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Submission + - Human Immune System has Emergency Backup Plan

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: New research by scientists at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine and Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences reveals that the immune system has an effective backup plan to protect the body from infection when the "master regulator" of the body's innate immune system fails. The study appears in the December 19 online issue of the journal Nature Immunology. The innate immune system defends the body against infections caused by bacteria and viruses, but also causes inflammation which, when uncontrolled, can contribute to chronic illnesses such as heart disease, arthritis, type 2 diabetes and cancer. A molecule known as nuclear factor kappa B (NF-B) has been regarded as the "master regulator" of the body's innate immune response, receiving signals of injury or infection and activating genes for microbial killing and inflammation.
Canada

Free Radicals May Not Be Cause of Aging 371

Posted by timothy from the with-very-few-exceptions-not-a-human-being dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Researchers at McGill University in Montreal have uncovered strong new evidence that that wildly-accepted mitochondrial free radical theory of aging (MFRTA) is wrong. MFRTA suggests that free radicals cause oxidative damage, which in turn leads to the aging process. This new evidence shows that high levels of Reactive Oxidative species are rather a biological signal used to combat aging then the process itself. This goes against claims of major health benefits from consuming foods and particularly supplements that contain antioxidants."
Science

Periodic Table of Elements To Get an Update 99

Posted by timothy from the elementally-my-dear-watson dept.
Lazarian writes "Scientists from around the world have put forth an update to the Periodic Table of Elements. In particular, they are changing the manner in which atomic weights of ten elements are expressed. From the article: 'For example, sulfur is commonly known to have a standard atomic weight of 32.065. However, its actual atomic weight can be anywhere between 32.059 and 32.076, depending on where the element is found.'"
Medicine

Browsing the Body 107

Posted by Soulskill from the not-porn dept.
ColdWetDog writes "Google Labs has an interesting new line of business — human anatomy. The Google Body Browser is a 3D representation of the major parts of the human body. Based on the well known and very expensive Zygote 3D artwork, you can zoom in, rotate, view the various organ systems (bone, internal organs, nerves) in various states of transparency. Very much like Google Earth in both execution and concept. Written with HTML5, it requires WebGL to work. The Firefox 4 beta seems to work fine. Google, of course, recommends Chrome."
Privacy

Submission + - Facebook Knows Your Face. Is That a Problem? (csmonitor.com) 2

Submitted by pickens
pickens writes: The Christian Science Monitor reports that Facebook will soon unveil a new face-recognition that crawls recently-added photos and rapidly coughs up a series of suggested tags, based on its analysis of the data making it easier for users to tag large numbers of pictures. Needless to say, the face-recognition announcement has been met with a good deal of blowback. "This is yet another way Facebook is mining data and information from all of us," one user wrote in the comments section of the Facebook blog. "It may just be the final nail in the coffin in my decision to delete my account." However the suggested tags "shouldn't come as a surprise, particularly given other products like say, iPhoto '09 or Microsoft's Windows Live Photo Gallery already use similar facial recognition technologies," writes JP Mangalindan. "And besides, how is Tag Suggestions more intrusive than the rest of the information – interests, likes, statuses, political affiliations, sexual preferences – that is all catalogued and searchable from within the network."

Comment Interesting study, bad interpretation (Score 1) 64

by DKush (#34579032) Attached to: Researchers Use Wireless To Study How Flu Spreads
Methinks this study protests too much. In schools, most classrooms are arranged in such a way that desks face one direction, forward. These sensors are logging data that is not truly in the range of spreading the virus. Last time I checked a kid never sneezed out of his ear to infect the kid sitting 5 feet to the left of him or out of the back of his skull to get the people behind him. The numbers presented are blown way out of proportion. The study does however pose a good question. Should the students or the teachers get the vaccine? My vote is for the teachers since they look in the face of 25-30 loaded barrels every class, while students might get their neck coughed on by the kid sitting behind them.
Power

CA's First Molten Salt Energy Plant Approved 270

Posted by timothy from the high-on-sodium dept.
An anonymous reader writes "This year we've seen molten salt power plants start to pick up steam around the world, and now the technology is heating up stateside — California just approved its first molten salt energy plant. Designed by SolarReserve, the plant uses heliostats to focus thermal energy on a power tower filled with salt, which is able to reach very high temperatures (over 1000 degrees Fahrenheit) and can hold heat for an extraordinary length of time. Heat from this reserve of molten salt can then be pumped through a steam generator to provide on-demand energy long after the sun has set."
Education

String Theory Tested, Fails Black Hole Predictions 307

Posted by CmdrTaco from the you-fail-it dept.
eldavojohn writes "Back in 2006 there was a lot of talk of testing String Theory. Well, today CERN has released a statement for the Compact Muon Solenoid Experiment. The short of it is simply that as far as they could tell, 'No experimental evidence for microscopic black holes has been found.' The long statement indicates that since the highly precise CMS detector found no spray of sub-atomic particles of normal matter while LHC smashed particles together, the hypothesis by String Theory that micro black holes would be formed and quickly evaporated in this experiment was incorrect. These tests have given the team confidence to say that they can exclude a 'variety of theoretical models' for the cases of black holes with a mass of 3.5-4.5 TeV (1012 electron volts). Not Even Wrong points us to the arxiv prepublication for those of you well versed in Greek. While you may not be able to run around claiming that String Theory is dead and disproved, evidently there are some adjustments that need to be made."
Medicine

Researchers Use Wireless To Study How Flu Spreads 64

Posted by samzenpus from the patient-802.15 dept.
MojoKid writes "With the help of wireless sensors, Stanford researchers confirmed what most of us suspected. When it comes to infectious viruses, human beings are toast. The researchers outfitted an entire high school population with IEEE 802.15.4 sensors for one day to model what they call a 'human contact network.' The devices tracked how often people came within the infection-spreading range of other individuals during a typical height-of-flu-season January day. The devices logged more than 760,000 incidents when two people were within 10 feet of each other, roughly the maximum distance that a disease can be transmitted through a cough or sneeze, according to a Stanford report on the project. The researchers ran thousands of simulations of a flu outbreak trying to determine infection rates under various circumstances."
Science

Atomic Weight Not So Constant 147

Posted by kdawson from the thulium-and-thalium dept.
DangerousBeauty writes "Yahoo has a Canadian Press story up about new changes to the periodic table of elements concerning the weights of specific elements — it seems that the weights fluctuate based on where they are found in nature. Quoting: '"People are probably comfortable with having a single value for the atomic weight, but that is not the reality for our natural world," says University of Calgary associate professor Michael Wieser.' He is is secretary of the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry's Commission on Isotopic Abundances and Weights."
Earth

Watch 200 Years of Global Growth In 4 Minutes 270

Posted by CmdrTaco from the statistics-are-fun dept.
kkleiner writes "A professor of international health in Sweden, Hans Rosling has a long history of exploring the facts and figures that surround our changing world. In the a segment of the BBC series, Rosling gives one of his most famous lectures with a new twist. Using 120,000+ bits of data and augmented reality, the exuberant professor takes us through the last 200 years of global history and its uneven growth of wealth and health." This is really worth watching. Seriously.
The Internet

Michael Moore Posts Julian Assange's Bail 987

Posted by CmdrTaco from the right-is-right dept.
digitaldc quotes Michael Moore in a story running on the Huffington Post where he says "Yesterday, in the Westminster Magistrates Court in London, the lawyers for WikiLeaks co-founder Julian Assange presented to the judge a document from me stating that I have put up $20,000 of my own money to help bail Mr. Assange out of jail. Furthermore, I (Michael Moore) am publicly offering the assistance of my website, my servers, my domain names and anything else I can do to keep WikiLeaks alive and thriving as it continues its work to expose the crimes that were concocted in secret and carried out in our name and with our tax dollars."
Handhelds

Nook Color Rooted — Will B&N Embrace the Tablet? 181

Posted by timothy from the what-technology-wants dept.
itwbennett writes "It can browse the web, edit Office docs, run apps. Is it a low-cost, low-function e-reader? Nope, it's a Nook. And now that XDA has rooted it, how Barnes & Noble responds will determine whether the Nook has a tablet future, says blogger Ryan Faas. 'If the device can be turned into a capable Android tablet (which technically it already is) easily, the $250 price tag certainly beats out some of the competition.'"

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