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John Lemke

Revisiting The Purpose Of The Copyright Monopoly: Science And The Useful Arts | Torrent... - 0 views

torrentfreak.com/nce-and-the-useful-arts-121202

2012 indienationnews legal law government politics IN TNN intelectualProperty IP copyright constitution USA

shared by John Lemke on 04 Dec 12 - No Cached
  • If there’s one thing that needs constant reminding, it’s the explicit purpose of the copyright monopoly. Its purpose is to promote the progress of human knowledge. Nothing less. Nothing more.
  • [Congress has the power] to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.
  • has the power, and not the obligation
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • two kinds of monopolies: copyright monopolies and patent monopolies, respectively. Science and the useful arts. The “science” part refers to the copyright monopoly, and the “useful arts” has nothing to do with creative works – it is “arts” in the same sense as “artisan”, that is, craftsmanship.
  • the purpose of the copyright monopoly isn’t to enable somebody to make money, and never was. Its sole purpose was and is to advance humanity as a whole. The monopoly begins and ends with the public interest; it does not exist for the benefit of the author and inventor.
  • The second thing we note is the “science” part. The US Constitution only gives Congress the right to protect works of knowledge – educational works, if you like – with a copyright monopoly. “Creative works” such as movies and music are nowhere to be found whatsoever in this empowerment of Congress to create temporary government-sanctioned monopolies.
  • Which brings us to the third notable item: “the exclusive right”. This is what we would refer to colloquially as a “monopoly”. The copyright industry has been tenacious in trying to portray the copyright monopoly as “property”, when in reality, the exclusive rights created are limitations of property rights (it prohibits me from storing the bitpatterns of my choosing on my own hardware). Further, it should be noted that this monopoly is not a guarantee to make money. It is a legal right to prevent others from attempting to do so. There’s a world of difference. You can have all the monopolies you like and still not make a cent.
  • The fourth notable item is the “for limited times”. This can be twisted and turned in many ways, obviously; it has been argued that “forever less a day” is still “limited” in the technical sense. But from my personal perspective – and I’ll have to argue, from the perspective of everybody reading this text – anything that extends past our time of death is not limited in time.
John Lemke

Colliding Atmospheres: Mars vs Comet Siding Spring - NASA Science - 0 views

science.nasa.gov/...12aug_marscomet

exploration space spacecraft spaceexploration 2014.09.29-TNN nasa comet mars science spring indienationnews

shared by John Lemke on 28 Sep 14 - No Cached
  • "We hope to witness two atmospheres colliding," explains David Brain of the University of Colorado's Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP).  "This is a once in a lifetime event!"
  • Everyone knows that planets have atmospheres.  Lesser known is that comets do, too.  The atmosphere of a comet, called its "coma," is made of gas and dust that spew out of the sun-warmed nucleus.  The atmosphere of a typical comet is wider than Jupiter.
  • The timing could scarcely be better.  Just last year, NASA launched a spacecraft named MAVEN to study the upper atmosphere of Mars, and it will be arriving in Sept. 2014 barely a month before the comet. MAVEN is on a mission to solve a longstanding mystery: What happened to the atmosphere of Mars?  Billions of years ago, Mars had a substantial atmosphere that blanketed the planet, keeping Mars warm and sustaining liquid water on its surface. Today, only a wispy shroud of CO2 remains, and the planet below is colder and dryer than any desert on Earth. Theories for this planetary catastrophe center on erosion of the atmosphere by solar wind.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • the comet could spark Martian auroras.
John Lemke

Ain't No Science Fiction, Suspended Animation Is FDA Approved and Heading To Clinical T... - 0 views

singularityhub.com/...and-heading-to-clinical-trials

2012 science clinical trials fda medicine hypothermia suspended animation tauma surgery cooling

shared by John Lemke on 26 Sep 12 - No Cached
  • The Food and Drug Administration has already approved his technique for human trials, and he has secured funding from the Army to conduct the feasibility phase. Dr. Rhee is currently lobbying for funds to conduct a full trial. If he’s successful human trials could begin as early as next year.
  • What Dr. Rhee hopes to test on humans is a method he worked out for the past couple decades on pigs. Patients would be injected with a cold fluid to induce severe hypothermia. Clinically hypothermia is characterized by the drop of a person’s body temperature from its normal 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit (37 degrees Celcius) to lower than 95 degrees (35 C). Below 95, the heart, nervous system and other organs begin to fail. The strict range is indicative of a metabolic system with strict temperature requirements for proper function (death waits only a few degrees the other way as well). Dr. Rhee’s method involves injecting patients with a cold fluid that would bring the body’s temperature down to 50 degrees Fahrenheit (10 C). Sounds chilling, but when he induced the extreme hypothermia in pigs they came out just fine. Heart function, breathing, and brain function was completely normal.
  • Dr. Rhee is no stranger to high-stakes medicine. The native South Korean was trained at the Uniformed Services University Medical School in Bethesda, Maryland. Following a fellowship in trauma and critical care at the University of Washington’s Harborview Medical Center he served in the US Navy as director of the University of South California’s Navy Trauma Training Center at Los Angeles County. He was then sent to Afghanistan where he was one of the first surgeons at Camp Rhino. Later he started the first surgical unit at Ramadi, Iraq. His cool under fire was on display nationally as he performed surgery on US Representative Gabrielle Giffords after she was shot through the skull in the Tucson shootings this past January. His experience with induced hypothermia came into play the night of the shootings when Dr. Rhee removed part of the congresswoman’s skull. The wound had raised her body temperature and began “cooking the brain.” He used a device to cool Rep. Giffords’ skin.
John Lemke

Video: Sun has 'flipped upside down' as new magnetic cycle begins - Science - News - Th... - 0 views

www.independent.co.uk/...etic-cycle-begins-9029378.html

2013 tech sun cycle science news video solar magnetic astronomy IN-Pub

shared by John Lemke on 30 Dec 13 - No Cached
  • The sun has "flipped upside down", with its north and south poles reversed to reach the midpoint of Solar Cycle 24, Nasa has said. Now, the magnetic fields will once again started moving in opposite directions to begin the completion of the 22 year long process which will culminate in the poles switching once again."A reversal of the sun's magnetic field is, literally, a big event," said Nasa’s Dr. Tony Phillips."The domain of the sun's magnetic influence (also known as the 'heliosphere') extends billions of kilometers beyond Pluto. Changes to the field's polarity ripple all the way out to the Voyager probes, on the doorstep of interstellar space."
  • John Lemke on 30 Dec 13
     
    It is topics like these that Lumpy and Brian often discuss on Tech Net News and Opinion which airs Monday's from 8-10 PM EST. Feel free to join us in geekshed.net IRC in #indienation. We encourage listener participation and having listeners on the air.
John Lemke

Unique Mineral Discovered In Australia | Popular Science - 0 views

www.popsci.com/...e-mineral-discovered-australia

2014 mineral australia science indienationnews

shared by John Lemke on 24 Apr 14 - No Cached
  • John Lemke on 24 Apr 14
     
    "While dozens of new minerals are discovered each year, it is rare to find one that is unrelated to already-known substances."
John Lemke

Scientists May Have Decoded One of the Secrets to Superconductors | Science | WIRED - 0 views

www.wired.com/...the-secrets-to-superconductors

technology 2014 superconductors indienationnews

shared by John Lemke on 09 May 14 - No Cached
  • “In the same way that a laser is a hell of a lot more powerful than a light bulb, room-temperature superconductivity would completely change how you transport electricity and enable new ways of using electricity,” said Louis Taillefer, a professor of physics at the University of Sherbrooke in Quebec.
  • ripples of electrons inside the superconductors that are called charge density waves. The fine-grained structure of the waves, reported in two new papers by independent groups of researchers, suggests that they may be driven by the same force as superconductivity. Davis and his colleagues directly visualized the waves in a study posted online in April, corroborating indirect evidence reported in February by a team led by Riccardo Comin, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Toronto.
  • Taken together, the various findings are at last starting to build a comprehensive picture of the physics behind high-temperature superconductivity. “This is the first time I feel like we’re making real progress,” said Andrea Damascelli, a professor of physics at the University of British Columbia who led two recent studies on charge density waves. “A lot of different observations which have been made over decades did not make sense with each other, and now they do.”
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • The community remained divided until 2012, when two groups using a technique called resonant X-ray scattering managed to detect charge density waves deep inside cuprates, cementing the importance of the waves. As the groups published their findings in Science and Nature Physics, two new collaborations formed, one led by Damascelli and the other by Ali Yazdani of Princeton University, with plans to characterize the waves even more thoroughly. Finishing in a dead heat, the rival groups’ independent studies appeared together in Science in January 2014. They confirmed that charge density waves are a ubiquitous phenomenon in cuprates and that they strenuously oppose superconductivity, prevailing as the temperature rises.
  • y applying Sachdev’s algorithm to a new round of data, Davis and his group mapped out the structure of the charge density waves, showing that the d-wave distribution of electrons was, indeed, their source.
  • The waves’ structure is particularly suggestive, researchers say, because superconducting pairs of electrons also have a d-wave configuration. It’s as if both arrangements of electrons were cast from the same mold. “Until a few months ago my thought was, OK, you have charge density waves, who cares? What’s the relevance to the high-temperature superconductivity?” Damascelli said. “This tells me these phenomena feed off the same interaction.”
  • In short, antiferromagnetism could generate the d-wave patterns of both superconductivity and its rival, charge density waves.
John Lemke

Physicist/musician's CD comes with a Petri dish and scientific paper - Boing Boing - 0 views

www.boingboing.net/...physicistmusicians-c.html

wroteatindienation writeabout music CD marketing novel kewl neat science physics 2011

shared by John Lemke on 02 Mar 11 - No Cached
  • John Lemke on 02 Mar 11
     
    A micrograph of stained penicillin is printed onto the CDs, which are presented in an attractive Petri Dish setting. The album sleeve notes come in the form of a 20-page scientific paper, telling you all you could ever wish to know about the origins, methods and results of this art/science endeavour, as well as full lyrics and some scientific background to explain the songs.
John Lemke

Voyager 1 spots new region at the edge of the Solar System | Ars Technica - 0 views

arstechnica.com/...t-the-edge-of-the-solar-system

2012 tech voyager solar system space newspacerace physics solarWind cosmic rays discovery science

shared by John Lemke on 06 Dec 12 - No Cached
  • The researchers suspect they've reached a region of the solar-interstellar boundary that nobody had predicted. In this area, the magnetic field lines of the Sun link up with those of the interstellar field. Scientists are calling this linkage a "highway" for particles to travel along. It lets solar wind particles escape more readily, causing the drop in their intensity. And it opens the door for low-energy cosmic rays to slip in to our Solar System, which is why Voyager 1 is seeing so many of them. According the researchers at the press conference that announced these results, most steady-state models of the Solar System failed to predict anything like this. A few models did have a feature like this, but it was only a transient one that appeared at certain times of the solar cycle.
John Lemke

Feathered dinosaur death site is an "animal Pompeii" | Ars Technica - 0 views

arstechnica.com/...eath-site-is-an-animal-pompeii

2014 dinosaur site indienationnews archaeology science

shared by John Lemke on 05 Feb 14 - No Cached
  • The fossils of the Jehol Biota are from the Early Cretaceous period, about 130 million years ago, and they comprise a wide variety of animals and plants. So far, about 60 species of plants, 1,000 species of invertebrates, and 140 species of vertebrates have been found in the Jehol Biota.
  • One of the most remarkable discoveries to arise from these fossils came in 2010, when Michael Benton of the University of Bristol found color-banding preserved in dinosaur fossils. These stripes of light and dark are similar to stripes in modern birds, and they provided further evidence that dinosaurs evolved into birds. Benton also found that these fossils had intact mealnosomes—organelles that make pigments. This discovery allowed paleontologists to tell the colors of dinosaurs' feathers for the first time.
John Lemke

South Korean Scientists Use E. Coli to Make Gasoline - Korea Real Time - WSJ - 0 views

blogs.wsj.com/...eam-turns-e-coli-into-gasoline

2014 gasoline biofuel green energy indienationnews technology

shared by John Lemke on 09 May 14 - No Cached
  • Using genetically modified E. coli to generate biofuel isn’t new. U.K. scientists said in April they have developed a process under which the bacterium turns biomass into an oil that is almost identical to conventional diesel–a development that followed similar research by U.S. biotechnology firm LS9 in 2010. But the breakthrough this time is important because the reprogrammed E. coli can produce gasoline, a high-premium oil product that’s more expensive than diesel if the biofuel becomes commercially viable, according to Prof. Lee Sang-yup at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology. His team’s study was published in the international science journal Nature on Monday.
  • The significance of this breakthrough is that you don’t have to go through another process to crack the oil created by E. coli to produce gasoline. We have succeeded in converting glucose or waste biomass directly into gasoline,
  • only a few drops of the fuel per hour—making just 580 milligrams of gasoline from one liter of glucose culture.
John Lemke

BBC News - Deep sea 'mushroom' may be new branch of life - 0 views

www.bbc.com/...science-environment-29054889

indienationnews 2014 biology zooology science new discovery news

shared by John Lemke on 04 Sep 14 - No Cached
  • The authors of the article note several similarities with the bizarre and enigmatic soft-bodied life forms that lived between 635 and 540 million years ago - the span of Earth history known as the Ediacaran Period.
  • The authors of the paper recognise two new species of mushroom-shaped animal: Dendrogramma enigmatica and Dendrogramma discoides.
  • The new organisms are multicellular but mostly non-symmetrical, with a dense layer of gelatinous material between the outer skin cell and inner stomach cell layers. The researchers did find some similarities to other animal groupings, such as the Cnidaria - the phylum that comprises corals and jellyfish - and the Ctenophora, which includes the marine organisms known as comb jellies. But the new organisms did not fulfil all the criteria required for inclusion in either of those categories.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • One way to resolve the question surrounding Dendrogramma's affinities would be to examine its DNA, but new specimens will need to be found. The original samples were first preserved in formaldehyde and later transferred to 80% alcohol, a mode of treatment that prevents analysis of genetic material.
John Lemke

DNA from maggot guts used to identify corpse in criminal case | Ars Technica - 0 views

arstechnica.com/...entify-corpse-in-criminal-case

2012 maggot corpse criminal dna forensic crime investigation murder identificaton

shared by John Lemke on 29 Sep 12 - No Cached
  • It had already been suggested by other researchers that the gastrointestinal contents of maggots could be used to identify the subjects they feed on. However, never before has the theory been trialed in a legal, criminal case. Pathologists at Autonomous University of Nuevo León in San Nicolás, Mexico, led by María de Lourdes Chávez-Briones and Marta Ortega-Martínez, carried out short tandem repeat typing tests (a common method of DNA profiling) on the matter extracted from three dissected maggots found on the victim's face and neck, and separately on the alleged father of the missing woman. Preliminary results showed that the body was female, and the final outcome was a 99.685 percent probability of positive paternity—the victim had been identified.
  • John Lemke on 29 Sep 12
     
    "It had already been suggested by other researchers that the gastrointestinal contents of maggots could be used to identify the subjects they feed on. However, never before has the theory been trialed in a legal, criminal case. Pathologists at Autonomous University of Nuevo León in San Nicolás, Mexico, led by María de Lourdes Chávez-Briones and Marta Ortega-Martínez, carried out short tandem repeat typing tests (a common method of DNA profiling) on the matter extracted from three dissected maggots found on the victim's face and neck, and separately on the alleged father of the missing woman. Preliminary results showed that the body was female, and the final outcome was a 99.685 percent probability of positive paternity-the victim had been identified."
John Lemke

'Smartware' clothing could signal impending epileptic seizures - 0 views

phys.org/...ending-epileptic-seizures.html

clothing signal 2012 biotech health science medicine sensor smartware

shared by John Lemke on 29 Sep 12 - No Cached
  • They are currently working on 'smartware', fabrics that treat chronic wounds that result from diabetes and leg ulcers. Their 'senseware' technology, which is motion sensors found inside textiles, can give medical professionals the tools they need to detect the onset of epileptic seizures. The centre's 'bioware' technology is embedded materials and surfaces found in the home and on the body.
  • John Lemke on 29 Sep 12
     
    "They are currently working on 'smartware', fabrics that treat chronic wounds that result from diabetes and leg ulcers. Their 'senseware' technology, which is motion sensors found inside textiles, can give medical professionals the tools they need to detect the onset of epileptic seizures. The centre's 'bioware' technology is embedded materials and surfaces found in the home and on the body."
John Lemke

How Covert Agents Infiltrate the Internet to Manipulate, Deceive, and Destroy Reputatio... - 0 views

firstlook.org/...jtrig-manipulation

NSA GCHQ 2014 misinformation psyops surveillance spying espinoge yourrights indienationnews law

shared by John Lemke on 25 Feb 14 - No Cached
  • “The Art of Deception: Training for Online Covert Operations.”
  • Among the core self-identified purposes of JTRIG are two tactics: (1) to inject all sorts of false material onto the internet in order to destroy the reputation of its targets; and (2) to use social sciences and other techniques to manipulate online discourse and activism to generate outcomes it considers desirable. To see how extremist these programs are, just consider the tactics they boast of using to achieve those ends: “false flag operations” (posting material to the internet and falsely attributing it to someone else), fake victim blog posts (pretending to be a victim of the individual whose reputation they want to destroy), and posting “negative information” on various forums. 
  • Critically, the “targets” for this deceit and reputation-destruction extend far beyond the customary roster of normal spycraft: hostile nations and their leaders, military agencies, and intelligence services. In fact, the discussion of many of these techniques occurs in the context of using them in lieu of “traditional law enforcement” against people suspected (but not charged or convicted) of ordinary crimes or, more broadly still, “hacktivism”, meaning those who use online protest activity for political ends. The title page of one of these documents reflects the agency’s own awareness that it is “pushing the boundaries” by using “cyber offensive” techniques against people who have nothing to do with terrorism or national security threats, and indeed, centrally involves law enforcement agents who investigate ordinary crimes:
    • John Lemke
      John Lemke on 25 Feb 14
       
      Wow, how is not changing pictures and creating false victims not identity theft and conspiracy?  
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • it is not difficult to see how dangerous it is to have secret government agencies being able to target any individuals they want – who have never been charged with, let alone convicted of, any crimes – with these sorts of online, deception-based tactics of reputation destruction and disruption.
    • John Lemke
      John Lemke on 25 Feb 14
       
      Not only are you now guilty until proven innocent but, if you are guilty enough, we shall create a situation so that you are.
  • Government plans to monitor and influence internet communications, and covertly infiltrate online communities in order to sow dissension and disseminate false information, have long been the source of speculation. Harvard Law Professor Cass Sunstein, a close Obama adviser and the White House’s former head of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, wrote a controversial paper in 2008 proposing that the US government employ teams of covert agents and pseudo-”independent” advocates to “cognitively infiltrate” online groups and websites, as well as other activist groups. Sunstein also proposed sending covert agents into “chat rooms, online social networks, or even real-space groups” which spread what he views as false and damaging “conspiracy theories” about the government. Ironically, the very same Sunstein was recently named by Obama to serve as a member of the NSA review panel created by the White House, one that – while disputing key NSA claims – proceeded to propose many cosmetic reforms to the agency’s powers (most of which were ignored by the President who appointed them).
    • John Lemke
      John Lemke on 25 Feb 14
       
      So one of the guys who advocates this and approves of it, gets to be on the NSA review committee?  Isn't that like Ted Kennedy on the Ethics Review Committee or the Warren Commission?
  • Whatever else is true, no government should be able to engage in these tactics: what justification is there for having government agencies target people – who have been charged with no crime – for reputation-destruction, infiltrate online political communities, and develop techniques for manipulating online discourse? But to allow those actions with no public knowledge or accountability is particularly unjustifiable.
John Lemke

Scientists can now control flies' brains with lasers | The Verge - 0 views

www.theverge.com/...ntrol-flies-brains-with-lasers

research indinenation news science biology

shared by John Lemke on 03 Mar 14 - No Cached
  • A laser beam can alter a fly’s behavior and make it mate with just about anything — even a ball of wax, according to scientists at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. The researchers have developed an experiment which involves shining an infrared laser directly at the head of a fly whose brain has been altered using heat-activated proteins. This alteration allows the laser, dubbed the "Fly Mind-Altering Device" (FlyMAD), to activate specific neurons involved in mating.
  • behavioral modification was so strong that it persisted for about 15 minutes after the laser was turned off.
John Lemke

Mars Orbiter Mission looks to sniff methane on comet - The Times of India - 0 views

timesofindia.indiatimes.com/...43476830.cms

Mars exploration space spaceflight spacecraft spaceexploration spacetravel 2014 2014.09.29-TNN India

shared by John Lemke on 28 Sep 14 - No Cached
  • BANGALORE: India's Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM) will look to have a date with the Siding Spring comet, which will pass very close to the Red Planet on October 19, Isro chairman K Radhakrishnan said on Thursday.
  • Asked how Nasa could do reprogramming on its MAVEN spacecraft to study the comet, Radhakrishnan said: "MAVEN reached there before us and has completed the orbit around the Red Planet. I have received mails about what they are going to do, and we know what we should. But MOM has to ascertain its position. It will be known in 2-3 days."
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