugging it into Google Maps, was told incorrectly that the restaurant was closed on the weekends, Bertagna says. For a destination restaurant with no walk-in traffic, that was a fatal problem.

http://www.wired.com/2014/07/hacking-google-maps/

joekiser writes:

After weeks of testing, CentOS 7 has been released. For a list of RELEASE NOTES, please see the Wiki.

CentOS falls in line with Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7, released just 26 days ago. It is also worth noting that an ALPHA release of Scientific Linux 7.0 is also available for testing.

frojack writes:

The Supreme Court is getting pretty insistent that adding with a computer to otherwise mundane concepts does not make the mundane new or patentable.

As we covered earlier, in Alice v. CLS Bank, the SCOTUS indicated that taking old ideas and doing them with a computer isn't going to fly any more.

Now the high court is sending a case back to the lower court for the THIRD time to make sure those courts get the message.

US patent 7,346,545 is owned by a company called Ultramercial, which sued Hulu, YouTube, and a gaming company called WildTangent (remember those guys and their hard to get rid of games?) back in 2011.

It describes a "method and system for payment of intellectual property royalties by interposed sponsor on behalf of consumer over a telecommunications network."

In plain English, it describes a system in which viewers watch an advertisement as a "payment," and then get to watch a piece of online content.

So what had been happening for 50 years in television and radio ads, watch commercial and then enjoy, was patented by hanging "With a Computer" on it.

AnonTechie writes:

One of the long-standing difficulties in astrophysics has been a way to accurately determine the age of a star. Brand new stars are obvious from their location in or near "star nurseries" of interstellar gas and dust, and "adult" stars can be roughly characterized through various methods, including a calculation based on their mass and luminosity. Unfortunately, these methods are approximations at best. Researchers at KU Leuven's Institute for Astronomy have now discovered a way to distinguish young stars from older ones by measuring the acoustic waves that they emit using ultrasound technology.

The result of the accretion of shrinking clouds of gas and dust particles, a star evolves from "newborn" to "adolescent" as growing gravitational forces cause it to contract. As these forces continue, the star becomes smaller, denser, and hotter until the core temperature is great enough to trigger thermonuclear fusion. Once this stage has been reached, and the star has stabilized in its size and fusion energy production over a very long period of time, it is classed as an "adult" and generally remains in this state for many billions of years. As a general rule, as an adult star ages it becomes brighter. This means it is possible to approximate the ages of these stars using a calculation based on their mass and luminosity. This method works particularly well for stellar objects in their main sequence, where they are stable, adult stars falling within a particular range of mass, color, and luminosity.

AnonTechie writes:

With a chip implanted in his brain, a 23-year-old quadriplegic moves his fingers and hand.

Thanks to a computer chip, algorithms, and nearly 10 years of research, a 23-year-old quadriplegic moved his fingers and hand with the power of his own thoughts.

"I never dreamed I would ever be able to do that again," said Ian Burkhart, of Dublin, Ohio. Burkhart, who was injured in a 2010 diving accident, is the first patient to use Neurobridge, an electronic neural bypass system developed at the Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center.

The system, which is aimed at spinal cord injuries, is designed to reconnect the brain directly to muscles, allowing voluntary and functional control of a paralyzed limb.

The technology may one day give self-propelled movement back to patients affected by brain and spinal cord injuries.

*Updated: Mr. Guillot AKA yankprintster (4225) responded and is interested in answering some questions. Ask him your questions below in the comments*

BlackHole writes:

B.J. Guillot is one of three candidates currently seeking to represent Washington's 2nd Congressional District in the U.S. House of Representatives. Mr. Guillot is also a reader of SoylentNews. In a recent interview with CoinTelegraph about his enthusiastic support of cryptocurrency, Mr. Guillot was asked "When did you first hear about Bitcoin, and when did you get into it?" He explains that he got turned on to Bitcoin while reading a certain news for nerds site, and then mentions:

Since I have the floor, let me just state for the record, the new Slashdot web design and user experience is really poor. I've since moved on to SoylentNews.org for my daily science and tech news.

Perhaps Mr. Guillot would be kind enough to answer a few questions about his positions on topics of particular concern to the SN community. I invite him to answer directly in the comments below, or if he would prefer, I will collect and forward the highest-modded comments to Mr. Guillot, and then submit a new story with his responses.

AnonTechie writes:

How much information is stored inside a human? Not as much as you think. All you need is a mere 1.5 gigabytes to fit your entire genetic code. Veritasium did the math in his latest brain tapping video and cooked up that number using bits to understand the molecules that make up a person's genetic code.

Of course, we have a lot of cells in our body (around 40 trillion) and each of those cells contain the full 1.5 GB of our genetic code. So a real person has about 60 zettabytes (60 with 21 zeroes after) of information in total. That's huge. Veritasium says that in the year 2020, all the digital information in the world will only tally up to 40 ZB. So turns out, there's a lot of information necessary to make a person.

But! 99.9% of our genetic information is shared with everyone else on Earth. What makes us unique is much, much smaller than a ZB. In fact, it takes less than a megabyte to make a person different from the next.

So there it is. A reasonable 1.5 GB of information for our genetic code. A ridiculous 60 ZB flowing in all our bodies. And an embarrassingly tiny megabyte that makes us believe we're a unique snowflake.