Amazon confirms Sydney CDN node

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21 June 2012
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Global cloud computing player and retailer Amazon today confirmed that it had added an edge location in Sydney to speed up the delivery of content to Australians, confirming a deployment model which was the subject of speculation some 12 months ago.

The company has long been suspected of rolling out data centre infrastructure in Australia to support its Amazon Web Services business, which is one of the largest global cloud computing infrastructure players. Many within the industry have believed the first step in such an investment could be the deployment of a so-called edge node which would allow the company to speed up the deployment of content to local users, ahead of a potential larger data centre roll-out down the track — via redwolf.newsvine.com

Goats remember kids’ voices after 12 months

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21 June 2012
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In Science, Wildlife
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Mother goats can remember their kids’ voices more than a year after they have been separated, a study has found.

Researchers recorded calls made by five-week-old pygmy goats and played them back to their mothers.

The mother goats were able to recognise their individual kids’ calls after as long as 12 to 18 months.

Study leader Dr Elodie Briefer, from Queen Mary, University of London, said: Because of the difficulties involved in following the same individuals over years, long-term recognition has been studied in only a few species.

Our study shows that animals remember socially important partners.

The research is reported in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B — via redwolf.newsvine.com

Japanese deer ‘eavesdrop’ on monkeys for food

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21 June 2012
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Sika deer eavesdrop on monkey chatter in order to find food, say scientists.

A team from Kyoto University, Japan, tested how macaque monkey calls affected the feeding behaviour of the deer that live on Yakushima Island.

Previous research has focussed on species listening to one another to avoid danger.

But when scientists played macaque calls from hidden speakers, the deer gathered nearby, indicating that they associate the sounds with benefits.

The results were published in the journal Behavioural Processes — via redwolf.newsvine.com

Chilled-out mice hold key to new treatments for psychological disorders

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21 June 2012
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In Health, Science
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Don’t make me angry. You wouldn’t like me when I’m angry,; the Hulk’s alter ego Bruce Banner famously said. Now researchers have made a discovery that might one day have implications for anyone considering Bruce as a potential house guest. The researchers have identified a brain receptor that malfunctions in overly hostile mice — a receptor that also exists in humans – and found a way to shut it down, offering the potential for the development of treatments for severe aggression.

The breakthrough by Marco Bortolato and Jean Shih from the University of Southern California’s (USC) School of Pharmacy, working with colleagues in Italy, builds on previous work by Bortolato and Shih, in which they identified a specific gene disposition resulting in low levels of the enzyme monoamine oxidase A (MAO A). They found that humans and mice with this congenital deficiency of the enzyme respond to stress with violent outbursts.

The same type of mutation that we study in mice is associated with criminal, very violent behavior in humans, Bortolato said. But we really didn’t understand why that it is — via redwolf.newsvine.com

The only good abortion is my abortion

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21 June 2012
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In Health, Rights
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As I write this, it is 1:17 am on Wednesday, 20 June 2012.

I am lying awake in bed, trying to decide whether or not to have an abortion.

Of course, we don’t call it an abortion. We call it a procedure or a D&C. See, my potential abortion is one of the good abortions. I’m 31 years old. I’m married. These days, I’m pretty well off. I would very much like to stay pregnant right now. In fact, I have just spent the last year — following an earlier miscarriage — trying rather desperately to get pregnant.

Unfortunately, the doctors tell me that what I am now pregnant with is not going to survive. Last week, I had an ultrasound, I was almost 6 weeks along and looked okay. The only thing was that the heartbeat was slow. It wasn’t a huge deal. Heartbeats start slow, usually around the 6th week, and then they speed up. But my doctor asked me to come back in this week for a follow up, just to be sure. That was Tuesday, yesterday. Still my today. The heart hasn’t sped up. The foetus hasn’t grown. The egg yolk is now bigger than the foetus, which usually indicates a chromosomal abnormality. Basically, this foetus is going to die. I am going to have a miscarriage. It’s just a matter of when — via redwolf.newsvine.com

Woman left kids in car after wreck, later found naked

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21 June 2012
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In Weird
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A woman was found naked and eating ice cream inside a drug store after leaving three children alone in a car after a wreck, investigators said.

Stephanie Dillard, 34, has been charged with endangering a child.

Houston police said Dillard’s children, ages 5, 12 and 16, were in the car with her when her vehicle collided with a METRO bus near South Post Oak and Orem on Friday.

All of the children were shaken up and suffered minor injuries. The 5-year-old had a large gash over one eye, officials said — via redwolf.newsvine.com

Why Scammers Say They’re From Nigeria

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21 June 2012
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We all get them: scam emails that claim to be able to make us millionaires overnight. But why are they so terribly unconvincing? And why do they even admit to being based in places like Nigeria? One Microsoft researcher claims to have the answer.

In particular, we’re talking about the offers to cut you into a deal, which offer a healthy cut of the profits. They normally end up requiring a small transfer of money from the person who’s being scammed to enable the deal to take place. Then another transfer of money, then another until… everything goes quiet.

These scams are normally know as Nigerian scams, because that’s where they tend to originate from. But you might also know them by their proper name: advance fee fraud. And they work! Last year, one Nigerian fraudster received a 12-year jail sentence after scamming $US1.3 million from victims.

But why on Earth are the emails written to sound so hugely unbelievable? Who the hell is going to fall for them? — via redwolf.newsvine.com

Art Deco Property / Southgate, London

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21 June 2012
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In Design
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If you are a fan of the period, this four-bedroom 1930s art deco property in Southgate, London N14 should be right up your street.

A lovely example and according to the agent, a house that has been used in both ITV and BBC TV productions in the past. It’s also a nice mix of the old and the new – some lovely period features are still here, but overall, this is very much a modern family home.

The house is on the market for offers in excess of £670,000. More images and details on the agent’s site — via WowHaus

TPG Cops $2 Million Fine Over Misleading Ads

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20 June 2012
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In Business, Technology
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A Federal Court judge has decided that TPG should pay a whopping $2 million in penalties for failing to specify that the company’s $29.99 Unlimited ADSL2+ deal needed a bundled $30 home phone plan in its ads, but it’s not something the ISP is going to take laying down.

TPG was offering an unlimited ADSL2+ broadband deal, but the offer only applied when a customer took a $30 home phone plan with the ISP. The ACCC turned its nose up at TPG in December 2010, throwing the book at the ISP for the potentially misleading offer. TPG was found to be at fault in November and the Federal Court has now handed down a $2 million fine.

The judge presiding over the case, Justice Murphy, said in the judgement that such a high penalty was needed to discourage similar behaviour by ISPs in future — via redwolf.newsvine.com

Tyrannosaur allegedly smuggled to US to be returned to Mongolia

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20 June 2012
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In Politics, Rights, Wildlife, World
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The United States Attorney’s office has intervened in a dispute over a dinosaur that went up for auction at the end of May with a demand that the skeleton be turned over to the US government, so that it can be returned to Mongolia.

Palaeontologists and Mongolian officials have maintained that the skeleton, which belongs to a type of tyrannosaur called a Tarbosaurus bataar, was taken illegally from their country.

The skeletal remains of this dinosaur are of tremendous cultural and historic significance to the people of Mongolia, and provide a connection to the country’s prehistoric past. When the skeleton was allegedly looted, a piece of the country’s natural history was stolen with it, and we look forward to returning it to its rightful place, Manhattan US Attorney Preet Bharara said in a statement — via redwolf.newsvine.com

Fishing Cats / National Zoo

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20 June 2012
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The Smithsonian’s National Zoo is closer to cracking the code for breeding one of Asia’s most elusive species with the birth of two Fishing Cats (Prionailurus viverrinus). Seven-year-old Electra delivered the kittens between 9.00am and 4.00pm 18 May in an off-exhibit den. Their birth marks an important milestone: this is the first time fishing cats have successfully bred and produced young at the National Zoo — via ZooBorns

The Humans With Super Human Vision

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19 June 2012
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Over the course of two decades, Newcastle University neuroscientist Gabriele Jordan and her colleagues have been searching for people endowed with this super-vision. Two years ago, Jordan finally found one. A doctor living in northern England, referred to only as cDa29 in the literature, is the first tetrachromat known to science. She is almost surely not the last.

The first hint that tetrachromats might exist came in a 1948 paper on color blindness. Dutch scientist HL de Vries was studying the eyes of colour-blind men, who, along with two normal cones, possess a mutant cone that is less sensitive to either green or red, making it difficult for them to distinguish the two colours. He tested their vision by having them perform a basic matching task. Twiddling the dials on a lab instrument back and forth, the men had to mix red and green light so that the result, to their eyes, matched a standard shade of yellow. To compensate for their difficulty in discerning hues, colour-blind men need to add more green or red than normal trichromats to make a match — via redwolf.newsvine.com

The Journalism We Really Need

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19 June 2012
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In Business
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I hold in my hand the future of quality journalism in Australia. It’s a newspaper, not actually published here but in Johannesburg: the South African Mail and Guardian. It scored the highest in the comparative content analysis I’ve been carrying out on media from around the world.

It’s all part of my present research to put forward a Global Standard for Reporting Conflict. In many respects, it is the newspaper we need, and could have: page after page of in-depth reporting, multiple-sourced, written by the paper’s own specialist correspondents.

There’s also a comment section equipping readers to peer round the side of truisms from the neo-liberal orthodoxy of economic and political analysis, and challenging readers’ prejudices. Then I turn to the Sydney Morning Herald, to read columns by Paul Sheehan and Gerard Henderson… — via redwolf.newsvine.com

It’s 9.01pm in Bangor. Do you know where your children are? (If not, they might be locked up)

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19 June 2012
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In Politics, Rights
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It is late afternoon in Bangor, North Wales, and a group of seven teenagers is wandering down to the city centre. Spared lessons because of a teacher-training day, they have have been doing what young people tend to do on a day off school — not much.

Too young to go for a pint, too old to hang around with their parents, the friends have so far visited the shops, sat in the park and talked about the football. The only unusual thing about their day is that they have to be off the streets by 9pm – or risk arrest.

Last night a curfew came into force in the centre of Bangor that bans under-16s from being in the area without an adult.

It is the first order of its kind to cover an entire city centre in the UK and has already been condemned by human rights groups who have labelled it more North Korea than North Wales — via redwolf.newsvine.com

A Case So Cold It Was Blue

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19 June 2012
35 second read
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In History
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The murder of newlywed Sherri Rasmussen went unsolved for 23 years, with the Los Angeles police assuming it was a burglary turned violent. Then, one morning in 2009, when a detective opened the cold-case file, he got his first clue that the killer had been under their noses the entire time — via redwolf.newsvine.com

Malawi school kitchen to be named in honour of school meal blogger Martha

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19 June 2012
2 min read
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In Food, Technology, Wildlife
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A school kitchen being built in Malawi is to be named in honour of a nine-year-old blogger who has raised £85,000 for charity.

Martha Payne started the NeverSeconds blog six weeks ago, posting daily pictures of, and opinions about, her school lunches.

The blog has received 6m views and won the support of celebrity chefs Jamie Oliver and Nick Nairn.

On Friday Martha was told by Argyll and Bute council to stop taking photos for her blog as media coverage had apparently left catering staff fearing for their jobs. But the council reversed its decision after a barrage of negative publicity in the media and on social networking sites.

The ban led to thousands of donations flooding in to Martha’s JustGiving site, which she had set up to raise money for Mary’s Meals. The charity runs school feeding projects in communities around the world where poverty and hunger prevent children from gaining an education.

Martha’s fundraising total rocketed from £3,000 to almost £85,000 in just four days. It means a kitchen will be built at Lirangwe primary school in Blantyre, Malawi, and all 1,963 of the pupils will be fed for a whole year, as part of the charity’s Sponsor a School initiative.

Martha has chosen to name the kitchen Friends of NeverSeconds, in recognition of the worldwide support she has received — via redwolf.newsvine.com

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