Chinese province bans adults looking at youngsters’ mobiles
Adults banned from searching children's computers or phones under a new law passed in Chongqing, southwest China It is a ruling that teenagers around the world will regard with a certain amount of envy. Parents in one Chinese city are to be prevented from snooping on their children's online activity and text messages. Adults, including family members, are banned from searching through children's computers or phones under a new regional law passed in Chongqing, southwest China, state media reported today. The regulation outlaws snooping into their emails, text messages, web chats, and browser history. The regulation is designed to protect the rights of children, but is surprising given widespread concern in China about excessive internet use among young people and their access to unsuitable material. Psychologists have sought to have internet addiction listed as a clinical disorder and treatment camps have sprung up across the country. The Chongqing Evening Post described the new regulation, adopted on Friday by officials in Chongqing, as the first of its kind in the country. Other Chinese media said it expanded an existing national rule. But both experts and children doubted whether it would have an impact in practice. Lu Yulin, a professor at the China Youth University of Political Science, told China Daily that children were unlikely to take their parents to court
See the original post here:
Chinese province bans adults looking at youngsters' mobiles
Video: India unveils world’s cheapest ‘laptop’
The $35 device is aimed at university students – and the price could yet fall further
Read the rest here:
Video: India unveils world's cheapest 'laptop'
Helsinki data centre to heat homes
Water warmed while cooling a server centre installed in a cathedral bomb shelter will go on to heat 500 homes A mini revolution in eco-friendly computing is taking place in the depths of the 19th-century Orthodox Uspenski Cathedral in downtown Helsinki. The Finnish IT company Academica has installed a new 2MW database server centre in an empty second world war bomb shelter meant to protect city officials in the event of a Russian attack. Water warmed while cooling the servers will go on to provide heat for 500 homes or 1,000 flats in a city that often suffers winters of -20C. After the heat is extracted, the water will be recycled back to cool the servers again. "There have been smaller implementations of similar systems," says Pietari Päivänen, head of sales at Academica. "Data centres being used to heat parking lots. No one has conducted the heat towards a central heating system however." Around the world, vast and fast-rising amounts of information and data are being stored online, creating a huge demand for affordable data centres. But the servers consume vast amounts of energy , raising concerns about the greenhouse gas emissions produced. About 2% of the total electricity used in Britain powers data centres, making them expensive to operate and a significant factor in the causes of climate change. Cooling the servers is the most expensive and energy intensive part of maintaining a data centre and Academica are tackling this challenge by making use of the heat extracted.
More here:
Helsinki data centre to heat homes
Virus phone scam being run from call centres in India
Britons targeted by cold callers pretending to be from Microsoft phoning to fix a fake computer problem The scam always starts the same way: the phone rings at someone's home, and the caller – usually with an Indian accent – asks for the householder, quoting their name and address before saying "I'm calling for Microsoft. We've had a report from your internet service provider of serious virus problems from your computer." Dire forecasts are made that if the problem is not solved, the computer will become unusable. The puzzled owner is then directed to their computer, and asked to open a program called "Windows Event Viewer".
View post:
Virus phone scam being run from call centres in India
Intel’s best-ever profits lift technology stocks
Intel reveals better-than-expected sales and profits – boosted by demand for chips – as technology shares in US and Asia rise American microchip manufacturer Intel cheered investors overnight by reporting its best-ever quarterly profits – comfortably beating Wall Street's forecasts – in a move that has pushed technology stocks higher across the world. The second-quarter figures from the world's largest microchip maker herald the start of results season in the US. Analysts had feared they would show slowing demand, not least because of the economic turbulence in Europe, and raise fears of a double-dip global recession. But Intel announced much better than expected sales and profits, boosted by strong demand for its chips from makers of both PCs and servers. For the three months to 26 June, Intel made a profit of $2.9bn (£1.9bn) – or 51 cents a share – compared with a loss in the previous year of $398m, which was distorted by a $1.06bn fine by the European commission after a long-running competition investigation. Analysts had, however, been forecasting profits of about 43 cents per share in the second quarter. Second-quarter revenues of $10.8bn were also higher than the $10.25bn forecast by Wall Street while investors were also pleased by Intel's guidance for the next three months. In the second quarter, Intel's profit margins were 67% – higher than the 64% expected by analysts – and Intel said it expects a similar result for the third quarter, with revenues of $11.2bn to $12bn, higher than the $10.9bn analysts had been forecasting. Intel CEO Paul Otellini said there are definite signs that corporate customers are renewing spending on IT. "Now that corporations have some breathing room in the economy and their budgets, you're starting to see those machines that were four or five years old get refreshed," he said in a conference call with analysts. Intel's second-quarter figures herald the start of a slew of results from American technology firms with quarterly results from Google and chip maker AMD due on Thursday, IBM on 19 July, Microsoft on 22 July and Cisco's figures next month. The news from Intel saw technology shares rising in the US and Asia overnight and pushed British chip designer Arm Holdings to the top of the FTSE 100 index leaderboard in early trading in London. Technology sector Intel Computing United States European commission Richard Wray guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
Go here to see the original:
Intel's best-ever profits lift technology stocks
Lung-on-a-chip could be used to predict the effects of toxins or drugs
The lung-on-a-chip device mimics a human lung and allows living tissue to be studied without opening up people or animals Scientists have grown lungs in the laboratory, a major first step towards growing tissue that could one day be used to replace diseased or damaged human lungs. In one study, scientists at Harvard Medical School and the Children's Hospital in Boston created a device that mimics a human lung, by incorporating lung and blood vessel cells into a microchip (see video, above). Meanwhile, at Yale University, scientists have grown lung tissue that carries out some of the basic functions of the organ, including exchanging oxygen and carbon dioxide. Both studies are published today in the journal Science . The work at Harvard will be used mainly for studying the workings of living lung tissue without having to open up people or animals. It could also be used to test the effects of environmental toxins or new drugs. The lung-on-a-chip could predict how human lungs absorb airborne nanoparticles and mimic the inflammatory response triggered by pathogens, said Donald Ingber , the vascular biologist who led the work at Harvard University's Wyss Institute . "Organs-on-chips could replace many animal studies in the future," he added. "We really can't understand how biology works unless we put it in the physical context of real living cells, tissues and organs." The device was able to replicate many of the natural responses of lung tissue, such as detecting pathogens and speeding up blood flow so that immune cells can deal with the invaders. The Harvard team is working on building other organ models, including ones made from gut, bone marrow or cancer cells. The Yale scientists, led by Laura Niklason , started with lungs from adult rats and removed the cells, leaving behind only the network that supports the branching airways and blood system. This support network was later used as a scaffold to grow cells for a new lung, which was implanted into rats for up to two hours at a time. "We succeeded in engineering an implantable lung in our rat model that could efficiently exchange oxygen and carbon dioxide, and could oxygenate haemoglobin in the blood," said Niklason. "This is an early step in the regeneration of entire lungs for larger animals and, eventually, for humans." To make the technology work for humans will take several more years of work using stem cells to grow the complex structures required for a fully-funtioning organ, said Niklason. Medical research Biology Research and development Gadgets Alok Jha guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
Continued here:
Lung-on-a-chip could be used to predict the effects of toxins or drugs
Apple’s iPad sales break the two million mark
• Apple sells more than two million iPads in less than two months • iPad to launch in nine more countries, including Ireland, in July • Analysts say biggest market is US, followed by France and UK Apple today said it has sold two million iPads, less than two months after launching the touchscreen tablet in the US, much faster than predicted. This is despite the fact the company had to delay the device's international launch by a month because it could not keep up with demand. On Friday, the iPad, which combines the mobility of a smartphone with the speed of a laptop, finally went on sale in the UK, and also launched in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Spain and Switzerland. The original UK launch date had been set for late April. The 32GB iPad, with its 24.5cm (9.7in) touchscreen, looks like an enlarged iPhone and costs £499, while the 64GB version costs £599. It will go on sale in nine more countries next month, including Ireland, and analysts at RBC Capital Markets estimated that by the end of the year, over eight million units will have been sold worldwide. The success of the gadget has underlined the renaissance of Apple, which last week overtook Microsoft as the biggest technology company in the world by market capitalisation. Apple's statement last night did not give a breakdown of the sales. Mike Abramsky, an analyst with RBC in Toronto, estimated the US will account for 57% of sales, with France and the UK being the next two biggest markets, where he predicted 805,000 and 585,000 will be sold this year. Analyst Daniel Ernst of Hudson Square Research told Reuters last month that he had estimated sales for the three months from April to the end of June at 1.25m. It took just under a month for Apple to notch up one million sales of the iPad, making it more popular than the iPhone, which took 74 days to hit the same figure in 2007. Apple has not announced sales targets for the iPad. At the launch of the iPhone in 2007, chief executive Steve Jobs said he hoped to sell 10m by the end of 2008 – it sold 16m. The iPad has already attracted a cult following among Apple enthusiasts. Stephen Fry said in Time magazine he was "not prepared for how instant the relationship I formed with the device would be", and David Pogue in the New York Times said it was "designed and built by a bunch of perfectionists". Fry queued in the rain with other Apple enthusiasts outside the company's Regent Street store when the gadget went on sale last week, even though he already owns a device. He said he was "completing the circle", having been in San Francisco when Apple announced the device in January, and present at the US launch in April: "There's a camaraderie among Apple users, particularly long-serving ones – we remember in 1997 when we were being laughed at and told we would only get spare parts in hobby shops because the company was absolutely on the floor. "I'm sure a lot of people will mock it as being some sort of pseudo-religious or cult atmosphere, but it's just genuine enthusiasm." Before it went on sale in the UK, demand was so intense that people tried to order it by using forwarding companies with offices in the US.
See original here:
Apple's iPad sales break the two million mark
Apple iPad worldwide launch
The internatonal Apple iPad launch was marked by long queues and excited early adopters
Read more here:
Apple iPad worldwide launch
Extradition of computer hacker Gary McKinnon put on hold
Theresa May agrees adjournment of judicial review to consider whether Gary McKinnon is fit to be extradited to US The extradition of the computer hacker Gary McKinnon has been put on hold after the home secretary, Theresa May, agreed to an adjournment of a judicial review that was supposed to start within days. The move will allow May to begin formal consideration of the medical evidence to see whether McKinnon is fit to be extradited. If it is established that he cannot be allowed to go, it paves the way for a prosecution in the UK. A Home Office spokesperson said: "The home secretary has considered the proposal from Gary McKinnon's legal team and has agreed an adjournment should be sought. An application to the court is being made today." McKinnon's lawyer, Karen Todner, said she hoped May would make a decision on whether he was fit to be extradited in a matter of weeks. Todner said: "The secretary of state, having recently taken office and having received further representations from the claimant's representatives, wishes to have appropriate time fully to consider the issues in the case." She said she hoped the decision was "a signal of a more compassionate and caring home secretary". McKinnon's lawyers were granted permission for a judicial review last week – having failed to win one last year – into whether a decision by the former home secretary Alan Johnson to allow extradition and trial in the US breached McKinnon's human rights. The judicial review was supposed to start next week and was virtually a last throw of the legal dice. Its adjournment allows May to cast a fresh eye on what has turned into a cause celebre, and to make a close examination of the extradition agreement between the US and the UK. Legal experts said May's main difficulty would be to override her Home Office advisers. "They will, perhaps, tell their minister that if she reverses the [Jacqui] Smith-Johnson decision, the Americans might take her to court for judicial review. But this is unreal: the Obama administration is unlikely to challenge, on behalf of a local state prosecutor, a decision of the new British government," Geoffrey Robertson QC wrote on the Guardian's Comment is free website, this week
Here is the original:
Extradition of computer hacker Gary McKinnon put on hold
Chinese workers link sickness to n-hexane and Apple iPhone screens
Staff suffer health decline after supplier's use of toxic chemical to clean western gadgets Next month, amid the usual hoopla, Apple is expected to officially unveil its latest gadget: the much-awaited iPhone 4G . But halfway round the globe from the company's California headquarters, a young worker who has spent months in an eastern Chinese hospital wants consumers to look beyond the shiny exterior of such gadgets. "People should know what we do to create these products and what cost we pay," said Bai Bing as she perched on a bed in her ward. She is one of scores of young workers in the city of Suzhou who were poisoned by the chemical n-hexane, which they say was used to clean Apple components including iPhone touch screens. Wu Mei – who, like the others, asked the Guardian to use her nickname – recalled her fear as her health suddenly deteriorated last spring. At first, she thought she was simply tired from the long working hours at Wintek, a Taiwan-owned electronics giant supplying several well-known brands. She was weaker than before and noticed she could not walk so fast. "Then it became more and more serious. I found it very hard to go upstairs and if I squatted down I didn't have the strength to get up. Later my hands became numb and I lost my balance – I would fall over if someone touched me," she said. By summer, she was admitted to hospital, where doctors struggled to diagnose the cause. "I was terrified. I feared I might be paralysed and spend the rest of my life in a wheelchair," she said. Because she was using n-hexane directly, she was one of the first and worst affected. But more and more workers from the same room were suffering headaches, dizziness and weakness, and pains in their limbs. An occupational diseases hospital which saw several victims diagnosed the problem in August and Wintek stopped using the chemical.
Here is the original post:
Chinese workers link sickness to n-hexane and Apple iPhone screens