Hibernation on Demand

Mr. Christmas Lights writes "Dr. Mark Roth at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center has successfully induced a state of reversible metabolic hibernation in mice which (no surprise) is getting quite a bit of publicity. Attempts in the past have used cooling techniques, but Dr. Roth uses hydrogen sulfide (80 parts/million) to basically put the warm-blooded mice into an advanced hibernated state, with a drop from the normal 120 breaths/minute to less than 10. Core body temperature also drops as low as 11C (50F) to match the ambient room temperature. The mice recover in about two hours once normal air/temperatures are applied, with no apparent ill effects - apparently there is a mice IQ/motor-skills test. In addition to the obligatory reference to Woody Allen's Sleeper movie, this has applicability for emergency rooms as it would be beneficial to in ER medicine as a way of "buying time" while diagnosis is performed."

Comments

oh shut up, honestly

[Anonymous Coward]

In further news, READ YOUR OWN FUCKING SITE once a day you stupid fuck.

Re:oh shut up, honestly

[MoogMan]

Calm down dear, its only a slashdot article.

Dupes and subscribers

[theolein]

I think it's time that there was an open discussion of dupes (This article is a dupe of one poasted last night).

There have been pro and against arguments. The pro argument have been that some people miss the original articles and have a second chance to post. The neutral argument has been that if one doesn't like the dupe, one should simpy ignore it. Both of these arguments make good sense.

However, slashdot is in some sense a commercial enterprise. The majority are, of course, not subscribers, but there must be quite a few all the same. Slashdot also gets paid by advertisers to get many hits. Advertisers could argue that they get less hits on dupe articles.

In these last two cases, it isn't exactly a shiny example of quality in a product (if one can look upin slashdot as a product) to see so many dupes. I know that the sheer number of dupes in slashdot would prevent me from subscribing as I see it as a problem of editors being disinterested in checking what they post.

Re:Dupes and subscribers

[Pedrito]

I also understand that it can be difficult to detect a dupe when such a large number of articles

Why is it so difficult? They post what, 20 articles a day? How hard is it to look over the past 100 topics to see if it was previously posted? I agree, though that a simple tool could provide them with the ability to detect these. I don't even think you'd need Bayesian techniques. A simple comparison of the less common words would probably bring 90% of them out pretty quickly.

But as I posted a while ago: Where's their incentive to improve their quality? What, are we all going to go somewhere else and stop reading Slashdot? I don't suspect that will happen anytime soon.

The fact is, Slashdot is an amateur operation that happens to make a little money. I doubt they make that much. When was the last time they updated the web site in any significant way? Let's face it, these guys aren't working for a living. That's cool. I'm sure a lot of people would in their situation. But they clearly don't follow their own site and they clearly could care less about what people think about it. If they did, the site would improve.

Re:Dupes and subscribers

[Andrewkov]

That's my thought exactly .. These dupes send a clear message that the Slashdot staff, who are *paid* to work for a for-profit company, spend less time reading the site than the casual readers. I'm not a /. addict by any means, but I do login a few times a day from work to see what's happening. If a casual reader like myself can spot these dupes, why can't the editors? Do they actually read their own site less than I do?