Buchanan bus station,Glasgow
Dundee University graduation day
on the way to Aberdeen
Saturday, July 31, 2010
Drinking alcohol can 'reduce severity' of arthritis
More research is needed to find out why alcohol can have an effect on arthritis symptomsDrinking alcohol can not only ease the symptoms of rheumatoid arthritis it appears to reduce disease severity too, research suggests.
Scientists at the University of Sheffield asked two groups of patients with and without the disease to provide details of their drinking habits.
They found that patients who had drunk alcohol most frequently experienced less joint pain and swelling.
Experts say this should not be taken as a green light for drinking more.
In the study, 873 patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) were compared to 1,004 people who did not have it.
Both groups were asked how often they had drunk alcohol in the month running up to the start of the study.
Patients completed a detailed questionnaire, had X-rays and blood tests, and a nurse examined their joints.
'Less damage'Dr James Maxwell, consultant rheumatologist and lead author of the study, explained the findings.
"We found that patients who had drunk alcohol most frequently had symptoms that were less severe than those who had never drunk alcohol or only drank it infrequently."
X-rays showed there was less damage to their joints, blood tests showed lower levels of inflammation, and there was less joint pain, swelling and disability in those patients, the researchers found.
They say they do not yet understand why drinking alcohol should reduce the severity of RA, and people's susceptibility to developing it.
Dr Maxwell said: "There is some evidence to show that alcohol suppresses the activity of the immune system, and that this may influence the pathways by which RA develops.
"Once someone has developed RA, it's possible that the anti-inflammatory and analgesic effects of alcohol may play a role in reducing the severity of symptoms," he added.
The authors say that further research is needed to confirm the results of the study and to investigate how and why alcohol has an effect on rheumatoid arthritis.
Risk and rewardsPrevious studies have shown that alcohol may reduce the risk of developing the disease in the first place.
Similarly, in the current study non-drinkers were four times more likely to develop RA than people who drank alcohol on more than 10 days a month.
A spokeswoman for Arthritis Research UK, which co-funded the research, said: "We would not want people with RA to take this research to mean that they should go out and start drinking alcohol frequently and in large amounts as this could be detrimental to their health."
She said some RA treatments, like the immunosuppressant drug methotrexate, could damage the liver when taken with large amounts of alcohol.
The patients in the study did not drink more than the recommended limit of 10 units of alcohol a week.
Facebook data harvester speaks out
The torrent is attracting hundreds of downloadsThe man who harvested and published the personal details of 100m Facebook users has spoken out about his motives.
Ron Bowes, a Canadian security consultant, used a piece of code to scan Facebook profiles, collecting data not hidden by users' privacy settings.
The list, which contains the URL of every searchable Facebook user's profile, name and unique ID, has been shared as a downloadable file.
Mr Bowes told BBC News that he did it as part of his work on a security tool.
"I'm a developer for the Nmap Security Scanner and one of our recent tools is called Ncrack," he said.
"It is designed to test password policies of organisations by using brute force attacks; in other words, guessing every username and password combination."
By downloading the data from Facebook, and compiling a user's first initial and surname, he was able to make a list of the most common probable usernames to use in the tool.
The three most common names, he found, were jsmith, ssmith and skhan.
In theory, researchers could then combine this list with a catalogue of the most commonly used passwords to test the security of sites. Similar techniques could be used by criminals for more nefarious means.
Mr Bowes said his original plan was to "collect a good list of human names that could be used for these tests".
"Once I had the data, though, I realised that it could be of interest to the community if I released it, so I did," he added.
Mr Bowes confirmed that all the data he harvested was already publicly available but acknowledged that if anyone now changed their privacy settings, their information would still be accessible.
"If 100,000 Facebook users decide that they no longer want to be in Facebook's directory, I would still have their name and URL but it would no longer, technically, be public," he said.
Mr Bowes said that collecting the data was in no way irresponsible and likened it to a telephone directory.
"All I've done is compile public information into a nice format for statistical analysis," he said
Simon Davies from the watchdog Privacy International told BBC News it was an "ethical attack" and that more personal information had not been included in the trawl.
"This is a reputational and business issue for Facebook, for now," he said
"They can continue to ride the risk and hope nothing cataclysmic occurs, but I would argue that Facebook has a special responsibility to go beyond doing the bare minimum," he added.
Snowball effectMr Bowes' file has spread rapidly across the net.
On the Pirate Bay, the world's biggest file-sharing website, the list was being distributed and downloaded by thousands of users.
Facebook hit its 500m user in mid June 2010One user said that the list showed "why people need to read the privacy agreements and everything they click through".
In a statement to BBC News, Facebook confirmed that the information in the list was already freely available online.
"No private data is available or has been compromised," the statement added.
That view is shared by Mr Bowes, who added that harvesting this data highlighted the possible risks users put themselves in.
"I am of the belief that, if I can do something then there are about 1,000 bad guys that can do it too.
"For that reason, I believe in open disclosure of issues like this, especially when there's minimal potential for anybody to get hurt.
"Since this is already public information, I see very little harm in disclosing it."
Digital trendsHowever, he said, it also highlighted a new trend that was emerging in the digital age.
"With traditional paper media, it wasn't possible to compile 170 million records in a searchable format and distribute it, but now we can," he said.
"Having the name of one person means nothing, and having the name of a hundred people means nothing; it isn't statistically significant.
"But when you start scaling to 170 million, statistical data emerges that we have never seen in the past."
A spokesperson for Facebook said the list was "similar to the white pages of the phone book.
"This is the information available to enable people to find each other, which is the reason people join Facebook."
"If someone does not want to be found, we also offer a number of controls to enable people not to appear in search on Facebook, in search engines, or share any information with applications."
Earlier this year there was a storm of protest from users of the site over the complexity of Facebook's privacy settings. As a result, the site rolled out simplified privacy controls.
Facebook has a default setting for privacy that makes some user information publicly available. People have to make a conscious choice to opt-out of the defaults.
Call to check on mobile network security
The attack project aims to reveal the weaknesses in mobile securityMobile phone users are being encouraged to find out if operators are doing enough to keep their calls secret.
Security researchers have released tools that, they say, make it easy to see what security systems operators use to stop eavesdropping.
The researchers want to expose those operators that have not updated security systems to prevent others listening in.
The tools are based on an attack first demonstrated in late 2009.
"We do want people to go out and study how secure these networks are and to put pressure on the operators to improve," said Dr Karsten Nohl, the lead security researcher behind the project.
Dr Nohl gave a presentation about the tools, called Airprobe, and how to use them at the Black Hat hacker conference held in Las Vegas from 28-29 July.
"We've built tools that interface with cellular telephone communications," he said.
Dr Nohl said he, his colleagues and a few dozen others have found a way to shrink the amount of storage needed to hold a complete list of the keys and speed up the way to find the one that unscrambles a conversation.
Without these innovations the call cracking project would have got nowhere, said Dr Nohl.
"Just generating the key table would have taken 100,000 computer years and storing it would have taken 100 petabytes," he said.
Dr Nohl and his colleagues have squeezed the table into a format only two terabytes in size and produced algorithms that can look through it and find the right key in minutes.
Defeating such an attack would be easy for operators, if they have installed an appropriate software update, said Dr Nohl.
"We want to enable users to test whether their operator has installed the patch," he said. "If not they should call them up or send a letter."
Little evidenceThe tools being shown off at Black Hat build on work done in late 2009 to generate the table of keys.
"What we are seeing is mobile phone hacking moving from an obscure sub-culture into a mainstream hacking movement," said Nigel Stanley, a mobile security analyst from Bloor Research.
The Black Hat conference is all about practical attacks on secure systems"When GSM security was originally designed call fraud was the issue, as was a concern that network suppliers would steal each other's customers," said Mr Stanley. "The thought that amateur hackers could break the code would have been laughable back then. Now it's a reality."
Commenting on the work, mobile phone industry body the GSM Association said: "Since 2007 reports of an imminent GSM eavesdropping capability by hacking groups have been common and operators have been monitoring this for some time."
The technical challenges of eavesdropping remained "considerable", said the GSMA.
"We have seen very little evidence that the hackers are able to overcome them," it added. It said that operators could quite easily change the way that calls were set up and handled in their networks to thwart eavesdropping.
It concluded: "GSMA remains convinced that the practical risk to customers is very low and spreading fear and panic amongst mobile users is inappropriate and regrettable."
நட்பு-1 !!
அழுதவுடன் அரவணைக்கும்
அன்னையிடம் ஆரம்பிக்கும்
அந்த அழகிய நட்பு !!!
ஆள் கொஞ்சம் வளர்ந்திடவே
ஆடாத ஆட்டம் ஆட
ஆள்சேர்த்து ஆர்பரிக்கும்
ஆண்களின் நட்பு !!!
இவன் வீட்டு சாப்பாடு
இனம் விட்டு இடம் மாறி
இளம் சிட்டாய் இவ்வுலகையே
இரண்டக்கிடுமே இந்த நட்பு !!!
ஈயாய் ஒற்றிக்கொள்வோம்
ஈருயிராய் வாழ்ந்திடுவோம்
உள்ளதெல்லாம் செலவழிப்போம்
ஊரு ஊராய் சுற்றிடுவோம் !!!
எந்த ஜாதியும் அறியமாட்டோம்
ஏழை ஏக்கமமும் உணரமாட்டோம்
ஐந்து விரலாய் உதவிக்கொள்வோம்
ஒன்றாய் தட்டில் உணவு கொள்வோம் !!!
ஓரிடத்தில் இல்லா விட்டாலும்
ஓருயிராய் நினைவு கொள்வோம்
ஓளவை வயது வரை ஒற்றுமையாய்
உலகை அளப்போம் !!!!
நட்பு-2 !!
நட்பு
புரியாத நட்புக்கு அருகில் இருந்தும் "பயனில்லை",
புரிந்து கொண்ட நட்புக்கு பிரிவு ஒன்றும் "தூரமில்லை".
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