Sicilian Mafia Getting into the Wind Power Biz?

by JOSH LOPOSER
Feb 20th 2009 @ 10:30AM

Filed under: News, Alternative Energy

Are Sicilian mobsters going green? According to reports coming out of Southern Italy, it appears that they're doing the damnedest to muscle, bribe and cheat their way into the wind power business. Italian investigators have made a string of arrests relating to a proposed Sicilian wind farm project in which officials were allegedly bribed with luxury cars and cash in exchange for awarding the contract to a mafia-backed company. 

In some ways, I guess wind farms seem like a great business for the mob. Like their current favorite -- the waste management biz -- huge contracts are doled out by less-than-perfect officials, and all crime bosses have to do is hire some people who know what they're doing and watch the money roll in. The only trick is securing the contracts. Apparently, red flags were raised when the mafia stole a rival bid from Mazara de Vallo's municipal vault, then submitted a contract obviously based on the stolen version. I know this sounds like something out of unimaginative Mario Puzo rip-off novel, but I'm not making this up.

[via CleanTechnica]

Spaceplane Concept Receives Euro Funding

Posted by samzenpus on Friday February 20, @04:15AM

from the space-plane-race dept.

draevil writes"BBC News reports that the novel "Skylon" spaceplane design of British firm Reaction Engines has received funding to proceed with its proof-of-concept design for an air-breathing rocket engine. If successful the Sabre rocket engine will be able to take the Skylon with 12 tonnes of cargo from a runway, to orbit and then back to that runway without the need for disposable components or a piggy-back ride on a larger aircraft. Should the design prove viable then it could see first use within ten years."

Do Video Games Cost Too Much?

Posted by Soulskill on Friday February 20, @06:02AM

from the depends-how-the-pirate-bay-trial-goes-right dept.

Valve's Gabe Newell gave the keynote address at this year's Design, Innovate, Communicate, Entertain (DICE) Summit about the cost of games, the effect of piracy, and how to reach new players. Valve undertook an experiment recently to test how price affected the sales of their popular survival-horror FPS, Left 4 Dead. They Reduced the price by 50% on Steam, which "resulted in a 3000% increase in sales of the game, posting overall sales that beat the title's original launch performance." They also tested various other price drops over the holidays, seeing spikes in sales that corresponded well to the size of the discount. This will undoubtedly add to the speculation that game prices have risen too high for the current economic climate. G4TV ran a live blog of Newell's presentation, providing a few more details.

Indoor Plants Can Reduce Formaldehyde Levels

ScienceDaily (Feb. 20, 2009) — The toxic gas formaldehyde is contained in building materials including carpeting, curtains, plywood, and adhesives. As it is emitted from these sources, it deteriorates the air quality, which can lead to "multiple chemical sensitivity" and "sick building syndrome", medical conditions with symptoms such as allergies, asthma, and headaches. The prevalence of formaldehyde and other volatile organic compounds (VOC) is greater in new construction.

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Systolic And Diastolic Blood Pressures Together More Useful For Predicting Cardiovascular Risk

ScienceDaily (Feb. 19, 2009) — Individuals with diastolic blood pressure under 70 mm Hg coupled with an elevated systolic blood pressure may have a greater risk of heart attack and stroke than indicated by the systolic blood pressure values alone, according to a UC Irvine study.

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Science Suggests Access To Nature Is Essential To Human Health

ScienceDaily (Feb. 19, 2009) — Elderly adults tend to live longer if their homes are near a park or other green space, regardless of their social or economic status. College students do better on cognitive tests when their dorm windows view natural settings. Children with ADHD have fewer symptoms after outdoor activities in lush environments. Residents of public housing complexes report better family interactions when they live near trees.

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Judge Dismisses Google Street View Case

Posted by samzenpus on Wednesday February 18, @07:19PM

from the never-go-against-the-google dept.

angry tapir writes"A judge has dismissed a lawsuit filed by a Pennsylvania family against Google after the company took and posted images of the outside of their house in its Maps service. The lawsuit, filed in April 2008, drew attention because it sought to challenge Google's right to take street-level photos for its Maps' Street View feature. Judge Amy Reynolds Hay from the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania, granted Google's request for dismissing the lawsuit because "the plaintiffs have failed to state a claim under any count.""

Surfing The Net Helps Seniors Cope With Pain

ScienceDaily (Feb. 18, 2009) — Surfing the Internet could provide significant relief for seniors with chronic pain, according to new research reported inThe Journal of Pain, published by the American Pain Society.

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Oops! Wal-Mart Misplaces Radioactive Gas

by KELLY LEAHY
Feb 17th 2009 @ 12:40PM

Filed under: News

Something strange is going on at Wal-Mart. It started with a few stores reporting missing exit signs which led to an audit of all 4,500 U.S. and Puerto Rico stores. What was discovered was that more than 15,800 exit signs are unexplicably missing. This wouldn't be a big deal except for the fact that Wal-Mart's exit signs contain tritium, a radioactive gas.

Though tritium is not hazardous externally, it can easily be ingested and bonds easily with water. Low levels are considered safe but ingesting 5% of the tritium in one of these signs is the equivelant of 208 years of natural background radiation.

In addition to glow-in-the-dark exit signs, Tritium is also used to make nuclear weapons. 15,800 signs could not only infect a water source but create a large explosion. It might be time for Wal-Mart to take a look at their record keeping and consider using non-nuclear store fixtures from here on out.

Student Satirist Gets 3 Months; the Judge, Likely More

Posted by timothy on Tuesday February 17, @10:22AM

from the but-everyone-else-in-pa-is-clean dept.

ponraul writes"When Judge Mark A. Ciavarella Jr., 58, sentenced Hillary Transue, 17, on a harassment charge stemming from a MySpace parody of her high school's assistant principal, Hillary expected to be let off with a stern lecture; instead, the Wilkes-Barre, PA area teen got three months in a commercially operated juvenile detention center. In a reversal of fortune, Ciavarella and his colleague, Judge Conahan, 56, find themselves trying to plea-bargain an 87-month sentence in Federal correctional facilities relating to a kick-back scheme that netted the pair $2.6 Million and PA Child Care 5000 inmates."True poetic justice would be for these corrupt, callous judges to serve their sentences in the same kind of environment to which they were happy to dispatch juvenile defendants.

Buying Experiences, Not Possessions, Leads To Greater Happiness

ScienceDaily (Feb. 17, 2009) — Can money make us happy if we spend it on the right purchases? A new psychology study suggests that buying life experiences rather than material possessions leads to greater happiness for both the consumer and those around them.

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Loneliness Affects How The Brain Operates

ScienceDaily (Feb. 17, 2009) — Social isolation affects how people behave as well as how their brains operate, a study at the University of Chicago shows.

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Jet Pack Runs For Hours On Water

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday February 17, @05:11AM

from the got-your-back dept.

Ponca City, We love you writes"Jet packs have been around for half a century, but there's always been one problem: they run out of fuel in around 30 seconds. Now a German company has taken the standard jet pack design, run a fat yellow hose out the back, and connected it to a small unmanned boat that houses an engine, pump, and fuel tank and sends pressurized water up the hose, where it's shot out by two nozzles just behind the wearer's shoulders. Called the JetLev-Flyer, the design purportedly can reach a height of 15 meters, a speed of 72 kph, and a range of 300 kilometers based on four hours of flying time. A digital fly-by-wire system is used to control the throttle. Future designs may achieve higher altitudes, higher top speeds, and extended range, and even travel below the water's surface. The American manufacturers claim it is 'amazingly easy to learn and operate' andthey're taking orders now at $130,000 each."

Earth-Like Planets In Our Neighborhood

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday February 17, @02:11AM

from the known-space dept.

goran72 sends in a story out of the Chicago AAAS meeting contending that Earth-like planets with life-sustaining conditions may be spinning around stars in our galactic neighborhood — we just haven't found them yet."'So I think there is a very good chance that we will find some Earth-like planets within 10, 20 or 30 light years of the Sun,' astrophysicist [Alan Boss]... told his AAAS colleagues meeting here since Thursday. ... The images from those new planets, he added, should identify 'light from their atmosphere and tell us if they have perhaps methane and oxygen. That will be pretty strong proof they are not only habitable but actually are inhabited. I am not talking about a planet with intelligence on it. I simply say if you have a habitable world. ... Sitting there, with the right temperature with water for a billion years, something is going to come out of it. At least we will have microbes,' said Boss."

Drug Deletes Fearful Memories

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Monday February 16, @07:26PM

from the also-the-memory-that-you-paid-your-bill-already dept.

Al writes"Technology Review has an article about a common drug that seems to 'delete' painful memories related to a fearful experience. Experiments carried out by neuro-scientists at Emory University show that propranolol, a drug commonly used to treat high blood pressure, can suppress the emotional part of a fearful memory. The results, published in Nature Neuroscience, suggest a new way to treat anxiety disorders. In recent years, scientists have discovered that the simple act of remembering a past experience requires that the memory be consolidated once again. And both animal research and some human studies have shown that during re consolidation, long-term memories — once thought to be fairly stable — can be more easily meddled with."

Draconian DRM Revealed In Windows 7

Posted by kdawson on Monday February 16, @09:18PM

from the just-who-did-you-think-owns-your-machine dept.

TechForensics writes"A few days' testing of Windows 7 has already disclosed some draconian DRM, some of it unrelated to media files. A legitimate copy of Photoshop CS4 stopped functioning after we clobbered a nagging registration screen by replacing a DLL with a hacked version. With regard to media files, the days of capturing an audio program on your PC seem to be over (if the program originated on that PC). The inputs of your sound card are severely degraded in software if the card is also playing an audio program (tested here with Grooveshark). This may be the tip of the iceberg. Being in bed with the RIAA is bad enough, but locking your own files away from you is a tactic so outrageous it may kill the OS for many persons. Many users will not want to experiment with a second sound card or computer just to record from online sources, or boot up under a Linux that supports ntfs-3g just to control their files."Read on for more details of this user's findings.

Re — Photoshop: That Photoshop stopped functioning after we messed with one of its nag DLLs was not so much a surprise, but what was a surprise: Noting that Win7 allows programs like Photoshop to insert themselves stealthily into your firewall exception list. Further, that the OS allows large software vendors to penetrate your machine. Even further, that that permission is responsible for disabling of a program based on a modified DLL. And then finding that the OS even after reboot has locked you out of your own Local Settings folder; has denied you permission to move or delete the modified DLL; and refuses to allow the replacement of the Local Settings folder after it is unlocked with Unlocker to move it to the Desktop for examination (where it also denies you entry to your own folder). Setting permissions to 'allow everyone' was disabled! 

Re — media: Under XP you could select 'Stereo Mix' or similar under audio recording inputs and nicely capture any program then playing. No longer.

 

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