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Comment Actual article link and abstract (Score 1) 238

The antimicrobial action is hypothesized to be largely physical (disruption of the cell membrane leading to cell death). Barring some relatively significant mutations that greatly change the overall structure of the bacteria, a "resistance" would be relatively unlikely.

Here is the actual article link, since it's busted in the summary:
http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/am200324f
or
http://dx.doi.org/10.1021/am200324f

Abstract:

One-Step Photochemical Synthesis of Permanent, Nonleaching, Ultrathin Antimicrobial Coatings for Textiles and Plastics

Antimicrobial copolymers of hydrophobic N-alkyl and benzophenone containing polyethylenimines were synthesized from commercially available linear poly(2-ethyl-2-oxazoline), and covalently attached to surfaces of synthetic polymers, cotton, and modified silicon oxide using mild photo-cross-linking. Specifically, these polymers were applied to polypropylene, poly(vinyl chloride), polyethylene, cotton, and alkyl-coated oxide surfaces using solution casting or spray coating and then covalently cross-linked rendering permanent, nonleaching antimicrobial surfaces. The photochemical grafting of pendant benzophenones allows immobilization to any surface that contains a C–H bond. Incubating the modified materials with either Staphylococcus aureus or Escherichia coli demonstrated that the modified surfaces had substantial antimicrobial capacity against both Gram-positive and Gram-negative bacteria (>98% microbial death).

Comment Re:Bring on the hate (Score 1) 207

Fantastic. And it is great at that. It is when a company lacks much in the way of technical personnel decides that since it works so great for these smaller things it should be used for that Big Project as well, rather than going for the bigger initial investment of a proper database system. Or a user creates a little project for himself that Boss sees and decides everyone should be using because it worked so great for person X.

Any time it moves beyond the small projects it becomes hell to deal with from a technical standpoint. Which, unfortunately, I have extensive personal experience with.

SKA Telescope To Provide a Billion PCs Worth of Processing 186

Sharky2009 writes "IBM is researching an exaflop machine with the processing power of about one billion PCs. The machine will be used to help process the Exabyte of data per day expected to flow off the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) telescope project. The company is also researching solid state storage technology called 'racetrack memory' which is much faster and denser than flash and may hold the secret to storing the data from the SKA. The story also says that the SKA is unlikely to use grid computing or a cloud-based approach to processing the telescope data due to challenge in transferring so much data (about one thousand million 1Gb memory sticks each day)."

Comment At an NPO anyway... (Score 1) 1055

If you're by the hour, now more than ever companies will try to restrict overages. Our support techs get called in off-hours for only the direst of emergencies. Of course, us salaried saps get to deal with the extra. "You've used linux before, here admin these two RHEL servers."
Biotech

New Method To Revolutionize DNA Sequencing 239

An anonymous reader writes "A new method of DNA sequencing published this week in Science identifies incorporation of single bases by fluorescence. This has been shown to increase read lengths from 20 bases (454 sequencing) to >4000 bases, with a 99.3% accuracy. Single molecule reading can reduce costs and increase the rate at which reads can be performed. 'So far, the team has built a chip housing 3000 ZMWs [waveguides], which the company hopes will hit the market in 2010. By 2013, it aims to squeeze a million ZMWs [waveguides] onto a single chip and observe DNA being assembled in each simultaneously. Company founder Stephen Turner estimates that such a chip would be able to sequence an entire human genome in under half an hour to 99.999 per cent accuracy for under $1000.'"
Robotics

Packs of Robots Will Hunt Down Uncooperative Humans 395

Ostracus writes "The latest request from the Pentagon jars the senses. At least, it did mine. They are looking for contractors to 'develop a software/hardware suite that would enable a multi-robot team, together with a human operator, to search for and detect a non-cooperative human subject. The main research task will involve determining the movements of the robot team through the environment to maximize the opportunity to find the subject ... Typical robots for this type of activity are expected to weigh less than 100 Kg and the team would have three to five robots.'" To be fair, they plan to use the Multi-Robot Pursuit System for less nefarious-sounding purposes as well. They note that the robots would "have potential commercialization within search and rescue, fire fighting, reconnaissance, and automated biological, chemical and radiation sensing with mobile platforms."

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