As_I_Please - Slashdot User

Submission + - HHS Secretary Kennedy Halts Clinical Trial of New Covid-19 Oral Vaccine (foxnews.com)

Submitted by As_I_Please on Wednesday February 26, 2025 @06:40PM

As_I_Please writes: From Fox News:
Kennedy issued a 90-day stop-work order on Friday related to the HHS (Health and Human Services) contract with American biotech company Vaxart Inc., which is working to develop a new COVID-19 vaccine that can be taken orally. The stop-work order comes as 10,000 individuals were slated to begin clinical trials on Monday.
As for the reason for the work stoppage, Secretary Kennedy explained:
"While it is crucial that the Department [of] Health and Human Services (HHS) support pandemic preparedness, four years of the Biden administrationÃ(TM)s failed oversight have made it necessary to review agreements for vaccine production, including VaxartÃ(TM)s," Kennedy said in comments provided to Fox News Digital on Tuesday.

"I look forward to working with Vaxart and medical experts to ensure this work produces safe, effective, and fiscal-minded vaccine technology."

Submission + - HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. Halts Clinical Trial of New Covid-19 Oral V (foxnews.com)

Submitted by As_I_Please on Wednesday February 26, 2025 @06:35PM

As_I_Please writes: From Fox News:
Kennedy issued a 90-day stop-work order on Friday related to the HHS (Health and Human Services) contract with American biotech company Vaxart Inc., which is working to develop a new COVID-19 vaccine that can be taken orally. The stop-work order comes as 10,000 individuals were slated to begin clinical trials on Monday.
As for the reason for the work stoppage, Secretary Kennedy explained:
"While it is crucial that the Department [of] Health and Human Services (HHS) support pandemic preparedness, four years of the Biden administrationâ(TM)s failed oversight have made it necessary to review agreements for vaccine production, including Vaxartâ(TM)s," Kennedy said in comments provided to Fox News Digital on Tuesday.

"I look forward to working with Vaxart and medical experts to ensure this work produces safe, effective, and fiscal-minded vaccine technology."

Submission + - Confusion and Criticism over ENCODE's Claims (arstechnica.com) 1

Submitted by As_I_Please on Wednesday September 12, 2012 @04:47AM

As_I_Please writes: In response to the previous report of the ENCODE project discovering "biochemical functions for 80 percent of the genome," many scientists have questioned what was meant by "function." Ars Technica Science Editor John Timmer wrote an article calling ENCODE's definition of functionality "broad to the point of being meaningless. At worst, it was actively misleading." Nature magazine also has a followup discussing the ambiguity surrounding the 80% figure and claims about junk DNA.

Submission + - Scientists Confirm Decay Rate Constancy (nist.gov)

Submitted by As_I_Please on Friday September 24, 2010 @12:25AM

As_I_Please writes: Scientists at the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology and Purdue University have ruled out neutrino flux as a cause of previously observed fluctuations in nuclear decay rates. From the article:
Researchers ... tested this by comparing radioactive gold-198 in two shapes, spheres and thin foils, with the same mass and activity. Gold-198 releases neutrinos as it decays. The team reasoned that if neutrinos are affecting the decay rate, the atoms in the spheres should decay more slowly than the atoms in the foil because the neutrinos emitted by the atoms in the spheres would have a greater chance of interacting with their neighboring atoms. The maximum neutrino flux in the sample in their experiments was several times greater than the flux of neutrinos from the sun. The researchers followed the gamma-ray emission rate of each source for several weeks and found no difference between the decay rate of the spheres and the corresponding foils.

The paper can be found here on arXiv . Slashdot has previously covered the original announcement and followed up with the skepticism of other scientists.

Submission + - Chinese Astronauts Complete First Spacewalk (space.com)

Submitted by As_I_Please on Saturday September 27, 2008 @02:35PM

As_I_Please writes: At 8:40AM (GMT) this morning, Chinese astronaut Zhai Zhigang successfully spent 18 minutes in a tethered spacewalk outside the spacecraft Shenzhou 7. This is an important step in China's goal of building an orbiting space station and sending astronauts to the moon.

From the Space.com article:

Successfully completing a spacewalk solidifies China's status as a space power, and helps the nation move toward its goal of establishing a more permanent presence in space.

"We're probably looking at an effort to do a manned docking [in the future] and eventually a spacelab," said Dean Cheng, China analyst with Alexandria, Va.-based think tank CNA Corp. "This is part of the progression toward that end. And if the Chinese really are intending to put a man on the moon, then this becomes even more essential."

In addition to proving China's ability to maneuver in space, the spacewalk showed that China can produce reliable and safe space equipment. During his space venture, Zhai wore a new Chinese-built spacesuit, dubbed Feitian (Chinese for "fly the sky").

Submission + - Student Launched DDoS Attacks on Estonia

Submitted by As_I_Please on Thursday January 24, 2008 @07:56PM

As_I_Please writes: An Estonian youth has been arrested and charged in relation to the cyber attacks on the Estonian government last May. No evidence has been found linking the Russian government with the attacks.

From the article:

Dmitri Galushkevich, a 20-year-old Estonian student, launched the DoS (denial-of-service) attacks from his own PC last year. Although he's a native Estonian, Galushkevich was angry over his government's plans to move the statue, and launched the attack as a means of protesting the decision. The fact that a single angry student was able to impact international relations between two countries is an startling development.

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