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Medicine

Child Receives Trachea Grown From Own Stem Cells 103

Posted by samzenpus from the just-add-oxygen dept.
kkleiner writes "Doctors at the Great Ormond Street Hospital (GOSH) along with colleagues at the University College London, the Royal Free Hospital, and Careggi University Hospital in Florence have successfully transplanted a trachea into a 10 year old boy using his own stem cells. A donor trachea was taken, stripped of its cells into a collagen-like scaffold, and then infused with the boy's stem cells. The trachea was surgically placed into the boy and allowed to develop in place. Because his own cells were used, there was little to no risk of rejection. This was the first time a child had received such a stem cell augmented transplant and the first time that a complete trachea had been used."
Medicine

High Fructose Corn Syrup Causes Bigger Weight Gain In Rats 542

Posted by timothy from the subsidies-cause-fatter-corn-farmers dept.
krou writes "In an experiment conducted by a Princeton University team, 'Rats with access to high-fructose corn syrup gained significantly more weight than those with access to table sugar, even when their overall caloric intake was the same.' Long-term consumption also 'led to abnormal increases in body fat, especially in the abdomen, and a rise in circulating blood fats called triglycerides.' Psychology professor Bart Hoebel commented that 'When rats are drinking high-fructose corn syrup at levels well below those in soda pop, they're becoming obese — every single one, across the board. Even when rats are fed a high-fat diet, you don't see this; they don't all gain extra weight.'"
Nintendo

Submission + - Nintendo Announces Nintendo 3DS Portable System (nintendoworldreport.com)

Submitted by Mekabyte
Mekabyte writes: In a surprise announcement, Nintendo Co., Ltd. released a brief teaser regarding their next portable system. Tentatively called the Nintendo 3DS, the system features three-dimensional gameplay without the need for glasses.

The handheld is set to release sometime in Nintendo's next fiscal year, which ends March 2011. Nintendo promises backwards compatibility with DS and DSi games. Other details regarding the system and its 3D capabilities will be revealed at E3 on June 15th.
Power

Submission + - Bill Gates May Build Small Nuclear Reactor

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens
Hugh Pickens writes: "The Wall Street Journal reports that TerraPower, an energy start-up backed by Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, is in discussions with Toshiba Corp. to develop a small-scale nuclear reactor that would represent a long-term bet to make nuclear power safer and cheaper. Toshiba confirmed it is in preliminary discussions with TerraPower, a unit of Intellectual Ventures, a patent-holding concern partially funded by Gates and Toshiba spokesman Keisuke Ohmori says the two sides are talking about how they could collaborate on nuclear technology although discussions are still in early stages and that nothing has been decided on investment or development. TerraPower has publicly said its Traveling Wave Reactor could run for decades on depleted uranium without refueling (PDF) or removing spent fuel from the device. The reactor, the company has said, could be safer, cheaper and more socially acceptable than today's reactors. Gates's recent focus on nuclear power has been fueled by an interest in developing new power systems for developing countries where he says that new energy solutions are needed to combat climate change. Terrapower faces a lengthy, multi-year process to get its “traveling wave” reactor concept reviewed by regulators but if TerraPower succeeds in advancing its plans, it could provide an alternative blueprint for the nuclear industry at a time when new reactors may be coming online."
Java

Submission + - New tool converts Java apps to Android (idg.com.au)

Submitted by
angry tapir
angry tapir writes: "Mobile software company Myriad Group has announced J2Android, which will make it possible for Java-based mobile applications to run on Android-based phones. The J2Android tool converts existing Java applications, including games, to run on Dalvik, which is the virtual machine used on all Android devices. Besides converting the application, J2Android will let the application be rescaled to fit the screen of the Android device."

Submission + - Rumor: Palm ditching webOS for Android? 8

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Jon Rubinstein, in an internal Palm memo that will be released in full shortly, is showing support for Android to replace the webOS on the Palm Pre Plus. Citing competition with the iPhone and exponential growth from the Android operating system (specifically mentioning the Motorola Droid), the leaked memo first came as a confidential internal email to certain members of the software development branch of the company.

The memo partially states: "While Palm is incredibly proud of our engineers who spent timeless work and effort to bring us this advanced operating system, consumers simply have not caught on. To provide a better future for ourselves and our customers, the only logical choice is to transition our hardware and software to the Android platform."

WebOS won't officially go away (the UI and notifications feature, which have been heavily praised by reviewers, are more than likely going to be integrated, a la Sense UI, into the Android platform), according to the memo.

Software engineers are to begin working on Palm's own builds of Android as soon as the device maker officially joins the Open Handset Alliance, which other executives at Palm say could be as soon as next week. An official statement from the company is expected as soon as the union is made.

Palm Inc.'s stock took a nosedive earlier this month when it was reported that its projections for revenue were down 50% than initially estimated. On Friday, the stock fell $1.65, or 29%, to $4.00. That value remained relatively unchanged during Monday's trading.

The full leaked memo will be posted on wikileaks.org around midnight Eastern.
Earth

Planned Nuclear Reactors Will Destroy Atomic Waste 344

Posted by Soulskill from the but-where-will-we-get-our-superheroes dept.
separsons writes "A group of French scientists are developing a nuclear reactor that burns up actinides — highly radioactive uranium isotopes. They estimate that 'the volume of high-level nuclear waste produced by all of France’s 58 reactors over the past 40 years could fit in one Olympic-size swimming pool.' And they're not the only ones trying to eliminate atomic waste: Researchers at the University of Texas in Austin are working on a fusion-fission reactor. The reactor destroys waste by firing streams of neutrons at it, reducing atomic waste by up to 99 percent!"
Science

Submission + - Quantum film might replace CMOS (pcauthority.com.au)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Quantum film could replace conventional CMOS image sensors in digital cameras and are four times more sensitive than photographic film. The film, which uses embedded quantum dots instead of silver grains like photographics film, can image scenes at higher pixel resolutions. While the technology has potential for use in mobile phones, conventional digital cameras would also gain much higher resolution sensors by using quantum film material.

Submission + - The Voynich Manuscript Decoded? (edithsherwood.com) 1

Submitted by
MBCook
MBCook writes: "The Voynich Manuscript has confounded attempts to decode it for nearly 100 years. A person named Edith Sherwood, who has previously suggested a possible link to DaVinci, has a new idea: perhaps the text is simply anagrams of Italian words. There are three pages of examples from the herb section of the book, showing the original text, the plaintext Italian words, and the English equivalents. Has someone cracked the code?"
Digital

Submission + - Jeff Bezos: 'Sorry for remotely erasing "1984& (nytimes.com)

Submitted by levicivita
levicivita writes: From the down-but-not-out NYT comes an article (warning login may be required) about user backlash against Kindle's embedded DRM: "Last week, Jeffrey P. Bezos, chief executive of Amazon, offered an apparently heartfelt and anguished mea culpa to customers whose digital editions of George Orwell's "1984" were remotely deleted from their Kindle reading devices. Though copies of the books were sold by a bookseller that did not have legal rights to the novel, Mr. Bezos wrote on a company forum that Amazon's " 'solution' to the problem was stupid, thoughtless and painfully out of line with our principles." Jeff's post is here.
Censorship

Submission + - AT&T blocks img.4chan.org from customers (reddit.com) 11

Submitted by
bmecoli
bmecoli writes: "AT&T seems to be blocking img.4chan.net which hosts the infamous /b/ (random) board, as well as /r9k/. Those who have contacted AT&T representatives were told that the site is in fact blocked, so this isn't a technical problem, and all the other 4chan subdomains work fine."
Government

Submission + - Should Copyright Of Academic Works Be Abolished? (harvard.edu)

Submitted by
Dr_Ken
Dr_Ken writes: "From the Tech Dirt summary of this Harvard Cyber-Law Center study: "I've even heard of academics who had to redo pretty much the identical experiment because they couldn't even cite their own earlier results for fear of a copyright claim. It leads to wacky situations where academics either ignore the fact that the journals they published in hold the copyright on their work, or they're forced to jump through hoops to retain certain rights. That's bad for everyone." Indeed it is and especially so given the huge amounts of tax dollars spent doing research that then gets published in proprietary journals where it can't be accessed without payment."
Space

Submission + - Is Jupiter Earth's Cosmic Protector?

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens
Hugh Pickens writes: "Last Sunday an object, probably a comet that nobody saw coming, plowed into Jupiter's colorful cloud tops, splashing up debris and leaving a black eye the size of the Pacific Ocean — the second time in in 15 years that this had happened — after Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 fell apart and its pieces crashed into Jupiter in 1994, leaving Earth-size marks that persisted up to a year. Better Jupiter than Earth say astronomers who say that part of what makes Earth such a nice place to live is that Jupiter's overbearing gravity acts as a gravitational shield deflecting incoming space junk away from the inner solar system where it could do to humans what an asteroid apparently did for the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. "If anything like that had hit the Earth it would have been curtains for us, so we can feel very happy that Jupiter is doing its vacuum-cleaner job and hoovering up all these large pieces before they come for us," says Australian amateur astronomer Anthony Wesley who first noticed the mark on Jupiter. But other say the warm and fuzzy image of the King of Planets as father-protector may not be true. In 1770 Comet Lexell whizzed by the earth missing us by a cosmic whisker after passing close to Jupiter, which diverted it into a new orbit and straight toward Earth. The comet made two passes around the Sun and in 1779 again passed very close to Jupiter, which then threw it back out of the solar system. "It was as if Jupiter aimed at us and missed," said Dr. Brian G. Marsden of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, who complains that the comet would never have come anywhere near the Earth if Jupiter hadn't thrown it at us in the first place."

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