News Briefs

Store clerk robbed twice in one evening

Tommy Gutierrez is not what you would call lucky. The 31-year-old convenience store clerk was working last Tuesday evening when an armed robber entered the store and demanded money. A little more than two hours later, Gutierrez was robbed again, this time by a different armed robber. Gutierrez said that he gave the robbers the money and things they demanded and nobody was hurt. The event has not fazed Gutierrez, who says that he will not quit his job because he has a family to support.

Telepathic DNA

A recent study published in “ACS’s Journal of Physical Chemistry B” shows that DNA molecules have the ability to recognize similar sequences from a distance and congregate together. Modern science does not have the ability to describe this behavior. The process happens without the aid of chemical indicators or differences in electric potential between the molecules. “Amazingly, the forces responsible for the sequence recognition can reach across more than one nanometer of water separating the surfaces of the nearest neighbor DNA,” said the authors of the paper, Geoff S. Baldwin, Sergey Leikin, John M. Seddon, and Alexei A. Kornyshev and colleagues.

Verizon says “no” to helping Hollywood with anti-piracy fight

Verizon recently refused to help Hollywood stop online pirates that use the Verizon network. The company’s stance is two-fold, it wishes to protect its customers and its own interest. Thomas J. Tauke, executive vice president for public affairs at Verizon, said that three main ideas factored in to Verizon’s decision: the slippery slope, liability, and privacy. With the slippery slope, Tauke says, “once you start going down the path of looking at information going down the network, there are many that want you to play the role of policeman.” As far as liability is concerned Tauke says that, “when you look back at the history of copyright legislation, there has been an effort by Hollywood to pin the liability for copyright violations on the network that transmits the material.” And, as for privacy, Tauke says, “Anything we do has to balance the need of copyright protection with the desire of the customers for privacy.”