Comment Re:Old news ? (Score 1) 248
Yep, this is old news. I've been in France since this past December and Pandora has been inaccessible the entire time.
Comment Re:Surprised? (Score 5, Insightful) 582
Crohn's disease is pretty common, so how come it wasn't diagnosed? The idiot medicos just pocketed the money for tests, hospital stays, appointments, medical certs etc for 8 years while the girl suffered? Hmmm. Come to think of it I'm not that surprised. There are far more quacks out there than decent doctors in my experience.
Well, Wikipedia can be suspect at times, but here's what it says (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crohn%27s_disease#Symptoms):
Many people with Crohn's disease have symptoms for years prior to the diagnosis.[12] The usual onset is between 15 and 30 years of age but can occur at any age.[13] Because of the 'patchy' nature of the gastrointestinal disease and the depth of tissue involvement, initial symptoms can be more vague than with ulcerative colitis. People with Crohn's disease will go through periods of flare-ups and remission.
Really sounds to me like a combo of on-again off-again symptoms and symptoms that are fairly generic (i.e., shared w/ lots of conditions) than doctors and labs trying to squeeze ever last buck out of someone and their insurance. Now, if there is a problem if the first thing they do is run expensive tests for exotic diseases or something like that. I mean, a responsible physician would consider the a priori odds of each condition. And while I'm sure there are plenty of "quacks" out there, I'm not sure that's the first conclusion I would reach for in this particular case.
Comment Re:2x100kW (Score 1) 196
Someone please mod this up.
Submission + - Mysterious Sound Waves Can Destroy Rockets
Ponca City, We love you writes: "Scientists believe that powerful and unstable sound waves, created by energy supplied by the combustion process, were the cause of rocket failures in several US and Russian rockets and have also observed these mysterious oscillations in other propulsion and power-generating systems such as missiles and gas turbines. Now, researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology have developed a liquid rocket engine simulator and imaging techniques to help demystify the cause of these explosive sound waves and bring scientists a little closer to being able to understand and prevent them. The team was able to clearly demonstrate that the phenomenon manifests itself in the form of spinning acoustic waves that gain destructive power as they rotate around the rocket's combustion chamber at a rate of 5,000 revolutions per second. Researchers developed a low-pressure combustor to simulate larger rocket engines then used a very-high-speed camera with fiber optic probes to observe the formation and behavior of excited spinning sound waves within the engine. "This is a very troublesome phenomenon in rockets," said Professor Ben Zinn. "These spinning acoustic oscillations destroy engines without anyone fully understanding how these waves are formed. Visualizing this phenomenon brings us a step closer to understanding it.""
Submission + - Rodents of Unusual Size Found in New Guinea (bbc.co.uk) 3
Morse Code Name writes: Apparently, researchers trekking through what's been dubbed the "Lost World" in New Guinea have discovered a "giant rodent five times the size of a common rat". With luck, detailed information on flame spurts and lightning sand will follow shortly.
Submission + - Black Hole Fires At Neighboring Galaxy
EricTheGreen writes: It's bad enough black holes swallow anything/everything that comes too close to them, but now they've decided to go all Borg-like on us and take the action directly to their hapless close-by neighbors.
We will be assimilated, indeed...
Submission + - Colorado Decertifies Electronic Voting Machines (denverpost.com)
CUShane writes: "Colorado's looming primary and presidential elections were thrown into turmoil Monday when many of the state's electronic voting machines were deemed unreliable and unsecure by Secretary of State Mike Coffman," according to the Denver Post. Coffman has decertified voting machines made by three of the four manufacturers operating in Colorado: Sequoia Voting System, Hart InterCivic, and Election Systems & Software. The decision affects 53 counties in Colorado. The only company to pass the certification is Premier Election Systems (formerly Diebold Election Systems).
Submission + - MIT dude disproves Wolfram on 44 conjectures 2
blue2 writes: Fresh out of press from the "Journal of cellular automata" ... geeky author Evangelos Georgiadis disproves legendary Stephen Wolfram on 44 conjectures. Abstract reads:
In this note, we disprove 44 claims in [4] on minimal Boolean formula size
of one-dimensional two-state nearest neighbor cellular automata as well as set a new lowersize bound.
http://www.oldcitypublishing.com/JCA/JCA%202.4%20abstracts/GEORGIADIS.html
Submission + - Scientists propose even less efficient solar power (sandia.gov)
wattrlz writes: "Scientists at Sandia National Labs in New Mexico have proposed a technique for using solar energy to reverse the combustion process and convert water into hydrogen and CO2 into methane and/or methanol.
...Over the past year they have shown proof of concept and are completing a prototype device that will use concentrated solar energy to reenergize carbon dioxide or water, the products of combustion. This will form carbon monoxide, hydrogen, and oxygen, which ultimately could be used to synthesize liquid fuels in an integrated S2P [Sunshine to Petrol] system...
"What's exciting about this invention is that it will result in fossil fuels being used at least twice, meaning less carbon dioxide being put into the atmosphere and a reduction of the rate that fossil fuels are pulled out of the ground,"
"
Submission + - Guy from MIT disproves Wolfram on 44 claims inANKS
An anonymous reader writes: http://www.oldcitypublishing.com/JCA/JCA%202.4%20abstracts/GEORGIADIS.html
Submission + - Artificial Blood Vessels Grown on a Nano-Template (eurekalert.org)
Invisible Pink Unicorn writes: "Researchers at MIT have found a way to induce cells to form parallel tube-like structures that could one day serve as tiny engineered blood vessels. The researchers found that they can control the cells' development by growing them on a surface with nano-scale patterning. The work focuses on vascular tissue, which includes capillaries, the tiniest blood vessels, and is an important part of the circulatory system. The team has created a surface that can serve as a template to grow capillary tubes aligned in a specific direction. The cells, known as endothelial progenitor cells (EPCs), not only elongate in the direction of the grooves, but also align themselves along the grooves. That results in a multicellular structure with defined edges — a band structure. Once the band structures form, the researchers apply a commonly used gel that induces cells to form three-dimensional tubes."
Omazing Grace 3
samzenpus writes "Are you ready for the worst thing you've heard all day and maybe ever? I can't believe nobody cut his microphone."
Submission + - Dell announces touchscreen and is immediately sued (informationweek.com)
goombah99 writes: Dell computer announced their foray into consumer touchscreen tablets using multitouch technology. And they are immediately sued in Texas by a company who's 1995 and 1997 patents cover "Portable computer with touch screen and computing system employing same". The claims seem to cover any touchscreen laptop or computing device. The Latitude XT's base price is $2,499, it has a 12.1-inch LED-backlit screen, a 1.06-gigahertz Intel Core 2 Solo processor, 1GB of memory, and a 40GB hard drive with Vista or XP. Battery life is said to be 5 hours and it weighs 3.5 pounds. The screen rotates from notebook with integral keyboard to tablet mode.
Submission + - Patent Trolls are nothing new
BigLinuxGuy writes: Gerard N. Magliocca has published an interesting white paper "Blackberries and Barnyards: The Perils of Innovation" that demonstrates that the patent troll phenomenon is at least a few hundred years old. Surprisingly, the paper asserts that trolls can't be rehabilitated by changing the patent system. Interesting read, regardless.
Submission + - Does surgery cause cancer to spread? (arxivblog.com)
KentuckyFC writes: "The first superstatistic study of metastasis and cancer survival rates backs the idea that surgery may cause cancer to spread, according to a preprint on the physics arxiv today (abstract)"
