Obesity Linked to Common Form of Kidney Cancer and Each Extra BMI Point Increases Risk

ScienceDaily (Jan. 13, 2010) — Being obese could lead to a greater risk of developing the most common form of renal cell cancer, according to research in the January issue of the UK-based urology journal BJUI.

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Mango Effective in Preventing, Stopping Certain Colon, Breast Cancer Cells, Food Scientists Find

ScienceDaily (Jan. 12, 2010) — Mango fruit been found to prevent or stop certain colon and breast cancer cells in the lab.

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Startup Tests Drugs Aimed at Autism

Posted by kdawson on Monday January 11, @04:52AM
from the whose-x-you-callin'-fragile dept.

medicine

An anonymous reader sends in this link from Technology Review about a startup company testing drugs that may help those with autism-spectrum disorders — even adults."Seaside Therapeutics, a startup based in Cambridge, MA, is testing two compounds for the treatment of fragile X syndrome, a rare, inherited form of intellectual disability linked to autism. The treatments have emerged from molecular studies of animal models that mirror the genetic mutations seen in humans. Researchers hope that the drugs, which are designed to correct abnormalities at the connections between neurons, will ultimately prove effective in other forms of autism spectrum disorders. ... The company is funded almost entirely by an undisclosed family investment of $60 million, with $6 million from the National Institutes of Health. [A spokesman] says that Seaside has enough funding to take its compounds through clinical testing and approval.

More Evidence That Autism Is a Brain 'Connectivity' Disorder

ScienceDaily (Jan. 11, 2010) — Studying a rare disorder known as tuberous sclerosis complex (TSC), researchers at Children's Hospital Boston add to a growing body of evidence suggesting that autism spectrum disorders, which affect 25 to 50 percent of TSC patients, result from a miswiring of connections in the developing brain, leading to improper information flow. The finding may also help explain why many people with TSC have seizures and intellectual disabilities.

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Brain Activity Levels Affect Self-Perception: 'Rose-Colored Glasses' Correlate With Less Frontal Lobe Use

ScienceDaily (Jan. 11, 2010) — The less you use your brain's frontal lobes, the more you see yourself through rose-colored glasses, a University of Texas at Austin researcher says.

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2010 Bug Plagues Germany

Posted by CmdrTaco on Thursday January 07, @08:47AM
from the well-that-was-ten-years-late dept.

bug

programming

money

krou writes"According the Guardian, some 30 million chip and pin cards in Germany have been affected by a programming failure, which saw the microchips in cards unable to recognize the year change. The bug has left millions of credit and debit card users unable to withdraw money or make purchases, and has stranded many on holiday. French card manufacturer Gemalto accepted responsibility for the fault, 'which it is estimated will cost €300m (£270m) to rectify.' They claim cards in other countries made by Gemalto are unaffected."

Astronomers Get New Tools for Gravitational-Wave Detection

ScienceDaily (Jan. 7, 2010) — Teamwork between gamma-ray and radio astronomers has produced a breakthrough in finding natural cosmic tools needed to make the first direct detections of the long-elusive gravitational waves predicted by Albert Einstein nearly a century ago. An orbiting gamma-ray telescope has pointed radio astronomers to specific locations in the sky where they can discover new millisecond pulsars.

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How People Work ... and the Fingerprint Mystery

ScienceDaily (Jan. 7, 2010) — Why do we chew our food? Research has shown that it is not, as has long been presumed, to make chunks of food small enough to swallow without choking. Biomechanics, who have modelled the cohesive strength of food after a certain amount of chewing, have shown that we actually chew our food to ensure it is in a firm blob and, therefore, safe to swallow.

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Tipping Elements in the Earth System: How Stable Is the Contemporary Environment?

ScienceDaily (Jan. 6, 2010) — A Special Feature of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences presents the latest scientific insights on so-called tipping elements in the planetary environment. These elements have been identified as the most vulnerable large-scale components of the Earth System that may be profoundly altered by human interference. If one or more of those components is tipped -- especially in the course of global warming -- then the age of remarkably stable environmental conditions on Earth throughout the Holocene may end quickly and irreversibly.

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Netgear to stream Full HD anywhere in the home over 4x4 MIMO WiFi

By Thomas Ricker posted Jan 5th 2010 6:55AM

Hey Netgear, did you have a surprise for us at CES? Say the world's first 4x4 MIMO 802.11n WiFi HD Video bridge? Sorry, but Quantenna just revealed your partnership that promises to deliver Full HD video quality streams across distances of "100 feet or more, regardless of signal interferences and dead zones." According to the Quantenna press release, anyway. That's up to 5x the distance ofexisting wireless HD solutions thanks to Quantenna's 4x4 Multiple Input Multiple Output (MIMO) technology, adaptive transmit digital beamforming, and wireless channel monitoring and optimizing; a lot of scary sounding jargon that should allow the device to carry up to four streams of full HD video pretty much anywhere in the house with claimed "near-perfect transmission performance." While we don't have pics yet you can expect Netgear's baby to be sporting 4 antennas (like the Quantenna reference design pictured) when it's announced proper in the next few days.

Loss of Sea Ice Stirs Up Arctic Waters

ScienceDaily (Jan. 4, 2010) — The Arctic Ocean is generally considered a remarkably quiet ocean, with very little mixing, because a cover of sea ice prevents wind from driving the formation of internal waves. To study this effect and investigate how melting sea ice might affect ocean mixing in the Arctic, Rainville and Woodgate analyze data from moorings in the northern Chukchi Sea.

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Discovery Aims to Correct Cellular Defects Leading to Diabetes

ScienceDaily (Jan. 4, 2010) — A new research discovery published online in the FASEB Journalmay change the perception and treatment of diabetes. That's because scientists have moved closer toward correcting the root cause of the disease rather than managing its symptoms. Specifically researchers identified a protein (G6PD protein) and its antioxidant product (NAPDH) that both prevent the death and promote the growth of cells which produce and release insulin in the pancreas (beta cells).

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Body Heat Energy Generation

Posted by CmdrTaco on Wednesday December 23, @09:54AM
from the i'm-sweating-right-now dept.

power

science

BuzzSkyline writes"Researchers in Belgium have developed devices to harvest the waste heat our bodies throw off in order to convert it to electricity to run devices such as a wristband blood oxygen sensor and an electrocardiogram shirt. As a side benefit, the power sources help cool you down and keep you looking cool, all while running sundry micropower devices. In fact, the researchers mention that the energy harvesting head band works so well that it can get uncomfortably cold. In that case, they say, 'This problem is solved in exactly the same way as someone solves it on the body level in cold weather: a headgear should be worn on top of the system to limit the heat flow and make it comfortable.' But it would be such a shame to cover up the golden heat-harvesting headband with a hat."

Stem cell therapy restores British man's eyesight

By Vladislav Savov posted Dec 23rd 2009 4:27AM

Russell Turnbull, now 38, lost almost all the sight in his right eye after trying to break up a fight and being sprayed with ammonia 15 years ago. The result for him was what's known as Limbal Stem Cell Deficiency, which caused him great pain, the need for therapeutic treatment, and economic dependency. Good news for Russell is that he can put all that behind him now, after becoming one of the first recipients of a new stem cell grafting procedure, whereby healthy tissue from his left eye was implanted into his right and -- just like a video game medpack -- restored his vision to normal. For the moment, this treatment is limited to patients with at least one healthy eye, but given the pluripotent nature of stem cells, it is hoped that tissue from elsewhere in the body could one day be used to regenerate damaged parts, such as the cornea in this case. You may find further enlightenment in the video after the break.

Quantum batteries are theoretically awesome, practically non-existent

By Vladislav Savov posted Dec 22nd 2009 10:45AM

Today's dose of overly ambitious tech research comes from the physics lab over at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, in a proposal titled "Digital quantum batteries: Energy and information storage in nano vacuum tube arrays." It's like a who's who of undelivered promises got together and united to form one giant and impossible dream, but it's one we'd prefer to believe in regardless. Aiming to improve battery performance by "orders of magnitude," the project's fundamental premise is that when capacitors -- and we're talking billions of them -- are taken to a small enough scale and packed to within 10nm of one another, quantum effects act to prevent energy loss. The projected result is a wonderful world of rapid recharges and storage of up to ten times the energy current lithium-ion packs can hold, as well as the potential for data retention. The only problem? It would take a year just to build a prototype, meaning we can expect market availability somewhere between a score from now and just prior to the underworld morphing into an ice rink.

Digital Storm's gaming rig shows that Core i5 can trump i7

By Tim Stevens posted Dec 17th 2009 9:39AM

Since the dawn of computing, gamers on a budget have been flaunting their ability to best higher-spec'd systems courtesy of a little extra cooling and a lot of time fiddling with BIOS settings. So, no real surprise here that an Intel Core i5 processor can keep up with a Core i7 when properly configured. What issurprising is that you can get one suitably configured with a warranty. The provider in this case is Digital Storm, the system is the Core i5-750, and the warranty is three years. HotHardware put one through its paces and found that, if anything, it was too aggressively overclocked. But, with a few minor tweaks (which hopefully will be made standard for future iterations) the machine was stable, fast, and rather noisy. It managed to keep up with Alienware's Core i7 Aurora ALX in most benchmarks, despite being about $2,000 cheaper. That kind of savings should buy enough thermal paste to last you at least 18 months.

Autonomous Intelligent Botnets Bouncing Back

Posted by CmdrTaco on Thursday December 17, @09:21AM
from the duck-and-cover dept.

security

spam

it

coomaria writes"Thought that 2009 was the year botnets died? Well, think again: compromised computers were responsible for distributing 83.4% of the 107 billion spam messages sent around the world every single day this year, and it's going to get worse if intelligent and autonomous botnets arrive in 2010 as predicted."

Local Teacher 'Bachelor' Contestant

Topic: Teachers and Principals
Source: Connection Newspaper
Publication Date: 12/16/2009
Author: Editor

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Ashley Elmore, 30, a marketing teacher at a Fairfax County high school, is one of the contestants on “The Bachelor” television series, which airs Monday, Jan 4, at 8 p.m. on ABC.

Elmore graduated cum laude from Virginia Tech, with a B.S. in marketing management. She received her MBA from Duquesne University with summa cum laude honors. She is currently a Ph.D. student at Old Dominion University. She was a top 10 contender in the Miss Virginia Pageant and the youngest person ever to win the Toyota and WJLA Channel 7 Working Woman of the Year award in 2006.

Her parents, Dr. James and Mrs. Peggy Elmore, reside in Pennsylvania. Ashley Elmore’s sister, Erin Elmore, is an attorney in Philadelphia and was on “The Apprentice 3” with Donald Trump.

LED traffic lights don't melt snow, do cause accidents

By Vladislav Savov posted Dec 17th 2009 9:16AM

A number of cold weather American states are reporting their dismay at finding out that LED traffic lights are so energy efficient that they do not produce enough excess heat to dissipate any snow that covers them. It turns out, perhaps in an homage to bad engineering everywhere, that the inefficiency of incandescent light bulbs was previously relied upon to keep traffic signals unimpeded. The new LEDs do not achieve the same effect, which has resulted in a few accidents and even a death being blamed on obstructed traffic lights. Feel free to apply palm to face now. It's not all gloomy, though, as the majority of people are said to treat a dysfunctional traffic light as a stop sign (how clever of them), and a tech fix is being worked on as we speak.

UK Wants To Phase Out Checks By 2018

Posted by samzenpus on Thursday December 17, @01:37AM
from the cash-or-credit dept.

government

money

The board of the UK Payments Council has set a date to phase out checks in a bid to encourage the advance of other forms of payment. They added, however, that the target of Oct. 2018 would only be realized if adequate alternatives are developed. "The goal is to ensure that by 2018 there is no scenario where customers, individuals or businesses, still need to use a cheque. The board will be especially concerned that the needs of elderly and vulnerable people are met," the Payments Council said in a statement.

Angry AT&T Customers May Disrupt Service

Posted by CmdrTaco on Wednesday December 16, @11:19AM
from the because-he-can dept.

apple

g0dsp33d writes"Fake Steve Jobs, the alter-alias of Newsweek's Dan Lyons, is calling disgruntled AT&T users to protest comments from AT&T’s Ralph de la Vega that smart phone (specifically iPhone) usage is responsible for their network issues and his plan to end unlimited data plans. The post, dubbed "Operation Chokehold" wants AT&T customers to use as much data service as they can on Friday, December 19th at noon. While Fake Steve Jobs is notable for its satire, many Twitter and Facebook users seem to be rallying to its cry. It is unclear if there will be enough support to cause a DDOS."

The Importance of Attractiveness Depends on Where You Live

ScienceDaily (Dec. 16, 2009) — Do good-looking people really benefit from their looks, and in what ways? A team of researchers from the University of Georgia and the University of Kansas found that yes; attractive people do tend to have more social relationships and therefore an increased sense of psychological well-being. This seems like common sense, and might be why we spend billions of dollars each year trying to become more attractive.

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McDonald's WiFi will be free like obesity starting January

By Thomas Ricker posted Dec 16th 2009 5:45AM

If you live in small-town America then you're already familiar with the hippest hangout around: McDonald's. Now everyone in the US, not just Zune owners, will be treated to free WiFi to go with their manufactured food purchases. Starting mid-January, some 11,000 Mickey Dee locations will partner with AT&T to scrub the $2.95 for 2-hours of WiFi fee according to David Grooms, CIO of McDonalds USA. The idea is to hook the nation's loitering youth into purchasing additional items in between Facebook updates capturing late-night brawls with local rent-a-cops. Thank gawd there's a middle-aged man-clown out there who likes to babysit children.

Close-Up Photos of Dying Star Show Our Sun's Fate

ScienceDaily (Dec. 15, 2009) — About 550 light-years from Earth, a star like our Sun is writhing in its death throes. Chi Cygni has swollen in size to become a red giant star so large that it would swallow every planet out to Mars in our solar system. Moreover, it has begun to pulse dramatically in and out, beating like a giant heart. New close-up photos of the surface of this distant star show its throbbing motions in unprecedented detail.

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Dying Star Mimics Our Sun's Death

Posted by kdawson on Wednesday December 16, @02:59AM
from the telltale-heart dept.

space

science

coondoggie writes"In about 5 billion years, our Sun will face a nasty death. Scientists with the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics this week releaseddramatic new pictures of a dying star much like the Sun, about 550 light-years from Earth. According to the researchers, Chi Cygni has swollen in size to become a red giant star so large that if it were in our solar system it would swallow every planet out to Mars and cook the asteroid belt. The star has started to pulse dramatically, beating like a giant heart with a period of 408 days."The research team produced a video of the pulsating star, using infrared images captured via very long baseline interferometry.