Pollution-Eating Bicycles Could Help Clean Up Cities And Make Cyclists Healthier

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Want to pedal your way to work but scared of what you're breathing in? Sick of smog spewing in your face while you cycle? Bangkok-based design firm Lightfog could have the bike for you -- or at least they're planning on building a prototype soon.

Lightfog's idea for an environmentally-friendly "Air Purifier" bike incorporates an air filter into a bike's handlebars, filtering out air pollution and emissions from those messy cars and pushing clean air back to the rider. Additionally, the bike produces oxygen via a process that imitates photosynthesis, powered not by plant life but by a lithium-ion battery embedded in the bike's frame.

Lightfog

Lightfog Creative Director Silawat Virakul told to Fast Co. Design he wanted to "add more value to a bicycle by adding its ability to reduce the pollution." It's a fair point, given that urban bicyclists can suffer health risks from breathing in automobile emissions.

Common pollutants spewed by cars and trucks not only irritate lungs and eyes, but can also cause heart irregularities, according to one Canadian study published in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives. Ironically, users of some of the most environmentally friendly forms of transportation -- bus riders and bicyclists -- can also be those most likely to breathe in pollutants.

In the post-"Inconvenient Truth" era, "carbon-negative" has become a buzzword, spurring a spate of unlikely inventions: Think carbon-negative gasoline, carbon-negative bricks and even carbon-negative cement. (It reduces air local air pollution by 45 percent!)

Derek Markham of Treehugger suggests that to have a significant effect on emissions pollution, Lightfog's bikes would have to come in fleets. But with city-sponsored bicycling programs rolling out across the U.S, a carbon negative fleet in the future hardly seems impossible.

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'PayPal 14' Plea Deal Lets Hacktivists Avoid Felonies, Which Is Pretty Much The Best They Could Hope For

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WASHINGTON -- Eleven individuals charged with helping overwhelm PayPal's website in 2010 have reached a plea deal with federal prosecutors that could potentially allow them to avoid a felony conviction.

Under the terms of the deal, 11 defendants in what is known as the "PayPal 14" case pleaded guilty to both felony and misdemeanor charges during their appearances in federal court in San Jose, Calif., on Thursday, but their sentencing will be pushed back for a year, according to reporter Alexa O'Brien. If they stay out of trouble with the law, federal prosecutors will seek to drop the felony charges, and the defendants will be sentenced to probation and possibly receive credit for time served.

One of the defendant's attorneys, Stanley Cohen, who called the deal a "big win for civil disobedience," said it also requires each defendant to pay eBay $5,600 in restitution. Two other defendants pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge, and likely will be sentenced to 90 days in prison. A final defendant who was indicted earlier this year on separate charges involving attacks on credit card companies and recording industry groups was not eligible for a plea deal.

The deal ends a three-year saga that started when members of the online group Anonymous launched a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack, or a tactic of overwhelming the system by flooding it with requests, against PayPal after it cut off service to WikiLeaks. Without PayPal, it was more difficult for WikiLeaks, an organization known for publishing leaked documents, to raise money.

In terms of the number of defendants, the PayPal case is the largest brought in connection to a DDoS attack, which some activists defend as a legitimate form of protest protected by the First Amendment. While PayPal collected the IP addresses of more than 1,000 computers involved in the attack, the PayPal 14 were the only people charged. There have been several other high-profile DDoS attacks against other websites, including government sites, in the years since the PayPal attack. A DDoS attack participant in a separate federal case was sentenced to two years probation earlier this week, and forced to pay $183,000 in restitution to Koch Industries.

The 14 defendants were charged under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, which critics say is overly broad and exposes computer users to extremely harsh sentences for relatively innocuous computer crimes.

Federal prosecutors and defense attorneys had nearly reached a plea deal in the PayPal case this fall, but it was held up because not all the defendants agreed. Defendants in the case told The Huffington Post earlier this year that the case has had a severe financial and emotional impact.

Pierre Omidyar, the founder of PayPal's parent company eBay, called for leniency this week, saying they should have been charged with misdemeanors, not felonies.

A spokeswoman for the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Northern District of California did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

This is a developing story and will be updated.

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Pennsylvania Gay Marriage Ban Challenge Could Go To Trial In June

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By Daniel Kelley

HARRISBURG, Pa., Nov 22 (Reuters) - One of the first trials to challenge a state ban on gay marriage since the U.S. Supreme Court partially struck down the federal Defense of Marriage Act is likely to go to trial in June in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.

U.S. District Judge John Jones III, who earlier this month denied the state's request to dismiss the case, said he was looking at a June 2014 date for the challenge to Pennsylvania's Defense of Marriage Act.

The Pennsylvania case, Whitewood v. Wolf, was filed just weeks after the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling in June that struck down part of the federal law defining marriage as a union between one man and one woman.

"It's an important case and it will give us an opportunity to have a full airing of the record," said Mark Aronchik, a private lawyer for Pennsylvania same-sex couples who are challenging the statute.

The state had argued that the Pennsylvania court lacked the authority to hear the case and it should be dismissed, but Jones rejected that argument and noted that case law dealing with issues of equal protection has recently undergone a "sea change."

At least 36 states have "mini-DOMA" statutes, and challenges have come up in nearly all of them, according to Freedom to Marry, an advocacy group.

The Whitewood lawsuit was the first filed since the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling, but another case, filed in Michigan, is slated for trial in February.

Pennsylvania is the only state in the northeast region that does not recognize gay marriages or same-sex civil unions.

Same-sex couples have filed at least five lawsuits challenging Pennsylvania's gay marriage ban. The Whitewood case, in particular, stirred controversy among the state's political leaders after Pennsylvania Attorney General Kathleen Kane announced in July that she would not defend the state's statute.

(Editing by Barbara Goldberg and Gunna Dickson)

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Exercise Could Prevent Early Death In Heart Patients

By Morgan Jones

Fitness is important to many people, but new research hints that it might be an issue of life or death to some patients with heart disease.

This new study measured the physical fitness of patients with coronary artery disease who were followed for a number of years.

The researchers found that heart disease patients who were more physically fit had a lower risk of dying than their less fit counterparts.

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In coronary artery disease (CAD), plaque builds up in the walls of arteries responsible for supplying blood to the heart. The arteries become hard and narrow and deliver less blood and oxygen to the heart. According to the National Institutes of Health (NIH), CAD is the most common type of heart disease and the leading cause of death in the US for both men and women.

Led by Rupert Hung, a medical student at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, the new study relied on data from The FIT Project, which was executed from 1991 to 2009.

A total of 9,852 CAD patients were identified by Hung and colleagues. The patients had an average age of 61, and 69 percent were male and 31 percent were African American.

The researchers looked at whether or not the patients had undergone revascularization surgery, in which blocked arteries are opened up. The researchers also analyzed results of treadmill Stress tests to determine physical fitness levels and exercise capacity.

Exercise capacity was measured in terms of metabolic equivalents (METS), a measurement of energy use during a physical activity, achieved during the stress test. Patients were separated into groups based on these scores of less than 6 METS, 6 to 10, 10 to 12 or greater than 12 METS. A higher METS score means a greater exercise capacity, and generally, increased physical fitness.

During the follow-up period, which lasted an average of 11.6 years, the researchers measured deaths, heart attacks and revascularization surgeries among the participants. A total of 3,824 deaths, 1,880 heart attacks and 1,930 revascularizations occurred during this time.

After analyzing the data, the researchers found that the more physically fit patients faired better.

"We found that each 1 MET increase in a person's exercise capacity was associated with a 13 percent reduction in risk of death, regardless of whether they had previously had a procedure to open a blocked artery," explained another researcher on the team, John W. McEvoy, also of Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, in a news release.

In the same news release, Hung noted that this accounted for a 75 percent lower risk of death among the most fit patients compared to the least fit patients, regardless of their history of revascularization surgery.

The study authors concluded that their findings reinforce the value of exercise and fitness for both CAD patients who have had revascularization surgery and for those who have not.

The study was presented November 17 at the American Heart Association's Scientific Sessions in Dallas, Texas. It is important to note that studies presented at conferences are considered preliminary until published in a peer-reviewed journal.

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