Bruce Landon's Weblog for Students
primarily for students of technology and psychology



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Friday, August 03, 2007
 

Stem Cell Fraudster May Have Actually Made Breakthrough. Otter writes "Woo Suk Hwang's career swung from fame over his lab's claim of the first stem cells from a cloned human embryo to humiliation when the results were found to be fake. Research at Harvard on Hwang's cells has found that they are actually parthenogenic lines derived from eggs -- perhaps a more important and difficult achievement than what he had been claiming! 'Researchers said that the distinct "genetic fingerprint" of the stem cells means they may be the first in the world to be extracted from embryos produced by the so-called "virgin birth" method, or parthenogenesis. This happens when eggs are stimulated into becoming embryos without ever being fertilised by sperm, and has been achieved in animals. However, before Hwang, no one had managed to produce a human embryo using parthenogenesis which lived long enough to allow the extraction of viable stem cells.'"Read more of this story at Slashdot.
11:27:03 PM    comment []

Lenovo Aims $199 PC At China's Rural Population. athloi writes "Lenovo has announced they are gearing up to sell a basic personal computer for 'China's vast but poor rural market'. The pricetag could be as low as $199. 'The new Lenovo unit will include a processor and a keyboard and will use a buyer's television set as a monitor, Chen said. He said he had no details on the processor size or other features. The new PC goes on sale later this year at prices of 1,499 to 2,999 yuan ($199-$399), Chen said. Lenovo is the world's third-largest PC manufacturer, behind U.S.-based Hewlett Packard Inc. and No. 2 Dell.'"Read more of this story at Slashdot.
12:04:06 PM    comment []

The Weird Psychology of Security. A noted security technologist talks about how the brain illogically measures risk. [Bits]
8:53:02 AM    comment []

Warning of webmail wi-fi hijack. Fans of webmail and social network sites are warned about tools that let attackers hijack accounts via wi-fi. [BBC News | Technology | UK Edition]
8:40:41 AM    comment []

Playing Their Own Way. Sites such as MyGame and Scratch are providing simple personalizing or programming tools so that people with little or no programming experience can create their own video games.... [KurzweilAI.net Accelerating Intelligence News]
8:39:45 AM    comment []

Toward An Alternative To Stem Cells For Treating Chronic Brain Diseases. Korean scientists are reporting the first successful use of small molecules to transform human muscle cells into nerve cells. This advance could lead to new treatments for stroke, Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease and other neurological disord... [KurzweilAI.net Accelerating Intelligence News]
8:38:23 AM    comment []

First Armed Robots on Patrol in Iraq. For the first time in the history of warefare, robots with guns have been deployed.  Three "special weapons observation remote reconnaissance direct action system" (SWO... [KurzweilAI.net Accelerating Intelligence News]
8:37:38 AM    comment []

Forensic Analysis Reveals Al-Qaeda's Image Doctoring. WerewolfOfVulcan writes "Wired reports that researcher Neal Krawetz revealed some very interesting things about the Al-Qaeda images broadcast in the mass media. Analysis shows that they're heavily manipulated, a discussion meant to illustrate a new technique that can spot forgery in digital media. 'Krawetz was ... able to determine that the writing on the banner behind al-Zawahiri's head was added to the image afterward. In the second picture above showing the results of the error level analysis, the light clusters on the image indicate areas of the image that were added or changed. The subtitles and logos in the upper right and lower left corners ... were all added at the same time, while the banner writing was added at a different time, likely around the same time that al-Zawahiri was added, Krawetz says.'"Read more of this story at Slashdot.
8:34:29 AM    comment []

Point-and-Click Gmail Hacking Shown at Black Hat. not5150 writes "Using Gmail or most other webmail programs over an unsecured access points just got a bit more dangerous. At Black Hat Robert Graham, CEO of errata security, showed how to capture and clone session cookies very quickly over connections without encryption. He even hijacked a shocked attendee's Gmail account in the middle of his presentation. 'While Ou was typing, Graham was running Ferret and sniffing all the cookies that were being sent from Ou's laptop and Google. Graham then clicked on Ou's IP address and Gmail page, complete with Ou's recently sent message on the screen. We photographed both Graham's and Ou's laptop at that time and posted it to the picture gallery. You'll see that the contents are exactly the same.'"Read more of this story at Slashdot.
8:29:21 AM    comment []


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