An anonymous reader writes "There is media (but not public?) outcry over the Pasadena, CA police switch from analog radio that can be picked up by scanners to encrypted digital radio that cannot. 'On Friday, Pasadena police Lt. Phlunte Riddle said the department was unsure whether it could accommodate the media with digital scanners. Riddle said the greatest concern remains officer safety. "People who do bank robberies use scanners, and Radio Shack sells these things cheap," Riddle said. "We just had a robbery today on Hill Avenue and Washington Boulevard," Riddle said. "The last thing I want to do is to have the helicopter or the officers set up on the street and the criminals have a scanner and know where our officers are." Just prior to the switch over, city staffers said they would look into granting access to police radio chatter, most likely by loaning media outlets a scanner capable of picking up the secure signal.'"

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Google's daily brainteaser helps hone your search skills.

Greenpeace looks down on the tech giants of the world. But it looks down on Google the least. On Tuesday, the big-name environmental-rights outfit unveiled its annual ranking of the tech giants working hardest to combat climate change and shift their operations to renewable energy sources. It's called the "Cool IT Leaderboard," and this year's leader is Google, which scores a mere 53 points out of 100. Cisco, last year's leader, dropped to second, with 49 points.

Hugh Pickens writes "With Verizon's 4G network covering a good chunk of the country and AT&T gaining ground, more smartphone users have access to the fastest wireless service available. But because 4G coverage isn't truly continuous in many locations, users' batteries are taking a big hit with 4G, as phones spend an lot of battery power trying to hunt down a signal. 'You've got a situation where the phones are sending out their signals searching and searching for a 4G tower, and that eats up your battery,' says Carl Howe, a vice president for research firm Yankee Group. The spottiness of 4G stems at least in part from the measured approach carriers have taken to it, rolling out the service city by city. There are a few tricks 4G users can try to extend battery life such as turning off your 4G connection when you don't need the fastest speeds — when using email, for instance — or using a program such as JuiceDefender to search for apps you may have downloaded that you don't need to run all the time, and erase them."

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The molecular pathway that carries time-of-day signals from the body's internal clock to ultimately guide daily behavior is like a black box, says a researcher. Now, new research is taking a peek inside, describing a molecular pathway and its inner parts that connect the well-known clock neurons to cells governing rhythms of rest and activity in fruit flies.

The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1992 brought an influx of Soviet mathematicians to US institutions, and those scholars' differing areas of specialization have changed the way math is studied and taught in this country, according to new research.

Scientists have developed a "biological computer" made entirely from biomolecules that is capable of deciphering images encrypted on DNA chips.

A high level of soft drink consumption is associated with asthma and/or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, according to new research.

Cleansing a newborn's umbilical cord with chlorhexidine can reduce an infant's risk of infection and death during the first weeks of life by as much as 20 percent, according to a new study. The study is the latest in a series of studies showing that umbilical cord cleaning with chlorhexidine can save lives.

Reviving a theory first proposed in the late 1800s that the development of organs in the normal embryo and the development of cancers are related, scientists have studied organ development in mice to unravel how breast cancers, and perhaps other cancers, develop in people. Their findings provide new ways to predict and personalize the diagnosis and treatment of cancer.

Researchers have identified how a specific gene protects dopamine-producing neurons from dying in both animal models and in cultures of human neurons.

When mature male white-crowned sparrows duel to win a mate or a nesting territory, a young bird just doesn’t get much respect.

DocDyson writes "I'm a dyed-in-the-wool C/C++/Java developer with over 20 years of experience. I'm making a good living and having fun doing back-end Java work right now, but I strongly believe in being a generalist, so I'm finally trying to learn the HTML5/CSS3/JavaScript future of the Web. However, I find JavaScript's weak typing and dynamic nature difficult to adapt to because I'm so used to strongly-typed, compiled languages with lots of compile-time error-checking and help from the IDE. Does anyone out there who has made this transition have any tips in terms of the best tools and libraries to use to make JavaScript more palatable to us old-school developers?"

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The latest board shakeup comes on the heels of founder Jerry Yang?s resignation from the board and ex-PayPal/eBay executive Scott Thompson?s hiring as CEO in January. On Twitter, Dealbook?s Evelyn Rusli reported that a source, pointing to Thompson and Webb?s shared history at eBay, called Yahoo?s overhaul ?a soft eBay takeover.?

Broken bones in humans and animals are painful and often take months to heal. New research shows promise to shorten healing time significantly and revolutionize the course of fracture treatment.

MojoKid writes "Historically, console add-ons that boosted the performance of the primary unit haven't done well. Any attempt to upgrade a system's core performance risks bifurcating the user base and increases work developers must do to ensure that a game runs smoothly on both original and upgraded systems. The other reason is that a number of games rely on very specific hardware characteristics to ensure proper operation. In a PC, swapping a CPU with 256K of L2 for a chip with 512K of L2 is a non-issue assuming proper platform support. Existing software will automatically take advantage of the additional cache. The Xbox 360, on the other hand, allows programmers to lock specific cache blocks and use them for storing data from particular threads. In that case, expanding the amount of L2 cache risks breaking previous games because it changes the range of available cache addresses. The other side of the upgrade argument is that the Xbox 360 has been upgraded more effectively than any previous console; current high-end versions ship with more than 10x the storage of the original, as well as support for HDMI and integrated WiFi. It would also forestall the decline in comparative image quality between console and PC platforms."

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New submitter brennanw writes "Anyone who was active on mp3.com during the late 90s/early 2000's will find Amazon.com's KDP Select awfully familiar: authors who make their works exclusive to Amazon compete for a pool of money. Any time someone 'borrows' one of their books, they get a cut of a monthly sum (700K in January, 600K for February) based on how many of their books were checked out vs. how many other author's books were checked out. This is almost identical to the 'Payback for Playback' service MP3.com provided musicians a little over a decade ago. Payback for Playback effectively destroyed the original MP3.com artist community, and I don't think KDP Select is going to be much different for the self-publishing community that is growing on Amazon."

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ananyo writes "Today the two main experiments at the Large Hadron Collider, the world's most powerful particle accelerator, submitted the results of their latest analyses. The new papers (here here and here) boost the case for December's announcement of a possible Higgs signal. Physicists working on the In the case of the Compact Muon Solenoid experiment, have been able to look at another possible kind of Higgs decay, and that allows them to boost their Higgs signal from 2.5 sigma to 3.1 sigma. Taken together with data from the other detector, ATLAS, Higgs' overall signal now unofficially stands at about 4.3 sigma."

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NASA chief Charles Bolden and several other agency officials attended the White House Science Fair on Feb. 7.

MrSeb writes "There are around 100 billion neurons in a human brain, forming up to 100 trillion synaptic interconnections. Neuroscientists believe that these synapses are the key to almost every one of your unique, identifiable features: Memories, mental disorders, and even your personality are encoded in the wiring of your brain. Understandably, neuroscientists really want to investigate these neurons and synapses to work out how they play such a vital role in our human makeup. Unfortunately, these 100 trillion connections are crammed into a two-pound bag of soggy flesh, making analysis rather hard. Starting small and working its way up, MIT today launched Eyewire, a crowdsourced 'game' that tasks users with wiring up the neurons in a mouse's retina. A future stage of the game will get users to find the synapses, too."

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