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Submission + - Discovery of 'cancer-proof' rodent cells (physorg.com)

Submitted by anglico
anglico writes: PhysOrg.com — Despite a 30-year lifespan that gives ample time for cells to grow cancerous, a small rodent species called a naked mole rat has never been found with tumors of any kind—and now biologists at the University of Rochester think they know why.

The findings, presented in today's issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, show that the mole rat's cells express a gene called p16 that makes the cells "claustrophobic," stopping the cells' proliferation when too many of them crowd together, cutting off runaway growth before it can start. The effect of p16 is so pronounced that when researchers mutated the cells to induce a tumor, the cells' growth barely changed, whereas regular mouse cells became fully cancerous.

Submission + - Laptop fires on airplanes (nytimes.com)

Submitted by Maximum Prophet
Maximum Prophet writes: As usual, xkcd gets it right: http://xkcd.com/651/

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/27/business/27fires.html?_r=1&hpw

"More than half of the 22 battery fires in the cabin of passenger planes since 1999 have been in the last three years. One air safety expert suggested that these devices might be "the last unrestricted fire hazard" people can bring on airplanes."

Submission + - SPAM: Star Trek communicator lives!

Submitted by
coondoggie
coondoggie writes: "The crew of the classic science-fiction show's Starship Enterprise wore small devices on their chests that they could tap to communicate instantly with their colleagues. Such communications technology is now closer to reality thanks to a Finnish company which this week demonstrated high-tech clothing that can send and receive messages via satellite.

The demonstrator antenna, built by the Patria Aviation Oy company, looks like a simple patch of cloth but is capable of operating in the Iridium and GPS frequency band as part of clothing. The Iridium satellites allow two-way voice and data communication, while GPS provides positional data to the user. Iridium could also relay the position of the user.

[spam URL stripped]"
Link to Original Source
Security

Submission + - SPAM: Apple Update Makes Securing Your Windows PC Harder 1

Submitted by
itwbennett
itwbennett writes: "In a recent post, blogger Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols wags his finger at Apple for indiscriminately pushing the iPhone Configuration Utility 2.1 update out to Windows users, since it is a tool for business system administrators to set up and administer corporate iPhones — the blogger himself (and practically every other iPhone user) not being of the corporate iPhone user persuasion. But more than just unnecessary, the update actually puts him and millions of other iPhone owners/Windows PC users at risk by installing 'not just a configuration program, but the Apache Web server as well,' says Vaughan-Nichols."
Link to Original Source
Science

Submission + - Synthetic Sebum Makes Slippery Sailboats (newscientist.com)

Submitted by
sonnejw0
sonnejw0 writes: "Sea-faring vessels are a major contributor of greenhouse gas production due to a deficit in international laws and inherent inefficiencies at sea, such as barnacle build-up on hulls. Many marine animals avoid the build-up of drag-inducing barnacles through secreting oily residues from their pores or through the nano-molecular arrangement of their skin. Sailors regularly defoul their hulls, remove the barnacles, at dry-dock, which requires them to reduce the amount of time they have at sea. Some synthetic chemicals in paints have been used to prevent barnacle build-up but have been found to be toxic to marine animals and thus outlawed by several nations. Now, engineers are trying to replicate the skin of marine animals to produce a slippery hull to which marine bacteria cannot attach, saving fuel costs and improving speeds:

Designing ships to exude slime from their hulls could cut their fuel consumption by up to 20 per cent. The slime would form a gelatinous skin that continually sloughs off, taking with it the barnacles and other marine life forms that cause energy-sapping drag as they accumulate on the ships' underside.

"

Submission + - Alzheimer's Disease linked to Sleep Deprivation (newscientist.com) 3

Submitted by
sonnejw0
sonnejw0 writes: "NewScientist is reporting a link between sleep deprivation and increased amyloid-beta plaque load, the protein thought responsible for a large part of the symptoms of Alzheimer's Disease, in mice. Medication to abrogate insomnia reduced the plaque load. Also discussed is a recently discovered sleep cycle of amyloid-beta deposition in the brain, in which levels decrease while asleep. From the article:

"Holtzman also tried sending the mice to sleep with a drug that is being trialled for insomnia, called Almorexant. This reduced the amount of plaque-forming protein. He suggests that sleeping for longer could limit the formation of plaques, and perhaps block it altogether."

"

Feed Science Daily: SMART-1 Images Crash Scene Of Upcoming LCROSS Impact (sciencedaily.com)

From feed by sdfeed
The European Space Agency’s SMART-1 team has released an image of the future impact site of NASA’s Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS). LCROSS will search for water ice on the Moon by making two impacts into a crater named Cabeus A at the lunar South Pole. The impacts are scheduled for 11:30 and 11:34 am UT on 9 October 2009.
Wireless Networking

Submission + - SPAM: How Could iPhone MMS Crash AT&T's Network?

Submitted by
itwbennett
itwbennett writes: "AT&T has said it is already seeing 'record traffic during peak hours of the night' with just the users selected for testing and so it is 'very nervous' about the spike in traffic that it expects will occur when it launches MMS service for iPhones on Friday. Of course, setting records for MMS traffic isn't that great a feat considering that 'the service in question has been out for years on other handsets and hasn't exactly taken the mobile world by storm:'

In 2008, MMS made up just 2.5 percent of all messages sent from phones worldwide, meaning about 97.5 percent were SMS text messages, according to ABI Research. ABI expects the MMS share to grow to just 4.5 percent by 2014.

However, the carrier's fears in one respect may have been justified, says ABI analyst Dan Shey: 'Interoperability between carriers has always been an issue, and that's why MMS usage hasn't really taken off.'"
Link to Original Source

Mars

Submission + - New Images Reveal Pure Water Ice on Mars (spacefellowship.com)

Submitted by
Matt_dk
Matt_dk writes: "Images of recent impact craters taken by the HiRISE Camera on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter have revealed sub-surface water ice halfway between the north pole and the equator on Mars. While the Phoenix lander imaged subsurface ice where the top layer of soil had been disturbed at the landing site near the north pole, these new images â" taken in quick succession, detecting how the ice sublimated away â" are the first to show evidence of water ice at much lower latitudes. Surprisingly, the white ice may be made from 99 percent pure water."

Submission + - Did Cooking Make Us Human? (npr.org) 1

Submitted by
SpaceGhost
SpaceGhost writes: "Anthropologist Richard Wrangham, author of "Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human" suggests that the discovery of cooked food led to evolutionary changes resulting in a smaller and different digestive system based on a higher quality diet, mainly relying on cooked meat. In an interview on NPR's Science Friday (text and audio) Professor Wrangham explores concepts such as the digestive costs of food, the benefits (or lack thereof) of raw diets, and a distinct preference in Great Apes for cooked food over raw."

Submission + - 250-Foot Hybrid Airship To Spy Over Afghanistan in

Submitted by
Toe, The
Toe, The writes: "Gizmodo details the Long Endurance Multi-intelligence Vehicle (LEMV) (based on the P-791), a spyship from U.S Army's Space and Missile Defense Command capable of hovering at 20,000 feet. Planned for deployment in Afghanistan, the ship can float for three weeks and carry well over a ton of payload, apparently surveillance equipment. The video on Gizmodo of the P-791 shows that these ships are a hybrid not only of both buoyancy and propulsive lift, but also of both awe and hilarity."

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