Daily Archives: April 28, 2011

Heart Attacks More Severe in the Morning

April 28, 2011   Anthony Stuart   2 Comments

A Spanish team of scientists and doctors have found a heart attack in the morning will do more damage than any other time of day.  It is already known heart attacks are more common in the morning, however no study has shown the amount of damage done compared to the time of day.

The study consisted of 811 patients, where the team would observe the amount of damage and at what time of day.  The most common time of day was morning heart attacks with 269 patients.  Results showed the amount of two enzymes (creatine kinase and troponin-I) were 21 percent  more in patients who had a heart attack in the morning.

This new information means physicians will be more aggressive to help prevent the extra damage that occurs in the morning.  Knowing this new information will also allow pharmaceutical companies to do research and hopefully come out with new medications to control morning heart attacks differently.

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Apple Denies Tracking Users’ Locations

April 28, 2011   Jacob Blanchard   1 Comment

On Wednesday, Apple clarified how its iPhones used location data and promised to make it easier for users to remove the information from their devices.

Answering the growing pressure from the public and a House committee, Apple said that the devices collect and store location data of nearby cell phone towers and Wi-Fi hot spots to speed up location services in the apps that use them. They claim that the data is sent back to Apple encrypted and anonymously. Users have the option to turn location services off entirely.

“Users are confused, partly because the creators of this new technology (including Apple) have not provided enough education about these issues to date,” the company said.

Concerns about Apple tracking user location arose last week when security researchers Alasdair Allan and Pete Warden discussed the discovery of a file on iPhones that stores the latitudes and longitudes of the phone’s coordinates, along with a time stamp. Apple did not immediately respond to the announcement, which incited a storm of questions among users and the public that reached the United States Government.

A committee of House members including Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn., and Rep. Edward Markey, D-Mass. sent letters to Apple as well as Google, Nokia, Research in Motion and Hewlett-Packard. The letters asked what kind of tracking devices their operating systems used, and demanded to know why they were using them.

Google has also admitted to using similar software to collect location data.

Sen. Franken called for a hearing on mobile privacy issues on May 10. Representatives from Apple and Google have been invited. In an interview with All Things Digital, Steve Jobs announced that the company would attend the hearing.

 

Article contains information from SFGate.
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SETI to Pull Plug on Alien-Seeking Telescopes

April 28, 2011   Jacob Blanchard   No comments

SETI has announced that it is shutting down its iconic Allen Telescope Array, a field of radio telescopes that listen to radio waves from outer space, hoping to hear signals from an extraterrestrial civilization. SETI’s mission is to explore the origins and prevalence of life in the universe in order to explain humanity’s place among the stars.

On April, SETI CEO Tom Pierson told donors that the telescopes would be put into “hibernation”, safe but nonfunctional, because of insufficient funding. The news is especially sad to astronomers since the space-based telescope Kepler recently detected 1,235 new possible planets.

“There is a huge irony,”  SETI Director Jill Tarter said, “that a time when we discover so many planets to look at, we don’t have the operating funds to listen.”

SETI has had funding problems since 1994, when Sen. Richard Bryan of Nevada convinced Congress that funding the program wasn’t worth the cost. SETI has been reliant on private funding since then, which has provided the resources to build the Allen Telescope Array. But now SETI cannot handle the day-to-day cost of running the array, which adds up to $5 million over the next two years.

The number seems frustratingly achievable, especially compared to the trillions the United States spends on its national budget.

SETI senior astronomer Seth Shostak said, “Honestly, if everybody contributed just 3 extra cents on their 1040 tax forms, we could find out if we have cosmic company.”

 

Contains information from MercuryNews.
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