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Biotech

Peoples' Immune Systems Can Now Be Duplicated In Mice 89

Posted by samzenpus from the rodent-proxy dept.
cylonlover writes "Because everyone's immune system is different, it's impossible to predict with absolute certainty how any given person will react to a specific medication. In the not-too-distant future, however, at-risk patients may get their own custom-altered mouse, with an immune system that's a copy of their own. Medications could be tried out on the mouse first, and if they are shown to have no adverse effects, the person could take the medication with a higher degree of confidence. If the person has an autoimmune disease, the mouse could also provide valuable insight into its treatment. A team led by Columbia University Medical Center's Dr. Megan Sykes has recently developed a method of creating just such a 'personalized immune mouse.'"
Science

A Small Glimmer of Hope For Faster-Than-Light Neutrinos 183

Posted by timothy from the wouldn't-put-much-money-on-it dept.
sciencehabit writes "The CERN particle physics laboratory in Geneva has confirmed Wednesday's report that a loose fiber-optic cable may be behind measurements that seemed to show neutrinos outpacing the speed of light. But the lab also says another glitch could have caused the experiment to underestimate the particles' speed. The other effect concerns an oscillator that gives its readings time stamps synchronized to GPS signals. Researchers think correcting for an error in this device would actually increase the anomaly in neutrino velocity, making the particles even speedier than the earlier measurements seemed to show."
The Military

The New Transparency of War and Lethality of Hatred 591

Posted by Soulskill from the apparently-we-do-bad-things-during-wars dept.
Hugh Pickens writes "Robert Wright says that if you had asked him a few days ago — before news broke that American soldiers had urinated on Taliban corpses — if such a thing were possible, he would have said 'probably.' After all if you send 'young people into combat, people whose job is to kill the enemy and who watch as their friends are killed and maimed by the enemy, ... the chances are that signs of disrespect for the enemy will surface — and that every once in a while those signs will assume grotesque form.' War, presumably, has always been like this, but something has changed that amounts to a powerful new argument against starting wars in the first place. First, there's the new transparency of war as battlefield details get recorded, and everyone has the tools to broadcast these details, so 'it's just a matter of time before some outrageous image goes viral — pictures from Abu Ghraib, video from Afghanistan,' that will make you and your soldiers more hated by the enemy than ever. The second big change is that hatred is now a more dangerous thing. 'New information technologies make it easier for people who share a hatred to organize around it,' writes Wright. 'And once hateful groups are organized, they stand a better chance than a few decades ago of getting their hands on massively lethal technologies.' It used to be that national security consisted of making sure all foreign governments either liked you or feared you; now it requires that as few people as possible hate you. 'I think we should reflect on that before we start another war.'"

Comment Misleading Summary (Score 1) 65

by audubon (#37972136) Attached to: Bell Labs Builds Cheap Telepresence 'Robots'

The technology will likely be priced in the 'hundreds of dollars,' rather than the tens of thousands that the likes of Cisco and Polycom charge for high-end telepresence rooms.

And that's because this is not a "high-end telepresence room"; it's a "low-cost camera and screen that swivels on a set of robotic shoulders, and sits at a meeting table with physical attendees." Apples and oranges.
Biotech

Japanese Scientist Creates Meat Substitute From Sewage 417

Posted by samzenpus from the I'm-going-to-need-another-slice-of-cheese dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Hold on to your hamburgers — Japanese scientist Mitsyuki Ikeda at the Environmental Assessment Center in Okayama has invented an artificial meat substitute made from human feces. The unseemly meal is made by extracting protein and lipids from 'sewage mud.' The lipids are then combined with a reaction enhancer and whipped into 'meat' in an exploder. Ikeda makes the 'meat' more palatable by adding things like soy protein."

Comment Re:Stupid (Score 2) 828

by Xzallion (#34603678) Attached to: Senate Repeals 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell'

This has got to be one of the stupidest moves they could make. Make and repeal all the laws you want, but there's no getting around the fact that there are some people that just hate gays. The Don't Ask Don't Tell policy wasn't about discrimination by their superiors, it was about discrimination by their peers. You're not allowed to ask someone if they're gay, and you're not allowed to tell someone if you're gay, and if you do either you will be met with disciplinary action. That was to prevent being discriminated against by the people you work with in the potentially-life-endangering industry of violence and death that is the military.

There are also people in the military that hate females serving in the military. The military tells them to shut up and learn to be more accepting and caring while killing the rest of us with POSH (Prevention of Sexual Harassment) and EO (Equal Opportunity) training sessions. The people that violate this are subject to UCMJ (Uniform Code of Military Justice) action. In the case of hatred of homosexuals, the guidelines established in EO and POSH can apply just as well, so there is no real reason for Don't Ask Don't Tell to exist.

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