If your body is used to consuming alcohol every day, and you suddenly stop cold turkey, you’re going to experience withdrawal symptoms including tremors. They’re treatable with benzodiazepine drugs, but often times those can be abused by addicts who fake tremors in order to get a prescription. Spotting those fake tremors isn’t always easy, so researchers at the University of Toronto have created a smartphone app that’s incredibly hard to fool. Read more…
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An App Can Tell If Addicts Are Faking Withdrawal Tremors To Get a Fix
Nicola Hahn (1482985) writes Kim Zetter of Wired Magazine has recently covered Dan Greer’s keynote speech at Black Hat USA. In his lengthy address Greer, representing the CIA’s venture funding arm, suggested that one way that the United States government could improve cyber security would be to use its unparalleled budget to buy up all the underground’s zero-day vulnerabilities. While this would no doubt make zero-day vendors like VUPEN and middlemen like the Grugq very wealthy, is this strategy really a good idea? Can the public really trust the NSA to do the right thing with all those zero-day exploits? Furthermore, recall the financial meltdown of 2008 where the public paid the bill for Wall Street’s greed. If the government pays for information on all these unpatched bugs would society simply be socializing the cost of hi-tech’s sloppy engineering? Whose interests does this “corner-the-market” approach actually serve? Read more of this story at Slashdot. 
The recent death by overdose of Google executive Timothy Hayes has drawn attention to the phenomenon of illegal drug use (including abuse of prescription painkillers) among technology workers and executives in high-pay, high-stress Silicon Valley. The Mercury News takes a look at the phenomenon; do the descriptions of freely passed cocaine, Red Bull as a gateway drug, and complacent managers match your own workplace experiences? From the Mercury News article: “There’s this workaholism in the valley, where the ability to work on crash projects at tremendous rates of speed is almost a badge of honor, ” says Steve Albrecht, a San Diego consultant who teaches substance abuse awareness for Bay Area employers. “These workers stay up for days and days, and many of them gradually get into meth and coke to keep going. Red Bull and coffee only gets them so far.” … Drug abuse in the tech industry is growing against the backdrop of a national surge in heroin and prescription pain-pill abuse. Treatment specialists say the over-prescribing of painkillers, like the opioid hydrocodone, has spawned a new crop of addicts — working professionals with college degrees, a description that fits many of the thousands of workers in corporate Silicon Valley. Increasingly, experts see painkillers as the gateway drug for addicts, and they are in abundance. “There are 1.4 million prescriptions … in the Bay Area for hydrocodone, ” says Alice Gleghorn with the San Francisco Department of Public Health. “That’s a lot of pills out there.” Read more of this story at Slashdot. 
According to Reuters , Iraq rebels have stolen 88 pounds of uranium compounds that were being used for scientific research at a university in the city of Mosul. Read more… 
In Lord of the Rings , Legolas claims to be able to count the exact number of horsemen five leagues away—that’s over 17 miles—even discerning their leader as very tall. But would that ever be possible? Read more… 
Rambo Tribble writes Researchers in Britain are reporting that they have found a way to prevent bacteria from forming the “wall” that prevents antibiotics from attacking them. “It is a very significant breakthrough, ” said Professor Changjiang Dong, from the University of East Anglia’s (UAE) Norwich Medical School. “This is really important because drug-resistant bacteria is a global health problem. Many current antibiotics are becoming useless, causing hundreds of thousands of deaths each year. Many bacteria build up an outer defence which is important for their survival and drug resistance. We have found a way to stop that happening, ” he added. This research provides the platform for urgently-needed new generation drugs. Read more of this story at Slashdot. 
