1. Should We Vaccinate Wild Apes? - Jennifer Viegas via Discovery New — If we are to save the great apes, many believe we will have to vaccinate them from common shared diseases, like measles, mumps and rubella, as humans and great apes are coming into closer contact. Also, new research on vaccines against Ebola  — which has a 90% mortality rate in humans — could lead to wiping out that disease in the ape population, where is is now killing 1/3 of chimpanzees and gorillas, and maybe cutting off one of the sources of ebola outbreaks in human populations.

#ebola #apes #vaccination

2. Neanderthals are as Unprepared for Modernity as We Are - Kyle Munkittrick via IEET — Speaking of non-homo sapiens primates, and living in close proximity with them, Kyle Munkittrick suggests we should clone Neanderthal in order to learn more about them, and us, and he also makes the case that this would be ethical: at least as ethical as a human parent deciding to have a child, so long as we provided the Neanderthal ‘a proper foster family, strict guidelines for study, adequate privacy, and full human rights, I can see no reason cloning a Neanderthal would be unethical.’

reconstruction by Kennis and Kennis / photo by Joe McNally / via National Geographic

#neanderthal #cloning #bioethics

3. Nerve probe controls cyborg moth in flight - Anil Ananthaswamy - New Scientist — DARPA has found a way to control the flight of a moth, one equipped with a radio-controlled probe to send signals to nerves in their abdomen. The MIT researchers behind this hope to use such moths for surveillance, outfitted with tiny cameras and transmitters.

#cyborg #moths #surveillance

4. Somebody’s watching: how a simple exploit lets strangers tap into private security cameras - Katie Notopoulos via The Verge — More on the surveillance front: Console Cowboys details how to hack into Trendnet home security cameras and watch their streams. Yikes.

#hacking #securitycameras #trendnet #surveillance

5. Did Wal-Mart love RFID to death? | SmartPlanet - Matthew Malon via SmartPlanet — Wal-Mart coerced its suppliers to integrate RFID into all goods, but the revolution in supply chain just hasn’t happened, despite all the hype in the early and mid-’00s. Nowadays, it is used more in retail stores for inventory control, not across the entire supply chain.

#rfid #wal-mart #supplychain