34557285
submission
ananyo writes:
Two anti-clotting compounds already approved for use in humans may have a surprising role in treating radiation sickness. Last year's nuclear accident in Fukushima, Japan, renewed anxiety over the lack of treatments for radiation poisoning. It was long thought that the effects of exposure to high doses of radiation were instantaneous and irreversible, leading to destruction of the gut and loss of bone marrow cells, which damages blood-cell production and the immune system.
The two compounds are thrombomodulin (Solulin/Recomodulin), currently approved in Japan to prevent thrombosis, and activated protein C (Xigris). Treating mice with either drug post-exposure led to an eightfold increase in key bone marrow cells needed for the production of white blood cells, and improved the survival rates of mice receiving lethal radiation doses by 40–80% (abstract).
And yes, the lead author's name really is Geiger.
34554851
submission
Shivetya writes:
A judge has decided that the American Disabilities Act requires services like Netflix to provide Closed Captioning support for any video it streams on its website. The easiest means to comply would be to remove all videos which do not have a closed captioning component, the other route would require Netflix to pay to have this done to any video it wants to provide. The implications to other provides is immense as well.
34552691
submission
jonastullus writes:
It is almost impossible to look over the shoulders of a programmer to see how he develops a program from start to finish.
When video tutorial are put online, they are scripted, edited and cut.
This video shows live-coding the game of Sokoban including a GTK GUI to give an impression of the cul-de-sacs and confusion that is involved in a successful programming project ;)
34527227
submission
remember_clifford writes:
Michael Gastner, known for his sublime cartograms that use gas-diffusion formulas to reshape maps, has a new map on Yahoo that morphs the US-Mexico border based on immigration data, animated over time. No word on exactly what formulas he used, but looks like pretty basic pressure on maleable surface.
33806623
submission
dsinc writes:
George Murray Levick, a scientist with the 1910-13 Scott Antarctic Expedition, made observations about the Adelie penguins' sex life. To his horror, the penguins' sexual activity included auto-erotic behaviour, and seemingly aberrant behaviour of young unpaired males and females, including necrophilia, sexual coercion, sexual and physical abuse of chicks and homosexual behaviour. When he returned to England, he deemed this part of the study to be too shocking and removed it "to preserve decency." Today, it is unearthed at the Natural History Museum.
33803537
submission
Tryfen writes:
UK ISPs are being forced to block The Pirate Bay. One is using "HTTP 403 Forbidden" to tell users that they cannot access the site. So, should there be a specific HTTP status code to tell a user that they are being censored?
33263561
submission
scibri writes:
Bring two positively charged spheres together and what happens? They repel, right? Wrong.
Physicist John Lekner, has proven mathematically that they will attract when they get close enough together (paper's not live yet, but the link where it will eventually live is here). A region of positive charge on one sphere can cause the positive charge on the other to retreat, piling up further away and leaving a patch of negative charge behind.
English scientist William Snow Harris, who invented lightning conductors for ships, saw something like this in 1836 with charged disks. So now all that remains is for someone to prove Lekner's math experimentally today.
31509211
submission
dsinc writes:
Mystery solved: The Simpsons live in the Springfield that's in Oregon, the creator of the animated family reveals.
29099895
submission
tmcb writes:
On Saturday protests are planned across the world against Acta — the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement. The treaty has become the focus of activists associated with the Anonymous hacking network because of concerns that it could undermine internet privacy and aid censorship.
First published in 1982, the comic series V for Vendetta charted a masked vigilante's attempt to bring down a fascist British government and its complicit media. Many of the demonstrators are expected to wear masks based on the book's central character.
Ahead of the protests, the BBC asked V for Vendetta's writer, Alan Moore, for his thoughts on how his creation had become an inspiration and identity to Anonymous.
28386594
submission
ads49 writes:
Apparently this Lamar guy just doesn't know when to quit. He's now pushing a law that forces ISP's to record your search history, credit card usage, and IP addresses you've been assigned for the last 18 months. So now when you are eventually suspected of something, they already have plenty of "proof" against you. Gotta love that forward thinking. http://www.slashgear.com/sopa-sponsor-has-another-internet-bill-that-records-you-247-20210264/
27958762
submission
Voline writes:
In a tweet early this morning, cybersecurity researcher Christopher Soghoian pointed to an internal memo of India's Military Intelligence that has been liberated by hackers and posted on the Net. The memo suggests that, "in exchange for the Indian market presence" mobile device manufacturers, including RIM, Nokia, and Apple (collectively defined in the document as "RINOA") have agreed to provide backdoor access on their devices.
The Indian government then "utilized backdoors provided by RINOA" to intercept internal emails of the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission, a US government body with a mandate to monitor, investigate and report to Congress on "the national security implications of the bilateral trade and economic relationship" between the US and China. Manan Kakkar, an Indian blogger for ZDNet, has also picked up the story and writes that it may be the fruits of an earlier hack of Symantec.
If Apple is providing governments with a backdoor to iOS, can we assume that they have also done so with Mac OS X?
