Category Archives: Blog

Blog

Royal Navy gets PWNZ0R3D by virus

HMAS Adelaide auxiliary warshipRemember when I mentioned that the UK’s Royal Navy has been installing a Windows derivative on its warship and submarine control computers? [image by Serendigity]

Well, it’s a different set of hardware, but apparently a bunch of RN computers have been knocked out of action my an email-borne virus in recent weeks. There’s got to be a great opening for an open-source contractor with a clean security history over there right now… [via SlashDot]

More seriously, though, this highlights a very real risk to ‘traditional’ military forces. After all, if small territorial conflicts like the Gaza situation can go worldwide on the web, that suggests that any opponent worth deploying your navy against is at least going to try futzing with your computer systems… and if the combination of your installed operating systems and a lack of basic email security savvy means you can have warship systems out of action for a few days, there’s some opportunities for a really nasty David and Goliath scenario somewhere down the line.

Blog

Are you ready for personalized genomics?

genome Personalized genomics–a rundown on your inherited risk for certain conditions–is becoming a reality.

A couple of hundred dollars, a few drops of saliva and a stamped envelope is all it takes to get a rundown on your inherited risk of around a hundred more-or-less common conditions, everything from bladder cancer and baldness to male infertility and memory loss. You can place your order by Internet with companies like 23andMe (“genetics just got personal”) and deCODEme (“deCODE your health”).

The cost of sequencing an entire individual genome is about $100,000 right now, and Pacific Biosciences in Menlo Park, California (“a revolution in DNA sequencing is coming”), says it will be able, by 2013, to map all three billion base-pairs of a person’s DNA in a quarter of an hour for a few hundred dollars.

Critics are not enthralled. Many diseases are the result of a complex interplay of many different genes that we’re just beginning to understand. And there is fear that people with dicey genomes could be discriminated against by employers, insurers and banks. (President George W. Bush signed the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act in the U.S. last year for that very reason.)

But here’s the real question: do you really want to know everything your genome could tell you? Is there any benefit in knowing you’re, say, 20 percent more likely to develop a fatal or debilitating disease? Might the worry about that possibility be almost as damaging to your quality of life as the disease itself?

What do you think?

As fast as the technology as advancing, you don’t have long to make up your mind.

(Via PhysOrg.)

(Image: U.S. Dept. of Energy Office of Science.)

[tags]genetics,DNA,ethics,medicine[/tags]

Blog

The small world in our hands

wirelessmicrScientists at John Hopkins University, Maryland have developed minute hands that can grasp tiny pieces of tissue when exposed to particular chemicals:

The researchers describe development of tiny metallic microgrippers shaped like a hand that work without electricity. The grippers are about 0.03 inches wide when open — smaller than the diameter of a grain of sand and made from a gold-coated nickel “palm” joined by six pointy metallic “fingers.”

The addition of certain chemicals triggers the hands to open or close. In laboratory studies, the scientists demonstrated that the grippers could grasp and release tiny pipes and glass beads and transport these objects to distant locations with the aid of a magnet, showcasing their potential for pick-and-place operations that are ubiquitous in manufacturing, they say.

The field is apparently called Micro-Chemo-Mechanical-Systems (MCMS) and along with Micro-Electro-Mechanical-Systems (MEMS) is set to have a major impact over the next several decades, particularly in the realm of health and medicine:

…the untethered grippers devised by Gracias’ team contain gold-plated nickel, allowing them to be steered by magnets outside the body. “With this method, we were able to remotely move the microgrippers a relatively long distance over tissue without getting stuck, he said. “Additionally, the microgrippers are triggered to close and extricate cells from tissue when exposed to certain biochemicals or biologically relevant temperatures.”

[from Physorg][image from the Physorg article][also check out the paper for more technical details]

Blog

Exhaust fumes are lightning magnets

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rural lightning strikeChalk another item up on the list of environmental effects caused by car exhaust fumes – they increase the likelihood of lightning strikes.

“In the south-eastern states [of the US], lightning strikes increased with pollution by as much as 25 per cent during the working week. The moist, muggy air in this region creates low-lying clouds with plenty of space to rise and generate the charge needed for an afternoon thunderstorm.

Surprisingly, the effect was not strongest within big cities with high pollution, but in the suburbs and rural areas surrounding them… “

Now there’s a tenuous techno-thriller plot device just waiting to be used… I wonder if a big enough car-generated lightning storm could deflect an incoming NEO? Call Bruce Willis! [story via BLDGBLOG; image by M0i et c’est tout]

Blog

NEOs: Near Earth Objects, or Nasty Existential Obliteration

meteorite impact sculptureHere’s something else that, alongside finding we have living neighbours on the planet next door, might give the space programs of the world a much needed kick in the backside. President-Elect, take note of the large number of Near Earth Objects, and our current inability to track them all effectively, let alone deal effectively with one on a collision course:

The numbers here are stark. NASA’s Near Earth Object Program reports that we’ve found 5,955 NEOs, some 763 of which are at least one kilometer in diameter. 1008 NEOs larger than 140 meters across come within 4.5 million miles of Earth’s orbit, dangerous to us because perturbing influences could change their trajectories in the future. Centauri Dreams believes that the discovery of an object on a collision course with Earth would galvanize the space program as researchers looked for the best ways to deflect its path. The problem is time.

As existential risks go, a meteor strike is rather different to the others – statistically less likely to happen (or so we hope), but fast and utterly devastating of it does. Keep watching the skies, people… [image by larkspurlazuli]