A New Windows Mobile Is Coming in February, But Which? [Windows Phone]

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It's clear that Microsoft will bring something to Mobile World Congress. This is inevitable, and necessary. But yesterday's report that it'll be Windows Mobile 6.6 has been met with another saying it'll be Windows Mobile 7. So which is it?

The conservative choice would seem to be Windows Mobile 6.6, especially given the nagging reports that Windows Mobile 7, which we basically know to exist in some form, has been delayed—in release, if not unveiling—until late this year. But here's the thing: until yesterday, nobody had even heard of Windows Mobile 6.6. We've only just been introduced to the final version of Windows Mobile 6.5.3, which appears to be the ultimate expression of the wrongheaded 6.5.x ethos, and any interim releases, even assuming a late 2010 release for WinMo 7, would have a hard time finding handset support.

Now that Bloomberg is chiming in to say that WinMo 7 will be unveiled at Mobile World Congress, I think it's fair to bet on seeing for the first time in February. As for 6.6? I'm not convinced that it even exists, or that Microsoft is oblivious enough to press forward toward such an obvious, self-imposed dead end.

On another note, this has been some uncharacteristically tight leak control from Microsoft—we know practically nothing about Windows Mobile 7 right now, which is as refreshing as it is frustrating. [Bloomberg via Silicon Alley Insider]



Can Guilt Save the Oceans? | The Intersection

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This is the first in a series of guest posts by Joel Barkan, a previous contributor to “The Intersection” and a graduate student at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. The renowned Scripps marine biologist Jeremy Jackson is teaching his famed “Marine Science, Economics, and Policy” course for what may be the last time this year (along with Jennifer Jacquet), and Joel will be reporting each week on the contents of the course.

Guilt. Shame. These aren’t emotions commonly associated with fish. According to Jennifer Jacquet, however, they may actually be effective tools to prevent destructive overfishing. Jennifer knows a thing or two about guilt—she writes the Guilty Planet blog for scienceblogs.com. Her lecture today covered creative ways to convince corporations to buy and sell fish caught in a sustainable manner. A supermarket that sells orange roughy, for instance, might change its practices if made to feel shame for peddling this exploited fish. Greenpeace, which graded the major seafood markets for sustainability, has made headway by calling out less ocean-friendly chains like Trader Joe’s. Can we go further, though, and attach a real public stigma to the trade of unsustainably caught fish?

Jennifer talked about the importance of corporate transparency to bring about policy changes, using examples from other industries. She mentioned the Toxic Release Inventory (TRI), which forces polluters to publicize their emission levels. On the day after the first TRI figures were released in 1989, the polluting firms saw their stocks fall a combined $4.1 million. These corporations—feeling guilty and seeking to deflect public scorn—soon announced plans to reduce emissions. Jennifer also referenced restaurant hygiene report cards, which grade the cleanliness of restaurants: you get an A if diners can eat your risotto off the floor, a C if the vermin outnumber your patrons. No restaurant wants the scarlet letter “C” tacked to its window—it would be hard to recover from the public shame of such a poor grade.

Our class discussion, as it has a tendency to do here at Scripps, delved into a number of tangents, all of them thought-provoking. One student, who moved to San Diego from China in June for graduate school, cautioned that with shame can come unfair humiliation. He spoke of China’s Cultural Revolution, when citizens who were suspected of supporting capitalism were forced to walk through the streets wearing hats bearing the sign “Capitalist Dog.” Now, he asserts, China feels regret for putting its people through such a public disgrace because it realizes its original convictions were misguided. I brought up the success of anti-smoking campaigns and the shame placed on cigarette companies for being deceitful about the health effects of smoking and its youth-targeted advertising. Prof. Jeremy Jackson countered by pointing out that a backlash against anti-smoking campaigns actually makes smoking appealing to some young people.

But back to fish—after all, this is a marine policy course. Can seafood retailers like Walmart and Red Lobster be guilted into changing their practices? I think we have a long way to go: it’s still a social norm to buy and eat trawl-caught shrimp, which includes 12 pounds of unintended, wasted bycatch for every pound of shrimp caught. The public looks down upon corporate misdeeds like embezzlement and pollution. It’s time to add trade in unsustainable fisheries to that list of offense.

Woman Gets Transplanted Windpipe That Was Grown in Her Arm | 80beats

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OrgansLinda De Croock, a Belgian woman who had her throat crushed in a car accident a quarter-century ago, received one of the odder-sounding organ transplants we’ve ever heard: For two years, De Croock had a dead man’s windpipe growing inside her arm. Reporting in the New England Journal of Medicine, her doctors say they successfully implanted the donated trachea in her forearm and then moved it from there to where it belongs.

While the arm might seem a questionable place to put a windpipe, the point was to acclimate her body to the new organ and get her off anti-rejection drugs. Doctors at Belgium’s University Hospital Leuven implanted the donor windpipe in De Croock’s arm as a first step in getting her body to accept the organ and to restart its blood supply. About 10 months later, when enough tissue had grown around it to let her stop taking the drugs, the windpipe was transferred to its proper place [Canadian Press]. Since De Croock’s own tissue has grown around the windpipe, her body no longer considers it foreign and dangerous. A year has passed since the surgery to move the windpipe from her arm to her throat, and the doctors report she is doing well.

After the accident, De Croock originally had metal pieces installed to prop open her windpipe. But having metal do the job became worse and worse. “Life before my transplant was becoming less livable all the time, with continual pain and jabbing and pricking in my throat and windpipe,” the 54-year-old Belgian told The Associated Press in a telephone interview [Canadian Press].

This is the first time scientists have transplanted an organ as large as a trachea in this way—allowing it to acclimate inside the patient’s body before they set it in its proper location. Dr Pierre Delaere, the surgeon who led the team, said: ”This is a major step forward for trachea transplantation. Her voice is excellent, and her breathing is normal. I don’t think she could run a marathon, but she is doing well” [Sydney Morning Herald].

Related Content:
80beats: Injured Vet Receives Transplanted Pancreas Grown From a Few Cells
80beats: First American Face Transplant is Successful (So Far)
80beats: Doctors Use a Patient’s Own Stem Cells to Build Her a New Windpipe
Discoblog: Organ Transplants Gone Horribly Awry
DISCOVER: How Do Transplant Patients End Up With Killer Organs?

Image: iStockphoto


Google Hacked the Chinese Hackers Right Back [Google]

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One of the cooler stories out the whole Google-China debacle is that Google hacked the hackers. It "began a secret counteroffensive," breaking into a computer in Taiwan, gathering evidence the attacks originated from mainland China, possibly orchestrated by the government.

Google's delta force found evidence that the hackers had attacked 33 other companies, like Adobe, and that the onslaught actually came from China, not Taiwan. More to the point, "much of the evidence, including the sophistication of the attacks, strongly suggested an operation run by Chinese government agencies, or at least approved by them." Unfortunately, Google can't prove the Chinese government's involvement 100 percent, which is why the Obama administration is pussy-footing around the issue.

Still, it's pretty awesome: If you hack Google, they will hack your ass right back. [NYT]



Kompis Compass Concept Shines Its Own Northern Light [Concepts]

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The Kompis is more than just a digital compass, really. It's a GPS mapmaker that lights the way to your destination. It may not be as effective as a Garmin, but it sure is prettier.

You can tell the Kompis where you want to go by hooking it up to your computer via USB, or you can mark a place you'd like to return to by hitting its "remember" button. It'll also tell you how close or far you are from your destination by cycling through color gradients from blue to red.

So. Functionality: somewhere between "Nuvi 880" and "trail of breadcrumbs." Form: pretty darned cool.



All smoothed out – hydroxyl radicals remove nanoscopic irregularities on polished gold surfaces

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The precious metal gold is the material of choice for many technical applications because it does not corrode - and because it also has interesting electrical, magnetic, and optical properties. In these applications, it is extremely important that the surface of the gold be completely clean and smooth. However, conventional processes not only 'polish' away the undesirable irregularities, but also attack the gold surface.

Communicating nanotechnology

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Experts and the public generally differ in their perceptions of technology risk. While this might be due to social and demographic factors, it is generally assumed by scientists who conduct risk research that experts' risk assessments are based more strongly on actual or perceived knowledge about a technology than lay people's risk assessments. Nevertheless, whether the risks are real or not, the public perception of an emerging technology will have a major influence on the acceptance of this technology and its commercial success. If the public perception turns negative, potentially beneficial technologies will be severely constrained as is the case for instance with gene technology. It is not surprising that a new study found that, in general, nanoscientists are more optimistic than the public about the potential benefits of nanotechnology. What is surprising though, is that, for some issues related to the environmental and long-term health impacts of nanotechnology, nanoscientists seem to be significantly more concerned than the public. Arguing that risk communication on nanotechnologies requires target-specific approaches, a group of researchers in Germany advocate the development of communication strategies that help people to comprehend nanotechnology, to differentiate between the fields of application and to gain an understanding of the cause and effect chains.