27815614
submission
HansonMB writes:
As you can maybe tell from buffmouse.jpg up there, this research is still in mice, but a new study out from the University of Pittsburg published in Nature Communications has big news for fans of not getting old and gross and dying. Shots of stem cells from healthy, young mice delivered to the abdomens of prematurally aging mice have been show to head off many of the effects of old age, leading to lives two to three times as long as would normally be the case. So, yes: a fountain of youth in a syringe full of stem cells. For mice.
“Our experiments showed that mice that have progeria, a disorder of premature aging, were healthier and lived longer after an injection of stem cells from young, healthy animals,” says senior investigator Laura Niedernhofer, M.D., Ph.D. “That tells us that stem cell dysfunction is a cause of the changes we see with aging.”
27814870
submission
crookedvulture writes:
Although Slashdot has already covered the launch of AMD's Radeon HD 7970 graphics card, those early reviews relied on frames-per-second figures that can mask stuttering and other interruptions to smooth gameplay. To get a sense of what it's really like to play games on a given card, one must take a deeper look at frame times. The Tech Report does just that in this review of the Radeon HD 7970, which offers new insight into how contemporary high-end graphics cards really compare when playing the latest games. The 7970 still reigns supreme, but its victory isn't always as triumphant as mere FPS averages would have you believe.
27814342
submission
scibri writes:
You thought quasicrystals, the winner of the 2011 Nobel Prize in chemistry, could only be made in the lab? Nope, turns out they also formed in meteorites 4 billion years ago.
But to prove that, you'd have had to track down ex-KGB smugglers and trek across the Siberian tundra, like theoretical physicist Paul Steinhardt did last summer.
27814100
submission
mikejuk writes:
It might be that a combination of AI techniques and photos on the web are your best chance of finding a long lost relative. Facial recognition for kinship is a new technique.
The novel aspect of this technique is that rather than using the standard facial recognition features it uses genetics to construct features which should be inherited. The resulting algorithm actually out performs humans at the task of recognizing relations.
27813702
submission
the_newsbeagle writes:
This year, Ekso Bionics will roll out its most sophisticated exoskeleton ever. The company's robotic walking suit, called the Ekso, allows paraplegics to get back on their feet and walk on their own. The first commercial model will be sold to rehab hospitals for on-site physical therapy, but the company plans to have a model ready for at-home physical therapy by the end of 2012. In a few years, they plan to sell an Ekso that a paraplegic person can wear to the post office, to work, etc.
15922418
story
Kilrah_il writes
"The fine-structure constant, a coupling constant characterizing the strength of the electromagnetic interaction, has been measured lately by scientists from the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia and has been found to change slightly in light sent from quasars in galaxies as far back as 12 billion years ago. Although the results look promising, caution is advised: 'This would be sensational if it were real, but I'm still not completely convinced that it's not simply systematic errors' in the data, comments cosmologist Max Tegmark of MIT. Craig Hogan of the University of Chicago and the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia, Ill., acknowledges that 'it's a competent team and a thorough analysis.' But because the work has such profound implications for physics and requires such a high level of precision measurements, 'it needs more proof before we'll believe it.'"
260553
submission
Dr. Eggman writes:
CVG is reporting on a group of modders who have proven that a DVD playing Wii is only a matter of software. The group has even gone so far as to assemble a boot disk for others to enable DVD playback. While the boot disk requires a Wii with a mod chip installed, there doesn't appear to be any hardware limiting an official 'DVD update' from Nintendo from enabling this feature for all.
135999
submission
Mike writes:
TorrentFreak reports: A man from Columbus, Georgia has pleaded guilty to two felonies connected to the distribution of copyright works via the EliteTorrents BitTorrent tracker, which was shut down by the FBI in 2005. As a major uploader he faces 5 years in jail plus a $250,000 fine.
