Disney’s Magic Band
March 10th, 2015A cautionary tale.
Via: Wired:
Will the world at large ever become something akin to Disney World, loaded with sensors attuned to our every move, designed to free us? There are signs. It’s already starting to appear on Disney cruise ships, and Staggs says airlines, sports leagues, and sports teams have asked about the technology. “We’re just at the beginning of understanding what to do with this,” he says. What Staggs doesn’t share, but what former team members do, is that Disney already has conceived, designed, and engineered many more features that seem to border on science fiction—features even more ambitious than delivering your food to you without your having to ask.
The MagicBand contains sensors that let guests swipe onto rides and allow Disney to pinpoint their location. At Be Our Guest, they’re what enable the radios in the table and ceiling to triangulate your location so your server can find you. If Disney decides to install those sensors throughout the park, a new world of data opens up. They could have Mickey and Snow White find you. They might use the park’s myriad cameras to capture candid moments of your family—enjoying rides, meeting Snow White—and stitch them together into a personalized film. (The product teams called this the Story Engine.) But they might also know when you’ve waited too long in line and email you a coupon for free ice cream or a pass to another ride. And with that, they’ll have hooked the white whale of customer service: Turning a negative experience into a positive one. It recasts your memories of a place—that’s why casinos comp you drinks and shows when you lose at the tables.
Though Franklin wouldn’t comment on the particulars of these possibilities, he did offer an intriguing summary of them. “What people call the Internet of Things is just a technological underpinning that misses the point, ” he says. “This is about the experiential Internet. The guest doesn’t need to know how it happened. It’s about the magic of the food arriving.”
The CIA Campaign to Steal Apple’s Secrets
March 10th, 2015Via: First Look:
RESEARCHERS WORKING with the Central Intelligence Agency have conducted a multi-year, sustained effort to break the security of Apple’s iPhones and iPads, according to top-secret documents obtained by The Intercept.
The security researchers presented their latest tactics and achievements at a secret annual gathering, called the “Jamboree,” where attendees discussed strategies for exploiting security flaws in household and commercial electronics. The conferences have spanned nearly a decade, with the first CIA-sponsored meeting taking place a year before the first iPhone was released.
New Memories Implanted in Mice While They Sleep
March 10th, 2015Via: New Scientist:
Benchenane’s team used electrodes to monitor the activity of mice’s place cells as the animals explored an enclosed arena, and in each mouse they identified a cell that fired only in a certain arena location. Later, when the mice were sleeping, the researchers monitored the animals’ brain activity as they replayed the day’s experiences. A computer recognised when the specific place cell fired; each time it did, a separate electrode would stimulate brain areas associated with reward.
When the mice awoke, they made a beeline for the location represented by the place cell that had been linked to a rewarding feeling in their sleep. A brand new memory – linking a place with reward – had been formed.
It is the first time a conscious memory has been created in animals during sleep.
“CDC Seeks More Clues to Bioterror Lab Accident”
March 10th, 2015Via: USA Today:
Federal health investigators are back at the Tulane National Primate Research Center in Louisiana this week seeking the source of the lab accident that has somehow exposed at least seven monkeys to a deadly bioterror bacteria. State officials, meanwhile, are planning to test wildlife and domestic animals in the surrounding area for possible exposure.
Investigators from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention began arriving Monday at the sprawling laboratory and monkey breeding compound north of New Orleans. The CDC will be taking a closer work at worker safety and health practices in the center’s veterinary hospital, said agency spokesman Jason McDonald. The hospital has been suspected as the site of the monkeys’ exposure last fall to the bacterium, Burkholderia pseudomallei, which is not found in the United States.
Despite several weeks of investigation, officials still don’t how the bacteria escaped a secure lab elsewhere at the 500-acre research complex, nor do they know the extent of the contamination — including whether bacteria have colonized soil or water in the huge outdoor primate breeding colony cages on the property. The outdoor monkey cages are near a school, homes, wetlands and a river.
The monkeys were not part of experiments and should have never crossed paths with the bacterium, which can cause serious and fatal illness in humans and animals that may not develop for days to years after exposure. The bacterium is highly regulated as a research material because of its potential to be used in a bioweapon. The bacterium is found primarily in soil and water in Southeast Asia and northern Australia.
New Zealand Prime Minister Retracts Vow To Resign if Mass Surveillance Is Shown
March 10th, 2015Shocker.
Via: First Look:
So now that it’s proven that New Zealand does exactly that which Prime Minister Key vowed would cause him to resign if it were proven, is he preparing his resignation speech? No: that’s something a political official with a minimal amount of integrity would do. Instead – even as he now refuses to say what he has repeatedly said before: that GCSB does not engage in mass surveillance – he’s simply retracting his pledge as though it were a minor irritant, something to be casually tossed aside…
Gas Industry’s Solution to Toxic Wastewater: Spray It on Roads
March 9th, 2015Via: Newsweek:
The wastewater spread on roads comes from oil and gas wells. To drill, production companies send large volumes of water down the well shaft. The water rises back to the surface as a brine laden with chloride (a salt) as well as a number of other constituents like radium and barium, which are radioactive. The brine used on roads comes from conventional oil and gas production, not hydraulic fracturing or “fracking.”
But according to Duke University geochemist Avner Vengosh, the conventional drilling waste is nearly identical in many of its most toxic components to the highly controversial fracking waste. Vengosh says the levels of radioactive material found in conventional brine samples taken from New York are equal to levels he has seen in fracking brine, for example.
Driverless Car Trials in 30 U.S. Cities by End of 2016
March 9th, 2015Via: Observer:
Automated vehicle pilot projects will roll out in the U.K. and in six to 10 U.S. cities this year, with the first unveiling projected to be in Tampa, Fla. as soon as late spring. The following year, trial programs will launch in 12 to 20 more U.S. locations, which means driverless cars will be on roads in up to 30 U.S. cities by the end of 2016. The trials will be run by Comet LLC, a consulting firm focused on automated vehicle commercialization.
“We’re looking at college campuses, theme parks, airports, downtown areas—places like that,” Corey Clothier, a strategist for automated transportation systems who runs the firm told, The New York Observer.
He explained that they’re focusing on semi-controlled areas and that the driverless vehicles will serve a number of different purposes, both public and private. The vehicles themselves, which are all developed by Veeo Systems, will even vary from two-seaters to full-size buses that can transport 70 people. At some locations, the vehicles will drive on their own paths, occasionally crossing vehicle and pedestrian traffic, while at others, the vehicles will be completely integrated with existing cars.
Altered Genes, Twisted Truth: How the Venture to Genetically Engineer Our Food Has Subverted Science, Corrupted Government, and Systematically Deceived the Public by Steven M. Druker
March 9th, 2015Via: Amazon:
This book uncovers the biggest scientific fraud of our age. It tells the fascinating and frequently astounding story of how the massive enterprise to restructure the genetic core of the world’s food supply came into being, how it advanced by consistently violating the protocols of science, and how for more than three decades, hundreds of eminent biologists and esteemed institutions have systematically contorted the truth in order to conceal the unique risks of its products–and get them onto our dinner plates.
Related:
Jane Goodall and Steven Druker Expose US Government Fraud over GMOs
Research Misconduct Often Unreported in Published Studies
March 9th, 2015Via: Reuters:
When U.S. health regulators find serious problems with how medical researchers collect their data, the researchers’ final reports often don’t mention it, a new analysis suggests.
Out of 78 published papers reporting on clinical trials in which the U.S. Food and Drug Administration found very serious issues, only three mentioned any violations, the new report says.
“These are major things,” said Charles Seife, a journalism professor and the study’s author.
Using documents and data from 1998 to 2013, Seife and his students at New York University in New York City identified 57 clinical trials that received an “official action indicated” violation – the most serious type of violation for trials – for reasons including poor recordkeeping, false information and poor patient safety.
Among the 78 published analyses of data from these sanctioned trials, only three noted the violations, which included researchers falsifying the data and patients being included in the trial even though they weren’t eligible for it.
The problems that weren’t reported were sometimes egregious. One paper, for example, said all patients reported improvement, but in fact, the FDA found that one patient had a foot amputated two weeks after receiving the treatment.
In another case, the entire clinical trial was considered unreliable by the FDA – but the published paper didn’t mention that.
In another, researchers falsified data, which led to one patient’s death.
Data on these violations are not readily available. So it’s impossible to say how often tainted data are published and how often the violations are noted, Seife said.
“No one really knows unless you go through these documents that anyone is questioning the integrity of the trials,” he said.
China Takes Under the Dome Anti-Pollution Film Offline
March 9th, 2015Here’s a version with English subtitles.
Via: BBC:
The authorities in China have a removed from websites a popular documentary which highlights the country’s severe pollution problem.
Under the Dome explains the social and health costs of pollution, and was watched by more than 100 million people online, sparking debates.
It was removed just two days after Premier Li Keqiang called pollution a blight on people’s lives.
