Welcome to the Overnight News Digest (OND) for Tuesday, September 25, 2012.
OND is a regular
community feature on Daily Kos, consisting of news stories from around the world, sometimes coupled with a daily theme, original research or commentary. Editors of OND impart their own presentation styles and content choices, typically publishing near 12:00AM Eastern Time.
Creation and early water-bearing of the OND concept came from our very own Magnifico - proper respect is due.
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This diary is named for its "Hump Point" video: Hold On (I'm Comin) by Sam and Dave
Please feel free to browse and add your own links, content or thoughts in the Comments section.
Any timestamps shown are relative to each publication.
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Top News |
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Drones in Pakistan traumatise civilians, US report says
By (BBC)
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Civilians are being "terrorised" 24 hours a day by CIA drone attacks that target mainly low-level militants in north-west Pakistan, a US report says.
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But the scale of civilian casualties has been difficult to assess because independent media and researchers are denied access by the authorities to the tribal areas near the Afghan border.
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An Associated Press investigation on the ground in Pakistan found that a significant majority of those killed by the drones were combatants. The report, by Stanford University and New York University's School of Law, upholds that conclusion, adding that the vast majority of those targeted were low-level militants and not senior commanders.
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"Publicly available evidence that the strikes have made the US safer overall is ambiguous at best," it says, adding that targeted killings and drone attacks undermine respect for international law.
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Young cancer survivors can't afford care
By (UPI)
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Many young adult cancer survivors avoid routine medical care because it's too expensive, despite most having health insurance, U.S. researchers say.
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The study, published in online ahead of the print edition of the journal Cancer, found adolescent and young adult cancer survivors had similar rates of being uninsured as those without cancer -- 21 percent versus 23 percent -- but cancer survivors were 67 percent more likely to forgo routine medical care due to costs in the previous year.
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"The Affordable Care Act is an important step to ensuring that adolescent and young adult cancer survivors have health insurance coverage and improving their healthcare access; but they need to be educated about the importance of regular healthcare to monitor for late effects," Kirchhoff said in a statement.
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Gender Bias Blocks Women in Science
By Kate Sheppard
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We hear a lot about the gender imbalance in the sciences. Now scientists have looked at one reason women might be disinclined to join the profession: gender bias. A new study from researchers at Yale University analyzed how professors treated candidates for a lab manager position, using applications that were identical in every way except the name on the top of the form. Here's what they found:
Faculty participants rated the male applicant as significantly more competent and hireable than the (identical) female applicant. These participants also selected a higher starting salary and offered more career mentoring to the male applicant.
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This suggests that the answer isn't necessarily just getting more women into the profession—and, more specifically, into academic jobs. Instead, it suggests that more needs to be done overall to change the impression of women as less-qualified simply by virtue of being women. Certainly, getting more women into the profession would go a long way toward addressing the bias, but it might not be the only remedy necessary.
This reminds me of an excellent piece in the Wall Street Journal from 2006, in which transgender scientists described their experiences working in the field first as a woman, and then later as a man after they transitioned. Neurobiologist Ben Barres talked about how much more accepted and praised his research was when he presented it as a man, rather than as Barbara Barres. . .
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International |
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Anti-US protests and the challenges of '21st century statecraft'
By Lizzy Tomei
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Social media use has been a key component of the State Department’s strategy for outreach and diplomacy under the Obama administration. This “21st Century Statecraft” has allowed for both unprecedented access to informal public opinion and a rapid pace of official communication.
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But the nature of social media, it could be said, gives control over messaging with one hand and with the other takes it away. That’s been highlighted during the recent rash of anti-US protests that erupted across the Middle East and North Africa, spreading to Asia and Europe. The seeds of this discontent have been a matter of discussion, with culprits ranging from US drone strikes to local politics being offered as reasons for anger that has fallen under the blanket heading of "anti-US sentiment."
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And, in the days that followed, protest — some of it fatally violent — spread further across the Middle East and Africa, into Asia and Europe. YouTube eventually blocked access to the inflammatory video in Libya and Egypt, while governments in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Bangladesh blocked the content themselves.
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Judge orders arrest of Brazil Google president
By (BBC)
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A regional judge has ordered the arrest of Google's president in Brazil, Fabio Jose Silva Coelho, after the company failed to take down Youtube videos.
Authorities say the videos are slanderous towards a candidate running in a city's election for mayor.
The judge ordered the removal of the videos last week, but Google has refused to remove them and says it is appealing.
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According to Brazilian media, the videos in question suggest Alcides Bernal - a mayoral candidate in the city of Campo Grande - is guilty of committing crimes.
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Denmark tightens sperm donor law after NF1 transmissions
By (BBC)
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Denmark is tightening rules on sperm donation after one donor was found to have passed on a rare genetic condition to at least five of the 43 babies he is thought to have fathered.
Neurofibromatosis type 1 (NF1) produces tumours that affect the nervous system, and the affected sperm is thought to have been used in 10 countries.
The sperm bank has been criticised for failing to screen for the condition.
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Denmark has liberal sperm donation policies that appeal to women who want to conceive using artificial insemination.
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Ford to axe 'hundreds' of jobs in Europe
By (BBC)
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US car giant Ford has said that it will cut several hundred jobs in Europe because of declining demand, including in the UK.
Jobs will also go in Germany and in other parts of Europe.
The carmaker will offer voluntary buyouts for staff and cut jobs for "agency workers and purchased service", it said.
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Ford wants to reduce labour costs and improve plant utilisation in Europe, where industry watchers say it uses less than 65% of its capacity.
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Libya appoints army to control militia groups
By (Al Jazeera)
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Army officers have been appointed to take over two powerful militias in the eastern Libyan city of Benghazi, after the president ordered that all militias join the armed forces or disband.
The move reflects increasing pressure on the government to control or disband the country's militias, many of which it had relied upon for securing Libya in the turmoil following last year's ouster of Muammar Gaddafi.
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Colonel Ali al-Sheikhi, the spokesman for Libya's joint chiefs of staff, told the news agency LANA on Monday that the chiefs of the Rafallah Sahati Brigade and the Feb 17 Brigade, two groups that authorities had allowed to manage security in the eastern city of Benghazi, would be replaced with army commanders.
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Anger at the militias boiled over following the killing of the top American diplomat in Libya and three US mission staffers in an assault on the consulate in Benghazi on Sept. 11.
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USA Politics, Economy, Major Events |
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Court to rule on pets' sentimental value
By (UPI)
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The Texas Supreme Court says it will take up a case seeking to allow people to claim damages for the sentimental, rather than market, value of their pets.
The state's highest court agreed last week to hear oral argument after an animal shelter employee in Fort Worth appealed a landmark appellate court ruling overturning a 120-year-old Texas law stating a person can sue for only the market value of a pet, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram reported Tuesday.
The case began when a lost dog was taken to an animal shelter and mistakenly euthanized three years ago. The owner's suit in Tarrant County District Court, which claimed damages for the sentimental value of the dog, was dismissed, but the appellate court in Fort Worth later reversed the lower court's decision.
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Apple Products Account for 14 Percent of All Crime in New York City
By Kyle Wagner
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. . . The NYPD has released statistics that imply, basically, that Apple product theft makes up 14 percent of all reported crime in the city. It's absurd and sad and sort of predictable but mostly just the sad and absurd.
Apple products were reported stolen in NYC 11,447 times this year, from January 1 to September 23. That number is 40 percent higher than last year's for the same period. It contrasts to a 4 percent rise in overall crime . . .
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Study: Lenders may see a different credit score than you do
By Lindsay Wise
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About one in five consumers are likely to receive credit scores that differ substantially from those used by lenders, according to a government study released Tuesday.
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But consumer advocates said the study casts serious doubt on the accuracy of credit scores.
“What this is telling me is that the consumer doesn’t have a number to rely on,” said Pamela Banks, senior policy counsel for Consumer’s Union, the advocacy arm of Consumer Reports. “How can a consumer manage their financial affairs if they can’t rely on the score that makes a difference in the type of loan they get? They might get loans with a higher interest rate or might not even qualify for something when in fact they do.”
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Credit reporting companies are about to come under much closer scrutiny from the bureau, a new federal watchdog created by the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010. On Sept. 30, the bureau will start supervising 30 of the nation’s largest credit reporting companies for the first time. The three biggest ones – TransUnion, Equifax and Experian – keep files on more than 200 million Americans and produce 3 billion credit reports a year.
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Welcome to the "Hump Point" of this OND.
News can be sobering and engrossing - at this point in the diary, an offering of brief escapism:
Random notes related to this video:
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Sam & Dave recorded for Stax Records, which was a popular Soul music label in the '60s and early '70s. Isaac Hayes was also on the label, which created a very loose and comfortable atmosphere for their artists - at least until they had a financial meltdown in the mid-'70s. While Motown worked hard on the visual styles and choreography of their artists, Stax left most of that up to the singers, which meant that most of them just came out and sang. Sam & Dave were the exception, doing lots of crazy dancing and improvisation in their stage shows, which was always on display when they performed this song.
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Sam and Dave were the inspiration for The Blues Brothers.
Back to what's happening:
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Environment and Greening |
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Critics question university research funded by shale gas industry
By Sean Cockerham
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Professors funded by the shale gas industry have produced influential research supporting the industry at major institutions including Penn State University and the University of Texas at Austin and don’t always disclose where the money is coming from.
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The University of Texas at Austin last month named a panel of experts to review its own controversial pro-industry study. The Texas report found no evidence of groundwater contamination from “fracking,” the process of injecting high-pressure water and chemicals underground to free gas inside shale rock. But the professor who led the study, Charles Groat, failed to mention he’s on the board of a company engaged in fracking that paid him $400,000 last year.
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The Responsible Drilling Alliance is targeting Penn State over a 2009 study that was influential in killing a proposed state tax on the shale gas industry. The study failed to mention it was commissioned and paid for by a shale industry trade group.
“Because Penn State put its prestige behind the paper it really changed the conversation in Pennsylvania, and weighted it very heavily on the side of the gas industry,” said Jon Bogle, co-founder of the Pennsylvania-based group. “If the gas industry had put out the same paper under its own name it would have been taken much less seriously.”
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Pork and bacon shortage 'unavoidable' as record drought raises feed costs
By Dominic Rushe
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Record droughts in the US and Russia are threatening to curtail the world's bacon supply, farmers in the US and Europe are warning.
So dire is the situation that a world shortage of pork and bacon is "unavoidable" next year, according to Britain's National Pig Association. And in the US farmers predict pork prices will hit new highs in 2013 as farmers cut back on production due to soaring feed costs.
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"It's not that people don't want to eat pork, it's just that they increasingly can't afford to," said Meyer. "We've been warning about this for years. Now that we are talking about bacon, we've really got everyone's attention."
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Texas loses 300 million trees last year due to drought, say experts
By Alexander Besant
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Experts say that drought claimed 300 million trees in Texas last year.
Researchers at the Texas A&M Forest Service found that hundreds of millions of trees disappeared after looking at evidence from ground and aerial surveys.
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Last year's drought in Texas was said by some scientists to be caused by climate change, reported GlobalPost last August.
It began in October 2010 and is said to be the state's worst drought in recorded history.
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Science and Health |
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Finding the Statistical Fingerprints of Election Thieves
By (scienceDaily)
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The art of swaying an election is as old as democracy itself. Strategies like ballot stuffing, redistricting, voter venue switching, and temporary traffic detours have skewed regional results, and sometimes determined the winner.
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Thurner, a Santa Fe Institute External Professor who heads the Section for Complex Systems at the Medical University of Vienna, and colleagues looked for two kinds of rigging: incremental fraud, where votes for one party are kept in the ballot box while those for the other candidates are tossed, and extreme fraud, which shows 100 percent voter turnout in a district, all voting for the same party.
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Among the countries studied, data from recent elections in Russia and Uganda showed both the smear of incremental fraud and the second cluster of extreme fraud, with up to 64 percent of districts being affected in Russia's 2011 vote and 39 percent in 2012. Other countries' data showed little to no such trends.
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Prison Rehab Tied to Parole Decisions
By (scienceDaily)
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According to a new study co-authored by Simon Fraser University economics professor Steeve Mongrain, parole board decisions can have a huge impact on whether or not prisoners are motivated to rehabilitate.
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Mongrain says an important application of this finding is in the context of legislative changes to constraints in the justice system. Any changes to laws governing parole eligibility need to be evaluated in terms of their impact on prisoners' motivation to seek rehabilitation and ultimately the rate of recidivism in prison and society.
"Most people in prison are there precisely because of their lack of impulse control. So very long sentences combined with long waits for parole eligibility can cause impatient inmates to conclude that rehabilitation is not worthwhile," explains Mongrain. "Studies show recidivism is directly tied to prisoners' completion of addiction recovery and skills-building programs. If they're not motivated to take them then recidivism goes up.
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Study: Contraception an economic issue
By (UPI)
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Most U.S. women say they use contraceptives because they could not afford to take care of a baby at that time, researchers say.
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Sixty-five percent of the women said they could not afford to take care of a baby at the time. Nearly 25 percent said either they or their partners were unemployed, and nearly all of those who had children said having more children would affect how much care they were able to provide for the children they already had.
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"Women value the ability to plan their childbearing, and view doing so as critical to being able to achieve their life goals," Lindberg said in a statement. "They need continued access to a wide range of contraceptives so they can plan their families and determine when they are ready to have children."
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And now for something really surprising: Sugary drinks linked to weight gain
By Tom Laskawy
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In the Great Soda Wars, it often seems that beverage companies have the upper hand. Critics of restricting access to soda and other sweetened beverages have the rhetoric of freedom and liberty — or rather Freedom! and Liberty! — to draw on as well as the whole history of failed government attempts to restrict stuff people like that’s bad for you. But now we have the latest entry in the Soda Wars saga; what I’d call: The Researchers Strike Back.
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The researchers found that kids who drank the diet drinks gained “significantly” less weight and had less body fat than the kids who drank the sugar-sweetened ones. The exact mechanism is unknown, but it lends credence to the theory that sugary drinks represent “extra” calories that don’t make us feel full the way other kinds of calories do. Of course, before you get excited about the idea of expanding diet soda consumption among kids, it’s worth quoting another study I recently wrote about that found diet soda consumption up among American kids:
. . . Recent human and animal studies have shown that [low-calorie sweeteners] may affect glucose metabolism, satiety, and vascular function, despite their inherent lack of energy. A growing body of evidence suggests that repeated exposure to sweet substances may lead to the development of preferences for highly sweet foods and beverages. This is particularly concerning in young children, among whom early exposure to highly sweet substances can lead to the development of dietary patterns replete with highly caloric foods, typically lacking in nutritional value.
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Saved by the bell: How recess makes kids healthy, smart, and well-adjusted
By Claire Thompson
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If you were still watching cartoons at the turn of the millennium (guilty), you may remember a delightful series called Recess, which chronicled the adventures of a group of fourth-graders during that most hallowed time of the school day. For TJ, his friends, and the rest of their schoolmates, the recess bell signaled a transition from the world of grown-ups to one ruled by kids, where the playground was their empire and a sixth-grader called King Bob governed from the top of the jungle gym. Epic battles and campaigns could be waged and won within one 22-minute episode, just as, in real life, those few minutes of recess were time enough to break hearts or body parts.
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In decades past, when neighborhoods were perceived to be safe, children had lots of time to play outdoors, and they naturally picked up the culture of play from older kids. Today, children are indoors more and “personal use media” takes up six or seven hours of their time every day (pdf). Young people between the ages of 10 to 16 engage in vigorous activity for only 12.6 minutes per day — nowhere near the 60 minutes that the surgeon general recommends. And the kids who are regularly active typically participate in sports leagues run by adults.
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To make matters worse, often the kids who need recess the most are the ones getting less of it. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, as of 2005, first graders got an average of 28 minutes of recess per day, including lunchtime. But that number decreases the larger and more urban a school is, the higher its minority enrollment, and the higher the number of students eligible for free lunch. . .
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Diet pills return to the US after long hiatus – people's panel
By Ruth Spencer and Nadja Popovich
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As more than a third of US adults struggle with obesity, a pill may seem like an easy answer, but weight loss drugs have had a sketchy track record over the past two decades. Ever since "fen phen" and Meridia were taken off the market after dangerous heart-related side effects were widely reported, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has been extremely cautious when assessing new diet drugs. In fact, no new weight loss medications have been approved by the FDA for 13 years, until this summer when the agency gave the green light to two new drugs.
Qsymia and Belviq, as the medications are branded, aim to put a dent in America's obesity epidemic. Both are targeted specifically at obese adults – those with a body mass index over 30 (check your BMI here).
When combined with diet and exercise, the new drugs promise "modest" weight loss (about 5-10% of body mass in a year) . . .
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Technology |
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Don't Drive Your Nissan Leaf Too Much
By Kevin Bullis
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Electric vehicles have a lot going for them—they’re clean and quiet, they accelerate briskly, and they have far fewer parts than conventional gas-powered cars, reducing maintenance. But that may all be trumped by their high price tag and limited range—most go 100 miles or less on a charge. Now electric vehicles are in danger of having another black mark: several Nissan Leaf owners in hot areas of the country have been saying that the battery capacity of their cars is shrinking fast. One 2011 model could only travel 59 miles on a charge, down from the EPA's rating of 73, and Nissan's original claims of 100 miles. Now the results of a Nissan study of those vehicles are in. The cars are being driven too much. . .
Based on the amount of driving and the decline in battery capacity so far, Nissan expects the cars to retain 76 percent of their capacity after five years. A spokesperson from Nissan is quoted as saying that, given their heavy use, “the cars and the battery packs are behaving as we expected."
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OMG Life creates Autographer - a wearable automatic camera
By (dpreview.com)
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British newcomer OMG Life has created Autographer, an 'intelligent' wearable camera that uses an array of built-in sensors to take pictures automatically triggered by changes in its environment. It uses a semi-fisheye lens with a 136° angle of view in front of a 5MP backlit-CMOS sensor, and the shutter is triggered at key moments based on input from GPS, acceleration, direction, temperature, proximity and light sensors. The company thinks it should appeal to anyone interested in recording an event without having to operate a camera, or as an additional tool for documentary photographers. Images are stored in internal memory, and can be transferred to a smartphone using Bluetooth for viewing; alternatively they can be compiled into movies using the supplied software. . .
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It's also, as far as we're aware, a unique concept; a camera that attempts to make informed decisions about the best time to take pictures. . .
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Myspace re-enters the social media ring with yet another rebrand
By Amanda Holpuch
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In its protracted battle to remain relevant, MySpace previewed a significantly rebooted version of its website on Monday.
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"In a single sentence, it's a social network for the creative community to connect to their fans," Myspace owner Tim Vanderhook told the Hollywood Reporter.
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One way Myspace may be able to reinvent itself as a relevant social network is with its focus on musicians. The rebrand video showcases what an artist's profile would look like, using Timberlake as an example. In the preview, he's given access to the actions of his top fans and can see who is listening to his music and where they are.
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Hitachi Builds Long-Lasting Glass Chips for Data Storage
By Tiffany Kaiser
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Ditch the CDs and MP3s -- Hitachi has created a tiny piece of quartz glass that's capable of storing digital information for a few hundred million years.
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I know what you're thinking -- how can a small piece of glass last a few hundred million years? The quartz glass material is capable of withstanding some harsh conditions like water (tsunamis), heat (high temperature flames and heat up to 1,000 degrees Celsius for two hours), radio waves and most chemicals.
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These chips have real potential to replace CDs and hard drives, which have a lifespan of a few decades to a century at most.
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Turn your personal mob into an army
By Rob Beschizza
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Human.io is the new thing from Joshua Schachter, founder of bookmarking site del.icio.us. This time, however, he's not suggesting you share your travels with a few friends—he's suggesting that you turn them into an army.
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The concept—developed by Paul Rademacher, creator of legendary Craigslist/Google Maps mashup Housingmaps, and Nick Nguyen, formerly of Yahoo and Mozilla—is straightforward enough: Human.io is a platform for performing "micro-tasks".
First, you publish a simple, crowdsourceble activity, such as voting on something, going to a particular location, or taking photos—anything that might be accomplished with a smartphone's UI and its sensors. Then you tell your readers, followers or friends about it. They start the app, get cracking, and, finally, the results are sent back to you.
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Cultural |
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Following news, political knowledge linked
By (UPI)
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Following the news is one way Americans learn about politics but it is not sufficient, by itself, enough to create political knowledge, U.S. researchers say.
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Adolescents who spend more time thinking and talking about the news with their peers and relatives tend to know more about political developments in the country than those who simply follow the news, a university release said Tuesday.
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"Our study shows that if parents and educators want to increase political knowledge and action among younger generations, it is important to involve them in discussions about what they are reading in the news," he said. "Just giving them a story to read is not enough. Teenagers need to be able to think through and talk about political issues in order to retain knowledge about them."
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Kenya MP Ferdinand Waititu accused of 'hate speech'
By (BBC)
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Kenya's director of public prosecutions has ordered the arrest of a deputy minister, for alleged incitement and hate speech against ethnic Maasai.
The order comes after parts of a speech made by MP Ferdinand Waititu were posted on YouTube.
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Keriako Tobiko, the director of public prosecutions, said they had incited violence and "feelings of hatred and hostility against the Maasai community", the Daily Nation newspaper reports.
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But Maasai leaders, who organised a protest march on Tuesday, say they do not want an apology as it encourages impunity. They want him to be prosecuted.
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Meteor Blades is known to offer an enlightening Evening Open Diary - you might consider checking that out tonight if you haven't already. |