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Submission + - Scientists 3D Print Liquid Materials (lbl.gov)

Submitted by omaha393
omaha393 writes: Researchers at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab have successfully developed a technique to print liquid 3D structures. Using a modified 3D printer, the team demonstrated they can reliably print liquid tubes sheathed in surfactants, with precision that allows spiral and branching shapes with diameters ranging from micrometers to millimetres. The technique offers a means to finely control small scale synthetic reactions but the team suggest it could lead to wearable, stretchable electronics. A brief video showing the technology is available and the full paper is available at Advanced Materials.

Submission + - Ibuprofen Linked To Male Infertility, Study Says (theguardian.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Men who take high doses of ibuprofen for months at a time may be at greater risk of fertility issues and also other health problems, such as muscle wastage, erectile dysfunction and fatigue, scientists have found. Research on healthy young men who took the common painkiller for up to six weeks showed that the drug disrupted the production of male sex hormones and led to a condition normally seen in older men and smokers. The 18 to 35-year-olds who took part in the study developed a disorder called “compensated hypogonadism” within two weeks of having 600mg of ibuprofen twice a day. The condition arises when the body has to boost levels of testosterone because normal production in the testes has fallen. Doctors in Copenhagen who led the study said that while the disorder was mild and temporary in the volunteers, they feared it could become permanent in long-term ibuprofen users. This would lead to continuously low levels of testosterone, because the body could no longer compensate for the fall.

Comment Re: Bogus Health Claims (Score 4, Insightful) 243

Really can't emphasize enough here the differences in aging between human and mice models: metabolism, neurological health and cardiovascular health are so variable between the two that attributing one phenomenon as translatable to another is irresponsible at best (especially considering lack of replicable results). Healthcare isn't a typical consumer service where a buyer-beware approach is acceptable, one bad study leading to a hyped up pseudo-treatment is bad news for everyone. On a sidenote though ambrosia is ragweed, that horrible allergenic pollen. So at least the company name is fitting.

Submission + - Ask Slashdot: How does your team track and manage bugs in your software? 1

Submitted by jb373
jb373 writes: My team uses agile software methodologies, specifically scrum with a kanban board, and adds all bugs we find to our kanban board. Our kanban board is digital and similar to Trello in many regards and we have a single list for bugs. I think that this is making bugs very hard to track. We end up with duplicates and now have a long list to try and scroll through. I'm thinking about pushing for a separate bug tracking system that we pull bugs from during refinement and create kanban cards for.

Has anyone run into a similar situation or do things differently that work well for their team?

Comment Microscopic elephant in the room: nucleases (Score 2) 50

by omaha393 (#54467101) Attached to: Microsoft Wants To Use DNA For Cloud Data Storage
The potential is exciting, but the big issues are cost of synthesis, which is fixable, and stability, which is unfortunately more pervasive. DNA is super stable, but only when its uncontaminated. Nucleases (enzymes specifically designed to cleave DNA) are everywhere and certain chemical or UV exposure would ruin the base sequences irreparably. Basically if the hard drive isn't in sterile conditions it risks being easily destroyed, so a misplaced sneeze could delete everything. Also cytosine (C) has a tendency to convert to Uracil (U, basically a substitute for T in RNA). I'm sure engineers will probably fix all these issues, but there's always nucleases that evolve to counter anti-nuclease activity.

Submission + - Texas Legislature Clears Road For Uber And Lyft To Return To Austin (austinmonitor.com)

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: “On Wednesday, the state Senate overwhelmingly approved House Bill 100 on second and third readings, sending the statewide ride-hailing regulations to Gov. Greg Abbott’s desk for his signature. If Abbott signs it, as he is expected to do, the new law will preempt regulations City Council passed in December 2015 that both Uber and Lyft deemed too restrictive on transportation network companies such as themselves. Both claimed they found particularly onerous the fingerprint background check requirement for drivers.”

Submission + - Inside Russia's Social Media War on America (time.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Time magazine ran a cover story about "a dangerous new route for antidemocratic forces" — social media. "Using these technologies, it is possible to undermine democratic government, and it's becoming easier every day," says Rand Waltzman of the Rand Corp., who ran a major Pentagon research program to understand the propaganda threats posed by social media technology." The article cites current and former FBI and CIA officials who now believe Russia's phishing emails against politicians were "just the most visible battle in an ongoing information war against global democracy." They cite, for example, a March report by U.S. counterintelligence which found "Russians had sent expertly tailored messages carrying malware to more than 10,000 Twitter users in the Defense Department."

Each message contained links tailored to the interests of the recipient, but "When clicked, the links took users to a Russian-controlled server that downloaded a program allowing Moscow's hackers to take control of the victim's phone or computer — and Twitter account... In 2016, Russia had used thousands of covert human agents and robot computer programs to spread disinformation referencing the stolen campaign emails of Hillary Clinton, amplifying their effect. Now counterintelligence officials wondered: What chaos could Moscow unleash with thousands of Twitter handles that spoke in real time with the authority of the armed forces of the United States?" The article also notes how algorithms now can identify hot-button issues and peole susceptible to suggestion, so "Propagandists can then manually craft messages to influence them, deploying covert provocateurs, either humans or automated computer programs known as bots, in hopes of altering their behavior. That is what Moscow is doing, more than a dozen senior intelligence officials and others investigating Russia's influence operations tell TIME."

Submission + - Toyota unveils plan for hydrogen powered trucking (rdmag.com)

Submitted by omaha393
omaha393 writes: From R&D Magazine:
"Toyota announced a new initiative on Wednesday aimed at advancing its work in vehicles powered by alternative energy sources. The automaker unveiled Project Portal, which is a novel hydrogen fuel cell system designed for heavy duty truck use at the Port of Los Angeles.
A proof-of-concept truck powered by this fuel cell will be part of a feasibility study held at the Port this summer, with the goal of examining the potential of this technology in heavy-duty applications.

The test vehicle will produce more than 670 horsepower and 1,325 pound feet of torque from two of these novel fuel cell stacks along with a 12kWh battery. Overall, the combined weight capacity is 80,000 pounds that will be carried over 200 miles."
While hydrogen fuel has been criticized due to high cost of production and safety concerns, recent advances in catalysis and solid storage systems have made the prospect of hydrogen fuel an attractive commercial prospect for the future.

Submission + - The surprising rise of China as IP powerhouse (techcrunch.com)

Submitted by hackingbear
hackingbear writes: China is not only taking the spotlight in strong defense of global markets and free trade, filling a vacuum left by retreating Western capitalist democracies, China is quickly becoming a (if not the) global leader in intellectual property protection and enforcement. And there too, just as Western democracies (especially the United States) have grown increasingly skeptical of the value of intellectual property and have weakened protection and enforcement, China has been steadily advancing its own intellectual property system and the protected assets of its companies and citizens. In addition to filing twice as many patents as the US, China is increasingly being selected as a key venue for patent litigation between non-Chinese companies. Why? Litigants feel they are treated fairly. Reports indicated that in 2015, 65 foreign plaintiffs won all of their cases against other foreign companies before Beijing’s IP court. And even foreign plaintiffs suing Chinese companies won about 81 percent of their patent cases, roughly the same as domestic Chinese plaintiffs. China’s journey from piracy to protection models the journeys of other Western and Asian countries. While building its industrial economies, the U.S. and major European powers violated IP laws with no consideration. As reported by the Guardian, Doron Ben-Atar, a history professor at Fordham University, has noted that “US and every major European state engaged in technology piracy and industrial espionage in the 18th and 19th century.” It took Western economies a hundred or more years to change that behavior. China’s mind-whipping change is happening over decades, not centuries.

Submission + - Singapore Wants To Test Flying Taxi Drones (nypost.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: "Commuters in Singapore might soon be able to ride a flying taxi home at the end of the day," writes the New York Post. "The country's Minister of Transport is in negotiations with tech companies to start trials on taxi drones that can pick up passengers, says a story by Singapore's Business Times. The driverless pods, which resemble the speeding hover bikes in Return of the Jedi, would stop for passengers based on an 'e-hail' similar to what Uber uses, the report says." Flying taxis have already been prototyped, including the Hoversurf Scorpion and the Volocopter VC200, while Dubai plans to begin testing Ehang 184 self-driving flying taxi drones in July.

Though Singapore is a small country with a relatively small workforce, the head of their ministry of transportation "noted the availability and affordability of data and the rise of artificial intelligence are already upending the transport sector globally," reports the Singapore Business Times. To that end, Singapore is also considering on-demand buses that optimize their routes, but also driverless buses. "It has signed a partnership agreement with a party to build and put such buses through a trial, and will be signing another agreement quite soon."

Comment Not broken (Score 1) 128

by omaha393 (#54104947) Attached to: Molecule Kills Elderly Cells, Reduces Signs of Aging In Mice
P53 is always present in cells but needs to be activated. Basically it's on standby to quickly kill cells in case there's DNA damage(very bad=cancer usually), so FOX helps keep it from killing healthy cells. On a side note peptides tend to get a lot of scrutiny from drug companies/designers. Our bodies readily metabolize peptides, so drug stability/delivery issues are usually the kiss of death for peptide drugs. Also, senescence is a good thing. Senescent cells don't actively divide, the alternative is mitotic cells that do divide. More divisions you have, more likely it is cancer forms. So as always, cancer and aging are inseparable and we're all doomed :)

Submission + - US Ordered 'Mandatory Social Media Check' For Some Visa Applicants (theverge.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has ordered a “mandatory social media check” on all visa applicants who have ever visited ISIS-controlled territory, according to diplomatic cables obtained by Reuters. The four memos were sent to American diplomatic missions over the past two weeks, with the most recent issued on March 17th. According to Reuters, they provide details into a revised screening process that President Donald Trump has described as “extreme vetting.” A memo sent on March 16th rescinds some of the instructions that Tillerson outlined in the previous cables, including an order that would have required visa applicants to hand over all phone numbers, email addresses, and social media accounts that they have used in the past. The secretary of state issued the memo after a Hawaii judge blocked the Trump administration’s revised travel ban on citizens from six predominantly Muslim countries. In addition to the social media check, the most recent memo calls for consular officials to identify “populations warranting increased scrutiny.” Two former government officials tell Reuters that the social media order could lead to delays in processing visa applications, with one saying that such checks were previously carried out on rare occasions.

Submission + - Molecule Kills Elderly Cells, Reduces Signs of Aging In Mice (sciencemag.org)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Even if you aren’t elderly, your body is home to agents of senility—frail and damaged cells that age us and promote disease. Now, researchers have developed a molecule that selectively destroys these so-called senescent cells. The compound makes old mice act and appear more youthful, providing hope that it may do the same for us. As we get older, senescent cells build up in our tissues, where researchers think they contribute to illnesses such as heart disease, arthritis, and diabetes. In the past, scientists have genetically modified mice to dispatch their senescent cells, allowing the rodents to live longer and reducing plaque buildup in their arteries. Such genetic alterations aren’t practical for people, but researchers have reported at least seven compounds, known as senolytics, that kill senescent cells. A clinical trial is testing two of the drugs in patients with kidney disease, and other trials are in the works. However, current senolytic compounds, many of which are cancer drugs, come with downsides. They can kill healthy cells or trigger side effects such as a drop in the number of platelets, the cellular chunks that help our blood clot. Cell biologist Peter de Keizer of Erasmus University Medical Center in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, and colleagues were investigating how senescent cells stay alive when they uncovered a different strategy for attacking them. Senescent cells carry the type of DNA damage that should spur a protective protein, called p53, to put them down. Instead, the researchers found that a different protein, FOXO4, latches onto p53 and prevents it from doing its duty. To counteract this effect, De Keizer and colleagues designed a molecule, known as a peptide, that carries a shortened version of the segment of FOXO4 that attaches to p53. In a petri dish, this peptide prevented FOXO4 and p53 from hooking up, prompting senescent cells to commit suicide. But it spared healthy cells. The researchers then injected the molecule into mutant mice that age rapidly. These rodents live about half as long as normal mice, and when they are only a few months old, their fur starts to fall out, their kidneys begin to falter, and they become sluggish. However, the peptide boosted the density of their fur, reversed the kidney damage, and increased the amount of time they could scurry in a running wheel, the scientists report online today in Cell. When the researchers tested the molecule in normal, elderly mice, they saw a similar picture: In addition to helping their kidneys and fur, the molecule also increased their willingness to explore their surroundings.

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