Welcome to the Overnight News Digest (OND) for Tuesday, February 25, 2014.
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: Down On The Corner by Johnny Marr
News below Aunt Flossie's hairdo . . .
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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U.S. Vice President Biden decries 'hatred' behind state voter ID laws
By (Reuters via chicagotribune.com)
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U.S. Vice President Joe Biden said on Tuesday he hopes Congress will pass new legislation to modernize the landmark Voting Rights Act of 1965 and counter what he called the "hatred" behind voter identification laws in states such as North Carolina, Alabama and Texas.
The U.S. Supreme Court gutted a core part of the act in June, and said Congress needed a new plan to protect blacks and other minorities in places where discrimination still persists rather than target former slaveholding states in the South.
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"These guys never go away. Hatred never, never goes away," Biden told the reception. "The zealotry of those who wish to limit the franchise cannot be smothered by reason."
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A bipartisan group of lawmakers introduced a new bill in the Senate and the House of Representatives in January in response to the Supreme Court decision.
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Scientists complete the top quark puzzle
By (ScienceDaily)
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cientists on the CDF and DZero experiments at the U.S. Department of Energy's Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory have announced that they have found the final predicted way of creating a top quark, completing a picture of this particle nearly 20 years in the making.
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Collisions that produce a single top quark through the weak nuclear force are rarer, and the process scientists on the Tevatron experiments have just announced is the most challenging of these to detect. This method of producing single top quarks is among the rarest interactions allowed by the laws of physics. The detection of this process was one of the ultimate goals of the Tevatron, which for 25 years was the most powerful particle collider in the world.
"This is an important discovery that provides a valuable addition to the picture of the Standard Model universe," said James Siegrist, DOE associate director of science for high energy physics. "It completes a portrait of one of the fundamental particles of our universe by showing us one of the rarest ways to create them."
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The CDF and DZero experiments first observed particle collisions that created single top quarks through a different process of the weak nuclear force in 2009. This observation was later confirmed by scientists using the Large Hadron Collider.
Scientists from 27 countries collaborated on the Tevatron CDF and DZero experiments and continue to study the reams of data produced during the collider's run, using ever more sophisticated techniques and computing methods.
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The Fed Cares About Inflation 10 Times More Than It Cares About Unemployment
By Kevin Drum
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Ryan Avent, having exhausted his conventional analysis of the Fed's 2008 transcripts, turns today to a more analytical approach: counting words. I think others have already made this point without numbers, but Avent's most powerful finding is that the Fed cares way more about inflation than it does about unemployment:
There is only one winner in the dual mandate. The word “inflation” (or variants thereof, such as “inflationary”) was mentioned a cool 2,664 times in 2008; “unemployment” pops up just 275 times.
I'm assuming he played fair and also looked for variants of "unemployment," like "employment" or "jobs." In any case, I don't think this comes as much of a surprise to anyone, since it's been obvious for decades that the Fed not only doesn't care about unemployment, but gets positively worried when too many people have jobs. That would mean the labor market is tight and workers might get paid more, you see, and that could be inflationary. Still, it's nice to see this verified quantitatively. |
China's toxic air pollution resembles nuclear winter, say scientists
By Jonathan Kaiman
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Beijing and broad swaths of six northern provinces have spent the past week blanketed in a dense pea-soup smog that is not expected to abate until Thursday. Beijing's concentration of PM 2.5 particles – those small enough to penetrate deep into the lungs and enter the bloodstream – hit 505 micrograms per cubic metre on Tuesday night. The World Health Organisation recommends a safe level of 25.
The worsening air pollution has already exacted a significant economic toll, grounding flights, closing highways and keeping tourists at home. On Monday 11,200 people visited Beijing's Forbidden City, about a quarter of the site's average daily draw.
He Dongxian, an associate professor at China Agricultural University's College of Water Resources and Civil Engineering, said new research suggested that if the smog persists, Chinese agriculture will suffer conditions "somewhat similar to a nuclear winter".
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She has demonstrated that air pollutants adhere to greenhouse surfaces, cutting the amount of light inside by about 50% and severely impeding photosynthesis, the process by which plants convert light into life-sustaining chemical energy.
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Li Yan, a climate and energy expert at Greenpeace East Asia, said the case could bring exposure to polluted cities outside of Beijing, putting pressure on provincial officials to prioritise the problem. She said: "People … who live in Beijing are suffering from the polluted air, but we have the attention of both domestic and international media. Shijiazhuang's environmental problems are far more serious, and this case could bring Shijiazhuang the attention it has deserved for a long time."
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International |
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Angela Merkel ready to offer Britain limited EU opt-outs
By Nicholas Watt
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Angela Merkel is prepared to grant David Cameron special assurances in a revised EU treaty to ensure that the interests of Britain and other non-euro members are protected in the European single market.
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The Foreign Office is advising Downing Street not to lose sight of the fact that Britain will need the agreement of all other 27 EU leaders if it is to achieve a favourable revision of the Lisbon treaty. One source said: "There is perhaps too much optimism emanating from No 10. We have to be a very hard-headed about this and bear in mind that the bedrock of the EU is the Franco-German relationship. There is only so far the Germans will go. We should be making a much bigger effort with the French."
Senior figures in Berlin have outlined a series of concessions they would be prepared to grant Britain to help the prime minister win a referendum campaign. They say Merkel believes new governance arrangements for the eurozone will have to be introduced in "targeted" treaty change. This would go beyond a straightforward "simplified revision procedure" but would fall short of a full "inter-governmental conference" change that would take at least five years.
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But Sir Menzies Campbell, the former leader of the Liberal Democrats, said the Tories were wrong to think Merkel would be able to grant major concessions. Campbell said: "Anyone who believes that Merkel, who is after all the leader of a coalition, is going to come to London with the kind of agenda that would satisfy the most rabid anti-Europeans in the Conservative party has got another think coming. Germany and France have been the engine room of the EU, often resentful of the fact that Britain appeared from time to time to be disconnected. Why should Merkel offer some kind of unique relationship for the UK under a Tory party which embarrassed her by leaving the European People's party [in the European parliament] as soon as the 2010 election was over?"
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59 students killed in Boko Haram attack in Nigeria — some 'burned to ashes'
By Joe Hemba
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Gunmen from Islamist group Boko Haram shot or burned to death 59 pupils in a boarding school in northeast Nigeria overnight, a hospital official and security forces said on Tuesday.
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The Islamists, whose struggle for an Islamic state in northern Nigeria has killed thousands and made them the biggest threat to security in Africa's top oil producer, are increasingly preying on the civilian population.
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Addressing a news conference on Monday, Jonathan defended the military's record, saying it had had some successes against Boko Haram. He said Nigeria was working with the Cameroon authorities to try to prevent militants from mounting attacks in Nigeria and then fleeing over the border.
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The insurgents mostly occupy the remote, hilly Gwoza area bordering Cameroon, from where they attack civilians they accuse of being pro-government. They have started abducting girls, a new tactic reminiscent of Uganda's cult-like Lord's Resistance Army in decades past.
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'Deepening' medical crisis in Afghanistan
By (BBC)
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Despite years of aid, medical care in Afghanistan remains severely limited as casualty rates from violence climb, humanitarian organisation Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) warns in a report.
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People spoke of clinics lacking medicines, qualified staff and electricity, and of facing mounting debt to pay for treatment.
Others told about being having to watch over their sick or injured relatives throughout the night, hoping they would survive until morning when it might be safe enough to make it to a hospital.
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MSF says international donors, aid providers and Afghan authorities must urgently address serious shortcomings in healthcare provision, and put aside any consideration other than people's needs.
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USA Politics, Economy, Major Events |
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Obama urges Organizing for Action to push for $10.10 minimum wage
By (UPI)
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U.S. President Obama Tuesday told an activist group pushing to advance his initiatives he wants them to help him get a $10.10 per hour minimum wage passed.
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"Three-quarters of Americans support raising the minimum wage -- not just Democrats; independents, Republicans support raising the minimum wage. Unfortunately, so far we have seen Republicans in Congress not even want to vote on it, even though the current proposal would potentially provide more income for 16 million Americans."
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Obama said the organization's second priority should be to keep working to get more people signed up for healthcare coverage under the Affordable Care Act.
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How Exactly Do Colleges Allocate Their Financial Aid? They Won’t Say.
By Marian Wang
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While universities don’t want to disclose the details, they have become increasingly strategic in recent years about how they use their aid and which students get it. Aid isn’t just given to students in need, it’s also used now for what schools call “financial aid leveraging” — often to entice high-scoring students who will help a school’s ranking or to give a small, feel-good discount to attract out-of-state students who will still end up paying a higher price.
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As it stands, colleges’ disclosures about their aid criteria “could be very ambiguous and still meet the statutory framework,” said David Bergeron, formerly the top advisor on higher education at the Department of Education. “Unless you have a regulation that’s specific about more detailed disclosure, I don’t think the Department can enforce anything.”
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Bergeron worries about the unintended consequences of disclosure — particularly, that the colleges that do give generous aid to needy students would feel pressure to equalize aid across all income classes to make their practices seem more palatable to the public. He’s also not sure, he said, whether the greater disclosure would ultimately be helpful to students, or whether it would get lost among the other paperwork sent their way.
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Nolt said the Education Department has encouraged more transparency, pointing to the standardized financial-aid letter the agency has developed and that colleges can voluntarily adopt.
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Eric Holder speaks out on same-sex marriage
By (BBC)
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The top law enforcement official in the US has said state attorneys general are not obligated to defend discriminatory laws banning same-sex marriage.
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"It really isn't his job to give us advice on defending our constitutions any more than it's our role to give him advice on how to do his job," Wisconsin Attorney General JB Van Hollen told the New York Times.
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Six Democratic state attorneys general have reportedly refused to defend such bans on same-sex marriage, drawing ire from conservatives who say they are obligated to uphold such state laws.
Mr Holder said it was "appropriate" for state attorneys general to base decisions on whether to defend such statutes on guarantees under the constitution, as opposed to questions of politics.
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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:
Johnny Marr. The name is synonymous with guitar god. When The Smiths called it quits in 1987, it caused a widespread depression that swept across the alternative music world like few band breakups ever could. (Imagine U2 breaking up right after recording The Joshua Tree, and you get the idea). But as much as we all wore out our knees out in prayer for a reconciliation, it was never to be. Oh well, some elements of life just [stink].
The release of Johnny Marr's first real solo project is not one of those elements. Johnny Marr has just given us a good reason to finally put the loss of The Smiths behind us. His "Boomslang" is the best album to come out (by any group except U2) in years.
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The big surprise here is how great Johnny's pipes sound. He is a natural singer, and to my taste, his vioce sounds like a better fit to his tunes than Morrissey's ever did. I'm sure there are many who won't agree with that, and I have respect for that opinion.
Alas, the closest Johnny comes to jingle-jangle on this album (my favorite of his many styles) is on the song "Down On The Corner." It sounds a little different in this context because the song is such a groove oriented track, but it is pure Johnny Marr heaven.
Like all of the Smiths' tunes, the subtlety of Johnny's arrangement is only revealed with repeated listening. Johnny's pretty crafty...on a 10th listen to a given track, you might hear a guitar part you never heard before that winds up being one of the highlights of that song for all future listenings.
Back to what's happening:
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Environment and Greening |
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EU parliament votes for tougher car emissions limits
By (Reuters via theguardian.com)
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Members of the European Parliament voted through the world’s toughest carbon dioxide standards for new cars on Tuesday, prompting a cautious welcome from environmental campaigners.
The new rules set a limit of 95 grams of carbon dioxide per kilometre (g/km) as an average across all new cars sold in the EU, compared with an existing limit of 130 g/km.
The European Commission, the EU executive, proposed the target should apply from 2020, but full implementation has been delayed for a year following months of negotiation.
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Rebecca Harms, co-president of the Greens in the European Parliament, said the weakening of the 2020 limits was “a shameful sop to German car manufacturers and will slow the development of new technologies to deliver more efficient and less polluting cars”.
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Big polluters tell Supreme Court they’re worried for Chinese restaurateurs
By John Upton
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The country’s worst climate polluters don’t want to have their carbon dioxide emissions reined in by the federal government. They’ve already tried and failed to convince the Supreme Court that the Clean Air Act doesn’t apply to CO2. So in court on Monday, they claimed to be worried that the EPA could, theoretically, crack down on CO2 produced by everything from Dunkin’ Donuts stores and Chinese restaurants to high school football games. And that would be crazy, so the EPA’s authority to regulate CO2 should be curbed.
The attorney representing conservative states, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and major polluters argued before the Supreme Court that the Obama administration erred when it set up a regulatory framework under the Clean Air Act for stationary sources of carbon dioxide, deciding to regulate emissions from major polluters like power plants and factories but not from tens of millions of small operations. The conservative coalition contends that a correct interpretation of the law should see smalltime polluters subjected to the same rules as big polluters — which everyone agrees would be absurd. So the polluters’ attorney told the Supreme Court that Congress should be called on to set new CO2-pollution rules — that it shouldn’t be up to the EPA to decide who is and who isn’t subject to such rules.
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Why are polluters so focused on these trivialities? As Grist’s Ben Adler explained, these hardcore global warmers had attempted to convince the court to hear a variety of more far-reaching challenges to the government’s regulation of carbon dioxide, but the vast majority of those challenges were rejected. Pretending to care about a hypothetical EPA crackdown on climate-changing Chinese restaurants and local sporting events is the best shot these guys have left.
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China smog: Shijiazhuang man attempts to sue government
By (BBC)
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A resident of the northern Chinese city of Shijiazhuang is reported to be trying to sue the local government over high levels of air pollution.
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But Mr Li told the state-run Yanzhao Metropolis Daily: "The reason that I'm proposing administrative compensation is to let every citizen see that amid this haze, we're the real victims."
"Besides the threat to our health, we've also suffered economic losses, and these losses should be borne by the government and the environmental departments because the government is the recipient of corporate taxes: it is a beneficiary," he was quoted as saying.
Shijiazhuang, about 260km (160 miles) south-west of Beijing, is a busy industrial base - a centre for steel and chemical production.
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Science and Health |
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Einstein's Lost Theory Uncovered
By Davide Castelvecchi
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A manuscript that lay unnoticed by scientists for decades has revealed that Albert Einstein once dabbled with an alternative to the Big Bang theory, proposing instead that the Universe expanded steadily and eternally. The recently uncovered work, written in 1931, is reminiscent of a theory championed by British astrophysicist Fred Hoyle nearly 20 years later. Einstein soon abandoned the idea, but the manuscript reveals his continued hesitance to accept that the Universe was created during a single explosive event.
The Big Bang theory had found observational support in the 1920s, when US astronomer Edwin Hubble and others discovered that distant galaxies are moving away and that space itself is expanding. This seemed to imply that, in the past, the contents of the observable Universe had been a very dense and hot ‘primordial broth’.
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“This finding confirms that Hoyle was not a crank,” says study co-author Simon Mitton, a science historian at the University of Cambridge, UK, who wrote the 2005 biography Fred Hoyle: A Life in Science. The mere fact that Einstein had toyed with a steady-state model could have lent Hoyle more credibility as he engaged the physics community in a debate on the subject. “If only Hoyle had known, he would certainly have used it to punch his opponents,” O’Raifeartaigh says.
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But the fact that Einstein experimented with the steady-state concept demonstrates his continued resistance to the idea of a Big Bang, which he at first found “abominable”, even though other theoreticians had shown it to be a natural consequence of his general theory of relativity. (Other leading researchers, such as the eminent Cambridge astronomer Arthur Eddington, were also suspicious of the Big Bang theory, because it suggested a mystical moment of creation.) When astronomers found evidence for cosmic expansion, Einstein had to abandon his bias towards a static Universe, and a steady-state Universe was the next best thing, O’Raifeartaigh and his collaborators say.
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Cancer patients turning to mass media, non-experts for info
By (ScienceDaily)
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The increasing use of expensive medical imaging procedures in the U.S. like positron emission tomography (PET) scans is being driven, in part, by patient decisions made after obtaining information from lay media and non-experts, and not from health care providers.
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"Clinical guidelines do not recommend PET for post-treatment surveillance among asymptomatic cancer survivors," explains Dr. Tan and the study's other authors. "Such procedures may result in unnecessary radiation exposure, anxiety, and morbidity associated with false-positive and false-negative results."
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"Our findings may have important implications for cancer survivors, health care providers, and health policy in the practice of advanced imaging use for routine follow-up," the authors conclude, while raising a follow-up question: Are PET promotional materials used by health care facilities misstating the benefits of PET given that the use of PET imaging for routine cancer surveillance is inconsistent with clinical practice guidelines for most malignancies? "Policies or professional guidelines may be necessary to ensure that health care facilities convey accurate and reliable facts about the appropriate forms of cancer follow-up to patients."
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Near-misses just as good as winning for some gamblers
By (UPI)
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Dr. Natalia Lawrence of the University of Exeter and Dr. Simon Dymond at Swansea University said they pinpointed the changes in the brain that lead gamblers to react in the same way to near-misses as they do to winning.
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It emerged that theta activity increased in response to near-misses relative to other losses in brain regions such as insula and orbitofrontal cortex -- parts of the brain involved with consciousness, emotion, perception, motor control, self-awareness and cognitive functioning -- which are linked to gambling severity.
"Problem gambling is a growing social concern, and the brain and behavioral effects of 'almost winning' are now well documented," Dymond said. "Advances in brain imaging techniques mean we are now able to pinpoint the precise brain regions involved in the near-miss effect and identify how they interact with people's vulnerability to problem gambling."
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ADHD linked to paracetamol taken during pregnancy, says study
By (AFP via theguardian.com)
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Women who took paracetamol, also known as acetaminophen, while pregnant had a 37% higher risk of having a child who would be later given a hospital diagnosis of hyperkinetic disorder, a particularly severe form of ADHD, said the study in the 24 February edition of the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) Pediatrics.
Compared with women who did not take paracetamol while pregnant, women who did also had a 29% higher chance of having children who were later prescribed medications for ADHD, and a 13% higher chance of exhibiting ADHD-like behaviors by age seven.
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Outside experts cautioned that the observational findings do not prove that taking such pain relievers causes ADHD, only that a preliminary link between the two has appeared and would need to be confirmed by further research.
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Technology |
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Computer scientists demonstrate 'contagious' airborne WiFi virus
By (UPI)
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British scientists have demonstrated a "contagious" airborne WiFi virus that can infect WiFi networks as efficiently as the common cold spreads between humans.
Computer scientists at the University of Liverpool designed and simulated an attack by a virus they dubbed "Chameleon" and found not only could it spread quickly between homes and businesses but it was able to avoid detection and identify the points at which WiFi access is least protected by encryption and passwords, the university reported Tuesday.
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While many APs are sufficiently encrypted and password protected, the virus simply moved on to find less-protected ones, including open access WiFi points common in locations such as coffee shops and airports, the researchers said.
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How Online Ads Work
By How Online Ads Work
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It all starts with you: the user. When you visit any given website, your browser arrives with a pretty detailed data profile that can reveal not only your age and gender but also your location and a list of sites you've recently visited. This is how the website knows which ad to show you. Or rather, it's how the websites start to figure it out.
Your digital profile is basically a collection of key words or facts about you and your web usage. Webpages use this information to submit a request of an advertising impression that would appeal to you. So if you've just looked at some shoes on eBay, maybe an add for Zappos.com would make sense.
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Maybe Zappos.com has an ad campaign that it wants to target shoe shoppers with. If the profile fits, the ad is served up in a split second.
If it doesn't fit, things start to get interesting. Your request is then sent to an ad exchange that might be operated by anybody from Adobe to Facebook. These exchanges might already have data on you which it will use to bolster your profile information in order to serve you more relevant ads.
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Choosing a Secure Password
By Bruce Schneier
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The best way to explain how to choose a good password is to explain how they're broken. The general attack model is what’s known as an offline password-guessing attack. In this scenario, the attacker gets a file of encrypted passwords from somewhere people want to authenticate to. His goal is to turn that encrypted file into unencrypted passwords he can use to authenticate himself. He does this by guessing passwords, and then seeing if they’re correct. He can try guesses as fast as his computer will process them – and he can parallelize the attack – and gets immediate confirmation if he guesses correctly. Yes, there are ways to foil this attack, and that's why we can still have four-digit PINs on ATM cards, but it's the correct model for breaking passwords.
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The attacker will feed any personal information he has access to about the password creator into the password crackers. A good password cracker will test names and addresses from the address book, meaningful dates, and any other personal information it has. Postal codes are common appendages. If it can, the guesser will index the target hard drive and create a dictionary that includes every printable string, including deleted files. If you ever saved an e-mail with your password, or kept it in an obscure file somewhere, or if your program ever stored it in memory, this process will grab it. And it will speed the process of recovering your password.
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You get the idea. Combine a personally memorable sentence with some personally memorable tricks to modify that sentence into a password to create a lengthy password. Of course, the site has to accept all of those non-alpha-numeric characters and an arbitrarily long password. Otherwise, it's much harder.
Even better is to use random unmemorable alphanumeric passwords (with symbols, if the site will allow them), and a password manager like Password Safe to create and store them. Password Safe includes a random password generation function. Tell it how many characters you want -- twelve is my default -- and it'll give you passwords like y.)v_|.7)7Bl, B3h4_[%}kgv), and QG6,FN4nFAm_. The program supports cut and paste, so you're not actually typing those characters very much. I'm recommending Password Safe for Windows because I wrote the first version, know the person currently in charge of the code, and trust its security. There are ports of PasswordSafe to other OSs, but I had nothing to do with those. There are also other password managers out there, if you want to shop around.
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Cultural |
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Could the NFL Yank Arizona's Super Bowl Because of an Anti-Gay Law?
By Matt Connolly
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A "religious freedom" bill that would allow discrimination against LGBT residents passed the Arizona Legislature and is currently sitting on Republican Gov. Jan Brewer's desk. Both of Arizona senators, the state's chamber of commerce, Apple, and American Airlines have all asked Brewer to veto the bill. Another critic, though, might have the biggest bargaining chip—and has shown the state before that it's not afraid to use it.
Arizona is set to host next year's Super Bowl, and the big game's host committee is not happy:
We share the NFL's core values which embrace tolerance, diversity, inclusiveness and prohibit discrimination. In addition, a key part of the mission for the Arizona Super Bowl Host Committee is to promote the economic vitality of Arizona. On that matter we have heard loud and clear from our various stakeholders that adoption of this legislation would not only run contrary to that goal but deal a significant blow to the state's economic growth potential. We do not support this legislation.
An NFL spokesman noted the league's anti-discrimination policy and said the league was "following the issue in Arizona and will continue to do so should the bill be signed into law." Would the NFL go so far as to move the country's biggest sporting event due to a social issue? History suggests that yes, it would.
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Given that the NFL is expecting its first openly gay player next season, and considering anonymous team officials' comments on the matter, league administrators are likely hyperaware of the kind of publicity an Arizona-based championship would get if the state's anti-gay bill is signed into law. Perhaps most importantly, the state would lose out on hundreds of millions of dollars if the big game is moved elsewhere—just as it did in 1993. Multiple outlets reported Tuesday that Brewer was likely to veto the bill. As one source told NBC News, "She doesn't want to take any actions that could jeopardize the economic momentum we've seen here in Arizona."
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Lady justice: Clarice Gaylord led the EPA’s fight for communities of color
By Brentin Mock
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In 1992, Clarice Gaylord was working in the human resources office at the Environmental Protection Agency when she got the call to head the agency’s newly minted Office of Environmental Equity — later named the Office of Environmental Justice. The office, created by President George H. W. Bush’s EPA chief, Bill Reilly, was the federal government’s first serious attempt at addressing the problem of pollution falling most harshly on communities of color and low income.
Gaylord, who holds a PhD in zoology, had worked throughout the 1980s as a health science administrator at the National Cancer Institute, the National Institutes of Health, and then as director of the EPA’s research grants program before she wound up in the agency’s human resources office. The HR post was somewhat of a demotion, she said, that happened due to racism. But it proved fortuitous for her: When she became director of the environmental justice office, she used those personnel skills to expand the diversity of EPA’s staff, even as she helped develop mechanisms for how the EPA could better protect communities of color.
She did this primarily by connecting residents of overburdened communities directly with science and public health officials in the federal government. Gaylord also established the first National Environmental Justice Advisory Council, which brought grassroots activists together from around the nation to coach the agency on how to integrate environmental justice (EJ) into its policies and thinking. She was the director of the Office of Environmental Justice for five years, ending with an office made stronger when President Bill Clinton signed Executive Order 12898, requiring all federal agencies to incorporate EJ strategies into their plans.
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Q. You developed the National Environmental Justice Advisory Council, which is a lasting legacy today, but what other successes did you have?
A. Our biggest problem in 1992 was, we were science-poor. We couldn’t prove that constant exposures [to toxins] even at low-level exposures were causing health problems. The science community would say that it was all anecdotal, and that you have to factor in that [residents of low-income communities and communities of color] are not eating right, have bad diets, etc. They’d say you couldn’t prove that these communities have higher rates of cancer and other health problems. I had years of experience in developing grants, so we decided we could develop a small grants program for community groups to create newsletters and other ways for communicating and getting the latest news out about environmental justice. Or they could use the money to hire technical persons to train them on how to test soil, water, and the air for pollutants in their communities.
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Life after Guantanamo prison
By Dawood Azami
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Some 220 Afghans have been held at the US military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, making them the largest single group of the nearly 50 nationalities involved. The vast majority have returned home, where their stories of imprisonment, and sometimes abuse at American hands, have made a big impact.
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"While in Guantanamo, we didn't have any knowledge of the outside world. The letters we were exchanging with our families were mostly censored and blacked out by the Americans. We were worried about our families… The difference was like coming out of the grave."
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"Neither the government nor anyone else will employ us - I've been without a job since I came home. Even after we were proven innocent, why won't they help us?" says Haji Ghalib, the former district police officer.
Although released without charge, many of them say they are still harassed by the US and Afghan security forces, who suspect some of them of possible links with the insurgents.
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The mere existence of Guantanamo, however, does continue to pose a threat - as the Taliban is able to exploit the fact in verse designed to recruit and motivate fighters.
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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. |