plastiqueman - Slashdot User

Comment Accumulate Naturally? (Score 1) 59

by plastiqueman on Wednesday July 27, 2011 @03:02PM (#36899720) Attached to: X-rays For Stargazing Turn Into Cancer Treatment

As a PhD candidate who works with noble metal nanoparticles on a daily basis, I have some issues with their work.

1. How do they plan to get the particles to "naturally" accumulate in tumors without some sort of surface coating; specifically one incorporating some sort of tumor sensing molecule?

2. If the nanoparticle is coated with some other molecule, do they still expect "low-energy" electrons to punch through without trouble? How low is "low-energy" anyway? In my experience, when dodecanethiol is attached to a nanoparticle surface (which is very common as a generic molecule for the synthesis work) 200 KeV electrons have no problem punching through, but this coating is much less transparent to a 40-80 KeV electron beam.

3. How well do these particles absorb x-rays anyway? The surface plasmon resonance peak (i.e. the wavelength of EM radiation that it preferentially absorbs) typically occurs in the 300-800 nm range for these (noble metal) nanoparticles. If there isn't a great absorption peak here, how much adjacent tissue are we cooking?

It just seems preliminary to elevate this to "treatment" status when the article really doesn't do much to inspire confidence in the work.

Submission + - Osama's Death Sets Twitter Record (ibtimes.com)

Submitted by

gabbo529

on Monday May 02, 2011 @05:27PM

gabbo529 writes: "Twitter has been a source of breaking news since its inception five years ago, and the social network was used at a high rate last night with the death of Osama Bin Laden. Last night saw the highest sustained rate of Tweets ever. From 10:45 p.m. to 2:20 a.m. ET, there was an average of 3,000 Tweets per second,"

Submission + - VMware causes 2nd outage while recovering from 1st (networkworld.com)

Submitted by

jbrodkin

on Monday May 02, 2011 @04:58PM

jbrodkin writes: "VMware's new Cloud Foundry service was online for just two weeks when it suffered its first outage, caused by a power failure. Things got really interesting the next day, when a VMware employee accidentally caused a second, more serious outage while a VMware team was writing up a plan of action to recover from future power loss incidents. An inadvertent press of a key on a keyboard led to "a full outage of the network infrastructure [that] took out all load balancers, routers, and firewalls ... and resulted in a complete external loss of connectivity to Cloud Foundry." Clearly, human error is still a major factor in cloud networks."

Submission + - Google wants your voice data (wordpress.com)

Submitted by 00_NOP on Monday May 02, 2011 @04:50PM

00_NOP writes: Peter Norvig, Google's director of research, has told New Scientist that one of the reasons the search engine launched Google Voice is that it needs more human voice data to perfect the sort of "big data, simple algorithm" probabilistic approach to translating voices to text that drives Google Translate. Norvig says that no one is listening to your calls on Google Voice — it is simply their servers trying to the translation right.

Submission + - OS X Crimeware Kit Emerges (threatpost.com)

Submitted by Trailrunner7 on Monday May 02, 2011 @03:47PM

Trailrunner7 writes: Crimeware kits have become a ubiquitous part of the malware scene in the last few years, but they have mainly been confined to the Windows platform. Now, reports are surfacing that the first such kit targeting Apple's Mac OS X operating system has appeared.

The kit is being compared to the Zeus kit, which has been one of the more popular and pervasive crimeware kits for several years now. A report by CSIS, a Danish security firm, said that the OS X kit uses a template that's quite similar to the Zeus construction and has the ability to steal forms from Firefox.

Submission + - Murder Trial May Turn on Missing Internet Router (wral.com)

Submitted by

bgood

on Monday May 02, 2011 @02:18PM

bgood writes: "The outcome of a murder trial taking place in Charlotte, NC, may turn on a missing router. State prosecutors believe that Brad Cooper may have used the router (never recovered by investigators) to make it appear his wife made a phone call from the house the day she disappeared. The trial is in its 8th week."

Internet Blacklist Back In Congress 278

Posted by CmdrTaco on Tuesday November 16, 2010 @04:04PM from the nobody-talks-about-my-orange-list dept.

Adrian Lopez writes "A bill giving the government the power to shut down Web sites that host materials that infringe copyright is making its way quietly through the lame-duck session of Congress, raising the ire of free-speech groups and prompting a group of academics to lobby against the effort. The Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act (COICA) was introduced in Congress this fall by Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT). It would grant the federal government the power to block access to any Web domain that is found to host copyrighted material without permission."

YouTube Gets a Vuvuzela Button (Seriously) 305

Posted by CmdrTaco on Thursday June 24, 2010 @08:45AM from the just-stop-watching-sports dept.

teh31337one writes "YouTube always has had a way with pranks. Some time in the last hour, the world's largest video portal activated a new button on some videos that looks like a tiny soccer ball. Clicking it will activate an endless, incredibly annoying sound that sounds vaguely like a swarm of insects. Or, for anyone who has been watching the World Cup, like the dreaded vuvuzela — an instrument commonly played in South Africa at football (soccer) games. South Africa is, of course, the host country for this year's World Cup, and fans watching the games have been subjected to the vuvuzela's mindless drone for hours on end. The noise is so annoying that television networks have taken measures to filter it out, and guides have popped up showing viewers how to block it from their TV sets and computers. I'm not seeing the button show up on all videos, but it is definitely appearing on some clips that aren't soccer-related."

Might Shatner Boldly Lead Canada As Governor? 318

Posted by CmdrTaco on Tuesday June 22, 2010 @10:34AM from the universal-healthcare-and-captain-kirk dept.

just fiddling around writes "Now that Michaëlle Jean is approaching the end of her customary five-year post as Governor General of Canada, the rumor mill has started on who Prime Minister Steven Harper will propose to the Queen in her stead. According to the CBC, the short list includes Captain Kirk, actor William Shatner. It seems that acting can lead to the highest offices in places other than California."

Japanese Consortium Projects a Humanoid Robot On the Moon By 2015 151

Posted by timothy on Thursday April 29, 2010 @04:03PM from the why-can't-they-send-them-all? dept.

JoshuaInNippon writes "A Japanese manufacturing cooperative named Astro-Technology SOHLA announced on April 27th that they are planning to create and send a two-legged humanoid robot to the moon, have it draw the Japanese flag on the surface, and hopefully then get it to return to the Earth, all by the year 2015. The group wants to inspire people, particularly in Japan, about space and generate confidence among SMEs to create low-cost space technology. While the idea may seem far-fetched to some, SOHLA had success in building a small low-cost satellite named Maido-1, which was launched into space aboard a Japanese H-IIA rocket in early 2009. The group also commented that they want to have their future humanoid robot hitch a ride to the moon with a surveying rover that JAXA is building."

Comment Re:This is why i love noscript and requestpolicy (Score 5, Informative) 245

by plastiqueman on Tuesday April 27, 2010 @03:07PM (#32003302) Attached to: Fake Antivirus Peddlers Outpacing Real AV Firms

I work for an IT helpdesk at a large public university and we see students come through all the time with these programs. Realistically though, the installation vector we see the most is not the installation of programs from random websites; the majority get them from clicking a link to watch a movie (still in theaters) online or even through certain ads in Facebook. These programs have simply gotten extremely clever at tricking the end user.

UK Police Promise Not To Retain DNA Data, But Do Anyway 372

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday March 02, 2010 @03:25AM from the most-private-thing dept.

redalien writes "In 2008 I invited two policemen into my home and voluntarily gave them a DNA and fingerprint sample to help with a murder investigation, as they'd promised it would only be used for that investigation. I was never under any suspicion and could just as easily have said no. Almost a year after the investigation closed they have now confirmed that they've retained my samples and at my request have begun an investigation to see if there are sufficient 'exceptional circumstances' to remove them. I'm not the only one who was told samples would be removed, so if you've had such a promise from the police I recommend contacting their data protection registrar immediately."

Chilean Earthquake Shortened Earth's Day 374

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday March 02, 2010 @12:30AM from the ice-skater-effect dept.

ailnlv writes "Days on Earth just got shorter. The recent earthquake in Chile shifted the planet's axis by about 8 cm and shortened days by 1.26 microseconds 'The changes can be modeled, though they're difficult to detect physically given their small size. ... Some changes may be more obvious, and islands may have shifted. ... Santa Maria Island off the coast near Concepcion, Chile’s second-largest city, may have been raised 2 meters (6 feet) as a result of the latest quake ...'"

Aurora Attack — Resistance Is Futile, Pretty Much 268

Posted by kdawson on Monday March 01, 2010 @10:36PM from the big-leagues dept.

eldavojohn writes "Do you have branch offices in China? iSec has published a new report (PDF) outlining the severity of the attacks on Google.cn, allegedly by the Chinese government, dubbed 'Aurora' attacks. Up to 100 companies were victims, and some are speculating that resistance to such attacks is futile. The report lays out the shape of the attacks — which were customized per-company based on installed vulnerable software and antivirus protection: '1. The attacker socially engineers a victim, often in an overseas office, to visit a malicious website. 2. This website uses a browser vulnerability to load custom malware on the initial victim's machine. 3. The malware calls out to a control server, likely identified by a dynamic DNS address. 4. The attacker escalates his privilege on the corporate Windows network, using cached or local administrator credentials. 5. The attacker attempts to access an Active Directory server to obtain the password database, which can be cracked onsite or offsite. 6. The attacker uses cracked credentials to obtain VPN access, or creates a fake user in the VPN access server. 7. At this point, the attack varies based upon the victim. The attacker may steal administrator credentials to access production systems, obtain source code from a source repository, access data hosted at the victim, or explore Intranet sites for valuable intellectual property.' The report also has pages of recommendations as well as lessons learned, which any systems administrator — even those inside the US — should read and take note of."

Another ACTA Leak Discloses Individual Country Data 133

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Monday March 01, 2010 @05:54PM from the forced-transparency dept.

An anonymous reader writes "On the heels of the earlier leak of various country positions on ACTA transparency, today an even bigger leak has hit the Internet. A new European Union document [PDF] prepared several weeks ago canvasses the Internet and Civil Enforcement chapters, disclosing in complete detail the proposals from the US, and the counter-proposals from the EU, Japan, and other ACTA participants. The 44-page document also highlights specific concerns of individual countries on a wide range of issues including ISP liability, anti-circumvention rules, and the scope of the treaty. This is probably the most significant leak to date since it goes beyond the transparency debate to include specific country positions and proposals."

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