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DNA computer sets Guinness record
REHOVAT, Israel, Feb. 24 (UPI) -- The latest entry in the Guinness Book of World Records for smallest biological computing device is a microscopic gadget composed of DNA and enzymes that not only reads DNA for data but uses it as fuel.

Israeli scientists reported Monday that just two spoonfuls could hold up to 30 million billion of such molecular computers, which could perform about 660 trillion operations per second -- nearly 20 times as many as Japan's Earth Simulator, the most powerful supercomputer now active.

"The long-term goal is to eventually create autonomous, programmable molecular computing devices that can operate in vivo, eventually inside the human body, and function as 'doctors in a cell,'" researcher Ehud Shapiro, a computer scientist at the Weizmann Institute of Science, told United Press International.

posted by West 3:50 PM

 

Who should explore space? Man or machine? (CNN)
Although they are less glamorous, unmanned missions pose no risks to humans. Robots have an impressive list of accomplishments compared to the their flesh and blood counterparts. Robots have dug in the dirt on Mars, flown in the atmosphere of Jupiter, driven by the moons of Neptune and plopped down on an asteroid. A few are even flirting with the boundary of the solar system.

Humans, on the other hand, have been relegated mostly to going in circles, barely above the surface of the planet. Besides the brief Apollo mission triumphs on the moon, almost 250,000 miles away, humans have never strayed farther than 400 miles from the planet, less than a day's drive, albeit straight up. Humans fly near home for several reasons. There is the logistics of sending humans and what they need, like water, air and food, in a closed environment that keeps them alive. Robotic probes can travel with a fraction of the luggage, and therefore cost.

A typical shuttle mission, for example, runs between $400 million and $500 million. A satellite can reach orbit for $20 million. Unmanned landers have touched down on Mars for as little as $250 million. But the estimated price tag for a manned journey to the red planet runs anywhere from $50 billion to $500 billion. ***This money could be better spent improving life on EARTH. Let those folks rich enough to afford the costs be the ones to pay for space trucking -- rather than stealing more billions from innocent taxpayers. Regardless of what little good the US gov't might accomplish (rarely), it is the greatest gang of thieves in the history of Earth.***

Muscle into mush
Sudden bursts of solar radiation can kill an unprotected spacewalker. Collisions with small space flotsam can obliterate a ship. And as the shuttle Challenger in 1986 and Columbia in 2003 painfully illustrate, launch and landing glitches can turn deadly in an instant. Weightlessness can seriously weaken human bones, muscles and immune systems. And a roundtrip to Mars using current rocket power technology could take several years.

For decades, NASA has gone to lengths defending the science of manned missions, presenting the billions spent on sending a few people into space as a worthwhile investment to the billions of people on the ground. Cordless drills, fire detectors, CT scans and ionized water filters can trace their origin to the U.S. space program, according to NASA. The agency's publication "Spinoff" goes further, boasting of shuttle tubing that makes better golf clubs, shuttle netting that improves racing boats, even spacesuit fabrics used in sports bras that reduce "mammary bounce." Critics contend that NASA has exaggerated the link between the space program and Earth-based technologies. The spinoffs have come not from research in space but brainstorming on the ground; engineers could have thought up fire detectors without actually building rockets.

posted by Hal 11:01 AM

 

Global Consciousness Project -- Peace Demonstrations Register in the Noosphere Activity
The GCP made a formal prediction that the 15th [February 2003] would show departures from expectation in the standard analysis. The original thought was to signal average major time-blocks in Europe and US, and if indicated, in the other capitols. The rallies were expected to continue for periods of 3 hours or more from the time set for assembly.

On the 15th, before looking at any data, it became clear from news reports that millions were engaged, in hundreds of cities around the world. So the prediction was simplified to accomodate all the major demonstrations from Tokyo to San Francisco by specifying the prediction for the whole day. We also specified that we would look at other periods to test (informally) the expectation that there might be greater effect in the times of the biggest, most intense demos, such as Berlin, London, and New York.

In Berlin, the beginning was noon, and concluding speeches were expected between 14:00 and 16:00. London and New York also assembled at noon, other places at different times, e.g., Paris at 14:00. Our formal prediction was in any case for the whole GMT day, applying the standard analysis. Secondary predictions identified the European US focus, to include Berlin, Paris, London, and New York and other US locations.

The first figure shows the formal result, which has fairly normal looking random walk for the first part of the day, but a striking trend beginning about the time the major European demonstrations got under way.

The second graph shows the secondary analysis covering the period from 11:00 GMT to 20:00 GMT. It coincides with the strongest trend during the day, and so has a more striking appearance. If it were formal, the statistics would be impressive.

posted by Lorenzo 5:10 PM

 

United Press International: NASA unveils new picture of universe
WASHINGTON, Feb. 11 (UPI) - NASA on Tuesday unveiled the most detailed picture yet of the universe in its infancy.

In the aftermath of the shuttle Columbia tragedy Feb. 1, the new map, created by an unmanned, relatively small project, marks a success for the agency.

A million miles from Earth, a satellite has been capturing light that has taken 13 billion years to reach the orbiting probe. The result -- a snapshot of the universe when it was a mere 380,000 years old.

An elliptical collage of mostly blue and green, speckled with yellow clumps and a few red splotches, was presented Tuesday at a briefing at NASA headquarters.

The Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe, named in honor of the late David T. Wilkinson, whose work contributed to the mission, has brought into sharp focus a previously blurry picture of the entire universe.

"WMAP has returned a gold mine of new results," said Charles Bennett, principal investigator for WMAP at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.

WMAP reaches back in time to give a glimpse of where the first galaxies might have formed and when the first stars ignited, and it has given insight into a unified cosmic theory that reveals the age of the universe.

posted by West 7:46 AM

 

U.S. Orders Resistance Warnings on Antibiotics

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Antibiotics will need to carry warnings advising doctors to avoid unnecessary prescriptions, a major contributor to the problem of drug-resistant infections, U.S. health officials said on Wednesday.

The new requirement aims to reduce inappropriate prescribing of antibiotics for common ailments such as ear infections and chronic coughs, which often are caused by viruses that do not respond to antibiotics.

Antibiotics only kill bacteria, but patients often request them for treating a variety of infections.

Starting next year, antibiotic labels should include instructions for doctors to prescribe them only when an infection is proven or strongly suspected to be caused by bacteria, the Food and Drug Administration said.

The labels also will encourage physicians to counsel patients about what types of infections require antibiotic treatment, as well as remind them to take all of their medication, even if they feel better in a few days.

Not completing a full course of treatment can give microbes the chance to mutate to resist antibiotics, causing infections that are harder to treat. Overprescribing the drugs also is considered a major reason that antibiotic resistance is increasing.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, half of the 100 million prescriptions a year written by office-based physicians in the United States are unnecessary because they are prescribed for the common cold and other viral infections.

"Antibiotic resistance is a serious and growing public health problem, not only in this country but worldwide," FDA Commissioner Mark McClellan said, noting that the growth of resistant germs is outpacing development of new antibiotics.

"We may end up in a situation where we don't have effective antibiotic drugs for common infections that were once easily treated," McClellan said in an interview.

The agency plans to try and publicize the warnings through medical journals and professional medical societies, McClellan said.

Jeff Trewhitt, a spokesman for the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, said the drug industry group had just begun reviewing the rule. He declined to comment further.

posted by West 7:39 AM

 

Bioengineered pigs might be in food supply
United Press International - The Food and Drug Administration said Wednesday researchers improperly disposed of bioengineered pigs and they might have entered the food supply. In an investigation last week, the FDA found researchers at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, sold the offspring of genetically modified pigs to a dealer, said Dr. Lester Crawford, deputy commissioner of the FDA, in a teleconference. Whether the dealer offered the pigs for slaughter has yet to be determined, Crawford said, and the FDA could not confirm whether meat from the pigs entered the food supply.

posted by West 7:35 AM

 

Scientists take step to growing human-compatible pig organs

Associated Press -- OMAHA, Nebraska - Nebraska scientists say they successfully grafted a pig's heart to a sheep by manipulating the immune systems of both animals, a step that may soon allow scientists to grow organs for human transplantation.

Other scientists conducting similar cross-species experiments said the Nebraska results are limited because the livestock are genetically similar. More research into the biochemistry of tissue rejection is needed before human trials could take place, they cautioned.

"The main practical limitation is that the immunity barrier between the sheep and the pig is probably lower than that between a pig and a human," said Dr. Jeffrey Platt, a transplant biologist at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota.

"It would not shock me to find out it didn't have that big an impact on a human," Platt said.

Details of the experiment conducted on 13 pairs of pigs and sheep at the University of Nebraska Medical Center appear in the February issue of the journal Annals of Surgery.

posted by West 7:33 AM