Chris Baraniuk, reporting for Wired: The unborn baby was in trouble. Its mother's doctors, at a UK hospital, knew there was something wrong with the fetus's blood, so they decided to perform an emergency C-section many weeks before the baby was due. But despite this, and subsequent blood transfusions, the baby suffered a brain hemorrhage with devastating consequences. It sadly passed away. It wasn't clear why the bleeding had happened. But there was a clue in the mother's blood, where doctors had noticed some strange antibodies. Some time later, as the medics tried to find out more about them, a sample of the mother's blood arrived at a lab in Bristol run by researchers who study blood groups. They made a startling discovery: The woman's blood was of an ultrarare type, which may have made her baby's blood incompatible with her own.

It's possible that this prompted her immune system to produce antibodies against her baby's blood -- antibodies that then crossed the placenta and harmed her child, ultimately leading to its loss. It may seem implausible that such a thing could happen, but many decades ago, before doctors had a better understanding of blood groups, it was much more common. Through studying the mother's blood sample, along with a number of others, scientists were able to unpick exactly what made her blood different, and in the process confirmed a new set of blood grouping -- the "Er" system, the 44th to be described. You're probably familiar with the four main blood types -- A, B, O, and AB. But this isn't the only blood classification system. There are many ways of grouping red blood cells based on differences in the sugars or proteins that coat their surface, known as antigens.

The grouping systems run concurrently, so your blood can be classified in each -- it might, for instance, be type O in the ABO system, positive (rather than negative) under the Rhesus system, and so on. Thanks to differences in antigens, if someone receives incompatible blood from a donor, for example, the recipient's immune system may detect those antigens as foreign and react against them. This can be highly dangerous, and is why donated blood needs to be a suitable match if someone is having a transfusion. On average, one new blood classification system has been described by researchers each year during the past decade. These newer systems tend to involve blood types that are mind-bogglingly rare but, for those touched by them, just knowing that they have such blood could be lifesaving. This is the story of how scientists unraveled the mystery of the latest blood system -- and why it matters.

From lower carbon emissions to fewer potholes, there are a number of benefits to building a layer of plastic into roads. From a report: On a road into New Delhi, countless cars a day speed over tonnes of plastic bags, bottle tops and discarded polystyrene cups. In a single kilometre, a driver covers one tonne of plastic waste. But far from being an unpleasant journey through a sea of litter, this road is smooth and well-maintained -- in fact the plastic that each driver passes over isn't visible to the naked eye. It is simply a part of the road. This road, stretching from New Delhi to nearby Meerut, was laid using a system developed by Rajagopalan Vasudevan, a professor of chemistry at the Thiagarajar College of Engineering in India, which replaces 10% of a road's bitumen with repurposed plastic waste.

India has been leading the world in experimenting with plastic-tar roads since the early 2000s. But a growing number of countries are beginning to follow suit. From Ghana to the Netherlands, building plastic into roads and pathways is helping to save carbon emissions, keep plastic from the oceans and landfill, and improve the life-expectancy of the average road. By 2040, there is set to be 1.3 billion tonnes of plastic in the environment globally. India alone already generates more than 3.3 million tonnes of plastic a year -- which was one of the motivators behind Vasudevan's system for incorporating waste into roads. It has the benefit of being a very simple process, requiring little high-tech machinery. First, the shredded plastic waste is scattered onto an aggregate of crushed stones and sand before being heated to about 170C -- hot enough to melt the waste. The melted plastics then coat the aggregate in a thin layer. Then heated bitumen is added on top, which helps to solidify the aggregate, and the mixture is complete. Many different types of plastics can be added to the mix: carrier bags, disposable cups, hard-to-recycle multi-layer films and polyethylene and polypropylene foams have all found their way into India's roads, and they don't have to be sorted or cleaned before shredding.

thomst writes "Nature Neuroscience just published an online article about the function of 'normal' prions in protecting myelin, the substance that sheathes and protects sensory and motor nerves. The international study (which has 11 authors) concluded that 'normal' (i.e., not mis-folded) prions may form a protective coat around myelin. The researchers found that Prnp -/- mice (mice with the gene for prions knocked out) consistently developed progressive demyelination, inevitably leading to persistent polyneuropathy by 60 weeks of age. Their data suggest that damage to myelin sheaths cause normal prions to cleave, and the resulting prion fragments activate Schwann cells, which are known to play a part in myelin repair. This research might eventually lead to possible treatments for progressive polyneuropathies in humans, including those mediated by Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, multiple sclerosis, Alzheimer's, and even diabetes."

Here is the eighth part in our continuing reprint of the columns Jon Katz wrote following the killings at Columbine High in Littleton, Colorado. Below are more of the many charged comments that the story drew.

Here is the next in our Hellmouth Revisited series; below is Jon Katz' column "The Cost of Being Different," a look into what it means to grow up and face high school for a painfully large number of kids. What would make things better? Will being different always cause so much suffering?

ICANN's elections are now underway. (We've covered this before.) ICANN's Nominating Committee has picked several candidates for each of the five open seats in a closed primary process; now there is a "member nomination" process underway where several more candidates will be selected to run for each seat. Civil liberties groups are actively attempting to promote democratic involvement in ICANN, such as the Civil Society Democracy Project being spearheaded by CPSR. We've asked each of the people seeking to be candidates for the North American region board seat to answer one question; here are the responses we've received. Update: 08/17 14:04 by michael : Two more responses added.

The folks over at LinuxWorldExpo have announced the keynote, presenters, and such for this August's show in San Jose. No big surprises - Linus as keynote, but also folks from Burlington Coat Factory and Intel for keynotes as well. Click below for the full screed.

It seems as if I only returned from the last LWCE, but it appears the new one is already underway. This time, we're moving out of our 10 x 10 hole, and will be housed in giant levitating portals, while Rob does his Ming impressions. Click below to get the real information.

Since Littleton, the cost of being different has gone up. Thousands of powerful e-mail messages have chronicled an educational system that glorifies the traditional and the normal, and brutalizes and alienates people who are or who are perceived as different under various names -- geeks, freaks, nerds, Goths and oddballs. One of the powerful messages coming out of Colorado is that so many of these "different" kids say they find school boring, oppressive, and utterly hostile, feelings echoed by educational survivors, many of whom are now parents. The hysteria over Littleton has only made things worse. It's time geeks defined and lobbied for some new rights. From their own messages, here are some places to start.