Comment Re:Should come as no big surprise... (Score 1) 62
Ultraviolet radiation and skin cancer
Comment Maybe not so surprising (Score 4, Informative) 100
This is probably not surprising since both Leydig cells and Sertoli cells express ACE2. Both Leydig cells and Sertoli cells are found in the testes, where Sertoli cells is a central player in the spermatogenesis, while Leydig cells produce testosterone. ACE2 is the transmembrane protein SARS-CoV-2 uses to enter cells. The expression of ACE2 on these cells was already shown in a study from 2004 published in Endocrinology https://academic.oup.com/endo/... (paywalled).
Comment Re:Zero G (Score 1) 201
How did they simulate zero gravity and its adverse effects on the human body??
This has already been done years ago. You can simulate the influence of microgravity http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weightlessness#Microgravity on the cardiovascular system and the skeleton using so called head down bed rest. The idea is if you are laying down at a down tilt of e.g. 5 degrees and are not allowed to stand up or sit up during the experiment you can simulate both the influence on the cardiovascular system and the unloading of the bones.
In the late 1980ies a 370-day-long head down tilt bed rest experiment was carried out in the Soviet Union, which is the bed rest study of the longest duration yet. This study showed that it was possible to counteract the immobilization induced bone loss by doing 1-2 hours of exercise per day combined with treatment with a pharmaceutical (a bisphosphonate, which is part of a group of agents that is currently used for treating/preventing osteoporosis [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bisphosphonate]). A control group who did not do any countermeasures experienced a significant loss of bone mass after 120 days of bed rest, after which they also stated the same exercise regimen as the other participants and seemed to regain some of the lost bone.
Citation: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16235873
(For reasons that is not clear to me this study was not published and the samples were put on storage unanalyzed until we got access to them. We analyzed the bone samples and published them with the original investigators from Russia and France.)
Comment Re:To expensive (Score 1) 695
The European Commission disagree with you as they use the term "ban" in their news release: http://ec.europa.eu/news/energy/090901_en.htm
Comment Re:Even so (Score 1) 521
Also, the British thinktank who instituted this are a right-wing one, no doubt plotting to destroy the NHS alongside the Tory allies. So they publish a non-peer reviewed piece of 'research' designed to conclude what they want it to conclude. Bullshit.
The study was published in a journal called Demography http://www.populationassociation.org/publications/demography/. From the journals web page: "Demography is a peer-reviewed journal. All manuscripts considered appropriate for the journal are reviewed externally." Consequently, the research study was actually peer reviewed...
Rupert Murdoch Claims To Own the 'Sky' In 'Skype' 186
Crudely_Indecent writes "Not content to own just news stories, Rupert Murdoch is now going after individual words! His BSkyB is fighting a legal battle with Skype, claiming that it owns the 'Sky' in 'Skype.' From the article: 'A spokesman for Sky confirmed that the company has been involved in a "five-year dispute with Skype" over trademark applications filed by the telecomms company. These are, the spokesman added: "including, but not limited to, television-related goods and services."'"
Wine 1.2 Released 427
David Gerard writes "Stuck with that one Windows app you can't get rid of? Rejoice — Wine 1.2 is officially released! Apart from running pretty much any Windows application on Unix better than 1.0 (from 2008), major new features include 64-bit support, bi-directional text, and translation into thirty languages. And, of course, DirectX 9 is well-supported and DirectX 10 is getting better. Packages should hit the distros over the weekend, or you can get the source now."
First Photos From the European Solar Decathlon 26
An anonymous reader writes "The 2010 Solar Decathlon Europe kicked off today in Madrid, Spain, with a stunning array of solar-powered prefab homes. Seventeen teams from around the globe are battling it out in the center of the city to see who has the most efficient solar-powered and eco-friendly house. Just as in the competition in Washington DC, the teams will be graded on minimal energy use, innovative architecture and engineering, sustainability, and more. Check out these exclusive photos from the event for a first look at the most exciting houses in this year's competition."
Alberta Scientists Discover Largest-Ever Cache of Dinosaur Bones 154
Cryolithic writes "The largest cache of dinosaur bones ever found has been unearthed in Alberta. From the article: '... officials at the Royal Tyrrell Museum say the Hilda site provides the first solid evidence that some horned dinosaur herds were much larger than previously thought, with numbers comfortably in the high hundreds to low thousands. ... Rather than picturing the animals as drowning while crossing a river, a classic scenario that has been used to explain bonebed occurrences at many sites in Alberta, the research team interpreted the vast coastal landscape as being submerged during tropical storms or hurricanes. With no high ground to escape to, most of the members of the herd drowned in the rising coastal waters. Carcasses were deposited in clumps across kilometers of ancient landscape as floodwaters receded.'"
Wine 1.2 Release Candidate Announced 165
An anonymous reader writes "After evolving over 15 years to get to 1.0, a mere 2 years later and Wine 1.2 is just about here. There have been many many improvements and plenty of new features added. Listing just a few (doing no justice to the complete change set):
many new toolbar icons; support for alpha blending in image lists; much more complete shader assembler; support for Arabic font shaping and joining, and a number of fixes for video rendering; font anti-aliasing configuration through fontconfig; and improved handling of desktop link files. Win64 support is the milestone that marks this release. Please test your favorite applications for problems and regressions and let the Wine team know so fixes can be made before the final release. Find the release candidate here."
Half-Male, Half-Female Fowl Explain Birds' Sex Determination 117
Kanan excerpts from a BBC report out of Scotland: "A study of sexually scrambled chickens suggests that sex in birds is determined in a radically different way from that in mammals. Researchers studied three chickens that appeared to be literally half-male and half-female, and found that nearly every cell in their bodies — from wattle to toe — has an inherent sex identity. This cell-by-cell sex orientation contrasts sharply with the situation in mammals, in which organism-wide sex identity is established through hormones."
Kanan also supplies this link to some pictures of the mixed-cell birds.
Apple Removes Wi-Fi Finders From App Store 461
jasonbrown writes "Apple on Thursday began removing another category of apps from its iPhone App Store. This time, it's not porn, it's Wi-Fi. Apple removed several Wi-Fi apps commonly referred to as stumblers, or apps that seek out available Wi-Fi networks near your location. According to a story on Cult of Mac, apps removed by Apple include WiFi-Where, WiFiFoFum, and yFy Network Finder."
Police Called Over 11-Year-Old's Science Project 687
garg0yle writes "Police in San Diego were called to investigate an 11-year-old's science project, consisting of 'a motion detector made out of an empty Gatorade bottle and some electronics,' after the vice-principal came to the conclusion that it was a bomb. Charges aren't being laid against the youth, but it's being recommended that he and his family 'get counseling.' Apparently, the student violated school policies — I'm assuming these are policies against having any kind of independent thought?"
An Open Source Compiler From CUDA To X86-Multicore 71
Gregory Diamos writes "An open source project, Ocelot, has recently released a just-in-time compiler for CUDA, allowing the same programs to be run on NVIDIA GPUs or x86 CPUs and providing an alternative to OpenCL. A description of the compiler was recently posted on the NVIDIA forums. The compiler works by translating GPU instructions to LLVM and then generating native code for any LLVM target. It has been validated against over 100 CUDA applications. All of the code is available under the New BSD license."
Linux Kernel 2.6.32 Released 195
diegocg writes "Linus Torvalds has officially released the version 2.6.32 of the Linux kernel. New features include virtualization memory de-duplication, a rewrite of the writeback code faster and more scalable, many important Btrfs improvements and speedups, ATI R600/R700 3D and KMS support and other graphic improvements, a CFQ low latency mode, tracing improvements including a 'perf timechart' tool that tries to be a better bootchart, soft limits in the memory controller, support for the S+Core architecture, support for Intel Moorestown and its new firmware interface, run-time power management support, and many other improvements and new drivers. See the full changelog for more details."
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