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Submitted by sciencehabit
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+ - EU Votes for Universal Phone Charger

Submitted by SmartAboutThings
SmartAboutThings writes "The European Union has voted in favor of a draft legislation which lists among the “essential requirements” of electrical devices approved by the EU a compatibility with “universal” chargers . According to a German MEP, this move will eliminate 51,000 tonnes of electronic waste. The draft law was approved by an overwhelming majority of 550 votes to 12 . At the moment, according to estimates, there are around 30 different types of charger on the market, but manufacturers have two years at their disposal to get ready for the new restriction."


Submitted by Anonymous Coward

+ - Judge says prosecutors should follow the law. Prosecutors revolt.->

Submitted by Anonymous Coward



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+ - Einstein's 'Lost' Model Of the Universe Discovered 'Hiding in Plain Sight'

Submitted by Hugh Pickens DOT Com
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes "Dick Ahlstrom reports that Irish researchers have discovered a previously unknown model of the universe written in 1931 by physicist Albert Einstein that had been misfiled and effectively “lost” until its discovery last August while researchers been searching through a collection of Einstein’s papers put online by the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. “I was looking through drafts, but then slowly realised it was a draft of something very different,” says Dr O’Raifeartaigh. “I nearly fell off my chair. It was hidden in perfect plain sight. This particular manuscript was misfiled as a draft of something else.” In his paper, radically different from his previously known models of the universe, Einstein speculated the expanding universe could remain unchanged and in a “ steady state” because new matter was being continuously created from space. “It is what Einstein is attempting to do that would surprise most historians, because nobody had known this idea. It was later proposed by Fred Hoyle in 1948 and became controversial in the 1950s, the steady state model of the cosmos,” says O’Raifeartaigh. Hoyle argued that space could be expanding eternally and keeping a roughly constant density. It could do this by continually adding new matter, with elementary particles spontaneously popping up from space. Particles would then coalesce to form galaxies and stars, and these would appear at just the right rate to take up the extra room created by the expansion of space. Hoyle’s Universe was always infinite, so its size did not change as it expanded. It was in a ‘steady state’. “This finding confirms that Hoyle was not a crank,” says Simon Mitton. “If only Hoyle had known, he would certainly have used it to punch his opponents." Although Hoyle’s model was eventually ruled out by astronomical observations, it was at least mathematically consistent, tweaking the equations of Einstein’s general theory of relativity to provide a possible mechanism for the spontaneous generation of matter. Einstein's paper attracted no attention because Einstein abandoned it after he spotted a mistake and then didn’t publish it but the fact that Einstein experimented with the steady-state concept demonstrates Einstein's continued resistance to the idea of a Big Bang, which he at first found “abominable”, even though other theoreticians had shown it to be a natural consequence of his general theory of relativity."

+ - Spyware Enabled Open Source and Source Forge. Trust levels?->

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes "So. New PC which needs Win7 installed on it for work purposes. Have performed a virginal install to an unformatted disk. Whilst doing the updates, I decide to yank the development apps over off the BSD box via SFTP and decide "lets grab filezilla client, it's opensource and I trust it from sourceforge." So, from the project page, I downloaded the installed which comes from sourceforge and noticed it wants to install browser tool-bars. Cancel the installation instantly and walk away to do other things. When I returned 30mins later, I'm presented with malware. "PC Optimizer Pro" and a couple of it's friends. Was any of this software actually opensource? No. Did I want it? No. Trust in SourceForge .. less. Please comment, I've got a clean system to format and re-install and patch so I'll be here most of the day again."
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Posted by Soulskill

+ - Finnish Hacker Isolates GPS Coordinates from Youtube Video Soundtrack->

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes ""The signal sits alone on the left audio channel, so I can completely isolate it. Judging from the spectrogram, the modulation scheme seems to be BFSK, switching the carrier between 1200 and 2200 Hz. I demodulated it by filtering it with a lowpass and highpass sinc in SoX and comparing outputs. Now I had a bitstream at 1200 bps.""
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Submitted by Hugh Pickens DOT Com

+ - SPAM: Sleep disorders change human transcriptome

Submitted by cusabio1
cusabio1 writes "Italy Neurobehavioral Institute of Technology geneticist Valter Tucci ( not involved in the study ) , said: " I think it's pretty fresh and interesting changes in ig3v9e4 sleep time will result in a significant impact only need to detect these genes , we can see . the most far-reaching destructive effect . "

In the 1930s and 1940s, studies of circadian rhythm precursor Nathaniel Kleitman discovered that when he forced himself to comply with the 28 hours of sleep -wake cycle , his body temperature does not fluctuate like the normal 24-hour cycle. University of Surrey sleep physiologist Derk-Jan Dijk said: "When you're not the right time to sleep , the other will usually reduce the amplitude of circadian rhythms of people think that many of the problems arise during the jet lag or shift workers . are due to circadian rhythm disorders caused our problem is that the transcriptome in the end what happened to change ? "

Dijk and colleagues invited 22 volunteers into their clinical research center within three days the participants sleep latency four hours a day until they are changed during the day time sleep. Blood samples were taken periodically and analyzed transcripts chip , the researchers found that " the timing of the expression and regulation of these transcripts had a huge impact," co-author of the paper, University of Surrey , a molecular biologist and geneticist Simon Archer said sleep .

In the beginning of the experiment , nearly 6.5% of the participants followed the transcripts 24 hours rhythm , consistent with the estimated value of other Human Proinsulin ELISA Kit circadian gene expression . But at the end of three 28 hours cycle, only 1% of the expression of genes such periodic display . Dijk said: "This is a considerable decline which basically explains that when you break the routine of sleep , circadian rhythm amplitude decreases phenomenon extends to the molecular level. ."

Archer said that the rhythm can be attributed to the loss of several factors, including the overall decline in the amplitude of gene expression changes periodically and altered expression of time. "Some are no longer showing the circadian rhythm , some are bimodal . Usually gene expression during the day and at night peaked genes are damaged ."

Importantly, the body's master clock — the nucleus of the hypothalamus Cross (SCN) while continuing normally keep participants in blood melatonin levels showed a consistent 24-hour period to confirm this . Dijk said: " So we are beginning to see some areas of the brain in some aspects of rhythm is still intact , and some parts of the rhythm of the body is destroyed ." He and others believe that this non- synchronization of the body clock is after the jet lag and shift the root of many physiological problems arise.

By carefully to detect the loss of rhythmic gene expression , Dijk and his colleagues found that many are known factors regulating gene expression . For transcription of some genes , such as RNA polymerase II, with the other translation-related , such as ribosome initiation and elongation factors and proteins lose their 24-hour period . Even some clock genes , CLOCK and BMAL1 , including destroyed. Finally, they found that some genes involved in chromatin modification, such as methyl and acetyl transferase enzyme , also showed rhythmic fall."

+ - EU: Google should face $1bn privacy fine, not 'pocket money' amounts-> 1

Submitted by DW100
DW100 writes "Despite Google being fined €900,000 by Spanish authorities and €150,000 in France for its controversial privacy policies in recent months, the EU has admitted this is mere 'pocket money' to the company. Instead, a new legal regime that would have seen Google fined $1bn for breaching data protection laws is needed to make US companies fear and respect the law in Europe."
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+ - Consumers Don't Want Companies To Store Their Info->

Submitted by dinscott
dinscott writes "Consumer trust has fallen in each and every sector, both public and private. 69% survey responders say this decline in trust was solely down to a lack of trust in the organizations that hold their personal information.

Yet, despite consumer angst around the data issue, there is a lack of ownership by the general public towards it. Only 32% of consumers recognize their own involvement in keeping their data secure. Instead, consumers blame individuals, with over a third expecting to see repercussions for the member of staff deemed responsible and almost one in 10 holding the CEO personally responsible.

Trust is being hampered by the fact that consumers are failing to see the results of the data they provide. Over a quarter of respondents believing that telecoms and utility companies use their data solely to extract more money from them."

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