the/diseased/republik

Fantastic Lad sends us to Wired for a story on the upside of nicotine. Researchers are developing drugs based on nicotine that may prove beneficial for [ 0 ]brains, bowels, blood vessels and immune systems. "Nicotine acts on the acetylcholine receptors in the brain, stimulating and regulating the release of a slew of brain chemicals, including seratonin, dopamine and norepinephrine. Now drugs derived from nicotine and the research on nicotine receptors are in clinical trials for everything from helping to heal wounds, to depression, schizophrenia, Alzheimer's, Tourette Syndrome, ADHD, anger management and anxiety." A separate story talks about [ 1 ]nicotine warding off Parkinson's disease. source -- slashdot

From the Washington Post: 'Attention, all aliens. Come on down. Because, seriously, this is your crowd. About 50,000 of your closest admirers are expected this weekend for the Roswell UFO Festival , celebrating the 60th anniversary of the nearby crash landing of a flying saucer — and, naturally, the ensuing government cover-up." Discuss at slashdot .

"The BBC is carrying a story on new tightened New York anti-piracy legislation : A man has been been arrested, after smuggling video recording equipment into a theatre showing the new Transformers movie. 'Kalidou Diallo, 48, has been charged with unauthorized use of a video camera in a cinema. Under upgraded legislation, he could face six months in jail and fines of up to $5,000 (£2,487) if found guilty,' the BBC reports." --source: slashdot --

iamlucky13 writes "In January of 2004, the NASA's Stardust mission made a flyby of comet Wild-2, taking images and collecting samples from its tail that have since been returned to earth in a detachable capsule. On July 4, 2005, Deep Impact smashed a 350 kg projectile traveling 37,000 km/h into comet Tempel 1 as part of its studies of that object. With both craft in good shape at the end of their missions, NASA has been considering additional tasks for the probes. These plans have now been confirmed with a variety of tasks costing an estimated 15% what a new mission would. Among the new duties will be a revisit of Tempel 1, a flyby of comet Boethin, and transit studies of known extra-solar planets. --s ource-slashdot --

Panic Over Failing QuikSCAT Satellite Overblown | | from the glad-that's-all-worked-out dept. | | posted by samzenpus on Thursday July 05, @07:59 (Space) | | http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/07/05/0414204 | +--------------------------------------------------------------------+ daeg writes "We previously [0]read and discussed about the aging QuikSCAT weather satellite used to help predict tropical storms. It turns out that [1]the panic is likely overblown and the loss of the satellite won't have any dramatic effects on forecasting at all. Some in the National Hurricane Center are now [2]calling for Director Proenza's resignation over this and his overall handling of the center." Discuss this story at: http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=07/07/05/0414204 Links: 0. http://politics.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/06/16/182240&tid=160 1. http://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffM

jakosc writes@/. : "The Register has a short commentary about a proposed new set of laws of robotics for war robots by John S Canning of the Naval Surface Warfare Centre. Unlike Azimov's three laws of robotics , Canning proposes (pdf) that we should 'Let machines target other machines and let men target men.' Although this sounds OK in principle, 'a robot could decide under Mr Canning's rules, to target a weapon system such as an AK47 for destruction on its own initiative, requiring no permission from a human. If the person holding it was thereby killed, that would be collateral damage and the killer droid would be in the clear.'"

A report on AppleInsider about Leopard still being an unfinished product was taken down after an order by Apple Legal. "This article has been removed temporarily for edits at the request of Apple Inc." the ap[ple]ologists and fanboys are out in force over @ /. and it is now the fault of Gates and his infernal redmond cabal. UPDATE do you hear the snickering from Redmond after reading Apple's statement regarding its delay of Mac OS X "Leopard." This comes from a company that never passed up an attempt to bash Microsoft's incessant delays of Vista at every turn. Now, Apple's a great company, don't get me wrong, but this attempt at spinning the truth smells of hypocrisy! As somebody in the office said today, "You can't bash Microsoft for being late to the party and then be tardy yourself." How true. Apple claims that in order to finish the iPhone on time, it had to pull developers from the Mac OS X team. It goes on to say that the OS wo