Kevin Fling

natharward writes "A new development in nano-level diagnostic tests has been applied as a lab on a chip that successfully screened viruses entirely by their size. The chip's traps are size-specific, which means even tiny concentrations of viruses or other particles won't escape detection. 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. Aaron Hawkins, the BYU professor leading the work, says his team is now gearing up to make chips with multiple, progressively smaller slots, so that a single sample can be used to screen for particles of varying sizes. One could fairly simply determine which proteins or viruses are present based on which walls have particles stacked against them. After this is developed, Hawkins says, 'If we decided to make these things in high volume, I think within a year it could be ready.'"

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With the Oracle/Sun merger finally completing at the end of January, one former Sun worker has taken the time to reflect a bit on the extravagant compensation and golden parachutes that the former executives at Sun are receiving for failing at their jobs. "I think it's fair to say that, for all the miscues that eventually led to its demise, the company created many products and technologies of value along the way, enough so that Oracle thought it was worth it to acquire them and try to keep them going. However, I think that it's equally fair to conclude that, after years of running losses, including about $2 billion in fiscal 2009, so that a buyout was necessary to avoid looming bankruptcy, Sun's executives did nothing to deserve lavish rewards, by any conceivable meaning of the word 'deserve.' But what actually happened is by now a familiar story. [...] And here's a prediction that I feel quite certain of: if, against expectations and my hopes, Ellison drops the ball and things start going south for Oracle, it's the employees who will suffer for it, and he'll be doing just fine."

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With the Oracle/Sun merger finally completing at the end of January, one former Sun worker has taken the time to reflect a bit on the extravagant compensation and golden parachutes that the former executives at Sun are receiving for failing at their jobs. "I think it's fair to say that, for all the miscues that eventually led to its demise, the company created many products and technologies of value along the way, enough so that Oracle thought it was worth it to acquire them and try to keep them going. However, I think that it's equally fair to conclude that, after years of running losses, including about $2 billion in fiscal 2009, so that a buyout was necessary to avoid looming bankruptcy, Sun's executives did nothing to deserve lavish rewards, by any conceivable meaning of the word 'deserve.' But what actually happened is by now a familiar story. [...] And here's a prediction that I feel quite certain of: if, against expectations and my hopes, Ellison drops the ball and things start going south for Oracle, it's the employees who will suffer for it, and he'll be doing just fine."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

With the Oracle/Sun merger finally completing at the end of January, one former Sun worker has taken the time to reflect a bit on the extravagant compensation and golden parachutes that the former executives at Sun are receiving for failing at their jobs. "I think it's fair to say that, for all the miscues that eventually led to its demise, the company created many products and technologies of value along the way, enough so that Oracle thought it was worth it to acquire them and try to keep them going. However, I think that it's equally fair to conclude that, after years of running losses, including about $2 billion in fiscal 2009, so that a buyout was necessary to avoid looming bankruptcy, Sun's executives did nothing to deserve lavish rewards, by any conceivable meaning of the word "deserve". But what actually happened is by now a familiar story. [...] And here's a prediction that I feel quite certain of: if, against expectations and my hopes, Ellison drops the ball and things start going south for Oracle, it's the employees who will suffer for it, and he'll be doing just fine."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A study conducted by researchers at University College London shows that boredom can kill you. The researchers found that people who reported feeling a great deal of boredom were 37 per cent more likely to have died by the end of the study. Martin Shipley, who co-wrote the report said, "The findings on heart disease show there was sufficient evidence to say there is a link with boredom."

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Gwmaw writes "The space shuttle Endeavour bolted off its seaside launch pad on Monday on a voyage to install the last two main pieces of the International Space Station. The 4:14 a.m. EST (0914 GMT) blastoff from the Kennedy Space Center shattered the predawn tranquility with a deafening roar and a brilliant tower of flames that momentarily turned the dark Florida sky as bright as day." HD video of launch attached.

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quaith writes "Quinn Dombrowski, a member of the University of Chicago's central IT staff, has been recording the graffiti left in the Joseph Regenstein Library Since September 2007. To date she has photographed and transcribed over 620 pieces of graffiti; over 410 of them are datable to within a week of their creation. She has now published in Inkling Magazine a statistical analysis of the entire graffiti collection covering such subjects as love, hate, despair, sex, anatomy, and temporal fluctuations of each of these. After November, both love and despair graffiti drop off significantly until spring, while sex graffiti reaches its one and only peak in December before declining for the rest of the school year. The story includes links to all of the original graffiti photos, which the researcher has made freely available to use under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike license."

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Curlsman informs us that the first beta of Ruby on Rails 3.0 has been released (release notes here). Rails founder David Heinemeier Hansson blogged that RoR 3.0 "feels lighter, more agile, and easier to understand." This release is the first the Merb team has participated in. Merb is a model-view-controller framework written in Ruby, and they joined the RoR development effort over a year ago. Reader Curlsman asks, "So, is version 3 of RoR going to be a big deal, more of the same (good or bad), or just churning technology?"

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Hugh Pickens writes "The first electric dental drill was patented in 1875; modern drills grind the diseased portions of teeth away at up to 500,000 rpm. But dentists have been seeking less invasive ways of wiping out stubborn, tooth-decaying bacteria. Now Live Science reports that bacteria-killing jets of plasma could soon replace the drills used to treat cavities in our teeth. Researchers recently demonstrated that a small, blowtorch-like device emitting a relatively cool beam of purple plasma could eliminate oral bacteria in cavities, leaving more tooth structure intact than a drill does. To test how well 'cold' plasma jets (about 100F or 38C) sterilize tooth material, researchers took slices of dentin from extracted human molars, doused them with bacteria, and torched them with the plasma jet. An inspection via a scanning electron microscope of the damage done to the germs shows bacterial remnants had holes in their cell walls. When the plasma jet fires, it charges oxygen in the surrounding air, creating highly reactive molecules that can break down the bacteria's defenses. Researchers believe the technique could be available to general dentistry in three to five years."

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