Paxsboy - Slashdot User

New iPhone Apps Help Drivers Beat Speed Traps 330

Posted by Soulskill on Sunday November 23, 2008 @02:08PM from the ifuzzbuster dept.

Ponca City, We love you writes "Two mobile applications, NMobile and Trapster, are providing drivers with up-to-date maps of speed-enforcement zones with live police traps, speed cameras or red-light cameras. Each application pulls up a map pinpointing the locations of speed traps within driving distance and an audio alert will sound as vehicles approach an area tagged as harboring a speed trap. Both applications rely on the wisdom of the crowds for their data with users reporting camera-rigged stop lights and areas heavily populated with radar-toting police officers via the iPhone or their web-based application, creating the ultimate speed trap repository available to you when you need it most — while you're driving. To thwart false alarms and eliminate inaccuracies, Trapster enlists its community of nearly 200,000 members to rank speed traps on their accuracy. NMobile founder Shannon Atkinson declined to provide detailed data, though he did estimate that 'well over 1,000' users had downloaded the application since it became available last week. The company insists they've received only positive feedback from law enforcement officials and police officers regarding their products. 'If the application gets people to slow down, I think it's generally considered to be a good thing,' said Atkinson."

German Doctor Cures an HIV Patient With a Bone Marrow Transplant 639

Posted by Soulskill on Sunday November 09, 2008 @12:50PM from the not-an-easy-one-though dept.

reporter writes "HIV is the virus that causes Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS). Until now, HIV has no cure and has led to the deaths of over 25 million people. However, a possible cure has appeared. Dr. Gero Hutter, a brilliant physician in Germany, replaced the bone marrow of an HIV patient with the bone marrow of a donor who has natural immunity to HIV. The new bone marrow in the patient then produced immune-system cells that are immune to HIV. Being unable to hijack any immune cell, the HIV has simply disappeared. The patient has been free of HIV for about 2 years. Some physicians at UCLA have developed a similar therapy and plan to commercialize it."

Comment Re:any evidence (Score 1) 2369

by Paxsboy on Wednesday October 29, 2008 @09:35PM (#25564123) Attached to: Discuss the US Presidential Election & the Economy

And it would be great if we did that. I'm all for it, as it's essentially the only way we'll have actual rule of law. Unfortunately, the people are happy voting for anyone who promises to fix things, regardless of the constitutionality of their plan.

As a result, the Constitution is next-to-meaningless, useful only when the Supreme Court occasionally has the urge to check something against it -- and often not even then.

Repairing Genetic Mutations With Lasers? 65

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Monday October 13, 2008 @05:02PM from the shed-a-little-light-on-your-genes dept.

Roland Piquepaille writes "German researchers at the Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel (CAU) think they've proved that genetic information can be controlled by light. The group studied the interaction between the four DNA bases — adenine (A), cytosine (C), guanine (G), and thymine (T) — by using femtosecond time-resolved fluorescence spectroscopy. The researchers think that they've demonstrated that DNA strands differ in their light sensitivity depending on their base sequences. The team thinks that it might be possible in the future to repair gene mutations using laser radiation. One of the project leaders said that 'it might even be possible under some circumstances to make transistors from DNA that would work through the hydrogen bonds.' It's not the first time I've heard about DNA computing, but this new approach looks promising."

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