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Biotech

Submission + - Evidence mounts that Darwin got it wrong (yahoo.com) 4

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: One hundred and fifty years ago, when Charles Darwin wrote "On the Origin of Species," he didn't know about DNA and genes. His "tree of life" was based on morphology — an organism's form and structure. The discovery of DNA offered scientists a means of refining the tree and of confirming Darwin's theory. However, recent attempts to re-position species on the tree based on their genes has presented extraordinary complications. Species, in fact, share DNA sequences in a nonlinear, "mosaic" pattern, twisting the tree into a bush with multiple roots and many cross-links, and presenting scientists with a conundrum.

    http://www.sciencemag.org/content/280/5364/672.summary
    http://www.sciencemag.org/content/284/5418/1305.short
    http://nar.oxfordjournals.org/content/37/4/1011
    http://www.biology-direct.com/content/2/1/30

This is old news to molecular biologist Dr. Periannan Senapathy, who, in 1994, published a book that detailed this problem and proposed a solution: parallel development of genomes leading to numerous complex life forms originating en masse. His theory attracted little attention. But, evidence is mounting that he was correct.

Three new research papers

    http://precedings.nature.com/documents/5384/version/1
    http://precedings.nature.com/documents/5385/version/1
    http://precedings.nature.com/documents/5387/version/1

by Dr. Senapathy have been published in Nature Precedings

      http://www.prweb.com/releases/theory/genome/prweb4896744.htm

Dr. Senapathy found that complex eukaryotic "split genes" can exist by chance in just milligrams of random DNA. An abundance of split genes in such a small amount of genetic material could have ignited the evolution of the eukaryotic genome. Furthermore, the mosaic patterns of simulated genomes share the same gene distribution patterns observed in living eukaryotes.

Comment Re:Let's bring everyone on the same page (Score 1) 1505

by machxor (#34538262) Attached to: Judge Declares Federal Healthcare Plan (Partly) Unconstitutional

obviously i meant mandatory if you have a car. try to comment in good faith please

But that's the point. It's your option to have a car and spend your money on the required costs that come with that.

Technically I guess I have the option to quit my job, become a bum and not have to pay for health care...
Government

Judge Declares Federal Healthcare Plan (Partly) Unconstitutional 1505

Posted by timothy from the urge-us-to-go-and-buy dept.
healeyb writes "In a surprise move, US District Judge Henry E. Hudson issued a ruling today that the universal healthcare law that was pushed through by the Obama administration is unconstitutional. Specifically, he invalidated the section of the law that requires all citizens to purchase healthcare insurance, arguing that it does not fall under the purview of Commerce Clause of the Constitution, as has been asserted by the government. The ruling represents the first major setback for President Barack Obama on an issue that will likely end up at the Supreme Court. Two other courts have shot down challenges to the law."

Comment Re:Go for it (Score 1) 1065

by machxor (#34282856) Attached to: US May Disable All Car Phones, Says Trans. Secretary

Assuming they consider the phone to be a safety device, I can't imagine that happening. A crash of any severity disables the electrical system. The battery is in the front and any metal touching the positive lead or damaging the battery sufficiently or pulling a connection loose will disable the jammer. Also, if phones were a safety device, then they'd make the jammer turn off if the car was in park or the engine was off (and maybe if the speedometer was under 10 mph as well). So having those cutoffs for the jammer fail, but the jammer still work should, with proper engineering, be functionally impossible. But, if you were in a car with a stuck ignition, stuck transmission, stuck throttle, stuck seatbelt, stuck door locks and the car wheels were spinning at 40 mph as the car teeters over a cliff with you unable to make a call to report your situation, then just maybe you'd have a point. Now, find me one case of that, and I'll concede.

You didn't see all the stuck accelerator news stories about the Toyata Prius a while back? :-)

Comment Re:Go for it (Score 2, Interesting) 1065

by machxor (#34275172) Attached to: US May Disable All Car Phones, Says Trans. Secretary

I may be wrong, but I'm pretty sure that radio jammers can't distinguish 911 calls.

That's probably true which is why this solution would have to be something more than a simple radio jammer. Turn the car into a faraday cage and then the only "tower" your phone sees is the repeater broadcasting in your car. Then the repeater allows/disallows calls based on vehicle state and destination number. I'm over simplifying things and talking out my ass here but there are solutions to do it right :-)

Comment Re:Go for it (Score 1) 1065

by machxor (#34274458) Attached to: US May Disable All Car Phones, Says Trans. Secretary

Just pull over, stop the car, and make the call. That's what I did in the "crash through the fence" incident I described.

Works great for that situation where you are in control of everything. However when you are in an accident and the car still thinks you are driving that could be a problem.

Comment Re:Go for it (Score 1) 1065

by machxor (#34274416) Attached to: US May Disable All Car Phones, Says Trans. Secretary
Even when my phone is locked I can press 9-1-1-Talk and get connected to help. Hopefully this technology would work in a similar fashion such that emergency calls were always allowed to go through. Imagine the liability law suit that would occur when someone died because they had an accident and the vehicle thought they were still in a "driving" situation and should be blocking the cell phone.
First Person Shooters (Games)

Duke Nukem 3D On Unreal Engine 3 118

Posted by Soulskill from the all-out-of-bubblegum dept.
Julefrokost writes "While we're waiting patiently on Forever, there's some real news in the Duke Nukem realm. Ars Technica has a story about a fan-made Duke 3D project on Unreal Engine 3. There's an awesome demo video up on YouTube. Created by hardcore fan Frederick 'fresch' Schreiber, we can hopefully expect to see an upgraded Duke 3D in the near future." The article also notes, "Gearbox ultimately decided to support the project, and gave Schreiber a personal, non-commercial license to Duke Nukem 3D. He can't sell the work or profit from it directly, but he can use the characters and design of the game without fear of being shut down."

Comment Why does it matter? (Score 1) 4

by machxor (#33788724) Attached to: Linux-based GPS Units?
Honestly I'm curious as to why this matters to you? Just because the device is running Linux doesn't mean that your purchasing it gives anything back to the community. My only guess is that you are assuming that because someone is using Linux on their device means they are somehow contributing to Linux which is quite simply not the case.

Comment Re:TV shows in countries other than the US ? (Score 1) 238

by machxor (#33539634) Attached to: King's <em>Dark Tower</em> Series To Be Adapted For Film, TV

How will the TV shows be handled in countries other than the US. I live in the Netherlands. We will probably get the movies in the movie theaters. I doubt the TV series will broadcast here at the same time as in the US. Usually it takes months if not years for TV shows to appear on TV here. So most likely We will see movie #1, then a long wait of nothing, see movie #2, the first TV series may (or not) start airing here. Then we get movie #3 and then after a long wait .... TV series #2. Point: it will be all out of sync. Just curious how that will be handled.

Just curious; if you go to nbc.com -> Watch Video do you see localized content (does NBC even exist in your market?) or do you see the same things I do or maybe nothing at all?

Submission + - King's "The Dark Tower" to Be Adapted to Film, TV (deadline.com)

Submitted by Kozz
Kozz writes: Universal Pictures and NBC Universal Television Entertainment have closed a deal to turn Stephen King’s mammoth novel series The Dark Tower into a feature film trilogy and a network TV series, both of which will be creatively steered by the Oscar-winning team behind A Beautiful Mind and The Da Vinci Code.
Iphone

Submission + - Real-time video edge detection on iPhone... (youtube.com)

Submitted by videoguy
videoguy writes: This is a demo of real-time video edge detection on the iPhone. It shows both a standard Canny edge detection and an adapted "skeletonize" effect that produces a sketch or line drawing style image at 30fps. This is the first app (of which I'm aware) that utilizes the raw video feed available in iOS4 to perform rendering or true video effects.

Comment Re:Quicktime? (Score 1) 232

by machxor (#33526830) Attached to: Open Source VLC Media Player Coming To iPad

I dunno, it's pretty vague (most of the guidelines are).

Why say "media" if it only applies to music?

What does "access" mean? Open a stream to and then decode in your application? Or actually decode through the MediaPlayer framework (ie: no non-Apple supplied codecs).

Overall reading through those guidelines were a waste of time for me. Most of them were common sense and the rest were so vague and subjective (I think that was the intention though).

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