May 9, 2006, 10:46 PM CT

Court Halts Spyware Operations

One Operator to Pay More Than $4 Million; Another Ordered to Stop Collecting Consumers Personal Information.

An operation that deceptively downloaded spyware onto unsuspecting consumers' computers, changing their settings and hijacking their search engines, has been halted by a federal court at the request of the Federal Trade Commission. The judge has ordered the operators to give up to more than $4 million in ill-gotten gains. The court also ordered a halt to another spyware operator's stealthy downloads and barred the collection of consumers' personal information, pending trial.

The FTC sued both operations charging that the stealthy downloads of spyware were unfair and deceptive and violated federal law. Although the companies used different techniques to direct consumers to their Web sites and implement the downloads, the FTC alleged that both operations hijacked consumers' computers without the consumers' knowledge or approval, secretly changed their settings, and barraged consumers with pop-up ads. The spyware and other software the defendants installed caused many computers to malfunction, slow down, or crash, causing consumers to lose data stored on their computers.

The FTC alleged that Sanford Wallace and his company, Smartbot.Net, exploited a security vulnerability in Microsoft's Internet Explorer's Web browser in order to distribute spyware. The spyware caused the CD-ROM tray on computers to open and then issued a "FINAL WARNING!!" to computer screens with a message that said, "If your cd-rom drive's open.You DESPERATELY NEED to rid your system of spyware pop-ups IMMEDIATELY! Spyware programmers can control your computer hardware if you failed to protect your computer right at this moment! Download Spy Wiper NOW!" Spy Wiper and Spy Deleter, purported anti-spyware products the defendants promoted, sold for $30.........

Posted by: Kevin      Permalink         Source

May 9, 2006, 0:01 AM CT

Nanotubes To Send Signals To Nerve Cells

Texas scientists have added one more trick to the amazing repertoire of carbon nanotubes -- the ability to carry electrical signals to nerve cells.

Nanotubes, tiny hollow carbon filaments about one ten-thousandth the diameter of a human hair, are already famed as one of the most versatile materials ever discovered. A hundred times as strong as steel and one-sixth as dense, able to conduct electricity better than copper or to substitute for silicon in semiconductor chips, carbon nanotubes have been proposed as the basis for everything from elevator cables that could lift payloads into Earth orbit to computers smaller than human cells.

Thin films of carbon nanotubes deposited on transparent plastic can also serve as a surface on which cells can grow. And as researchers at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston (UTMB) and Rice University suggest in a paper published in the recent issue of the Journal of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology, these nanotube films could potentially serve as an electrical interface between living tissue and prosthetic devices or biomedical instruments.

"As far as I know, we're the first group to show that you can have some kind of electrical communication between these two things, by stimulating cells through our transparent conductive layer," said Todd Pappas, director of sensory and molecular neuroengineering at UTMB's Center for Biomedical Engineering and one of the study's senior authors. Pappas and UTMB research associate Anton Liopo collaborated on the work with James Tour, director of the Carbon Nanotechnology Laboratory at Rice's Richard E. Smalley Institute for Nanoscale Science and Technology, Rice postdoctoral fellow Michael Stewart and Rice graduate student Jared Hudson.........

Posted by: Kevin      Permalink         Source

May 8, 2006, 11:50 PM CT

Antidepressant Drug May Help Depression In Diabetics

team of researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis found that an antidepressant medicine may reduce the risk of recurrent depression and increase the length of time between depressive episodes in patients with diabetes.

"That's important not only because people with diabetes will feel better if we can control their depression. It's also key to helping manage blood sugar," says Patrick J. Lustman, Ph.D., principal investigator and professor of psychiatry. "As depression improves, glucose levels also tend to improve".

Although depression affects about 5 percent of the general population, the rate is about 25 percent for patients with diabetes. Lustman's team previously demonstrated that treatment with antidepressant drugs and psychotherapy is an effective way to treat depression in patients with diabetes, but often depression would quickly redevelop.

"As we better understand depression, it's clear that for many patients, it is a chronic and recurring disease," Lustman says. "That appears to be especially true for patients with diabetes compared to those otherwise free of medical illness".

Although they knew that short-term treatment with antidepressants was helpful with mood and with control of blood glucose, Lustman's team didn't know whether the drug could prevent the recurrence of depression in patients with diabetes. He also didn't know what would happen to glucose levels in the months following successful depression therapy.........

Posted by: Sean      Permalink         Source

May 8, 2006, 11:46 PM CT

Social Stress Prompts Hamsters To Overeat

Put a mouse or a rat under stress and what does it do? It stops eating. Humans should be so lucky. When people suffer nontraumatic stress they often head for the refrigerator, producing unhealthy extra pounds.

When Syrian hamsters, which are normally solitary, are placed in a group-living situation, they also gain weight. So researchers at the Center for Behavioral Neuroscience at Georgia State University are using hamsters as a model for human stress-induced obesity. They want to begin unraveling the complex factors that lead people to eat when under stress and hope that the information can eventually be used to block appetites under this common scenario.

The study, "Social defeat increases food intake, body mass, and adiposity in Syrian hamsters," by Michelle T. Foster, Matia B. Solomon, Kim L. Huhman and Timothy J. Bartness, Georgia State University, Atlanta, appears in the recent issue of the American Journal of Physiology-Regulatory, Integrative and Comparative Physiology published by The American Physiological Society.

Hamsters similar to humans

In the study, the scientists look at nontraumatic stress -- the stress we experience in everyday life, such as getting stuck in traffic or trying to complete a major project at work. It is distinct from traumatic stress, such as suffering the death of a loved one. Traumatic stress typically dulls the human appetite, said Bartness, the study's senior researcher and an authority on obesity.........

Posted by: Ashley      Permalink         Source

May 8, 2006, 11:27 PM CT

Where Have All the Butterflies Gone?

Cold, wet conditions early in the year mean that 2006 is shaping up as the worst year for California's butterflies in almost four decades, according to Art Shapiro, professor of evolution and ecology at UC Davis.

That's a turnaround from last spring, when millions of painted lady butterflies migrated through the Central Valley. But other species have seen steep declines in recent years and could disappear from the region altogether.

"It has been the worst spring for butterflies of my 35 in California," Shapiro said. "There will probably be long-term repercussions, especially for species already in serious decline".

Shapiro said that at most of his study sites, he is seeing half or less than half the number of species present at this time in an average year, and far fewer individual butterflies than usual. For example, at Gates Canyon near Vacaville he counted 10 species and 43 individuals on April 18, 2006. At the same site on April 19, 2005, he counted 21 species and 378 butterflies.

This winter's weather conditions may have a lot to do with the drop in numbers. The early winter was mild, with not enough cold to end the winter dormancy or "diapause" of most butterflies, so they did not emerge to take advantage of early warm weather in February. Then March turned cold and wet, wiping out the breeding of species that had emerged.........

Posted by: Ashley      Permalink         Source

May 8, 2006, 11:21 PM CT

New 'metal Sandwich' May Break Superconductor Record

After an exhaustive data search for new compounds, scientists at Duke University's Pratt School of Engineering have discovered a theoretical "metal sandwich" that is expected to be a good superconductor. Superconductive materials have no resistance to the flow of electric current.

The new lithium monoboride (LiB) compound is a "binary alloy" consisting of two layers of boron -- the "bread" of the atomic sandwich -- with lithium metal "filling" in between, the scientists said. Once the material is synthesized, it should be superconductive at a higher temperature than other superconductors in its class, as per their results.

The scientists reported their findings in the May 5 online edition of the journal Physical Review B, Rapid Communications.

"To the best of our knowledge, this alloy structure had not been considered before," said Stefano Curtarolo, professor of mechanical engineering and materials sciences at Duke's Pratt School. "We have been able to identify synthesis conditions under which the LiB compound should form. And we think that if the material can be synthesized, it should superconduct at a higher temperature, perhaps more than 10 percent greater, than any other binary alloy superconductor."

"The significance of the work is not only the discovery of lithium monoboride itself, but also that this opens the door to finding derivatives that could aid in the search for additional novel superconductors," added Aleksey Kolmogorov, lead author of the study and a postdoctoral fellow at the Pratt School. He said that once a new superconductive material is identified, researchers typically can manipulate the substance -- twisting it or doping it with other elements - to create related structures that might have even more appealing properties.........

Posted by: Kevin      Permalink         Source

May 8, 2006, 9:12 PM CT

Two New Varieties of Non-Allergenic Soybeans

Soy is also a very common ingredient in a lot of food products, usually as fillers and extenders. For a lot of vegetarians, it is also a common alternative to meat because of its high protein cotent. However, a considerable number of people, particularly children, show allergic reactions such as skin rashes, gastrointestinal problems, or in more serious cases, swelling and diffulty of breathing and swallowing. If not for this, soy would have been an ideal food item, considering its nutritional value and relatively cheap price.

This is why scientists have tried to create genetically modified soybeans that are non-allergenic. They simply shut off that gene called p34, which has been found to be responsible for producing the protein that invokes allergic reactions. However, because of public resistance to GMOs, they tried other traditional approaches as well.

Alas, researchers from the University of Illinois and the USDA-Agricultural Research Service have been rewarded. After screening more than 16,000 soybean lines in the USDA's National Soybean Germplasm Collection, they found two varieties that are naturally deficient in the allergy-causing P34 protein. They said they will release these soybean varieties without patents to companies and breeders. Hopefully it doesn't take long before we consumers see them on the store shelves!........

Posted by: Jessica      Permalink         Source

May 7, 2006, 11:11 PM CT

Huge Impacts From Tiny Tech

The Center for Responsible Nanotechnology (CRN) today announced the continuation of its first series of original essays in which industry experts predict profound impacts of nanotechnology on society. Eleven new articles by members of CRN's Global Task Force appear in the latest issue of the journal Nanotechnology Perceptions, published recently, complementing the prior issue's collection. Covering topics from commerce to criminology, from ethics to economics, and from our remote past to our distant future, this new collection illustrates the profound transformation that nanotechnology will have on every aspect of human society.

Ray Kurzweil, renowned inventor, entrepreneur, and best-selling author, explained, "As the pace of technological advancement rapidly accelerates, it becomes increasingly important to promote knowledgeable and insightful discussion of both promise and peril. I'm very pleased to take part in this effort by including my own essay, and by hosting discussion of these essays on the 'MindX' discussion board at KurzweilAI.net".

Nanotechnology Perceptions is a peer-reviewed academic journal of the Collegium Basilea in Basel, Switzerland. "We jumped at the chance to publish the CRN Task Force essays," said Jeremy Ramsden, editor-in-chief of the journal. "To us, these articles represent world-class thinking about some of the most important challenges that human society will ever face."........

Posted by: Sarah      Permalink         Source

May 7, 2006, 11:05 PM CT

How Does 'mechanochemistry' Work?

It's a bit like enzymes (if you know your chemistry): you fix onto a molecule or two, then twist or pull or push in a precise way until a chemical reaction happens right where you want it. This happens in a vacuum, so you don't have water molecules bumping around. It's a lot more controllable that way.

So, if you want to add an atom to a surface, you start with that atom bound to a molecule called a "tool tip" at the end of a mechanical manipulator. You move the atom to the point where you want it to end up. You move the atom next to the surface, and make sure that it has a weaker bond to the tool tip than to the surface. When you bring them close enough, the bond will transfer. This is ordinary chemistry: an atom moving from one molecule to another when they come close enough to each other, and when the movement is energetically favorable. What's different about mechanochemistry is that the tool tip molecule can be positioned by direct computer control, so you can do this one reaction at a wide variety of sites on the surface. Just a few reactions give you a lot of flexibility in what you make.........

Posted by: Sarah      Permalink         Source

May 7, 2006, 10:58 PM CT

Gene That Increases Type 2 Diabetes

In a painstaking set of experiments in overweight mice, scientists from the University of Wisconsin-Madison have discovered a gene that appears to play an important role in the onset of type 2 diabetes.

The finding is important because it provides evidence that the same gene in humans could provide clinicians with a powerful tool to determine the likelihood that some individuals will acquire the condition. Moreover, the finding that the gene works through a pathway not generally studied in the context of diabetes, suggests new avenues to explore in the search for new drugs to treat or prevent the disease, says Alan Attie, a UW-Madison professor of biochemistry and the senior author of the study published this week (May 7) in the journal Nature Genetics.

Type 2 diabetes is the most common form of the condition in the United States, with an estimated 16 million Americans afflicted with the disease. It is caused by an inability of the pancreas to produce enough insulin, or by the body's reduced ability to respond to insulin, or both. Insulin is necessary for the body to properly utilize sugar.

Often, the development of type 2 diabetes is caused by obesity. Obese individuals tend to have insulin resistance; that is, it takes more insulin for the body to respond normally. Type 2 diabetes occurs when the pancreas is unable to manufacture enough insulin to compensate for the body's increased demand for the hormone, which it does by growing more insulin-producing beta cells or by ramping up insulin secretion.........

Posted by: Sean      Permalink         Source

Older Blog Entries   1   2   3   4   5   6   7   8   9   10   11   12   13   14   15   16   17   18   19   20   21   22   23   24   25   26   27   28   29   30   31   32   33   34   35   36   37