http://phys.org/news/2015-08-iron-bar-capable-decision-making.html

Researchers show that an iron bar is capable of decision-making

August 24, 2015 by Lisa Zyga

Decision-making—the ability to choose one path out of several options—is generally considered a cognitive ability possessed by biological systems, but not by physical objects. Now in a new study, researchers have shown that any rigid physical (i.e., non-living) object, such as an iron bar, is capable of decision-making by gaining information from its surroundings accompanied by physical fluctuations.

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"The most important implication that we wish to claim is that the proposed scheme will provide a new perspective for understanding the information-processing principles of certain lower forms of life," Kim, from the International Center for Materials Nanoarchitectonics' National Institute for Materials Science in Tsukuba, Ibaraki, Japan, told Phys.org. "These lower lifeforms exploit their underlying physics without needing any sophisticated neural systems."

As the researchers explain in their study, the only requirement for a physical object to exhibit an efficient decision-making ability is that the object must be "volume-conserving." Any rigid object, such as an iron bar, meets this requirement and therefore is subject to a volume conservation law. This means that, when exposed to fluctuations, the object may move slightly to the right or left, but its total volume is always conserved. Because this displacement resembles a tug-of-war game with a rigid object, the researchers call the method "tug-of-war (TOW) dynamics."

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By showing that decision-making is not limited to biological systems, the new method has potential applications in artificial intelligence.

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More information: Song-Ju Kim, et al. "Efficient decision-making by volume-conserving physical object." New Journal of Physics. DOI: 10.1088/1367-2630/17/8/083023

http://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/aug/21/study-of-holocaust-survivors-finds-trauma-passed-on-to-childrens-genes?CMP=share_btn_fb

Study of Holocaust survivors finds trauma passed on to children's genes

New finding is clear example in humans of the theory of epigenetic inheritance: the idea that environmental factors can affect the genes of your children

The team’s work is the clearest sign yet that life experience can affect the genes of subsequent generations. Photograph:

Helen Thomson
Friday 21 August 2015

Genetic changes stemming from the trauma suffered by Holocaust survivors are capable of being passed on to their children, the clearest sign yet that one person’s life experience can affect subsequent generations.

The conclusion from a research team at New York’s Mount Sinai hospital led by Rachel Yehuda stems from the genetic study of 32 Jewish men and women who had either been interned in a Nazi concentration camp, witnessed or experienced torture or who had had to hide during the second world war.

They also analysed the genes of their children, who are known to have increased likelihood of stress disorders, and compared the results with Jewish families who were living outside of Europe during the war. “The gene changes in the children could only be attributed to Holocaust exposure in the parents,” said Yehuda.

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“To our knowledge, this provides the first demonstration of transmission of pre-conception stress effects resulting in epigenetic changes in both the exposed parents and their offspring in humans,” said Yehuda, whose work was published in Biological Psychiatry.

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http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-08-25/international-court-orders-russia-pay-compensation-to-activitsts/6722616

Russia ordered to pay compensation for seizure of Greenpeace ship, activists, including Australian

Updated August 25, 2015 16:23:32

Russia has been ordered to compensate the Netherlands over the seizure of a Greenpeace ship in 2013 when it detained 30 activists including Australian Colin Russell.

Russian commandos stormed the Dutch-flagged Arctic Sunrise in September 2013 after a protest at an offshore oil rig owned by Russian state oil giant Gazprom.

The action sparked international outcry and the activists, dubbed the Arctic 30, were accused of piracy before the charge was downgraded to hooliganism.

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Now, the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague has ruled the seizure and detention were unlawful.

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http://arstechnica.com/security/2015/08/ashley-madison-roundup-execs-hacked-competitors-wrote-screenplay/

Ashley Madison execs hacked competitors, wrote screenplay

As information from hacking ring Impact Team is combed through, characters are revealed.

by Megan Geuss - Aug 25, 2015 2:40 am UTC

Last week, a hacking ring calling itself "Impact Team" released a trove of information collected by Ashley Madison, a dating site that connected people looking to have extramarital affairs. Not only were details pertaining to more than 30 million Ashley Madison accounts leaked, but Impact Team also dropped a 30-gigabyte archive which it said encompassed e-mails from the company's CEO, Noel Biderman.

In one of the more salient exchanges, according to KrebsOnSecurity, Ashley Madison's Chief Technology Officer Raja Bhatia apparently e-mailed Biderman in 2012 to tell him that he had discovered a security hole in a site called nerve.com, which operated a dating platform that was an Ashley Madison competitor at the time. A few months before, Nerve had approached Ashley Madison's parent company, Avid Life Media, with an offer to partner with the company. E-mails suggested that Bhatia offered at least $20 million for Nerve and another website called flirts.com, but Ashley Madison ended up declining pursuit of the deal.

When Bhatia started probing Nerve's site for weaknesses, however, he found some interesting things. As he wrote to Biderman, “They did a very lousy job building their platform. I got their entire user base. Also, I can turn any non paying user into a paying user, vice versa, compose messages between users, check unread stats, etc.” Bhatia included a link to a sample of the database, apparently.

Six months later, ahead of a meeting with representatives from Nerve, Biderman asked Bhatia, “Should I tell them of their security hole?” If there was a response, it did not take place over e-mail.

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http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/john-mcafee-ashley-madison-database-stolen-by-lone-female-who-worked-avid-life-media-1516833

John McAfee: Ashley Madison database stolen by lone female who worked for Avid Life Media

By John McAfee
August 24, 2015 13:44 BST

Yes, it is true. Ashley Madison was not hacked - the data was stolen by a woman operating on her own who worked for Avid Life Media. The reason that I am so late to the second act of the Ashley Madison affair is that, without a supercomputer, it has taken over a week to finish the analysis of the massive data dumps that the perpetrator has so generously provided us with.

A hacker is someone who uses a combination of high-tech cybertools and social engineering to gain illicit access to someone else's data. But this job was done by someone who already had the keys to the Kingdom. It was an inside job.

In my first IBTimes UK article about Act One of the Ashley Madison Affair, I alleged that the group of hackers claiming responsibility for the "hack" simply did not exist. I gleaned this information from reliable sources within the Dark Web – which have yet to fail me. I also claimed that it was the act of a single person.

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Lone female operative

Today, I can confidently claim that the single person is a woman, and has recently worked within Avid Life Media. I have provided IBTimes UK background information and pertinent elements of the woman's data dump to prove both my access to the data and also to confirm elements of my research, under the strict conditions that it is to be referenced and then destroyed. The data I provided included such delicate material as the decoded password hash tables of every Avid Life and Ashley Madison employee, which I have also now destroyed.

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