Saturday, February 19, 2005

Feel free to use the Wikimedia sites to solve our Wikinews crossword. Please do not fill it out online as it would spoil it for other people; print it out and fill it in at your own leisure!

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Thursday, November 21, 2019

In findings published on Monday in Nature Sustainability, researchers mostly from Pennsylvania State University (Penn State) in the U.S. reported the invention of a new coating that could reduce bacterial growth, water waste, and odor when sprayed onto an ordinary house toilet by rendering its surface too slippery for anything to remain attached for long.

According to the research team, half of all people worldwide are affected by limits on their water supply, while daily fresh water usage to flush the planet’s roughly 1 billion toilets and flush urinals is upwards of 141 billion liters (about 37 billion U.S. gallons, 31 billion imperial gallons); which they note is several times larger than the total rate of water consumption for the continent of Africa. Inventions that render the facilities more water-efficient, they reason, could have a profound impact on wastewater management, sustainable water use, and sanitation, possibly cutting the amount of water used to flush waste by, reportedly, a factor of two.

“Our team” study co-author Tak-Sing Wong said in a press release “has developed a robust bio-inspired, liquid, sludge-, and bacteria-repellent coating that can essentially make a toilet self-cleaning[.]” Wong is Penn State’s Wormley Early Career Professor of Engineering and an associate professor of mechanical engineering and biomedical engineering.

Co-developer Jing Wang recounted, “When we put that coating on a toilet in the lab and dump synthetic fecal matter on it, [the synthetic fecal matter] just completely slides down and nothing sticks to [the coated surface.]”

The more something sticks to a surface, the more water it takes to rinse it off. The researchers reported inventing a coating good at resisting substances that are sticky and vary profoundly in viscosity across their mass—like human fecal matter. They also reported the coating repels bacteria, which has implications for preventing the spread of disease and certainly reduces smells.

The invention, called a liquid-entrenched smooth surface (LESS) coating, involves two separate treatments, both presented as suitable for spraying onto ceramics amongst other materials. The first spray is made of molecularly grafted polymers, specifically polydimethylsiloxane silicone, that Wang described as resembling human hairs — though vastly thinner — once it has dried on the target surface, which makes the surface very smooth. The second spray covers the target surface in silicone lubricant. According to the report, the two-spray process is complete in under five minutes and lasts for roughly 500 flushes before requiring reapplication. Existing treatments have tended to take hours to set.

Carl Hensman of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which offered a contest for redesigning the toilet some years ago, noted the ingredients in the sprays are also found in commonly used products like — in the case of the first spray — toothpaste, and are unlikely to pollute nearby water supplies; though he also remarked that, because the spray wears off, it was unlikely to be used widely in developing countries as the researchers claim to hope.

Wong and three of his co-authors have started a company, spotLESS Materials, to transform their invention into a product. He remarked, “As a researcher in an academic setting, my goal is to invent things that everyone can benefit from […] As a Penn Stater, I see this culture being amplified through entrepreneurship, and I’m excited to contribute.” They have received support from the Rice Business Plan Competition, Ben Franklin Technology Partners’ TechCelerator, Y-Combinator, and the United States’ National Science Foundation, Department of Energy, and Office of Naval Research.

Thursday, October 4, 2007

Glenn Crowe is running for the NDP in the Ontario provincial election, in the Bramalea-Gore-Malton riding. Wikinews’ Nick Moreau interviewed him regarding his values, his experience, and his campaign.

Crowe did not reply to various questions asked.

Stay tuned for further interviews; every candidate from every party is eligible, and will be contacted. Expect interviews from Liberals, Progressive Conservatives, New Democratic Party members, Ontario Greens, as well as members from the Family Coalition, Freedom, Communist, Libertarian, and Confederation of Regions parties, as well as independents.

Sunday, February 13, 2011

With a fourth-quarter investment earnings of $3.9 Billion CAD, largely driven by stock market rises, the Canada Pension Plan’s (CPP) assets rose to $140.1 Billion reported the CPP Investment Board on Thursday.

Rate of return for the quarter netted three percent, bringing the first nine months of the fiscal year to 8.3%. The fund’s broad exposure to equities, in concert with a good quarter for stocks both in Canada and internationally, was largely to be credited according to CEO David Deneson.

The assets value rose from $127.6 Billion March 31st 2010, to $138.6 B on September 30th, to $140.1 B December 31st. The $3.9 B investment earnings, 3.58 of which came from the 54% of the portfolio in equities, was partially offset by seasonal outlays of $2.4 B to plan members.

The fund was very active throughout the calendar year, and particularly active in infrastructure, real estate, and private equity. As part of a consortium they completed the $4.8 B purchase of UK-based Tomkins plc, as well as purchasing Australian-based Intoll for $3.4 B thus acquiring a 30% stake in the 407 Express Toll Route (ETR) near Toronto — which they expanded purchasing a further 10% stake from Spain’s Concesiones de Infraestructuras de Transporte, S.A. (CINTRA). They acquired a 25% equity stake in Westfield Stratford City, a retail complex adjacent to London’s Olympics venue, among many real estate ventures.

The CPP fund covers every province except Quebec, whose Caisse de Depot et Placement du Quebec is the only larger pension fund in Canada. The five-year annualised investment rate of return for the CPP reserve fund was 3.5%, its 10-year rate of return was 5.6%, at the close of 2010. The fund was established in 1997.

Tuesday, August 3, 2010

The United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has asked the Wikimedia Foundation (WMF), host of Wikinews and its sister projects, to take down its image of the FBI seal from its websites. However, the WMF declined, saying that FBI lawyers had misinterpreted the relevant federal law.

In a letter dated July 22, David C. Larson, Deputy General Counsel of the FBI demanded that the WMF remove the seal from its websites within fourteen days, claiming that “it facilitates both deliberate and unwitting violations of these restrictions by Wikipedia users.”

Larson cited 18 U.S.C. 701, which states: “Whoever manufactures, sells, or possesses any badge, identification card, or other insignia, of the design prescribed by the head of any department or agency of the United States for use by any officer or employee thereof, or any colorable imitation thereof, or photographs, prints, or in any other manner makes or executes any engraving, photograph, print, or impression in the likeness of any such badge, identification card, or other insignia, or any colorable imitation thereof, except as authorized under regulations made pursuant to law, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than six months, or both.”

Larson went on to say that use of the FBI seal may be authorized only by the director of the FBI; the FBI director has not given such permission to WMF.

The WMF, represented by General Counsel Mike Godwin, responded, saying in a letter dated July 30, that Larson’s interpretation “is both idiosyncratic (made especially so by your strategic redaction of important language) and, more importantly, incorrect.”

Godwin said that “while we appreciate your desire to revise the statute to reflect your expansive vision of it, the fact is that we must work with the actual language of the statute, not the aspirational version” Larson provided. According to the relevant case law, it “was intended to protect the public against the use of a recognizable assertion of authority with intent to deceive.”

Godwin asserted that the use of the FBI seal by the WMF and its projects do not fall under the purview of that law.

The websites of the Wikimedia Foundation are filled with user-generated text, pictures, and other materials, uploaded and curated by independent, often anonymous, volunteers, who change the websites minute by minute. The most well-known sites are the Wikipedias, encyclopedias with over 13 million articles in hundreds of languages. However, the foundation also hosts an image and media library, dictionaries, the Wikinews news websites, book websites and many other educational collaborations.

Cindy Cohn, legal director for the Electronic Frontier Foundation (where Godwin was once staff counsel), said that the WMF’s constitutional right to free expression allows it to use the FBI seal. “I have to believe the FBI has better things to do than this,” she said. The reason for the FBI’s request is unknown, as the FBI seal is published on many other websites, including Encyclopedia Britannica.

A compilation of brief news reports for Monday, July 8, 2013.

Friday, June 26, 2015

Annabel Goldie, Scottish Conservative Party leader from 2005 to 2011, has announced she will stand down as an MSP at the next elections in 2016. Goldie, who has been an MSP for the West Scotland (previously West of Scotland) electoral region since the Scottish Parliament’s formation in 1999, said she intends to focus on her role in the House of Lords, where she has been a peer since 2013.File:Annabel Goldie.jpg

In a statement today, Goldie said leading the party was an “enormous honour” for her. She also said: “It has afforded me both satisfaction and pleasure to serve my constituents and to serve the parliament and I will look back with great happiness at my time as an MSP. I am grateful to friends and colleagues from all parties for their support. Sometimes we found common ground, sometimes we disagreed but never I hope with rancour nor disrespect. Politics is a rough trade but we have built a strong parliament in Scotland of which we can all be rightly proud.” She said because of Ruth Davidson, her successor as Scottish Conservative leader, the party is now “in fine fettle and stands a great chance of making real progress in the years ahead,” concluding by saying: “I look forward to continuing to work as part of that effort in the House of Lords in the years to come.”

Davidson responded to the news by calling Goldie an “unstoppable force”, adding: “She has been an inspiration to a whole generation of Scottish Conservatives, and she has been a tremendous mentor, support and friend to me. In Holyrood, she has fostered both affection and respect from all members – regardless of their political affiliation – and her retirement from the Scottish Parliament will leave an Annabel-sized hole which won’t ever quite be filled. She is unique.” Meanwhile, David Cameron, UK Conservative leader and UK Prime Minister, said: “Annabel is one of those rare breeds in Scottish politics, somebody known by her first name alone. When she was Scottish Conservative leader, I valued her sage advice. She has been a towering strength to our party in Scotland, a doughty debater in the TV studios and Scottish Parliament and has one of the sharpest wits around. I wish her a long and happy retirement after 17 years unstinting service at Holyrood – but look forward to seeing her on the red benches of the Lords for years to come.”

Goldie, the Scottish Conservatives’ first ever female leader, was elected unopposed. She took up the role in the aftermath of David McLetchie’s resignation from the role in an expenses usage controversy and subsequent resignation of Brian Monteith from his Conservative whip role in the Scottish Parliament for briefing the media against him. Meanwhile, as Scottish Conservatives won 18 seats in the Scottish Parliament in 1999 and 2003, the party had been less successful in UK general elections in Scotland; Conservatives went up from zero out of a possible 72 UK MPs in Scotland in 1997 to one in 2001. This led to Goldie remarking in her inaugural speech in 2005 that: “The wheels are back on the wagon – and I’m the nag hitched up to tow it.” She also said: “The party is still way ahead of where it was in 1997. And my first task is to take it forward to 2007.” However, under Goldie’s leadership, the number of seats the Scottish Conservatives won in the Scottish Parliament slightly decreased from 18 in 2003 to 17 in 2007 and to 15 in 2011. At the same time, the number of Conservative MPs stood at one out of a possible 59 after the 2010 UK general election.

In the aforementioned 2005 speech, she also said the party could be trusted with devolution in Scotland, adding: “making devolution work better means real devolution: not the lumbering and cripplingly expensive array of government departments, government advisers, consultants, quangos, quasi-quangos and agencies with all their expensive appendages, but devolving down to people and their communities, their right to make their own decisions about their lives, how for example they procure healthcare and how they educate their children.” Goldie would go on to sit on the advisory board for the Smith Commission, which was set up to examine which further political powers should be devolved to Scotland following the 2014 Scottish independence referendum. More recently, Goldie supported a reduction in the voting age for Scottish Parliament elections from 18 to 16 in a vote earlier this month, commenting: “I think it is an opportunity for them to continue their high level of engagement in topical affairs that we saw with the independence referendum.”

Goldie, a member of the Salvation Army’s West of Scotland Advisory Board and a Church of Scotland elder, is not the only Scottish Conservative MSP intending to stand down in 2016. Mary Scanlon, Gavin Brown, Alex Fergusson and Nanette Milne all reportedly intend to leave the Scottish Parliament next year.

Sunday, February 17, 2008

Grameen Bank of Bangladesh has made the first loans to U.S. citizens who do not have a bank account. Grameen Bank is experienced in micro-financing in its home country, lending money to poor women that want to start small businesses.

Since the start of the mortgage-crisis more people in the U.S. tend to turn to fringe financial institutions bypassing the mainstream bank institutes. “Now is a good time because of … the subprime crisis and that highlights the issue that the financial system is not perfect,” , says the bank’s founder and 2006 Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus. Grameen Bank started in 1976 by lending a total amount of $27.00 to 42 Bangladesh women. To date the bank has made over $6.5 billion in loans to 7 million people in Bangladesh.

Grameen Bank’s first loans of approximately $50,000.00 in total in the U.S. was to a group of women in Jackson Heights, Queens, New York City. Garmeen Bank plans to offer $176 million in loans in New York City the next five years, and after that expanding into business as remittances and mortgages all over the U.S., as it has done in Bangladesh.

Thursday, December 20, 2007

Wikinews reporter David Shankbone is currently, courtesy of the Israeli government and friends, visiting Israel. This is a first-hand account of his experiences and may — as a result — not fully comply with Wikinews’ neutrality policy. Please note this is a journalism experiment for Wikinews and put constructive criticism on the collaboration page.

Dr. Yossi Vardi is known as Israel’s ‘Father of the Entrepreneur’, and he has many children in the form of technology companies he has helped to incubate in Tel Aviv‘s booming Internet sector. At the offices of Superna, one such company, he introduced a whirlwind of presentations from his baby incubators to a group of journalists. What stuck most in my head was when Vardi said, “What is important is not the technology, but the talent.” Perhaps because he repeated this after each young Internet entrepreneur showed us his or her latest creation under Vardi’s tutelage. I had a sense of déjà vu from this mantra. A casual reader of the newspapers during the Dot.com boom will remember a glut of stories that could be called “The Rise of the Failure”; people whose technology companies had collapsed were suddenly hot commodities to start up new companies. This seemingly paradoxical thinking was talked about as new back then; but even Thomas Edison—the Father of Invention—is oft-quoted for saying, “I have not failed. I have just found ten thousand ways that won’t work.”

Vardi’s focus on encouraging his brood of talent regardless of the practicalities stuck out to me because of a recent pair of “dueling studies” The New York Times has printed. These are the sort of studies that confuse parents on how to raise their kids. The first, by Carol Dweck at Stanford University, came to the conclusion that children who are not praised for their efforts, regardless of the outcome’s success, rarely attempt more challenging and complex pursuits. According to Dweck’s study, when a child knows that they will receive praise for being right instead of for tackling difficult problems, even if they fail, they will simply elect to take on easy tasks in which they are assured of finding the solution.

Only one month earlier the Times produced another story for parents to agonize over, this time based on a study from the Brookings Institution, entitled “Are Kids Getting Too Much Praise?” Unlike Dweck’s clinical study, Brookings drew conclusions from statistical data that could be influenced by a variety of factors (since there was no clinical control). The study found American kids are far more confident that they have done well than their Korean counterparts, even when the inverse is true. The Times adds in the words of a Harvard faculty psychologist who intoned, “Self-esteem is based on real accomplishments. It’s all about letting kids shine in a realistic way.” But this is not the first time the self-esteem generation’s proponents have been criticized.

Vardi clearly would find himself encouraged by Dweck’s study, though, based upon how often he seemed to ask us to keep our eyes on the people more than the products. That’s not to say he has not found his latest ICQ, though only time—and consumers—will tell.

For a Web 2.User like myself, I was most fascinated by Fixya, a site that, like Wikipedia, exists on the free work of people with knowledge. Fixya is a tech support site where people who are having problems with equipment ask a question and it is answered by registered “experts.” These experts are the equivalent of Wikipedia’s editors: they are self-ordained purveyors of solutions. But instead of solving a mystery of knowledge a reader has in their head, these experts solve a problem related to something you have bought and do not understand. From baby cribs to cellular phones, over 500,000 products are “supported” on Fixya’s website. The Fixya business model relies upon the good will of its experts to want to help other people through the ever-expanding world of consumer appliances. But it is different from Wikipedia in two important ways. First, Fixya is for-profit. The altruistic exchange of information is somewhat dampened by the knowledge that somebody, somewhere, is profiting from whatever you give. Second, with Wikipedia it is very easy for a person to type in a few sentences about a subject on an article about the Toshiba Satellite laptop, but to answer technical problems a person is experiencing seems like a different realm. But is it? “It’s a beautiful thing. People really want to help other people,” said the presenter, who marveled at the community that has already developed on Fixya. “Another difference from Wikipedia is that we have a premium content version of the site.” Their premium site is where they envision making their money. Customers with a problem will assign a dollar amount based upon how badly they need an answer to a question, and the expert-editors of Fixya will share in the payment for the resolved issue. Like Wikipedia, reputation is paramount to Fixya’s experts. Whereas Wikipedia editors are judged by how they are perceived in the Wiki community, the amount of barnstars they receive and by the value of their contributions, Fixya’s customers rate its experts based upon the usefulness of their advice. The site is currently working on offering extended warranties with some manufacturers, although it was not clear how that would work on a site that functioned on the work of any expert.

Another collaborative effort product presented to us was YouFig, which is software designed to allow a group of people to collaborate on work product. This is not a new idea, although may web-based products have generally fallen flat. The idea is that people who are working on a multi-media project can combine efforts to create a final product. They envision their initial market to be academia, but one could see the product stretching to fields such as law, where large litigation projects with high-level of collaboration on both document creation and media presentation; in business, where software aimed at product development has generally not lived up to its promises; and in the science and engineering fields, where multi-media collaboration is quickly becoming not only the norm, but a necessity.

For the popular consumer market, Superna, whose offices hosted our meeting, demonstrated their cost-saving vision for the Smart Home (SH). Current SH systems require a large, expensive server in order to coordinate all the electronic appliances in today’s air-conditioned, lit and entertainment-saturated house. Such coordinating servers can cost upwards of US$5,000, whereas Superna’s software can turn a US$1,000 hand-held tablet PC into household remote control.

There were a few start-ups where Vardi’s fatherly mentoring seemed more at play than long-term practical business modeling. In the hot market of WiFi products, WeFi is software that will allow groups of users, such as friends, share knowledge about the location of free Internet WiFi access, and also provide codes and keys for certain hot spots, with access provided only to the trusted users within a group. The mock-up that was shown to us had a Google Maps-esque city block that had green points to the known hot spots that are available either for free (such as those owned by good Samaritans who do not secure their WiFi access) or for pay, with access information provided for that location. I saw two long-term problems: first, WiMAX, which is able to provide Internet access to people for miles within its range. There is already discussion all over the Internet as to whether this technology will eventually make WiFi obsolete, negating the need to find “hot spots” for a group of friends. Taiwan is already testing an island-wide WiMAX project. The second problem is if good Samaritans are more easily located, instead of just happened-upon, how many will keep their WiFi access free? It has already become more difficult to find people willing to contribute to free Internet. Even in Tel Aviv, and elsewhere, I have come across several secure wireless users who named their network “Fuck Off” in an in-your-face message to freeloaders.

Another child of Vardi’s that the Brookings Institution might say was over-praised for self-esteem but lacking real accomplishment is AtlasCT, although reportedly Nokia offered to pay US$8.1 million for the software, which they turned down. It is again a map-based software that allows user-generated photographs to be uploaded to personalized street maps that they can share with friends, students, colleagues or whomever else wants to view a person’s slideshow from their vacation to Paris (“Dude, go to the icon over Boulevard Montmartre and you’ll see this girl I thought was hot outside the Hard Rock Cafe!”) Aside from the idea that many people probably have little interest in looking at the photo journey of someone they know (“You can see how I traced the steps of Jesus in the Galilee“), it is also easy to imagine Google coming out with its own freeware that would instantly trump this program. Although one can see an e-classroom in architecture employing such software to allow students to take a walking tour through Rome, its desirability may be limited.

Whether Vardi is a smart parent for his encouragement, or in fact propping up laggards, is something only time will tell him as he attempts to bring these products of his children to market. The look of awe that came across each company’s representative whenever he entered the room provided the answer to the question of Who’s your daddy?

Thursday, September 1, 2005

Air evacuation of the Superdome was temporarily halted Thursday after shots were reportedly fired at a military helicopter.

Evacuations by bus continue, despite an early news report to the contrary. Thousands of people taking temporary shelter in the Superdome and nearby areas in New Orleans are being evacuated after Mayor Ray Nagin ordered a complete evacuation of the city, in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. Evacuees will be taken to the Astrodome in Houston, Texas.

Looting has become an increasing concern, as looters and gangs are beginning to rob hotels and hospitals. Some looters have even been able to take guns from abandoned shops. Officials say that they are concerned about the increasing number of people with guns. Police officers stranded on the roof of a hotel reported shots fired at them.

President George W. Bush plans to visit the affected areas on Friday. Former Presidents Bill Clinton and George H. W. Bush are expected to lead a private fund-raising campaign for the victims of the hurricane, similar to the campaign after the oceanic earthquake and resulting tsunami in late 2004.