Interested in Michael Jackson now that he is dead?   So are cyber criminals who are exploiting public interest in his death with spam messages that infect computers with a virus able to steal bank account numbers and passwords, according to Gary Warner, University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) director of research in computer forensics. Warner and the other researchers at the UAB Spam Data Mine began tracking the celebrity-focused spam early on Tuesday, June 30.

“We’ve been tracking the cyber criminals behind this spam and the associated virus for many weeks, but it is just today that they have shifted their strategy by embedding their virus into an e-mail that claims to link you to a Web site that will reveal Michael Jackson’s killer,” Warner said. 

With the increasing popularity of whitening teeth, and some studies showing negative effects of teeth whitening, researchers at the Eastman Institute for Oral Health at the University of Rochester Medical Center set out to learn if there are negative effects on the tooth from using whitening products.

Eastman Institute's YanFang Ren, DDS, PhD, and his team determined that the effects of 6 percent hydrogen peroxide, the common ingredient in professional and over-the-counter whitening products, are insignificant compared to acidic fruit juices. Orange juice markedly decreased hardness and increased roughness of tooth enamel.

A team of researchers from the University of Alcalá de Henares (UAH) says that human beings can develop echolocation, the system of acoustic signals used by dolphins and bats to explore their surroundings. Producing certain kinds of tongue clicks helps people to identify objects around them without needing to see them, obviously something that would be useful for the blind, if it's true.

The team has started a series of tests, the first of their kind in the world, they say, to make use of human beings' under-exploited echolocation skills.


Much cooler than Man-Bat.  ©Marvel Comics Group

There's a reason religious cults do things in groups; peer pressure and mutual awareness keeps them on message.   Likewise, young people are more likely to participate in conservation if their peers do - a tendency that should be exploited when it comes to protecting the environment, according to results of a new study.

The research, which focused on a mammoth government initiative called Grain-to-Green that pays Chinese farmers to convert cropland back to forest, is the first to focus on the phenomenon of social norms in the context of China's conservation efforts, said scientist Jianguo "Jack" Liu of Michigan State University (MSU).

The front portion of the brain that handles tasks like decision-making, the left inferior frontal sulcus, also helps decipher different phonetic sounds, according to new Brown University research.  This section of the brain treats different pronunciations of the same speech sound (such as a 'd' sound) the same way, they say, and in determining this they believe they have solved a mystery.

ABU DHABI, United Arab Emirates, June 30 /PRNewswire/ --

- Abu Dhabi's Masdar City, the world's first carbon-neutral, zero-waste city, to house IRENA's headquarters

Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates, has been selected to house the secretariat of the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), marking the first time an international organization has chosen a Middle East city for its headquarters. IRENA will be located in Abu Dhabi's Masdar City, the world's first carbon-neutral, zero-waste city powered entirely by renewable energy.

LONDON, June 30 /PRNewswire/ --

- KT, SK Telecom and LG Telecom join forces to provide new enhanced services for customers incorporating GSMA's Rich Communication Suite key features

The GSMA today announced that the world's first interoperable enhanced communication service incorporating key elements of the GSMA's Rich Communication Suite (RCS) specifications is now a live commercial service in South Korea. The GSMA's RCS initiative is supported by some of the world's leading handset vendors, core network vendors and mobile operators including KT, and SK Telecom, who joined the initiative to provide an interoperable service solution in South Korea.

In a few days, scores of Italian post-doctoral researchers in experimental particle physics will get tested on their knowledge of the matter, without any promise of a position, but just to get one further "stamp" on their curriculum, testifying that they are competent enough to be worth offering a temporary position by INFN, the Italian Institute for (sub)Nuclear Physics. So this is a  national exam, with the sole purpose of giving a green light to be admitted to two-year positions , which are typically paid less than 1400 euros a month, and which are so far not available. Frankly, I feel ashamed, since I myself work for INFN, and I strongly disagree with its current recruitment policies.

How proteins recognize specific stretches of DNA is one of the key questions of gene regulation. One would like to be able to look at the regulatory DNA sequence adjacent to a gene, and predict which regulatory proteins bind there, and control the adjacent gene. In other words, we want to, just by running a few computer programs over a genome, know how the genes in that genome are regulated.

LONDON, June 29 /PRNewswire/ --

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