The US Department of Veterans Affiars have added the Wiccan pentacle to its list of emblems of belief
allowed on the government-issued headstones of veterans. The new policy apparently settles two lawsuits against the VA, including one filed last year by the American Civil Liberties Union representing Wiccan churches and individuals
German scientists at the University of Ulm have identified a natural ingredient of human blood that prevents the HIV-1 virus from from infecting immune cells and multiplying. The molecule, which they call virus-inhibitory peptide (VIRIP), promises new types of effective treatment for HIV in the future
Free internet access will be available throughout all 17 Auckland City Libraries from Thursday 26 April. The service will be funded as part of $25 million being spent by Auckland City Council over the next decade to enhance community facilities. Auckland City Council said providing free internet access will meet the expectation that everyone should be able to access information from any source, using computers, at their local library
Officials in the Venezuelan capital, Caracas, are taking to the air in an attempt to make the city safer. The council has bought three mini remote-controlled airships which are soon to be launched to look down on the city monitoring criminal activity. Each has a camera mounted on it, which beams back pictures to a control room
Those of you as fond of Ubuntu as we are likely won’t need much convincing, but those that have yet to go ‘bu now have one of the most compelling reasons yet to consider the OS, as version 7.04 (otherwise known as Feisty Fawn
) has now been officially released into the wild. Among the improvements this time around are improved wireless and multimedia support, and a new Windows migration tool that should make things a bit easier for those going for a dual-boot system
The active compound in marijuana, THC, can slow the growth of lung tumours and reduce the spread of the cancer in mice, a preliminary study reveals. Human lung cancer tumours grew less than half as fast in mice that received moderate doses of the compound, the researchers reveal. They hope that drugs mimicking the apparent anti-cancer effects of tetrahydrocanabinol (THC) could one day help treat patients. The team strongly discourage people from self-medicating by smoking marijuana, noting that doing so could potentially encourage tumour growth
A desktop printer loaded with a silver salt solution and vitamin C has been used to produce electronic circuits. The UK researchers behind the feat say their experimental device could pave the way for safer and cheaper electronics manufacturing. Being able to print out electronic components and whole circuit boards could provide an alternative to current manufacturing techniques, which are energy intensive and environmentally unfriendly
With all the new features Mozilla added to Thunderbird 2.0, Thunderbird’s target is clearly Microsoft’s Outlook e-mail program. In the business community, Thunderbird’s ability to make inroads on Outlook has been hampered by Outlook’s integration with Microsoft Exchange, but Thunderbird has had a great deal of success for home users
An inquiry into one of Canada’s leading pathologists has revealed he was responsible for wrongful diagnoses, which resulted in a number of innocent people going to jail. The investigation looked at 45 cases where Dr Charles Smith had determined children had been murdered. They found that in at least 20 cases the children had in fact not been murdered. One man spent 12 years in prison after Dr Smith said he had raped and killed his niece, but the girl had not been raped and was not murdered
Google has announced a new Ajax Feed API makes it possible to extract information from multiple RSS feeds with only a few simple lines of JavaScript. The API–which allows web developers to retrieve RSS data as either XML or JSON–can be used to build mashups, unique web applications that leverage multiple sources of data and display the results in a useful or innovative manner
A 17-year-old rookie plumber has burned down a £5 million ($12 million) waterside mansion in southwest England, after a soldering task during his first day on the job went horribly wrong
Microsoft, Mozilla, Opera and Google took the stage this week at the Web 2.0 expo and in addition to discussing pressing issues have declared their intent to avoid another browser war. All the panelists agreed that security was the largest concern currently facing browser developers
MySpace.com has launched a beta of a news site it hopes will bring more advertising revenue to the popular social networking site. MySpace News is a hybrid between standard news-aggregation sites, such as Google News, and a news-rating site such as Digg. Like Google and other news sites from portals such as Yahoo and AOL, MySpace News brings in content from a variety of news outlets. But the site also has a Digg-like feature that lets MySpace users rate stories they see on the site, and share stories with other site users
Magnetic deflector shields
could one day guard astronauts against dangerous space radiation, if experiments now underway pay off
For the members of the iGen, the infinitely connected teens and twenty-somethings who cannot remember a time when the Web didn’t exist, the ritual of mourning is now a social-networking phenomenon
A Japanese temple building company goes out of business after 1428 years. Kongo Gumi was founded in 578 and was the world’s oldest continuously operating family business
— via kottke.org
The BBC is to open up its vast archive of video and audio in an on-demand trial involving more than 20,000 people in the UK. Full-length programmes, as well as scripts and notes, will be available for download from the BBC’s website. The pilot is part of the BBC’s plans to eventually offer more than a million hours of TV and radio from its archive
Irish rocker and Live Aid founder Bob Geldof is to team up with the BBC on a project to digitally catalogue all known human existence. The London-based public service broadcaster, its commercial arm BBC Worldwide and Geldof’s Ten Alps media group are to collaborate on the Dictionary of Man. In a statement, the BBC says the scale and ambition of the anthropological project, which will have an accompanying television series The Human Planet, will be unprecedented
. It would use every available medium to create the largest ever living record
of films, photographs, anthropological histories, philosophies, theologies, economies, language, art as well as people’s personal stories
Tiny smart
devices that can be borne on the wind like dust particles could be carried in space probes to explore other planets, UK engineers say. The devices would consist of a computer chip covered by a plastic sheath that can change shape when a voltage is applied, enabling it to be steered
Within a few weeks, Australia may introduce new laws to censor films and literature deemed by the government to be supportive of terrorism. This is not the first time material has been censored in Australia, which has previously censored films and banned publications, including one titled Defence of the Muslim Lands (censored in mid 2006 by Attorney-General Phillip Ruddock). The proposed laws are aimed to target material such as a DVD by Feiz Mohammad containing some of his past controversial sermons calling for jihad and comparing Jews with pigs. The Office of Film and Literature Classification previously classified this DVD as PG
, suitable for viewing by anyone under 15 years of age with parental guidance
RSS – Posts