NYSE Pays a Paltry $5 Million Fine for Giving Private Customers a Trading Head Start
September 20th, 2012Via: IEEE:
On Friday, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) announced that it had administratively fined the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) $5 million (pdf) for allowing its private customers access to stock market information ahead of when it was available to the general public. This occurred from June 2008 to about mid-May 2010. The fine amounts to about a morning’s worth of revenue for the exchange.
Rethink Robotics
September 20th, 2012Via: IEEE:
Whereas traditional industrial robots perform one specific task with superhuman speed and precision, Baxter is neither particularly fast nor particularly precise. But it excels at just about any job that involves picking stuff up and putting it down somewhere else while simultaneously adapting to changes in its environment, like a misplaced part or a conveyor belt that suddenly changes speed.
Cryptogon Reader Signs Up for Hosting with BlueHost
September 20th, 2012Thanks to the owner of parabellumradio.com for signing up for hosting with BlueHost. Cryptogon received a $90 commission.
France: Monsanto’s GMO Corn Causes Cancer, Organ Damage in Rats
September 20th, 2012Update: Study Linking GM Maize to Rat Tumors Retracted, Author Unrepentant
Via: Nature:
Bowing to scientists’ near-universal scorn, the journal Food and Chemical Toxicology today fulfilled its threat to retract a controversial paper that claimed that a genetically modified (GM) maize causes serious disease in rats after the authors refused to withdraw it.
The paper, from a research group led by Gilles-Eric Séralini, a molecular biologist at the University of Caen, France, and published in 20121, showed “no evidence of fraud or intentional misrepresentation of the data”, said a statement from Elsevier, which publishes the journal. But the small number and type of animals used in the study means that “no definitive conclusions can be reached”. The known high incidence of tumours in the Sprague-Dawley rat ”cannot be excluded as the cause of the higher mortality and incidence observed in the treated groups”, it added.
Today’s move came as no surprise. Earlier this month, the journal’s editor-in-chief, Wallace Hayes, threatened retraction if Séralini refused to withdraw the paper, which is exactly what he announced at a press conference in Brussels this morning. Séralini and his team remained unrepentant, and allege that the retraction derives from the journal’s editorial appointment of biologist Richard Goodman, who previously worked for biotechnology giant Monsanto for seven years.
“The magazine reviewed our paper more than any other,” says co-author and medical doctor Joël Spiroux, who is also president of the Paris-based Committee for Research and Independent Information on Genetic Engineering (CRIIGEN), which collaborated in the study. The retraction is “a public-health scandal”, he says.
—
Update / Predictable: Nothing to See Here
Via: New York Times:
Two additional panels of experts in France said the rat study does not change their view of Monsnto’s engineered corn or the Roundup herbicide. See the postscript below.]
An intensively promoted and controversial French study claiming to find high tumor rates and early mortality in rats fed genetically modified corn and “safe” levels of the herbicide Roundup has been dismissed in a rare joint statement from France’s six scientific academies.
—End Update—
This image is from a French language story about the study posted at nouvelobs.com:
Rats, GMO Corn, RoundUp
Americans are literally made of the stuff: King Corn:
Via: AFP:
France’s government on Wednesday asked a health watchdog to carry out a probe, possibly leading to EU suspension of a genetically-modified corn, after a study in rats linked the grain to cancer.
Agriculture Minister Stephane Le Foll, Ecology Minister Delphine Batho and Health and Social Affairs Minister Marisol Touraine said they had asked the National Agency for Health Safety (ANSES) to investigate the finding.
“Depending on ANSES’ opinion, the government will urge the European authorities to take all necessary measures to protect human and animal health,” they said in a joint statement.
“(The measures) could go as far as invoking emergency suspension of imports of NK603 corn to Europe pending a re-examination of this product on the basis of enhanced assessment methods.”
Earlier, French scientists led by Gilles-Eric Seralini at the University of Caen in Normandy unveiled a study that said rats fed with NK603 corn or exposed to the weedkiller used with it developed tumours.
NK603 is a corn, also called maize, made by US agribusiness giant Monsanto.
It has been engineered to make it resistant to Monsanto’s herbicide Roundup.
This enables farmers to douse fields with the weedkiller in a single go, thus offering substantial savings.
Genetically modified (GM) crops are widely grown in North America, Brazil and China but are a hot-button issue in Europe.
The study, published in the peer-reviewed journal Food and Chemical Toxicology, says it is the first to look at rats over their normal lifespan of two years.
“For the first time ever, a GM organism and a herbicide have been evaluated for their long-term impact on health, and more thoroughly than by governments or the industry,” Seralini told AFP. “The results are alarming.”
Two hundred male and female rats were split into 10 groups of 10 animals.
One was a “control” group which was given ordinary rat food that contained 33 percent non-GM corn, and plain water.
Three groups were given ordinary rat food and water with increasing doses of Roundup, reflecting various concentrations of the herbicide in the food chain.
The other six were fed rat food of which 11, 22 or 33 percent comprised NK603 corn, either treated or not with Roundup when the corn was grown.
The researchers found that NK603 and Roundup both caused similar damage to the rats’ health, whether they were consumed together or on their own.
Premature deaths and sickness were concentrated especially among females.
At the 14-month stage of experiment, no animals in the control groups showed any signs of cancer, but among females in the “treated” groups, tumours affected between 10 and 30 percent of the rodents.
“By the beginning of the 24th month, 50-80 percent of female animals had developed tumours in all treated groups, with up to three tumours per animal, whereas only 30 percent of controls were affected,” it said
Males which fell sick suffered liver damage, developed kidney and skin tumours and digestive problems.
Related:
Why are Monsanto Insiders Now Appointed to Protect Your Food Safety?
California: The Companies Trying to Stop Mandatory Labeling of Products Containing GM Ingredients
Research Credit: LDXX
DARPA’s Mentats: EEG Data Used for Threat Detection
September 20th, 2012During a recent email conversation about a related technology with a friend of mine, who, shall we say, knows more than a little about this subject, he wrote something that you might find interesting:
Interesting approach. It sounds like they’ve given up on computers processing images and instead they’re trying to create a mentat. Maybe they should try giving the guy some spice and see if his performance improves?
This is kind of interesting because in the Dune series the mentats were created because the empire couldn’t trust AI machines. The AI machines almost took over during this war called the Butlerian Jihad. After that, they said forget this we’re going to just improve human calculating ability to the point where it can compete with a computer. So, they used the drug called spice to create the mentat. At that point, they didn’t have to rely on AI computers anymore. The mentat could do the same thing and was more controllable.
I wonder if the current empire is thinking along the same lines. Eventually there will be no humans on the battlefield. The DoD has a goal to do that by 2034. Everyone will be remote controlling robots or drones. But the problem with using a normal human pilot is there will still be a 1-to-1 ratio between robots and humans. What they really need is a mentat that can guide a thousand robots simultaneously. Then it won’t be the 0.01% that rule the world, it’ll just be one power-mad PHB with his bunker full of mentats controlling semi-automated swarms of drones. What a paradise that sounds like.
—
Have a nice day!
Via: ExtremeTech:
After more than four years of research, DARPA has created a system that successfully combines soldiers, EEG brainwave scanners, 120-megapixel cameras, and multiple computers running cognitive visual processing algorithms into a cybernetic hivemind. Called the Cognitive Technology Threat Warning System (CT2WS), it will be used in a combat setting to significantly improve the US Army’s threat detection capabilities.
There are two discrete parts to the system: The 120-megapixel camera, which is tripod-mounted and looks over the battlefield (pictured below); and the computer system, where a soldier sits in front of a computer monitor with an EEG strapped to his head (pictured above). Images from the camera are fed into the computer system, which runs cognitive visual processing algorithms to detect possible threats (enemy combatants, sniper nests, IEDs). These possible threats are then shown to a soldier whose brain then works out if they’re real threats — or a false alarm (a tree branch, a shadow thrown by an overheard bird).
The soldier is linked into the computer system via an EEG (electroencephalogram) brain-computer interface that continually scans his brains for P300 responses. As we’ve discussed previously (see: Hackers backdoor the human brain), a P300 response is triggered when your brain recognizes something important. This might be a face of someone you know or the glint of a sniper scope — it doesn’t matter. P300 responses are very reliable and can even be triggered subconsciously.
In short, CT2WS taps the human brain’s unsurpassed ability to recognize objects. In testing, the 120-megapixel camera, combined with the computer vision algorithms, generated 810 false alarms per hour; with a human operator strapped into the EEG, that drops down to just five false alarms per hour. The human brain is surprisingly fast, too: According to DARPA, CT2WS display 10 images per second to the human operator — and yet that doesn’t seem to affect accuracy. The total overall accuracy of the system is 91% — but that will improve as DARPA moves beyond the prototype stage.
Related: Dune by Frank Herbert
Holder Cleared in Justice Gunwalking Probe
September 20th, 2012Mmm hmm.
Via: CBS:
The Justice Department’s inspector general cleared Attorney General Eric Holder Wednesday of knowing about the gun-walking operation known as Fast and Furious that allowed thousands of weapons to cross into Mexico.
But Inspector General Michael Horowitz concluded that there were “serious failures” at both the Justice Department and its Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives going back more than six years, CBS Radio News reporter Stephanie Lambidakis reports.
Horowitz found that no one running the operations — not agents, nor prosecutors, nor managers — questioned the wisdom of letting guns vanish across the border with Mexico, where they ended up in the hands of drug traffickers.
BPA: It’s Not That Bad, It’s Worse
September 20th, 2012Via: Smithsonian Magazine:
Now comes another piece of data on a potential risk from BPA but in an area of health in which it has largely been overlooked: obesity. A study by researchers from New York University, published today in the Journal of the American Medical Association, looked at a sample of nearly 3,000 children and teens across the country and found a “significant” link between the amount of BPA in their urine and the prevalence of obesity.
“This is the first association of an environmental chemical in childhood obesity in a large, nationally representative sample,” said lead investigator Leonardo Trasande, who studies the role of environmental factors in childhood disease at NYU. “We note the recent FDA ban of BPA in baby bottles and sippy cups, yet our findings raise questions about exposure to BPA in consumer products used by older children.”
Nanostructured Thermoelectric Material Breaks Record for Turning Heat Into Electricity
September 20th, 2012Definitely don’t hold your breath while you wait for this one to power your flux capacitor, but it’s interesting anyway.
Via: Nature:
A scrambled-up material has broken the record for converting heat into electricity. Findings published today in Nature suggest that disorder may be the key to creating a new generation of energy-harvesting technologies.
…
The material had a conversion efficiency of about 15% — double that of normal PbTe thermoelectrics.
Man Pays for Cross-Country Trip Using Only Bacon as Currency
September 20th, 2012The story below is a corporate stunt, but I enjoy bartering work for food. You may remember how some people paid me for some computer work with heifer. I just did another computer job (maybe 30 minutes) and was given enough seafood delicacies to feed six adults and two children with some left over.
Via: Travelers Today:
Travel can be expensive. One man is using a unique way to pay for a trip as a challenge. Pennsylvania comedian Josh Sankey is on a mission to make a cross-country road trip from New York to Los Angeles with no other currency but bacon.
Sankey isn’t carrying any cash or credit cards as he makes his cross country trip. He is paying for everything from gas to lodging by using uncooked bacon as currency. He set off on his trip with 3,000 pounds of the popular meat and he seems to be getting good deals with it so far.
“I got two tickets to the Jets game for six bricks [of bacon],” Sankey told ABC. “They were pretty good seats, too.”
Sankey’s trip is part of a promotion for bacon producer Oscar Mayer. He is being followed by a film crew as they document Sankey’s bacon barter.
Sankey, of New Castle, kicked off his trip in New York on Sept. 9. He has until Sept. 23 to make it to Los Angeles as he barters the bacon that he’s towing in a trailer.
Sankey has made some interesting trades so far along his journey. He was able to get a taxi ride in NYC, Jets tickets, lodging at stranger’s houses who he met through Twitter, homemade moonshine and wine, jumper cables, gas money and more. Sankey was even able to hire 29 college interns for 100 pounds of bacon in Lafayette, Ind. However the strangest trade was paying a fan with 200 bricks of bacon to get a bacon tattoo, which cost another 200 bricks of bacon.
iTravel: Apple’s Secret Plan to Join iPhones with Airport Security
September 20th, 2012If you have been waiting for a good one for the top of your Not-The-Onion pile, this is it.
Via: CNN:
Apple is releasing a mobile wallet app called Passbook which could lead to some of the ideas suggested in these iTravel patent schematics, which were submitted in 2008. The patent was granted last July.
“Empty pocket” travel apps would eliminate the need to carry credit cards, airline tickets, boarding passes, baggage claim stubs, car or hotel reservations, or even personal identification.
