mmmscience writes with this excerpt from Examiner.com: "A study coming out of Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, has found that the influenza virus manages to dysregulate the immune system, allowing other infections to thrive in the body. This discovery, coming at an opportune time as the world battles the new H1N1 flu outbreak, may be the first step in understanding why the flu can cause such high mortality rates in normally healthy individuals."

Ashmash writes "Benchmarks of the Btrfs filesystem have been published by Phoronix that compare it to the XFS, EXT3, and EXT4 file-systems. In the end they conclude that this next-generation Linux filesystem is not yet the performance king. In a great number of the tests, the EXT4 filesystem that was designed to be an interim step to Btrfs actually performs much better than the unstable Btrfs, albeit Btrfs still has more advanced features. Fedora 11 even took longer to boot when using Btrfs than EXT3 or EXT4."

jchrisos writes "Microsoft is planning to disable autorun in the next Release Candidate of Windows 7 and future updates to Windows XP and Vista. In order to maintain a 'balance between security and usability,' non-writable media will maintain its current behavior however. In any case, if it means no more autorun on flash drives, removable hard drives and network shares, that is definitely a step in the right direction. Will be interesting to see what malware creators do to get around this ..."

Al writes "Tech Review has an article about the progress being made on prosthetic arms that can be controlled using nerves that once connected to the missing limb via muscles in the chest. Todd Kuiken, director of the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago's Center for Bionic Medicine has pioneered the technique, which has so far given more than 30 patients the ability to control a mechanical prosthetic simply by thinking about moving their old arm. Those who have had the procedure report using their arm to slice hot peppers, open a bag of flour, put on a belt, operate a tape measure, or remove a new tennis ball from a container. The next step is to add sensing capabilities to the arms so that this information can be fed back to the reconnected nerves."

AndreV writes "It's endlessly comforting to know a recently designed and implemented long-distance robotic signing arm can produce signatures legal in both the US and Canada. The aptly named LongPen replicates the handwriting from a person writing in a remote location — with the unique speed, cadence and pressure of a human pen-stroke. It started as an idea from author Margaret Atwood to help free her from grueling, multi-city, multi-country book tours, but the hard stuff was done by a bunch of Canadian haptic gurus, whose design took into consideration many factors of the human arm and how we write. How it works: from the author-end, data protocols are set up, and the pen pressure is measured on a special tablet. The data streams to the robot, while algorithms smooth out all the missed points. Complex math operations were used to help the mechatronic limb repeat the hand's motions without unnecessary jerking, and programmers had to 'scale time' or 'stretch time' by breaking down the movements, essentially tricking the eyes into thinking the robot is writing fast. It was recently adopted by the Ontario Government to sign official documents. It helps criminals sign books, too."

The two Nevada state employees, Tami and Kevin Jenicke, who took 77 gravestones from the Southern Nevada Veterans Cemetery to build a patio aren't overzealous Marilyn Manson fans, or really into Halloween, they just have extraordinarily poor judgement. The Attorney General's Office is now investigating the incident and trying to decide if taking the stones is considered a crime. Tami Jenicke is a spokesperson for the state veterans home. Kevin Jenicke works at the cemetery. A veteran and their spouses can be buried together and that requires replacing the current headstone. Tami and Kevin took these stones which are usually destroyed. "We have to step back and say, 'How have we failed?' Our veterans deserve a respectful, peaceful final resting place," said Carole Turner with the Nevada Office of Veterans Services.

clickclickdrone writes "The BBC are reporting that Amazon has said it will not allow online advertising system Phorm to scan its web pages to produce targeted ads. For most people this is a welcome step, especially after the European Commission said it was starting legal action against the UK earlier this week over its data protection laws in relation to Phorm's technology. Anyone who values their privacy should applaud this move by Amazon."

mb writes to mention that Germany has gone one step further in impeding access to Wikileaks. Germany's registration authority, DENIC, recently suspended Wikileaks.de without notice. "The action comes two weeks after the house of the German WikiLeaks domain sponsor, Theodor Reppe, was searched by German authorities. Police documentation shows that the March 24, 2009 raid was triggered by WikiLeaks' publication of Australia's proposed secret internet censorship list. The Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) told Australian journalists that they did not request the intervention of the German government."

palegray.net writes "Inspired by a recent Ask Slashdot, I've written a step-by-step tutorial for setting up an Openfire server on Debian Linux, for those interested in running their own open source collaboration server. Aimed at those just getting started with collaboration software, the tutorial shows precisely how to get Openfire up and running quickly on a base Debian install, and offers a basic feature tour of the software's plugin and IM gateway functionality."

CWmike writes "Gregg Keizer reports that Microsoft acknowledged today it has 'broadened the options' for PC makers to continue offering Windows XP as a downgrade from Vista — and potentially even Windows 7. However, the company would not confirm specific reports that HP has been given the green light to sell new PCs with Windows XP Pro pre-installed through the end of April 2010. 'Windows XP went into semi-retirement in June 2008, when Microsoft stopped selling it at retail and withdrew Windows XP Home from use on all but netbooks, though it allowed XP Professional to be installed as a Vista downgrade. Since then, Microsoft has extended the final date it will sell XP Professional install media to large computer makers and smaller systems builders to July 31, 2009, and May 30, 2009, respectively. Today, Microsoft denied that it had extended the life span of Windows XP, and intimated that those rights were built into the newer operating system — in this case, Vista — and did not expire at some arbitrary date.'" Update: 04/07 14:36 GMT by T : nandemoari adds "Not only will users be able to keep Windows Vista, but they'll be able to step back in time two generations, all the way to XP. "We will offer downgrade rights from Windows 7 to Windows XP in the same way we did with Windows Vista," a Microsoft rep said. Insiders speculate that the right to use this time machine might be reserved for those purchasing licenses for only two versions of Windows 7 — Ultimate and Professional. However, that's not yet been confirmed."

Premier Rodney MacDonald is attending a noon rally at the Prince George hotel, downtown Halifax. NDP Leader Darrell Dexter is speaking at the Silver and Gold Club in Middle ...

An eight-week-long upturn in European, Japanese, US and emerging stock markets since March 10th has sparked a wave of optimistic commentaries in the financial media, that the worst ...

With a gold medallist in one of its top events busted for doping at the Beijing Games, the troubled sport of track and field is once again at the centre of an Olympic drug scandal ...

Pistons president of basketball operations Joe Dumars held a news conference Wednesday to wrap up a miserable season and he ended any doubt about his plans on the bench by ...

Assembly of First Nations National Chief Phil Fontaine, left, walks in St. Peter's Square in Vatican City ahead of a private audience with the Pope on Wednesday. (Stephanie Jenzer ...

28/04 10:58 - Number of Canadians Receiving Unemployment Benefits Surges 7.8% in February 28/04 10:07 - U.S. Consumer Confidence Jumps Beyond Expectations in April 28/04 10:07 ...

Peter Lucas from langley, Canada writes: The G & M attributes this piece to Martin Mittelstaedt, who is The Globe and Mail's environment reporter. Hmmmm. Shouldn't he know that ...

May 5 (Bloomberg) -- Brazil’s real fell the most in a week as the central bank stepped into the foreign-exchange market to weaken the currency for the first time since the global ...

NAGPUR: Maharashtra government has paid Rs 30-40 lakh as fees to Medical Council of India for the last 11 inspections of Indira Gandhi Government Medical College (IGGMC). In return ...

If you want to know what prompted this blog post click this link to the original article at brietbart.com What do you look for in a leader? Inspiration? Motivation? Guidance ...

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