The recent study undeniably linking genetically modified foods (GMOs) to cancer should shock the health world, especially in the United States where the overwhelming majority of grocery store food is derived from GMO-based crops.
The new peer-reviewed study to be published in the upcoming Food & Chemical Toxicology Journal in New York proves that GMO corn and world's best-selling weedkiller, Roundup, causes increased tumors, multiple organ damage and led to premature death in rats.
“This research shows an extraordinary number of tumors developing earlier and more aggressively - particularly in female animals. I am shocked by the extreme negative health impacts,” said Dr. Michael Antoniou, molecular biologist at King’s College London School of Medicine.
Here are the experts discussing the significance of the findings of this unprecedented study:
This study comes at a time when aware consumers in California are trying to force chemical and genetic engineering companies like Monsanto to label any food that contains genetic modification. These recent findings that GMOs are clearly a health threat will likely give this campaign a boost of credibility in the face of millions of lobbying dollars being spent to oppose Prop 37.
Thursday, September 20, 2012
Cameras know you by your walk
EVERYONE knows how easy it is to recognise a friend or family member from their walk - even from a distance.
But despite more than three decades of research, using gait analysis as a biometric has never taken off. Until now, perhaps. Recent advances in the accuracy of automated gait recognition suggest the technology could soon form the basis for a new generation of security systems.
Gait analysis has attracted attention because of the shortcomings of other biometric security techniques. Iris scans and face recognition require reasonably high-quality images, for example. They also generally require a cooperative subject, as do fingerprints. By contrast, a person's gait can be recognised from low-quality CCTV footage.
In one leading technique, known as the gait energy image, computer vision techniques use video images of a person to create a blurred silhouette that is characteristic of their gait. A human operator links this gait "signature" to a person's identity, allowing the system to automatically spot that person when they are next caught on film.
This technique uses just a blank silhouette, but Martin Hofmann and colleagues at the Technical University of Munich in Germany have developed a version that also extracts information from the person's image, such as the shadows on their clothing, which leads to a more detailed signature. Hofmann also used Microsoft's gaming sensor Kinect to measure depth, allowing him to better separate the target from the background. The result is a system that is better at tackling tasks that cause problems for the standard version of the technique, such as recognising a person carrying a briefcase. In tests using videos of several hundred people the system achieved a recognition rate of almost 80 per cent, outperforming 13 other gait analysis methods, including the one using gait energy images.
Another problem that has troubled researchers is finding a way to identify a person captured at different camera angles, and Daigo Muramatsu and colleagues at Osaka University in Japan are now working on a solution. They filmed 20 people on a treadmill using 24 cameras ranged around them and used this data to write software that can model the appearance of a person's gait when viewed from different angles. In preliminary tests, the system led to lower identification error rates at almost all angles, results Muramatsu describes as "promising".
Muramatsu and Hofmann will present their work this week at the BTAS biometrics conference in Washington DC.
These and other developments suggest that automated gait analysis might be ready for commercial use in the near future. Muramatsu says his group is already working with forensic scientists in Japan and has also developed gait analysis software that can be used by non-experts.
At the National Physical Laboratory in Teddington, UK, researchers have developed a demonstration system that can track people as they move through the laboratory building by their gait alone.
Hofmann cautions against thinking gait recognition will ever rival fingerprints for accuracy. Accuracy rates can plummet if a person walks more rapidly than normal, for example. But that does not mean it won't prove useful. "Gait has potential for commercial applications," he says. "Imagine a bank robber who has covered his fingers and face, but can be identified by the way he walks out of the bank."
Nestle Embeds GPS Trackers In Candy Bars To Hunt Down Eaters
Select Kit-Kat bars in the UK will contain GPS devices, which Nestlé will use to find the buyers and give them a cash prize.
Customers buying Kit-Kat bars in the United Kingdom could be unwrapping a 21st-century version of Willy Wonka’s Golden Ticket--a GPS unit the candy-maker will use to find them, apprehend them and give them a prize. Nestlé claims to be the first to market its chocolatey wares with a GPS-based promotion.
The somewhat sinister-sounding “We Will Find You” campaign will place a GPS-enabled bar inside four versions of Kit-Kats. Inside the wrapper, it would look exactly like a regular Kit-Kat, according to the York Press newspaper, in the town where Nestlé is based. When the would-be snacker pulls a tab to open the wrapper, the GPS device will turn on, which will notify the company. Then a “prize team” will locate this person within 24 hours and hand him or her a check for £10,000 (about $16,000).
Nestlé said they devised the campaign to appeal to men, who presumably like GPS technology. It is backing the marketing blitz with TV ads and a smartphone campaign, wherein users are supposed to scan QR codes on Kit-Kat ads or use NFC-equipped phones to enter an online competition.
While Nestlé may be the first to do this with candy, they’re not the first to use GPS to track their customers. As Network World points out, multinational soap-and-ice-cream supplier Unilever added a GPS device to a box of laundry soap it sells in Brazil, and stalked 50 shoppers to their front doors to give them prizes.
Soda, fast food and candy wrappers always have some kind of contest running, but those usually rely on the consumer to notice the special winning code or wrapper and go get the prize. Tracking people down is definitely a different concept.
Germany urges public to stop using Internet Explorer
The German government urged the public on Tuesday to temporarily stop using Microsoft Corp’s Internet Explorer following discovery of a yet-to-be repaired bug in the Web browser that the software maker said makes PCs vulnerable hacker attacks.
It issued the warning as a researcher said he found evidence that suggests the hackers who exploited the flaw were seeking to attack defense contractors.
Microsoft said on Monday that attackers can exploit the bug in its Internet Explorer, used on hundreds of millions of computers, to infect the PC of somebody who visits a malicious website and then take control of the victim’s computer.
The German government’s Federal Office for Information Security, or BSI, said it was aware of targeted attacks and that all that was needed was to lure Web surfers to a website where hackers had planted malicious software that exploited the bug.
“A fast spreading of the code has to be feared,” the German government said in its statement.
BSI advised all users of Internet Explorer to use an alternative browser until the manufacturer has released a security update.
Officials with Microsoft did not respond to a request to comment on the move by the German government, although the company downplayed the impact of the flaw in a written statement.
“There have been an extremely limited number of attacks,” said company spokeswoman Yunsun Wee. “The vast majority of Internet Explorer users have not been impacted.”
The company said it planned to release software to protect PCs from attack within the next few days. Customers must manually install the code by visiting Microsoft’s website and clicking on a link.
Microsoft did not say how long it will take to release a full update to Internet Explorer, which will automatically be loaded onto the machines of most customers. Several security researchers have said they expect the update within a week.
‘NITRO’ LINK
The vulnerability in Internet Explorer was identified on Friday after the PC of a security researcher from Luxembourg was infected while analyzing a computer server that was used last year to launch a cyber industrial espionage campaign on at least 48 chemical and defense companies.
The victims of the so-called “Nitro” attacks included Fortune 100 corporations that develop compounds and advanced materials, according to security software maker Symantec Corp, which disclosed them in October 2011.
Network security firm AlienVault said on Tuesday it has discovered three other servers that host malicious that exploit the newly found Internet Explorer vulnerability.
Jaime Blasco, manager of AlienVault Labs, said he found evidence suggesting they targeted defense contractors. As an example, he said he found a related virus on a site that provides news on India’s defense sector.
“It seems that these guys are behind big targets,” he said.
Internet Explorer was the world’s second-most widely used browser last month, with about 33 percent market share, according to StatCounter. It was close behind Chrome, which had 34 percent of the market.
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