Nanotech Vaccine Successfully Cures Type-1 Diabetes in Mice

An innovative nanotech "vaccine" has been proven to cure type 1 diabetes in mice, and paves the way to do the same for humans. A dose of therapeutic nanoparticles given to diabetic mice restored healthy sugar levels in the rodents. Read the complete article at Nanotech Vaccine Cures Type-1 Diabetes in Mice

Texas Hill Country Bluebonnets

Thanks to Dick Belt for these photos.

Nanogel Regenerates Cartilage in Joints

The body is a resilient biological structure, but there's one thing medical science, an increasing number of Baby Boomers, and the majority of professional athletes will all tell you: Take care of your joints, because once you burn up the cartilage you started with, you're not getting any more. But a breakthrough by Northwestern University scientists will now allow adult joints to naturally grow new cartilage for the very first time.

The process has undergone successful animal testing, but it's likely got a few more years of testing ahead of it before it could become commonplace. But the timing couldn't be better; an aging population means an increase in achy old joints. A fresh round of cartilage production could keep many of the more senior members of society in the workforce, on the golf course and out of orthopedic surgeon's office.

Read more at Stem Cell Nano-gel Regenerates Cartilage

Personal note: I hope this procedure is approved soon. I have severe arthritis in one of my thumbs caused by a teenage injury and over 45 years of computer keyboard and mouse use. It causes me mild discomfort and pain and makes me appreciate the problems and pain of people with a wider range of arthritic joints.

The passing of an unsung artist and intellectual

Charles Frank "Devo" Ragsdale died of cancer on February 12, 2010. He was an aspiring artist and intellectual whose life can best be summed up in Henry David Thoreau's quotation "If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away." Devo was a teacher who taught in New England, California and Texas; an avowed Zionist who had an excellent knowledge of Middle Eastern history and current events; and a football fan with an encyclopedic knowledge of college and pro football statistics. After retirement he became a reclusive artist who was convinced that his next painting would bring him fame.

Devo was one of my best friends for over 50 years. I am the proud owner of three of his more realistic paintings. The painting of birds above was done for me when my wife died in November 2006. His paintings tended toward Impressionism and Cubism to such an extent that they were incomprehensible to most people. Over the years we had many good natured arguments about his style of painting. I kept telling him he could be a successful commercial artist if he would switch his painting style to Realism. And he would tell me I did not recognize good art when I saw it and that he refused to prostitute himself to the commercial art world just to be successful.

Dallas Blooms

Dallas Blooms at the Dallas Arboretum is the largest floral festival in the south, showcasing over 500,000 spring-blooming bulbs. The 90 Japanese cherry blossom trees were also in bloom when I visited yesterday.

No more bar codes?

Lines at the grocery store might become as obsolete as milkmen, if a new tag that seeks to replace bar codes becomes commonplace.

Researchers from Sunchon National University in Suncheon, South Korea, and Rice University in Houston have built a radio frequency identification tag that can be printed directly onto cereal boxes and potato chip bags. The tag uses ink laced with carbon nanotubes to print electronics on paper or plastic that could instantly transmit information about a cart full of groceries.

"You could run your cart by a detector and it tells you instantly what's in the cart," says James M. Tour of Rice University, whose research group invented the ink. "No more lines, you just walk out with your stuff."

For more information read New RFID Tag Could Mean the End of Bar Codes

Cloud computing

Have you heard the term cloud computing? If you haven't, you will soon. Simply put, cloud computing means using the Internet to provide your programs and store your data. The cloud is a metaphor for "the Internet." This started because in drawing networks, the Internet was usually represented by a drawing of a cloud.

For example, instead of spending $300 on a new copy of Microsoft Office, you might find that Google's free online suite, Google Docs, will do just fine. Needless to say, many companies are investigating cloud computing.

For more information read the Wikipedia entry on Cloud Computing.

American Revolution Quiz

Courtesy of Chris Aceto.

http://americanrevolutioncenter.org/what_do_you_know

Turn Your Body Into Your I/O with Skinput

Electronic devices are getting smaller, and so are their interfaces. If you've ever had problems typing on your mobile, or changing a song on your iPod while jogging, Chris Harrison has the answer. His Skinput prototype is a system that monitors acoustic signals on your arm to translate gestures and taps into input commands. Just by touching different points on your limb you can tell your portable device to change volume, answer a call, or turn itself off. Even better, Harrison can couple Skinput with a pico projector so that you can see a graphic interface on your arm and use the acoustic signals to control it.

Incorporating your body into your mobile systems could be the next big theme in human computer interfaces.

Read more at Turn Your Body Into Your I/O

Tiny Chip Made of Paper Diagnoses Diseases and Costs Just a Penny

Existing lab-on-a-chip designs can put the power of testing in the palm of your hand, but an upcoming model may represent the cheapest and most colorful one yet. A Harvard University chemist has created a prototype "chip" technology out of paper that could help diagnose HIV, malaria, tuberculosis and other diseases for just a penny each time, according to CNN.

A drop of blood on one side of the paper chip results in a colorful tree-like pattern that tells physicians or nurses whether a person has certain diseases. Water-repellent comic-book ink helps channel the blood into the tree-like pattern, as several layers of treated paper react to the blood and create the telling colors.

George Whitesides, a Harvard chemist, said that the colors can also reveal the severity of a disease rather than just saying if a person has it or not. It's not the most sophisticated lab-on-a-chip, but that's the point -- many of these could become cheap diagnostic tools for a developing world that often lacks physicians and clinics.

Read the article at Chip that diagnoses diseases for a penny

U.S Spooks Want a System That Automatically Gauges Who Can Be Trusted

Just as DARPA pushes the wackier Pentagon ideas and ARPA-E backs next-gen energy projects, IARPA serves the intelligence community by checking out "high-risk, high-payoff" research. The spooks' lab has now launched a "TRUST (Tools for Recognizing Useful Signals of Trustworthiness)" program that aims to figure out whom can be trusted, even under the most stressful or deceptive circumstances.

Trust has always presented a problem for the shadowy world of espionage, where believing in the wrong person could mean death and the loss of military or national secrets. A sobering reminder of that came in December 2009, when a trusted informant turned suicide bomber killed seven CIA analysts in Afghanistan who had been directing drone attacks against Pakistani militants.

IARPA's five-year plan aims to design experiments that can measure trust with high certainty -- a tricky proposition for a psychological study. Developing such experimental protocols could prove very useful for assessing levels of trust within one-on-one talks, or even during group interactions.

Read the complete article at http://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2010-02/us-spooks-want-better-gauge-trust-matter-life-and-death

Cybersecurity: Here’s What Really Worries the Pentagon

In Washington, "cybersecurity" is a term that's come to have a thousand meanings, and none at all. Any crime, prank, intelligence operation, or foreign-government attack involving a computer has become a "cyber threat." But at the Pentagon, they aren't worried about some kid painting a Hitler moustache on Defense Secretary Robert Gates' online portrait. They're not even that concerned about a full-scale attack on the military's networks – even though the modern American way of war depends so heavily on the free flow of data. In the military, there's now broad agreement that one cyber threat trumps all others: electronic espionage, the infiltration (and possible corruption) of Defense Department networks.

Well-placed spy software not only opens a window for an adversary to look into American military operations. That window can also be used to extract information — everything from drone video feeds to ammunition requests to intelligence reports. Such an opening also gives that enemy a chance to introduce his own false data, turning American command-and-control systems against themselves. How does a soldier trust an order, if he doesn't know who else is listening – or who gave the order in the first place?

Read More http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2010/01/cybersecurity-heres-what-really-worries-the-pentagon/#ixzz0fwqyd9BP

Pew Research quiz

This is not a humorous joke, but a Pew Research quiz.

See how well you do compared to the national averages. Once you see the results, you will know why the country is in the pathetic shape we're in. No one knows a damn thing!!! I contend the really uninformed Americans haven't even taken this test.

Test your knowledge with 12 questions, then be ready to shudder when you see how others did.

http://pewresearch.org/politicalquiz/quiz/index.php

Pass it along to your friends and see how well they did!!

'Lab on a chip' that detects viruses developed by BYU researchers

A team of BYU engineers and chemists has created an inexpensive silicon microchip that reliably detects viruses, even at low concentrations.

For medicine, this development is promising for future lab diagnostics that could detect viruses before symptoms kick in and damage begins, well ahead of when traditional lab tests are able to catch them.

Read the complete article at http://news.byu.edu/archive09-Dec-labonachip.aspx

To Charge your iPod, Plug in Your Jeans

A breakthrough in wearable computing lets researchers change ordinary cotton and polyester into electronic textiles that can double as rechargeable batteries. That means powering an iPod or cell phone could become as easy as plugging it into your tee shirt or jeans and charging the clothing overnight.

Read More http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2010/01/e-textile-charge/#ixzz0dJ5Rl6jE

Toyota Sees Robotic Nurses in Your Lonely Final Years

Japan's aging population and low birthrate point to a looming shortage of workers, and Japan's elder care facilities and hospitals are already competing for nurses. This fact has not escaped Toyota, which runs Toyota Memorial Hospital in Toyota City, Japan. Taking a lead from Honda, Toyota in 2004 announced plans to build "Toyota Partner Robots" and begin selling them in 2010 after extensive field trials at Toyota Memorial.

This is more than some futuristic fantasy. The government is drafting safety regulations for service robots, which would include nursing droids. A new agency, the Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization, has launched a five-year project to improve safety standards for the machines. The South Korean Government has even drawn up a code of ethics for how robots should treat humans and, perhaps ironically, how humans should treat robots.

To read more click on Robotic Nurses

Can Cell Phones Help Fight Alzheimer's?

Jan. 6, 2010 -- Cell phone exposure may be helpful in the fight against Alzheimer's disease, a new study shows.

The study, involving mice, provides evidence that long-term exposure to electromagnetic waves associated with cell phone use may protect against, and even reverse, Alzheimer's disease. The study is published in the Journal of Alzheimer's Disease.

To read the complete article click on http://www.webmd.com/alzheimers/news/20100106/can-cell-phones-help-fight-alzheimers

Free Microsoft Antivirus and Antispyware Software

Information on Microsoft Security Essentials (MSE), a free antivirus and antispyware program, is available on the Microsoft blog at http://blogs.msdn.com/securitytipstalk/archive/2010/01/10/reviewers-like-microsoft-security-essentials.aspx:

Excerpt from one of the articles : "Not only did AV-Test.org find that it detects 98% of their enormous malware database, but AV-Comparatives (a widely known anti-malware testing group) found that

MSE was one of only three products that did well at both finding and removing malware, including the leftovers. It was also the only free product to grab their "Advanced+" rating—the top honor for an anti-malware solution."

NOTE: I suspect MSE is based on a former $50/year Microsoft antivirus and antispyware program named OneCare that failed as a commercial product. I used OneCare for a year and found it to be easy to use but weak on antivirus protection. Microsoft stopped selling the program last year. If we can believe the blog information the free product is much stronger than the commercial product.

Google Hack Attack Was Ultra Sophisticated, New Details Show

Hackers seeking source code from Google, Adobe and dozens of other high-profile companies used unprecedented tactics that combined encryption, stealth programming and an unknown hole in Internet Explorer, according to new details released by researchers at anti-virus firm McAfee.

"We have never ever, outside of the defense industry, seen commercial industrial companies come under that level of sophisticated attack," says Dmitri Alperovitch, vice president of threat research for McAfee. "It's totally changing the threat model."

Read More http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/01/operation-aurora/#ixzz0cdsF417s

NZ's cyber spies win new powers

New Zealand: New cyber-monitoring measures have been quietly introduced giving police and Security Intelligence Service officers the power to monitor all aspects of someone's online life.

The measures are the largest expansion of police and SIS surveillance capabilities for decades, and mean that all mobile calls and texts, email, internet surfing and online shopping, chatting and social networking can be monitored anywhere in New Zealand.

Police and SIS must still obtain an interception warrant naming a person or place they want to monitor but, compared to the phone taps of the past, a single warrant now covers phone, email and all internet activity.

It can even monitor a person's location by detecting their mobile phone; all of this occurring almost instantaneously.

Police say in the year to June 2009, there were 68 interception warrant applications granted and 157 people prosecuted as a result of those interceptions.

Official papers obtained by the New Zealand Star-Times show that, despite government claims that it was done for domestic reasons, the new New Zealand spying capabilities are part of a push by United States agencies to have standardized surveillance capabilities available for their use from governments worldwide.

WOW! Click on NZ cyber spies for the complete article