Prison Bans D&D For Mimicking Gang Structure

They have obviously never played or they would know that the DM builds the world that the players interact with. If the DM "gives directions" to the players beyond the rules, it is not fun any longer.

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday January 26, @05:21AM
from the step-away-from-the-polyhedral-dice dept.

court

games

Trepidity writes"In a case that has been winding its way through the courts for a while now, a Wisconsin prison banned inmates from playing Dungeons & Dragons, using the justification that 'one player is denoted the Dungeon Master... [who] is tasked with giving directions to other players... [which] mimics the organization of a gang.' The prison also cited some sparse evidence that a handful of non-inmate D&D players once committed some crimes that allegedly were related to their D&D playing. On Monday the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the regulation (PDF) against challenges from inmates. The court appeared skeptical of the ban, sarcastically referring to it as the 'war on D&D,' but upheld it nonetheless as having a 'rational basis.' Law professor Ilya Somin suggests that the court may have had no choice, given how deferential rational-basis review usually is."

NASA Designs All-Electric Personal Flight Vehicle

Posted by samzenpus on Wednesday January 20, @09:36PM
from the touch-the-sky dept.

nasa

transportation

hardware

technology

MikeChino writes"NASA is currently working on a personal aircraft that will put jet packs to shame. The Puffin is an all-electric one-man airplane that could be the start of some new and amazing air travel technology. With two prop electric engines, lithium phosphate batteries and a top speed of almost 300 mph, the vertical take off and landing vehicle was originally designed for covert military insertions because it has a lower heat signature than combustion engines. The Puffin would also be super quiet – 10 times quieter than current low-noise helicopters, and since the engine is electric it has no flight ceiling and can fly up to 9,150 meters high, uninhibited by thin air ."

Sound Generator Lethal From 10 Meters

Posted by Soulskill on Wednesday January 20, @08:52AM
from the can-you-hear-me-now dept.

military

technology

penguinrecorder writes"The Thunder Generator uses a mixture of liquefied petroleum, cooking gas, and air to create explosions, which in turn generate shock waves capable of stunning people from 30 to 100 meters away. At that range, the weapon is relatively harmless, making people run in panic when they feel the sonic blast hitting their bodies. However, at less than ten meters, the Thunder Generator is capable of causing permanent damage or killing people."

Why Hasn't Earth Warmed as Much as Expected? New Report on Climate Change Explores the Reasons

ScienceDaily (Jan. 19, 2010) — Planet Earth has warmed much less than expected during the industrial era based on current best estimates of Earth's "climate sensitivity" -- the amount of global temperature increase expected in response to a given rise in atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide (CO₂). In a study to be published in theJournal of Climate, a publication of the American Meteorological Society, Stephen Schwartz, of Brookhaven National Laboratory, and colleagues examine the reasons for this discrepancy.

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Electric Control of Aligned Spins Improves Computer Memory

ScienceDaily (Jan. 19, 2010) — Researchers from Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin (HZB) and the French research facility CNRS, south of Paris, are using electric fields to manipulate the property of electrons known as "spin" to store data permanently. This principle could not only improve random access memory in computers, it could also revolutionize the next generation of electronic devices.

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Friendly Bacteria Love the Humble Apple

ScienceDaily (Jan. 20, 2010) — Why does an apple a day keep the doctor away? New research published in the open access journal BMC Microbiology contributes to our understanding of why eating apples is good for you.

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Sitting Down Too Long Is Bad Even If You Exercise

Posted by kdawson on Wednesday January 20, @05:02AM
from the get-a-move-on dept.

medicine

Ant tips the week-old news that sitting down too much is not good for you, even if you are otherwise fit. A blog at the LA Times reports a followup from Swedish exercise experts: they propose "establishing a new way of thinking about sedentary behavior. They suggest abolishing 'sedentary behavior' as a synonym for not exercising. Instead, sedentary time should be defined as 'muscular inactivity' to distinguish it from not doing any exercise at all." These experts warn that the excessively sedentary are running serious health risks, irrespective of how much exercise they get when they're not plonked behind a desk or lying on a sofa.

Yoga Reduces Cytokine Levels Known to Promote Inflammation, Study Shows

ScienceDaily (Jan. 14, 2010) — Regularly practicing yoga exercises may lower a number of compounds in the blood and reduce the level of inflammation that normally rises because of both normal aging and stress, a new study has shown.

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Arctic Could Face Warmer and Ice-Free Conditions

ScienceDaily (Jan. 14, 2010) — There is increased evidence that the Arctic could face seasonally ice-free conditions and much warmer temperatures in the future.

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U.S. Adult Obesity Still High, but Recent Data Suggest Rates May Have Stabilized

ScienceDaily (Jan. 14, 2010) — The prevalence of adults in the U.S. who are obese is still high, with about one-third of adults obese in 2007-2008, although new data suggest that the rate of increase for obesity in the U.S. in recent decades may be slowing, according to a study appearing in the January 20 issue of JAMA.

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Plastic Chemical Bisphenol A (BPA) Linked to Cardiovascular Disease in Adults, Analysis Confirms

ScienceDaily (Jan. 13, 2010) — Researchers from the Peninsula Medical School and the University of Exeter, UK, have found more evidence for a link between Bisphenol A exposure (BPA, a chemical commonly used in plastic food containers) and cardiovascular disease. The team analysed new US population data and their results are published by the online journal PLoS ONE.

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Longevity Gene' Helps Prevent Memory Decline and Dementia

ScienceDaily (Jan. 13, 2010) — Scientists at Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University have found that a "longevity gene" helps to slow age-related decline in brain function in older adults. Drugs that mimic the gene's effect are now under development, the researchers note, and could help protect against Alzheimer's disease.

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Obesity Linked to Common Form of Kidney Cancer and Each Extra BMI Point Increases Risk

ScienceDaily (Jan. 13, 2010) — Being obese could lead to a greater risk of developing the most common form of renal cell cancer, according to research in the January issue of the UK-based urology journal BJUI.

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Mango Effective in Preventing, Stopping Certain Colon, Breast Cancer Cells, Food Scientists Find

ScienceDaily (Jan. 12, 2010) — Mango fruit been found to prevent or stop certain colon and breast cancer cells in the lab.

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Startup Tests Drugs Aimed at Autism

Posted by kdawson on Monday January 11, @04:52AM
from the whose-x-you-callin'-fragile dept.

medicine

An anonymous reader sends in this link from Technology Review about a startup company testing drugs that may help those with autism-spectrum disorders — even adults."Seaside Therapeutics, a startup based in Cambridge, MA, is testing two compounds for the treatment of fragile X syndrome, a rare, inherited form of intellectual disability linked to autism. The treatments have emerged from molecular studies of animal models that mirror the genetic mutations seen in humans. Researchers hope that the drugs, which are designed to correct abnormalities at the connections between neurons, will ultimately prove effective in other forms of autism spectrum disorders. ... The company is funded almost entirely by an undisclosed family investment of $60 million, with $6 million from the National Institutes of Health. [A spokesman] says that Seaside has enough funding to take its compounds through clinical testing and approval.

More Evidence That Autism Is a Brain 'Connectivity' Disorder

ScienceDaily (Jan. 11, 2010) — Studying a rare disorder known as tuberous sclerosis complex (TSC), researchers at Children's Hospital Boston add to a growing body of evidence suggesting that autism spectrum disorders, which affect 25 to 50 percent of TSC patients, result from a miswiring of connections in the developing brain, leading to improper information flow. The finding may also help explain why many people with TSC have seizures and intellectual disabilities.

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Brain Activity Levels Affect Self-Perception: 'Rose-Colored Glasses' Correlate With Less Frontal Lobe Use

ScienceDaily (Jan. 11, 2010) — The less you use your brain's frontal lobes, the more you see yourself through rose-colored glasses, a University of Texas at Austin researcher says.

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2010 Bug Plagues Germany

Posted by CmdrTaco on Thursday January 07, @08:47AM
from the well-that-was-ten-years-late dept.

bug

programming

money

krou writes"According the Guardian, some 30 million chip and pin cards in Germany have been affected by a programming failure, which saw the microchips in cards unable to recognize the year change. The bug has left millions of credit and debit card users unable to withdraw money or make purchases, and has stranded many on holiday. French card manufacturer Gemalto accepted responsibility for the fault, 'which it is estimated will cost €300m (£270m) to rectify.' They claim cards in other countries made by Gemalto are unaffected."

Astronomers Get New Tools for Gravitational-Wave Detection

ScienceDaily (Jan. 7, 2010) — Teamwork between gamma-ray and radio astronomers has produced a breakthrough in finding natural cosmic tools needed to make the first direct detections of the long-elusive gravitational waves predicted by Albert Einstein nearly a century ago. An orbiting gamma-ray telescope has pointed radio astronomers to specific locations in the sky where they can discover new millisecond pulsars.

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How People Work ... and the Fingerprint Mystery

ScienceDaily (Jan. 7, 2010) — Why do we chew our food? Research has shown that it is not, as has long been presumed, to make chunks of food small enough to swallow without choking. Biomechanics, who have modelled the cohesive strength of food after a certain amount of chewing, have shown that we actually chew our food to ensure it is in a firm blob and, therefore, safe to swallow.

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Tipping Elements in the Earth System: How Stable Is the Contemporary Environment?

ScienceDaily (Jan. 6, 2010) — A Special Feature of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences presents the latest scientific insights on so-called tipping elements in the planetary environment. These elements have been identified as the most vulnerable large-scale components of the Earth System that may be profoundly altered by human interference. If one or more of those components is tipped -- especially in the course of global warming -- then the age of remarkably stable environmental conditions on Earth throughout the Holocene may end quickly and irreversibly.

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Netgear to stream Full HD anywhere in the home over 4x4 MIMO WiFi

By Thomas Ricker posted Jan 5th 2010 6:55AM

Hey Netgear, did you have a surprise for us at CES? Say the world's first 4x4 MIMO 802.11n WiFi HD Video bridge? Sorry, but Quantenna just revealed your partnership that promises to deliver Full HD video quality streams across distances of "100 feet or more, regardless of signal interferences and dead zones." According to the Quantenna press release, anyway. That's up to 5x the distance ofexisting wireless HD solutions thanks to Quantenna's 4x4 Multiple Input Multiple Output (MIMO) technology, adaptive transmit digital beamforming, and wireless channel monitoring and optimizing; a lot of scary sounding jargon that should allow the device to carry up to four streams of full HD video pretty much anywhere in the house with claimed "near-perfect transmission performance." While we don't have pics yet you can expect Netgear's baby to be sporting 4 antennas (like the Quantenna reference design pictured) when it's announced proper in the next few days.

Loss of Sea Ice Stirs Up Arctic Waters

ScienceDaily (Jan. 4, 2010) — The Arctic Ocean is generally considered a remarkably quiet ocean, with very little mixing, because a cover of sea ice prevents wind from driving the formation of internal waves. To study this effect and investigate how melting sea ice might affect ocean mixing in the Arctic, Rainville and Woodgate analyze data from moorings in the northern Chukchi Sea.

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Discovery Aims to Correct Cellular Defects Leading to Diabetes

ScienceDaily (Jan. 4, 2010) — A new research discovery published online in the FASEB Journalmay change the perception and treatment of diabetes. That's because scientists have moved closer toward correcting the root cause of the disease rather than managing its symptoms. Specifically researchers identified a protein (G6PD protein) and its antioxidant product (NAPDH) that both prevent the death and promote the growth of cells which produce and release insulin in the pancreas (beta cells).

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Body Heat Energy Generation

Posted by CmdrTaco on Wednesday December 23, @09:54AM
from the i'm-sweating-right-now dept.

power

science

BuzzSkyline writes"Researchers in Belgium have developed devices to harvest the waste heat our bodies throw off in order to convert it to electricity to run devices such as a wristband blood oxygen sensor and an electrocardiogram shirt. As a side benefit, the power sources help cool you down and keep you looking cool, all while running sundry micropower devices. In fact, the researchers mention that the energy harvesting head band works so well that it can get uncomfortably cold. In that case, they say, 'This problem is solved in exactly the same way as someone solves it on the body level in cold weather: a headgear should be worn on top of the system to limit the heat flow and make it comfortable.' But it would be such a shame to cover up the golden heat-harvesting headband with a hat."