Penis pump judge faces stiff sentence

June 29, 2006

A retired US judge is himself before the beak in Bristow, Oklahoma, "on charges he used a penis pump on himself in the courtroom while sitting in judgment of others", AP reports.

The trial of Donald D Thompson, 59, has reportedly provoked much courtroom merriment as the jury has been entertained by both a defence attorney and prosecutor indulging in "pantomime masturbation" and a former juror in Thompson's court identifying the sound of the pump because "he had seen such devices in Austin Powers and Dead Man on Campus".
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Smile! A new Canadian tool can re-grow teeth say inventors

June 28, 2006

Snaggle-toothed hockey players and sugar lovers may soon rejoice as Canadian scientists said they have created the first device able to re-grow teeth and bones.

The researchers at the University of Alberta in Edmonton filed patents earlier this month in the United States for the tool based on low-intensity pulsed ultrasound technology after testing it on a dozen dental patients in Canada.

"Right now, we plan to use it to fix fractured or diseased teeth, as well as asymmetric jawbones, but it may also help hockey players or children who had their tooth knocked out," Jie Chen, an engineering professor and nano-circuit design expert, told AFP.
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Data Mining for Fun and Profit

Tom Owad at applefritter.com has posted a detailed story on how he was able to use Amazon wishlists to profile thousands of people. By using the search function at Amazon, he accessed and downloaded over 260,000 publicly-available wishlists. He then searched the lists for "suspicious" books and authors, including Fahrenheit 451, Michael Moore, Rush Limbaugh, the Koran/Quran and, of course, Build Your Own Laser, Phaser, Ion Ray Gun and Other Working Space Age Projects.
At this point, Tom had a list of Amazon usernames and had identified any "suspicious" books and authors that appeared on each user's wishlist.

But there was still more to do. Amazon allows a user to include their city and state information on their wishlist, so Tom had the information to take it to the next level: plotting his suspects on a Google map.
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Video Surveillance Cameras Headed for Downtown Shreveport

June 27, 2006

A change is on its way to downtown Shreveport that could either make you feel safer, or like someone is spying on you. The Downtown Development Authority plans to install video surveillance cameras at several intersections as a way to monitor what goes on in some of the busier gathering areas, such as Festival Plaza and the Downtown Entertainment District.

"There will be six cameras and it's an outdoor surveillance system," said Janie Landry with the DDA. "They tell us that you can see if you have a note in your hand. With the cameras, you'll be able to read the writing on the note. So they're pretty powerful cameras."
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Safety on the buses

June 27, 2006

FLORIDA students in the US are enjoying safer journeys to school, thanks to a Warrington-based company.

A hundred yellow school buses in the state capital, Tallahassee, are being installed with mobile digital recording system, TransVu, and 100 more systems are to be installed shortly.

The cameras, installed by CCTV specialist AD Group, record images of any incidents and automatically send them back to the central bus depot.
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Aerial-imaging system becoming vital

April 01, 2006

ROCHESTER, N.Y. (AP) -- A year and a half before the sea rushed in, cameras protruding from low-lying Cessna aircraft captured eagle-eye images of every square foot of New Orleans from every direction.

The same aerial-mapping technology helped firefighters quickly size up the damage when a jetliner slammed into the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001. And police in Atlanta were able to scrutinize the layout of an apartment complex where suspected gunman Brian Nichols retreated after a courthouse rampage in March 2005.

Instead of just the straight-down views that distant satellites gather, a small company called Pictometry International Corp. has developed an oblique-imaging, geo-spatial system to snap vast swaths of America's varied landscape at a 40-degree angle from a few thousand feet in the air.
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New Cell Can Tell If You're Drunk

June 27, 2006

They were originally designed to simply make phone calls without tying callers to one location. But today's cell phones can do so much more, from snapping digital photos to sending text messages to playing video.

You can add one more feature to the list: a sobriety test.
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Big Brother watching you surf?

June 27, 2006

OTTAWA — One of Canada's largest Internet service providers is warning its customers that Big Brother is lurking on-line, with the federal government expected to revive an Internet surveillance bill.

If the legislation is reintroduced, it could allow police unfettered access to personal information without a warrant, experts warn.
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Cashless society is on the cards

June 14, 2006

A trip to the corner shop may never be the same again.

If you pop out for a Sunday paper or a bar of chocolate, you will no longer have to worry about bringing a pocket full of change.

A low-maintenance debit card will soon be available for shoppers that removes the need to carry any cash at all, according to a report into consumer trends.
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ACLU Seeks Information About Government Use of Brain Scanners in Interrogations

June 28, 2006

NEW YORK-- In the face of suspicions that the government is using cutting-edge brain-scanning technologies on suspected terrorists being held overseas or at home, the American Civil Liberties Union today announced that it has filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests with all the primary American security agencies.

"There are certain things that have such powerful implications for our society -- and for humanity at large -- that we have a right to know how they are being used so that we can grapple with them as a democratic society," said Barry Steinhardt, Director of the ACLU's Technology and Liberty Project. "These brain-scanning technologies are far from ready for forensic uses and if deployed will inevitably be misused and misunderstood."
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Spain outlaws P2P filesharing

June 27, 2006

A Spanish intellectual property law has finally banned unauthorized peer-to-peer file-sharing in Spain, making it a civil offense even to download content for personal use.

The legislation, approved by Congress on Thursday, toughens previous provisions. An early May circular from Spain's fiscal general del estado, or chief prosecutor, allowed downloads for purely personal use.
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A Record-Breaking Camera Chip

June 29, 2006

an Juan Capistrano, CA-based Semiconductor Technology Associates (STA) has designed the world’s highest-resolution digital camera chip, capable of holding an image composed of more than 111 million pixels. By comparison, the best consumer cameras take shots of 12 to 16 million pixels, and an average computer monitor offers about one million pixels.

The imaging chip, which is a charge-coupled device (CCD), was designed for use in telescope cameras that map stars and ever-moving objects in the solar system, says Richard Bredthauer, STA’s president. But this large-scale chip -- it measures four inches square -- could be useful in more fields than just astronomy, he says, including high-resolution microscopic images of proteins, military surveillance applications, and even civilian mapping projects that require detailed aerial photography.
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Logic from Chaos

June 15, 2006

A reconfigurable chip developed by ChaoLogix in Gainesville, FL, makes it possible to morph a circuit from one type into another in an instant. Having the ability to effectively redesign chips an unlimited number of times after they've been manufactured could make chips faster and more robust. And, ultimately, it could bring down the cost of producing integrated circuits, by reducing the need to make expensive, custom-built chips.

The novel chips work by exploiting inherent "chaotic" behavior within the integrated circuits, enabling a single, simple circuit to behave like any kind of logic gate. Such a chip could be transformed, for example, from a graphics card into a memory chip and back again -- in just two computer clock cycles. "We have blurred the line between software and hardware," says William Ditto, chief technology officer of ChaoLogix, which was spun out of research at the University of Florida.
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Robots Act as Soccer Commentators

June 20, 2006

As national soccer teams head into the second round of the World Cup this week in Germany, they're playing in the wake of RoboCup 2006, held last week in Bremen, Germany. Organized by the RoboCup Federation, these games, in which robots on wheels and legs compete in soccer "matches," are sponsored by a host of companies, including Microsoft. It might not get the fanfare of the World Cup, but this year RoboCup drew more than 400 teams from 36 countries.

In 2006, though, a new twist was added to the event: robots not only played in the games, they also called the action.
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Scientists Blocking out the Sun

June 27, 2006

In the past few decades, a handful of scientists have come up with big, futuristic ways to fight global warming: Build sunshades in orbit to cool the planet. Tinker with clouds to make them reflect more sunlight back into space. Trick oceans into soaking up more heat-trapping greenhouse gases.

Their proposals were relegated to the fringes of climate science. Few journals would publish them. Few government agencies would pay for feasibility studies. Environmentalists and mainstream scientists said the focus should be on reducing greenhouse gases and preventing global warming in the first place.

But now, in a major reversal, some of the world's most prominent scientists say the proposals deserve a serious look because of growing concerns about global warming.
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Finding the Hidden Mutations That Control Cancer

June 28, 2006

The DNA of cancer cells is littered with mutations -- tiny genetic missteps that can make cells grow out of control or become resistant to certain medicines. Identifying those mutations could speed up the development of new drugs or new diagnostics that could match an individual with the most effective treatment.

But sorting out the key mutations from the surrounding reams of normal DNA in tumor samples is a challenge, partly because it's difficult to isolate and sequence single molecules of DNA.
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Smart Materials Could Help Engineer a New Liver

June 28, 2006

By building up coatings one molecular layer at a time, MIT researchers have made a new class of materials that can release drugs, and even genes, in an exact sequence and at a predetermined rate. The method could be widely applicable for designing novel multilayered materials to improve the safety of medical implants and to serve as elaborate scaffolding in the tissue engineering of cells to make bones, blood vessels, muscles, and livers in the lab.
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Family home raided over 'toy gun'

23 June, 2006

amily's home after their teenage son was spotted playing with a toy gun in his bedroom.
An eye-witness had seen Olly Trimbos, 15, playing with a plastic BB gun and raised the alarm fearing it was real.

Officers burst through the door after the family had just finished dinner and handcuffed Olly and his father John.
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Mother Nature's Design Workshop

June 27, 2006

Scientists looking to develop new methods of defense and surveillance often study the characteristics of houseflies, bees, dragonflies, and other small creatures.

It's a field known as biomimetics or biomimicry, though not everyone approves of those terms. Promode Bandyopadhyay of the Naval Undersea Warfare Center in Newport, R.I., says his work is not an imitation of biology, but biologically inspired. "We are learning from nature's design," he says.
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AT&T rewrites rules: Your data isn't yours

June 21, 2006

AT&T has issued an updated privacy policy that takes effect Friday. The changes are significant because they appear to give the telecom giant more latitude when it comes to sharing customers' personal data with government officials.

The new policy says that AT&T -- not customers -- owns customers' confidential info and can use it "to protect its legitimate business interests, safeguard others, or respond to legal process."
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Gene-Silencing Makes Female Mice Avoid Sex

June 27, 2006

Female mice are rendered totally unresponsive to the overtures of their mates when a specific gene is silenced in a small part of the brain. The findings demonstrate the power of a relatively new gene-silencing technique called RNA interference, or RNAi, for mapping out the genes and brain regions that underlie behavior. And it could eventually shed light on the role of estrogen in human sexuality.
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Twelve Things Journalists Need To Know to be Good Futurist/Foresight Reporters

June 12, 2006

J. Bradford DeLong is a professor of economics at UC Berkeley, and was an economic advisor to President Clinton; Susan Rasky is a senior lecturer in journalism at UC Berkeley, and was an award-winning reporter for the New York Times. Together, they have compiled for the Neiman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard lists of what economists need to know about journalists, and what journalists need to know about economists, in order to result in useful and accurate economic reporting. The lists are straightforward, and if followed would make a world of difference.
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Nice video shows policing of the future

June 25, 2006

ice Systems, the Israeli firm trying to sell extreme surveillance software to the British police, has put out a promotional video depicting the way our friendly bobbies will police our communities a year from now - if they use its latest software.

It opens* with a lonely old lady twitching a curtain over a street where hooded youths are hanging around. Shouldn't they be at the scout hut? Or doing their homework? The police must know about this.
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Stem Cell Mix Helps Paralyzed Rats Walk

June 26, 2006

A complex combination of treatments, including stem cells and growth factors, can heal damaged neural circuits, allowing partially paralyzed rats to walk. These findings represent a significant step forward in regenerative medicine, providing new treatment possibilities for Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) and other neurodegenerative diseases, as well as some types of spinal-cord injury.
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US to deploy interceptor missiles in Japan

June 26, 2006

The US will deploy advanced Patriot interceptor missiles on Japanese soil this year for the first time as the region braces itself for a possible test launch by North Korea of an intercontinental ballistic missile, local media reports said today.

Under the agreement, reached this month, US bases on the southern Japanese island of Okinawa will host US Patriot advanced capability-3 missiles, which are said to be capable of intercepting ballistic missiles of the type being developed by Pyongyang, as well as cruise missiles and aircraft.
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Coming soon -- mind-reading computers

June 25, 2006

A raised eyebrow, quizzical look or a nod of the head are just a few of the facial expressions computers could soon be using to read people's minds.

An "emotionally aware" computer being developed by British and American scientists will be able to read an individual's thoughts by analyzing a combination of facial movements that represent underlying feelings.
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Digital camera blocking technology created

June 19, 2006

Georgia Institute of Technology scientists say they've created a prototype device that can block digital video cameras from working in a specific area.

The scientists say the prototype -- which could be used to stymie unwanted use of video or still cameras -- uses off-the-shelf equipment to scan for, find and neutralize digital cameras. The system works by looking for the reflectivity and shape of the image-producing sensors used in digital cameras.
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Ontario Privacy Commissioner issues RFID guidelines

Radio frequency identification tags, reviled by some and praised by others, will have to be manufactured carefully under guidelines released by Ontario's Information and Privacy Commissioner.

Commissioner Ann Cavoukian has announced that manufacturers of RFID technology must build privacy into their RFID designs.

RFID tags, a next-generation technology that improves on barcodes, contain microchips and short-range radio antennas, and are most commonly attached to products in retail stores. But they are also used to track shipments of goods around the world. In the food and produce industries, they can instantly tell management about the age and temperature of the product.

RFIDs transmit a unique identifying number to an electronic reader, which links to a computer database where information about the item is stored. RFID tags may be read from a distance quickly and easily, making them useful for managing inventory.

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Hi-tech adverts to arrive on the Tube

June 21, 2006

Like a scene from science fiction movie Blade Runner set in Victorian England, giant advertisement films are to be beamed on to London Underground platform walls.

Replacing posters on the walls opposite the platforms from the start of next year, the advertisements will be shot across from projectors installed above passengers' heads.

Full colour and even high-definition, the "cross-track projection" system will be installed at an initial 24 stations in Zone One.

Fully computer-controlled, in addition to advertisements, it will also be able to beam across everything from football scores to lottery results.
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Lisbon school plans to use fingerprint ID in lunch line

June 18, 2006

A big change is in the works next winter in the hot lunch line at the Lisbon Community School.

The elementary school, with an enrollment of more than 750, will be shifting to fingerprint identification technology -- broadly known as biometrics -- to track lunch orders and eliminate the need for meal cards or numeric codes.
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UK DNA database shared with other countries

June 21, 2006

The UK Home Office has admitted that DNA stored in the UK National DNA Database has been shared with other countries.

UK has today one of the largest law enforcement DNA database with profiles from 3.5 million people, including 500 000 children under 16 years old. The database was established in 1995.

Privacy concerns regarding the database have been expressed, especially when the database was revealed to contained more than 50 000 DNA profiles of children who have never been charged with any offence.
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German Parliament rejects motion against data retention

June 21, 2006

On 20 June the German Parliament rejected a resolution that would have requested the federal government to join the action for annulment of the EU telecommunications data retention directive at the European Court of Justice (ECJ). The text had been introduced by the opposition parties Greens, Liberals and Left Party and was supported by 133 parliamentarians. But the grand coalition of the governing parties voted against it, with one abstention from the Conservatives. The authors of the resolution argued that the data retention decision should have been made in the "Third Pillar" of the European Union structure in the form of a framework directive, which would have required an unanimous vote in the Council of Ministers.

The governments of Ireland and Slovakia who voted against the Directive during the final decision in February have already started a case at the ECJ. Their chances are good, as the court's recent decision on the transfer of passenger data to the United States was taken on the same grounds. The German opposition also asked to postpone the transposition of the Directive into the federal law until this case is decided, because even if the Directive is annulled, national laws would still be valid. The EU Directive mandates the retention of all telecommunications traffic data within the EU for 6 to 24 months for law enforcement and national security purposes.
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Carnegie Mellon's robotics whiz oddly trapped in the past

June 21, 2006

The US military plans to have a vast robot army in the near future but has yet to come up with a concrete method for ensuring that mindless devices can operate safely alongside brained troops. So, the military has been forced to beg for help.

General Charles Cartwright urged attendees here at the Robo Business conference to pursue research projects that address "how you put ground troops and robots together at the same time." The need for technology that can guarantee the smooth behavior of robotic systems proves dramatic given that the Army plans to start deploying a new fleet of robotic gear in Iraq by 2008. Shortly thereafter, the Army intends to push out myriad robotic devices, stretching from automated weapons systems to autonomous tanks.
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The call for robotics standards is on

June 22, 2006

The robotics industry's penchant for bespoke gadgets has so far led to a slow moving field where every company and hobbyist has to spend huge amounts of time and money on new designs. A growing number of people have started to point to a lack of hardware and software standards as one of the main reasons robotics has stalled and failed to live up to its potential. And they want to change this.
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Led by Belgium, citizen smart cards in Europe forge on

June 20, 2006

While some countries continue to debate national ID cards, citizen smart card initiatives in some European countries are well underway. Technology players are working to secure contracts to provide services to card-holding citizens, many with an eye on what’s happening in Belgium – the European nation that is seen as the model for smart-card deployment.

Despite a few initial delays, Belgium is becoming the first European country to standardize the electronic identity card. By the end of 2009, every Belgian citizen will be required to own an e-ID card –11 million cards, according to most counts. To meet this requirement, close to 10 million cards will be issued to the country’s citizens over the next three to five years.
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Drones Taking a Bite Out of Crime

Jun, 19, 2006

This could be the shape of things to come in crimefighting.

In the months ahead, the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department will test an unmanned, remote-controlled surveillance plane.

If deputies want a birds-eye view of a standoff, they might scramble the unmanned drone instead of a helicopter to get a closer, quieter look. Within minutes, real-time color video would be streamed to a portable computer system manned by an officer 250 feet below.

Officials with the nation's largest sheriff's department said it is believed to be the first field test of drones by local police in a major U.S. urban area.
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Robots used to patrol stadium for first time at World Cup

June 17, 2006

BERLIN (AP) - Robots are being used to patrol a stadium at the World Cup for the first time, although they haven't had much chance yet to show off what they can do.

The Berlin company Robowatch has developed two surveillance robots - one is similar to those used by the US military as scouts in Iraq - and 11 of them are patrolling underground parking lots inside Berlin's Olympic Stadium and a football-sized field next to the arena covered by tents holding the media, sponsors and VIPs.
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Mega TV invades the sky

Jun. 16, 2006

Imagine a drive-in movie screen that floats 1,000 feet in the air - and travels 15 mph.

An Orlando-based blimp company called The Lightship Group has effectively made one, and it could be coming to a night sky near you.

The company recently received Federal Aviation Administration approval for its new A-170 lightship, an enormous blimp that doesn't just say "Goodyear" or "Coca-Cola" on the side, but instead flashes commercials, NFL football highlights, movie trailers or whatever else a company wants to put on its 70-foot-by-30-foot LED screen.
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Human Cells + Animal Cells = ?

June 19, 2006

On the sun-splashed Caribbean island of St. Kitts, Yale University researchers are injecting millions of human brain cells into the heads of monkeys afflicted with Parkinson's disease.

In China, there are 29 goats running around on a farm with human cells coursing through their organs, a result of scientists dropping human blood cells into goat embryos.

The mixing of humans and animals in the name of medicine has been going on for decades. People are walking around with pig valves in their hearts and scientists have routinely injected human cells into lab mice to mimic diseases.

But the research is becoming increasingly exotic as scientists work with the brains of mice, monkeys and other mammals and begin fiddling with the hot-button issue of cloning. Harvard University researchers are attempting to clone human embryonic cells in rabbit eggs.

Such work has triggered protests from social conservatives and others who fear the blurring of species lines, invoking the image of the chimera of Greek mythology, a monstrous mix of lion, goat and serpent.
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Robot soccer World Cup kicks off

June 14, 2006

The 10th annual RoboCup, being held in Bremen, will see more than 400 teams of robots dribbling, tackling and shooting in an effort to become world champions.

Machines compete in 11 leagues including those designed for humanoid and four-legged robots.
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Smarter than thou? Stanford conference ponders a brave new world with machines more powerful than their creators

May 12, 2006

(...)
Borrowing a term from physics, singularity suggests a horizon beyond which we can't see. It describes the point at which some form of intelligence spawned by technology gains the ability to rapidly improve its own programming -- becoming so powerful that we cannot predict what it might do. At that point, its capabilities could exceed even the power of our imaginations.

"This could be very, very good if we get it right, and very, very bad if we get it wrong,'' said Eliezer Yudkowsky, a research fellow with the Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence, a nonprofit group in Palo Alto that is co-sponsoring the event.
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Artificial brain parts on the horizon

May 30, 2006

Alzheimer's, stroke, Parkinson's and epilepsy are all diseases that would benefit from a new brain ... or at least brain part. The "superhuman" is about to become reality.

The future of the human race is about to take a turn.

"I think all human beings have wanted to be better than well. We have always wanted to transcend the limitations of the human condition," said World Transhumanist Association Executive Director James Hughes, Ph.D.

He believes the world is headed for a superhuman future. "We have continued to invent new technologies, to extend the reach of the human body, new tools and new ways of modifying the way the body works."
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Transhumanism debated in the House of Lords

"(...)We must surely choose to adopt technology that will ensure that the classroom will fit the child, and buck the growing trend for technology to be used to make the 21st-century child fit the classroom. The educational needs of the individual are changing and the very nature of the classroom needs to change too. Initiatives such as the Foresight programme have already made significant impact on our thinking about the future of a number of issues in society. Perhaps Her Majesty's Government might consider a similar in-depth project to explore the future of learning and education.(...)"

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New embryo test to screen for 6,000 diseases

June 19, 2006

British fertility specialists have developed a powerful new way to test embryos for inherited diseases, offering hundreds of couples their first realistic chance of having healthy children. The procedure has been hailed as a big advance, boosting the number of diseases clinics can test for from about 200 to nearly 6,000.
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Deputy drone SkySeer fights crime from above

PASADENA - Sheriff's officials on Friday tested the next generation in law enforcement surveillance technology.

The pilotless aircraft - dubbed SkySeer - has an onboard GPS and a magnetic compass, along with a pan-tilt camera that can give commanders a real-time view of crime scenes, said Los Angeles County sheriff's Cmdr. Charles "Sid" Heal.

Authorities gave the 3 pound drone a test flight Friday morning in the Rose Bowl parking lot.

"The primary purpose is to provide a bird's-eye tactical view of a situation, although many other applications are possible," Heal said. "It is one of the first \ intended for law enforcement purposes, and is an extremely portable, hand-launched, battery-operated vehicle capable of sustained and autonomous flight."
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Among the Transhumanists

June 4, 2006

On a projection screen at Stanford Law School, an auditorium full of nerds stared at a picture of a guy who'd done himself up like a cat—not with makeup, but with tattoos and surgery. The guy's whiskers were implanted. His nose had been converted to a cat nose. His teeth had been filed into the shape of cat teeth. His head has been flattened, and he was looking for a doctor to implant a tail. And that's just the tip of the freakberg. Behind him, there's Lizard Man, Amputee Online, the Church of Body Modification, and Suspension.org, the Web site for people who like to be impaled on hooks.
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Microchips in humans inevitable: Alberta

June 10, 2006

EDMONTON -- Imagine a world where you're taken unconscious and with no identification to a hospital. The doctor scans the microchip implanted in your shoulder, downloads your medical identification number and links up with a secure network that says you're a diabetic and allergic to Tylenol.
Sounds ideal.
In a world where more than 230 physicians in the United States have bought microchips for implantation in patients, and where a club owner in Spain offers to implant VIP chips into posh people so they don't need to carry credit cards or identification, the ethics of human microchip technology needs to be debated in Canada, says a University of Ottawa professor.
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Stem cell trigger pinpointed

June 16, 2006

Stem cell scientists have pinpointed a molecule that confers the cells with amazing powers of self-renewal and maintains their ability to develop into any other type of cell in the body.

The discovery could help pave the way for stem cells derived from adult tissues, giving ethical debates over the use of embryos a side-swerve.
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Heaven or hell?

How will technology shape our future?

(Atlanta) -- Humanity is the verge of an incredible future. Technologies that seem like science fiction are already becoming science fact as researchers develop innovations that will transform the very essence of what it is to be human.

"The pace of change is exponential, not linear," says inventor, entrepreneur, author, and futurist Ray Kurzveil. "So things fifty years from now will be very different. That's pretty phenomenal. It took us fifteen years to sequence HIV, we sequenced SARS in 31 days."

Nanotechnology, genetics and cybernetics will mean that we will become faster, stronger and more beautiful; we will live longer and banish disease; we will be more intelligent and quicker-witted with photographic memories and the ability to go days without sleep.
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Los Angeles Police Forcibly Evict and Bulldoze the South Central Farm

15 Jun 2006

Despite widespread popular resistance, including years of struggle against the city and developers on the part of farmers, a three-week old occupation and treesit, a successful effort to raise millions of dollars in order to try to buy the land on which the farm stood - a bid which was ultimately rejected, and a day full of nonviolent civil disobedience including lockdowns and blockades, the largest urban farm in the United States was evicted on the morning of June 13th.

The farm, which had been started on property taken from developers under eminent domain laws after the 1992 popular uprising following the videotaped police beating of Rodney King, and which provided healthy food for over three hundred and fifty families as well as an ecologically sustainable model for building urban economy and community with dignity in the midst of poverty, was destroyed by bulldozers today to make way for the construction of commercial warehouses serving the (activists speculate that Wal-Mart maybe the primary intended beneficiary.)

Los Angeles Indymedia is reporting that at least 45 people have been (in many cases violently) arrested while defending the farm from re-enclosure and destruction.

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Prozac pills for children

June 8, 2006

Children as young as eight should be given Prozac to help battle depression, an EU drugs watchdog has ruled.

The benefits of taking the drug outweigh the potential risks, the European Medicines Agency said. But parents and doctors were warned to watch youngsters for 'suicidal behaviour'.

It means that Prozac could be licensed for treating children in Britain for the by September.
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Scientists breed allergy-free moggies

June 12, 2006

A San Diego-based biotech firm has started selling hypoallergenic cats. Allerca's kittens have been selectively bred to reduce the amount of a protein called FEL D1, which causes adverse reactions in allergy sufferers.

As New Scientist reported back in 2004, the firm publicly announced plans to genetically engineer cat DNA to eliminate production of FEL D1. It seems the plans hit technical problems though, and the "product" Allerca is offering is just a cat that has been selectively bred in the traditional fashion, albeit backed up by gene testing and for a novel purpose.
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Invention: The TV-advert enforcer

April 18, 2006

The advert enforcer

If a new idea from Philips catches on, the company may not be very popular with TV viewers. The company's labs in Eindhoven, The Netherlands, has been cooking up a way to stop people changing channels to avoid adverts or fast forwarding through ads they have recorded along with their target programme.
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New Czech Police draft act allows taking DNA samples by force

7 June, 2006

The Czech Senate, upper chamber of the Parliament, approved on 25 May 2006 the amendment of the Criminal Proceedings Code and Police Act, which empowers police officers to take DNA samples and other identification samples as fingerprints.

According to the draft police can take the DNA samples even by using force in case of resistance. Currently, a person may refuse to provide the saliva sample, which could result only in aprocedural fine of maximum 2800 Eur.

The new amendment foresees that the DNA samples can be taken from people suspected, charged, accused, sentenced or in execution of protective measures. The amendment also contains provisions authorizing massive DNA sampling from all people that are imprisoned for wilful crimes. This purposed measure will concern approximately 12 000 people.
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Scientists to try to clone human embryos

Jun 6, 2006

Stepping into a research area marked by controversy and fraud, Harvard University scientists said Tuesday they are trying to clone human embryos to create stem cells they hope can be used one day to help conquer a host of diseases.

"We are convinced that work with embryonic stem cells holds enormous promise," said Harvard provost Dr. Steven Hyman.
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Worm-inspired robot crawls through intestines

June, 06 2006

A robot designed to crawl through the human gut by mimicking the wriggling motion of an undersea worm has been developed by European scientists. It could one day help doctors diagnose disease by carrying tiny cameras through patients' bodies.

The team behind the robot includes scientists from Italy, Germany, Greece and the UK. They modelled it on polychaetes, or "paddle worms", which use tiny paddles on their body segments to push through sand, mud or water.
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A Sixth Sense for a Wired World

Jun 07, 2006

What if, seconds before your laptop began stalling, you could feel the hard drive spin up under the load? Or you could tell if an electrical cord was live before you touched it? For the few people who have rare earth magnets implanted in their fingers, these are among the reported effects -- a finger that feels electromagnetic fields along with the normal sense of touch.
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Plan for cloaking device unveiled

May, 25 2006

Researchers in the US and Britain have unveiled their blueprints for building a cloaking device.
So far, cloaking has been confined to science fiction; in Star Trek it is used to render spacecraft invisible.

Professor Sir John Pendry says a simple demonstration model that could work for radar might be possible within 18 months' time.
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iRobot Scooba Exposed: What's Inside This Robotic Maid

Jun 2, 2006

Robots have long fascinated humanity. Movies like "Artificial Intelligence: AI" (2001) and "I, Robot" (2004) portrait possible futures where all your mundane chores are performed by a mechanical life form. Just imagine not ever cleaning the windows, doing the dishes, or washing your car! On average, a family spends 1.8 hours per day doing just such activities. That is 12.6 hours a week, 655 hours a year, or 2,047 days of your life wasted on something that a robot could do.
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Call centre surveillance trained on police

June 5, 2006

Software used to monitor the phone conversations of staff working in call centres will be used to tap police calls with the public and hold force operators to performance targets.

Nice Systems, an Israeli intelligence software firm, is tendering with three British police forces for the sale of a system that will automatically pick out calls for closer inspection.
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Texas wants P2P border surveillance

June 2, 2006

The governor of Texas is spending $5m installing web cameras along the state's border with Mexico so ordinary web surfers can get involved in stopping illegal immigration.

The idea is that a "virtual wall" will be created by putting night-vision cameras and motion sensors on private land near the border. Illegal immigration and violence has become more of a problem recently, thanks to a drugs war over the border.

The footage will be streamed in real time onto a website so concerned citizens snooping loons can watch for illegal immigrants. A freephone number will be set up so citizens can report any crimes they see, or think they see.
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CryptoMetrics announces facial recognition contract with New Zealand Passport Office

June 1, 2006

New Zealand is utilizing New York-based CryptoMetrics' facial recognition technology as part of its new passport initiative. Using the company's SecurIDent, the country can carry out advanced face biometric-based "Watch List" Checks on all passport applications.
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Mob rule on China's Internet: The keyboard as weapon

June 1, 2006

It began with an impassioned, 5,000-word letter on one of China's most popular Internet bulletin boards, from a husband denouncing a student he suspected of carrying on an affair with his wife.

Immediately, hundreds joined in the attack. "Let's use our keyboard and mouse in our hands as weapons," as one person wrote, "to chop out the heads of these adulterers, to pay for the sacrifice of the husband." Within days, the hundreds had grown to thousands, and then tens of thousands, with total strangers forming teams to hunt down the student's identity and address, hounding him out of his university and causing his family to barricade themselves inside their home.

It was the latest example of a growing phenomenon the Chinese call Internet hunting, in which morality lessons are administered by online throngs and where anonymous Web users come together to investigate others and mete out punishment for offenses real and imagined.
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Internet suicides rise in Japan

June 2, 2006

The number of Japanese people killing themselves in online death pacts rose alarmingly again last year, despite government efforts to monitor websites where suicidal people meet.

The National Police Agency said 91 people died in group suicides arranged over the internet - up from 55 in 2004. The number of internet suicide pacts has almost tripled since police began keeping records in 2003.
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Police offered robot eye

June 1, 2006

A firm that produces surveillance software used by numerous British police forces is looking for one of them to test its latest wheez, a programme that automatically scans CCTV footage for suspicious behaviour and matches it with other intelligence such as mugshots.

The new software, by Nice Systems, can alert police when it detects loitering, crowd gathering, people running when they should be walking, tail-gating, parking in the wrong place, unauthorised entry, or any sort of behaviour the police want to track.
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Fresno Police Department Has Begun Major Surveillance Project

May 31, 2006

The Fresno Police Department (FPD) has begun the installation of state-of-the-art, high-resolution cameras at several locations. Plans are to increase video surveillance in the community with at least 256 cameras, all fed into a central downtown location. A large part of the funding for this project will come from a grant from the Department of Homeland Security.

FPD isn’t planning to have people watch over the video monitors on a regular basis. Instead, cameras can be put on alert, for example by a 911 call. Once on alert, the signal from that camera will be sent directly to squad cars in the crime scene area. Officers can use the camera to zoom in and out in order to see things better. This will enable the officers to see everything that takes place on the camera in real-time. At the same time, the entire incident will be recorded on a hard drive that stores the information at police headquarters.
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High-tech tags may track kids in TUSD

May 28, 2006

Millions of consumers pay extra to put tracking devices in their cars in case of theft.
But would parents want to shell out more money for something similar for their children? And would schools go for it?
The answer seems to be yes.

School districts around the nation are starting to hold themselves more accountable for the students they're paid to teach and protect. As part of the growing trend, officials in the Tucson Unified School District already are testing new technology that helps keep track of elementary students during the school day.
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Radio chip tracking raises privacy concerns

May 29, 2006

Major corporations in Canada have quietly started using implanted radio chips to track the movement of products and their secretive behaviour and potential for using the technology to invade the private lives of Canadians has raised serious alarm with the federal privacy commissioner.

The technology, called radio frequency identification (RFID) is poised to radically expand the ability of corporations to spy on customers' shopping habits, track items in homes and allow the government to monitor the movement of immigrants.
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Call for database to track vulnerable children

May 27, 2006

The Government should set up a database to track the vulnerable children who drop out before secondary school, it was claimed today.

There are up to 1,000 children, mainly from disadvantaged areas and the travelling community, who leave school before the age of 12.

Sinn Féin TD Sean Crowe said a primary school pupils database would allow the Government to track these children.
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Communications Intercepts by Law Enforcement Increasing

May 31, 2006

The Following is based on a report obtained by the National Association of Chiefs of Police from the US Federal Courts.)

The number of orders authorizing or approving the interception of wire, oral or electronic communications by federal and state courts increased 4 percent in 2005, for a total of 1,773 applications.

Of the total applications, 625 were submitted to federal judges, down 14 percent from 2004, and 1,148 applications were submitted to state judges, an increase of 17 percent over 2004. Orders for 22 wiretaps were approved for which no wiretaps were actually installed. In addition, one application was denied. As of December 31, 2005, a total of 4,674 persons had been arrested based on interceptions terminated in 2005, 4 percent more than in 2004.
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Mayor to launch CCTV camera boost

28 May 2006

Increased security is promised with five new CCTV cameras due to go live in a Birmingham suburb.
The move comes after the community and Birmingham City Council worked together to help combat crime and reduce the fear of criminal activity locally.
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Holyrood debates new DNA powers

25 May 2006

A shake-up of the regulations governing the DNA of suspected criminals has been debated by MSPs.
It is proposed to allow police to keep DNA samples for three years in violent or sexual offence cases, whether a person is found guilty or not.
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