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takyon writes:

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) is planning to lift its moratorium on chimeric embryo research:

The National Institutes of Health is proposing a new policy to permit scientists to get federal money to make embryos, known as chimeras, under certain carefully monitored conditions. The NIH imposed a moratorium on funding these experiments in September because they could raise ethical concerns.

[...] [Scientists] hope to use the embryos to create animal models of human diseases, which could lead to new ways to prevent and treat illnesses. Researchers also hope to produce sheep, pigs and cows with human hearts, kidneys, livers, pancreases and possibly other organs that could be used for transplants.

To address the ethical concerns, the NIH's new policy imposes several restrictions. The policy prohibits the introduction of any human cells into embryos of nonhuman primates, such as monkeys and chimps, at their early stages of development. Previously, the NIH wouldn't allow such experiments that involved human stem cells but it didn't address the use of other types of human cells that scientists have created. In addition, the old rules didn't bar adding the cells very early in embryonic development. The extra protections are being added because these animals are so closely related to humans. But the policy would lift the moratorium on funding experiments involving other species. Because of the ethical concerns, though, at least some of the experiments would go through an extra layer of review by a new, special committee of government officials.

You can submit a response to the proposal here up until the end of the day on September 4.

Related: NIH Won't Fund Human Germline Modification
U.S. Congress Moves to Block Human Embryo Editing
China's Bold Push into Genetically Customized Animals
Human-Animal Chimeras are Gestating on U.S. Research Farms

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butthurt writes:

previously: Straddle Bus 'Eats' Cars As it Speeds Down the Highway

Shanghaiist reports that an example of the TEB-1 (Transit Elevated Bus) has been built and has been tested on a 300 m track. The bus is of an unusual design: 7.8 m wide, its wheels rest both sides of a road, with the main part of the body high above street level so that other traffic can pass beneath. It is electrically powered. Passengers enter and leave via raised platforms. Its capacity is variously reported as 300 or 1200 passengers.

additional coverage:

• TechCrunch
• official news agency Xinhua
• Washington Post
• video by Descubre tu Mundo
• video by ELive Now

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MrPlow writes:

Submitted via IRC for TheMightyBuzzard

As Tim Cushing wrote a few months back, recording the police is a complex and contentious issue in the US. But what about in China? Given the increasing clampdown on the Internet world, it's pretty easy to guess that the Chinese authorities wouldn't take too kindly to members of the public trying to hold the police to account in this way. Easy to guess -- and yet wrong, according to this story in the South China Morning Post (SCMP):

Chinese residents can now record the actions of police ­officers as long as it does not stop them from doing their job.

The article provides a little background to this rather surprising news:

The move is expected to help keep police in check but there were no details on how it will be enforced.

And this is why some of them clearly need to be controlled better:

Environmental scientist Lei, 29, died in police custody in May just 50 minutes after he was ­approached by plainclothes ­officers for an identification check in his neighbourhood.

At first, police said he died of a heart attack, but an autopsy report this month said he died of suffocation from gastric fluid.

The public blamed his death on police handling, with two case officers arrested on suspicion of dereliction of duty.

Source: TechDirt

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Windows 10 Anniversary Update Borks Dual-Boot Partitions

The Windows 10 anniversary may interfere with, affect and even delete other partitions on the same disk. http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2016/08/windows-10-anniversary-update-delete-partition

It seems that the latest version of Microsoft's OS has attention issues. Not content with forcing itself on users who didn't want it, it may be taking even more drastic steps of hosing other operating systems entirely!

A handful of reports surfacing on social media suggest, anecdotally, that the Windows 10 anniversary may interfere with, affect and even delete other partitions on the same disk.

If these claims are accurate —and do keep in mind that various different factors may be at play in these cases — it would be a pretty shocking situation.

Classic Shell, Audacity downloads infected with classic MBR nuke nasty

"exec" writes:

http://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.co.uk/2016/08/04/classicshell_audicity_infection/

Classic Shell and Audacity downloads were booby-trapped with an old-school software nasty this week that knackered victims' Windows PCs.

Hackers were able to inject some retro-malware into the popular applications' installers hosted on fosshub.com, an official home for Classic Shell and Audacity releases among other software projects.

When victims fetched the tainted downloads and ran them, rather than install the expected app, the computer's Master Boot Record (MBR) was replaced with code that, during the next reboot or power on, displayed a cheeky message and prevented the machine from starting up properly. The drive's partition table was also likely damaged.

We thought these sorts of shenanigans died in the 1980s or early 1990s. In order for this to work, the victim would have to click through a warning that the download was not legit

-- submitted from IRC

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fork(2) writes:

Stuck with Comcast? You may get stuck some more!

Ars Technica , Gizmodo, ZDNet, and a host of others are reporting that Comcast claims that the FCC has no authority to limit or prohibit the internet provider from distributing web histories to advertisers.

From the Ars Technica article:

As the Federal Communications Commission debates new privacy rules for Internet service providers, Comcast has urged the commission to let ISPs offer different prices based on whether customers opt into systems that share their data and deliver personalized ads.

Comcast executives met with FCC officials last week, and "urged that the Commission allow business models offering discounts or other value to consumers in exchange for allowing ISPs to use their data," Comcast wrote in an ex parte filing that describes the meeting. (MediaPost covered the filing yesterday.)

AT&T is the biggest Internet provider offering such a plan. AT&T's "Internet Preferences" program reroutes customers' Web browsing to an in-house traffic scanning platform, analyzes the customers' search and browsing history, and then uses the results to deliver personalized ads to websites. With Internet Preferences enabled, AT&T customers can pay as little as $70 per month for 1Gbps fiber-to-the-home service, but those who don't opt into Internet Preferences must pay at least $29 a month extra.

[Continues...]

An Anonymous Coward writes:

How old is too old for this job and others?

Would making the position unpaid like other foundation actually make it "difficult to recruit a top candidate"?

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/08/dispute-over-presidents-age-tears-pasteur-institute-apart

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n1 writes:

The European Commission – the executive arm of the European Union – has proposed a directive aimed [at] preventing the use [of] the financial system for terrorist financing which includes a central database for bitcoin and virtual currency users' identities and wallet addresses accessible to government financial intelligence units (FIUs).

The proposal seeks to require member states to bring into force the regulations necessary to comply with this directive by Jan. 1, 2017.

[...] To counter the risks related to the anonymity, national FIUs should be able to associate virtual currency addresses to the identity of the owner of virtual currencies. In addition, the possibility to allow users to self-declare to authorities voluntarily should be considered.

The proposal defines "virtual currencies" as "a digital representation of value that is neither issued by a central bank or a public authority, nor necessarily attached to a fiat currency, but is accepted by natural or legal persons as a means of payment and can be transferred, stored or traded electronically."

Source: CCN.LA

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n1 writes:

The Obama administration quietly shipped $400 million stacked on wooden pallets in an unmarked plane to Iran in January — just as Tehran was releasing four Americans who had been detained there, according to a report.

The huge cash load represented the first payment of a $1.7 billion debt that Iran, at an international tribunal in The Hague, claimed it was owed over a failed 1979 arms deal signed before the fall of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, according to a report by The Wall Street Journal Tuesday night.

The Obama administration was accused Tuesday night of making the cash-for-hostages deal by timing the payout to the release — but US officials said the money was simply part of settling the nearly 40-year-old debt under the terms of the historic nuclear agreement hammered out in 2015.

"As we've made clear, the negotiations over the settlement of an outstanding claim . . . were completely separate from the discussions about returning our American citizens home," State Department spokesman John Kirby told the Journal.

Source: New York Post

the Obama administration transferred the equivalent of $400 million to their central banks. It was then converted into other currencies, stacked onto the wooden pallets and sent to Iran on board a cargo plane.

Source: The Wall Street Journal

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takyon writes:

http://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-36965066

The Harry Potter and the Cursed Child script has become the fastest-selling book in the UK this decade. It has sold more than 680,000 copies in its first three days alone, beating Fifty Shades of Grey which sold 664,478 in a single week in 2012. At its current rate, it is on track to become the second biggest single-week sales for a book since records began. That title is currently held by Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, according to The Bookseller. The final novel in the Potter series sold 1.8 million copies - as well as 780,000 copies of the version aimed at adults - in its launch week in July 2007.

Harry Potter and the Cursed Child has also become the fastest-selling script book, said publishers Little, Brown. Meanwhile, the script has also sold more than two million print copies in North America in its first two days, according to publishers Scholastic. Reviewers have complained the script is an "incomplete experience" as the story "demands to be seen", but theatre critics awarded the play five-star reviews. The stage production in London's West End is currently sold out, but a new batch of 250,000 tickets is being released on Thursday.

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fork(2) writes:

According to Reuters:

Just months after the College Board unveiled the new SAT* this March, a person with access to material for upcoming versions of the redesigned exam provided Reuters with hundreds of confidential test items. The questions and answers include 21 reading passages -- each with about a dozen questions -- and about 160 math problems.

Reuters doesn't know how widely the items have circulated. The news agency has no evidence that the material has fallen into the hands of what the College Board calls "bad actors" -- groups that the organization says "will lie, cheat and steal for personal gain." But independent testing specialists briefed on the matter said the breach represents one of the most serious security lapses that's come to light in the history of college-admissions testing.

To ensure the materials were authentic, Reuters provided copies to the College Board. In a subsequent letter to the news agency, an attorney for the College Board said publishing any of the items would have a dire impact, "destroying their value, rendering them unusable, and inflicting other injuries on the College Board and test takers."

College Board spokeswoman Sandra Riley said in a statement that the organization was moving to contain any damage from the leak. The College Board is "taking the test forms with stolen content off of the SAT administration schedule while we continue to monitor and analyze the situation," she said.

Then, of course, there's the problem of unprepared "students" clogging up the already sluggish educational system...

* [Editor's Note] The SAT is a standardized test widely used for college admissions in the United States. It was first introduced in 1926, and its name and scoring have changed several times, being originally called the Scholastic Aptitude Test, then the Scholastic Assessment Test, then the SAT I: Reasoning Test, then the SAT Reasoning Test, and now simply the SAT.

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes:

Latin America is leading worldwide opposition to food industry marketing, and The Nation has a story on how much is happening in Brazil.

[...] Over the last 30 years, big transnational food companies have aggressively expanded into Latin America. Taking advantage of economic reforms that opened markets, they've courted a consumer class that has grown in size due to generally increasing prosperity and to antipoverty efforts like minimum-wage increases and cash transfers for poor families. And as sales of highly processed foods and drinks have plateaued (and even fallen, in the case of soda) in the United States and other rich countries, Latin America has become a key market.

[...] In recent years, Brazil has inscribed the right to food in its Constitution and reformed its federal school-lunch program to broaden its reach while bolstering local farms.

And, in 2014, the Ministry of Health released new dietary guidelines that made healthy-food advocates across the world swoon. [...] The guidelines transcend a traditional nutrition-science framework to consider the social, cultural, and ecological dimensions of what people eat. They also focus on the pleasure that comes from cooking and sharing meals and frankly address the connections between what we eat and the environment.

This is precisely the kind of holistic, unambiguous advice that US food reformers hoped to see in our new dietary guidelines, which were released in January. But for the most part, the latest version—which influences billions of dollars in government spending, the $5 trillion food industry, and the diets of millions of Americans—remains vague and narrowly focused, ensuring that no corporate ox was gored.

There is an infographic which nicely summarizes the differences between Brazil's and the USA's food policies and dietary recommendations.

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An Anonymous Coward writes:

Source: Nature.com

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MrPlow writes:

Submitted via IRC for TheMightyBuzzard

The Federal Communications Commission's Enforcement Bureau has reached a $200,000 settlement with TP-Link in regards to selling in the US routers that could operate at output levels higher that allowed by FCC rules.

At the same time, TP-Link has also agreed to work with the open-source community and Wi-Fi chipset manufacturers to enable consumers to install third-party firmware on their Wi-Fi routers.

Source: Help Net Security

Original Submission

takyon writes:

Facebook temporarily disabled the social media accounts of a woman who was posting video of her own standoff negotiations with the police:

Baltimore police shot and killed Korryn Gaines, a 23-year-old black woman, after an hourslong standoff on Monday — during which Facebook and Instagram, at police request, temporarily shut down Gaines' accounts. [...] Police Chief Jim Johnson says Gaines was posting video of the standoff to social media as it was unfolding, which prompted police to request the deactivation of her accounts. Gaines' Facebook page is now reactivated; it does not have any videos visible to the public. On Instagram, one video apparently recorded during the standoff remains. [...] A second video, now deleted, showed a police officer with a gun drawn at Gaines' door. Facebook and Instagram have not responded to NPR's requests for comment.

[...] "Gaines was posting video of the operation as it unfolded. Followers were encouraging her not to comply with negotiators' requests that she surrender peacefully," he said. "Clearly, you can see this was an exigent circumstance where life and serious injury were in jeopardy." After a short period of time, Facebook (which owns Instagram) complied and deactivated the accounts. No data was deleted, Johnson said. Police do not have the authority to directly deactivate a social media account, Johnson and the spokeswoman both said. Facebook decides whether to comply with such requests.

Original Submission

MrPlow writes:

Submitted via IRC for Runaway1956

Black Lives Matter has taken offense at police saying “Blue Lives Matter” and others who say “All Lives Matter,” but now a Wisconsin school is risking ire by branding a class on environmentalism “Green Lives Matter.”

The course at University of Wisconsin at Green Bay will encourage students to support the “environmental justice movement” by “the merging of civil rights and environmental concerns.” But even Scott Furlong, the dean of social sciences at the school, acknowledged that the class name plays on what has become a loaded term.

Source: http://www.foxnews.com/us/2016/08/01/green-lives-matter-college-course-title-has-some-critics-seeing-red.html

Original Submission