Web pick posted by Neil Savage, Xconomy.com
Democrats had been boasting that the Denver convention would be the "most sustainable" in the history of conventions, and in some ways they may have accomplished their goal. CNET News says there were certainly separate trash containers for recycling waste, including biodegradable drinking straws. On the other hand, there were plenty of SUVs idling while waiting to ferry delegates around, and recycling all those signs is going to take energy.
Web pick posted by Neil Savage, Xconomy.com
by Shawn Zeller, CQ Staff Writer
Whoever wins the presidential election, he'll likely increase funding for all forms of stem cell research, predicts University of Pennsylvania bioethicist Art Caplan. Caplan tells Wired that, as stem cell research matures and the pile of money available for it grows, questions about ethics are likely to take a back seat to practical considerations. But he thinks there will still be arguments over what use to make of stem cells in humans and when to move them from the lab to actual use.
Web pick posted by Neil Savage, Xconomy.com
At the "Big Tent" outside the DNC perimeter, MyBarackObama administrator and former Facebook employee Chris Hughes held a chat with online activists about the role of social networking in the Obama campaign.
Web pick posted by Neil Savage, Xconomy.com
Web pick posted by Neil Savage, Xconomy.com
Click on the image to see a slideshow about the "Green" convention
If the biodegradable coffin business ever takes off, its executives can point to this year's Democratic convention as the brea kout moment.
The convention organizers' goal of making the gathering the greenest political hobnob in history has unleashed a wave of pitches and promotions surrounding organic foods, renewable fuels, carbon offsets and consumer goods made from recyclable materials.
If the phone rings at 3 a.m., it's probably Barack Obama texting you the late news of his vice presidential choice. Nielsen, which normally measures television audiences, said about 2.9 million people received the cell phone message, which had already been scooped by the more old-fashioned media. The Wall Street Journal points out that Obama still wins, having collected all those cell phone numbers so he can contact supporters in the future.
Web pick posted by Neil Savage, Xconomy.com
Researchers at Johns Hopkins University have found a virus that infects the world's most dangerous type of mosquito. The New York Times reports that the virus in its current form is harmless, but the researchers feel it could be genetically engineered to kill the mosquitoes. The virus targets the type of mosquito that is chiefly responsible for spreading malaria in Africa.
Web pick posted by Neil Savage, Xconomy.com
The candidates will reportedly respond to a list of 14 broad questions, such as: "What steps, if any, should the United States take during your presidency to protect ocean health? "
Web pick posted by Neil Savage, Xconomy.com
By Shawn Zeller, CQ Staff
LBJ had his war on poverty. Then there was Ronald Reagan's war on drugs and George W. Bush 's war on terror. Public health advocates are hoping a Barack Obama administration will wage war on fat.
They're encouraged by language in the Democratic platform, which for the first time mentions the need to combat obesity -- not just once, but three times.
Voice communications don't work for deaf people, and the quality of video carried by American cellular networks is generally too low to carry images of people signing. Now researchers at the University of Washington have overcome this problem by coming up with video-encoding algorithms that enhances only the important parts of a video feed, Ars Technica reports. Since speakers of American Sign Language rely mostly on hand gestures and facial expressions, the algorithm raises the image quality of hands and faces and lowers it in the rest of the video so the video doesn't overrun the cellular network's bandwidth limitations.
Web pick posted by Neil Savage, Xconomy.com
Web pick posted by Neil Savage, Xconomy.com
Web pick posted by Neil Savage, Xconomy.com
Web pick posted by Neil Savage, Xconomy.com
Web pick posted by Neil Savage, Xconomy.com
Kathi Payne and Kari Verjil, elections officials for
San Bernardino County, California pose with mothballed touch-screen voting machines on Tuesday. Disenchanted officials saw elections delayed by
vanishing votes and breakdowns. There was evidence that the
ATM-like devices were vulnerable to hackers. (AP Photo/Nick Ut)
Break out the butterfly ballots. After a number of states spent $2 billion to replace old-fashioned voting systems with touchscreens, several of those states are reversing course and getting rid of the electronic voting machines ahead of the November presidential election. Ars Technica reports that states including Alaska, California, Florida, Iowa, Maryland, Tennessee, and New Mexico will get rid of their voting machines in favor of old-fashioned paper ballots.
Web pick posted by Neil Savage, Xconomy.com
Web pick posted by Neil Savage, Xconomy.com
Web pick posted by Neil Savage, Xconomy.com
Web pick posted by Neil Savage, Xconomy.com
Last week's military incursion into Georgia by Russian troops was preceded by an attack on government computers, and the same thing could happen here, experts warn. According to CNN, computer security experts say no one has devised a way to protect against online attacks on government systems. The fact that the U.S. is so dependent on the Internet makes us all the more vulnerable, they say.
Web pick posted by Neil Savage, Xconomy.com
By borrowing a technique used in wastewater treatment plants, scientists from Washington University say they can make ethanol production more efficient. The technique involves mixing waste from the ethanol plant into an oxygen-free vat of bacteria, which digest the waste and produce methane gas, according to Technology Review. Capturing the methane and burning it as fuel could allow the production facility to cut its use of natural gas in half.
Web pick posted by Neil Savage, Xconomy.com
By Penelope Lemov, Governing.com
CalPERS is a very big fish. When California's $250 billion employee pension plan flexes its muscle in boardrooms, corporate CEOs sit up and take notice. When it dumps stocks from countries with morally offensive policies, leaders of those nations hear about it.
None of the other public employee pension plans in this country has quite that much clout. But quite a few are starting to gain some. "Public pension plans were for decades sleepy things that nobody paid attention to," says Beth Almeida, executive director of the National Institute of Retirement Security. But in recent years, these funds have grown to some $3 trillion in value. "Obviously, with an investment that large," Almeida says, "they become a focus."
Infrared scans that verify identity by making a map of the veins in a person's palm will be required for all people taking the Graduate Management Admissions Test next year. Discovery News says this is the first use of this technology in the United States, although ATMs in Japan have been using it for about five years. A palm scan is considered more secure than a fingerprint, because it can't be lifted from an object as easily as a fingerprint and it requires a live hand with active blood flow.A blogger can tout a particular political candidate, even coordinating with the campaign, without being subject to campaign finance restrictions, the Federal Elections Commission ruled recently. A Hillary Clinton supported had alleged that Gordon Fischer, the former chairman of the Iowa Democratic Party, coordinated his criticism of Clinton with Barack Obama's campaign, reports Online Media Daily. The FEC said even if he had, which it did not believe, Fischer's comments are protected by the First Amendment.
Web pick posted by Neil Savage, Xconomy.com
Open source software has led to better, cheaper applications. But the major providers of open source, such as Red Hat and Novell, have not profited much from such innovations, reports BusinessWeek. Instead, it's the tech giants such as IBM, HP, and Oracle that are making all the money.
Web pick posted by Neil Savage, Xconomy.com
The U.S. is lagging behind other countries in providing broadband Internet access to its citizens, a report from the Communications Workers of America has found. According to Information Week, the CWA report showed that the median download speed in the U.S. is 2.35 megabits per second, compared to 63.6 Mbps in Japan. Of the 50 states, Rhode Island has the fastest connections at a median of 6.8 Mbps, while Alaska is slowest, at only 0.8 Mbps.
Web pick posted by Neil Savage, Xconomy.com
By Rob Margetta, CQ Staff
U.S. caution over China's access to technology has extended to the Olympics, says the surveillance camera manufacturer Axsys Technologies, which went through a lengthy waiver process so its military-grade high-definition cameras could be used at the games.
Axsys found out the White House approved its waiver only a week before the Olympics began, concluding six months of feeding the State Department information about the V14 High Definition camera systems slated to be mounted on helicopters and boats to film outdoor events including cycling, rowing, the marathon and the opening and closing ceremonies.
from Governing.com Idea Center
Half of the 42,000 automobile-crash-related fatalities that occur in the United States each year are on two-lane rural roads. To help drivers and public officials make smarter, safer choices about transportation, especially in rural areas, the Center for Excellence in Rural Safety at the University of Minnesota created a new interactive map that plots out every traffic fatality in the nation in 2006.
Using the Internet or text messages to harass one's fellow students could become illegal under a bill making its way through the California legislature. The Associated Press reports that the cyberbullying bill passed the state Senate on a 21-11 vote and is headed to the Assembly.
Web pick posted by Neil Savage, Xconomy.com
Two-way video conferencing between medical specialists and patients can lead to better outcomes than simply consulting over the telephone, according to a study in Lancet Neurology. Ars Technica says the study found that stroke victims in rural or remote areas were correctly diagnosed more often through telemedicine than by phone, 98 percent versus 82 percent.
Web pick posted by Neil Savage, Xconomy.com
By Matt Korade, CQ Staff
Top Democrats on the House Energy and Commerce Committee vowed to expand their investigation of security risks at labs used to study lethal pathogens -- including a review of personnel security at Fort Detrick, Md.
Fort Detrick was the workplace of Bruce Ivins, the suspect in the 2001 anthrax attacks who committee suicide last month.
Web pick posted by Neil Savage, Xconomy.com
Web pick posted by Neil Savage, Xconomy.com
A number of governments are implanting radio frequency identification (RFID) tags into passports as a way of making them more secure. But a pair of researchers at last week's Black Hat conference in Las Vegas showed the Wall Street Journal's Business Technology Blog that they could hack into the chips and change the data. One said it took about four hours to break the encryption key and get the data contained in a passport chip.
Web pick posted by Neil Savage, Xconomy.com
By Karoun Demirjian, CQ Staff
The prospect of comprehensive immigration overhaul legislation died a public death in June 2007, but the notion of targeted immigration changes has continued to live on in proposals seeking to provide special help for narrow categories of foreigners, one at a time.
Whether Bruce Ivins, the scientist who killed himself last month as the FBI was closing in, was indeed the person who mailed deadly anthrax in 2001 or not, there is at least a legacy that could help the nation in a future emergency, the Associated Press reports. The attacks spurred a new branch of science, microbial forensics. Investigators used it to identify the unique genetic signature of the spores from the attack and trace them back to a specific flask, which they then linked to Ivins.
Web pick posted by Neil Savage, Xconomy.com
The Department of Defense, which accounts for 1.5 percent of U.S. energy consumption, wants to get greener, and hopes its efforts will translate into benefits for civilian society as well, Reuters says. The military wants 25 percent of its energy to come from renewable sources by 2025. Among their goals are the development of portable solar and wind power stations.
Web pick posted by Neil Savage, Xconomy.com
Bruce Schneier writes in his "memo" to the next President: "You have the buying power to get your vendors to make serious security improvements in the products and services they sell to the government, and then we all benefit...."
Web pick posted by Neil Savage, Xconomy.com
Web pick posted by Neil Savage, Xconomy.com
By Rob Margetta, CQ Staff
Kathy Kraninger, head of the Department of Homeland Security's Office of Screening Coordination, gave a rundown today on progress made in the highest profile screening programs, including:
The Electronic System for Travel Authorization
Kraninger called the program "the biggest thing we're working through and certainly the thing that's gotten the most attention." ESTA deals with how DHS processes foreign air passengers who can travel to America visa-free, because their countries are members of the Visa Waiver Program. It requires such travelers to fill out an online form with biographical and security information three days prior to departure.
Facebook, MySpace, and their ilk are becoming increasing popular for identity thieves and purveyors of malicious software, several speakers at the Black Hat security conference in Las Vegas said this week. The Washington Post's Security Fix blog says the raft of user-created applications on these sites are prime candidates for spreading malware. On the other hand, one speaker warned that staying off such sites gives scammers the opportunity to create a fake profile for you and use it against your friends.
Web pick posted by Neil Savage, Xconomy.com
A California company, Calera, has developed a process in which it captures the carbon dioxide emitted by a natural-gas-burning power plant, pumps it through seawater, and produces the materials needed to make cement. Normally the process of making cement releases at least a ton of carbon dioxide for every ton of cement, but the company says it captures half a ton of C02 for each ton of cement it makes, according to Scientific American. Since cement and its sister material, concrete, are widely used in buildings all over the world, such a change could have a significant impact on global warming.
Web pick posted by Neil Savage, Xconomy.com
A private think tank is looking for ways the government can make cyberspace more secure. The Commission on Cyber Security for the 44th Presidency, a group organized by a Center for Strategic and International Studies, is working on recommendations it can make to the next president. CNET News quotes Marcus Sachs, Verizon's director of national security policy, a former government official, and a commission member, said that stealthy cyber-intrusions were a real threat to the security of today's networks.
"In the transition between the Clinton and Bush presidencies in late 2000, there was no group doing what we're doing now...trying to tee up cybersecurity as an agenda item," Sachs said during a panel discussion at the Black Hat security conference in Las Vegas.
Web pick posted by Neil Savage, Xconomy.com
Some Internet service providers are worried that the growing demand for large files, such as videos, is going to produce more data traffic than the Internet can handle. But one Internet expert says traffic growth rates are actually falling. Ars Technica reports that Andrew Odlyzko of the University of Minnesota's Internet Traffic Studies project says "there is not a single sign of an unmanageable flood of traffic."
Web pick posted by Neil Savage, Xconomy.com
Web pick posted by Neil Savage, Xconomy.com
If you had any thoughts of sneaking up on your enemies and running them over with a nearly silent hybrid car, forget about it. Lotus Engineering, which makes active noise management systems to keep it quiet inside the car, has developed a system to produce artificial engine noises and make the cars safer for pedestrians. Edmund.com says the company has made a demo model of its "Safe and Sound Hybrid" using a standard Toyota Prius.
Web pick posted by Neil Savage, Xconomy.com
By Aliya Sternstein, CQ Staff
A proposed rule for country of origin labeling is meeting resistance from food safety advocates in Congress as the Sept. 30 deadline for implementation approaches.
The law requires retailers to label the source of many foods, including beef, chicken, produce and pecans, by Sept. 30. But the Agriculture Department (USDA) plan for implementing the law "does not make sense," said one of the House's primary food safety watchdogs, Agriculture Appropriations Chairman Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn.DeLauro said.
By CQ Staff
Although some doctors assume otherwise, a cocktail of drugs to slow the development of AIDS works as well in infected individuals who are injectable drug users as in other people with HIV, the AIDS virus, the National Institutes of Health announced Wednesday.
The medical research agency noted that the cocktail has been "extremely effective" at slowing the progression of HIV infection to AIDS and at extending the lives and improving the quality of life of those with the virus.
Web pick posted by Neil Savage, Xconomy.com
The Federal Communications Commission wants to bring high-speed Internet access to the 40 percent of American homes that lack it. Business Week tells us that FCC Chairman Kevin Martin wants to provide government incentives for private companies to provide more broadband service. He wants to auction off wireless spectrum and have the winning bidder commit to bringing at least minimal broadband service to 95 percent of the country within 10 years.
Web pick posted by Neil Savage, Xconomy.com
By Whitney Blair Wyckoff, CQ Staff
A study evaluating different scenarios that would allow people to purchase health insurance across state lines found that 12 million previously uninsured people would be able to get insurance if there were competition between states.
The study was presented during an American Enterprise Institute panel discussion on interstate competition for individual insurance as a way to increase access to the uninsured. But it's already generating disagreement from some health policy analysts.
Solar mirrors manufactured by Ausra, one of many cleantech companies.
Concerns about the environment are helping to drive up venture investing in cleantech companies, according to a report from Ernst & Young. The report found venture investing in cleantech hit $961.7 million in the second quarter of 2008, says CNET News. A big portion of the increase is coming from large corporations, such as Shell, Chevron, and DuPont.
Web pick posted by Neil Savage, Xconomy.com
Web pick posted by Neil Savage, Xconomy.com
Web pick posted by Neil Savage, Xconomy.com
California's Community Stabilization Home Loan Program. California is among the states hardest-hit by the foreclosure crisis. Its program offers 30-year loans at below-market interest rates to eligible first-time homebuyers in communities with some of the state's highest foreclosure rates. Several lenders have agreed to price properties in these communities at 12 percent below market value. Down payments are not required, but families must meet specific income levels to participate. Overseen by the California Housing Finance Agency, the program is expected to help 800 to 1,000 Californians, and will be offered until the $200 million bond fund allocation is spent.
Connecticut's Mortgage Crisis Job Training Program. In June, Gov. M. Jodi Rell signed comprehensive legislation that not only increases funding to existing foreclosure assistance programs but also connects the dots between the mortgage crisis and unemployment. The program, which may be the first of its kind in the nation, targets unemployed and underemployed workers who are at least 60 days behind in their mortgage payments, and provides job training and placement assistance. Participants also receive financial education and credit counseling.
Web pick posted by Neil Savage, Xconomy.com
Web pick posted by Neil Savage, Xconomy.com
A newly created free search service will dig up police records of anyone you want to find out about in all 50 states, including traffic violations. An essay in the New York Times wonders if such services will upset a social balance where the privacy of minor infractions was protected by the difficulty of obtaining such records.
Web pick posted by Neil Savage, Xconomy.com
By Rob Marghetta, CQ Staff
The technology and communication provider Harris Corp. has announced its contender in a market the Department of Homeland Security is pushing private industry to invest in: handheld interoperable emergency communications,
Just two months ago, DHS's Science and Technology Directorate said it wants companies to find ways to allow local, state and federal law enforcement and emergency officers to talk to one another, and that's exactly what Unity, its new family of multiband software-defined radios does, Harris said Friday.
A Pittsburgh couple has sued Google over its Street View feature, which contained a photo of the outside of their house. Aaron and Christine Boring say the feature lowered the value of their property and caused them mental suffering. A blogger at CNET News feels the Borings might be taking the notion of privacy a little bit too far.
Web pick posted by Neil Savage, Xconomy.com
Here's a chance to get a jump on a piece that will surely spur some discussion. The New York Times has published on its website a story from its upcoming Sunday magazine about Internet trolls who are, in the paper's words, "part of a growing Internet subculture with a fluid morality and a disdain for pretty much everyone else online." A "troll" is someone who intentionally disrupts online communities.
Web pick posted by Neil Savage, Xconomy.com
A law enacted this week allows cities and counties in California to make loans to homeowners wishing to install solar panels on their houses or upgrade to energy-saving appliances. According to the Los Angeles Times, the law allows residents to pay back the low-interest loans over decades through their property taxes. Lawmakers hope the program will boost the installation of solar panels, which can cost $15,000 to $30,000 per house.
Web pick posted by Neil Savage, Xconomy.com
In a sign that the era of gas guzzlers may be ending, the Wall Street Journal observes that even in Texas, people are leaving their SUVs in the garage in favor of smaller electric cars. As the paper puts it, "You Know Gas Prices Are High When Texans Start Driving Golf Carts." The story says the tiny vehicles take some getting used to, but people seem willing to switch given how much they save on gas.
Web pick posted by Neil Savage, Xconomy.com
Anticipating a day when enemy combatants will be armed with lasers capable of melting holes in its equipment and weapons, the U.S. Air Force is looking for technology that will protect its weapons. Among the possibilities listed in a request for proposals is a spray-on coating to deflect laser energy or a broadband reflector that can be embedded in a weapon's skin, Wired tells us. Such technologies, the Air Force suggests, could also protect commercial airliners from terrorists with lasers.
Web pick posted by Neil Savage, Xconomy.com
the program is the appropriate mechanism through which to
screen job applicants' work eligibility.By Whitney Blair Wyckoff, CQ Staff
Growing evidence has shown that vaccines and antibody medications could prove effective at treating drug and nicotine addiction, said scientists at a Capitol Hill briefing.
Research in this field is encouraging -- there have been successful animal trials and a few promising human trials -- but studies would progress faster if pharmaceutical companies were more invested, they said during Tuesday's briefing sponsored by the Friends of the National Institute on Drug Abuse.
