A team of British scientists investigating whether a tiny tropical hookworm could provide a cure for asthma and hay fever have committed the ultimate act of bravery by infecting themselves with the parasite to observe the effects. It was fairly itchy when they first go through the skin,
he admitted — via digg
Senators have voted in favour of a bill removing control over the abortion drug RU486 from the federal health minister, a noted loonie fundie. Senators were given a rare conscience vote on the bill, with 45 voting in favour of the change and 28 voting against. The bill now heads to the House of Representatives and if passed will end the Health Minister’s power to ban RU486 and allow the Therapeutic Goods Administration to make a decision on the drug. It is the first conscience vote since 2002
Alexander Franklin Mayer, a physicist at Stanford, has just recently published a peer review website for several physics lectures focusing on a single underlying idea that time is not a single dimension of spacetime but rather a local geometric distinction in spacetime. The science is presented quite clearly and originally uses GPS systems as a point of focus — via Slashdot
Andrew Carol has built a version of the Babbage Difference Engine No 2 out of Lego — via digg
In an effort to crack down on search engine abuse, Google has eliminated the German site of BMW from its index, charging the company with violating webmaster guidelines. Office equipment giant Ricoh has also now found itself on the end of Google’s search sanctions in Germany but some critics of Google’s death penalty
say companies are being punished unfairly for having the savvy to make Google’s system work for them. Others joining the debate however have praised Google for keeping large multinational companies in check
Google is tightening the link between Gmail and Google Talk by allowing users to conduct instant messaging text chat sessions from within the Web mail service’s interface. To use Google Talk from within Gmail, users don’t need to download any additional software nor a separate application
The US military is considering testing the principle behind a type of space drive which holds the promise of reaching Mars in just three hours. The problem is it’s entirely theoretical and many physicists admit they don’t understand the science behind it — via digg
Fluorinex Active has developed a new technology that can protect the tooth from cavities for five years with one simple electrical treatment. The company is currently working on a small device which, together with a gel, will impose an efficient ion exchange process through an electro-chemical reaction in which fluor ions displace the Hydroxide ions at the outer layer of the tooth. This is intended to produce a new mineral layer with significantly improved chemical and physical resistance to the aggressive bacteria and the resulting acidic environment in the mouth
An astonishing mist-shrouded lost world
of previously unknown and rare animals and plants high in the mountain rainforests of New Guinea has been uncovered by an international team of scientists — via digg
iiNet is investigating problems with its popular Internet telephony service which have seen some customers lose signal in mid-call
Carbon nanotubes being used to make memory chips. As the name suggests, carbon nanotubes are extremely small cylinders of carbon, and they have some similar properties to the extremely fine hairs on the feet of Geckos that enable the lizards to climb walls and hang from ceilings. The new chips work faster than current technologies, and hold their data without needing a power source
Alon Bodner has developed an underwater breathing system, called LikeAFish, that literally squeezes oxygen directly from seawater, doing away with the need for compressed air tanks — via digg
Minnesotans buying mail-order prescription drugs from Canada are having medications confiscated by US Customs in escalating numbers, a step that has some worried that life-saving supplies may not reach customers on time
Scientists at the University of Kentucky have built tiny pipes that move water 10,000 times as fast as the conventional laws of fluid flow allow, mimicking for the first time the seamless way fluids progress through our cells — via digg
After 145 years, Western Union has quietly stopped sending telegrams. On the company’s web site, if you click on Telegrams in the left-side navigation bar, you’re taken to a page that ends a technological era with about as little fanfare as possible: Effective January 27, 2006, Western Union will discontinue all Telegram and Commercial Messaging services. We regret any inconvenience this may cause you, and we thank you for your loyal patronage
— via digg
AOL and Yahoo have proposed a system to charge senders a quarter of a cent for guaranteed delivery on each e-mail sent to their customers. They justify this as an anti-spam measure, but of course it could make them billions, is unlikely to eliminate spam, and will undermine the ability of activist groups like MoveOn and others to correspond with their supporters. The justification AOL offers for this is that it could make e-mail just as good as postal mail — via Boing Boing
The British Library is concerned about DRM’s effect on its ability to make materials available to the public. Libraries have a legal right to distribute materials under the Fair Use provisions of the copyright law, but DRM systems may block this. Furthermore, they point out that DRM systems don’t automatically switch themselves off when a work goes out of copyright. DRM systems may allow copyright holders to retain control over their material longer than they are legally entitled to. Worse yet, if the software no longer exists to unlock a DRM-protected file, its contents may be lost forever — exactly the thing libraries are intended to prevent
Suwan Jayasinghe of University College London and colleagues at Kings College London has used a form of ink-jet printing to create
jets
of living cells. The biophysicists say their technique, which does not destroy the cells, could be used to grow biological tissue or even human organs — via digg
Hundreds of thousand of people could die in a nuclear attack, but hundreds of thousands of others could be saved. That’s because the Pentagon — after decades of searching — believes it has found a drug to treat radiation exposure. Why isn’t that drug available? Because bureaucratic red tape is blocking the availability of Neumune, a drug developed by San Diego biotech firm Hollis Eden to treat Acute Radiation Syndrome — via Boing Boing
Bug reports are already flooding in for Microsoft’s new Internet Explorer 7 Beta 2 Preview. Specific issues include the possibility of arbitrary code execution as well as incompatibilities with McAfee Security Center, anti-spyware programmes and online banking sites
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