NZ cows produce own skimmed milk

Experts at a biotechnology company in New Zealand have discovered that some cows have a gene giving them a natural ability to produce skimmed milk.

The finding could be used to develop a dairy herd that produces low-fat milk, Chemistry & Industry magazine reports.

A cow with the "skimmed milk" gene was identified in 2001, and the team have since been able to breed calves that also produce the low-fat variety.

They say it could have a significant impact on the dairy industry.

The original cow - called Marge - produces milk that is very low in saturated fats, and so should be high in healthier polyunsaturates and monounsaturated fats.

Milk with this composition could also be used to make more spreadable butter.

Skimmed milk is currently made by removing much of the fatty cream contained in whole fat milk.

About 25% of milk sold in the UK today is full-fat. The rest is skimmed or semi-skimmed (skimmed milk with some fat added back).

Marge was discovered during a screening of milk compositions across New Zealand's four million cattle, carried out by biotech firm ViaLactia.

The low-fat gene then emerged in some of her calves, raising the possibility of developing commercial herds producing natural skimmed milk.

Potential impact

"When we found her daughters had the gene, that was the eureka moment, but the true holy grail will be to produce a sire with the gene," ViaLactia's chief scientist Russell Snell told New Zealand's Dominion Post newspaper.

High levels of saturated fats in people's diets - usually from a whole range of different sources - have been linked to an increased risk of heart disease and stroke. However, the dairy industry points out that whole milk as part of a balanced diet is not harmful.

Some experts express concern that continued demand for low fat dairy products could lead to a situation where excess fat separated from milk is wasted.

Ed Komorowski, technical director for Dairy UK, said that commercial dairy herds might suit some dairy firms but not others.

"By having cows producing skimmed milk, if you are a dairy company that only really wants skimmed milk, then you might want to get it straight from the cow, without having to separate the [cream out of the milk] and sell on the surplus," he told BBC News.

"The other side of that coin is that there are plenty of companies that will separate the cream to use in other products."

Mr Komorowski speculated that if, in future, whole milk could be made to contain unsaturated fats, it might draw some consumers back to buying this variety.

A typical pint of whole milk contains 3.5% saturated fat, a pint of semi-skimmed contains 1.7% and skimmed milk has 0.1% saturated fat content.

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iTunes 7.2 supports DRM-free 'iTunes Plus' music

An update to Apple’s iTunes software is available for download from Apple’s Web site and through the Software Update system preference. The new version, 7.2, adds support for previewing, purchasing and downloading DRM-free music through the iTunes Store.

"We have always believed that music should be accessible and DRM-free," Chris Bell, Apple's director of worldwide marketing for iTunes, told Macworld. "This is the right direction for the future."

Apple is calling the new music “iTunes Plus,” and plans to offer it alongside the FairPlay-encrypted AAC files it has offered for some time through the iTunes Store. “iTunes Plus” files cost a bit more — $1.29 per track, versus the $0.99 per track for protected files — but have been encoded at a higher bit rate, 256Kbps AAC, instead of 128Kbps AAC, which should yield better audio fidelity.

There are several links to iTunes Plus when you go to the store. Apple is also offering a one-click upgrade for all of your EMI purchased DRM songs. If you choose to upgrade, iTunes gives you the choice to save the original songs on the desktop or delete them from your computer.

"We believe iTunes plus is the future so we made it very simple to upgrade," said Bell.

Apple first announsend in early April plans to start offering songs for sale through the iTunes Store that don’t use Digital Rights Management (DRM) technology. The company made the announcement with music publisher EMI, and said that all of EMI’s catalog of music and music videos would be available for download sans DRM by the end of May. With the introduction of iTunes 7.2 this week, Apple is set to do just that.

During the April announcement Apple CEO Steve Jobs said that EMI is only the first major label to join with Apple to offer DRM-free music. Jobs predicts that by the end of 2007, more than half the songs on the iTunes Store will be DRM-free.

Bell reiterated Jobs' timeframe and added that "Indie labels are already embracing iTunes Plus and they will be on soon."

Spam flows despite high-profile arrest

By ANICK JESDANUN, AP Internet Writer

NEW YORK - Junk e-mail continued to land in mailboxes around the world Thursday, despite the arrest a day earlier of a man described as one of the world's most prolific spammers.

Even if Robert Alan Soloway is ultimately convicted and his operations shuttered, spam experts say dozens are in line to fill the void.

"In the short term, the effect it's going to have is more symbolic more than anything else," said John Levine, co-author of "Fighting Spam for Dummies." "Soloway is a large spammer, but hardly the only large spammer."

Levine said Soloway was a good target because he operates in the United States and has taken few steps to cover his tracks.

Soloway, 27, was once on a top 10 list of spammers kept by The Spamhaus Project, an international anti-spam organization. Others have since topped him, mostly based in Russia and other countries out of reach of U.S. or European law.

But Soloway remains on a Spamhaus list of about 135 spammers deemed responsible for as much as 80 percent of all junk e-mail, and one Spamhaus official considers him in the top 20.

"Most of the Russian gangs seem to have a lot more freshly hijacked computers and are able to deliver much more spam into people's inboxes," said Vincent Hanna, a European investigator for Spamhaus. "The stuff that Robert Soloway had under this control, let's call it `second grade.'"

Soloway was arrested Wednesday on charges of mail fraud, wire fraud, e-mail fraud, aggravated identity theft and money laundering. Prosecutors say Soloway has sent millions of junk e-mails since 2003 and continued even after Microsoft Corp. won a $7 million civil judgment against him in 2005 and the operator of a small Internet service provider in Oklahoma won a $10 million judgment.

Soloway could face decades in prison, though prosecutors said they have not calculated what sentence range he might face.

Like most spammers these days, authorities say, Soloway sent out unsolicited bulk e-mails using networks of compromised computers called "zombies." These are generally home computers whose owners typically have no idea that their machines have been infected with viruses or other malicious programs; service providers can't easily block messages from zombies because they are mixed in with legitimate messages.

What set Soloway apart was his focus on spam designed to sell tools and services for companies and organizations to send their own junk e-mail, said Patrick Peterson, vice president of technology at anti-spam vendor IronPort Systems Inc.

Other types of spam were largely unaffected by the arrest. One Gmail account collected messages Thursday promising deals on Viagra and other medicines, while an AOL account drew an offer for two large, mouthwatering pizzas.

IronPort said it saw no notable drop in spam volume, with 70 billion messages in a 24-hour period, unchanged from two weeks earlier. The company said spam has doubled from about 36 billion a day last May.

Anne Mitchell, who runs the anti-spam consultancy Institute for Spam and Internet Public Policy, said an individual user who happens to be on Soloway's list might see a big drop, but the collective impact is negligible.

"It's not that different from the mafia," she said. "Many times the feds grab a high-ranking don but the mafia didn't go away. Someone's going to step up and fill his void."

Nonetheless, anti-spam experts lauded the arrest, calling it an encouraging sign that authorities are taking spam seriously. Compared with civil lawsuits that have led to multimillion dollar judgments, prosecutions have been rare.

"Criminal prosecutions are absolutely necessary," said Richi Jennings, lead analyst for e-mail security with Ferris Research. "It adds a whole new level of fear to the lives of these spammers."

Joseph Smith, 43, a Web designer in Greensboro, N.C., said he couldn't say for sure the arrest resulted in a decrease in spam Thursday, but he was hopeful.

"I can see the Net becoming a little more secure now and becoming a more enjoyable experience," he said.

Microsoft spokesman Lou Gellos said the arrest not only removes Soloway from spamming "but it throws caution to others that are doing it as well. There's hope that this causes a ripple, if not a wave."

At Wednesday's news conference in Seattle announcing the arrest, U.S. Attorney Jeff Sullivan acknowledged that "others sometimes take their place, but we want it to be a deterrent."

Google Launches Gears Open Source Project to Bring Offline Capabilities to Web Applications

At Google Developer Day, New Browser Extension Provided to Developer Community

SYDNEY, Australia (May 31, 2007) -- Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) today announced at Google Developer Day 2007 that it is providing developers with Google Gears™, an open source technology for creating offline web applications. This new browser extension is being made available in its early stages so that everyone can test its capabilities and limitations and help improve upon it. The long-term hope is that Google Gears can help the industry as a whole move toward a single standard for offline capabilities that all developers can use.

Google Gears marks an important step in the evolution of web applications because it addresses a major user concern: availability of data and applications when there’s no Internet connection available, or when a connection is slow or unreliable. As application developers and users alike want to do more on the web—whether it’s email or CRM or photo editing—enhancements that make the browser environment itself more powerful are increasingly important.

"With Google Gears we're tackling a key limitation of the browser in order to make it a stronger platform for deploying all types of applications and enabling a better user experience in the cloud," said Eric Schmidt, Chief Executive Officer of Google. "We believe strongly in the power of the community to stretch this new technology to the limits of what’s possible and ultimately emerge with an open standard that benefits everyone."

Google is offering Google Gears as a free, fully open source technology in order to help every web application, not just Google applications. As a first example of what is possible, the Google Reader™ feed reader (http://reader.google.com) is available today with Gears-enabled offline capabilities.

Industry support
Google will be working closely with all members of the web community to converge upon a standard so developers have one consistent API for offline functionality.

"We're very excited to be collaborating with Google to move the industry forward to a standard cross-platform, cross-browser local storage capability," said Kevin Lynch, senior vice president and chief software architect at Adobe. "The Gears API will also be available in Apollo, which enables web applications to run on the desktop, providing developers with consistent offline and local database solutions."

"This announcement is a significant step forward for web applications," said Brendan Eich, CTO at Mozilla Corporation. "We're pleased to see Google working with open source and open standards bodies on offline web applications."

"Opera and Google share the common goal of making Web applications richer and more robust," said Håkon Wium Lie, CTO, Opera Software. "Developers have long desired the functionality and flexibility Google Gears can offer browsers. Because Opera has always prioritized giving our users what they want, we're excited to work with Google to extend the reach and power of Web applications."

Another tool in the application development toolbox
Google Gears builds on the web's existing programming model by introducing new JavaScript APIs for sophisticated data storage, application caching, and multi-threading features. With these APIs, developers can bring offline capabilities to even their most complex web applications. Google Gears works with all major browsers on all major platforms: Windows, Mac and Linux.

Google Gears is available now at http://gears.google.com.

Children 'meet net friends often'

Many children are meeting up with people they first encountered on the internet - and their parents know nothing about it, a study claims.

Web security firm Garlik surveyed hundreds of eight to 15-year-olds and found 20% have met an online friend in person - and one-in-20 do so regularly.

Just 7% of parents were aware of their child's behaviour, the study suggested.

Garlik, which advises people about data protection on the web, said youngsters were putting themselves in danger.

'Wake-up call'

The firm polled 500 young people about their online habits - and 500 parents were asked about their attitudes.

It found that 40% of children regularly visit websites that are specifically prohibited by their parents and many give out sensitive information without parental consent.

Details divulged include full name (30%), home address (12%), school details (46%) and family photos (9%).

One in 10 admitted to being cyber-bullied - but only half said they had spoken to their parents about the ordeal.

Despite 90% of parents saying they monitored their offspring's internet usage, more than half of the youngsters admitted to surfing the internet when their parents did not know.

Garlik boss Tom Ilube labelled the research a "shocking wake-up call" to British parents.

"The web is a wonderful place to explore - but young people continue to make themselves vulnerable by not applying the same caution online as they would in person."

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The findings reveal that sustainability – environmental and social – is a key concern for urban

Philips’ LED innovation and range of energy efficient lighting solutions to improve the quality of cities

Amsterdam, The Netherlands – Royal Philips Electronics (NYSE:PHG, AEX:PHI) today unveiled the results of its city.people.light2007 research, carried out with leading architects, lighting designers and urban planners. The findings reveal that sustainability – environmental and social – is a key concern for urban life and lighting in the coming decade, and needs to be addressed to ensure sustainable cities as well as to respond to climate change. At the City.People.Light Forum, which takes place on May 24 in Rotterdam, Philips will demonstrate that the development of energy efficient lighting solutions can go hand in hand with the development of social sustainable lighting solutions to improve safety and well being in urban environments.

Research into urban life and the role of city lighting has never been more important. A century ago less than 10% of the world’s population lived in cities. Today, the figure is over 50% and by 2050, the percentage is expected to be over 75%. Many of these city dwellers will live in mega-cities in Asia and South America. Cities such as Shanghai (with a population of over 18 million) are already more populous than many European countries.

Sustainable lighting solutions As a world leader in lighting, Philips is at the forefront of energy efficient urban lighting solutions that enable cities to balance social and environmental sustainability. In conventional lighting, Philips’ CosmoPolis street lighting cuts energy consumption by 50%, while it also improves the quality of light, producing a greater feeling of security and well-being. And this enhanced sense of security can lead to further indirect energy savings. In the new area of solid-state lighting Philips is also leading with sustainable innovations. Solid-state lighting increasingly allows city authorities to combine social sustainable lighting plans with drastically reduced energy and maintenance costs. The symbolic Bosphorus Bridge linking Asia and Europe has recently been illuminated using Philips’ LEDs and luminaires. The installation creates a memorable, elegant effect and consumes 50% less energy than previously required. Furthermore, LEDs are ideal to significantly reduce light pollution and can be integrated in the design for a more natural look and feel. Both aspects were addressed in the research as major concerns going forward.
About Royal Philips Electronics Royal Philips Electronics of the Netherlands (NYSE: PHG, AEX: PHI) is a global leader in healthcare, lifestyle and technology, delivering products, services and solutions through the brand promise of “sense and simplicity”. Headquartered in the Netherlands, Philips employs approximately 124,300 employees in more than 60 countries worldwide. With sales of EUR 27.0 billion in 2006, the company is a market leader in medical diagnostic imaging and patient monitoring systems, energy efficient lighting solutions, personal care and home appliances, as well as consumer electronics. News from Philips is located at www.philips.com/newscenter. link