Follow Slashdot blog updates by subscribing to our blog RSS feed

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror
Biotech

Human Astrocytes Developed From Stem Cells 92

RogerRoast writes "Astrocytes are the most ubiquitous cells in the brain. They perform critical support function to the neurons. These cells are also implicated in several human brain disorders. The U of Wisconsin researchers developed a method to create these cells from stem cells. According to the lead author Dr Zhang, 'not a lot of attention has been paid to these cells because human astrocytes have been hard to get, but we can make billions or trillions of them from a single stem cell.' The technology developed by the Wisconsin group lays a foundation to make all the different species of astrocytes. It may be possible to genetically engineer them to mimic disease so that previously inaccessible neurological conditions can be studied in the lab."

Comment Expanding Horizons (Score 1) 393

This really broadened and expanded my horizon. While this was of course theoretically feasible ever since any touring complete scripting was available for web browsers, someone actually DOING it and letting the world play around with it marks a considerable paradigm shift to me, regarding how virtualization is viewed. ... or how computers are viewed.

Because to me, computers have now become nothing more than web pages, nothing more than windows that you open somewhere, and then THAT is a computer, and independent machine.

The machine is the content now.

I guess it's hard to convey the magnitude of the insight I just got from experiencing this near little java script hack... but it's way up there with my first contact with cloud & virtualization technology.

Comment Re:On the subject of games (Score 4, Informative) 200

You have three choices (assuming the Total War series cannot be counted as viable Multi Player choices)

More Strategic: R.U.S.E (awesome visuals, very autonomous units, very indirect control)
More Direct: Supreme Commander - Forged Alliance (decent visuals, unprecedented scope of war and great control over your units)
More StarCrafty: Supreme Commander 2 (think ugly Starcraft with the ability to fully zoom out)

Comment A Stylus is NOT the answer. (Score 1) 214

Oh please, everyone who suggests using a stylus...

Have you ever used a decent capacitive screen (e.g. Samsung Galaxy, or any iDevice)?

They are very precise and very responsive. Devices that require a pen also require you to pick up that pen first. I used a PalmOS device when these were still popular, and typing did work - but pulling out the pen was a serious hassle, and the tiny pens felt awkward.

The only precision problem modern capacitive screens have is the curvature of the human finger, and the user's inability to properly see (or even estimate!) where his finger touches the glass. That's something I believe can be learned/trained, though, so it's important kids learn to use touch screens much like they learn to use a pencil.

I think Palm's simplified alphabet would work awesomely on capacitive touch screens. It's just that patents block most of the innovation in this field (and 8pen is also patent pending... he great...)

Comment Re:I'm all for it (Score 1) 832

This is actually how they did it for years - it costs the same to make a chip with more or fewer features, processes are so decent now they just deactivate parts in the chip's firmware and sell those for the high demand of low end chips.

They just made their firmware a little more flexible at what this so called "binning" can be made to do.

Comment More than last year (Score 2, Insightful) 270

I use social networks to stay vaguely in touch with people, as opposed to not staying in touch AT ALL.

It's also a great way to provide one additional channel of communication to all those morons who don't seem to understand my email being mail@realname.tld and constantly insist they "lost" it despite regularly mailing me.

Comment Re:wow (Score 4, Informative) 768

"Mud" is a technical term for all sorts of drilling fluids specifically designed to keep the pressure on an oil well.

In this case, they used a special type of "Mud", even, "Kill Mud".

But it still failed (and the failure has quite possibly damaged the Blowout Preventer atop the borehole further, potentially increasing the amount of oil gushing into the ocean.

Comment Re:Automatic transmissions fail before engines, no (Score 1) 609

I come from a fairly hilly area in Germany and my stick shift cars have always been fine . In fact, without the transmission "randomly" switching gears, you can reduce slippage on icy roads a lot. Rear wheel drive is more of a problem in winter...

By fairly hilly, I mean driving 10% inclines pretty much daily, up to 22% (just been up such a slope this wekend, and there's a town you're driving through).

Slashdot Top Deals

"I've seen the forgeries I've sent out." -- John F. Haugh II (jfh@rpp386.Dallas.TX.US), about forging net news articles

Working...