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IBM's supercomputer Watson will be used to make decisions about cancer care in 14 hospitals in the US and Canada, it has been announced. Using computers to trawl through vast amounts of medical data speeds up the diagnosis process. (excerpt) It also recently teamed up with IBM to allow the software that helps gather health data from iPhones to be used by Watson.

Last night over the Pacific Ocean, somewhere South of the Russian peninsula Kamchatka I experienced the creepiest thing so far in my flying career. After about 5 hours in flight we left Japan long time behind us and were cruising at a comfortable 34.000ft with about 4,5 hours to go towards Alaska. We heard via the radio about earthquakes in Iceland, Chile and San Francisco, and since there were a few volcanos on our route that might or might not be going off during our flight, we double checked with dispatch if there was any new activity on our route...

Freetown (AFP) - Alarm soared in west Africa Monday over the deadliest Ebola virus outbreak yet, with an American doctor and a missionary contracting the disease in Liberia and the death of the first victim from Sierra Leone's capital Freetown. Samaritan's Purse, a Christian charity, said that its physician Kent Brantly was in stable condition and had been isolated at the group's Ebola treatment center at the ELWA hospital in the Liberian capital Monrovia. His symptoms included intermittent fever and body aches. Nancy Writebol, a missionary with the SIM Christian charity that runs the hospital, was also in stable condition...

nuqneH! (hello) Today is a good day to post! Please forgive the vanity, but I just found this and must report it to my fellow Star Trek fans here. I know this is a complete waste of time, but everything has been so serious lately -- possible World War and all -- I thought we needed a break. qaStaH nuq? (what's happening?), you ask. The Bing Translator at http://www.bing.com/translator can translate English into Klingon! The translator was introduced when the last Star Trek movie was released, in partnership with the Klingon Language Institute. buy' ngop! (that's great news!) Go over...

Link only due to the subject of the article.

Hugh Pickens writes "On June 20 District Court Judge Philip Pro found that Kentucky resident Wayne Hoehn was protected by fair use in posting a Las Vegas Review-Journal column on a sports website. Now Hoehn's attorneys have submitted a $34,000 bill and asked that Judge Pro require Righthaven to pay it. The $34,000 could be just the tip of the iceberg for Righthaven, should the Democratic Underground prevail in what likely will be a far larger fee demand."

"TSA employees at Logan International Airport believe they have identified a cancer cluster in their ranks, according to documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act and released by the Electronic Privacy Information Center. They have requested dosimetry to counter 'TSA's improperly non-monitored radiation threat.' So far, at least, they have not received it."