Wired had an article last week entitled Your Relative's DNA Could Turn You Into a Suspect, in which they describe a method of using familial DNA searching to locate suspects. There are interesting implications here, especially with regard to public DNA search resources like Ancestry.com. Thanks to Bruce Schneier's …

If you haven't already heard of the "Mojave" experiment, then you will--likely in the next few days. Microsoft, not please with the reaction so far to Vista, set out to attempt to bolster the new operating system's reputation by offering a "blind taste test" of the OS. What happened? Exactly …

Reminding me of the infamous Polish study which considered costs across the social spectrum, government and university researchers in the Netherlands have issued a report in the Medical Journal of the Public Library of Science indicating that people who smoke or are obese live shorter lives and are less expensive …

The US patent system is under fire again this week (this time by an article in Wired) for putting the rights of patent holders above the research and security implications thereof. In this particular case, the issue is HID Global (ironically self-tagged as "The Trusted Brand") going after a security …

Mr. Gore has a point. Carol and I have been putting off going to see An Inconvenient Truth for the last few weeks out of concern over boredom, propaganda, and general bad moviemaking. The reviews of this movie by others (which many of you may know I don't usually read …

In this article from Discovery News, Bruce Charlton, Reader in Evolutionary Psychiatry at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, puts forth that he thinks many educated adults never reach mental adulthood. Thoughts anyone? There is a short paper on related ideas by Dr. Charlton.

An article from the Christian Science Monitor details the exploits of an MIT scientist who is working to help greenhouse gas emissions by using algae. The idea is to use the algae in containers at the top of coal plant smokestacks as a filter. The tests so far indicate that …

The Christian Science Monitor has an article detailing research being done in Australia on using discarded plastics as the source of carbon to refine steel. Although it is a ways off, it's another interesting idea coming out of the green movement. Kudos to the CSM for pointing out that electrolysis …

In a passionate and detailed article, Popular Science takes the movie industry and the MPAA to task over their strangle-hold on content on DVDs. The article describes the faustian bargain that we all made with the movie industry when we accepted their copy protection scheme, since broken many times and …

Not surprisingly, Dr. Jeffery M. Masters, Weather Undergound's Chief Meteorologist, bashes Mr. Crichton's new book State of Fear for basically taking the side on the global warming issue that he doesn't like. I say "not surprisingly," because he has written on Weather Underground in the past about global warming and …

Both the Bush and Kerry campaigns have talked about outsourcing as a problem. Bush wants to keep business taxes low and regulation under control in order to keep jobs in the US; Kerry wants to penalize companies for taking their jobs overseas. Today, in the Wall Street Journal, Lou Gerstner …

According to an article from the International Herald Tribune, researchers at the Newcastle Center for Life have been granted a limited (1-year) license to clone human embryos for stem cell production. The plan is to clone stem cells from embryos created by inserting skin cell nuclei into human egg cells …

Although Windows seems to be continuing its growth in education markets (a sad slide for the venerable Apple stalwart), the scientific community is beginning to become a new battleground for the Mac vs. PC argument. An article from E-Commerce Times quotes NASA scientists, among others, who are finding the power …

An article in the New York Times this morning points to an article from Science that describes research done by Cornell University indicating that the levels of PCBs in the two samples of salmon differed significantly. However, despite this, the levels are still 50 times less than the amount approved …

Popular Science has an article about the worst jobs in science. If you have the time, take a look. Sadly, I can say that I had friends in Lexington who had the number 3 bad job.

Microsoft is hardly a beloved name in the computer industry, but when software patents are in question, everybody rallies to the support of the defendant. The latest example of this is a blog entry from Ray Ozzie (formerly of Lotus and currently of Groove Networks). Microsoft in August fell prey …

Before you go out and put too much trust in that peer-reviewed scientific research that just came out last Friday, take into consideration this report from the New York Times about a study released previously this year concerning death rates and the designer drug, Ecstasy. The study, published last year …

According to an article from CNet, the Department of Homeland Security is preparing to fund $1B per year in Homeland Security research. So, grab your friends and ready your proposals, because the funding gates are open. Patterned after the Department of Defense's DARPA, HSARPA is intended to provide funding for …

With all of the recent discussions on profiling and the CAPPS system for airport profiling, it appears that one issue was lost: is profiling actually more effective than random searches. According to an article on ACFNewssource, a set of MIT graduate students have put together a paper detailing why random …

An article (subscription required) in this week's Science discusses hydrogen fuel use for transportation and whether it makes sense for us to concentrate on hydrogen now as a replacement for fossil fuels due to global warming, air quality, and energy security concerns. In short, David W. Keith (CMU) and Alexander …