Slashdot Mirror
Domain: lehigh.edu
Stories and comments across the archive that link to lehigh.edu.
Stories · 13
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Scientists Control a Fly's Heartbeat With a Laser (ieee.org)
the_newsbeagle writes: Researchers have demonstrated a laser-based pacemaker in fruit flies, and say that a human version is "not impossible."
The invention makes use of optogenetics, a technique in which the DNA that codes for a light-sensitive protein is inserted into certain cells, enabling those cells to be activated by pulses of light. Researchers often use this method to study neurons in the brain, but in this case the researchers altered flies' heart cells. Then they activated those cardiac cells using pulses of light, causing them to contract in time with the pulses (abstract). Voila, they had an optical pacemaker that worked on living adult fruit flies.
Don't worry, no one can control your heartbeat with a laser just yet. That would require inserting foreign DNA into your heart cells, and also finding a way to shine light through the impediment of your flesh and bones. But lead researcher Chao Zhou of Lehigh University is working on it. -
Intellectual Property Discussion in the Classroom?
Nick M asks: "I'm a TA for a Computer Ethics course at Lehigh University. My professor is currently in China, and I'm charged with the task of teaching the chapter on Intellectual Property. I have read the book (Cyberethics, Spinello, 3rd Ed.), and can see that this could be the most boring 75 minutes of their lives. What topics, examples and questions do you think would stimulate a heated discussion on intellectual property rights which would display the complexities of both sides of the issue?" -
Intellectual Property Discussion in the Classroom?
Nick M asks: "I'm a TA for a Computer Ethics course at Lehigh University. My professor is currently in China, and I'm charged with the task of teaching the chapter on Intellectual Property. I have read the book (Cyberethics, Spinello, 3rd Ed.), and can see that this could be the most boring 75 minutes of their lives. What topics, examples and questions do you think would stimulate a heated discussion on intellectual property rights which would display the complexities of both sides of the issue?" -
Web Users Angered by Anti-Spam 'Captcha'
Carl Bialik from WSJ writes "Captchas -- the jumbles of letters that users must type to gain access to some websites -- are a growing irritation, the Wall Street Journal reports. But programmers hope to make new variations that are both easier to decipher and harder to crack. From the article: 'Some captchas have been solved with more than 90% accuracy by scientists specializing in computer vision research at the University of California, Berkeley, and elsewhere. Hobbyists also regularly write code to solve captchas on commercial sites with a high degree of accuracy. ... Henry Baird, a professor of computer science at Lehigh University who studies PC users' responses to the codes, has been working with colleagues to develop new generations of captchas that are designed to be easier on humans but baffling for computers.'" -
Going from a 'Web of links' to a 'Web of meaning'
neutron_p writes "Computer scientists from Lehigh University are building the Semantic Web, which will handle more data, resolve contradictions and draw inferences from users' queries. The new improved Web will also combine pieces of information from multiple sites in order to find answers to questions." -
Recommended Data Modeling Tools?
dnxthx asks: "After performing a fairly comprehensive web search (including Slashdot) I came to the (possibly incorrect) conclusion that there were no high-visibility sites that comprehensively reviewed and compared data modeling tools such as ER/Studio, ERWin, DeZign for Databases, System Architect, or Visio for Enterprise Architects. Since some of these tools can be quite expensive (ERWin is about $4K US it seems), I was wondering what the Slashdot community's experiences were with data modeling tools such as these, or some that our group has overlooked." -
Linux Games WIth Guns
ZaMoose writes: "Not to beat on the poor America's Army servers any further, but their sitrep for today featured the following interesting tidbit: "That's not all. We're also working on an in-game browser, linux port, and host of other features. Yes, we've been busy the past week!" (emphasis mine). For those not familiar with AA:Operations, it is a free (as in beer) first person shooter developed under the watchful eye of the US Army. It received mounds of praise at this year's E3 and was released to Windows users July 4th." Well, it says Linux server port, anyhow. And JD writes: "Apex Designs have announced that their GTA-style game Payback is coming to Linux. The port appears to already be fully playable as there is a status report here which includes some early screenshots. (And their website doesn't require IE. :)" -
The Past and Future of the Hard Drive
Snags writes "Brian Hayes of American Scientist has written a nice little historical review of hard drive technology, from the first hard drive (nice pic) made by IBM in 1956 to what may be available in 10-15 years. He muses on how to fill up a 120 TB hard drive with text, photos, audio, and video (60,000 hours of DVD's). Kind of ironic that this came in my mailbox today considering IBM's announcement." -
Electric Company Using Power Lines for Data
Snags writes: "The local electric company PPL Utilities is testing a system to send electricity usage readings back to the company over its own power lines. According to a local newspaper article, they are using the TWACS system made by DSCI. I'm just hoping this doesn't interfere with other ideas for sending data over power lines." -
Linus Patching FreeBSD Kernel?
Laz writes "I just checked this out on daily.daemonnews.org. Apparently Linus Torvalds has written a patch to the FreeBSD kernel that has been submitted. " -
Red Hat to fund Mozilla and Sendmail?
aeiler writes "According to this PC Week article. Red Hat is looking to invest significant cash, engineering and marketing resources into the Mozilla project and Sendmail. " -
Free MGL released
ZaMoose writes "Word comes from Gamers' Alliance that SciTech has released their MGL for free. MGL is a development tool for OGL that allows you to do many of the OGL rendering features without actually having to code them. MGL was used in the development of both WinQuake and Hexen 2. Currently, it is available only in Win95/3.1/NT or DOS flavors, but full source is available and SciTech claims that it can be ported to any other OS with no more than 1000 lines of code. " -
Internet Tax?
ZaMoose writes "The FCC is pursuing the idea of taxing private 'Net users in order to fund the cheap hook-ups for schools that the Clinton Administration has promised. This would hit ISPs, telephone companies and ordinary Netizens right in the pocketbook. Gingrich and the Republicans in Congress are set to block such a measure." USAToday has the rest of the story.