JumperCable - Slashdot User

Submission + - Mexican Scientists Successfully Test Vaccine that Could Cut Heroin Addiction (guardian.co.uk)

Submitted by JumperCable on Friday February 24, 2012 @12:41AM

JumperCable writes: Scientists at Mexico's National Institute of Psychiatry say they have successfully tested the vaccine on mice and are preparing to test it on humans. The vaccine, makes the body resistant to the effects of heroin, so users would no longer get a rush of pleasure. Mice given the vaccine showed a huge drop in heroin consumption.

Submission + - Ginkgo Doesn't Improve Memory or Cognative Skills (cnn.com)

Submitted by JumperCable on Wednesday December 30, 2009 @05:41AM

JumperCable writes: CNN reports

Ginkgo biloba has failed — again — to live up to its reputation for boosting memory and brain function. Just over a year after a study showed that the herb doesn't prevent dementia and Alzheimer's disease, a new study from the same team of researchers has found no evidence that ginkgo reduces the normal cognitive decline that comes with aging.
In the new study, the largest of its kind to date, DeKosky and his colleagues followed more than 3,000 people between the ages of 72 and 96 for an average of six years. Half of the participants took two 120-milligram capsules of ginkgo a day during the study period, and the other half took a placebo. The people who took ginkgo showed no differences in attention, memory, and other cognitive measures compared to those who took the placebo, according to the study, which was published in this week's Journal of the American Medical Association.

And of course, the link to the study. http://jama.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/full/302/24/2663?home

Submission + - Cohen Drops Lawsuit After Outing Anonymous Blogger (nydailynews.com)

Submitted by JumperCable on Monday August 24, 2009 @01:06AM

JumperCable writes: According to a recent Daily News article, model Liskula Cohen, who was suing the 'Skanks of NYC' blogger for defamation is reportedly dropping (page 2) the lawsuit now that she has outed the anonymous blogger. This brings to question the potential for abuse of the legal system to out anonymous authors even if there is no intention to actually pursue a case against an anonymous individual.

Also, according to the article, the outed blogger Rosemary Port, intends to sue Google for $15 million because it "breached its fiduciary duty to protect her expectation of anonymity." Do web hosting services even have a fiduciary duty to protect their clients? Or is this all legal bluff & bluster?

Submission + - EFF: Patent Busting -- Prior Art Needed for VOIP

Submitted by JumperCable on Friday April 06, 2007 @08:41PM

JumperCable writes: The Electronic Frontier Foundation is seeking to bust an overly broad patent by a company called Acceris. Acceris claims patents on processes that implement voice-over-Internet protocol (VoIP) using analog phones as endpoints. These patents cover telephone calls over the Internet.

Specifically, the claims describe a system that connects two parties where the receiving party does not need to have a computer or an Internet connection, but the call is routed in part through the Internet or any other "public computer network". The calls must also be "full duplex", meaning that both parties can listen and talk at the same time, like in an ordinary phone call.

To bust these overly broad claims, we need "prior art" — any publication, article, patent or other public writing that describes the same or similar ideas being implemented before September 20, 1995.

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