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Submission + - DNA project 'to make UK world genetic research leader'

Submitted by mrspoonsi
mrspoonsi writes: A project aiming to revolutionise medicine by unlocking the secrets of DNA is under way in centres across England. Prime Minister David Cameron has said it "will see the UK lead the world in genetic research within years". The first genetic codes of people with cancer or rare diseases, out of a target of 100,000, have been sequenced. Experts believe it will lead to targeted therapies and could make chemotherapy "a thing of the past". Just one human genome contains more than three billion base pairs — the building blocks of DNA. Prof Jeremy Farrar, director of the Wellcome Trust, said: "I can see a future where genetics is going to come into every bit of medicine from cardiology to oncology to infectious diseases." "Twenty years from now there's going to be a plethora of those, we will have a series of mutations which academics and industry will have developed therapies for, which will be targeted at you and specific for that cancer." He said chemotherapy, which attacks all dividing cells in the body, would be replaced with such therapies. "We will look back in 20 years' time and think of blockbuster chemotherapy [as] a thing of the past and we'll think 'Gosh, what an era that was'." David Cameron has announced a series of investments across government, industry and charities totalling £300m ($500m).

Comment Re:Radicalization (Score 1) 868

by mrspoonsi (#47557657) Attached to: Gaza's Only Power Plant Knocked Offline
...and what if your piano kills not just the guy with the knife, but 10 of his neighbors also? it was still justified because you were at risk? the neighbors are fair game because they live next to a guy with a knife?

Violence begets violence, simple as that.

>Since Hamas started tossing bombs into Israel a few weeks ago, how would you respond had you been in charge of Israel? Keep in mind that the Iron Dome is effective, but not 100%.

I would guess that more people had been killed by car crashes in that time frame, so if they really want to protect the lives of the population, mandate a country wide 15mph speed limit.

Comment Re:Radicalization (Score 5, Insightful) 868

by mrspoonsi (#47556821) Attached to: Gaza's Only Power Plant Knocked Offline
It is more to do with proportional response. Those rockets they have killed what 2 or 3? there are over 1000 Palestinians dead. You also have to consider that the Palestinian people as a whole are not Hamas, in the same way the Northern Ireland population were not the IRA. The UK did not resort to carpet shelling Northern Ireland to remove the IRA, because it would never have worked, the IRA would only get stronger. Ireland had segregation, it did not work, only by integrating the people can you bring them around and ultimately onto the same side. For every innocent non-terrorist killed, that will recruit many terrorists.

Submission + - Android Fake ID bug exposes smartphones and tablets

Submitted by mrspoonsi
mrspoonsi writes: An Android flaw has been uncovered that lets malware insert malicious code into other apps, gain access to the user's credit card data and take control of the device's settings. BlueBox Labs said it was particularly concerning as phone and tablet owners did not need to grant the malware special permissions for it to act. The company added it had alerted Google to the problem in advance to allow it to mend its operating system. Google confirmed it had created a fix. "We appreciate BlueBox responsibly reporting this vulnerability to us. Third-party research is one of the ways Android is made stronger for users," said a spokeswoman. "After receiving word of this vulnerability, we quickly issued a patch that was distributed to Android partners, as well as to the Android Open Source Project."

Submission + - Police placing anti-piracy warning ads on illegal sites 1

Submitted by mrspoonsi
mrspoonsi writes: The City of London police has started placing banner advertisements on websites believed to be offering pirated content illegally. The messages, which will appear instead of paid-for ads, will ask users to close their web browsers. The move comes as part of a continuing effort to stop piracy sites from earning money through advertising. Police said the ads would make it harder for piracy site owners to make their pages look authentic. "When adverts from well known brands appear on illegal websites, they lend them a look of legitimacy and inadvertently fool consumers into thinking the site is authentic," said Detective Chief Inspector Andy Fyfe from the City of London Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit (Pipcu). "This new initiative is another step forward for the unit in tackling IP crime and disrupting criminal profits. "Copyright infringing websites are making huge sums of money though advert placement, therefore disrupting advertising on these sites is crucial and this is why it is an integral part of Operation Creative."

Submission + - NVIDIA found a way to quadruple display performance in low-res LCDs

Submitted by mrspoonsi
mrspoonsi writes: Problem: how do they manufacture low-cost products with high-resolution screens? NVIDIA researchers have one solution — stack two low-resolution panels on top of each other to increase pixel density on the cheap. The solution is so simple it sounds ridiculous, but apparently, it works. Researchers disassembled two 1,280 x 800 LCD panels and rebuilt them into a single display with slightly offset pixels, a filter to weed out polarization conflicts and a bit of customized software to force the display components to work in tandem. NVIDIA calls the resulting prototype a "cascaded display," and in tests it has quadrupled the spatial resolution of the original panels (thanks, in part, to how the pixel offset crams an additional four pixels behind every one of the first panel's visible pixel).

Submission + - Overwhelming majority of UK broadband users opting out of porn filters

Submitted by mrspoonsi
mrspoonsi writes: By all accounts, the UK's national porn filters have been a disaster. The network-level filters were introduced at the insistence of the government, which said that companies could either implement them voluntarily, or face legislation to force them to do so. After their introduction, more tech savvy users were able to avoid the filters entirely by simply using a browser extension. But 'ordinary' users found that many entirely innocent and non-pornographic sites being blocked due to the over-zealous nature of the filtering. Internet service providers (ISPs) didn't want them, many government ministers didn't want them, and now it is clear that the overwhelming majority of users don't want them either, according to the findings of an official study by the UK's telecommunications regulator, Ofcom. On three of the UK's top four ISPs, over 92% of users opted out of the porn filters. Just 5% of users on BT chose to keep the filters in place.

Submission + - Sony agrees to $15m settlement for 2011 PSN attack

Submitted by mrspoonsi
mrspoonsi writes: The Anonymous-sponsored attacks lead to a loss of names, passwords, identity theft, and possibly even stolen credit card information. As such, a class action lawsuit was filed against the company. Due to this, Sony has finally agreed to a preliminary settlement of $15m, which may be able to appease most of the customers that suffered from this attack. The PlayStation Network users that did not partake in the "Welcome Back" program that Sony unveiled shortly after their online services were brought back will be able to choose from two of the following benefit options: One PlayStation 3 or PlayStation Portable game selected from a list of 14 games; three PlayStation 3 themes selected from a list of six themes; or a three-month subscription to PlayStation Plus free of charge. Claiming these benefits will be done on a first come, first serve basis, according to the Washington Examiner's report, and are subject to a $6m cap. The settlement isn't just about free games or services. Customers with documented identity theft charges are eligible for up to $2,500 per claim.

Submission + - The Time The US Blew Up A Passenger Plane — And Tried To Cover It Up

Submitted by mrspoonsi
mrspoonsi writes: Fury and frustration still mount over the downing of Malaysia Air Flight 17, and justly so. But before accusing Russian President Vladimir Putin of war crimes or dismissing the entire episode as a tragic fluke, it’s worth looking back at another doomed passenger plane—Iran Air Flight 655—shot down on July 3, 1988, not by some scruffy rebel on contested soil but by a U.S. Navy captain in command of an Aegis-class cruiser called the Vincennes. A quarter-century later, the Vincennes is almost completely forgotten, but it still ranks as the world’s seventh deadliest air disaster (Malaysia Air Flight 17 is the sixth) and one of the Pentagon’s most inexcusable disgraces. In several ways, the two calamities are similar. The Malaysian Boeing 777 wandered into a messy civil war in eastern Ukraine, near the Russian border; the Iranian Airbus A300 wandered into a naval skirmish—one of many clashes in the ongoing “Tanker War” (another forgotten conflict)—in the Strait of Hormuz. In 1992, four years after the event (and shortly after I moved on to a different beat), Adm. Crowe admitted on ABC’s Nightline that the Vincennes was in Iranian waters at the time it shot down the plane. Back in 1988, he and others had said that the ship was in international waters. Not long after the shoot-down, Iran asked the United Nations Security Council to censure the United States for its “criminal act” against Iran Air Flight 655. Vice President George H.W. Bush, who was running to succeed Ronald Reagan as president, said on the campaign trail, “I will never apologize for the United States—I don’t care what the facts are.”

Submission + - Arizona execution takes two hours

Submitted by mrspoonsi
mrspoonsi writes: US death row inmate Joseph Wood has died after an execution in Arizona took nearly two hours to kill him. Wood, a double murderer, was executed by lethal injection. His lawyers filed an appeal for an emergency stay of execution, after he had been "gasping and snorting for more than an hour" in the death chamber. Arizona Governor Jan Brewer says she has ordered a full review of the execution, although she said that Wood "died in a lawful manner". Wood's lawyers argued the extended execution process violated his right to be executed in the absence of cruel and unusual punishment.

Submission + - Researchers fully 'delete' HIV from human cells for the first time

Submitted by mrspoonsi
mrspoonsi writes: So far, HIV has eluded a cure because it installs its genome into human DNA so insidiously that it's impossible for our immune system to clear it out. While current treatments are effective, a lifetime of toxic drugs are required to prevent its recurrence. But researchers from Temple University may have figured out a way to permanently excise it using a highly-engineered HIV "editor." Here's how it works: the team analyzed a part of our immune system that fights infection and built a "guide RNA" strand consisting of 20 nucleotides (RNA building blocks). Those strands were then injected into cells typically infected with HIV, like T-cells. There, they targeted the end parts of the virus's gene and snipped out all 9,709 nucleotides that made up its genome. Since the guide RNA strand contained no human DNA sequences, it left the host cell intact — but free from HIV.

Submission + - RJ Reynolds told to pay wife of cancer victim $23.6bn

Submitted by mrspoonsi
mrspoonsi writes: A US court has ordered the country's second largest cigarette company to pay $23.6 billion to the wife of a smoker who died of lung cancer. RJ Reynolds Tobacco Company was hit with the punitive fine in addition to $16.8m in compensatory damages. Cynthia Robinson took action against the firm in 2008, seeking compensation for her husband's death in 1996. A company official said the verdict was ``grossly excessive and impermissible under state and constitutional law.'' During the four-week trial, lawyers for Ms Robinson argued that RJ Reynolds was negligent in informing consumers of the dangers of consuming tobacco. This negligence, the lawyers said, led to her husband Michael Johnson Sr contracting lung cancer from smoking after becoming "addicted" and failing multiple attempts to quit.

Submission + - Edward Snowden Says NSA Workers Pass Around Your Nude Photos

Submitted by mrspoonsi
mrspoonsi writes: If you thought that nude photo you took of yourself was just for you and your significant other, you may be wrong. According to whistleblower Edward Snowden, young NSA employees occasionally get a hold of nude photos while searching through personal data and, if the person is attractive, the photos get passed around the office. Snowden explained how this happens to The Guardian during a 7-hour interview. Here's the relevant bit: You’ve got young enlisted guys, 18 to 22 years old, they’ve suddenly been thrust into a position of extraordinary responsibility where they now have access to all of your private records. Now in the course of their daily work, they stumble across something that is completely unrelated to their work in any sense. For example, an intimate nude photo of someone in a sexually compromising situation, but they’re extremely attractive. So what do they do? They turn around and they show their coworker. And their coworker says ‘Oh hey, that’s great. Show it to Bill down the way.’ And then Bill sends it to George, George sends it to Tom, and sooner or later this person’s whole life has been seen by all of these other people.

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