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Biotech

Submission + - Gene Therapy Causes Blind Woman to Grow New Fovea (technologyreview.com)

Submitted by
Al
Al writes: "A woman with a rare, inherited form of blindness is now able to read, thanks to a gene therapy that caused a new fovea--the part of the retina that is most densely populated with photoreceptors--to grow in her eye. The patient suffers from Leber congenital amaurosis, meaning an abnormal protein makes her photoreceptors have a severely impaired sensitivity to light. SAhe received the experimental treatment twelve months ago when physicians injected a gene encoding a functional copy of the protein into a small part of one eye--about eight-to-nine millimeters in diameter. Along with two other patients receiving the same treatment, her eyesight improved after just a few weeks. Now the physicians report that this patient seems to have developed a new fovea, exactly where she received the injection. Because the woman has been effectively blind since birth, the results suggest that the brain is able to adapt to new visual stimuli remarkably quickly."
Idle

Submission + - Team Aims to Create Pure Evil AI (scientificamerican.com) 1

Submitted by puroresu
puroresu writes: Scientific American reports on the efforts of Selmer Bringsjord and his team at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, who have been attempting to develop an AI possessed of an interesting character trait: pure evil.

"To be truly evil, someone must have sought to do harm by planning to commit some morally wrong action with no prompting from others (whether this person successfully executes his or her plan is beside the point). The evil person must have tried to carry out this plan with the hope of "causing considerable harm to others," Bringsjord says. Finally, "and most importantly," he adds, if this evil person were willing to analyze his or her reasons for wanting to commit this morally wrong action, these reasons would either prove to be incoherent, or they would reveal that the evil person knew he or she was doing something wrong and regarded the harm caused as a good thing."
Medicine

Submission + - Genetic Mutation Enables Less Sleep (nytimes.com) 1

Submitted by
reporter
reporter writes: "According to an article by the "New York Times", "Researchers have found a genetic mutation in two people who need far less sleep than average, a discovery that might open the door to understanding human sleep patterns and lead to treatments for insomnia and other sleep disorders.

The finding, published in the Friday issue of the journal Science, marks the first time scientists have identified a genetic mutation that relates to sleep duration in any animal or human.

... [People possessing the mutated gene] routinely function on about 6 hours of sleep a night; the average person needs 8 to 8.5 hours of sleep."

Does 2 less hours of sleep mean 2 more hours in writing comments on SlashDot?"
Portables (Apple)

Submission + - French teenager hurt by shattering iPhone 1

Submitted by KamuZ
KamuZ writes: From the article, "A French teenager suffered an eye injury when his girlfriend's iPhone shattered... The phone began making a hissing noise and the screen suddenly broke, sending pieces flying in the air...". Good thing he didn't lose an eye.
Privacy

Submission + - Digsby quietly installs malware (lifehacker.com)

Submitted by
An anonymous reader writes: Instant messenging company Digsby has quietly included malware in an update to their client software that utilizes users' computing power and bandwidth while "idle" for a quick buck. When questioned, developers at Digsby claim that they have done no wrong and that users should not complain because the client software is "free".
Privacy

Submission + - Installing DRM malware to watch a cable TV station (wordpress.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: In Windows 7, Playready will prevent you from recording certain cable stations into open, non-MS formats. The third screen shot is quite chilling... Isn't it lovely when content owners and monopolists conspire together to scratch each others' backs?
Space

Submission + - Space elevator: 'global warming cure'? (goodgearguide.com.au)

Submitted by
angry tapir
angry tapir writes: "Researchers gathered at the Space Elevator Conference at Microsoft's Redmond campus said that an elevator could make transportation to space so much more inexpensive than it is now that companies could build large solar-power farms in space to provide energy for people on Earth. That could eliminate the need to burn fossil fuels and thus reduce global warming."
Transportation

Submission + - New battery could change world, 1 house at a time

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: In a modest building on the west side of Salt Lake City, a team of specialists in advanced materials and electrochemistry has produced what could be the single most important breakthrough for clean, alternative energy since Socrates first noted solar heating 2,400 years ago. The prize is the culmination of 10 years of research and testing — a new generation of deep-storage battery that's small enough, and safe enough, to sit in your basement and power your home. http://www.heraldextra.com/news/article_b0372fd8-3f3c-11de-ac77-001cc4c002e0.html
Biotech

Submission + - SPAM: Salk Proves Stems Cells Can Cure Genetic Diseases

Submitted by
destinyland
destinyland writes: "The Salk Institute for Biological Studies just proved that genetic diseases can be cured by combining gene therapy with stem cells. With induced pluripotent stem cell technology, they actually corrected a defective gene linked to leukemia and other cancers in cells taken from a patient volunteer. "It's a pretty remarkable discovery that hasn't been extensively covered in the mainstream press," says their communications director, calling it "a major step in getting regenerative medicine from the laboratory to the clinic." A Salk researcher says that "If we can demonstrate that a combined iPS-gene therapy approach works in humans, then there is no limit to what we can do.""
Link to Original Source
United States

Submission + - Best online home for an open source project?

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: I am interested in starting an open source project that would involve software engineers, hardware engineers, and people with civil service experience in the United States. The project will be an attempt to engineer/design the perfect government for the US (as an educational exercise, of course). The design goals would be the same design goals our founding fathers had when they were drafting the Article of Confederation and The US Constitution. The Bill of Rights would be the only existing code that would be re-used. The design should follow the object-oriented design methodologies. What would be the best online home for such a project? (+5 Funny for any suggestions concerning a non-US location)
The Media

Submission + - SPAM: Rihanna's legs are worth $1.000.000!

Submitted by
Fashionista
Fashionista writes: "Long time has passed since I posted something with /about Rihanna! Today however I get these pictures of Rihanna wearing a leather/floral print skin tight dress, and lucky for me I can stare for hours at her perfectly shaped legs! Call me a freak, but if there's something I love about Rihanna, it's definitely her legs! Sure her ass and boobs are great too but today we only get to see her legs! Good enough I'd dare to say!"
Link to Original Source
Software

Submission + - Google Chrome 4.0 on OS X: 59x faster than IE 7 (cnet.co.uk)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: It's the fastest version of Chrome ever, the world's fastest browser on PC and Mac, and 34% faster than the quickest OS X browser to date, Safari 4. It's Google's still-very-early-in-development Chrome 4.0 and CNet benchmarking prove it's more than twice as fast as the original Chrome and (by my own calculations based on earlier benchmarks) 59 times faster than IE 7 on the PC!
Medicine

Submission + - Blind "See" with Their Tongues Using New D 1

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens
Hugh Pickens writes: "Neuroscientist Paul Bach-y-Rita hypothesized in the 1960s that "we see with our brains not our eyes." Now, a new device aims to partially restore the experience of vision for the blind and visually impaired by relying on the nerves on the tongue's surface to send light signals to the brain. "At first, I was amazed at what the device could do," says research director William Seiple. "One guy started to cry when he saw his first letter." BrainPort collects visual data through a small digital video camera about 1.5 centimeters in diameter that sits in the center of a pair of sunglasses worn by the user. Bypassing the eyes, the data are transmitted to a handheld base unit a little larger than a cell phone that houses such features as zoom control, light settings and shock intensity levels as well as a central processing unit that converts the digital signal into electrical pulses--replacing the function of the retina. The base unit sends the signals to the tongue via a "lollipop," an electrode array about nine square centimeters that sits directly on the tongue where densely packed nerves at the tongue surface receive the incoming electrical signals. White pixels yield a strong electrical pulse and the electrodes spatially correlate with the pixels so that if the camera detects light fixtures in the middle of a dark hallway, electrical stimulations will occur along the center of the tongue. Within 15 minutes of using the device, blind people can begin interpreting spatial information. "It becomes a task of learning, no different than learning to ride a bike," says neuroscientist Aimee Arnoldussen, adding that the "process is similar to how a baby learns to see. Things may be strange at first, but over time they become familiar.""

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