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Canada

Canadian Government Trucking Generations of Scientific Data To the Dump 209

Posted by Soulskill from the just-look-on-wikipedia dept.
sandbagger writes "Canada's science documents are literally being taken to the dump. The northern nation's scientific community has been up in arms over the holidays as local scientific libraries and records offices were closed and their shelves — some of which contained century old data — emptied into dumpsters. Stephen Harper's Tory government is claiming that the documents have been digitized. The scientists say, 'The people who use this research don’t have any say in what is being saved or tossed aside.'"
Biotech

Low-Cost Morphing Robotic Hands Could Revolutionize Blue-Collar Bionics 21

Posted by Soulskill from the might-come-in-handy dept.
malachiorion writes "Cornell, MIT and iRobot have all shown off so-called jamming manipulators: rubbery blobs that grip objects by deforming around them. But with the first commercially available version shipping to industrial and manufacturing customers, Cornell spinoff Empire Robotics has a new market in mind: Prosthetics. While impossibly expensive, neuro-controlled bionic hands continue to be a fantasy for most amputees, jamming manipulators could do the job. This article is about the merits of a low-tech, self-gripping stump, that could be powered by hooking up to an air compressor." This seems like a decent solution while we close in on a method to regrow lost limbs.
China

Chinese Firm Can Now Produce 500 Cloned Pigs Per Year 156

Posted by Soulskill from the baconators-for-all dept.
Sockatume writes "According to an article published by the BBC, Chinese firm BGI has refined cloning procedures to the point where they can produce 500 pigs per year, performing two embryo implantations per day with a 70-80% success rate. Much of the operation is concerned with producing genetically-engineered animals for research. The biotech firm's other work includes million-individual-scale animal and plant genetic sequencing."
Science

Ampere Could Be Redefined After Experiments Track Single Electrons Crossing Chip 299

Posted by timothy from the micro-management dept.
ananyo writes "Physicists have tracked electrons crossing a semiconductor chip one at a time — an experiment that should at last enable a rational definition of the ampere, the unit of electrical current. At present, an ampere is defined as the amount of charge flowing per second through two infinitely long wires one meter apart, such that the wires attract each other with a force of 2×10^-7 newtons per meter of length. That definition, adopted in 1948 and based on a thought experiment that can at best be approximated in the laboratory, is clumsy — almost as much of an embarrassment as the definition of the kilogram, which relies on the fluctuating mass of a 125-year-old platinum-and-iridium cylinder stored at the International Bureau of Weights and Measures in Paris. The new approach, described in a paper posted onto the arXiv server on 19 December, would redefine the amp on the basis of e, a physical constant representing the charge of an electron."
Security

Mathematical Model Helps Estimate Optimal Timing of Cyber Attack 31

Posted by Unknown Lamer from the hack-the-gibson-when-it's-ripe dept.
sciencehabit writes "Have you been missing the grim mathematical war games that strategists once used to map out possible nuclear confrontations? Don't worry, the games are back — this time applied to computer security. Researchers have now mathematically formalized the strategy of computer hacking, potentially enabling anyone — governments, activist hackers, cybermafia — to determine the optimal timing of attacks."

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