Follow Slashdot stories on Twitter

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
Medicine

Possible Treatment For Ebola 157

Posted by samzenpus from the there's-a-pill-for-that dept.
RedEaredSlider writes "Researchers at the US Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases have found a class of drugs that could provide treatment for Ebola and Marburg hemorrhagic fever. The new drugs are called 'antisense' compounds, and they allow the immune system to attack the viruses before they can do enough damage to kill the patient. Travis Warren, research scientist at USAMRIID, said while the work is still preliminary -— the drugs have been tested only on primates — the results are so far promising. In the case of Ebola, five of eight monkeys infected with the virus lived, and with Marburg, all survived. The drugs were developed as part of a program to deal with possible bioterrorist threats, in partnership with AVI Biopharma."
Biotech

Did Sea Life Arise Twice? 238

Posted by CmdrTaco from the shoulda-got-it-right-the-first-time dept.
eldavojohn writes "Dr. Adam Maloof has found fossils of sea sponges in Australia from 650 million years ago. You might think this is no big deal unless you consider that sea sponges were thought to have arisen 520 million years ago. These fossils predate the oldest hard bodied fossils we have by a hundred million years. Dr. Maloof is now wondering if life might have arisen twice after the first attempt was quashed 635 million years ago: 'Since animals probably did not evolve twice, we are suddenly confronted with the question of how some relative of these reef-dwelling animals survived the Snowball Earth.' So how is it that life survived the Marinoan glaciation? The BBC has a video on the topic and Wikipedia has a time line of the Proterozoic Eon into the Paleozoic Era."
Earth

Nuclear Energy Now More Expensive Than Solar 635

Posted by samzenpus from the sunlight-is-free dept.
js_sebastian writes "According to an article on the New York Times, a historical cross-over has occurred because of the declining costs of solar vs. the increasing costs of nuclear energy: solar, hardly the cheapest of renewable technologies, is now cheaper than nuclear, at around 16 cents per kilowatt hour. Furthermore, the NY Times reports that financial markets will not finance the construction of nuclear power plants unless the risk of default (which is historically as high as 50 percent for the nuclear industry) is externalized to someone else through federal loan guarantees or ratepayer funding. The bottom line seems to be that nuclear is simply not competitive, and the push from the US government to subsidize it seems to be forcing the wrong choice on the market."
Cellphones

Droid X Gets Rooted 97

Posted by Soulskill from the root-root-root-for-the-home-team dept.
An anonymous reader writes "The Droid X forums have posted a procedure to root the new Motorola Droid X, putting to rest Andoid fans' fears that they would never gain access to the device's secrets due to a reported eFuse that would brick the phone if certain boot files were tampered with. Rooting the phone is the first step in gaining complete control over the device."
NASA

Submission + - NASA Chief Charged With Appealing to Muslims (foxnews.com)

Submitted by cosm
cosm writes: While I am all for holding hands and singing kumbaya (sometimes), this comes out of the political correctness gone wrong department, FTA:

NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said in a recent interview that his "foremost" mission as the head of America's space exploration agency is to improve relations with the Muslim world...."When I became the NASA administrator — or before I became the NASA administrator — he charged me with three things. One was he wanted me to help re-inspire children to want to get into science and math, he wanted me to expand our international relationships, and third, and perhaps foremost, he wanted me to find a way to reach out to the Muslim world and engage much more with dominantly Muslim nations to help them feel good about their historic contribution to science ... and math and engineering," Bolden said in the interview.

Comment Re:No actual points of purpose in the letter (Score 1) 483

by Robin47 (#32697120) Attached to: ASCAP Declares War On Free Culture, EFF

Man, don't you love letters like that? They are asking for money, but they don't list a single, specific point of how the law needs to change, or what specific philosophical claims for which they are in disagreement with EFF, CC, et. al.

They are asking you to write a check, but they haven't explained, AT ALL, what the money is going to be used for. They use very vague and nebulous statements that add up to nothing. What do they actually want to do?

Obviously receive money.

Comment Re:Where's the applications? (Score 1) 271

by Robin47 (#32585530) Attached to: Fermilab Experiment Hints At Multiple Higgs Particles

Simply because you or I cannot find an immediate use for something does not mean that it is not useful. Who knows, in 15 years, knowledge gained through these experiments could lead to a better method of harvesting energy from some unknown source, or coming up with a better means of propulsion or medicine for a problem that we thought was mundane (subatomic cure for the common cold? who knows).

At least a redesigned toaster. I think that's doable in 15 years.

Comment Re:Open Primary (Score 2, Interesting) 467

by Robin47 (#32576608) Attached to: The South Carolina Primary and Voting Machine Fraud

South Carolina uses an open primary system where any registered voter can vote in the Democratic primary, not just registered Democratic Party members.

Is it possible that thousands of Republicans decided to vote for Alvin Greene not because they want him to be their next Senator, but because he is such a hopeless candidate that he will be crushed by the Republican nominee?

On the face of it, this open primary system seems open to abuse. If you vote for candidate A in the primary, and he wins the primary to move onto the general election ballot, shouldn't your vote be "locked in" to support him in the general election?

At one point in Michigan, Jack Kevorkian's lawyer declared for the Democratic primary for governor and the Republican party crossed over and granted his wish, much to the consternation of the Democrats. It happens. Look, I live in SC. No one knew about the felony charges till after the election. I think it was a mix of "first guy on the list" and I don't like the guy the party is backing and there is no selection for "none of the above". (apparently, NV has such a thing?)I used to live in Baton Rouge and I thought the politics was entertaining there. It's entertaining here, too.

Comment Re:Wrong or right (Score 2, Informative) 386

by Robin47 (#32526324) Attached to: For Normals, Jobs' "Retina Display" Claim May Be Fair After All

Again though, why the use of meaningless words? Couldn't he have just said "the resolution/DPI is so dense that your eyes won't be able to distinguish individual pixels"? What, does the average Apple customer really seek the need of some special word to wrap up the device's capabilities in? And if they do, what does that say about their average customer?

I think it's insulting to the people that buy Apple's products, regardless of whether people seek it out or not.

Because you sell the sizzle, not the steak.

Comment Re:Hmm. (Score 1) 161

by Robin47 (#32257434) Attached to: Europeans Bury "Digital DNA" Inside a Mountain

"The sealed box containing the key to unpick defunct digital formats will be locked away for the next quarter of a century behind a 3-1/2 ton door"..."the information and tools required to access and read historical digital material and prevent digital memory loss into the next century."

Perhaps they should include the calculations they used to equate 25 years with 90 years.

Those calculations are the key.

Slashdot Top Deals

The use of money is all the advantage there is to having money. -- B. Franklin

Close