Scientists are tracking the strongest lighting storm ever detected at Saturn. The storm is larger than the continental United States, with electrical activity 1,000 times stronger than the lightning on Earth.

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The University of Calgary have stumbled on a possible cure for type 1 Diabetes. If developed properly there would no longer be a need for daily injections.

Diabetes breakthrough may end insulin injections

Updated Fri. Mar. 17 2006 6:23 AM ET

CTV.ca News Staff

Bioengineers at the University of Calgary have successfully grown insulin producing cells in a lab, marking a major breakthrough in diabetes research.

The team of scientists hope to eventually transplant lab grown, insulin producing cells directly into the bodies of patients with Type 1 diabetes.

Type 1 diabetes makes the body unable to produce enough insulin, requiring those suffering from the disease to inject themselves with the hormone.

In theory, the transplant would eliminate the need for daily insulin injections by patients who suffer from the disease.

“This transplant procedure, developed in Edmonton, is the best thing to come in 20 years to treat type one diabetes,” Dr. Leo Behie, the professor of chemical engineering in charge of the research project, told CTV Thursday.

The study is significant in the battle against diabetes but there are still many steps to be taken, including clinical trials. The tests that Behie and his team have done in his lab so far are very encouraging.

“In many cases people are off insulin and they have good sugar controls in their blood with no constrains in terms of eating. That is a big deal,” said Behie.

The research stems from a sponsored project by New York-based Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation International (JDRF), that set up 16 researchers from 13 universities around the world.

The researchers are trying to find the cause of the Type 1 disease that affects more than 19-million people worldwide.

“The people who receive the transplants, they have no doubt about it, that they would call this a cure, but I think in this consideration we have to be careful of the word cure. This is more of a treatment that increases hugely your quality of life,” Behie said.

Behie and his team developed their conclusions by establishing bioreactor protocols for producing large quantities of pig pancreatic insulin-producing cells.

They hope this will lead to the large-scale production of islet-like structures which contain insulin-producing cells.

Researchers concluded that these cells may be suitable for treating individuals with Type 1 diabetes.

Donna Lillie, of the Canadian Diabetes Association, said the research presents a real possibility for people with Type 1 diabetes that they can get rid of their multiple daily injections.

“Dr. Behie’s all-Canadian team has brought us one more step towards potentially securing a large supply of insulin-producing pancreatic cells for transplantation into individuals with Type 1 diabetes,” Lillie said.

University of Alberta scientists transplanted cells into Type 1 diabetes sufferers in 2000, freeing some from injections over the last five years.

But the approach they used required pancreas cells from as many as three donor cadavers which created a supply headache. Even with the supply, only 10 per cent were able to stop taking insulin injections.

“There are not nearly enough of these human islets to meet the demand of those who would like to have this transplantation procedure,” Behie said.

Behie says his plan to produce cloned cells on a large scale in computer-controlled bioreactors would “get rid of this supply bottleneck.”

Behie said his goal is to provide Type 1 diabetes sufferers with a reliable supply of cells that eventually could be given through booster shots.

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The Rockmart family is being sued for illegal music file sharing, despite the fact that they don’t even own a computer, haha. Good job RIAA.

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When she was free, she swam in what seemed like joyous circles, then returned to each and every diver, and nudged them, she was thanking them. Some said it was the most incredibly beautiful experience of their lives. The guy who cut the rope out of her mouth says her eyes were following him the whole time, and he will never be the same.”

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The Washington Post is reporting that a recent update by Microsoft is now scanning people’s machines to see if they have valid license, and reporting back to Microsoft, all without user intervention.

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The U.S. government is currently wrestling with the problem that they actually lose money every time they produce a penny. As the problem persists, it could end up costing a lot more.

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For many years I was surrounded by mac-people (the race) always telling me how great Apple was, and how Microsoft had absolutely nothing on them.  At that point, OS X was fairly new, and the only experience I had with macs were the big, old OS9 computers that were only good for two things: going to netscape.com and crashing.  Oh, and they played that cool little beeping noise when you hold down that obscure sideways triangle key during bootup.  Because of these experiences, I had a personal vendetta against Apple, but every time I tried to rant about them, I always heard OS X fixed all those bugs and everything finally works.  Now I wouldn’t normally pay that any attention because every software vendor in history says that about every new release, but one thing made this different.  The Appleians told me OS X was based on Darwin… a modified FreeBSD core.

Long story short, I finally broke down and decided to buy a much needed 4th laptop (the other three are just collecting dust)…. a Powerbook (it’s an overly pretty unix… couldn’t be too bad, right?).  Rather than getting a cheap old one, I said if I was going to give Apple a try, I’d be fair about it.  I pranced into the Apple store and 15 minutes later, walked out with a brand new 12″ Powerbook G4 with an upgraded 1GB of ram and an Airport Extreme card (Apple’s name rebranding for an 802.11g wireless network card).  I chose the 12″ size because I’d only be using the Powerbook on the go, thus portability.  If I’m at home, I’ll use my desktop.

I used OS X for a while and decided it is in fact fantastic.  If all you want to do is word processing and browsing websites.  I don’t really play games, so even if it could do that (I’ve heard mixed things), it wouldn’t help me.  I tried programming Carbon (Apple’s “pretty” APIs), which turned out to be complete rubbish.  It’s like they took Visual Basic, and tried to make it even more user friendly… in doing so completely destroying all development ability (and breaking all programming syntax standards), however I will admit it does have very good OOP support.  I with a bit of installing and patching, I got the latest versions of Perl and gcc installed, however I quickly realized programming on that keyboard is truly a form of torture.  The control key is rarely used in OS X (unless you’re…. wait, another rant:

Rant:  Right-clicking.  Apples are developed on the foundation of being very easy to use.  Superb.  Their mouse is even so easy to use, it only needs one button!  Wrong.  Modern GUIs these days are so overcomplicated they require multiple click functionality to actually get anything done.  Unless you want to memorize a plethora of obscure key codes (usually involving a hybrid symbol between a pound sign and a daisy), you need a right click.  Now Apple realized this and instead of adding another mouse button like a sensible operating system, they require you to hold down control (a key from one input source) and click the single mouse button (on the other input source).  WHY?  If the right-click functionality was important enough to include in the operating system at all, why make it so needlessly complicated?  Your answer?  Because their stubborn.  Since the main focus of their OS X operating system is ease of use, they’d never admit they developed the system overeasy and in doing so lost some fundamental usability.  Oh, and let me tell you about ease of use”¦ to force quit an application in Windows it”™s quite simple, the three finger solute involving your fingers falling in aesthetically pleasing positions.  In Apple, not so much.  After looking it up online to figure out how the hell I”™m supposed to kill my Safari that went haywire, it still took me a good few minutes to figure out HOW to push the correct keys.  The sequence sounded simple enough, with something like ctrl-alt-esc, the alt key wasn”™t doing anything.  OS X rarely uses the alt key, so they decided to override the functionality with an option key, which is also rarely used.  I, on a laptop, had to hold down the Fn key with one finger, then tapping the option/alt hybrid key, and cross my fingers back over to hit the ctrl key, and use my 2nd hand to hit escape.  Then the whole system locked up.  I wanted to throw it out a Window, however the shear monetary investment in this hunk of metal made me restrain myself.  Also on this rant of input controls I”™d like to bring up Apple”™s brilliant “œeasy-to-use” plethora of OS key binds.  They break every standard and for reasons incomprehensible to me, decided to choose the most obscure, yet applicable combinations.  For example you open a folder and are looking at some files, right?  You select a file, and how would you expect to open it using the keyboard (I”™m much more key-focused than mouse focused)?  The normal and obvious answer would be the Enter/Return key (yes they are different, another crazy hybrid key requiring the Fn key to toggle it”¦ however there is ALSO a completely separate key for “œEnter” alone, by itself, down beside the arrow keys”¦ why I will never understand).  Wrong.  Enter is the key you press to rename the file.  You have to hold down the apple key and tap O to actually open the file.  I could understand a two-key combination for renaming a file since it”™s less used, however I think the programmer who set this up got it backwards.  The Enter key renames the file?  Wow.

Now that that rant is over, back to my programming rant.  Now, the control key is rarely used in OS X, so it”™s not in a very comfortable spot on the 12″ Powerbook”™s keyboard.  The function key is the perfect distance from the C key, which causes me to often find myself hitting function-c to halt a script and wonder why it”™s still going.  I understand they were cramped for space on the keyboard with the 12″, but there are about 5 keys on here I think I could easily pop off and never miss, so the keyboard design is absolutely horrible.  I have keys I never use, and the keys I do need require finger-yoga to get to.  I quickly discovered the Powerbook is probably the worst choice I could have made for a programming laptop.

Fine, no perl or gcc.  I gave up on all mobile development and used it for what it could do”¦ internet and word processing.  And actually the funny part is it struggles at that.  The wireless reception range on of the Airport Extreme is horrible, and the only decent word processor that works on it is Microsoft Word”¦ quite ironic.  So there I had a very expensive laptop that could do less than my 500MHz Compaq Armada M300 (great little laptop).

I can”™t really sell it because of some scratches on the case and some dead pixels, I”™d get very little for it, so I began looking into other alternative uses for it.  While a frisbee would be fun, I decided instead to look into a true *nix solution.  FreeBSD recently finished their PPC port (I remember a few years back it wasn”™t bootable), however I”™m still not sure I”™d trust the stability and driver availability since it is a fairly new platform for it.  I eventually narrowed it down to YellowDog (a PPC oriented linux) and Gentoo 2006.  I”™ve always wanted to play with Gentoo and learn it a bit more, because of it”™s closeness to FreeBSD, so I chose that direction.

The installation process for Gentoo was as painful as expected, like always, but finished compiling a Stage 1 system in a little over 11 hours.  It”™s been compiling X, Sawfish (a real man”™s window manager), and some other visual goodies for the entire day so far, and is still not done.  It might take me some tweaking to get the keymaps and mouse setup the way I like it (and is useable), however with Gentoo and X11 I”™ll have that freedom.  I still haven”™t gotten Airport working on it, but I found a few sites talking about how it can be done, but takes some tweaking.

With the 4.5 pound ultra-portable body, and finally a decent operating system, I might actually have a useable laptop after all these months.  With black and white text scrolling by for well over 24 hours now, it”™ll be nice to finally get a familiar looking window manager up and running on it.  Another day I”™m going to mess with the power management, suspend mode on screen close, and other goodies like that”¦ but for now I just want it working.

So far it”™s looking like good game OS X.

In an experiment conducted recently in the Netherlands, Dr. Van Someren attempted to earn a greater understanding of REM Sleep. He took young children, who sleep more and learn quicker than adults, and subjected them to a series of tests to see how their learning abilities were affected by a lessening of REM sleep, which we learned in class is hypothesized to be an area where memories are consolidated into the hippocampus for long term storage.

The experiment begins by the children being tested on general memory, such as remembering combinations of letters on a computer keyboard and memorizing groups of words for recall. That evening after a long period of testing, they”™re asked to stay overnight, and fit with headphones and sensors on their heads to create an EEG (Electroencephalogram) while they sleep. Throughout the night, the EEG monitors what depth of sleep their body is experiencing (as we learned in class, Stages 1 through 4 and REM sleep) based on scans every two-seconds. As soon as the machine detected the child begin to enter a deep stage of sleep, it created a quiet beep in their ears, trying to elevate them back to a higher stage. This usually cased the child to shift restlessly, but ensured their sleep stayed in one of the first stages. If the beep did not get a response from the child, it repeated the stimulation a bit louder, until it finally knocked the child out of a deep sleep. This is repeated all night, allowing the child a full night of sleep, in the upper stages only. The next day when everyone woke up, they went through the same series of testing and memory experiments, and noted the results.

While the analysis of this experiment”™s results aren”™t completed yet, preliminary evaluation shows a 20% decrease in memory retention with the children participating in the experiment, compared to the control group who were allowed a full night”™s rest without any beeping. Twenty percent is a very significant fluxuation, making this one of the first experiments to conclusively connect REM sleep with memory retention and learning ability. The importance of this experiment was recognized world-wide, as two American scientists from Harvard seized this opportunity to fly to the Netherlands and witness the procedure first-hand, aiming to then return to Harvard and obtain funding for similar research in the states.

Long term uses of this knowledge could be applied to developing and adapting sleep cycles for injured people trying to rehabilitate their memory from a mind-affecting accident, for example. It”™s findings could be used to construct learning programs used by school students in preparation for large exams such as the SAT or ACT. Even looking beyond initial academic learning, political leaders might slightly tweak or adapt their sleep schedule to allow an increased duration of REM sleep a few days before giving a major speech, to solidify memorization and prevent any errors in delivery. There are vast practical applications for research like this and it”™s importance should not be overlooked.

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Three quarters of a terabyte and that’s just the first 7200.10 Barracuda drive Seagate announced! We might see 1TB drives before the end of this year.

I want one three.

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Bob Parsons of GoDaddy.com donated $10k to the OpenBSD/OpenSSH project.

Now if we can just find some big-pocketed companies to donate to FreeBSD (the better BSD) we’ll be set.

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Go to Jet Blue’s website, select a destination then type pbj.

Instantly a clip from the Family Guy will appear and start playing.

It was probably made by some developer who thought no one would ever see it but him and his friends… yeah he just got fired, haha.

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Google just announced in an official press release that their OneBox server is now going beyond simply searching corporate documents and fully integrating with some major industry players such as Cisco, NetSuite, Oracle, SAS, and Salesforce.com. This means an employee of a Salesforce-enabled company can use the Google search engine architecture (usually over their intranet) to accurately find that tiny, yet important, piece of information noted in a phone log attached to a lead made 5 years ago. Google’s already dominated the consumer internet experience, now it’s moving even farther into the corporate and B2B territory.

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Animal Farm by George Orwell is the epitome of an extended metaphor. Throughout this novel, the fable presented is in constant comparison to the Russian Revolution of 1917. Instances surface outlining the quintessence of revolution through emblematic characters. From Squealer symbolizing a propaganda machine to Napoleon standing as dictator, the novel follows a revolution from inception to demise.

Originating as a archetypal farm, Manor Farm is governed by Mr. Jones- a symbol of the fatally-corrupt governments ripe and vulnerable to revolutionary ideologies. Old Major is introduced as a highly respected, but sick and dieing pig- the more intelligent of the animals on the farm. He can be compared to Karl Marx through his influential and persuasive means that eventually sparked revolutionary thought in the common people. Upon his demise, the plot truly begins. Two pigs, Snowball and Napoleon unite as an authoritative power gaining support through promising to work toward Old Major’s vision. Throughout the course of the novel, tensions grew between Snowball and Napoleon until eventually Napoleon evicted Snowball from the farm using his personally trained dogs, symbolizing the Gestapo.

After Snowball was driven off the farm, a few critical events occurred. Napoleon rose to unopposed power. He began forcing his influence on the animals of the farm, building his power as an absolute authority figure while hiding behind lies of his selfish motivation being for the good of the farm. Through further actions such as changing the very documents laid down during the birth of the rebellion, appending his own ways on the Seven Commandments, Napoleon’s control and grip on the animals tightened. The namesake of Napoleon becomes increasingly ironic as the reader develops a connection between the pig and Napoleon Bonaparte of France and his dominating control.

Squealer is the pig who constantly convinces the animals of the farm that they are superior to their old position being governed by Mr. Jones. He keeps the peace and ensures the animals that Napoleon is indeed doing the right thing. Squealer symbolizes the propaganda machine of a rebelling country such as Russia in 1917. All the animals hear is the good being done by Napoleon, so they give their unquestioned consent to his ways. At one point, Napoleon announces the uncovering of an attempted plot of rebellion against him and has a few animals executed, inciting fear in the animals, driving them farther under his control, very similar to the methods executed during the rebellion in Russia.

As the novel draws to a close, Napoleon begins straying further from the ideological ideas presented by Old Major at the beginning of the novel. He becomes power hungry and leads the animals into a death spiral. They begin running short of food, but keep up an illusion of prosperity to the outside world, much like how rebellious countries have done in past historical times. At the conclusion of the novel, Napoleon invites some humans over for dinner and refers to the other animals as a “lesser class.” The animals outside look into the house through the window, and realize in a moment of complete horror, that they cannot tell the difference in the pigs’ faces and the humans’ faces.

I’m usually not much on poetry, but it seemed very appropriate for this application. I wrote this last year as a reenactment of The Divine Comedy in first person, being escorted by the biblical Cain. The circles have been greatly simplified and associated with a few of the Seven Deadly Sins. In each circle, I meet people guilty of that sin, completely unrelated to the actual novel. It’s a bit of a stretch, but still an interesting read. Enjoy.
(Also note the form, you may recognize it. )

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