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Submission + - Nasal Spray Could Prevent Coronavirus Transmission (columbia.edu)

Submitted by Snard
Snard writes: A nasal antiviral created by researchers at Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons blocked transmission of SARS-CoV-2 in ferrets, suggesting the nasal spray also may prevent infection in people exposed to the new coronavirus.

The compound in the spray—a lipopeptide developed by Anne Moscona, MD, and Matteo Porotto, PhD, professors in the Department of Pediatrics and directors of the Center for Host-Pathogen Interaction—is designed to prevent the new coronavirus from entering host cells.

The antiviral lipopeptide is inexpensive to produce, has a long shelf life, and does not require refrigeration. These features make it stand out from other antiviral approaches under development, including monoclonal antibodies. The new nasal lipopeptide could be ideal for halting the spread of COVID in the United States and globally; the transportable and stable compound could be especially key in rural, low-income, and hard-to-reach populations.

Comment Re:Microsoft got nailed to the wall for less (Score 1) 162

If you want to compete in the console industry you must support Sony Playstation. Which requires a Windows PC and a developer license to even publish something. It's about 59% market share in the US right now. Pretty large captive audience they've got there. Plus you have to buy devkits which are in the order of thousands of dollars per kit. The same applies to Nintendo and Microsoft. So, why the fixation with Apple?

Comment Atari 800XL (Score 2) 623

by robcfg (#43850525) Attached to: How Did You Learn How To Program?
I got my 1st computer, an Atari 800XL from my grandmother in Germany as a First Communion present. When I got bored of playing Donkey Kong, I took a look at the manual, wrote the first example, and ran it. I was so amazed, that I started tweaking the numbers in the code and saw which effect they had. That's when I discovered the power XD
Space

Submission + - Missing Matter, Parralel Universes ? (universetoday.com)

Submitted by
Phoghat
Phoghat writes: "Could mirror universes or parallel worlds account for dark matter — the ‘missing’ matter in the Universe? In what seems to be mixing of science and science fiction, a new paper by a team of theoretical physicists hypothesizes the existence of mirror particles as a possible candidate for dark matter. An anomaly observed in the behavior of ordinary particles that appear to oscillate in and out of existence could be from a “hypothetical parallel world consisting of mirror particles,” says a press release from Springer. “Each neutron would have the ability to transition into its invisible mirror twin, and back, oscillating from one world to the other.”"
Wikipedia

Submission + - Statisticians Investigate Political Bias on Wikipedia

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens writes
Hugh Pickens writes writes: "The Global Economic Intersection reports on a project to statistically measure political bias on Wikipedia. The team first identified 1,000 political phrases based on the number of times these phrases appeared in the text of the 2005 Congressional Record and applied statistical methods to identify the phrases that separated Democratic representatives from Republican representatives, under the model that each group speaks to its respective constituents with a distinct set of coded language. Then the team identified 111,000 Wikipedia articles that include “republican” or “democrat” as keywords and analyzed them to determine whether a given Wikipedia article used phrases favored more by Republican members or by Democratic members of Congress. The results may surprise you. "The average old political article in Wikipedia leans Democratic" but gradually, Wikipedia’s articles have lost the disproportionate use of Democratic phrases and moved to nearly equivalent use of words from both parties (PDF), akin to an NPOV [neutral point of view] on average. Interestingly some articles like civil rights tend to have a Democrat slant, while others like trade tend to have a Republican slant while at the same time many seemingly controversial topics such as foreign policy, war and peace, and abortion have no net slant. "Most articles arrive with a slant, and most articles change only mildly from their initial slant. The overall slant changes due to the entry of articles with opposite slants, leading toward neutrality for many topics, not necessarily within specific articles.""

Comment Re:Oh really? (Score 1) 143

by robcfg (#39965395) Attached to: Xbox 360 Kinect Said To Add Internet Explorer Browsing

"We are told that the browser will let Xbox users surf all parts of the web straight from their living rooms." Does that include YouTube for example? As far as I remember you have to be a XBox Live Gold Member to use the YouTube application...

I'm not trying to be rude, but do people actually buy an Xbox and not have a Gold membership? It equates to something like $5 per month for access to demos, weekly arcade games, an indie game market, promo videos, media streaming, a stable staging environment for multiplayer gaming across games, etc. Not to burst your bubble, but you'll probably need a Gold membership to use the IE browser anyways. Hopefully they launch Skype soon. That's my only real complaint.

For me the key point is why do I have to pay for something that is free? I mean, I can watch youtube without restrictions on my Windows PC but I have to pay extra to do the same on the 360. And I don't have a gold account because I'm not into online gaming, but I'd like to watch youtube in my living room tv.
Linux

Submission + - Why Linux is a desktop flop (networkworld.com)

Submitted by alphadogg
alphadogg writes: It's free, easier to use than ever, IT staffers know it and love it, and it has fewer viruses and Trojans than Windows. So, why hasn't Linux on the desktop taken off? When it comes to desktop Linux, the cost savings turn out to be problematic, there are management issues, and compatibility remains an issue. ""We get a lot more questions about switching to Macs than switching to Linux at this point, even though Macs are more expensive," one Gartner analyst says.
Hardware

Submission + - Silicene discovered: Single-layer silicon that could beat graphene to market (extremetech.com)

Submitted by
MrSeb
MrSeb writes: "Numerous research groups around the world are reporting that they have created silicene, a one-atom-thick hexagonal mesh of silicon atoms — the silicon equivalent of graphene. You will have heard a lot about graphene, especially with regard to its truly wondrous electrical properties, but it has one rather major problem: It doesn't have a bandgap, which makes it very hard to integrate into existing semiconductor processes. Silicene, on the other hand, is theorized to have excellent electrical properties, while still being compatible with silicon-based electronics. For now, silicene has only been observed (with a scanning tunneling electron microscope), but the next step is to grow a silicene film on an insulating substrate so that its properties can be properly investigated."

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