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Qattus writes:

Tony Dyson, the creator of the Star Wars character R2-D2 has passed away. Mr. Dyson, who had lived on the Maltese island of Gozo for a number of years, was found dead at his residence after friends became concerned that he had not been seen for a number of days. An investigation is under way but at this stage there is no suspicion of foul play. RIP.

takyon: Tony Dyson, Who Brought R2-D2 to Rolling, Beeping Life, Dies at 68

Original Submission

bitstream writes:

Vice: Scientists Find Cancer's 'Achilles Heel' — Which the Body Could Be Trained to Attack

A discovery in the genetic make-up of tumors means scientists now believe that they have found a way to get the human immune system to recognize cancer as an hostile and attack it.

When cancer tumors grow, they evolve and mutate into very different groups of cells that often look and behave differently, which makes them hard to attack. But this study have found that even after that evolution process, all cells within the tumor contain markers of their original state which can act as a flag. The cancer cell surface carries this flag which can be recognized by specialized cells in the immune system.

There's two ways to exploit this property:
  * Develop a vaccine made up of the cancer flags, that would train the immune system to spot and attack them.
  * Harvesting T-cells that react most strongly to the cancer cells from the body, growing them in a lab and inject the multiplied load back into the patient.

Swanton, one of the researchers says that "I will be disappointed if we haven't treated a patient within two years. Do we think it's going to work? I hope this is going to result in improvements in survival outcomes. If this doesn't work I'll probably hang my hat up and do something else,".

These new findings, will make it possible to tell the immune system how to specifically recognize and attack tumors.

The article: Clonal neoantigens elicit T cell immunoreactivity and sensitivity to immune checkpoint blockade (DOI: 10.1126/science.aaf1490)

Additional coverage at The Guardian .

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes:

An article published in PLoS, "Biomechanical Characteristics of Hand Coordination in Grasping Activities of Daily Living" contained this passage (emphasis added):

Hand coordination can allow humans to have dexterous control with many degrees of freedom to perform various tasks in daily living. An important contributing factor to this important ability is the complex biomechanical architecture of the human hand. However, drawing a clear functional link between biomechanical architecture and hand coordination is challenging. It is not understood which biomechanical characteristics are responsible for hand coordination and what specific effect each biomechanical characteristic has. To explore this link, we first inspected the characteristics of hand coordination during daily tasks through a statistical analysis of the kinematic data, which were collected from thirty right-handed subjects during a multitude of grasping tasks. Then, the functional link between biomechanical architecture and hand coordination was drawn by establishing the clear corresponding causality between the tendinous connective characteristics of the human hand and the coordinated characteristics during daily grasping activities. The explicit functional link indicates that the biomechanical characteristic of tendinous connective architecture between muscles and articulations is the proper design by the Creator to perform a multitude of daily tasks in a comfortable way. The clear link between the structure and the function of the human hand also suggests that the design of a multifunctional robotic hand should be able to better imitate such basic architecture.

The retraction notice apologizes for "inappropriate language":

The editors apologize to readers for the inappropriate language in the article

[Continues...]

"multixrulz" writes:

A team from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Oregon State University and the U.S. Coast Guard left a hydrophone at the bottom of the Mariana Trench, the deepest part of the ocean, for several months to get a baseline measure of ambient noise in the ocean. This data is to be used in future studies of human-generated ocean noise. They didn't expect to hear much.

"You would think that the deepest part of the ocean would be one of the quietest places on Earth," said Robert Dziak, a NOAA research oceanographer and chief scientist on the project. "Yet there really is almost constant noise from both natural and man-made sources. The ambient sound field at Challenger Deep is dominated by the sound of earthquakes, both near and far as well as the distinct moans of baleen whales and the overwhelming clamor of a category 4 typhoon that just happened to pass overhead.

"There was also a lot of noise from ship traffic, identifiable by the clear sound pattern the ship propellers make when they pass by," added Dziak, who has a courtesy appointment in Oregon State's College of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences. "Guam is very close to Challenger Deep and is a regional hub for container shipping with China and The Philippines."

The hydrophone had enough flash to store 23 days of sound, but the device couldn't be retrieved immediately because of typhoons and shipping activity.

The researchers had never send a hydrophone so deep before: this one went 7 times deeper than any previous instrument. The pressure at that depth is nearly 1100 times air pressure at sea level. It took 6 hours to freefall to the ocean floor, because its rate was limited to 5 ms^-1 to prevent damage due to the increasing pressure. To retrieve the device, an acoustic signal was sent to tell it to release from the ocean floor and rise up on attached floats.

Original Submission

An Anonymous Coward writes:

Physicist Brian Greene of Columbia University appeared on Wednesday's The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. Bringing a laser interferometer, he explained gravitational waves and the LIGO experiment.

Without missing a beat, Greene jumped right in.

"Spacetime is a four dimensional Hausdorff differential manifold on which a metric tensor is imposed that solves the Einstein field equations and that metric tensor gives rise to geodesics and objects that are not experiencing any other force move along the geodesic described by the metric."

Stephen Colbert's assessment: "That's the s**t right there!"

official video via Youtube

Previously: Gravitational Waves Detected From Black Hole Merger

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

Vallie, a UK-based company, is offering London car drivers a service that on the one hand will make driving an electric car a lot easier, and on the other, will eliminate many of the frustrations of individual car use in the city—potentially incentivizing that usage and making life for everyone else in the city less pleasant.

Here's how it works:
1) You use an app to tell Vallie where you'll be dropping off your car.
2) A fully-insured driver monitors your progress, and turns up on their scooter when you arrive to take charge of your vehicle and park it in a commercial parking lot.
3) While Vallie has your car, they'll plug it in to charge (assuming it has a plug), or they'll go fill it up with gas or give it a wash—all for additional fees of course.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

A team of neuroscientists at Duke Health have developed a brain-machine interface (BMI) that allows monkeys to steer a robotic wheelchair by thought alone:

The BMI uses signals from hundreds of neurons recorded simultaneously in two regions of the monkeys' brains that are involved in movement and sensation. As the animals think about moving toward their goal — in this case, a bowl containing fresh grapes — computers translate their brain activity into real-time operation of the wheelchair.

The interface, described in the March 3 issue of the open-access online journal Scientific Reports, demonstrates the future potential for people with disabilities who have lost most muscle control and mobility due to quadriplegia or ALS, said senior author Miguel Nicolelis, M.D., Ph.D., co-director for the Duke Center for Neuroengineering. "In some severely disabled people, even blinking is not possible," Nicolelis said. "For them, using a wheelchair or device controlled by noninvasive measures like an EEG (a device that monitors brain waves through electrodes on the scalp) may not be sufficient. We show clearly that if you have intracranial implants, you get better control of a wheelchair than with noninvasive devices."

Scientists began the experiments in 2012, implanting hundreds of hair-thin microfilaments in the premotor and somatosensory regions of the brains of two rhesus macaques. They trained the animals by passively navigating the chair toward the bowl containing grapes. During this training phase, the scientists recorded the primates' large-scale electrical brain activity. The researchers then programmed a computer system to translate these recorder brain signals into digital motor commands that later controlled the movements of the wheelchair. This process is similar to using recorded brain patterns of experienced pilots to train novice pilots (see "Now you can learn to fly a plane from expert-pilot brainwave patterns"), except that in this case, the monkey's own brain activity was recorded. As the monkeys learned to control the wheelchair just by thinking, they became more efficient at navigating toward the grapes and completed the trials faster, Nicolelis said.

The primates' brain signals showed signs they were estimating their distance to the bowl of grapes. "This was not a signal that was present in the beginning of the training, but something that emerged as an effect of the monkeys becoming proficient in this task," Nicolelis said. "This was a surprise. It demonstrates the brain's enormous flexibility to assimilate a device, in this case a wheelchair, and that device's spatial relationships to the surrounding world."

Wireless Cortical Brain-Machine Interface for Whole-Body Navigation in Primates (open, DOI: 10.1038/srep22170)

Original Submission

frojack writes:

According to an Associated Press Story carried in Us News and number of places:

The method may offer predictions 2 to 3 weeks in advance to wide areas. Meteorologists currently can only give notice up to five days in advance that thunderstorm conditions are going to be ripe for tornadoes. Actual Tornado prediction is problematic, often only reporting them after they touch ground and often missing them entirely with Doppler radar.

The new prediction method looks for shifts in Global Wind Oscillation (pdf) , and focuses on the jet stream changes (winds at 33,000 feet). When these winds shift from rather straight east-west to more roller coaster-like plunges north and south, tornado outbreaks are more prevalent. These wind patterns shifts sometimes persist for two to three weeks before they trigger tornados.

Original Submission

Phoenix666 writes:

A study by the Germany-based Bertelsmann Foundation notes a global decline in democracy and models of social market economy, and an increase in religion's influence in political and legal institutions.
...
The study, in which 250 experts participated, analyzed 129 developing countries and countries in transition every two years to assess the situation based on 17 criteria.

Only six of those 129 countries are credited with "very good governance" lowest level since 2006, when the study began to be regularly performed; while governments of other 46 countries "demonstrate either failed or weak transformation efforts."

Since two years ago, when the last study took place, the number of autocracies has increased from 58 percent to 73 percent, and only 15 of 55 autocracies protect "civil rights even on a basic level, with modest political rights."

Original Submission

sex fiend writes:

Frequency of sex is declining in Finland since the 2000s, according to an ongoing 50 year study. The sharpest decline has been shown for 30-40 year olds who are down to once a week as the average. Sexperts downplay the importance of the findings. The results are based on the FINSEX research project that has tracked the subject for decades.

How is the situation in your country?

Original Submission

takyon writes:

An Emirates Airbus A380 jet has made the longest (by distance) commercial non-stop flight, covering a distance of about 14,200 km in around 17 hours and 15 minutes:

Qantas' Dallas-Sydney flight was believed to be the previous current longest flight, at 13,800km and clocking in at about 16 hours, 55 minutes.

The Dubai-Auckland flight duration record is not expected to hold for long, as Emirates is launching a Dubai-Panama City service later in March that will take 17 hours, 35 minutes. Singapore Airlines used to fly Singapore-New Jersey, which took 19 hours. The firm announced in 2015 it was planning to bring back the service in 2018.

The new non-stop Emirates route between Auckland and Dubai reportedly reduces the current travel time by three hours.

Original Submission

HughPickens.com writes:

Cyrus Farivar reports at ArsTechnica that Congressman David Jolly has introduced the "No Taxpayer Support for Apple Act," a bill that would forbid federal agencies from purchasing Apple products until the company cooperates with the federal court order to assist the unlocking of a seized iPhone 5C associated with the San Bernardino terrorist attack. "Taxpayers should not be subsidizing a company that refuses to cooperate in a terror investigation that left 14 Americans dead on American soil," said Jolly, who announced in 2015 that he's running for Senate, joining the crowded GOP primary field to replace Sen. Marco Rubio. "Following the horrific events of September 11, 2001, every citizen and every company was willing to do whatever it took to side with law enforcement and defeat terror. It's time Apple shows that same conviction to further protect our nation today." Jolly's bill echoes a call from Donald Trump last month to boycott Apple until it agrees to assist the FBI. Not to fear. GovTrack gives Jolly's bill a 1 percent chance of passage.

Original Submission

takyon writes:

After several days of weather-related delay, SpaceX successfully launched SES-9, a geostationary satellite for the satellite communications company SES, at 6:35 PM ET (23:35 GMT). The 4th attempted landing of the first stage rocket on the drone barge was unsuccessful.

SpaceX attempted to land the first stage of Falcon 9 on its drone barge, but was not confident of success due to the velocity required:

This mission is going to a Geostationary Transfer Orbit. Following stage separation, the first stage of the Falcon 9 will attempt an experimental landing on the "Of Course I Still Love You" droneship. Given this mission's unique GTO profile, a successful landing is not expected.

SES-8 was launched back in December 2013, and was the first geostationary satellite to be launched with a SpaceX rocket. SES will attempt to launch seven more satellites between now and 2017, although SpaceX will not launch all of them.

NASA has ordered five more International Space Station resupply missions from SpaceX, valued at around $700 million.

Original Submission

oaklandwatch writes:

Google will release a faster beta version of Angular 2 in "about two weeks", with a smaller version targetted for April. "We're improving our ability to handle different languages," says Google's Brad Green, noting that 213 contributors are currently working on Angular. "Our plan is to have versions that will work with many server-side technologies, from Java to Python." Microsoft has already demonstrated how its building Angular into ASP.NET and Google is also working with the Drupal team. But Green says they'll also continue supporting Angular 1 for at least a year, until at least a majority of users have transitioned to the new syntax. (Google says there are currently 1.3 million developers using Angular 1, versus 300,000 using Angular 2, so "We've got a ways go to.")

Original Submission

SubiculumHammer writes:

https://www.humblebundle.com/books/paizo-pathfinder-bundle

For those who like or would like to try table-top Gaming, Humble Bundle is offering a "mindblowing" pay-what-you-want offer for digital copies of the PathFinder roleplaying game, a fork of AD&D rule 3.5, I believe... and it also helps charity [takyon: the two charity options are Extra Life/Children's Miracle Network Hospitals and Camden's Concert via the Tides Foundation].

This was my first post for an advertisement, don't hate me, but I thought some might be interested.

Original Submission