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Submission + - Diabetes Is Actually Five Separate Diseases, Research Suggests (bbc.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Scientists say diabetes is five separate diseases, and treatment could be tailored to each form. Diabetes, or uncontrolled blood sugar levels, is normally split into type 1 and type 2. But researchers in Sweden and Finland think the more complicated picture they have uncovered will usher in an era of personalized medicine for diabetes. The study, by Lund University Diabetes Centre in Sweden and the Institute for Molecular Medicine Finland, looked at 14,775 patients including a detailed analysis of their blood. The results, published in The Lancet Diabetes and Endocrinology, showed the patients could be separated into five distinct clusters:

Cluster 1 — severe autoimmune diabetes is broadly the same as the classical type 1 — it hit people when they were young, seemingly healthy and an immune disease left them unable to produce insulin
Cluster 2 — severe insulin-deficient diabetes patients initially looked very similar to those in cluster 1 — they were young, had a healthy weight and struggled to make insulin, but the immune system was not at fault
Cluster 3 — severe insulin-resistant diabetes patients were generally overweight and making insulin but their body was no longer responding to it
Cluster 4 — mild obesity-related diabetes was mainly seen in people who were very overweight but metabolically much closer to normal than those in cluster 3
Cluster 5 — mild age-related diabetes patients developed symptoms when they were significantly older than in other groups and their disease tended to be milder

Submission + - Meet the Carolina Butcher, a 9-Foot Crocodile That Walked on Two Legs

Submitted by HughPickens.com
HughPickens.com writes: Science News reports on the Carolina Butcher, a giant, bipedal reptile that looked a lot like living crocodiles — except it walked on two legs, not four. Carnufex carolinensis is one of the oldest and largest crocodile ancestors identified to date. Its size and stature also suggest that for a time, the Carolina Butcher (named for its menacing features), was one of the top predators in the part of the supercontinent Pangaea that became North America. Past fossil finds show that cousins of ancient crocodiles were vying with the earliest bipedal dinosaurs, called theropods, for the title of top predator in the southern regions of Pangaea but the Carolina Butcher's reign probably ended 201 million years ago when a mass extinction event wiped out most large, land-based predators, clearing the way for dinosaurs to fully dominate during the Jurassic period. Carnufex is one of the most primitive members of the broad category of reptiles called crocodylomorphs, encompassing the various forms of crocs that have appeared on Earth. "As one of the earliest and oldest crocodylomorphs, Carnufex was a far cry from living crocodiles. It was an agile, terrestrial predator that hunted on land," says Lindsay Zanno. "Carnufex predates the group that living crocodiles belong to." Transported back to the Triassic Period, what would a person experience upon encountering this agile, roughly three metre-long, about 1.5 metre-tall beast with a long skull and blade-like teeth? "Abject terror," says Zanno.
Data Storage

Submission + - HDD Pricewatch: How the Thai Floods Have Affected Prices (techspot.com) 1

Submitted by jjslash
jjslash writes: The hard disk drive supply chain was hit hard late last year when a series of floods struck Thailand. The Asian country accounts for about a quarter of the world's hard drive production, but thousands of factories had to close shop for weeks as facilities were under water, in what is considered the world's fourth costliest natural disaster according to World Bank estimates. That's on top of the human cost of over 800 lives. TechSpot has monitored a number of mobile and desktop HDDs to get a better overview of how the situation has developed in the last three months.
Businesses

Submission + - Dell execs in massive insider trading probe (computerworlduk.com)

Submitted by DMandPenfold
DMandPenfold writes: Two former Dell employees, including a former investor relations manager, were part of a $62 million record-breaking insider trading scam, involving the company's shares as well as Nvidia stock, according to the FBI.

The news comes as the US authorities step up their pursuit of inside traders. Two months ago, Galleon hedge fund founder Raj Rajaratnam was sentenced to 11 years in jail for his role in a scam involving AMD, IBM and 3Com stock.

Yesterday, Sandeep Goyal, an employee at Dell's US headquarters between 2006 and 2007 before becoming a financial analyst, was arrested. An unnamed co-conspirator in Dell's investor relations department from 2007 to 2009 is also alleged to have been part of the scam. The co-conspirator has not been arrested, it is understood.

Goyal allegedly made $175,000 by providing inside information about Dell to a hedge fund. He has pleaded guilty to charges of securities fraud.

Jesse Tortura, a former analyst at Diamondback, and Spyridon Adondakis, formerly at Level Global, have also pleaded guilty.

Seven men in total are allegedly implicated in the scam, including Todd Newman, a senior manager with the Diamondback Capital Management hedge fund, and Anthony Chiasson, a co-founder at Level Global investors. Newman oversaw IT stock investments at Diamondback. Chiasson's Level firm principally trades in IT and finance shares. Both were arrested yesterday.

Jon Horvath, an employee at hedge fund Sigma Capital Management, and Danny Kuo of Whittier Trust, were also allegedly part of the scam. Both hedge funds trade in a range of share types.

All seven were charged with conspiracy to commit securities fraud, relating to profits made from trading Dell and Nvidia stock in 2008 and 2009.

Authorities even produced an email from Kuo to Adondakis, Tortura and Horvath, in which he openly states that he is providing insider information.

In one instance of profit from the scam, Level Global allegedly made $57 million from a tip ahead of Dell's results – which authorities branded as the largest single profit ever from inside information.

Dell said in a statement that it "has cooperated with government authorities". It added: "All Dell employees are required annually to complete training on the company's Code of Conduct, which includes a section on insider trading. Violations of these policies are treated seriously, and violations result in disciplinary action up to and including termination."

FBI assistant director Janice Fedarcyk said: "The FBI has arrested more than 60 people in 'Operation Perfect Hedge' [the hedge fund insider trading probe] to date, and this initiative is far from over.

"If you are engaged in insider trading, what distinguishes you from the dozens who have been charged is not that you haven't been caught; it's that you haven't been caught yet."
Canada

Submission + - Bell Canada to end throttle (huffingtonpost.ca)

Submitted by inject_hotmail.com
inject_hotmail.com writes: I just caught wind of a story over at the Huff. Bell Canada has written a letter to the CRTC indicating that it will end traffic shaping on March 1, 2012. Although Bell says that this is due to "increasing popularity of streamed video and other traffic" and "P2P file-sharing, as a proportion of total traffic, has been diminishing", it's far more likely that they are interested in higher revenue. In all likelihood, the change of heart is based on the fact that Bell has moved most of their customer base to, and offer no alternative to, low-usage-cap UBB packages, which would ultimately generate more income or deter full usage of their service (and thus require less infrastructure investment).
Science

Submission + - MythBusters: Savage and Hyneman detonate truthines (theregister.co.uk)

Submitted by gearystwatcher
gearystwatcher writes: MythBusters' Jamie Hyneman's been developing blast-resistant, light-weight armor for use on US military vehicles in Iraq and Afghanistan based on his work with show co-host Adam Savage. "We had a lot of experience in the show dealing with explosives, obviously in ways and situations that are outside the norm. This is very revealing, because when you see something outside the norm you get to see what the boundaries of the phenomenon are," Hyneman tells The Reg during an interview for the new MythBusters' season.
Microsoft

Submission + - Phone maker publicly says ‘No’ to WP7 (networkworld.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Chinese smartphone maker ZTE, fifth largest in the world, has publicly criticized Microsoft for the lackluster market reaction to its Windows Phone 7 operating system and that ZTE has no plans to develop a WP7-powered phone. That's bad news for Microsoft for its well-regarded but not well-received mobile OS.
Patents

Submission + - DOJ Anti-trust Investigation of MPEG-LA (wsj.com) 4

Submitted by
thomst
thomst writes: "The Wall Street Journal's Thomas Catan reports that the Department of Justice has launched an anti-trust investigation of MPEG-LA's purported efforts to prevent Google's VP8 codec from widespread adoption. According to the article, the California Stare Attorney General's office is also investigating MPEG-LA for possible restraint of trade practices."

Submission + - Glory lost to Taurus XL Failure (spaceflightnow.com)

Submitted by
FullBandwidth
FullBandwidth writes: "The protective nose cone of an Orbital Sciences Corp. Taurus XL rocket carrying NASA's Glory environmental research satellite apparently failed to separate after launch Friday, preventing the spacecraft from achieving orbit in a $424 million failure. It was the second nose cone failure in a row for a Taurus XL rocket following the 2009 loss of another environmental satellite."
Oracle

Submission + - Red Hat Changes Source Code Shipping Method (h-online.com)

Submitted by mvar
mvar writes: Red Hat has changed the way it ships the source code for the Linux kernel. Previously, it was released as a standard kernel with a collection of patches which could be applied to create the source code of the kernel Red Hat used. Now though, the company ships a tarball of the source code with the patches already applied. This change, noted by Maxillian Attems and LWN.net, appears to be aimed at Oracle, who like others, repackage Red Hat's source as the basis for its Unbreakable Linux. Although targeted at Oracle, the changes will make work harder for distributions such as CentOS, the community built Linux distribution also based on Red Hat's sources.

Submission + - SCO found no source code in 2004 (groklaw.net)

Submitted by doperative
doperative writes: A consultant hired by SCO in 2004 to compare UNIX and Linux, with the thought he could be used as an expert at trial, says that, after days and days, his comparison tool found "very little correlation". When he told that to SCO, it paid him and he never heard from SCO again.

Submission + - World's Most Powerful Optical Microscope (sciencedaily.com)

Submitted by gamricstone
gamricstone writes: Scientists have produced the world's most powerful optical microscope, which could help understand the causes of many viruses and diseases. Previously, the standard optical microscope can only see items around one micrometre — 0.001 millimetres — clearly. But now, by combining an optical microscope with a transparent microsphere, dubbed the 'microsphere nanoscope', the Manchester researchers can see 20 times smaller — 50 nanometres ((5 x 10-8m) — under normal lights. This is beyond the theoretical limit of optical microscopy. "Seeing inside a cell directly without dying and seeing living viruses directly could revolutionize the way cells are studied and allow us to examine closely viruses and biomedicine for the first time."
The Military

Submission + - UK MOD to spend 20 million on toy size spy drones (suasnews.com)

Submitted by
garymortimer
garymortimer writes: "The Ministry of Defence (MOD) is making 20 million pounds available for Nano UAS. This is the second story this week in which military organizations seem to be looking for small multicopters. A market to date that has been ignored by the big defence contractors and a space owned by small start ups. No doubt some of those small start ups will soon become big defence contractors!"
Security

Submission + - 20 Years of Innovative Windows Malware (infoworld.com)

Submitted by
snydeq
snydeq writes: "InfoWorld's Woody Leonhard takes a look at the past 20 years of innovative Windows malware — an evolution that provides insights into the kinds of attacks to come. From macro viruses, to interstitial infections, to spray attacks, to industrial espionage, 'there's been a clear succession, with the means, methods, and goals changing definitively over time,' Leonhard writes, outlining the rise of Windows malware as a succession of ingenious breakthroughs to nefarious ends."

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