US Government tries to restrict publication
of details on avian flu virus that spreads among mammals John Timmer Although avian flu viruses have infected humans in the past (often with lethal effect), so far, these infections have come directly from birds. Over this past summer, however, researchers presented disturbing results at a scientific meeting. By growing the avian H5N1 virus in … Read more
A collapsing scientific hypothesis led to a lawsuit and arrest
John Timmer In 2006, scientists announced a provocative finding: a retrovirus called XMRV, closely related to a known virus from mice, was associated with cases of prostate cancer. But other labs, using different sets of patients, found no evidence of a viral infection. Before the controversy could be sorted out, another research group published a … Read more
Hackers gave Subway a $30 million lesson in point-of-sale security
Sean Gallagher For thousands of customers of Subway restaurants around the US over the past few years, paying for their $5 footlong sub was a ticket to having their credit card data stolen. In a scheme dating back at least to 2008, a band of Romanian hackers is alleged to have stolen payment card data … Read more
Defendant asks US Marshals to drag Righthaven principals to court
Timothy B. Lee The copyright trolling firm Righthaven hit a new low on Monday when one of its targets sought to have a US Marshal drag Righthaven officers into court to explain their failure to comply with a previous court order. When we began covering Righthaven last year, the firm seemed like it could pose … Read more
Firefox 9 and fancy JavaScript optimizations
Peter Bright Another six weeks have gone by, and another version of Firefox has been released. Still not officially "live," Firefox 9 improves on Firefox 8 with a JavaScript engine that’s up to 30 percent faster and, well, not a whole lot else. Mac OS X users will have a little more to gain, as … Read more
MIT launching certificate program based on OpenCourseWare, open source platform
John Timmer A decade after MIT began to put its teaching materials and lectures online via the OpenCourseWare platform, the university has announced that it will leverage these materials to provide an online certification program, currently termed MITx. Although these certificates won’t have the same weight as an MIT degree, they will indicate mastery of … Read more
How Does the Brain Perceive Art?
In 1995, the Metropolitan Museum of Art mounted a controversial exhibition entitled “Rembrandt/Not Rembrandt,” in which works considered to be genuine Rembrandts were displayed alongside those done by his students and admirers. (These lesser paintings are often dismissed as “the school of Rembrandt.”) The point of the exhibition was to reveal the fine line between … Read more
Does Alcohol Improve Your Writing?
Putting Hitch’s theory to the test. Brian Palmer Writer, philosopher, gadfly, and Slate contributor Chrisopher Hitchens died on Thursday of complications from esophageal cancer. While drinking and smoking may have contributed to his untimely passing, Hitchens didn’t regret either habit: “Writing is what’s important to me, and anything that helps me do that—or enhances and … Read more
A Child in Time
New frontiers in treating premature babies. Recent advances have boosted parents’ hopes, but great uncertainties remain. Jerome Groopman The entryway to the neonatal intensive-care unit in my hospital, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, in Boston, is lined with photographs of children who were born prematurely. Jeremiah, delivered at twenty-four weeks, sixteen weeks early, weighed one … Read more
What a difference a decade makes
Ten years ago the American short story was in decline. Now it is once again a vital genre Ruth Franklin The short story is an amuse-bouche: luscious, glittering, to be consumed in a single bite. It should be artfully conceived, but not so dainty that you can’t sink your teeth into it. It should restrain … Read more
Sometimes, more is less
Christopher Hitchens’s autobiography is at its best when it echoes his essays. Unfortunately, the rest of the time it’s largely pointless and self-indulgent Alexander Linklater In 1988, Christopher Hitchens wrote a characteristically scintillating essay for the American magazine, Grand Street, which was, uncharacteristically, about himself. Though his public arguments have always been driven by a … Read more
Christopher Hitchens dies at 62 after suffering cancer
Vanity Fair’s editor said those who read him felt they knew him British-born author, literary critic and journalist Christopher Hitchens has died at the age of 62. He died from pneumonia, a complication of the oesophageal cancer he had, at a Texas hospital. Vanity Fair magazine, which announced his death, said there would "never be … Read more
Anti-Inflammatory Polyphenols in Apple Peels
Here’s another reason why "an apple a day keeps the doctor away" — according to new research findings published in the Journal of Leukocyte Biology, oral ingestion of apple polyphenols (antioxidants found in apple peels) can suppress T cell activation to prevent colitis in mice. This study is the first to show a role for … Read more
Caffeine Increases Sport Performance
Caffeine combined with carbohydrate could be used to help athletes perform better on the field, according to new research by a sport nutrition expert. Mayur Ranchordas, a senior lecturer and performance nutritionist at Sheffield Hallam University, carried out studies on footballers using caffeine and carbohydrates combined in a drink. Along with improvements in endurance caused … Read more
A Towering Engineer Is Born
Randy Alfred Dec.16, 1832: Gustave Eiffel is born in Dijon, France. His innovative metal-structure design still supports buildings, bridges and even statues. Eiffel was graduated from the Ecole Centrale des Arts et Manufactures in 1855. He began his career by supervising railway construction in southwest France. He set himself up as an independent “constructor” in … Read more
The Internet Defends Independent Bookstores
L. V. Anderson Earlier this week, Slate technology columnist Farhad Manjoo wrote an essay championing Amazon over local bookstores. Bookstores, according to Manjoo, are “frustrating,” “difficult to use,” and “economically inefficient.” Amazon, on the other hand, has “ignite[d] a national passion for buying, reading, and even writing new books.” The backlash against Manjoo’s piece was … Read more
Why Do Americans Hate the French?
How a nation of 65 million people got on our bad side. Brian Palmer A new ad from a liberal advocacy group shows Mitt Romney speaking in French while intentionally mistranslated subtitles make the case that he’s a flip-flopper. Surrogates for George W. Bush accused John Kerry of "looking French" during the 2004 campaign. Why … Read more
Amazon Doesn’t Care About Your Local Bookstore
Tim Carmody Here are two surprising holiday shopping season success stories. They’re even more surprising because they seem to directly contradict each other. First, Amazon, which has historically kept its sales figures for Kindle e-readers tightly under wraps, announced that it’s sold more than a million Kindle devices each week for the past three weeks. … Read more
Some Plant-Based Food Supplements Contain High Levels of Cancer Causing Agents
ScienceDaily (Dec. 12, 2011) — While many consumers equal ‘natural’ with ‘safe’, botanicals and botanical preparations such as plant-based food supplements may contain compounds, like the so called alkenylbenzenes, that are of concern for human health. At high doses these chemical compounds can cause liver cancer in experimental animals. A new study, published in the … Read more
First Study to Reveal How Paracetamol Works
ScienceDaily (Nov. 22, 2011) — Researchers at King’s College London have discovered how one of the most common household painkillers works, which could pave the way for less harmful pain relief medications to be developed in the future. Paracetamol is a widely-used analgesic (painkiller) and the main ingredient in everyday medications such as cold and … Read more
How the Bioweapon Ricin Kills
ScienceDaily (Dec. 1, 2011) — A key protein that controls how the deadly plant poison and bioweapon ricin kills, has finally been identified by researchers at the Institute of Molecular Biotechnology in Vienna, Austria. The discovery was made using a revolutionary technology that combines stem cell biology and modern screening methods, and reported on 2 … Read more
Love Roots in Earliest Infancy
ScienceDaily (Dec. 14, 2011) — The ability to trust, love, and resolve conflict with loved ones starts in childhood — way earlier than you may think. That is one message of a new review of the literature in Current Directions in Psychological Science, a journal published by the Association for Psychological Science. "Your interpersonal experiences … Read more
Torn Between My Books and My Kindle
Holly Robinson My husband gave me a Kindle for my birthday. (Forgive him, O Indie booksellers. He is an engineer who knows not what he does.) At first I protested. As a writer, avid reader, and patron of indie bookstores with cats curled on floral armchairs, what did I want with this devilish contraption? "Give … Read more
Buying books on Amazon is better
Farhad Manjoo Amazon just did a boneheaded thing, and it deserves all the scorn you want to heap on it. Last week, the company offered people cash in exchange for going into retail stores and scanning items using the company’s Price Check smartphone app. If you scanned a product and then purchased it from Amazon … Read more
The Miracle Noodle
My experiment with shirataki, the zero-calorie pasta from Japan. Annie Lowrey Shirataki In the past decade, pasta has slowly disappeared from many American plates, banished for its starchy carbo-load along with bread, rice, cereal, potatoes, and corn. But what if dieters could have as much delicious pasta as they wanted? And what if this pasta … Read more
The Thrustcycle Will Never Tip Over
Keith Barry Meet the Thrustcycle, a two-wheeled EV that relies on gyroscopes to stay upright and a flywheel for acceleration. If it ever becomes street legal, it’ll be like nothing else on the road — and it’ll never fall over. At first glance, the Thrustcycle appears to defy gravity, balancing its 500 pounds on just … Read more
Snakes and Humans
‘Arms Race’ Exists Between Snakes and Humans Sarah C. P. Williams, ScienceNOW At sunset on 13 March 1973, a reticulated python (Python reticulatus) slithered into a thatched hut in the Philippines and killed two siblings: a 4-year-old girl and a 3-year-old boy. The third child in the family was saved when his father returned to … Read more
Blogger not eligible for media shield law, hit with $2.5M judgment
Timothy B. Lee An Oregon judge has ruled that a Montana blogger is not eligible for the legal protections afforded to journalists, letting stand a $2.5 million defamation verdict. The blogger, a Montana woman named Crystal Cox, had become a thorn in the side of an attorney named Kevin Padrick. Padrick is the principal of … Read more
How Filipino phreakers turned PBX systems into cash machines for terrorists
Sean Gallagher A quartet of hackers based in the Philippines have allegedly bilked AT&T and possibly other telecommunications companies out of millions, which they channeled to their own bank accounts and to accounts associated with a terrorist organization. And apparently, AT&T helped them collect the money. On November 24, the Philippine National Police’s Criminal Investigation … Read more
How to "friend" anyone on Facebook within 24 hours
Sean Gallagher If there’s any doubt how social networks have presented hackers with a wealth of social engineering tools, a Brazilian security researcher recently demonstrated how he could "friend" even allegedly more wary Facebook users in less than 24 hours. At the Silver Bullet security conference in São Paulo, UOLDiveo chief security officer Nelson Novaes … Read more
Japan’s enduring challenge
Clyde Prestowitz Seventy years ago this week, hundreds of Japanese fighters and dive bombers unexpectedly appeared on a clear Sunday morning over the North Shore of the main Hawaiian island of Oahu and prepared to drop their bomb loads on Pearl Harbor. Within minutes the U.S. Pacific fleet was decimated and the door appeared open … Read more
The Most Dangerous Over-the-Counter Drug
Hint: It’s not Plan B. Brian Palmer Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius overruled the FDA’s recommendation that emergency contraception be made available over the counter to patients of all ages on Wednesday. Her argument was that its effects on 11-year-olds have not been thoroughly studied. Critics pointed out that many over-the-counter drugs are … Read more
Do thoughts have a language of their own?
What is the relationship between language and thought? The quest to create artificial intelligence may have come up with some unexpected answers Robert Kowalski THE idea of machines that think and act as intelligently as humans can generate strong emotions. This may explain why one of the most important accomplishments in the field of artificial … Read more
Earliest human bedding didn’t let the bedbugs bite
Michael Marshall After a hard day hunting and gathering, humans 77,000 years ago could count on a good night’s mosquito-free sleep on a comfy bed of grass and leaves. Archaeologists have discovered the oldest evidence of humans using plant bedding, 50,000 years before it appears anywhere else. Many animals make beds for themselves, says lead … Read more
Ostrich Penis Clears Up Evolutionary Mystery
Overlooked bird organ is similar to, but separate from, that of reptiles and mammals. By Adam Marcus of Nature magazine A long-running question about how the largest species of birds achieve erect penises seems to have been settled. In a study published this week in the Journal of Zoology, researchers report that male ostriches and … Read more
Intellectuals and Politics
GARY GUTTING The rise of Newt Gingrich, Ph.D.— along with the apparent anti-intellectualism of many of the other Republican candidates — has once again raised the question of the role of intellectuals in American politics. In writing about intellectuals, my temptation is to begin by echoing Marianne Moore on poetry: I, too, dislike them. But … Read more
Live Like a Poet!
By Rosanna Warren Posted by Ann Kjellberg On April 13, 1904, Pablo Picasso and his friend the Catalan painter Sebastià Junyer Vidal travelled from Barcelona to Paris and installed themselves in Montmartre in the studio just vacated by the Basque ceramicist and sculptor Paco Durrio. Junyer Vidal paid the rent. Called “La Maison du Trappeur” … Read more
The domino effect
Abkhazia wants independence. Could an ancient game help? Oliver Bullough Every one of the 277 players who visited Abkhazia for the three-day domino world championships in October was a criminal. By crossing the border from Russia, they were immediately liable to at least two years in a Georgian prison. Abkhazia’s quarter of a million people … Read more
What Pinterest?
Farhad Manjoo Pinterest feels like the least cynical place on the Web At Slate’s annual retreat last summer, Holly Allen, one of the magazine’s Web designers, buttonholed me and exclaimed, “Have you heard of Pinterest? You’ve got to write about it!” I hadn’t heard about it, and rather than explain what it is—because while Pinterest … Read more
Are Psychopaths “Brain Damaged”?
Gary Stix Pathway from the prefrontal cortex to the amygdala We all have a ghoulish fascination with the Hannibal Lecters of this world. That’s because many of the most-publicized stories about psychopaths can be quickly banged into a Hollywood script. One of the most absorbing accounts that I’ve come across recently, however, was in an … Read more
For “Super Agers,” Bodies Age as Brains Stay Young
Sandra Upson Early research on the sharpest octogenarians reveals unusually youthful brain regions A nasty affliction sets into humans as they advance in years. The hair either disappears or thins into a fuzzy halo, the skin sags and bunches, while inside the brain, changes set in that slow our reaction times and cause our memories … Read more
Paella Party
Stop wasting your time with risotto. Sara Dickerman Maybe it’s time you stopped stirring. For a couple of decades now, risotto has been the go-to sophisticated rice dish for homes and restaurants alike, and cooks have stood by the stove with a spoon in one hand and a ladle in the other, tending to their … Read more
"Japanese" Cars, Made in America and Ready for Export to South Korea
Matthew Yglesias Yesterday, Toyota announced that they’re going to start exporting U.S.-built Camrys from Georgetown, Kentucky to South Korea. Karl Smith wisely points out that this is a great example of what a recession isn’t. If the problem is years of "living beyond our means" the solution dictated by cosmic justice is years of laboring … Read more
Why Are Informers Called Rats?
And why are spies called moles? Forrest Wickman New York City police officers called attendees of the Brooklyn’s West Indian Day Parade “savages” and “animals” in a series of Facebook posts full of complaints about being assigned to the event. Some members of the online group warned others to watch their words, which could get … Read more
Francis Galton’s novel about eugenics
Michael Marshall How do you publish a novel arguing that the unfit, weak or mentally infirm should not be allowed to breed, and only those deemed “high quality” be given the privilege of having children? Well, you don’t. Francis Galton tried to in the first decade of the 20th century, but he died in 1911 … Read more
Hidden mountains make up Antarctica’s true terrain
Chelsea White (Image: British Antarctic Survey/BEDMAP consortium) Antarctica is hiding something. It may look like a fairly flat, snow-covered wasteland, but the BEDMAP project has pulled back the ice sheet to reveal the mountainous bed topography of the continent underneath. Only one per cent of this concealed rock makes its way to the surface of … Read more
Great white hunter
Fifty years on from Ernest Hemingway’s death EL Doctorow We know too much about Ernest Hemingway to think of his work apart from his life. With the success of his first novel, The Sun Also Rises (1926), he became a public figure. He worked, usually on a short lead time, from his own experiences: the … Read more
Muscle Monarch
Victorian strongman Eugen Sandow was thought to possess the perfect male body. Like Oscar Wilde, he is essential to understanding modern manhood David Waller On the evening of Tuesday October 29, 1889, at around 10 o’clock, a young man wearing a monocle and evening suit jumped onto the stage of the Royal Aquarium Music Hall … Read more
Will You Live Forever by Uploading Your Brain into a Computer?
Gary Stix Neurons of the retina Ray Kurzweil and other so-called transhumanists have promised that in coming decades we will be able to transfer a digital copy of the trillions of connections among nerve cells in our brains into a computer. We would essentially reincarnate ourselves as non-biological beings that persist for eternity inside a … Read more
Was Jane Austen Poisoned by Arsenic?
Modern techniques could reveal whether the celebrated English novelist’s surviving hair contains unusually high levels of arsenic Ferris Jabr On April 27, 1817, Jane Austen sat down and wrote her will, leaving almost all of her assets—valued at less than 800 pounds sterling—to her sister Cassandra. In May, the sisters moved to Winchester, England, so … Read more
