Category: News

NIST bans Vista in major blow to Microsoft

NIST bans Vista in major blow to Microsoft | ZDNet Government Blog | ZDNet.com
The National Institute of Standards and Technology isn’t just another federal agency – it sets the standards for federal computing. And NIST doesn’t like Vista. In fact it has banned it from its internal networks, according to document obtained by InformationWeek. IW obtained a copy of the formal agenda for an April 10 meeting at which tech staffers will explain their concerns and discuss “the current ban of this operating system on NIST networks,” the newsweekly said.

This follows news that the Department of Transportation and the Federal Aviation Administration are also banning Vista. FAA CIO Dave Bowen told InformationWeek he wold consider running a combination of Linux and Google Apps. Among other things, Bowen said he is concerned that Windows Vista may be incompatible with many software applications already in use at the FAA

Game over for China’s net addicts at Beijing boot camp

FEATURE – Game over for China’s net addicts at Beijing boot camp | Reuters.com
Patients, overwhelmingly male and aged 14 to 19, wake up in common dormitories at 6.15 a.m. to do morning calisthenics and march on the cracked concrete grounds wearing khaki fatigues. Drill sergeants bark orders at them when they are not attending group and one-on-one counselling sessions. Therapy includes patients simulating war games with laser guns.

“Many of the Internet addicts here have rarely considered other peoples’ feelings. The military training allows them to feel what it’s like to be a part of a team,” said Xu Leiting, a psychologist at the hospital. “It also helps their bodies recover and makes them stronger”.

At the end of 2006, China had 137 million Internet users, an increase of 23.4 percent from the previous year. Of users under 18, an estimated 13 percent — or 2.3 million — are Internet addicts, according to a 2006 study by the China National Children’s Centre.

Addiction to the Internet is blamed for most juvenile crime in China, a number of suicides, and deaths from exhaustion by players unable to tear themselves away from marathon game sessions. In 2005, a Shanghai court handed a life sentence to an online game player who stabbed a competitor to death for stealing his cyber-sword — a virtual prize earned during game-play.

Preserved in ice for 100 years, the whisky Shackleton used to keep out the cold

Preserved in ice for 100 years, the whisky Shackleton used to keep out the cold | News | This is London
They say whisky matures with age…but leaving it embedded in the Antarctic ice for almost 100 years may be going a bit far.

Two cases of MacKinlay’s Rare Old Whisky that Ernest Shackleton’s team abandoned on their failed 1908 expedition to the South Pole have been uncovered intact.

The pine cases were discovered by a conservation team excavating ice from beneath the hut where Shackleton and his men sheltered from the long, savage winter. They showed almost no damage from the ice and the company’s stag’s head logo is clearly visible.

Video Game Helps Find Depression

NIMH: Virtual-Reality Video Game Helps Link Depression to Specific Brain Area
Scientists are using a virtual-reality, three-dimensional video game that challenges spatial memory as a new tool for assessing the link between depression and the hippocampus, the brain’s memory hub. Spatial memory is the memory of how things are oriented in space and how to get to them.

Earlier studies showed that people with mood disorders tend to have smaller hippocampi than nondepressed people. Other studies showed that depressed people have memory problems. This study strengthened the evidence of a link between the hippocampus and depression by showing that people with hippocampus dysfunction — as revealed by spatial memory problems detected by the new video game — are more likely to be depressed

Predisposition to Addiction Found in Cocaine Study

Scientific American: Predisposition to Addiction Found in Cocaine Study
The findings suggest that a lack of D2-family receptors may predict both the risk of anticipatory impulsivity as well as a predisposition to behaviors like drug and other addictions such as compulsive gambling and shopping. “This is probably one of several ‘vulnerability’ markers, for future drug addiction,” Dalley says. “What determines the final ‘tipping’ point is obviously very complex—[involving] genes and environment, etc.”

The real value of the new research may be that these receptors can provide new and more effective therapies for current addicts, says Michael Nader, a physiologist and pharmacologist at the Wake Forest University School of Medicine in Winston-Salem, N.C. “This identifies a target,” he says. “If you have low D2 levels you’re more vulnerable; if you change the environment, you can increase those levels.” He suggests that treatments that stimulate production of D2 receptors could be beneficial.

“Most licensed treatments are substitution therapies”—such as methadone in the case of heroin addiction—”so they maintain the addicted state, but more safely,” says Dalley. “We feel that newer treatments should aim to prevent relapse.” He notes that the behavior of the impulsive study rats normalized after they went through withdrawal from cocaine. “The potential here,” he says, “is [in] treatments that retard the return of impulsivity in post-cocaine addicts, [which] may be an important contributor to relapse.”

Video: Rescue of 200 Stranded Horses – Netherlands

You may have heard about the herd of horses that were trapped for 3 days on a tiny piece of land in wind and rain in the Netherlands a short while ago? They were trapped on a small piece of land, surrounded by water. Their natural instincts kept them from swimming to solid land, from their tiny perch. There were about 100 horses huddled together against the wind and water.

The Nation was mesmerized watching this drama as 18 of the horses perished, while others were slowly weakening. First the fire department, then the Dutch army, tried to rescue them – both efforts were unsuccessful. Then, with a break in the weather, the water level went down and four women hatched a plan to attempt a rescue by luring the horses into the water. Here’s a video of the successful rescue. Thanks to Mike Douso

Storm rider’s miracle survival

Storm rider’s miracle survival – National – theage.com.au   Photo: Robert Chappel
Robert Chappel A German paraglider survived lightning, pounding hail, minus 40-degree temperatures and oxygen deprivation after a storm system sucked her to an altitude higher than Mount Everest.

Ewa Wisnierska, 35, passed out due to a lack of oxygen and flew unconscious for up to an hour covered in ice after reaching an altitude of 9947 metres – near the cruising height of a jumbo jet.

The champion sportswoman’s survival was like “winning Lotto 10 times in a row”, Australia’s most experienced paraglider says.

Wisnierska says experience told her she had no chance of survival, but a doctor told her that blacking out had saved her.

“It was because that I got unsconscious because then the heart slows down all the functions – it saved my life,” she told ABC radio. Continue reading “Storm rider’s miracle survival”

Wild eagles attack paraglider

Daily Times – Leading News Resource of Pakistan – Wild eagles attack paraglider
Britain’s top female paraglider has cheated death after being attacked by a pair of ‘screeching’ wild eagles while competition flying in Australia.

Nicky Moss, 38, watched terrified as two huge birds began tearing into her parachute canopy, one becoming tangled in her lines and clawing at her head 2,500 meters (8,200ft) in the air.

The encounter happened on Monday while Moss — a member of the British paragliding team — was preparing for world titles this month at Manilla in northern New South Wales state. One of the giant wedge-tailed eagles became wrapped in the canopy lines and slid down toward Moss, lashing at her face with its talons as her paraglider plummeted toward the ground. Veteran Australian paraglider pilot Godfrey Wenness said eagle attacks were rare, but Moss had been flying in an area where the birds were not accustomed to human pilots. reuters

Smoking can lead to a slow and painful death

Photo – Lutte et campagne anti-tabac – atc-Basset

So says the caption on this graphic photo of a tumor on a package of cigarettes in Belgium. Other EU countries are planning to follow suit. Click on the French Link to view the rest of the graphics planned for the next 3 years.

 Evidence from Canada, which became the first country to put graphic pictures on cigarette packs in 2001, suggests he is right. Almost a third of former smokers in Canada say the images encouraged them to quit, and 7 out of 10 adults say the warnings were an effective way of informing them about the health effects of smoking.

Belgium can now picture the worst from smoking

The Iran Option That Isn’t on the Table

Vali Nasr and Ray Takeyh – The Iran Option That Isn’t on the Table – washingtonpost.com
Paradoxically, to liberalize the theocratic state, the United States would do better to shelve its containment strategy and embark on a policy of unconditional dialogue and sanctions relief. A reduced American threat would deprive the hard-liners of the conflict they need to justify their concentration of power. In the meantime, as Iran became assimilated into the global economy, the regime’s influence would inevitably yield to the private sector, with its demands for accountability and reform.

It is important to appreciate that Iran has a political system without precedent or parallel in modern history. The struggle there is not just between reactionaries and reformers, conservatives and liberals, but fundamentally between the state and society. A subtle means of diminishing the state and empowering the society is, in the end, the best manner of promoting not only democracy but also nuclear disarmament. Credit Photo Sack/Star Tribune