Investigators are treating the explosions as acts of vandalism, not terrorism, Shields said.

"Under the Criminal Code, it would be characterized as mischief, which is an intentional vandalism. We don't want to characterize this as terrorism. They were very isolated locations and there would seem there was no intent to hurt people," he said.

It's not all good, though. Here's a story from Philadelphia, where a subway car is criticized because people can see out the front. Because, um, because terrorist will be able to see out the front, and we all know how dangerous terrorists are:

Marcus Ruef, a national vice president with the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen, compared a train cab to an airliner cockpit and said a cab should be similarly secure. He invoked post-9/11 security concerns as a reason to provide a full cab that prevents passengers from seeing the rails and signals ahead.

"We don't think the forward view of the right-of-way should be available to whoever wants to watch ... and the conductor and the engineer should be able to talk privately," Ruef said.

Pat Nowakowski, SEPTA chief of operations, said the smaller cabs pose no security risk. "I have never heard that from a security expert," he said.

At least there was pushback against that kind of idiocy.

And from the UK:

Transport Secretary Geoff Hoon has said the government is prepared to go "quite a long way" with civil liberties to "stop terrorists killing people".

He was responding to criticism of plans for a database of mobile and web records, saying it was needed because terrorists used such communications.

By not monitoring this traffic, it would be "giving a licence to terrorists to kill people", he said.

I hope there will be similar pushback against this "choice."

Squid and their relatives have eyes that are sensitive to polarised light and to them and are known to use it to signal to one another. Their predators on the other hand, like seals or whales, don't share this ability and cannot see the squids' signals.

Most of all, the polarised iridescent light, is not affected by the chromatophores and passes through unaltered. This means that camouflaged squid can have entire visual conversations while remaining invisible to passing predators. In the world of squid, conversations carry secrets wrapped in lies.

Jon used a desktop computer attached to a GPS satellite simulator to create a fake GPS signal. Portable GPS satellite simulators can fit in the trunk of a car, and are often used for testing. They are available as commercial off-the-shelf products. You can also rent them for less than $1K a week -- peanuts to anyone thinking of hijacking a cargo truck and selling stolen goods.

In his first experiments, Jon placed his desktop computer and GPS satellite simulator in the cab of his small truck, and powered them off an inverter. The VAT used a second truck as the victim cargo truck. "With this setup," Jon said, "we were able to spoof the GPS receiver from about 30 feet away. If our equipment could broadcast a stronger signal, or if we had purchased stronger signal amplifiers, we certainly could have spoofed over a greater distance."

During later experiments, Jon and the VAT were able to easily achieve much greater GPS spoofing ranges. They spoofed GPS signals at ranges over three quarters of a mile. "The farthest distance we achieved was 4586 feet, at Los Alamos," said Jon. "When you radiate an RF signal, you ideally want line of sight, but in this case we were walking around buildings and near power lines. We really had a lot of obstruction in the way. It surprised us." An attacker could drive within a half mile of the victim truck, and still override the truck's GPS signals.

Having a validated drug discovery platform is the first and most important criterion for defining a good platform company. The platform is typically comprised of a combination of technology, experienced personnel and intellectual property that can generate a stream of drug candidates. Most importantly, investing should be done only after a product of the platform demonstrates activity in clinical trials. Having a clinically validated product is not a guarantee for future success of the platform nor does it mean that the specific agent will reach the market, but it does imply that one or more of the platform’s products stand a reasonable chance of becoming a commercial drug. A validated platform may increase overall success rates, yet the odds of a particular drug candidate to make it all the way to approval are still low.

...

Exelixis is active in the ever growing market of kinase inhibitors (KIs) for the treatment of cancer, that is, drugs that block the activity of kinases in cancer cells. Cancer cells are often described as cells that are out of control: They proliferate quickly, ignore death signals, invade nearby tissues and eventually metastasize to distant organs. These disease onset and advancement are associated with processes such as cell growth, motility and blood-vessel formation, which are governed by a complex network made of kinases. Thus, blocking these processes by inhibiting the relevant kinases has emerged as one of the most attractive approaches to fighting cancer.

Together with monoclonal antibodies, kinase inhibitors represent a paradigm shift in cancer treatment from cytotoxic agents to targeted therapies, a trend that is constantly growing. Like antibodies for cancer, kinase inhibitors target tumors while sparing healthy cells and consequently lead to better activity with fewer side effects. Kinase inhibitors, however, possess several advantages over antibodies. The most evident advantage is that KIs can hit targets inside the cell while antibodies can only bind targets presented on the cell surface, so internal targets are approachable only by KIs. Another advantage is the fact that KIs can be given orally, which is a major factor in terms of patient convenience, especially given the typical long treatment duration associated with targeted therapies. Another advantage, which will be later discussed in the article, is the ability to produce KIs that hit several targets at once.

Fourth US airline to go Wi-Fi: Aircell says they have a fourth airline--after American, Delta, and Virgin America--on board for its in-flight Wi-Fi service. The aerial broadband provider's latest partner will be announced soon. Aircell's service went live in 15 American Airlines planes two weeks ago, and there's been a surprising lack of reporting from regular travelers or journalists since the big splash at the launch.

Microsoft, two universities research methods for better Wi-Fi handoff for vehicles: The researchers developed a method they call Vi-Fi, writes the Seattle Post-Intelligencer's Todd Bishop, which allows a system to maintain connections with several base stations at once, using a primary access point for traffic until a discontinuity is predicted or encountered. This allows seamless handoffs and continuous voice conversations.

Speaking of autos and Wi-Fi, concerns raised about Chrysler's in-car Wi-Fi option: Randall Stross wrote nearly two weeks ago in The New York Times about the problem of distraction. With the Internet at your fingertips, can you restrain yourself? The only problem with the humorous and accurate analysis is that millions of business travelers have 3G access via laptop cards already, so you'd think we'd already be seeing the bad effects of automotive area networks.

A Wi-Fi booster can't post availability signs on highway: The Nebraska town of Louisville has free Wi-Fi downtown, and wanted to post "Visitor Wi-Fi" on a highway sign as another amenity. The state highway department has a policy that doesn't allow the promotion of Wi-Fi, because they believe they'd be inundated. A resident who runs a local Internet firm installed his own signs on the highway; the roads department removed them; he remounted them; they were removed again. The idea of zoning and mounting a billboard apparently hasn't come to the city officials' minds (or perhaps they're prohibited).

The folks spreading misinformation about Wi-Fi health effects cause Ulster school to disable network: I can understand why non-technical folks might think that Wi-Fi has been proven to be unsafe, given the kind of information that's available on the Internet about wireless safety. While there are ongoing studies about the safety of cellular signals--and I'm convinced at this point there's no increased risk to an adult's health by using a cell phone--there is no specific and credible research linked to Wi-Fi, which broadcasts signals at a far lower level than a cell phone, most of the time in most uses.

Washington state shuts down rest-area Wi-Fi: The $3 for 15 minutes, $7 per day, or $30 per month Wi-Fi service at 28 of Washington's 42 rest areas has been turned off after a year for lack of use. Figures. The fees charged by Parsons and Road Connect aren't unreasonable for a nationally scoped plan, but are ridiculous for limited use. States should either bite the bullet and offer these service for free, partner with national roaming operators who can resell service into large networks of business travelers, or use ads to support the service. Highways in remote areas can typically pick up cell data networks, and ongoing costs should be minimal to operate such networks.

IEEE approves fast-roaming standard, 802.11r: This new standard is designed to improve the handoff of devices between base stations. This is accomplished in part by allowing base stations to communicate security and quality of service information so that a VoIP over WLAN phone can immediately reassociate without the delay of authentication and other handshaking.

Denver airport sees 7,000 connections on a single day last week due to Democratic National Convention: FreeFi released the usage figures recently to show how their service is operating. The network started with about 600 daily users when the switchover from fee to free happened 10 months ago, and now carries about 3,500 daily connections.

Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf goes free: The chain of about 700 cafes will have free Wi-Fi installed by now in all its company-owned stores (about 300).

Oddly, Nikon also announced the $500 P6000 with a built-in GPS receiver, 13.5 MP sensor, 4x zoom, and effective 6400 ISO--and a built-in Ethernet jack. Which is a very weird choice. I know Wi-Fi adds cost and reduces battery life-span, but I would think that GPS plus Wi-Fi would allow assisted GPS for faster coordinated lookups (if the Wi-Fi tapped into Skyhook's system and cached some location information), as well as offering automated uploads, and Wi-Fi positioning when GPS signals couldn't be reached.

Seems like a missed ship here.

The first session, on deception, was fascinating. It emphasised the huge range of problems, from detecting deception in interpersonal contexts such as interrogation through the effects of context and misdirection to how we might provide better trust signals to computer users.

Over the past seven years, security economics has gone from nothing to a thriving research field with over 100 active researchers. Over the next seven I believe that security psychology should do at least as well. I hope I’ll find enough odd minutes to live blog this first workshop as it happens!

[Edited to add:] See comments for live blog posts on the sessions; Bruce Schneier is also blogging this event.