Harsh Childhood Environments Linked to Drastic Chromosome Ageing
April 9th, 2014Via: New Scientist:
Children growing up in severely disadvantaged circumstances can experience drastic chromosome ageing. By the time they are 9 years old their telomeres – the caps on the ends of chromosomes that shrink each time cells divide – can be as short as those of someone decades older. And a particular combination of genes seems to make children flourish in nurturing environments but suffer in harsh environments.
Daniel Notterman from Penn State University in University Park and colleagues found the effect in a group of 40 9-year-old boys, half of whom were from extremely harsh backgrounds and half from privileged ones.
Telomeres protect chromosomes from damage, so their shortening over time is thought to be responsible for some of the negative effects of ageing.
Children whose mothers had changed partners more than once by the time they were 9 had telomeres 40 per cent shorter than those whose mothers didn’t change relationships. And those with mothers who’d gone to college had 35 per cent longer telomeres than those who didn’t, on average. They also found shorter telomeres were associated with harsh parenting and younger mothers.
“The social environment really conditions the way that these children are living, and their health,” says Notterman. “The fact that these people have early telomere shortening by the age of 9 could be an argument for some people who want to intervene earlier in the lives of children, by getting them in school, for example.”
U.S. Government Spied on Human Rights Workers
April 9th, 2014Shocker.
Via: Guardian:
The US has spied on the staff of prominent human rights organisations, Edward Snowden has told the Council of Europe in Strasbourg, Europe’s top human rights body.
Giving evidence via a videolink from Moscow, Snowden said the National Security Agency – for which he worked as a contractor – had deliberately snooped on bodies like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch.
He told council members: “The NSA has specifically targeted either leaders or staff members in a number of civil and non-governmental organisations … including domestically within the borders of the United States.” Snowden did not reveal which groups the NSA had bugged.
The assembly asked Snowden if the US spied on the “highly sensitive and confidential communications” of major rights bodies such as Amnesty and Human Rights Watch, as well as on similar smaller regional and national groups. He replied: “The answer is, without question, yes. Absolutely.”
Serious Reading Takes a Hit from Online Scanning and Skimming
April 9th, 2014Via: Washington Post:
Claire Handscombe has a commitment problem online. Like a lot of Web surfers, she clicks on links posted on social networks, reads a few sentences, looks for exciting words, and then grows restless, scampering off to the next page she probably won’t commit to.
“I give it a few seconds — not even minutes — and then I’m moving again,” says Handscombe, a 35-year-old graduate student in creative writing at American University.
But it’s not just online anymore. She finds herself behaving the same way with a novel.
“It’s like your eyes are passing over the words but you’re not taking in what they say,” she confessed. “When I realize what’s happening, I have to go back and read again and again.”
To cognitive neuroscientists, Handscombe’s experience is the subject of great fascination and growing alarm. Humans, they warn, seem to be developing digital brains with new circuits for skimming through the torrent of information online. This alternative way of reading is competing with traditional deep reading circuitry developed over several millennia.
…
There is concern that young children’s affinity and often mastery of their parents’ devices could stunt the development of deep reading skills.
Beef Prices Hit All-Time High in U.S.
April 9th, 2014Via: Los Angeles Times:
Come grilling season, expect your sirloin steak to come with a hearty side of sticker shock.
Beef prices have reached all-time highs in the U.S. and aren’t expected to come down any time soon.
Extreme weather has thinned the nation’s beef cattle herds to levels last seen in 1951, when there were about half as many mouths to feed in America.
“We’ve seen strong prices before but nothing this extreme,” said Dennis Smith, a commodities broker for Archer Financial Services in Chicago. “This is really new territory.”
The retail value of “all-fresh” USDA choice-grade beef jumped to a record $5.28 a pound in February, up from $4.91 the same time a year ago. The same grade of beef cost $3.97 as recently as 2008.
Takeda, Lilly Jury Awards $9 Billion Over Actos Cancer Risks
April 9th, 2014Via: Bloomberg:
Takeda Pharmaceutical Co. and Eli Lilly & Co. were ordered to pay a combined $9 billion in punitive damages after a federal court jury found they hid the cancer risks of their Actos diabetes medicine in the first U.S. trial of its kind.
Navy’s New Railgun Can Hurl a Shell Over 5,000 MPH
April 9th, 2014Via: Wired:
The U.S. Navy is tapping the power of the Force to wage war.
Its latest weapon is an electromagnetic railgun launcher. It uses a form of electromagnetic energy known as the Lorentz force to hurl a 23-pound projectile at speeds exceeding Mach 7. Engineers already have tested this futuristic weapon on land, and the Navy plans to begin sea trials aboard a Joint High Speed Vessel Millinocket in 2016.
LAPD Officers Tampered with In-Car Recording Equipment
April 9th, 2014Via: Los Angeles Times:
Los Angeles police officers tampered with voice recording equipment in dozens of patrol cars in an effort to avoid being monitored while on duty, according to records and interviews.
An inspection by Los Angeles Police Department investigators found about half of the estimated 80 cars in one South L.A. patrol division were missing antennas, which help capture what officers say in the field. The antennas in at least 10 more cars in nearby divisions had also been removed.
LAPD Chief Charlie Beck and other top officials learned of the problem last summer but chose not to investigate which officers were responsible. Rather, the officials issued warnings against continued meddling and put checks in place to account for antennas at the start and end of each patrol shift.
NATO Warns Russia Against Further Intervention
April 8th, 2014
Via: BBC:
Nato has warned Russia that further intervention in Ukraine would be a “historic mistake” with grave consequences.
Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said Moscow must pull back troops it has massed on the Ukrainian border.
On Tuesday, Ukraine regained control of one of the government buildings occupied by pro-Russian activists in the east of the country.
Moscow has said that using force to end the protests could lead to civil war.
Kiev says the unrest in the east is being fomented by Russia following its annexation of the Crimean peninsula.
Russia took control in Crimea – where Russian-speakers are in a majority – after a disputed referendum.
In another development, the Kremlin said Russian President Vladimir Putin would meet senior officials on Wednesday to discuss economic ties with Ukraine – including energy supplies.
Ukraine owes Russia’s Gazprom $2.2bn (£1.3bn) for supplies of natural gas and missed a deadline to pay its March bill by midnight on Monday. Previous disputes over the price of gas have seen Gazprom cut off supplies to Ukraine.
Al Sharpton’s Secret Work As FBI Informant
April 8th, 2014Via: The Smoking Gun:
The former mob snitch has become a regular in the White House, where he has met with the 44th president in the East Room, the Roosevelt Room, and the Oval Office. He has also attended Obama Christmas parties, speeches, policy announcements, and even watched a Super Bowl with the First Family (an evening the man has called “one of the highlights of my life”). During these gatherings, he has mingled with cabinet members, top Obama aides, military leaders, business executives, and members of Congress. His former confederates were a decidedly dicier lot: ex-convicts, extortionists, heroin traffickers, and mob henchmen. The man’s surreptitious recordings, FBI records show, aided his government handlers in the successful targeting of powerful Mafia figures with nicknames like Benny Eggs, Chin, Fritzy, Corky, and Baldy Dom.
Later this week, Obama will travel to New York and appear in a Manhattan hotel ballroom at the side of the man whom FBI agents primarily referred to as “CI-7”–short for confidential informant #7–in secret court filings. In those documents, investigators vouched for him as a reliable, productive, and accurate source of information about underworld figures.
The ex-informant has been one of Obama’s most unwavering backers, a cheerleader who has nightly bludgeoned the president’s Republican opponents in televised broadsides. For his part, Obama has sought the man’s counsel, embraced him publicly, and saluted his “commitment to fight injustice and inequality.” The president has even commented favorably on his friend’s svelte figure, the physical manifestation of a rehabilitation effort that coincided with Obama’s ascension to the White House. This radical makeover has brought the man wealth, a daily TV show, bespoke suits, a luxury Upper West Side apartment, and a spot on best seller lists.
Most importantly, he has the ear of the President of the United States, an equally remarkable and perplexing achievement for the former FBI asset known as “CI-7,” the Rev. Al Sharpton.
‘Heartbleed’ Bug in OpenSSL Puts Encrypted Communications at Risk
April 8th, 2014Via: PC World:
Computer security experts are advising administrators to patch a severe flaw in a software library used by millions of websites to encrypt sensitive communications.
The flaw, nicknamed “Heartbleed,” is contained in several versions of OpenSSL, a cryptographic library that enables SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) or TLS (Transport Security Layer) encryption. Most websites use either SSL or TLS, which is indicated in browsers with a padlock symbol.
The flaw, which was introduced in December 2011, has been fixed in OpenSSL 1.0.1g, which was released on Monday.
The vulnerable versions of OpenSSL are 1.0.1 through 1.0.1f with two exceptions: OpenSSL 1.0.0 branch and 0.9.8, according to a special website set up by researchers who found the problem.
If exploited, the flaw could allow attackers to monitor all information passed between a user and a Web service or even decrypt past traffic they’ve collected.
“This allows attackers to eavesdrop communications, steal data directly from the services and users and to impersonate services and users,” the researchers wrote.
The bug was discovered by three researchers from Codenomicon, a computer security company, and Neel Mehta, who works on security for Google.
