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Biotech

+ - International challenge to computationally interpret protein function->

Submitted by Shipud
Shipud writes "We live in the post-genomic era, when DNA sequence data is growing exponentially. However, for most of the genes that we identify, we have no idea of their biological functions. They are like words in a foreign language, waiting to be deciphered. The Critical Assessment of Function Annotation, or CAFA, is a new community-wide experiment to assess the performance of the multitude of computational methods developed by research groups worldwide to help channel the flood of data from genome research to deduce the function of proteins.

Thirty research groups participated in the first CAFA, presenting a total of 54 algorithms. The results are published in an article in Nature Methods. The researchers participated in blind-test experiments in which they predicted the function of protein sequences for which the functions are already known but haven't yet been made publicly available. Independent assessors then judged their performance. The challenge organizers explain that: 'The accurate annotation of protein function is key to understanding life at the molecular level and has great biochemical and pharmaceutical implications, explain the study authors; however, with its inherent difficulty and expense, experimental characterization of function cannot scale up to accommodate the vast amount of sequence data already available.The computational annotation of protein function has therefore emerged as a problem at the forefront of computational and molecular biology.'"
Link to Original Source

+ - San Diego Drops Red-Light Cameras->

Submitted by
gannebraemorr
gannebraemorr writes "From utsandiego.com: "San Diego on Friday became the latest in a cadre of California cities turning their backs on red-light cameras — aloof intersection sentries that have prompted $490 tickets to be mailed to 20,000 motorists per year here. Mayor Bob Filner announced his decision to take down the city’s 21 cameras at a news conference set at the most prolific intersection for the tickets, North Harbor Drive and West Grape Street, near San Diego International Airport. A crew went to work immediately taking down 'photo enforced' signs throughout the city. 'Seems to me that such a program can only be justified if there are demonstrable facts that prove that they raise the safety awareness and decrease accidents in our city,' Filner said of the cameras. 'The data, in fact, does not really prove it.'"

I have to say I'm a bit surprised that my city is voluntarily shedding potentially $9.8M in revenue after objectively evaluating a program. I wonder how much a system would cost that could switch my light from green to red if it detected a vehicle approaching from a red-lit direction at dangerous speeds."
Link to Original Source
Bitcoin

+ - Chips Capable of Mining Bitcoins 50 Times Faster Unveiled-> 2

Submitted by hypnosec
hypnosec writes "A digital media student and head of BitSynCom LLC, Yifu Guo has invented a Application Specific Integrated Circuits (ASIC) capable of mining Bitcoins 50 times faster than currently available computer systems and offers an impressive price-to-performance ratio and consumes a lot less power as compared to GPU-based system available today. According to tests carried out by the Bitcoin Foundation, the Avalon V1 churned out “89 gigahashes of raw crypto-juice every second" which is equivalent to that 250 Radion HD 5850 graphic cards each consuming 200 watts of power. The Avalon V1 managed to pull this off by consuming only 600 watts of power. Given the capability of the Avalon V1, it will provide its users anywhere between $200 to $300 worth of Bicoins every day."
Link to Original Source

Comment: Re:Great (Score 1) 320

by linhares (#42210565) Attached to: Race To Mine Bitcoins Drives Enthusiasts Into the Chip Making Business
You may think you are not a sucker, but as we speak our Benefactor is printing new US$800,000 per each new bitcoin. This is just an observation, a fact, or a TIL. It's not a speculation about the future. Make of it what you will. Goodnight and godspeed. Just a bonus for you: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=iTBODoBaCns

Comment: Re:Great (Score 1) 320

by linhares (#42205731) Attached to: Race To Mine Bitcoins Drives Enthusiasts Into the Chip Making Business
1. Where is it in Nobel's will? 2. Ever read "Choice in currency?" 3. Sorry dude, but a *bitcoin bank* has just been licenced in Europe, so I don't have the time nor the interest to keep educating zombies. http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/14e048/bitcoincentral_first_exchange_licensed_to_operate/

Comment: Re:Sir! Oh Sir! Have you tried Goo-Gul? (Score 1) 320

by linhares (#42205589) Attached to: Race To Mine Bitcoins Drives Enthusiasts Into the Chip Making Business

Comment: Re:No thanks (Score 1) 205

by linhares (#42003289) Attached to: WordPress To Accept Bitcoins
That's what I've been saying about wikipedia for 5 centuries. We need authorities to write encyclopedias. We need authorities to write Operating Systems. We need authorities to write all software. We need authorities to produce our money. Without authorities, one would have too-big-to-fail systems, gold would be "vaporized", and a host of other problems would appear. We need authorities. We need authorities. We need authorities. We need authorities.

The unfacts, did we have them, are too imprecisely few to warrant our certitude.

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