Horizontal Perspective 横顾天下

Facebook addiction has finally caused real world consequences, at least for one would-be burglar. The Martinsburg Journal reported last week that a burglar left his Facebook page on his victim’s computer.  It seems that 19-year-old Jonathan Parker couldn’t stay away from the popular social networking site, even long enough to rob a house. Parker not only stopped mid-robbery to check his Facebook status on the victim’s computer, but forgot to log out before leaving the home with two diamond rings worth more than $3,500.

Last month I posted a story titled ‘Vanish’ Makes Sensitive Data Self-Destruct. It’s about a piece of software called ‘Vanish‘, developed by computer scientists at the University of Washington, which makes sensitive electronic messages ’self destruct’ after a certain period of time.

Now a group from researchers from UT Austin, Princeton, and the University of Michigan has come up with a way to break this approach, by making a single computer appear to be many nodes on the peer-to-peer network. In their experiments with the demonstration system (called Unvanish), they showed that it is possible to make Vanish messages reappear long after they should have disappeared nearly 100 percent of the time.

On Monday, the Vanish researchers responded that they had now modified their initial prototype to use multiple file sharing networks, complicating the task of an attacker. I dare say this will not be the end of this matter. It will only get more intense and interesting in the cat-and-mouse game of cryptography one-up-manship.

Last year, around this time, we noted that the country of Lebanon was trying to claim that it owns hummus and other middle eastern foods, such as falafel, tabouleh and baba gannouj, and that no other country could produce them. It seems that other parts of the world are seeing the same sort of thing. Associated Press reported last week that Malaysia is trying to declare that it owns popular local dishes, like nasi lemak.

We cannot continue to let other countries hijack our food … Chili crab is Malaysian. Hainanese chicken rice is Malaysian. We have to lay claim to our food.
      – Malaysian Tourism Minister (The Star)

The Malaysian Tourism Ministry is identifying signature recipes that it will declare as Malaysian, mentioned were favourites such as nasi lemak, chili crab, Hainanese chicken rice, laksa and bak kut teh (Chinese pork rib stew).

It not entirely clear what this means, and the article is a bit vague (the title mentions “copyright,” but the rest of the article does not), but her statement has sparked off a “food fight” over the Internet, with some unhappy Singaporeans insisting that chilli crabs and chicken rice were theirs. “We have to claim ownership on some dishes but I never said we must patent them. Neither did I say that no other countries can cook such food. We are not trying to compare with other countries”, she later clarified. But there’s no putting the genie back into the bottle as various regions took up the fight. First, Malacca lays claim to Hainanese chicken rice, then Penang claims Nasi kandar. Which region will jump in next with a claim ? Ipoh ? Kota Bahru ? There’s little sign that the furore is dying down soon.

Personally I think all these talk of ownership is downright ludicrous. Our collective future in ASEAN is in integration, not further differentiation. These should be our common heritage, not points of contention.

According to the US News and World Report, a recent study has shown a link between obesity and the loss of neurological tissue. The brains of elderly patients who were obese had on average 8% less tissue than their trimmer counterparts. Overweight patients had brains lighter by about 4%. This could have implications for the onset of dementia illnesses such as Alzheimer’s. Just one more risk factor to add to the growing body (no pun intended) of reasons to try and stay trim.

The brains of obese people looked 16 years older than their healthy counterparts while [those of] overweight people looked 8 years older.

Clinically obese people had 8 percent less brain tissue, while the overweight had 4 percent less brain tissue compared to normal-weight individuals. …Much of the lost tissue was in the frontal and temporal lobe regions of the brain, the seat of decision-making and memory, among other things.

A neuroscience professor believes it may be a vicious cycle. “Each one is contributing to the other. A person’s genetics may be contributing to overeating and weight gain, which leads to less activity, which leads to a shortfall in the oxygen and nutrients that the brain needs to thrive and grow.

New Scientist reports on a study that girls are more “primed” genetically to fear spiders and snakes, compared to boys. Infant boys and girls were shown pairs of images, a fearful and a happy object (such as a spider and a flower), measuring the boys’ and girls’ dwell times on the images. In another test, normally happy objects (such as a flower) were given a fearful face and fearful objects were given a happy face. The results of these two tests suggested to the researcher that girls are not so much wired to fear spiders, but rather girls are wired to more quickly learn to fear dangerous animals. The researcher attributes the difference to behavioural differences between men and women among our hunter-gatherer ancestors. An aversion to spiders may help women avoid dangerous animals, but in men evolution seems to have favoured more risk-taking behaviour for successful hunting.

This reminds one of another report in early 2007 (can’t locate the reference anymore) that men have a much harder time putting down a game controller than women do. The researchers at Stanford did brain imaging work on a group of young test subjects while they played a simple PC game. Besides the ‘obvious’ conclusion that men were more ‘aggressive at gaining territory on the screen’, the tests also indicated that male brains showed more activity in the reward and addiction components of the brain. The researcher noted that most of the video games that are popular with men are territory and aggression-type games. ‘These gender differences in the brain may help explain why males are more attracted to, and more likely to become hooked on video games than females,’ he said. Other recent surveys indicate that about 40 percent of Americans regularly play games on a computer or console, but young males are two or three times more likely than females to feel addicted to video games.

A Phase III ‘RV 144′ study in Thailand succeeded in reducing HIV infection rate in trial with 31.2% effectiveness. The study was conducted by the Thailand Ministry of Public Health and used strains of HIV common in Thailand. It is not clear whether the vaccine, which combines AIDSVAX with Aventis Pasteur ALVAC-HIV canarypox vector, known as ‘vCP1521,’ would work against other strains in the United States, Africa or elsewhere. Strangely, the vaccine had no effect on levels of HIV in the blood of those who did become infected, providing ‘one of the most important and intriguing findings’ of the trial, according to Dr Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, which is one of the trial’s sponsors.

Channel NEWS Asia – AIDS breakthrough as vaccine cuts infection risk
The NY Times – Vaccine Shows Some Success

The human fat removed during liposuction procedures contains versatile cells that can be easily coaxed to become stem cells, according to a new study from Stanford’s School of Medicine. The ‘liposuction leftovers’ can be more easily converted to induced pluripotent stem cells, or iPS cells, than the skin cells most often used by researchers, according to researchers at the Stanford School of Medicine.

Researchers hope that reprogramming adult cells to function like embryonic stem cells is one way to create patient-specific cell lines to regenerate tissue or study specific diseases.

The good news? There’s a lot of liposuction leftovers to go around. (more…)

Finally, some good news for ALS patients on the medical front, though it probably came too late for me.

My other blog: HomeCare » FDA OKs First Human Trial of Neural Stem Cell.

Guns drawn, cops busted down the door of a suspected south Florida drug dealer, then proceeded to kick some ass – on Wii bowling. A security cam captured some playing video games while others searched for drugs and weapons.

Cops Play Wii During Undercover Drug Raid

Maybe some of them knew that they were searching for weed, while others thought they were searching for Wii ?

According to both the BBC and REUTERS, showering may be bad for your health. Apparently, dirty shower heads can be an ideal breeding ground for Mycobacterium avium, a bug responsible for a type of pulmonary disease more prevalent than tuberculosis in developed countries, cases of which have risen in parallel with the rise in showering. Tests revealed nearly a third of devices harbour significant levels of the bug.

If you are getting a face full of water when you first turn your shower on, that means you are probably getting a particularly high load of Mycobacterium avium, which may not be too healthy.

This really shouldn’t concern average, healthy people. The main concern is for people who are immune-compromised.

Source :
BBC NEWS – Taking showers ‘can make you ill’
REUTERS – Your shower may be blasting you with germs
NewScientist – Shower heads make a perfect home for bugs