There was a time when offshore platforms were secure communities in which production was controlled by closed processes that were isolated from the external world.   Not so today.  With modern integrated operations, offshore-onshore contact is transparent and may of the processes out on the platform are controlled by onshore personnel via networked PCs.

Oil company data security is inadequate, and production systems are at risk of attack by hackers, viruses and worms.

Integration and onshore control has several advantages but a big disadvantage is a fall in information security. When onshore and offshore networks are linked together, the chances of attacks by viruses and hackers increase.

I keep seeing these ads for Acai pills that help you lose belly fat, supposedly used by Oprah.  Sometimes I’m slapped with these commercials saying that you have belly fat because you're very stressed and you should take their drugs, because, obviously, it’s the only solution.  Then I see articles about how there are these magical foods that burn belly fat. 

In a state of confusion and depression, I stumbled into Dr. Robert Sapolsky, a Stanford neuroscientist and author of “Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers", giving a talk at UC Davis about stress and his work. 

After studying the baboons in Africa for about 30 years, he saw that some of the same social structures play a part in their lives.  Humans, and apes alike, are social beings.

Vegetarians must have felt a little left out when hearing stories of startling weight loss by people consuming nothing except bacon and cheddar cheese.

It was only a matter of time before a study came along showing that vegetarians could get thin too.  Of course, the secret ingredient was, as always, participants consuming fewer calories than  they burned.  Again.

But the non-weight benefits are worth discussion.   Overweight individuals who ate a low-calorie, low-carbohydrate diet high in plant-based proteins for four weeks lost weight and experienced improvements in blood cholesterol levels and other heart disease risk factors, according to a report in the June 8 issue of Archives of Internal Medicine.

If you've ever been an engineering student, taught engineering or hired a young engineer, this will sound familiar: tales of students splitting up group projects so they don't have to work together or a student stating he didn't bother with the directions but still got the right answer or students who do the whole project an hour before class.

Expert engineers waiting to happen?  Maybe some day, but that stuff irks hiring managers in the real world, where huge mistakes and sloppy work bring on costly overruns and maybe lawsuits.

Do you think high fructose corn syrup makes you fatter than sugar?   You're not alone.   In the culture wars, they like lines blurry and corporations who got rid of corn syrup have been using that as a marketing claim.    

Three top researchers say they have corrected inaccuracies and misunderstandings concerning high fructose corn syrup's impact on the American diet and examined how the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) considers this sweetener in light of the upcoming 2010 Dietary Guidelines for Americans in their session, 'High Fructose Corn Syrup: Sorting Myth from Reality', at the Institute of Food Technologists (IFT) Annual Meeting in Anaheim, California.

More than 100 feet deep in Lake Huron, on a wide stoney ridge that 9,000 years ago was a land bridge, University of Michigan researchers have found the first archeological evidence of human activity preserved beneath the Great Lakes.

The researchers located what they believe to be caribou-hunting structures and camps used by the early hunters of the period. 

"This is the first time we've identified structures like these on the lake bottom," said John O'Shea, curator of Great Lakes Archaeology in the Museum of Anthropology and professor in the Department of Anthropology. "Scientifically, it's important because the entire ancient landscape has been preserved and has not been modified by farming, or modern development."

ROBBINSVILLE, New Jersey, June 9 /PRNewswire/ --

SAN JOSE, California, June 8 /PRNewswire/ --

Atmel(R) Corporation (Nasdaq: ATML) announced today the new release of the popular Atmel QTouch Library, a royalty free software library providing access to the industry-leading QTouch(TM) technology. Without the need for external devices, the QTouch Library adds capacitive touch capabilities to AVR(R) and AVR32 microcontrollers. The new library consists of pre-compiled and object code binaries, which can be configured individually as touch keys, or combined in groups to form sliders, navigation wheels or combinations of all these. The QTouch Library allows full user customization and optimization of the touch function.

MINNEAPOLIS, June 8 /PRNewswire/ --

Nonin Medical, Inc., a leading innovator of noninvasive physiological monitoring solutions, introduced its Model 7600 Regional Oximetry System at the European Society of Anaesthesiology (ESA) conference in Milan, Italy. Designed for instantaneous signal acquisition, improved accuracy and consistency during cerebral monitoring, the Model 7600 offers real-time management of cerebral oxygenation for patients at risk of ischemia.

AMSTERDAM, June 8 /PRNewswire/ -- Seismic interpreters are facing a growing amount of data to interpret and the demands for computational tools to underpin the 3D seismic interpretation process throughout the EP workflow have never been more apparent. Through use of ffA's high performance computational software, a data driven approach to 3D seismic interpretation can provide the step change in productivity required for geoscientists to fully exploit their data and deliver more accurate interpretations of the subsurface, improved understanding of uncertainty and better quantification of risk.