Kong and the glowcats

The Associated Press
December 14, 2007 at 8:47 AM EST
SEOUL — South Korean scientists have cloned cats that glow red when exposed to ultraviolet rays.
The country's Science and Technology Ministry said it is an achievement that could help develop cures for human genetic diseases.
Three Turkish Angora cats were born in January and February through cloning to include a gene that produces a red fluorescent protein that makes them glow in the dark.
One died at birth, but the two others survived.

A handout photo released in Seoul by the Ministry of Science and Technology shows cloned cats under normal light that have a fluorescence protein gene, left, and glowing under ultraviolet beams. The technology could help develop treatments for human genetic diseases, the developers said. South Korean Ministry of Science and Technology/AFP/Getty

Scientists in Japan have created a genetically modified mouse that they say shows no fear when confronted with a cat

The ministry says it is the first time cats with modified genes have been cloned.
The development means genes can be inserted in the course of cloning, paving the way for producing lab cats with genetic diseases to help develop new treatments.
“Scientists from Gyeongsang National University and Sunchon National University took skin cells from a cat and inserted the fluorescent gene into them before transplanting the genetically modified cells into eggs.
"Cats have similar genes to those of humans,” veterinary professor Kong Il-keun of Gyeongsang National University said. “We can make genetically modified cats that can be used to develop new cures for genetic diseases.”
Keitaro Kato, a geneticist at Kinki University in western Japan who has cloned fish, said the research could be significant if it eventually helps treat people with hereditary diseases.
“People with genetic disorders usually have to receive treatment throughout their lives that is very hard on them,” Mr. Kato said. “If these results can help to make their lives easier, then I think it's a wonderful thing.”
South Korea's scientific reputation suffered a heavy blow after much-hailed stem-cell breakthroughs by scientist Hwang Woo-suk were found to be faked in late 2005. He remains on trial on fraud and other charges.

You still won't be communicating with anyone else but yourself. That was the point of this reflexion.

so conspiracy theories are sorta like celebrity watch i think..... its all too obvious the governments are lying, and we have all the evidence we need. so many bodies on subway air vents and bloodspilt and somethings wrong. i'm sure osama bin laden is talking to a cia agent in an american hospital and that bush is investing in a dictatorship's oil intrests and on and on, but really why fucking flatter them? proof that the american government has undemocratic, racist, and tyrannical business going on is in the exsistance of the militarybordereconomictradepolicy and i really don't care if it was not this president it'd be another. why do people waste their time... its distracting and pointless entertainment, these deaths are real. we'd realize something has to be done but for weeks we go over and over and over the details of the terrorist attacks. i do not need any more convincing and nobody else should either. its not even about special access to information i'm talking conclusions you must draw from the toronto sun. do you get what i'm saying? we must busy our hands with something though. because the only thing we are left with is the fact that nobody-is-doing-anything-about-our-governments-murdering-people everyday and its that simple and how can you get out of bed, how can you justify weak ill attended protests outside the american consulate.you cannot[...]

m. suzuki est un japonais, c'est donc un être humain.

moohk you post some of the most bizzare stuff.

[...] Hylozoic Soil (2007) by Philip Beesley. The work of this architect constitutes a vestibule through which we, the visitors, will pass into another space and time, a biometric environment, a reactive space. This transformation occurs as we enter an “organic and living” system. These quasi-plants – all synthetic – come to life in the space, retracting, contracting, slackening and opening as we pass, creating in us a sense of both wonderment and anxiety. They trigger an emotional response from visitors, prompting them to “question the boundaries between nature and artifice and examine their own organic condition as they interact with technology.”Hylozoic Soil is one in a series of works by the artist that explores thenewest techniques and materials, interactive geotextiles and reflexive and responsive membranes, networks of actuated objects, and canvases composed of primitive interactive systems. The works use sensors and proximity detectors, muscle wires, actuators, and distributed networks of microprocessors.

The cost of (anti-)social networks: Identity, agency and neo-luddites, by Ryan Bigge

Abstract : The media coverage and resultant discourse surrounding social networking sites such as Facebook, MySpace and Friendster contain narratives of inevitability and technological determinism that require careful explication. Borrowing a tactic from the Russian Futurists, this paper attempts to make strange (that is, to defamiliarize) social network sites and their associated discourses by drawing upon an eclectic but interrelated set of metaphors and theoretical approaches, including: the digital enclosure, network sociality, socio-technical capital and Steven Jones’s recent examination of neo-Luddites. Whenever appropriate, this paper will integrate relevant magazine and newspaper journalism about social networking sites.

Contents

Invisible Work
Hit Any Key to Continue
The Politics of Amateurism
‘Dividual Enclosure
A Garden of Clicks and Cliques
Enforced Volunteerism
Conclusion

The good thing with this kind of law is that it reduces the number of sketchy promoters. :p

Play video games and become a better surgeon

A new paper from a team of medical researchers claims that research shows playing video games will help surgeons become more skilled and make fewer mistakes, No this is not April 1 and this is not a hoax.

According to the paper, "The Impact of Video Games on Training Surgeons in the 21st Century", which has appeared in professional medical publication Archives of Surgery this month, anecdotal observations of young surgeons suggest that video game play contributes to performance excellence in laparoscopic surgery.

Therefore the research set out to test the hypotheses that training benefits for surgeons who play video games should be quantifiable and there is a potential link between video game play and laparoscopic surgical skill and suturing.

The research led by Dr James C Rosser from the Department of Surgery, Beth Israel Medical Center, and a team of colleagues tested 33 surgeons including 21 residents and 12 attending physicians with various levels of gaming experience. The results were nothing short of astounding.

Surgeons who had previously played video games more than 3 hours a week had made 37% fewer errors and were 27% faster in completion of surgical procedures than non-gamers, Current video game players made 32% fewer errors and performed 24% faster than their nonplaying colleagues.

The conclusions: Video game skill correlates with laparoscopic surgical skills. Training curricula that include video games may help thin the technical interface between surgeons and screen-mediated applications, such as laparoscopic surgery. Video games may be a practical teaching tool to help train surgeons.

However, before budding young gamers do handsprings and tell parents that playing Monkey Ball 2 will help them become surgeons, it should be noted that a sample size of 33 doctors hardly provides conclusive scientific evidence.

what if the primary activity of the event is ingesting large amounts of EXCTAMACY!?!?!

la radio et la télévision ne sont pas des instruments de communication, mais des outils d’information. On ne peut pas discuter avec la télévision ! C’est plutôt le contraire, on la subit assez passivement.

Babble On Revisited

When we last checked in with Klingon linguist d'Armond Speers ("Dejpu'bogh Hov rur qabllj!" Wired 4.08, page [ www.wired.com ] he had embarked on an ambitious project: to teach his toddler Alec to be bilingual in English and Klingon. Now that Alec's reached his fifth birthday, how's the effort going?

"I had a tremendously hard time talking to him about everyday things," Speers confesses. Klingon's vocabulary at the time was only about 2,000 words, and it lacked some crucial vocabulary, such as words for bottle and diaper.

So Speers found himself using "thing which is flat" for table. "Alec very rarely spoke back to me in Klingon, although when he did, his pronunciation was excellent and he never confused English words with Klingon words," Speers says. "But we did sing Klingon songs together." (A RealAudio file of Alec singing is at [ www.bigfoot.com ] "Eventually he stopped listening to me when I spoke in Klingon. It was clear that he didn't enjoy it, and I didn't want to make it into a problem, so I switched to English about two years ago."

Too bad. Not long after Speers gave up, Klingon language architect Marc Okrand released Klingon for the Galactic Traveler, which included 1,000 new words, including one for table.

- Gavin Edwards

I have the entire Planet Earth series

Live an unique and intense sensorial experience where low frequency audio modulations, 3D video, thick smoke and stroboscopic fragments will plunge you into a world with no spatial reference. For curious and audacious audiences only: signed release required before entering the venue!"

U.S. ISP blocking BitTorrent users; Comcast actively interferes with some high-speed Internet subscribers, AP test shows
PETER SVENSSON, Associated Press, October 19, 2007 at 11:08 AM EDT

NEW YORK — Comcast Corp. actively interferes with attempts by some of its high-speed Internet subscribers to share files online, a move that runs counter to the tradition of treating all types of Net traffic equally.

The interference, which The Associated Press confirmed through nationwide tests, is the most drastic example yet of data discrimination by a U.S. Internet service provider. It involves company computers masquerading as those of its users.

If widely applied by other ISPs, the technology Comcast is using would be a crippling blow to the BitTorrent, eDonkey and Gnutella file-sharing networks. While these are mainly known as sources of copyright music, software and movies, BitTorrent in particular is emerging as a legitimate tool for quickly disseminating legal content.

The principle of equal treatment of traffic, called "Net Neutrality" by proponents, is not enshrined in law but supported by some regulations. Most of the debate around the issue has centred on tentative plans, now postponed, by large Internet carriers to offer preferential treatment of traffic from certain content providers for a fee.

Comcast's interference, on the other hand, appears to be an aggressive way of managing its network to keep file-sharing traffic from swallowing too much bandwidth and affecting the Internet speeds of other subscribers.

Comcast, largest cable TV operator and No. 2 Internet provider in the United States, would not specifically address the practice, but spokesman Charlie Douglas confirmed that it uses sophisticated methods to keep Net connections running smoothly.

"Comcast does not block access to any applications, including BitTorrent," he said.

Douglas would not specify what the company means by "access" — Comcast subscribers can download BitTorrent files without hindrance. Only uploads of complete files are blocked or delayed by the company, as indicated by AP tests.

But with "peer-to-peer" technology, users exchange files with each other, and one person's upload is another's download. That means Comcast's blocking of certain uploads has repercussions in the global network of file sharers.

Comcast's technology kicks in, though not consistently, when one BitTorrent user attempts to share a complete file with another user.

Each PC gets a message invisible to the user that looks like it comes from the other computer, telling it to stop communicating. But neither message originated from the other computer — it comes from Comcast. If it were a telephone conversation, it would be like the operator breaking into the conversation, telling each talker in the voice of the other: "Sorry, I have to hang up. Good bye."

Matthew Elvey, a Comcast subscriber in the San Francisco area who has noticed BitTorrent uploads being stifled, acknowledged that the company has the right to manage its network, but disapproves of the method, saying it appears to be deceptive.

"There's the wrong way of going about that and the right way," said Elvey, who is a computer consultant.

Comcast's interference affects all types of content, meaning that, for instance, an independent movie producer who wanted to distribute his work using BitTorrent and his Comcast connection could find that difficult or impossible — as would someone pirating music.

Internet service providers have long complained about the vast amounts of traffic generated by a small number of subscribers who are avid users of file-sharing programs. Peer-to-peer applications account for between 50 per cent and 90 per cent of overall Internet traffic, according to a survey this year by ipoque GmbH, a German vendor of traffic-management equipment.

"We have a responsibility to manage our network to ensure all our customers have the best broadband experience possible," Douglas said. "This means we use the latest technologies to manage our network to provide a quality experience for all Comcast subscribers."

The practice of managing the flow of Internet data is known as "traffic shaping," and is already widespread among Internet service providers. It usually involves slowing down some forms of traffic, like file-sharing, while giving others priority. Other ISPs have attempted to block some file-sharing application by so-called "port filtering," but that method is easily circumvented and now largely ineffective.

Comcast's approach to traffic shaping is different because of the drastic effect it has on one type of traffic — in some cases blocking it rather than slowing it down — and the method used, which is difficult to circumvent and involves the company falsifying network traffic.

The "Net Neutrality" debate erupted in 2005, when AT&T Inc. suggested it would like to charge some Web companies more for preferential treatment of their traffic. Consumer advocates and Web heavyweights like Google Inc. and Amazon Inc. cried foul, saying it's a bedrock principle of the Internet that all traffic be treated equally.

To get its acquisition of BellSouth Corp. approved by the Federal Communications Commission, AT&T agreed in late 2006 not to implement such plans or prioritize traffic based on its origin for two and a half years. However, it did not make any commitments not to prioritize traffic based on its type, which is what Comcast is doing.

The FCC's stance on traffic shaping is not clear. A 2005 policy statement says that "consumers are entitled to run applications and services of their choice," but that principle is "subject to reasonable network management." Spokeswoman Mary Diamond would not elaborate.

Free Press, a Washington-based public interest group that advocates Net Neutrality, opposes the kind of filtering applied by Comcast.

"We don't believe that any Internet provider should be able to discriminate, block or impair their consumers ability to send or receive legal content over the Internet," said Free Press spokeswoman Jen Howard.

Paul "Tony" Watson, a network security engineer at Google Inc. who has previously studied ways hackers could disrupt Internet traffic in manner similar to the method Comcast is using, said the cable company was probably acting within its legal rights.

"It's their network and they can do what they want," said Watson. "My concern is the precedent. In the past, when people got an ISP connection, they were getting a connection to the Internet. The only determination was price and bandwidth. Now they're going to have to make much more complicated decisions such as price, bandwidth, and what services I can get over the Internet."

Several companies have sprung up that rely on peer-to-peer technology, including BitTorrent Inc., founded by the creator of the BitTorrent software (which exists in several versions freely distributed by different groups and companies).

Ashwin Navin, the company's president and co-founder, confirmed that it has noticed interference from Comcast, in addition to some Canadian Internet service providers.

"They're using sophisticated technology to degrade service, which probably costs them a lot of money. It would be better to see them use that money to improve service," Navin said, noting that BitTorrent and other peer-to-peer applications are a major reason consumers sign up for broadband.

BitTorrent Inc. announced Oct. 9 that it was teaming up with online video companies to use its technology to distribute legal content.

Other companies that rely on peer-to-peer technology, and could be affected if Comcast decides to expand the range of applications it filters, include Internet TV service Joost, eBay Inc.'s Skype video-conferencing program and movie download appliance Vudu. There is no sign that Comcast is hampering those services.

Comcast subscriber Robb Topolski, a former software quality engineer at Intel Corp., started noticing the interference when trying to upload with file-sharing programs Gnutella and eDonkey early this year.

In August, Topolski began to see reports on Internet forum [ DSLreports.com ] from other Comcast users with the same problem. He now believes that his home town of Hillsboro, Ore., was a test market for the technology that was later widely applied in other Comcast service areas.

Topolski agrees that Comcast has a right to manage its network and slow down traffic that affects other subscribers, but disapproves of their method.

"By Comcast not acknowledging that they do this at all, there's no way to report any problems with it," Topolski said.

Associated Press Writers Ron Harris, Brian Bergstein, Deborah Yao and Kathy Matheson contributed to this story.

Artivistic is an international transdisciplinary three-day gathering on the interPlay between art, information and activism. Artivistic emerges out of the proposition that not only artists talk about art, academics about theory, and activists about activism. Founded in 2004, the event aims to promote transdisciplinary and intercultural dialogue on activist art beyond critique, to create and facilitate a human network of diverse peoples, and to inspire, proliferate, activate.
For the third edition of Artivistic, the expression [ un.occupied spaces ] was chosen to stimulate new ideas in response to the hidden confusions caused by the infinite networks of 21C globalization and neo-liberalism. [ un.occupied spaces ] dares to link the charged issues of environmentalism, indigenous and migrant struggles, and urban practices together through the angle of occupation. In an interconnected world, critical thought and action cannot but become flexible and uncompromising at once. To think with occupation consequently becomes a strategy for approaching these issues in a way that will reveal their interdependence, and fuel creative and tactical collaborative actions between “co-artists” (artists and non-artists). Built around three interrelated questions, the event consists of roundtables, workshops, interventions, exhibitions, performances, and screenings at our temporary headquarters at 5455 av. de Gaspé, #701 and in different venues and spaces of Montreal.

Our events are free admission, with a suggested donation of $10 for waged participants.
Please register in advance to secure a place by including: name, city/country and contact information.