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Medicine

Doctor Performs Amputation By Text Message 242

Posted by samzenpus from the l33t-5ki11z dept.
Peace Corps Online writes "Vascular surgeon David Nott performed a life-saving amputation on a boy in DR Congo following instructions sent by text message from a colleague in London. The boy's left arm had been ripped off and was badly infected and gangrenous; there were just 6in (15cm) of the boy's arm remaining, much of the surrounding muscle had died and there was little skin to fold over the wound. 'He had about two or three days to live when I saw him,' Nott said. Nott, volunteering with the medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres, knew he needed to perform a forequarter amputation requiring removal of the collar bone and shoulder blade and contacted Professor Meirion Thomas at London's Royal Marsden Hospital, who had performed the operation before. 'I texted him and he texted back step by step instructions on how to do it,' Nott said."

Comment Re:Shenanigans (Score 1) 115

by pnotequalsnp (#25654591) Attached to: First Whole Cancer Genome Sequenced

Fine, but you can't do the research if you don't have the genome. The title of the article wasn't "Cancer Genome Sequence, Cure Eminent."

I am saying if you claim to that you have the genome, you should probably have the genome. They don't. I said nothing about cures for cancer. Again my point stands, since they only have the differences between the tumor genome and a "reference genome" (same for the normal genome of that person). They then compare the two to see the differences in the differences. The have a 10% data missing problem.

Comment Shenanigans (Score 1) 115

by pnotequalsnp (#25653711) Attached to: First Whole Cancer Genome Sequenced
I call shenanigans, since at least 7% of the genome is repetitive elements, centromeres, cnvs etc. etc. Also, remember that they use a reference genome, which itself is not complete. What happens if the cancer/person has a sequence not found in the reference genome. I know, it is not reported. It is more informative to say 90% of the tumor was sequenced. Probably the last 10% was the important part anyways (cnvs and the number of repeats are very important), so this is just anther "first post" in Science and Nature. Can they start publishing proper papers rather than "hot" papers?
Censorship

YouTube Reposts Anti-Scientology Videos 435

Posted by timothy from the fun-and-easy-to-destroy-stuff dept.
Ian Lamont writes "YouTube has reposted anti-Scientology videos and reinstated suspended YouTube accounts after receiving thousands of apparently bogus DCMA take-down notices. Four thousand notices were sent to YouTube last Thursday and Friday by American Rights Counsel, LLC. After YouTube users responded with counter-notices, many of the videos were reposted. It turns out that the American Rights Counsel had no copyright claim on the videos, and the group may not even exist, although the text of the DCMA notices have been linked to a Wikipedia editor. While filing a false DMCA notice is a criminal offense, prosecution in these cases rarely comes about."
The Internet

IsoHunt Petitions Canadian Court For Copyright Blessing 217

Posted by timothy from the petition-to-the-courts-not-petition-online dept.
A Cow writes "As an act of self-defense, the popular BitTorrent site isoHunt has decided to file a petition to ask the Court of British Columbia to confirm that isoHunt — and sister sites Torrentbox and Podtropolis — do not infringe copyright. isoHunt owner Gary explains to TorrentFreak: 'Our petition summarizes BitTorrent technology, its open nature and a whole ecosystem of websites and operators that has developed around it, that CRIA does not own copyright to all files distributed over BitTorrent or on isoHunt websites, and we seek legal validation that we can continue to innovate within this emerging BitTorrent ecosystem on the Internet.'"
Privacy

Identifying a Culprit In a Bloodbath 47

Posted by timothy from the sounds-utterly-foolproof dept.
worromot writes "A group of geneticists published a method to determine if a given individual's DNA is present in a mixture (e.g., in a pool of blood on a carpet). An individual's DNA can comprise less than 1% of the mixture. (The article is in open access on PLoS Genetics website.) While this is a potential boon for forensics, there are more immediate worries about the privacy of the participants of the genetics studies that had been under way for many years. As Science magazine writes, 'The discovery that a type of genetic data that is widely shared and often posted online can be traced back to individuals has prompted the US National Institutes of Health and the Wellcome Trust to strip some genetic data from their publicly accessible Web sites and NIH to recommend that other institutions do the same.' The gravest worry was that an individual who had someone's genetic code could determine, based on the pooled data, whether the person participated in a disease study and whether they were in the disease group, or thereby glean private health information. NIH plans to ask institutions that have posted pooled data on their own Web sites to take these down, too."
Patents

Akamai Wins Lawsuit to Protect Obvious Patent 173

Posted by Zonk from the keeping-things-locked-down dept.
brandaman writes "Akamai, the largest content delivery network (CDN) with about 70% market share, recently won its lawsuit against the against second largest CDN - Limelight Networks. The suit asserted that Limelight was infringing on Akamai's patent which, upon examination, seems to be somewhat on the obvious side. 'In accordance with the invention, however, a base HTML document portion of a Web page is served from the Content Provider's site while one or more embedded objects for the page are served from the hosting servers, preferably, those hosting servers near the client machine. By serving the base HTML document from the Content Provider's site, the Content Provider maintains control over the content.' Limelight is obviously not pleased, and this is not the first lawsuit Akamai has won regarding its patents."
Government

Government Mistakenly Declares Deaths of Citizens 361

Posted by Soulskill from the totally-nonsensationalist-headline dept.
superbrose writes "According to MSNBC, thousands of U.S. citizens have wrongfully been declared dead, due to an average of 35 data input errors per day by the Social Security Administration (SSA). Many other agencies rely on the data provided by the SSA, such as the IRS. People who have been wrongfully declared dead face many problems, such as rejection of tax returns, cancellation of health insurance, and closure of bank accounts. The article states, 'Input of an erroneous death entry can lead to benefit termination and result in financial hardship for a beneficiary.' Apparently it is far easier to declare a person's death than it is to correct the mistake. It continues, 'Social Security says an erroneous death record can be removed only when it is presented with proof that the original record was entered in error. The original error must be documented, and the deletion must be approved by a supervisor after "pertinent facts supporting reinstatement" are available in the system.'"
Patents

End Software Patents Project Comes Out Swinging 205

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the amicus-populorum dept.
Linux.com is reporting that the End Software Patents project is launching several new initiatives to help drive support for their cause. Among the new methods are a web site, a report on the state of patents in the US, and a scholarship contest promising to award $10,000 "for the best paper on the effects of the patentability of software and business methods under US law." "The project is being launched with initial funding of a quarter million dollars, supplied primarily by the Free Software Foundation (FSF). Under the directorship of Ben Klemens, a long-time advocate of software patent abolition best-known for the book Math You Can't Use: Patents, Copyright, and Software, the project is being supported by the FSF, the Public Patent Foundation, and the Software Freedom Law Center (SFLC). One of ESP's goals is to enlist support from academics, software developers, legal experts, and business executives. Its initial supporters show that the project is already well on its way to building such a coalition."
Medicine

Researchers Discover Gene That Blocks HIV 333

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the i'm-pretty-good-at-giving-people-bad-news dept.
stemceller writes to tell us that a team of researchers at the University of Alberta claims to have discovered a gene capable of blocking HIV thereby preventing the onset of full blown AIDS. "Stephen Barr, a molecular virologist in the Department of Medical Microbiology and Immunology, says his team has identified a gene called TRIM22 that can block HIV infection in a cell culture by preventing the assembly of the virus. 'When we put this gene in cells, it prevents the assembly of the HIV virus," said Barr, a postdoctoral fellow. "This means the virus cannot get out of the cells to infect other cells, thereby blocking the spread of the virus.'"
Sci-Fi

Submission + - The Role of Mitochondrial DNA in Aging and Cancer

Submitted by pnotequalsnp
pnotequalsnp writes: Doug Wallace, PHD UC Irvine, gave a very interesting talk on the role of Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) entitled "Human Origins, Aging, Cancer & Degenerative Disease".

One of the interesting conclusions is that aging is correlated to body temperature (or exercise) and overeating. mtDNA produces ATP and heat. In warm blooded humans, typically their mtDNA produces more heat for the body by burning calories. On the other hand, cold blooded humans produce less heat and more ATP to use as energy for the body. Basically, keeping your electron transfer chain oxidized in your mtDNA (by exercising or converting calories to heat) will reduce cancer risk (free radicals produced). If you have a tightly coupled mtDNA (produce less heat and more ATP) and you overeat (meaning more calories), then you will reduce the electron transfer chain within your mtDNA, creating more free radicals, resulting in apotosis (cell suicide) and you will age faster.

In short, calorie restricition will increase lifespan and reduce cancer risk, especially in cold blooded humans.

Click here for a video of the talk
Slashdot.org

Submission + - Fermi Lab discovers Cascade B

Submitted by pnotequalsnp
pnotequalsnp writes: A new heavy particle has been discovered by physicists at the Fermi lab in Illinois.
The particle — known as cascade b — is special because it's the first of its kind to be made up of quarks representing all three quark families, the lab announced in a news release.
The Fermi lab article can be found at http://www.fnal.gov/pub/presspass/press_releases/D zero_baryon.html

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