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An Anonymous Coward writes:

Katelyn Vincik's parents said their daughter was born with a left hand that was not fully formed. While Katelyn has always known her left hand was a little different than her right, it has not slowed her down.

"She's very determined, she does everything," said Kimberly Vincik. "It's never held her back."

[...] Katelyn has been on a waiting list for more than a year for a functional prosthetic. "It has not been FDA-approved. It's basically tied up in approval and legal," said Katelyn's father, Casey.

Her parents said Katelyn was offered a cosmetic prosthetic hand, but the little girl found it too heavy and generally disliked the way it looked.

[...] Determined to find a hand for Katelyn, the family drove from Victoria to Clear Lake and met with Branch Librarian Jim Johnson and Innovation Lab trainer Patrick Ferrell.

"We let them know we don't know anything about prosthetics. We've never done this before. We just know how to run a 3-D printer," said Ferrell. The fact the lab never printed a hand didn't stop Ferrell and a team of volunteers from diving into the project.

[...] The Vinciks said Katelyn took to her new hand like she'd had it all her life. Kimberly Vincik said some of Katelyn's first words after receiving the hand were directed to her younger sister, Lacey.

"(She said) 'Lacey, we can hold hands now,'" Vincik said.

The polylactic acid material used to make Katelyn's hand was even dyed in Katelyn's favorite colors: pink and purple. The prosthetic attaches to Katelyn's arm and a pulley system opens and closes the hand when Katelyn bends her arm.

Pretty amazing stuff these days eh?

Link: http://www.click2houston.com/news/investigates/parents-search-to-find-prosthetic-hand-for-daughter-ends-at-library

Here's a link to the library: http://www.hcpl.net/content/jocelyn-h-lee-innovation-lab-0

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story :

Tags on a fragile packages may someday be able to say whether the goods are riding safely in the back of a truck or bouncing around in a hazardous way.

If Intel follows through on an IoT research project it demonstrated at Intel Developer Forum (IDF) this week, those tags could report on shipping conditions in real time without needing a battery to stay powered. After the package is delivered, the label might even be disposable.

Intel demonstrated a prototype "smart tag" for packages at Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco on Aug. 16, 2016. The tag could detect motion and show it on a chart in real time. It's the kind of IoT that enterprises might not even be aware of as a device or system but could still benefit from every day. Meanwhile, for a shipping company, it might save on labor and specialized technology rollouts.

The key to this oversharing tag is what Intel calls a mote. It's a chip so small it could get lost in a jar of coarse-ground pepper. The IA-32 mote shown at IDF, built on Intel's Quark architecture, would be the brains of a tag that could incorporate motion, temperature and other sensors.

The tiny size of the processor is a big part of what makes the whole system viable, as it keeps both energy draw and per-chip costs low.

The mote doesn't talk directly to the cloud. Instead, it uses a short-range, low-power network – in this case, Bluetooth Low Energy – to a local gateway device that forwards the data over a longer-range network like cellular. The local gateway might also process or store the data first.

The mote is so small and efficient, using only about 1 milliwatt, that it can run on energy harvested from radio waves wafting through the air around it. For example, a Wi-Fi network on a truck might bathe a trailer full of packages with enough RF (radio frequency) energy to power motes on every one of them, Intel researcher Turbo Majumder said.

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

NASA has confirmed that the Russian Federal Space Agency Roscosmos is mulling whether or not to continue staffing the International Space Station with its usual complement of astronauts.

Last week the Russian newspaper Izvestia quoted Sergei Krikalev, director of manned programs at Roscosmos, saying that the agency had approached NASA about reducing its standard ISS crew count from three to two. Russia has had three astronauts on rotation in the ISS since 2010, but apparently that will be changing.

Krikalev said that delays in building the Russian Multipurpose Laboratory Module (MLM), the nodal unit (a structural join), and the scientific and power module – let alone lofting them into orbit – meant there was no need for three local astronauts on station. Cutting one would save money and allow Russia to auction off the place to space tourists.

"We'll look at it as we do with all these kind of things – we'll trade it against whatever risk that might put into the program, first and foremost the risk to our crew onboard, and the station itself. From there, we start looking at the options and see what we can do as a partnership to either accommodate it or help them realize why that's a bad thing."

[...] To make life more difficult, the Russians can no longer bank on getting cash from NASA for astronaut delivery past 2017. SpaceX should be ready to start sending crew to the ISS by then and Boeing is planning flights by 2018, so the $80m per launch Roscosmos was getting will no longer be coming in.

Original Submission

Bill Dimm writes:

The latest NIST (United States National Institute for Standards and Technology) guidelines on password policies recommend a minimum of 8 characters. Perhaps more interesting is what they recommend against. They recommend against allowing password hints, requiring the password to contain certain characters (like numeric digits or upper-case characters), using knowledge-based authentication (e.g., what is your mother's maiden name?), using SMS (Short Message Service) for two-factor authentication, or expiring passwords after some amount of time. They also provide recommendations on how password data should be stored.

[Ed. Note: Contrary to common practice, I would advocate reading the entire linked article so we can have an informed discussion on the many recommendations in the proposal. What has been your experience with password policies? Do the recommendations rectify problems you have seen? Is it reasonable to expect average users to follow the recommendations? What have they left out?]

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes in with a story on the misuse of a drug based on Bromopyruvic acid:

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/08/candidate-cancer-drug-suspected-after-death-three-patients-alternative-medicine-clinic

Additional links for the story:

Commentary from Dr. Lowe - http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2016/08/17/3-bromopyruvate-what-a-mess

Lots of extra information from Science-Based Medicine:

https://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/3-bromopyruvate-the-latest-cancer-cure-they-dont-want-you-to-know-about/

Original Submission #1  Original Submission #2 

Two Soylentils wrote in to tell us of news from the US Justice Department's plans to stop using private prisons.

Justice Department Says it will End use of Private Prisons

mhajicek writes in with a story from the Washington Post :

The Justice Department plans to end its use of private prisons after officials concluded the facilities are both less safe and less effective at providing correctional services than those run by the government.

Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates announced the decision on Thursday in a memo that instructs officials to either decline to renew the contracts for private prison operators when they expire or "substantially reduce" the contracts' scope. The goal, Yates wrote, is "reducing — and ultimately ending — our use of privately operated prisons."

"They simply do not provide the same level of correctional services, programs, and resources; they do not save substantially on costs; and as noted in a recent report by the Department's Office of Inspector General, they do not maintain the same level of safety and security," Yates wrote.

This really took me by surprise; I had thought this was beyond hope. The article doesn't mention my main beef with private prisons though, which would be the incentive for those profiting to lobby for and otherwise encourage increased jail time for more people, including making more things illegal (war on drugs), and increased chances of wrongful prosecution.

Related Coverage:

http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/20880-for-profit-prisons-eight-statistics-that-show-the-problems
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/eric-lotke/the-real-problem-with-pri_b_8279488.html
https://www.aclu.org/blog/private-prisons-are-problem-not-solution

[Continues...]

"exec" writes:

The Airlander 10—also known as the world's largest aircraft, better known as a giant, ass-shaped vessel—took off for the first time today.

The "flying bum," as it's apparently known, was supposed to take its maiden voyage on Sunday, but the flight was postponed due to "a slight technical issue." The aircraft's maker, Hybrid Air Vehicles, didn't say on Sunday when the flight would happen, but luckily for ass and aircraft enthusiasts everywhere, it finally took off from Cardington airfield near London.

The flight itself wasn't long—just half an hour, according to the AP—but apparently drew a crowd of hundreds. The 302-foot aircraft combines elements of "fixed wing aircraft and helicopters with lighter-than-air technology," resulting in a Frankenstein-esque behemoth that its creators say can stay in the air for over two weeks unmanned.

The AP says the Airlander 10 was originally created for the US military, which wanted to use it "for surveillance in Afghanistan," but the plan was axed in 2013. (It's hard to miss a giant butt.)

http://gizmodo.com/worlds-largest-aircraft-takes-off-for-the-first-time-s-1785420329

-- submitted from IRC

[Ed note: This is the world's largest aircraft, currently, but the Graf Zeppelin had nearly three times the volume.]

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes in about an article from Observer.com:

Excerpt:

"It's certainly possible that an NSA [National Security Agency] hacker goofed massively and left files in the wrong place at the wrong time. Human error can never be ruled out. Russian cybersleuths carefully watch for possible NSA operations online—just as we look for theirs—and even a single slip-up with Top Secret hacking tools could invite a disastrous compromise.

However, it's far more likely that this information was stolen by an insider. There's something fishy about the official story here. It's far-fetched to think a small group of unknown hackers could infiltrate NSA. Furthermore, explained a former agency scientist, the set-up implied in the account given by The Shadow Brokers makes little sense: "No one puts their exploits on a [command-and-control] server...That's not a thing." In other words, there was no "hack" here at all.

It's much more plausible that NSA has a Kremlin mole (or moles) lurking in its ranks who stole this information and passed it to Russian intelligence for later use. This isn't surprising, since NSA has known since at least 2010 of one or more Russian moles in its ranks and agency counterintelligence has yet to expose them."

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

Chrome, Firefox and other web browsers are plagued by vulnerabilities that can be exploited to spoof their address bar. Some of the affected vendors are still working on addressing the issues.

Pakistan-based researcher Rafay Baloch discovered that the address bar in Google Chrome, also known as the omnibox, can be tricked into flipping URLs.

The problem, which affects Chrome for Android, is related to how Arabic and Hebrew text is written from right to left (RTL). If an attacker's URL starts with an IP address and it contains an Arabic character, the URL's host and path are reversed.

For example, the URL 127.0.0.1/ا/http://example.com becomes http://example.com/‭ا/127.0.0.1 as it contains the "ا" character, the Arabic letter alef, which causes the URL to be rendered RTL. The method works with other Arabic characters as well, as long as they are the rightmost "strong" character – the numbers and the dots in the IP address are considered "weak" characters.

"The IP address part can be easily hided specially on mobile browsers by selecting a long URL (google.com/fakepath/fakepath/fakepath/... /127.0.0.1) in order to make the attack look more realistic," Baloch explained in a blog post. "In order to make the attack more realistic unicode version of padlock can be used in order to demonstrate the presence of SSL."

Original Submission

MrPlow writes:

Submitted via IRC for cmn32480 with a story that appeared in ScienceAlert:

Australian researchers have come up with a non-invasive ultrasound technology that clears the brain of neurotoxic amyloid plaques - structures that are responsible for memory loss and a decline in cognitive function in Alzheimer's patients.

If a person has Alzheimer's disease, it's usually the result of a build-up of two types of lesions - amyloid plaques, and neurofibrillary tangles. Amyloid plaques sit between the neurons and end up as dense clusters of beta-amyloid molecules, a sticky type of protein that clumps together and forms plaques.

Neurofibrillary tangles are found inside the neurons of the brain, and they're caused by defective tau proteins that clump up into a thick, insoluble mass. This causes tiny filaments called microtubules to get all twisted, which disrupts the transportation of essential materials such as nutrients and organelles along them, just like when you twist up the vacuum cleaner tube.

[...] Publishing in Science Translational Medicine , the team describes the technique as using a particular type of ultrasound called a focused therapeutic ultrasound, which non-invasively beams sound waves into the brain tissue. By oscillating super-fast, these sound waves are able to gently open up the blood-brain barrier, which is a layer that protects the brain against bacteria, and stimulate the brain's microglial cells to activate. Microglila cells are basically waste-removal cells, so they're able to clear out the toxic beta-amyloid clumps that are responsible for the worst symptoms of Alzheimer's.

The team reports fully restoring the memory function of 75 percent of the mice they tested it on, with zero damage to the surrounding brain tissue. They found that the treated mice displayed improved performance in three memory tasks - a maze, a test to get them to recognise new objects, and one to get them to remember the places they should avoid.

[...] The team says they're planning on starting trials with higher animal models, such as sheep, and hope to get their human trials underway in 2017.

Original Submission

-- OriginalOwner_ writes:

Medical Daily reports

Utilizing data from four decades of U.S. government drug use surveys, an extensive and easy-to-use collection of charts has just been created.

[...] The Brian C. Bennett Drug Charts provide a more accurate and illuminating picture of the use and abuse of drugs in America. The visual data components break down people's habits consuming alcohol, amphetamines, cocaine, crack cocaine, hallucinogens, heroin, inhalants, LSD, marijuana, MDMA, methamphetamines, nonmedical prescription pills, nonmedical prescription pain relievers, oxycontin, PCP, sedatives, stimulants, and tranquilizers.

"The Bennett charts graphically illustrate the natural course of the use of psychoactive drugs", William Martin, director of the Baker Institute's Drug Policy Program, and Katharine Neill, the Alfred C. Glassell III Postdoctoral Fellow in Drug Policy at the Baker Institute, wrote in an issue brief called Drugs by the Numbers: The Brian C. Bennett Drug Charts.

"Most people who ever use such drugs stop using them shortly after initiation or a period of (usually brief) experimentation. As the introduction to the collection explains, this pattern is closely correlated with age, with illicit drug use (and other risky behaviors) reaching a peak between 18 and 20, declining sharply by age 26 and then dropping gradually over the rest of the lifespan", the researchers explained.

"This calls into question policies that levy harsh penalties and apply indelible criminal records to people for what may be experimental or incidental use likely to stop on its own in the normal course of maturation without treatment, 12-step programs or relapse. More rational and compassionate responses exist and deserve close attention."

Original Submission

The Mighty Buzzard writes:

Some exceedingly odd news today from the world of Microsoft:

Today's customers live in a multi-platform, multi-cloud, multi-OS world – that's just reality. This world brings new challenges and customers need tools to make everything work together. Microsoft is working company-wide to deliver management tools that empower customers to manage any platform, from anywhere, on any device, using Linux or Windows. This shift to a more open, customer-obsessed approach to deliver innovation is one of the things that makes me most excited to come to work every day.

You've heard Satya Nadella say "Microsoft loves Linux" and that's never been more true than now. Nearly one in three VMs on Azure are Linux. Nearly 60 percent of third-party IaaS offers in the Azure Marketplace are open source software (OSS). We have forged strong industry partners to extend choice to our customers. We've announced SQL Server on Linux, as well as open sourced .NET. We added Bash to Windows 10 to make it a great platform for developing OSS. And, we're active contributors and participants to numerous open source projects (e.g. OpenSSH, FreeBSD, Mesos, Docker, Linux and many more) across the industry.

Today, we are taking the next step in our journey. I am extremely excited to share that PowerShell is open sourced and available on Linux. (For those of you who need a refresher, PowerShell is a task-based command-line shell and scripting language built on the .NET Framework to help IT professionals control and automate the administration of the Windows, and now Linux, operating systems and the applications that run on them.) I'm going to share a bit more about our journey getting here, and will tell you how Microsoft Operations Management Suite can enhance the PowerShell experience.

I have no words. Well, I do but they're mostly of the four-letter variety and in random order.

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes:

The study is under peer review and TFA is based on the preprint submitted to mBio.

In Soviet Russia ...

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/08/anthrax-genome-reveals-secrets-about-soviet-bioweapons-accident
http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2016/08/16/069914

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes:

http://www.fda.gov/AnimalVeterinary/NewsEvents/CVMUpdates/ucm490246.htm
http://journals.plos.org/plosntds/article?id=10.1371/journal.pntd.0003864
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aedes_aegypti#Genetic_modification

Previously: Genetically-Modified Mosquito Company Expands Operations

Original Submission

-- OriginalOwner_ writes:

Democracy Now! reports via AlterNet

Ken Salazar is a former U.S. Senator from Colorado who now works at WilmerHale, one of the most influential lobbying firms in Washington. Some groups have criticized Salazar's selection due to his vocal support of fracking, the Trans-Pacific Partnership, and the Keystone XL pipeline.

In addition to Ken Salazar, other leaders of the transition team include former Obama National Security Adviser Tom Donilon, Center for American Progress head Neera Tanden, former Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm, and Maggie Williams, the director of Harvard's Institute of Politics.

[...] WilmerHale [represents] corporate clients across the board--Cigna, for instance. Cigna is a healthcare giant that is fighting for a merger with Anthem. WilmerHale represents them, Delta Airlines, Verizon, investment firms, a mining company. So, WilmerHale is a major law and lobbying firm.

Ken Salazar is not a registered lobbyist at WilmerHale; he is a partner there. Interestingly enough, Hillary Clinton had published a year ago an op-ed deriding the revolving door where lawmakers leave office and become lobbyists or help special interests. And she had specifically said that she was concerned about lawmakers who go into that line of work, public policy work, for corporate clients, but do not register as a lobbyist, which seems to fit the description of Ken Salazar.

Original Submission

The Mighty Buzzard writes:

Karl Bode over at Techdirt brings us news that NPR will no longer be allowing comments on its website in order to promote relationships and conversation:

For several years now we've documented the rise in websites that shutter their comment sections, effectively muzzling their own on-site communities. Usually this is because websites are too lazy and cheap to moderate or cultivate real conversation, or they're not particularly keen on having readers point out their inevitable errors in such a conspicuous location. But you can't just come out and admit this -- so what we get is all manner of disingenuous prattle from website editors about how the comments section is being closed because they just really value conversation, or are simply trying to build better relationships.

NPR appears to be the latest in this trend du jour, with Managing Editor of digital news Scott Montgomery penning a new missive over at the website saying the comments are closing as of August 23:

"After much experimentation and discussion, we've concluded that the comment sections on NPR.org stories are not providing a useful experience for the vast majority of our users. In order to prioritize and strengthen other ways of building community and engagement with our audience, we will discontinue story-page comments on NPR.org on August 23."

Again, nothing says we "love and are engaged with" our community quite like preventing them from being able to speak to you on site (this muzzle represents my love for you, darling). The logic is, as Montgomery proceeds to proclaim, that social media is just so wonderful, on-site dialogue is no longer important:

"Social media is now one of our most powerful sources for audience interaction. Our desks and programs run more than 30 Facebook pages and more than 50 Twitter accounts. We maintain vibrant presences on Snapchat, Instagram and Tumblr. Our main Facebook page reaches more than 5 million people and recently has been the springboard for hundreds of hours of live video interaction and audience-first projects such as our 18,000-member "Your Money and Your Life" group."

And while those are all excellent additional avenues of interaction and traffic generation, it's still not quite the same as building brand loyalty through cultivating community and conversation on site. By outsourcing all conversation to Facebook, you're not really engaging in your readers, you're herding them to a homogonized[sic], noisy pasture where they're no longer your problem. In short, we want you to comment -- we just want you to comment privately or someplace else so our errors aren't quite so painfully highlighted and we no longer have to try to engage you publicly. All for the sake of building deeper relationships, of course.

Say it with me now: control the narrative at all costs.

Original Submission