EPA Bans Most Wood-Burning Stoves
November 8th, 2013Tell me another one.
Via: Off The Grid News:
Wood-burning stoves offer warmth and enhance off-grid living options during cold weather months, but the tried-and-true heating devices now are under attack by the Environmental Protection Agency.
The EPA has banned the production and sale of the types of stoves used by about 80 percent of those with such stoves. The regulations limit the amount of “airborne fine-particle matter” to 12 micrograms per cubic meter of air. The current EPA regulations allow for 15 micrograms in the same amount of air space.
Most of the wood stoves currently nestled inside cabins and homes from coast-to-coast don’t meet the new environmental standard. The EPA launched a “Burn Wise” website to help convince the public that the new regulations were needed.
Trading in an old stove for a newer stove isn’t allowed.
“Replacing an older stove with a cleaner-burning stove will not improve air quality if the older stove is reused somewhere else,” the website says. “For this reason, wood stove change out programs usually require older stoves to be destroyed and recycled as scrap metal, or rendered inoperable.”
CIA Pays AT&T $10 Million Per Year for Access to Call Data
November 8th, 2013Via: New York Times:
The C.I.A. is paying AT&T more than $10 million a year to assist with overseas counterterrorism investigations by exploiting the company’s vast database of phone records, which includes Americans’ international calls, according to government officials.
The cooperation is conducted under a voluntary contract, not under subpoenas or court orders compelling the company to participate, according to the officials. The C.I.A. supplies phone numbers of overseas terrorism suspects, and AT&T searches its database and provides records of calls that may help identify foreign associates, the officials said. The company has a huge archive of data on phone calls, both foreign and domestic, that were handled by its network equipment, not just those of its own customers.
The $100,000 Battery That Could Help Hotels Save Bundles of Money
November 8th, 2013Via: The Atlantic:
What riles Hobbs is utilities’ approach to managing electricity supply and demand for big commercial customers like hotels. If a hotel’s energy consumption spikes—say on a hot day when guests all turn on their room air conditioners at once—the utility ratchets up the electricity rate they pay. To avoid these so-called demand charges—which can account for half of a monthly power bill—businesses can participate in programs that cut their bills if they allow their local utility take control of their air conditioners or lighting to reduce electricity use when the grid is overloaded.
Letting hotel guests who pay $300 a night sweat, however, is not an option. So Hobbs has pulled the plug on his utility by storing electricity in lithium-ion battery packs when rates are low for use when demand and prices rise. The battery and sophisticated software was built by a Silicon Valley startup called Stem and is another example of how technological innovation is upending utilities’ century-old stranglehold on power.
“We measure a business’ electricity usage and predict when there will be spikes in usage and make decisions on whether to charge or discharge batteries,” says Prakesh Patel, Stem’s vice president of capital markets and strategy, who notes that demand charges have risen 30 percent in the San Francisco Bay Area over the past three years.
That means Stem’s algorithms are constantly analyzing a customer’s power demand as well as other factors, such as weather patterns and past energy use, and then charging and discharging the batteries in tiny increments. Such fine-tuning keeps a customer’s utility bills down while minimizing wear and tear on the expensive lithium ion battery packs, which are similar to those found in electric cars.
A Recently Discovered Bacterium Thrives in NASA’s Spacecraft Clean Rooms
November 8th, 2013Via: JPL:
A rare, recently discovered microbe that survives on very little to eat has been found in two places on Earth: spacecraft clean rooms in Florida and South America.
Microbiologists often do thorough surveys of bacteria and other microbes in spacecraft clean rooms. Fewer microbes live there than in almost any other environment on Earth, but the surveys are important for knowing what might hitch a ride into space. If extraterrestrial life is ever found, it would be readily checked against the census of a few hundred types of microbes detected in spacecraft clean rooms.
The work to keep clean rooms extremely clean knocks total microbe numbers way down. It also can select for microbes that withstand stresses such as drying, chemical cleaning, ultraviolet treatments and lack of nutrients. Perversely, microbes that withstand these stressors often also show elevated resistance to spacecraft sterilization methodologies such as heating and peroxide treatment.
“We want to have a better understanding of these bugs, because the capabilities that adapt them for surviving in clean rooms might also let them survive on a spacecraft,” said microbiologist Parag Vaishampayan of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., lead author of the 2013 paper about the microbe. “This particular bug survives with almost no nutrients.”
This population of berry-shaped bacteria is so different from any other known bacteria, it has been classified as not only a new species, but also a new genus, the next level of classifying the diversity of life. Its discoverers named it Tersicoccus phoenicis. Tersi is from Latin for clean, like the room. Coccus, from Greek for berry, describes the bacterium’s shape. The phoenicis part is for NASA’s Phoenix Mars Lander, the spacecraft being prepared for launch in 2007 when the bacterium was first collected by test-swabbing the floor in the Florida clean room.
Some other microbes have been discovered in a spacecraft clean room and found nowhere else, but none previously had been found in two different clean rooms and nowhere else. Home grounds of the new one are about 2,500 miles (4,000 kilometers) apart, in a NASA facility at Kennedy Space Center and a European Space Agency facility in Kourou, French Guiana.
Snowden Pulled Off NSA Document Heist—Using Oldest Trick in the Book?
November 8th, 2013Via: Reuters:
Former U.S. National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden used login credentials and passwords provided unwittingly by colleagues at a spy base in Hawaii to access some of the classified material he leaked to the media, sources said.
A handful of agency employees who gave their login details to Snowden were identified, questioned and removed from their assignments, said a source close to several U.S. government investigations into the damage caused by the leaks.
Snowden may have persuaded between 20 and 25 fellow workers at the NSA regional operations center in Hawaii to give him their logins and passwords by telling them they were needed for him to do his job as a computer systems administrator, a second source said.
The revelation is the latest to indicate that inadequate security measures at the NSA played a significant role in the worst breach of classified data in the super-secret eavesdropping agency’s 61-year history.
Reuters reported last month that the NSA failed to install the most up-to-date, anti-leak software at the Hawaii site before Snowden went to work there and downloaded highly classified documents belonging to the agency and its British counterpart, Government Communication Headquarters.
Related: Social Engineering (as the term relates to computer security)
Crispr
November 7th, 2013Via: Independent:
A breakthrough in genetics – described as “jaw-dropping” by one Nobel scientist – has created intense excitement among DNA experts around the world who believe the discovery will transform their ability to edit the genomes of all living organisms, including humans.
The development has been hailed as a milestone in medical science because it promises to revolutionise the study and treatment of a range of diseases, from cancer and incurable viruses to inherited genetic disorders such as sickle-cell anaemia and Down syndrome.
For the first time, scientists are able to engineer any part of the human genome with extreme precision using a revolutionary new technique called Crispr, which has been likened to editing the individual letters on any chosen page of an encyclopedia without creating spelling mistakes. The landmark development means it is now possible to make the most accurate and detailed alterations to any specific position on the DNA of the 23 pairs of human chromosomes without introducing unintended mutations or flaws, scientists said.
The technique is so accurate that scientists believe it will soon be used in gene-therapy trials on humans to treat incurable viruses such as HIV or currently untreatable genetic disorders such as Huntington’s disease. It might also be used controversially to correct gene defects in human IVF embryos, scientists said.
Motorola Wants You to Tattoo a Smartphone Microphone Onto Your Throat
November 7th, 2013
Via: Engadget:
Motorola has applied for a patent of a microphone with a tranceiver and power supply that is designed to be tattooed onto your throat. The idea is to capture vibrations directly from your larynx in order to cut out background noise — while eliminating something else you could lose, we imagine.
Oregon: Students Limited to Walking or Running Around a Track at Recess
November 7th, 2013Via: Mail Tribune:
Parents and kids of Jacksonville Elementary School say physical fitness shouldn’t be limited to endless circles on the school’s track in order to comply with the state’s physical education mandates.
Andy Kranenburg, an orthopedic surgeon with two sons at the school, was one of several parents and grandparents who spoke in defense of free-play recess at Monday’s Medford School Board meeting.
Periods of unstructured physical activity play a crucial role in developing cognitive structure and increasing social and physical skills, Kranenburg said.
“Free play” has been taken away during some recess periods, said Julie Evans, the district’s director of elementary education, on Tuesday.
However, she stressed, “Not every free-play recess has been affected or will be affected.”
Research Credit: noguru
Google Barges: Places “Where People Can Learn About New Technology”
November 6th, 2013Via: TechCrunch:
Google has issued a statement (finally?) about its months-long mystery barge project. The barges, which are anchored in both Portland, Maine and San Francisco, have been the topic of intense interest since multiple reports surfaced last month.
A Google spokesperson told TechCrunch that the barges are ‘an interactive space’ to teach people about its technology:
Google Barge … A floating data center? A wild party boat? A barge housing the last remaining dinosaur? Sadly, none of the above. Although it’s still early days and things may change, we’re exploring using the barge as an interactive space where people can learn about new technology.
iPads Banned from Cabinet Meetings Over Surveillance Fears
November 6th, 2013Oh yeah, China, Russia, Iran and Pakistan. *wink*
In other news: NSA Can Access Data on All Smartphones
Via: Telegraph:
The securities services fear foreign intelligence agencies have developed the ability to turn mobile devices such as phones and tablets into bugs without the owner’s knowledge, allowing them to eavesdrop on confidential meetings.
iPads were used this week during a presentation by Francis Maude, the Cabinet Office minister, on how the Government Digital Service could save the Government £2bn a year.
But after the presentation they were swiftly removed by No 10’s security staff to prevent Cabinet discussions being picked up, according to a report in the Mail on Sunday.
It is feared China, Russia, Iran and Pakistan have developed the ability to turn mobiles into microphones and turn them into transmitters even when they are turned off, using a Trojan computer virus.
Ministers in sensitive government departments have been issued with soundproof lead-lined boxes, which they must place their mobiles in when having sensitive conversations, it emerged this week.
Research Credit: GP
