Slashdot Mirror

Ventner's new virus is artificial in the sense that it was created from chemicals- but it is identical to a known natural virus.

Venter's team cobbled together the virus, called phi-X174, following its published genetic sequence.

Google News rocks! Here's some better articles about the same thing:

New Scientist
Nature
The Economist

Unfortunately for you, there is such a place. Maybe even more of them, dunno, I left my lunar map in my spacecraft, and I'm not in the mood to fetch it.

The place is called the Shackleton crater - which is a crater at the Lunar South Pole. Because of it location, the bottom of that crater is expected not to be exposed to sunlight ever.

As a coincidence, this is exactly the place where the Clementine mission observed radiation patterns indicating hydrogen presence - and which the referenced article also discusses.

Using viruses to attack diseases is a technique from the early 20th century. It was widely used in Russia, but fell out of favor when anitbiotics were discovered. It appears to be reviving.

This is not the first controlled-not gate for a quantum computing system but rather the first in this solid state system.

Other implementations of a controlled-not gate (or its close relative, a controlled-phase gate) include:

Caltech Quantum Optics implemented a controlled-phase gate between photons using a strongly coupled atom in a cavity.

Serge Haroche's group implemented a controlled-phase between an atom and a photon using microwave cavities and atomic Rydberg states.

NIST Ion Storage Group: implemented a two qubit gate (which could be turned into a controlled-not) and a four qubit gate using trapped ions.

NMR quantum computing has been implemented by various groups including the biggest quantum computation to date, factoring 15, done by Isaac Chuang's group (IBM and now MIT.)

A proof of principle implementation of a controlled-not in the linear optics quantum computing scheme has been implemented at the University of Queensland.

I'm leaving out quite a few other cool experiments: but the above links should give you a good idea of the what early steps have been taken in quantum computing.

Letter to Nature [pdf] to which original story was based.

X-raying bones the way this guy does on the picture doesn't seem very safe to me. In hospitals, X-ray operations are protected by leaded windows or aprons (sp?)... Studying dinos causes cancer ;-)

The larger pattern this fits into is one that's seen lots of research recently: we don't like other people getting what we perceive to be "better" deals, even if their deals come at no marginal cost to us. The social disapproval at these "cheaters" who don't "pay their share" is pretty strong.

So consumers get pissed when Amazon tries differential pricing, and people will moan about how they should have bought a Powerbook this month, and not last month. Combine this with the "all MP3s and software should be free" crowd, and that will generate a lot of /. posts!

The other part of sexual reproduction would lie in some of the panspermia theories I have been digesting. I have not even begun on imagining the technicalities of creating life suited for enviroments other than earth and creating those in situ before arriving at an extra solar planet to insure their proclivity towards that enviroment.

However, I would think that sex bots would be well suited for prison populations to reduce the incidents of rape.

John Dalton and John Lennon.

I checked out the Nature Materials website and found this abstract that has the same info as the article. Apparently the author was as cheap as I am and didn't fork over the $30 US to see the full text.

About 96% of the more than 4,800 living anuran species belong to the Neobatrachia or advanced frogs. Because of the extremely poor representation of these animals in the Mesozoic fossil record, hypotheses on their early evolution have to rely largely on extant taxa. Here we report the discovery of a burrowing frog from India that is noticeably distinct from known taxa in all anuran families. Phylogenetic analyses of 2.8 kilobases of mitochondrial and nuclear DNA unambiguously designate this frog as the sister taxon of Sooglossidae, a family exclusively occurring on two granitic islands of the Seychelles archipelago. Furthermore, molecular clock analyses uncover the branch leading to both taxa as an ancient split in the crown-group Neobatrachia. Our discovery discloses a lineage that may have been more diverse on Indo-Madagascar in the Cretaceous period, but now only comprises four species on the Seychelles and a sole survivor in India. Because of its very distinct morphology and an inferred origin that is earlier than several neobatrachian families, we recognize this frog as a new family.

Research on this has been done on antarctic fish. Apparently, there are "antifreeze" proteins in the fish blood stream. These proteins don't reduce the freezing point of the blood (that would take an intoxicatingly high concentration of chemical) but instead they attach to the surface of microscopic ice crystals and interfere with the growth.

Unfortunately, being that money does not yet grow on trees, the money to publish in an open access journal such as PLoS Biology has to come from somewhere. If you look at the fine print of the great majority of journals, there will be a little statement about the publication qualifying as advertisement, because the author had to pay page charges. These charges come out of grant money, and major funding agencies such as the NIH, NSF, and Wellcome Trust have already approved publication charges for open access journals (which, by the way, your taxes paid for these agencies to fund the research to begin with). To then read the journal, you have to pay again. In fact, most of the comments out of the publishing community towards the PLoS journals insist that the $1500 charge is not nearly enough to cover the costs of publishing. Economics and career risk has been the largest concern with the survival of PLoS, not the peer review process.

With people such as Harold Varmus (Nobel Prize in Medicine 1989 "discovery of the cellular origin of retroviral oncogenes") and James Watson, and recruiting former editors of the high profile journal Cell the quality is not likely to be the greatest concern. Besides the economics of running an open access journal, many young scientists, whose careers are still in the making, would be hard pressed to give up the opportunity to publish in Nature or Science, to hold their "moral" ground and publish in PLoS. But it only takes a few to get the ball rolling... Pat Brown (one of the founders of PLoS) and several other authors names were removed from an article in the New England Journal of Medicine, because the journal edited out a sentence pertaining to access and retention of copyright. There were two good commentaries/news in the last two issues of Nature on the NEJM article and PLoS economics, however being that they were published in Nature (whose articles from fifty years ago are still kept closed access), you will have to pay to see them.( I think this will run you approximately $10-30 per article)

Here are the links for those of you who have access:

Nature:Open Access
NEJM fall out

Unfortunately, being that money does not yet grow on trees, the money to publish in an open access journal such as PLoS Biology has to come from somewhere. If you look at the fine print of the great majority of journals, there will be a little statement about the publication qualifying as advertisement, because the author had to pay page charges. These charges come out of grant money, and major funding agencies such as the NIH, NSF, and Wellcome Trust have already approved publication charges for open access journals (which, by the way, your taxes paid for these agencies to fund the research to begin with). To then read the journal, you have to pay again. In fact, most of the comments out of the publishing community towards the PLoS journals insist that the $1500 charge is not nearly enough to cover the costs of publishing. Economics and career risk has been the largest concern with the survival of PLoS, not the peer review process.

With people such as Harold Varmus (Nobel Prize in Medicine 1989 "discovery of the cellular origin of retroviral oncogenes") and James Watson, and recruiting former editors of the high profile journal Cell the quality is not likely to be the greatest concern. Besides the economics of running an open access journal, many young scientists, whose careers are still in the making, would be hard pressed to give up the opportunity to publish in Nature or Science, to hold their "moral" ground and publish in PLoS. But it only takes a few to get the ball rolling... Pat Brown (one of the founders of PLoS) and several other authors names were removed from an article in the New England Journal of Medicine, because the journal edited out a sentence pertaining to access and retention of copyright. There were two good commentaries/news in the last two issues of Nature on the NEJM article and PLoS economics, however being that they were published in Nature (whose articles from fifty years ago are still kept closed access), you will have to pay to see them.( I think this will run you approximately $10-30 per article)

Here are the links for those of you who have access:

Nature:Open Access
NEJM fall out

And if it didn't have any side effects, there wouldn't be any problems with shooting yourself in the head.

These things all have side effects. The drugs all have side effects. Even blood doping (increasing your red blood cell count to improve stamina) will kill you occasionally (stroke). Genetic doping will carry the same risks. Look at that kid who died undergoing Gene therapy .

I don't think a substance that is stable for only a trillionth of a second should be classified as an element. Most of these 100+ table 'elements' are like that.

Not quite the case...From this Nature article:

"A 'superheavy' atom of element number 114, created in a research reactor in Russia, has a 'half-life' of 30 seconds ... This sounds short, but most such artificially created superheavy atoms decay into lighter elements in a matter of milliseconds. By the standards of the field, element 114 lasts for a long time."

In " Femtosecond Lasers for Nanosurgery," Roland Piquepaille writes "In "Lasers operate inside single cells," Nature writes that nanosurgery...

In " Femtosecond Lasers for Nanosurgery," Roland Piquepaille writes "In "Lasers operate inside single cells," Nature writes that nanosurgery...

A recent article in Nature suggests that "[the] apparent randomness [of the stock prices] comes from the imperfect ability of market agents to process the complex and often incomplete information at their disposal. The best strategy is virtually impossible to find, so everyone reaches different conclusions." It's funny, but it seems that in reality the market stock prices are mostly determined by the actions of investors, not by any fundamental qualities of the companies in question. I.e. to beat the market you need to know about how it functions, not to know anything about the companies. This is made worse by the fact that even if you can successfully predict the companies' destiny, in short term the stock price movement still depends on the investors' actions, not on the "true value" of future cash flows. The only remaining option is to invest long-term and collect the dividends during 10 years or so. In this case you can succeed despite the market randomness by correctly predicting future cash flows.

The primary evidence for the Alvarez theory of extinction caused by asteroid impact is the abnormally high concentration of iridium and other siderophiles in the K-T layer
You forgot to mention the GIANT ASS craters that line up nicely when you back-date the tectonic plate movements to that period. This research was done at my little university in Canada :)

For health-related info we need a law making it a criminal act to knowingly suppress information about a potential significant hazard to human health.

Sure, but not all plant species date back to the Jurassic age. Or animal species (thank god for that!). If somebody had used the term living fossil, perhaps it would be clearer.

Apparently ginkos are also extremely old and resemeble a Jurassic variety. And Cycads, which are woody plants that create seeds. They also seem to be quite poisonous although they are eaten as "beach tucker" after processing in the jungle. (link) Anyway here are some links.

Finally I there are also the extremely visually (and biochemically?) wierd Gymnopsperms like Welwitschia And Ephedra, which seem ancient, maybe same era..

All this because I was trying to figure out if the inch-long stem/leaf in my pocket which I snapped off a huge pencil plant was one of those. Not sure yet.. I remember my mother also has some kind of ancient plant which looks like a gray rock and does nothing, but then one day suddenly splits in half, and then each half will continue to split in the same way recursively. A very cool plant if anyone can figure out what it is!

Here's a link. You could have used Scientific American's search feature to find it. Or how about the abstract here. Perhaps the original poster assumed too much by assuming that you could remember back a whole year and a half to when the study was published.

Here we have a classic, slashdot pessimist. That's ok. Going off at the handle is the stereotype we slashdotters fit best. Now, if you RTFP, you'd note the question in the first paragraph saying I remember reading the piece but not where it was.

Now that you've opened your mouth, please insert foot...
Here,, here, and of course, here.
(The CNN article references U of Wisconsin research)

Let alone the fact that the main slashdot story references the National Acadamy of science and Scientific American.

I believe this is where the mods rate you a troll.
-begin non sig- This is not a troll, I repeat this is not a troll.

Popular press take on it

Abstract:
Direct human influences on climate have been detected at local scales, such as urban temperature increases and precipitation enhancement, and at global scales,. A possible indication of an anthropogenic effect on regional climate is by identification of equivalent weekly cycles in climate and pollution variables. Weekly cycles have been observed in both global surface temperature and local pollution data sets. Here we describe statistical analyses that reveal weekly cycles in three independent regional-scale coastal Atlantic data sets: lower-troposphere pollution, precipitation and tropical cyclones. Three atmospheric monitoring stations record minimum concentrations of ozone and carbon monoxide early in the week, while highest concentrations are observed later in the week. This air-pollution cycle corresponds to observed weekly variability in regional rainfall and tropical cyclones. Specifically, satellite-based precipitation estimates indicate that near-coastal ocean areas receive significantly more precipitation at weekends than on weekdays. Near-coastal tropical cyclones have, on average, significantly weaker surface winds, higher surface pressure and higher frequency at weekends. Although our statistical findings limit the identification of cause-effect relationships, we advance the hypothesis that the thermal influence of pollution-derived aerosols on storms may drive these weekly climate cycles.

Oh, there's also discussion about this research in The Economist

According to this article, scientists are going to have a hard time getting their mice to live longer. Because cancer tends to "take over" as an animal's age increases, scientists have tried using cancer-preventing proteins to prevent this. The problem they found, however, was that it accelerated the aging process for mice. That's not to say that some other method may find a way around this, but scientists do still seem to be grappling with the issue.

Besides, didn't anyone read Brave New World Revisited? Overpopulation is not the answer. :^)

Does posting a link to the Nature Materials abstract count as karma whoring, when there's maybe only three people here who would understand what it says? ;)

Is the guinea-pig a rodent?

No, the guinea-pig is not a rodent.

It seems that Nature is really into guinea-pigs!
This is a better writeup than the New York Times article, by the way. Although it does refer to them as rodents.

While I'm whoring, this page ought to settle some of the phylogenetic fracas here.

Up to a point. There's an abstract from June this year that concludes that "we never learn to see a word as a feature".

This might help explain why character-based (non-alphabetical) written languages have survived longer than any of those with alphabets.

I was planning to make some similar pun about voles being little rat-like rodents, so I went Googling to find out more about them. The third hit was a Nature article about how "Viral Gene Therapy makes male Voles more faithful and friendly". So if you want your VOLE to act nice, you'd better give it a virus.....

I brought this up over at ScienceForums yesterday, and someone pointed to the mentioned article that says: "They wrote up their results in the 29 April 1999 issue of Nature, but I've been unable to find it online."
The original article that particular blog is based on can be found here
Abstract is here
and full text (HTML and PDF w/ images) for those without access to Nature is here

However, this research was done on words that are reversed, not internally scrambled. I have been unable to locate research on the letter order within longer words, however the principle is accurate and I'm sure it exists.

I brought this up over at ScienceForums yesterday, and someone pointed to the mentioned article that says: "They wrote up their results in the 29 April 1999 issue of Nature, but I've been unable to find it online."
The original article that particular blog is based on can be found here
Abstract is here
and full text (HTML and PDF w/ images) for those without access to Nature is here

However, this research was done on words that are reversed, not internally scrambled. I have been unable to locate research on the letter order within longer words, however the principle is accurate and I'm sure it exists.

There's a number of CDs which have already experienced 10 years of mistreatements, I wonder if any mass producing company has already learned something valuable and if they modified their production accordingly. Polycarbonate-eating fungi were already mentioned here and on Nature as well. Add the aluminum layer oxidation problem and my trust on cd-r as long term storage is reaching zero. I also own a couple of 10+ years old CDs (original, shush RIAA) that don't show any surface problem, but no player I have tried can play it anymore.

To keep up with the good journalists who wrote this article, shown with "...or nearly 1000 million times fainter...", or at nature.com with their "...thousandth of a millimetre across..." and "...rated at a millionth of a milliamp...", you should state 50 million as some obscure number, such as 50000 thousand, or 50000 kilomiles, or 5000 10000 miles. Come on man, keep with the times.

Some silk reflects light in the UV range which is thought to attract flies. dense read.
Another possible use is to confuse potential predators Silky doodles may confuse spiders' enemies

I think the main benefit of thinness maybe that less resources are used in its manufacture. Just my 2 cents worth.

On a positive note, I suppose this would reduce smog in heavy-traffic areas (as smog is formed as ozone [O3] reacts with nitrogen [N2] to form various nitrogen oxides, including the brown NO2.) However, it'd take a lot of loose hydrogen to competitively inhibit the ozone-nitrogen reaction, and we'd still end up with greater problems than we started with.

Hmm, the Nature link above points to calorie restriction study of the same yeast by the same author which yields the same longevity results. This is the Nature Publication in question by Sinclair. It's the first article listed and currently the abstract is not responding.

Resveratrol activates enzymes that prevent cancer, stave off cell death and boost cellular-repair systems. A naturally occurring molecule, it builds up in under-nourished animals and plants attacked by fungi. One of the latter is the grapevine. . . But wine doesn't contain much resveratrol, and the compound degrades quickly in both the glass and the body.

For those interested in getting to the heart of the story, check out the original research paper from Nature magazine. If you're not at a university or other institute with site-wide access you'll need to subscribe or pay to see it, though.

"Deep Blue was not dismantled"

Then why does everyone seem to think that it is?

Wired: Deep Blue has since been dismantled

ChessCenter: Deep Blue was dismantled after beating Garry Kasparov in 1997

Nature: Blue was dismantled after the '97 contest

Kasparov: it was quickly dismantled after the event.

What is the current status of this machine and its software?

Indeed. People make enough panic about burying the nuclear waste, let alone sending (three grams of) uranium up into space. Perish the thought!
... in related news, the lasest in nuclear waste disposal...

The sun will swell to become a red giant until it engulfs Earth.

Actually, it's been recently shown (1, 2) that Earth could survive Sol's expansion, though it would be really frickin' hot!

-l

Actually according to this article in Nature we are at the end of a warming trend (which occurs every 10,000 years or so). This article points out however that there is still some debate as to wether or not the next ice age will actually occur thanks to global warming...

Interestingly, a 1975 earthquake in China was successfully predicted due in large part to strange animal behavior. A large number of lives were saved.

Needless to say, this is an extreme exception to the rule, and is about as reliable as grandma's old bones are at predicting the weather.

I saw a TV show about fringe-scientific earthquake predictors. One of the was quite unconvincing, but the other was interesting. He predicted quakes by satellite photos of "earthquake clouds". The finding mentioned in the Science@NASA article about thermal anomalies might back his theory up some. He makes his predictions publicly on his website.

Not Quite right. This linkhas a lot more information (yes, I just copied the link from another post here). Here's the relevant text:
Twin embryos often share a blood supply in the placenta, allowing blood stem cells to pass from one embryo and settle in the bone marrow of the other, seeding a lasting source of blood. As a result, as many as 8% of non-identical twin pairs have chimaeric blood.

This is quite different than the chimeras formed from two different egg/sperm pairs combining into one.

The other interesting thing is frequently a mother will never know that she had twins. One will be naturally aborted, but not before some of the blood from it starts circulating through the placenta. The other child will have those blood cells settle in the bone marrow, and will, for the rest of his life, carry blood from the unknown twin who died.

http://www.nature.com/nsu/020429/020429-13.html

A photo of Blaschko's lines is here.