In a case that is likely to set guidelines for the punishment of file-sharers in the future, a 26 year-old man from Sweden has escaped his court hearing with little more than a tap on the wrist. After being tracked by the IFPI and accused of making available 44 music tracks on the Internet, the man was taken to court last week. His punishment was a 2000 kronor fine – just $311.
File-sharers in the United States are used to hearing about mind-boggling fines handed down to the likes of Jammie Thomas-Rasset and Joel Tenenbaum. After significant legal wrangling, the proceedings against these individuals resulted in damages payable of $1.5m and $67,500 respectively, astonishing amounts for what were essentially petty file-sharing offenses.
Want to protect against the effects of Alzheimer’s? Learn another language. That’s the takeaway from recent brain research, which shows that bilingual people’s brains function better and for longer after developing the disease.
Psychologist Ellen Bialystok and her colleagues at York University in Toronto recently tested about 450 patients who had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. Half of these patients were bilingual, and half spoke only one language.
Artist Ed Chapman made this mosaic of Hendrix out of 5,000 Fender guitar picks. He auctioned it for £23,000 (US $37,352) to benefit cancer research. You can view a gallery of his other mosaics at his website, most of which are made from ceramic fragments.
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Pungent body odor from sweaty adult human skin is unique in the animal kingdom. Humans turn out to be particularly smelly because odors are released from nearly every part of the body while other species living on us are simultaneously emitting odors too.
Our powerful scent attracts at least two species of mosquitoes, according to a paper accepted for publication in the journal Trends in Parasitology. Understanding what it is about human odor that attracts these bugs could help prevent the spread of diseases such as malaria and yellow fever.
