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This week in European sciences -- week 14|2004 |
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Overview
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De Standaard Discloses Unprotected W-Lan Networks In a series of articles, De Standaard reports (April 1, 2004*) on how some hospitals neglect to secure the wireless entry to their internal computer network. With the help of a fifteen year old computer crack and his laptop, Kim De Rijck discovered how the computer networks of several hospitals are so poorly secured, that outsiders can relatively easy access the network and find their way to information about the patients. Passwords and other simple forms of security measures IT-administrators often rely on, appear to be easily bypassed. Hospital network administrators seem not to be aware of the problem, or do not take it very seriously. Kits for wireless network or internet access are mostly sold with the security features turned off. If the unsuspecting buyer (company, hospital or private person) installs it out of the box without much further ado, the security stays turned off, and anybody who comes near the building with a wireless computer can access the network and the connected computers. Moreover, in many large organisations, members of staff install wireless kits on their own initiative, often without telling the central IT-service. If the installation is unsecured, this opens the whole network for hackers, without anybody being aware of the problem. Meanwile, many young people (they call themselvers 'wardrivers') have made it their hobby to scan everywhere for unsecured wireless networks and put them on maps on the internet, while nobody is checking what they do with it. With more and more hospitals moving towards detailed electronic patient records, a weak security of wireless systems is a problem. Medical information can easily be misused by insurance companies and employers. The publication
in De Standaard led to a discussion on the issue in the Belgian federal
Senate the next day (April
2, 2004), where the Minister of Health, Rudy Demotte, promised to
create a special working group to look further into the problem. |
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De
Standaard * The links only work on the www.euroscience.net website. |
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Newcomers in European Research What is European
science? Almost everyone, who asks that question, thinks about science
in France, Germany and the UK. But the EU is getting bigger. In May, a
lot of Eastern countries will join the EU. In die Zeit (April
1, 2004), Hans Schuh describes his impressions from a trip through
the forthcoming EU countries and compares science in Estonia, Poland and
Czechia. His conclusions: Science in Estonia is the leader among the new
members. The government invested a lot of money into research structures
and equipment, despite the poverty of the Estonian people. Science in
Poland and Czechia, the author states, is governed by opposites. On the
one hand there are a few insituts with Western standard, on the other
hand: a lot of universities with growing numbers of students and bad scientific
reputation. |
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Die
Zeit |
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What are
the basic essentials which life requires? One of the simplest bacteria
needs about 500 genes for growing, metabolism and dividing. "But
how many building blocks are needed to make the most basic living organisms,"
ask David Adam and Ian Samle in The Guardian (April
1, 2004). Scientists systematically knock out genes, at the moment
in bacteria, "to find a point at which life becomes impossible."
According to estimates fewer than 300 genes are required to support life.
The researcher's vision: "We sit down at a computer and design the
organism we want just by ordering in the parts." Another approach
follows the prospect to create life from scratch. At present, simple viruses
have been created, for instance, by Craig Venter's group at the Institute
for Biological Energy Alternatives. But viruses aren't living organisms.
And it seems that life is too complex to create from scratch, as a scientist
said: "by shuffling things around that exist alrady you could get
something with differnt properties", but nothing absolutely new. |
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The
Guardian |
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Outline of a European Science Debate Christian
Schwägerl, science correspondent of FAZ, is glad (March
31, 2004) that actually the EU mega-bureaucracy recognizes that innovation
and enthusiasm for science might not be prescribed but fostered on a sound
societal basis. In Genua, Italy, the EU commission held a conference that
showed the outline for a European science debate. The questions tackled
weren't heard before on a EU level, such as "Is our belief in progress
appropriate? Is the reductionistic approach to understand life rigth?
How is the relation between scientific progress and democracy?" For
instance, a philosopher and a biologist stressed that progress in biosciences
should have a social link, for instance, by supporting the solidarity
among people and the development of third world countries. |
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Frankfurter
Allgemeine Zeitung |
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Lake Hornborga
in Western Sweden attracts huge numbers of devoted bird watchers and curious
tourists every spring, when migratory cranes stopover there on their migration
from Southern Europe to their breeding grounds further up North. Peter
Sandberg reports in Dagens Nyheter (March
31, 2004) from the town of Skara, where the hopes are that up to 200,000
visitors will show up this year in order to enjoy the displays of the
cranes. |
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Dagens
Nyheter |
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It shows that even a good idea and a respectable will, if overstressed, may lead to a questionable outcome: In the cover story of Der Spiegel (March 29, 2004) Frank Dohmen and Frank Hornig report on the German controversy on regenerative energies, especially wind mills, that split environmentalist, industry, if not the whole society. Firstly welcomed as a renewable energy source, wind mills are now in critic because there are simply more and more in the fields: About 15,000 of them are installed in Germany by the year 2003. Their overall electrical power sums more than Denmark, Spain and the U.S. together. As the wind mills have a planning priority outside villages, local citizen's interest groups against wind energy form all over the place. The authors stress also one more important issue: The problem of the utilities to feed the electricity from wind farms into their network - the grid infrastructure is poor at the sites where the wind generators are built. What weights more is that the amount of wind energy yield is almost unforeseeable and the utilities have to assure a stable grid by expensive backup generators. E-stonias Leap Forward Many Estonians
are proud to see the leading "E" in their country's name an
alliteration for electronics, or synonym for the Internet era. Jan Puhl
explains in Der Spiegel (March
29, 2004) why they do so. In the mid of the 90s (some years after
Soviet occupation ended) the Estonian government started a programme dedicated
to bring the country to the forefront of IT development and business.
Now, every citizen has a guaranteed free access to the Internet (Estonia
has 1.4 million inhabitants). 90 percent of financial transactions are
done online. Almost all governmental processes are open to the public
via the Web. This brings the issue of private policy to the agenda, but
seemingly people don't care much about it. For instance, legal suits and
punishments are also public, including personal data. What the author
didn't mention are the downsides of the boosting economy: The formation
of a new proletariate by the poor, mostly Russian inhabitants (roughly
30 percent) and, for instance, the increase in HIV/AIDS cases as recently
stressed by the World Health Organization. |
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Der
Spiegel |
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Dietary Advice Becomes More Complex Scandinavians are usually perceived to be robust and healthy. This perception, however, doesn't seem to be quite right: compared to other EU countries, Swedes have the largest proportion of their workforce on short- and long-term sick leave. This might have to do with a very generous welfare system, but there are also signs that public health simply isn't as good as it should be. In the wake of this insight attitudes towards some alleged sources of public health problems has rather belatedly become less simplistic. Gunilla Eldh continues in this spirit the Dagens Nyheter's recent emphasis on new research on food and dieting (March 28, 2004). Dietary advice has in the past few years become more complex and balanced. A general anti-fat stance has been replaced even in Sweden by an attitude that distinguishes "good", unsaturated from "bad", saturated fats. The author summarizes the positive effects of unsaturated vegetable and fish fats and blames the traditional Swedish diet, which is rich in saturated fats, for problems such as obesity and coronary artery disease. Trendy Swedish Research Strategies A report
just published by a project called "Teknisk Framsyn" (Technological Foresight)
leads Karin Bojs to contemplate about attempts to predict and steer technological
development in Dagens Nyheter (March
28, 2004). The report has identified a number of areas, which are
supposedly most promising for the economic and scientific development
of Sweden. Karin Bojs isn't surprised about the suggested priorities:
stem cell research, biomedical technology, advanced weapons, steel and
forestry. In these "prophecies" Bojs simply recognizes fields that are
trendy now and the concerns of the organisations that exert power over
Swedish science. |
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Dagens
Nyheter |
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Intelligent Systems Ensure Higher Traffic Safety Recently,
the Swedish government has formulated a "null vision" concerning traffic
safety: all possible efforts should be made so that there will be no more
fatal accidents on Swedish roads. Håkan Borgström now reports about new
developments in car safety research in Svenska Dagbladet (March
28, 2004). More and more so-called "intelligent systems" are built
into cars. These systems are designed to improve driving performance,
but also supply the driver with information in critical situations. For
example, car lights have become a focus of new developments. There are
designs, where the lights follow the movements of the steering wheel,
adapt their spread to the type of road or their intensity to the weather
situation. Or cameras are used to give the driver view of the blind spot
when using the rear view mirror. Researchers also try to use information
gained from accidents. Chalmers Technical University in Gothenburg has
set up a "rapid response unit" of researchers that also receives emergency
calls. These units then record as much technical information as possible
at the scene of an accident. This information is then used in computer
simulations and involved persons are interviewed by psychologists about
their perceptions of the course of events leading to the accident. Astrid
Linder, traffic safety researcher now at Monash University in Australia,
emphasises that such research can lead to improved and new warning systems,
but that it's also important to find out how much information a driver
can actually use. She mentions a system developed by BMW and Bosch that
monitors the state of traffic and the driver and decides when the driver
shouldn't be distracted by telephone calls or radio. |
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Svenska
Dagbladet |
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Donald Kennedy
writes in an editorial of Science magazine (March
25, 2004*) about the way intelligence analyzes its issues in comparison
to scientists. Kennedy thinks they are using quite the same methods to
obtain their results, except the last step. Science reports get their
qualification by a peer-review process which also discloses the qualifications
and limitations on scientific conclusions. These "are usually added
to the text at the insistence of reviewers, rather than removed",
writes Kennedy. Whereas "the intelligence agencies may well have
done some real science - until they got to the political level and encountered
reverse peer review." That means, the conclusions are filtered politically
as, for instance, done in the case of weapons of mass destruction in the
Iraq. |
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Science
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