The SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY News Thread

[ganbaru]

Originally Posted by SaintessHeart

EDIT :

World's first malaria vaccine works in major trial

Even a half protection against malaria would be a great thing, just thinking about how much live, work and money it cost each year.

[Tom Bombadil]

Robot plays table tennis (vs Robot, vs Human)

They should have played the first part on fast foward. Seek to 2:33 for some additional moves.

By the look and the sound of the paddle, I don't think there is rubber on it. So no spin.

[Decagon]

MIT's developed the real life equivalent (precursor?) of x-ray vision. Sort of.
Seeing through walls

The ability to see through walls is no longer the stuff of science fiction, thanks to new radar technology developed at MIT’s Lincoln Laboratory.

Much as humans and other animals see via waves of visible light that bounce off objects and then strike our eyes’ retinas, radar “sees” by sending out radio waves that bounce off targets and return to the radar’s receivers. But just as light can’t pass through solid objects in quantities large enough for the eye to detect, it’s hard to build radar that can penetrate walls well enough to show what’s happening behind. Now, Lincoln Lab researchers have built a system that can see through walls from some distance away, giving an instantaneous picture of the activity on the other side.

http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2011/l...alls-1018.html

edit:

Originally Posted by SaintessHeart

World's first malaria vaccine works in major trial

For the scientifically inclined, this is an old publication about this vaccine published about a year and a half ago slightly after it entered phase 3 clinical testing.
http://www.landesbioscience.com/jour...che=1607833846
The gist of it being why they chose to target the circumsporozoite protein presented by malaria sporozoites over infected hepatocytes, and how they came about engineering a yeast cell that presented a repeating part of circumsporozoite protein fused to a hep B surface protein for increased immunogenicity (ie, why their vaccine works so well compared to CSP targeting vaccines that were not nearly as effective).

[MrTerrorist]

Shopping by phone at South Korea's virtual grocery

[JMvS]

Soyuz rocket succesfully launch first Galileo satellites from Kourou, French Guyana.

(Reuters) - A Russian Soyuz rocket successfully blasted off from French Guiana on Friday bearing the first two satellites in Europe's Galileo global positioning system, a much-heralded mission that will redraw commercial competition in space.

[...]

The launch from Europe's space base in South America was the first time that Soyuz, which first flew in 1966 and traces its roots back to the earliest Cold War intercontinental ballistic missiles, has taken off from outside its old Soviet Union bases.

[...]

Once fully operational later this decade, the Galileo system aims to give Europeans autonomy from the U.S. government-controlled Global Positioning System. Russia says it recently completed its own similar system.

[Jinto]

Originally Posted by JMvS

Soyuz rocket succesfully launch first Galileo satellites from Kourou, French Guyana.

I could imagine, that devices that use all three systems could potentially be very accurate (even when using the rather low spec "free for all" mode of Galileo. GPS + Galileo + GLONASS == more precise trilateration results when combined?).

[Ithekro]

If they can talk to each other. I will assume this is so one country can't have a monopoly on such a system, both commercially and militarily.

[Anh_Minh]

Originally Posted by Ithekro

If they can talk to each other. I will assume this is so one country can't have a monopoly on such a system, both commercially and militarily.

They don't need to be able to talk to each other. You just need one receiver able to listen to the three of them. Worse come to worst, some duct tape and a calculator to compute the average will do the trick.

[Fahd]

Originally Posted by Anh_Minh

They don't need to be able to talk to each other. You just need one receiver able to listen to the three of them. Worse come to worst, some duct tape and a calculator to compute the average will do the trick.

Since at least Galileo in theory should be interoperable with GPS, in theory it should just work without any user side hassle. I suspect though, if user side hassle is involved, that all the GNS (Global Navigation System) suppliers would be very happy to sell you a new combined GPS/Galileo device, even if it's only a software/firmware fix that your current GPS device needs .

[Vexx]

Apparently, the Google Buzz experiment is over -- they're shutting it down. (not that I'll miss it but its interesting to see they ARE shutting it down)
http://www.pcworld.com/businesscente...ettlement.html
http://www.blogherald.com/2011/10/14...ne-saw-coming/

[SaintessHeart]

Exclusive: Medtronic probes insulin pump risks

[Vexx]

Originally Posted by SaintessHeart

Exclusive: Medtronic probes insulin pump risks

At the same time, we've got venture capitalists and paid politicians trying to get the FDA to relax rules on medical devices (and this is after the big hip replacement corrosive failure scandals).

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/26/bu...er=rss&emc=rss

[SaintessHeart]

Originally Posted by Vexx

At the same time, we've got venture capitalists and paid politicians trying to get the FDA to relax rules on medical devices (and this is after the big hip replacement corrosive failure scandals).

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/26/bu...er=rss&emc=rss

Is it just me or are there way too many idiots on both sides?

[Vexx]

Originally Posted by SaintessHeart

Is it just me or are there way too many idiots on both sides?

Making money is more important than getting it right and idiots appear to at the steering wheel and holding the maps.

[SaintessHeart]

Originally Posted by Vexx

Making money is more important than getting it right and idiots appear to at the steering wheel and holding the maps.

And the government seem to let those people tie strings to them, play them around like puppets.

To rule a state and to have no power over the country; spineless much?

Sony buys Ericsson out of mobile phone venture

Finally they can put some consolidated effort into building mobile devices and smartphones, but I seriously doubt they can be any competition at all.

Why? Their USB-PC/charger devices suck. Big time.

[Sides]

Originally Posted by SaintessHeart

Sony buys Ericsson out of mobile phone venture

Finally they can put some consolidated effort into building mobile devices and smartphones, but I seriously doubt they can be any competition at all.

Why? Their USB-PC/charger devices suck. Big time.

Still remember the old sony cmd phones...
With playstation suite coming, a lot of patents and actively backing android, I don't see why they cannot become a main driving force in the mobile phone market. Pretty sure the new chargers are micro-usb and uses only a simple usb to psu adapter.

[MrTerrorist]

Did hot dogs save us from colon cancer?

[MrTerrorist]

Nasa examines 'tractor beams' for sample gathering

[Xellos-_^]

http://healthland.time.com/2011/11/0...grain-of-rice/

Billions of people rely on rice as a staple crop. Now here's another reason to grow it: scientists have figured out a way to use the grain to produce a key component of human blood.
The blood protein is called human serum albumin, or HSA, which is normally produced by the liver and helps ferry hormones, steroids and fatty acids in the bloodstream. HSA is also used in drug and vaccine production, and to treat patients in hemorrhagic shock or with serious burns, cirrhosis or other conditions.
The HSA used for therapeutic purposes is largely harvested the conventional way, from human blood donations. But that doesn't produce nearly enough HSA to meet the yearly global demand, which exceeds 500 tons per year. Hence, the efforts to grow the protein another way.
Scientists have been using plants like potatoes and tobacco to produce HSA for two decades, but the yield has been low. So researchers in China, where health officials have struggled with contaminated blood supplies and HSA shortages, decided to try rice. Rice seeds have already been useful for making other human proteins, including lysozyme and lactoferrin, which are found in breast milk, saliva and other bodily fluids.

[AnimeFan188]

"gadgets with screens the size of an oyster cracker have inspired new ways
to "steal" everyday surfaces to replace the computer screen. By using tiny
projectors that sense your every move, you'll soon be able to read and write
email on a wall or table top. Or surf the web on the palm of your hand or the leg
of your jeans."

See:

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/this-cou...202115388.html