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Comment Re:Seriously though, what about adopted kids? (Score 2, Interesting) 199

I had a conversation and a dream about this just last week. No joke. And this time your tin foil hats won't help you.

I think the technology is there for the government to take genetic samples from everyone in the U.S. armed forces, and thereby build a database in which they could match any found genetic material by gene clade, and describe your relationship, and triangulate your placement in the larger family tree, with a reasonable degree of certainty.

More simply put, a hair or skin flake on the ground could tell them who your brother, cousin, second cousin, uncle, all in different branches of your family, are. With that information it wouldn't be hard to find you.

Really, I'd be more surprised to find out definitively that this wasn't already in place.

Anyway, I feel a bit like a nutter saying it, but with enough computing power, we already have algorithms that do almost, if not, all of this.

Comment Re:Great... (Score 1) 246

No seriously, though.

The United States Military isn't, in my opinion (get out your tin-foil hats), in the habit of developing a brand-new and potentially game-winning technology, and promptly running to the phone to make a press release. Between this and several other more benign, as several medical advances reported on recently, I can't help but wonder what has happened in the international community that would prompt this type of activity. What type of non-public intel would instigate a response of this kind from the U.S. Military, an organization that has previously only let the world know they had radar evading aircraft some twenty years (or some such) after they had been in operation? Could it be that some other potentially less-than-friendly has developed some other or similar "Star Wars" type tech? And, I mean other than those we currently suspect of trying to develop nukes.

And please, don't hesitate to tell me I can go back to my conspiracy theorist secret bunker, as I've got plenty of canned food to last.
Earth

Submission + - New Material Captures Entire Spectrum of Rainbow (inhabitat.com) 1

Jason writes: Scientists at the Ohio State Institute for Materials Research recently announced that they have developed a new hyper-efficient solar material that is able to capture light from every spectrum of the rainbow. Whereas most photovoltaics are limited to collecting energy from a small range of frequencies, the new material is able to absorb energy from all spectrums of visible light at once.
Medicine

Submission + - Fat cells used to create beating heart cells (bobim.org)

Amenacier writes: Melbourne scientists recently made the discovery that stem cells isolated from adult fat cells could be made to turn into beating heart muscle cells when cultured with rat heart cells. This discovery may lead to the usage of fat stem cells in the reparation of cardiac damage, or to fix such cardiac problems as holes in the heart.

It is proposed that culturing the stem cells with rat heart cells allows them to differentiate into heart muscle cells through the action of signals from the heart cells. In the future it may be possible to inject/transplant the stem cells into the damaged area and have them naturally differentiate into the type of cell required, with only the natural stimuli provided by surrounding cells required to effect the process, without any danger of rejection by the body.

The original article can be found at the Bernard O'Brien Institute of Microsurgery website: http://bobim.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=88&Itemid=37

I for one welcome our rat-fat-heart cell overlords, what about you?

Image

"Stayin Alive" Helps You Stay Alive Screenshot-sm 31

In a small study conducted at the University of Illinois medical school, doctors and students maintained close to the ideal number of chest compressions doing CPR while listening to the Bee Gees hit, "Stayin' Alive." At 103 beats per minute, the old disco song has almost the perfect rhythm to help keep accurate time while doing chest compressions. The study showed the song helped people who already know how to do CPR, and the results were promising enough to warrant larger, more definitive studies with real patients or untrained people. I wonder what intrinsic power is contained in "How Can You Mend A Broken Heart?"
Businesses

Ars Examines Outlandish "Lost To Piracy" Claims and Figures 380

Nom du Keyboard writes "For years the figures of $200 billion and 750,000 jobs lost to intellectual property piracy have been bandied about, usually as a cudgel to demand ever more overbearing copyright laws with the intent of diminishing of both Fair Use and the Public Domain. Now ARS Technica takes a look into origin and validity these figures and finds far less than the proponents of them might wish."

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