SoylentNews

c0lo writes:

International Business Times reports of a startup (called the Disease Diagnostic Group) raised more than $200,000 from investors interested in their new device, capable of diagnosing malaria using magnets and laser light. The devices may be small enough to keep in one hand, cost as low as $300 and have a claimed accuracy of 93% even for infected but asymptomatic persons

The device uses the discovery, published in 2008 by Dave M. Newman and his Exeter University colleagues, on a way to exploit the magneto-optical behaviour of "haemozoin" (also called malaria pigment) a crystalline substance excreted by malaria parasites. When the parasites turn hemoglobin into malaria pigment, it becomes magnetic, unlike any other substances in the human body. Placing an infected blood sample in a magnetic field forces all the crystals to align with the magnetic field. Their collective effect on a polarized light (such as a laser) reveals malaria infection.

Well, my question: with 219 million documented cases of malaria in 2010, why does SN-ers think it needed more than 5 years for the discovery to reach the implementation stage?

Subsentient writes:

I was digging through the piles of garbage in my server today and found a rather large program I had written when I barely knew C. It was so bad, it naively reimplemented strlen(), had mixed and inconsistent case for identifiers, and it had a comment next to a const char *const saying /*constant pointers*/, to name a few. It was so bad, I wasn't sure whether to laugh or vomit, or perhaps both at the same time.

So, I ask you, what is the worst code you ever wrote? Were you a noob? Were you exhausted? I'm interested to see what soylenters have buried deep, deep in their drives.

edIII writes:

Splitting a log requires a surprising amount of force, but Finnish inventor Heikki Karna has invented a new kind of axe that makes it much easier and safer.

The Vipukirves does what the name implies, assuming you speak Finnish. It's essentially acting as a lever instead of a wedge (Vipukirves translates as Leveraxe).

So what makes a lever different than a wedge in this scenario? The Vipukirves still has a sharpened blade at the end, but it has a projection coming off the side that shifts the center of gravity away from the middle. At the point of impact, the edge is driven into the wood and slows down, but the kinetic energy contained in the 1.9 kilogram axe head continues down and to the side (because of the odd center of gravity). The rotational energy actually pushes the wood apart like a lever. A single strike can open an 8 cm gap in a log, which is more than enough to separate it.

YouTube video demonstration shows most logs being split into a dozen or more small pieces of kindling within 30-45 seconds by hand.

Angry Jesus writes:

Multipath TCP (MPTCP) is a recent protocol design that tries to address problems with TCP in the modern network environment like hand-offs from cellular data to wifi. Previous attempts to improve on TCP have had limited success, some of them breaking TCP's critical congestion-control functionality and others, like SCTP, having adoption problems because nobody wants to go first.

In a nutshell, MPTCP works by layering on top TCP so path-based congestion-control still works and all the software infrastructure for TCP handling is also maintained. The design goals for MPTCP are:

• It should be capable of using multiple network paths for a single connection.
• It must be able to use the available network paths at least as well as regular TCP, but without starving TCP.
• It must be as usable as regular TCP for existing applications.
• Enabling MPTCP must not prevent connectivity on a path where regular TCP works.

A FreeBSD implementation is under development and linux sources are currently available and packaged with APT.

c0lo and romanr wrote:

Good bye independent implementation of API's? Oracle wins the appeal on Java API copyright. Page 5:

Because we conclude that the declaring code and the structure, sequence, and organization of the API packages are entitled to copyright protection, we reverse the district court's copyrightability determination with instructions to reinstate the jury's infringement finding as to the 37 Java packages.

From PCWorld:

The federal appeals court referred the case back to the U.S. District Court in San Francisco, where the two sides will have to return to do battle.

Oracle sued Google four years ago, saying its Android operating system infringes on patents and copyrights related to Oracle's Java technology.

Blackmoore writes:

The EFF is promoting a security tool called Privacy Badger. As it's in alpha, I suspect it isn't going to be as good as other browser add-ons. What add-ons do you use and what would you recommend to enhance your online security?

[Editor's Note: We published a story on the tool last week.]

lhsi writes:

New research (abstract) into the risk of death at middle age has found:

Frequent worries/demands from partner or children were associated with 50-100% increased mortality risk. Frequent conflicts with any type of social relation were associated with 2-3 times increased mortality risk.

While the risks were noted, the researchers could not fully explain the cause. The findings indicate that men and those not in work were the most vulnerable.

SuddenOutbreak writes:

National Geographic carries a story about a study to check how birds locate north in the absence of visual cues went slightly off-course when researches noted that their birds were completely lost. Someone decided to put a Faraday cage around the cages and the birds got sorted out.

Previous studies found no such problem, but had been conducted out in the countryside. The newer study was being held near the University of Oldenburg, and was more awash in nearby signals.

The presence of AM frequency signals seemed to have no effect, but the higher frequencies caused problems for the birds. The researcher dug no further into exact frequencies, amplitudes, or patterns as it wasn't the initial point of the research.

AnonTechie writes:

From MIT Technology Review:

Most tech startups are silent spaces where earbud-clad engineers peer into monitors. Not Hampton Creek Foods. The two-year-old company's office-a filled-to-bursting space in San Francisco's South of Market tech hotbed -grinds, clatters, and whirs like a laundromat run amok. That's the sound of industrial-strength mixers, grinders, and centrifuges churning out what the company hopes is a key ingredient in food 2.0: an animal-free replacement for the chicken egg.

Silicon Valley venture capitalists have funded several food-related startups in the past year, but Hampton Creek has gathered the most momentum. It has A-list investors including Founders Fund, Horizon Ventures, and Khosla Ventures, and two undisclosed industrial food companies are experimenting with its plant-based egg substitute. The prepared-food counter at Whole Foods began using the startup's egg-free Just Mayo mayonnaise in September 2013, with four other mainstream grocery chains lined up for the first half of this year. And, thanks to a recent investment round that boosted Hampton Creek's funding to $30 million and drew in Li Ka-shing, the wealthiest person in Asia, Just Mayo soon will be sold by a large online grocer in Hong Kong.

Angry Jesus writes:

Gallup and Purdue University conducted a poll intended to measure how effective different colleges were at producing graduates who were engaged in their work and thriving in their lives, or more simply which colleges produced happier people. The results were surprising: they found no significant difference between expensive ivy league schools and state schools, although for-profit college graduates saw worse outcomes.

Factors that did correlate with the well-being of graduates were things like cost of attendance (and therefore level of debt after graduation), quality of teaching and depth of learning. Internships and having a professor take a special interest in the student were particularly responsible for imparting a greater depth of learning.

AnonTechie writes:

A Chinese researcher's concept of a super-maglev reaching higher speeds was put to the test recently according to a detailed report appearing earlier this week in the Daily Mail. "China's first manned megathermal superconducting maglev loop has been tested successfully by the Applied Superconductivity Laboratory of Southwest Jiaotong University." The researcher, Dr. Deng Zigang, who is project lead, is focused on developments for a high speed train system of the future. He is an associate professor of the Applied Superconductivity Laboratory. His superspeed train concept involves an enclosed vacuum tube vehicle. Dr. Zigang said air is the limiting factor on making even faster high-speed trains, but vacuum tubes operate in a vacuum, removing the air and letting even a low-power vessel operate at enormously high speeds. Maglevs make for very fast and smooth journeys but speeds are limited due to the excessive air resistance encountered at these speeds. The vacuum tube designs could allow trains to travel over seven times faster in the future, said the Daily Mail.

[Dr. Zigang says: "If the running speed exceeds 400 kilometres (250 miles) per hour ... Aerodynamic noise will break through 90 decibels." Superman must be LOUD.]

Blackmoore writes:

Cory Doctrow at bOing bOing brings us Congressmen ask ad companies to pretend SOPA is law, break anti-trust:

A murder of Congresscritters and Senators have told Internet ad-brokers that they expect them to behave as though SOPA passed into law (instead of suffering hideous, total defeat); they want the companies to establish a secret, unaccountable blacklist of "pirate" sites. The group comprises Congressmen Bob Goodlatte and Adam Schiff, and Senators Sheldon Whitehouse and Orrin Hatch. This isn't just a terrible idea, it's also an obviously illegal antitrust violation.

He also links Mitch Stoltz from the Electronic Frontier Foundation Who points out this is a violation of the Sherman Anti-Trust law.

AnonTechie writes:

A new plastic that "heals itself" has been designed, meaning your cracked phone screen or broken tennis racquet could one day mend its own wounds. The polymer automatically patches holes 3 cm wide, 100 times bigger than before. Inspired by the human blood system, it contains a network of capillaries that deliver healing chemicals to damaged areas. The new material, created by engineers at the University of Illinois, is described in Science journal. For decades scientists have dreamed of structures that heal like a plant or an animal heals a wound. Cracks in water pipes and car bonnets would seal up. Satellites could repair their own damage. Broken electronic chips in laptops and mobile phones would spontaneously sort out their own problems.

Link to the abstract, the full journal requires a login.

youngatheart writes:

London's black cabs have promised to bring "chaos, congestion and confusion" to London as a protest against the growing presence of smartphone taxi service Uber. They are planning for 10,000 drivers to meet at a London landmark (which hasn't been named yet) in early June.

Steve McNamara, LTDA's [Licensed Taxi Drivers Association] general secretary, told the BBC: "I anticipate that the demonstration against TfL's [Transport for London's] handling of Uber will attract many many thousands of cabs and cause severe chaos, congestion and confusion across the metropolis."

This amid lawsuits in some places and drivers being fined in others.

Angry Jesus writes:

Starting in 2008 Japanese astronauts brought some cherry tree seeds to the International Space Station. Upon return, there have been about 15 plantings and at least 5 of them seem to be maturing at an accelerated rate, growing very fast and blooming about 6 years ahead of schedule. Unfortunately the plantings were not part of an experiment, so there are no control trees to compare them with. From the story:

Tomita-Yokotani, a plant physiologist, said it was difficult to explain why the temple tree has grown so fast because there was no control group to compare its growth with that of other trees. She said cross-pollination with another species could not be ruled out, but a lack of data was hampering an explanation.

"Of course, there is the possibility that exposure to stronger cosmic rays accelerated the process of sprouting and overall growth," she said. "From a scientific point of view, we can only say we don't know why."