The SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY News Thread

[Kokukirin]

Originally Posted by GenjiChan

The question is will it be available to all? Cause a lot of these people are poor.

This can cure everybody but not everyone could have it. That's a painful fact.

The glass is 1% empty. How depressing.

[SaintessHeart]

Originally Posted by monir

Break through against Leukemia.

This method is still in its experimental stage, but the impact it can potentially have in the future at fighting disease is exponential. I was all excited reading through the article.

There must be a way to make this cheaper. If only we can kidnap geneticists and inject them with mycotoxin sacs, then make them produce a few batches of these anti-cancer cells in exchange for the removal of those sacs.

If the medical world isn't as dominated by Big Pharma, laws could have been mandated to work the way of pro-bono legal systems.

[erneiz_hyde]

Originally Posted by Kokukirin

The glass is 1% empty. How depressing.

Forgive me if I misunderstand you, but to me you sound like you're saying that poor people only consists of 1% of population.

[RRW]

YouTube

https://youtu.be/-TVWfu4aPw4

Sorry; dynamic content not loaded. Reload?

[mangamuscle]

Brain cells made from urine

... the method uses ordinary cells present in urine, and transforms them into neural progenitor cells — the precursors of brain cells. Researchers routinely reprogram cultured skin and blood cells into induced pluripotent stem cells, which can go on to form any cell in the body. But urine is a much more accessible source.

Why I am thinking that someone is going to make a b-movie about a mad scientist that builds a giant brain out of the piss of an entire city - Beats using dead brains like in Evangelion.

[AnimeFan188]

U.S. Spies See Superhumans, Instant Cities by 2030:

"3-D printed organs. Brain chips providing superhuman abilities. Megacities, built
from scratch. The U.S. intelligence community is taking a look at the world of 2030.
And it is very, very sci-fi.

Every four or five years, the futurists at the National Intelligence Council take a
stab at forecasting what the globe will be like two decades hence; the idea is to
give some long-term, strategic guidance to the folks shaping America’s security
and economic policies. (Full disclosure: I was once brought in as a consultant to
evaluate one of the NIC’s interim reports.) On Monday, the Council released its
newest findings, Global Trends 2030. Many of the prognostications are rather
unsurprising: rising tides, a bigger data cloud, an aging population, and, of
course, more drones. But tucked into the predictable predictions are some rather
eye-opening assertions. Especially in the medical realm."

See:

http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2012...nstant-cities/

[Kokukirin]

Originally Posted by erneiz_hyde

Forgive me if I misunderstand you, but to me you sound like you're saying that poor people only consists of 1% of population.

Since when is a breakthrough in medical science measured by the % of population with access to it?

The news is about a medical science breakthrough still in the experimental stage, and the guy's reaction is "oh but a lot of the poor won't be treated by it." It is an absolutely pointless nitpicking of a good news.

[NoemiChan]

Originally Posted by Kokukirin

The news is about a medical science breakthrough still in the experimental stage, and the guy's reaction is "oh but a lot of the poor won't be treated by it." It is an absolutely pointless nitpicking of a good news.

What? Pointless? and please I got a name here.

Hey,Kokukirin if you seen patients I've seen you'll be eating what you have just said. I say its a definitely a good news. But do you think a lot will benefit? Think of this thoroughly... Try putting yourself on their shoes.

I hope someday I will not hear you complain to your doctor when he prescirbes a medication too expensive you'll be shouting "WTH?!"

I wouldn't be COMPLETELY happy until I see everyone is benefiting on it...

Lastly, I still hope it succeeds FOR EVERYONE"S BENEFITS.

[Jinto]

The idea to use virii as transport vessels for DNA is not new at all. Neither are articles that claim a break through using them. In the case of Leukemia however, there exist another treatment that works kinda well: bone-marrow transplantation.

So, the benefits are not that obvious here. But the new approach is claimed to be the cheaper method of the two. So, if anything, this makes treatment available for more people than the previous method did alone.

That in itself runs counter to any argument that complains about the cost-based availability of the new method. In industrialized countries with a working health care system even the old "bone-marrow transplantation" treatment is availbale to virtually everyone who needs it.

[RRW]

A team of international researchers has confirmed that there's no such thing as a ‘gay gene.' But that doesn't mean biology is off the hook in terms of explaining why homosexuality exists in the human population. It's not about genetics, say the researchers, it's about epigenetics — the process in which the expression of DNA is influenced by any number of external factors. And in the case of homosexuality, these factors are happening inside the womb.
And indeed, when looking at this issue through a strictly Darwinian lens, it makes no sense for homosexuality to exist in the gene pool. Given the "selfish gene" theory, it couldn't possibly be a beneficial adaptation — it's a trait that could never be passed down. But that said, homosexuality is common for men and women in most cultures — an observation that clearly demands an explanation.

http://io9.com/5967426/scientists-co...?post=55103548

[mangamuscle]

Originally Posted by RRW

http://io9.com/5967426/scientists-co...?post=55103548

So it is a matter of time for the exact process to be discovered and then it might be feasible to prevent or generate it in the womb. I remember one friend saying many decades ago "I would prefer all my daughters to be lesbian, that way I would not have to worry about teen pregnancies".

[AnimeFan188]

Researchers get cardiac muscle cells to grow, repair heart attack damage:

"Massive search finds micro RNAs that help the heart regrow."

See:

http://arstechnica.com/science/2012/...attack-damage/

[ganbaru]

Originally Posted by ogon_bat

. I remember one friend saying many decades ago "I would prefer all my daughters to be lesbian, that way I would not have to worry about teen pregnancies".

It do reduce most of the probability but I wouldn't call it a 100% safe.

[AnimeFan188]

Top-secret X-37B mini-shuttle mission lifts off from Cape Canaveral:

"An Atlas V rocket blasted off from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station today,
hauling a unmanned military mini-shuttle on a top-secret mission.

Cloud coverage in the area threatened to scrub the launch all day, but the
weather cleared just enough for an on-time launch at 1:03 p.m. at Launch
Complex 41.

The Atlas rocket and its Centaur upper stage performed flawelessly through the
first 17 minutes and 34 seconds. The mission then switched into a classified
mode, and an information blackout followed."

See:

http://www.floridatoday.com/article/...nclick_check=1

[Kyuu]

Two days late, but RIP to this man:

http://weebls-stuff.com/songs/patrick+moore/

[creb]

If I was Bill Gates, I would totally build me a space yacht and go for a cruise on Titan.

[AnimeFan188]

Quantum networks may be more realistic than we thought:

"A group of Japanese and British researchers have come up with a
communications protocol that overcomes many of the fundamental problems
associated with transferring quantum information over long distances. We still
don't have a quantum computer, but when we do, these guys know how to
connect them up."

See:

http://arstechnica.com/science/2012/...an-we-thought/

[Arturia Polaris]

Imagining the 10th dimension 2012 version.

Totally worth the 12 mins.

Arty

[Xellos-_^]

Originally Posted by ganbaru

It do reduce most of the probability but I wouldn't call it a 100% safe.

it is safe as long as they stay away form Turkey Basters.

[RRW]

A month ago scientists at the Large Hadron Collider released the latest Higgs boson results. And although the data held few obvious surprises, most intriguing were the results that scientists didn’t share.

The original Higgs data from back in July had shown that the Higgs seemed to be decaying into two photons more often than it should—an enticing though faint hint of something new, some sort of physics beyond our understanding. In November, scientists at the Atlas and LHC experiments updated everything except the two-photon data. This week we learned why.

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/...-higgs-bosons/