Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard

I've just discovered that Visa et al publish their Data Security Standard for the Payment Card Industry.

(link via Wired describing CardSystems' recent breach)

Non-toxic chemotherapy?

New Scientist writes:

All living cells require folic acid to replicate, but cancer cells have a particularly strong appetite for it, displaying up to one thousand more docking sites - called folate receptors - on their membranes. By attaching five folic acid molecules to branches of the dendrimer, the researchers were able to lure the cancer cells into accepting the whole package across the membrane and into the cell - including the toxic drug, which then kills off the cell.

...

He says that the treatment targeted the cancer cells so successfully that they had not even found an upper dosage limit, since it had not been toxic to healthy cells.

I may be reading more into this than is intended, but it sounds as though attaching the folic acid ions (not whole molecules, surely?) to the dendrimer not only reduces the total amount of toxin required to kill tumours, but also reduces the toxic effects of even the same total amount of toxin being present in the patient's body, should this occur.

Focus has its benefits.

Police Pedantry

British coppers look after pennies. 15/06/2005. ABC News Online: "'We are determined that no one should benefit from crime and although 29 pence may seem minuscule, it sends out a message that the courts will strip such people of every asset that can be found even if it is a few pence,' Detective Superintendent Gordon Lang of the Cleveland police said."

Homebrew Air Conditioning

A Canadian student has come up with a Homebrew Air Conditioning solution that cost him about CA$30. Neat. Hopefully the heat "siphon" is removing more heat from the room than the fan motor is adding.

(via collision detection)

Sheep urine as a pollution reducing agent...

ABC News Online writes:

Bus operator Stagecoach has fitted a tank to a bus in Winchester, southern England, which sprays urine into the exhaust fumes to reduce nitrous oxide emissions.
...
The urine, from farmyard waste, is refined into pure urea. Ammonia in the urea converts nitrous oxides into nitrogen gas and water.

I can't help wondering about the side-effects, but wow, a simple (and presumably cheap) way to eliminate NOx at its source.

Is there enough urine in the world to make a dent on the NOx emissions from domestic vehicles?

Hell has frozen over!

Well, not really, but Debian Sarge has actually been released! Even more impressive is that it has occured just five weeks after the freeze and just one week beyond the release date proposed at that time. Way to go Debian!

(This release date also means that Sarge avoids by a month the ignomy of coming out three years after Woody...)

Judge told alleged sex offender too fat to face Qld court.

In a move that would inspire (or was inspired by?) Homer Simpson,

The chief judge of the District Court in Brisbane has been told a 58-year-old man is too fat to return from interstate to face trial on sex charges.

For those don't recall, Homer managed to get himself special treatment and the right to work from home by deliberately getting too fat to commute.

The defendant in WA won't be quite so lucky, the court is moving a special session to WA to hear his case.

(via ABC)

Drown the Phish

Cringely proposes an attack on phishers:

If you get phishing e-mail, go the web sites and enter false data. Make up everything -- name, sign-on name, password, credit card numbers, everything. Instead of one million messages yielding 100 good replies, now the phisher will have one million messages yielding 100,000 replies of which 100 are good, but WHICH 100?

I really doubt that enough people will bother, the masses appear to prefer that someone else take care of their problems for them, but the approach has a certain appeal to it.

Oxytocin, the conman's friend?

Today, Nature has published (abstract, editor's summary) a paper documenting Oxytocin's role in increasing an individual's willingness to accept risk in interpersonal interactions (e.g. approaching strangers). I've seen this discovery trumpeted all over the place, with most commentators decrying in concerned tones the harm that this could do in the hands of malfactors (conmen, retailers, ...). For what they are worth, here are some alternate viewpoints. From New Scientist:

But could it be used to con people? Kosfeld doubts it, because it takes nearly an hour for the hormone to reach the brain. Nor would it be easy to make people “sniff” something unfamiliar, and it is not known whether it would work through a spiked drink.

(Kosfeld is one of the paper's authors.) These seem to me like impediments to trivial exploitation, things that could be overcome with a little effort. More cause for optimism appears in news @ nature:

So does that mean it could be pumped into the air in department stores by unscrupulous salespeople, turning us all into soft targets?

Perhaps, but it seems a trifle extravagant, says Antonio Damasio, a neurologist at the University of Iowa in Iowa City. Modern advertising already uses tricks to get us to trust a brand that probably make us boost our own oxytocin levels. "It lures you in with images of wonderful landscapes or sex, and it probably works in exactly the same way," says Damasio.

(Damasion is not one of the paper's authors.) We already live with communicators' attempts, on a daily basis, to persuade us through linking euphoric states in ourselves to what they are attempting to sell us. This is perhaps just more of the same. Given that oxytocin is already cheap and widely available, I suspect that we are going to start hearing about "field research" on this in the not-too-distant future.