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"gewg_" writes:

The Center for American Progress reports:

A large new study--which was published just in time for National Infant Immunization Week--is being hailed as the final "nail in the coffin" of the persistent conspiracy theory that [the vaccine for measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) is] linked to autism.

[...]In the years since [disgraced British doctor Andrew] Wakefield's [completely discredited] research on the topic, several different studies have reaffirmed the safety of the recommended childhood vaccination schedule. No credible evidence has emerged that vaccines have any effect on autism rates.

Now, a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association has ruled out a potential vaccine-autism link even among a small group of children who are more at risk for the disorder. The review of nearly 100,000 children found (paywall) that even when toddlers have an older sibling who has been placed on the autism spectrum--which means they could have a greater chance of developing autism themselves--getting the MMR shot does nothing to increase that risk.

This still doesn't solve the Jenny McCarthy (bimbo) problem:
A lie can go around the world while the truth is lacing up its boots.

AnonTechie writes:

When managers create a culture where employees know the boss puts employees' needs over his or her own, measureable [sic] improvements in customer satisfaction, higher job performance by employees, and lower turnover are the result, according to research by Robert Liden, Sandy Wayne, Chenwei Liao, and Jeremy Meuser, that has just been published in the Academy of Management Journal.

Employees feel the most valued, and in return give back to the company and its customers when their bosses create a culture of trust, caring, cooperation, fairness and empathy. According to Sandy Wayne one of the authors of the research, "The best business leadership style is far from, 'Do this. Don't do that.' A servant leader looks and sounds a lot more like, 'Is there anything I can do to help you?' Or, 'Let me help you....' Or, 'What do you need to...?' This approach helps employees reach their full potential."

The study was conducted at the Jason's Deli national restaurant chain, and the sample included:
961 employees
71 Jason's Deli restaurants
10 metropolitan areas.
The findings were based on data from surveys completed by managers, employees, and customers, and data from corporate records.

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2015-05/ub-wb042915.php

[Study]: http://amj.aom.org/content/57/5/1434

[Also Covered By]: http://phys.org/news/2015-05-bosses-employees.html

[Source]: http://business.uic.edu/docs/default-source/chrm-documents/2015-website-servant-leadership-and-serving-culture-linden-wayne-liao-meuser.pdf?sfvrsn=2 [PDF]

"gewg_" writes:

AlterNet reports

Online instruction at community colleges isn't working--yet policymakers are continuing to fund programs to expand online courses at these schools, which primarily serve low-income minority students, and community college administrators are planning to offer more and more of them.

The latest salvo comes from researchers at the University of California-Davis, who found that community college students throughout California were 11 percent less likely to finish and pass a course if they opted to take the online version instead of the traditional face-to-face version of the same class. The still-unpublished paper, entitled Online Course-taking and Student Outcomes in California Community Colleges, was presented on April 18, 2015, at the American Educational Research Association's annual conference in Chicago.

[...]Community colleges [educate 45 percent of the nation's undergraduates] and [that sector] is under fire for low graduation rates.

[...]Despite the flexibility, it appears that many students find it hard to manage their time to complete the lectures and coursework throughout an entire semester.

[...]These are very different results from what researchers are finding for students at four-year colleges.

Anonymous Coward writes:

As major disasters go, asteroid impacts are one of the few, which are theoretically preventable, provided we had enough advance notice. Some schemes call for merely painting the asteroid white, and relying on radiation pressure from the sun, to change its' orbit enough to miss us.

Step zero, is to see the asteroid first, so I was thrilled to see, some recent progress on this front.

"Based on the geologic record and what we know about the NEO (near earth orbit) population, the probability of a catastrophic event is quite low. A Tunguska-scale event might occur once every few centuries. Impactors as large as the 10-km-diameter object that finished off the dinosaurs very rarely collide with Earth, just once every 100 million years or so.

But of course, these are just average rates. The next asteroid with the potential to level a city might not hit Earth for hundreds of years; it could also arrive tomorrow. The only thing we can say with certainty is that there will be more collisions in our future."

CoolHand writes:

Phys.org reports on a new synthetic gel able to produce movement using its own internal chemical reactions.

For decades, robots have advanced the efficiency of human activity. Typically, however, robots are formed from bulky, stiff materials and require connections to external power sources; these features limit their dexterity and mobility. But what if a new material would allow for development of a "soft robot" that could reconfigure its own shape and move using its own internally generated power?

By developing a new computational model, researchers at the University of Pittsburgh's Swanson School of Engineering have designed a synthetic polymer gel that can utilize internally generated chemical energy to undergo shape-shifting and self-sustained propulsion.

With other recent gel developments that Phys.org has reported, along with the advancement of AI, one must wonder if we are approaching sci-fi tech similar to the T-1000 from the Terminator series.

takyon writes:

On the heels of Microsoft bashing Google's hands-off Android update policy at Ignite 2015, Lucian Armasu at Tom's Hardware has an editorial reaffirming Android's update woes:

Android 5.0 and Android 5.1 (Lollipop) [...] currently represent 9.0 percent and 0.7 percent of the Android market, respectively, for a combined total of 9.7 percent. That's definitely nothing to be proud about, because it could be years by the time the vast majority of users are on the Android 5+ platforms. By then, 10 percent of users could be on Android 8.0.

Because Android is open source and because so many (essentially) OEM-tweaked "forks" of it exist, a "clean" upgrade path is almost impossible. To have a clean standardized update system would mean all the OEMs would have to agree to abide strictly by Google's guidelines for what they can and cannot modify on the platform. However, as soon as Google tries to do something like that, the OEMs usually cry foul that Google is making Android more proprietary and restricting what they can do with it. Google may also not want to upset the OEMs too much by forcing a unified update system on them either, because of the fear that those OEMs could take their business elsewhere, as it were.

When we look at the matter practically, though, we see that some have already tried that (Samsung with Tizen), and it hasn't worked very well. The reality is that Android and iOS are so entrenched in the market right now that it's hard to believe a significant third platform could arise on mobile when it comes to apps. Even Microsoft, after spending billions upon billions trying to make Windows Phone popular, has essentially admitted failure on the app store front, and is now trying to make Android and iOS apps work with Windows instead.

Google also can't and shouldn't leave the responsibility to OEMs and carriers anymore, because so far they've proven themselves to be quite irresponsible from this point of view. At best, we see flagship smartphones being updated for a year and a half, and even that is less than the time most people keep their phones. Even worse, the highest volume phones (lower-end handsets) usually never get an update. If they do it's only one update, and it comes about a year after Google released that update to other phones, giving malicious attackers plenty of time to take advantage of those users.

This update "system," if you can call it that, ends up leaving the vast majority of Android users with security holes in their phones and without the ability to experience new features until they buy new phones (which is sadly a kind of planned obsolescence as well). This can't be an acceptable state of affairs for Google, and it shouldn't be. Google already has a great six-week update system for Chromebooks, and it's time to have Android catch up to that, as well.

Hugh Pickens writes:

Thomas Kim has an interesting paper at PLOS one that analyzes virtual currencies in online games that have been voluntarily managed by individuals since 1990s to study whether the recent price patterns and transaction costs of Bitcoin represent a general characteristic of decentralized virtual currencies. Kim's conclusions:

We find that more mature game currencies have a price volatility of one-third of that of Bitcoin, at a level similar to that of small size equities or gold. The decentralized structure of Bitcoin does not seem to be the cause of the recent price instability, as game currencies are also managed by non-government entities. We observe a similar price instability from the game currencies that are launched around the time when Bitcoin gained much of its current public attention (around the year 2011). The contrast between mature and newly introduced virtual currencies indicates that the Bitcoin price may stabilize over time.

The transaction costs of virtual currencies are sometimes lower than that of real currencies. With more competition among virtual currency exchanges, the transaction costs may drop further making virtual currencies a lower cost alternative to real currency transactions. Economists agree that a properly functioning currency should include a method of transaction, a unit of account, and store value. Bitcoin may meet the criteria if it can combine its low transaction costs with more stable prices.

However, there are a few caveats for our projection. Bitcoin is the first virtual currency that is attempting to substitute the role of real currencies. Until this point, other virtual currencies, like game currencies, remain as auxiliary currencies that aid in transactions that real currencies cannot easily do, such as transactions within an online game. Game currencies currently have considerable trading volume, but their role is tied to the gaming industry. It is difficult to estimate how widespread Bitcoin will be. Also, our analysis does not justify that virtual currencies should have greater value. A large volume of Bitcoin trading in these days is speculative trading, betting on the possible appreciation of Bitcoin prices. Speculative trades are necessary to discover the reasonable exchange rates of Bitcoin, but it is unknown when the market will reach the equilibrium. As we demonstrate from the comparison of exchanges with varying degrees of competition, various regulations imposed on Bitcoin exchanges may be a dragging factor in the price discovery process.

Fauxlosopher writes:

When the United States Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson was asked, "do you believe the government has the right to bulk collection of records from millions of individuals without a warrant", his response was that the question was "beyond my competence as secretary of homeland security" to answer.

The original article touches on some important details and raises key criticisms of the slipshod method currently used to obtain communications records for millions of people from US phone companies in violation of the spirit, if not letter, of the US Constitution's Fourth Amendment prohibition on unreasonable government searches and seizures.

Source video for quotes and context: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N_auHdE89qQ

An Anonymous Coward writes:

The tragic sudden death of Silicon Valley entrepreneur Dave Goldberg, CEO of SurveyMonkey and husband of Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, has taken a twist. The cause of death was initially withheld; now it has been reported that the 47-year old died while working out in a gym at a Mexican resort hotel. Goldberg was found by his brother lying next to a treadmill in a pool of blood, with a gash in his head; state officials believe the injury occurred after he fell off the machine. Meanwhile, the general manager at Four Seasons Resort Punta Mita - denies that Goldberg was even a guest at the hotel or residences.

Ethanol-fueled writes:

CNSNews reports:

Federal Communications Commission (FCC) member Ajit Pai said over the weekend that he foresees a future in which federal regulators will seek to regulate websites based on political content, using the power of the FCC or Federal Elections Commission (FEC). He also revealed that his opposition to "net neutrality" regulations had resulted in personal harassment and threats to his family.

Pai, one of two Republicans on the five-member FCC, has been an outspoken critic of net neutrality regulations passed by the agency on Feb. 6. The rules, which are set to take effect on June 12, reclassify Internet providers as utilities and command them not to block or "throttle" online traffic.

However, Pai said it was only the beginning. In the future, he said, "I could easily see this migrating over to the direction of content... What you're seeing now is an impulse not just to regulate the roads over which traffic goes, but the traffic itself."

"Is it unthinkable that some government agency would say the marketplace of ideas is too fraught with dissonance? That everything from the Drudge Report to Fox News... is playing unfairly in the online political speech sandbox? I don't think so," Pai said.

That in contrast to a Department of Defense article here in which the Pentagon's chief spokesman admitted, "When bad things happen, the American people should hear it from us, not as a scoop on the Drudge Report."

The Drudge Report is singled out as an example in both articles, but such changes have the potential to affect all political speech online, some people believe. As for Pai's point of view, is it valid, or is it partisan sour-grapes fearmongering?

mendax writes:

Multiple sources have marked the death of Grace Lee Whitney at 85. Those old-time Trekkies will recall that she played Captain Kirk's luscious yeoman in the first half of the first season before being fired. However, she made numerous appearances in the movies and one episode of Voyager.

What's interesting about this story is that she was, in fact, older than Leonard Nimoy, who died earlier this year, and William Shatner, who somehow manages to hang on, probably due to his amazing hair pieces, even though she played a character who was much younger than both. She wore her age well, and she will be missed.

mendax writes:

Liberté, égalité, fraternité? Non! At least no "liberté" if the lower house of the French parliament has anything to do with it. The New York Times is reporting:

The lower house of the French Parliament overwhelmingly approved a sweeping intelligence bill that, if it passes in the upper house, would give the government broad surveillance powers with little judicial oversight.

The measure, which must still pass the Senate, was a strong reaction to the security threat vividly displayed by the January terrorist attacks in and around Paris, including at the offices of the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo and at a kosher grocery that left 17 people dead.

The bill would give French intelligence services the right to gather potentially unlimited electronic data from Internet communications, and to tap cellphones and capture text messages. It would force Internet providers to comply with government requests to sift through subscribers' communications.

More coverage of "France's Patriot Act": BBC, NPR, The Guardian, Washington Post, France 24, and TechCrunch.

kadal writes:

We've previously covered Mozilla considering a push to deprecate HTTP in favor of HTTPS. Well, it looks like the time is here. This HTTPS encrypted blogpost by Mozilla starts with

Today we are announcing our intent to phase out non-secure HTTP.

There's pretty broad agreement that HTTPS is the way forward for the web. In recent months, there have been statements from IETF, IAB (even the other IAB), W3C, and the US Government calling for universal use of encryption by Internet applications, which in the case of the web means HTTPS.

[...] There are two broad elements of this plan:

• Setting a date after which all new features will be available only to secure websites
• Gradually phasing out access to browser features for non-secure websites, especially
  features that pose risks to users' security and privacy.

[...] For example, one definition of "new" could be "features that cannot be polyfilled". That would allow things like CSS and other rendering features to still be used by insecure websites, since the page can draw effects on its own (e.g., using <canvas>). But it would still restrict qualitatively new features, such as access to new hardware capabilities.

[More after the break]

takyon writes:

The Intercept has released an article entitled, "The Computers Are Listening: How the NSA Converts Spoken Words Into Searchable Text":

Top-secret documents from the archive of former NSA contractor Edward Snowden show the National Security Agency can now automatically recognize the content within phone calls by creating rough transcripts and phonetic representations that can be easily searched and stored. The documents show NSA analysts celebrating the development of what they called "Google for Voice" nearly a decade ago.

Though perfect transcription of natural conversation apparently remains the Intelligence Community's "holy grail," the Snowden documents describe extensive use of keyword searching as well as computer programs designed to analyze and "extract" the content of voice conversations, and even use sophisticated algorithms to flag conversations of interest.

The documents include vivid examples of the use of speech recognition in war zones like Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as in Latin America. But they leave unclear exactly how widely the spy agency uses this ability, particularly in programs that pick up considerable amounts of conversations that include people who live in or are citizens of the United States.

Recently, Chancellor Angela Merkel defended German intelligence (BND) spying on behalf of the NSA. Former Director of the NSA Michael Hayden has taken the opportunity to use the failed Garland, TX attack to advocate preserving or extending NSA surveillance:

Public wishes about how to balance privacy and security will have to be evaluated in light of the shooting deaths of two men outside a "Draw Muhammad" free-speech event in Garland, Texas, on Sunday, former CIA and NSA director Gen. Michael Hayden tells Newsmax TV. "You've got this difficult decision to make: when does free thought and free speech cross the line into something that's actionable by American law enforcement?" Hayden said Monday on "Newsmax Prime," hosted by J.D. Hayworth. The "totality of circumstances" should determine where the line is drawn between privacy and security, Hayden said. "We may actually discover that we're drawing the line too conservatively and that we should be more forward-leaning with our action," he said. "We'll let the facts take us there if they will."

Despite criticism of NSA overreach from some quarters, the agency's former boss doesn't see anything wrong with how information is collected, he told Hayworth. He understands the concerns, Hayden said, but added: "Of all the times when we might want to make it more difficult or more cumbersome to find the terrorists in the United States, this is not that time because of the kind of things that happened in Texas yesterday."

ISIS just claimed responsibility for the Garland attack. What does this all mean for the USA FREEDOM Act, the bill that could place some small limits on the U.S. surveillance state? According to the New York Times, the NSA may be willing to sacrifice elements of domestic telephone spying in order to preserve "more vital" programs.

AnonTechie writes in on the ineffectiveness of the US Federal Election Commision:

The leader of the US Federal Election Commission, the agency charged with regulating the way political money is raised and spent, says she has largely given up hope of reining in abuses in the 2016 US presidential campaign, which could generate a record $10 billion in spending.

“The likelihood of the laws being enforced is slim,” Ann M. Ravel, the chairwoman, said in an interview. “I never want to give up, but I’m not under any illusions. People think the F.E.C. is dysfunctional. It’s worse than dysfunctional.”

Her unusually frank assessment reflects a worsening stalemate among the agency’s six commissioners. They are perpetually locked in 3-to-3 ties along party lines on key votes because of a fundamental disagreement over the mandate of the commission, which was created 40 years ago in response to the political corruption of Watergate.