The NSA is denying a report from the Wall Street Journal that a secret program code-named "Perfect Citizen" will be monitoring civilian networks. More »
National Security Agency - Wall Street Journal - Security - Privacy - NSA
I'm not saying there were aliens flying whatever buzzed Hangzhou airspace earlier today. But there's no question that it was an object, that it was flying, and that it's as yet unidentified. And yet it looks awfully familiar up close: More »
UFO - Paranormal - Organizations - United States - Directories
Hello my fellow CR4'ers.
Do any of you have experience with an epoxy shimming process?
We're working with some large weldments we'd rather not post machine. We thought we could possibly make a smaller sub-frame (also welded, but post machinable) to fit inside the larger weldment, and then
Hi guys, I've been given, two spray painting guns, my question is, How does one determine what types I have, eg. how can I tell , a HVLP gun from a conventional gun ...?? Norm.
Yesterday, a long-exposure photobomb set the internet on fire. Today, creator Anthony Valle shared with Gizmodo his inspiration, aspirations, and who that poor unsuspecting girl is: More »
United States - Government - Executive Branch - Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry - Department of Health and Human Services
 MSN Health & Fitness | HPV Infection and Skin Cancer Risk Explored CalorieLab Calorie Counter News A study at Dartmouth Medical School suggests that infection with Human Papillomavirus (HPV) may increase the risk of squamous cell carcinoma. ... Study Suggests Link Between HPV, Skin CancerU.S. News & World Report HPV Viruses Linked to Skin CancerWebMD HPV Associated With Increased Risk for Skin CancerMedscape AHN | All Headline News -Times of India -Healthcare Republic all 46 news articles » |
Scott Freeland, the industrious artist behind the iRetrophone dock has returned with iRetrofone Steampunk Copper edition. The dock is powered entirely by gears and steam and curly mustaches, just like everything else in the mid-19th Century. More »
Steam - Recreation - Model - iPhone - Business
 New York Daily News | Researchers discover antibodies that prevent HIV infection in human cells NBC13.com Researchers at Dartmouth Medical School say some people develop antibodies to aids after they develop the disease. ... Renaissance Research in AIDS PreventionFood Consumer Newly Discovered Antibody Defeats 91 Percent of HIV StrainsPopular Science Breakthrough in HIV-fighting antibodies discoveredMarketWatch |
New York Daily News | Health Check: School start times Turn to 10.com A researcher says delaying the start of school even a half hour has benefits for students. (more) By Barbara Morse Silva Delaying the start of school could ... Later school start times for teens may mean more rest, better moodsNational Post Later School Start Times May Foster Better StudentsBusinessWeek Teens More Alert, Motivated, When School Starts Later, US StudyMedical News Today EurekAlert (press release) -Los Angeles Times -EmpowHer (blog) all 572 news articles » |
In 2012, when the space shuttle Endeavour launches for the last time, the United States' manned space program will be over for the foreseeable future, killing the dreams of millions of kids nationwide. Hopefully, American astronauts won't end like this: More »
Space - United States - Technology - Space Shuttle - International Space Station
At 4096 x 3072 pixels, 4K videos are nearly four times the size of 1080p. Yes, that's huge. And yes, YouTube now supports such videos. It's a feature almost as awesome as the vuvuzela button. More »
You can’t defeat what you can’t identify. That’s part of the human body’s problem with HIV–a virus that mutates constantly. Most antibodies can identify, latch onto, and neutralize only certain variants of the virus, or none at all. But two new studies published in Science yesterday point to two antibody that almost always hits their targets--neutralizing some 90 percent of the most common HIV strains.
Scientists hope to eventually use their knowledge of this antibody to develop a vaccine, but this is not an easy task.
“The path forward isn’t as clear as we’d like it to be, but we are turning a corner, I think,” says David Montefiori, a viral immunologist at Duke University Medical Center in Durham, N.C., who was not involved in the research. [Science News]
But first, how did they find the antibody?
Step 1: Learning from a Survivor
Researchers at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases looked at the blood of a 60-year-old African American man who had survived with HIV for 20 years.
The HIV antibodies were discovered in the cells of a 60-year-old African-American gay man, known in the scientific literature as Donor 45, whose body made the antibodies naturally…. Donor 45’s antibodies didn’t protect him from contracting HIV. That is likely because the virus had already taken hold before his body produced the antibodies. He is still alive, and when his blood was drawn, he had been living with HIV for 20 years. [Wall Street Journal]
Something about Donor 45’s antibodies were keeping the virus at bay or, more specifically, keeping it from binding with certain white blood cells to infect and destroy them.
Step 2: Trolling for Antibodies
Researchers suspected that the antibodies were manipulating a piece of the virus that remained relatively the same despite the virus’s overall shape-shifting. A prime suspect were the tiny “spikes” (see Wall Street Journal illustration) where the virus attached to white blood cells.
The researchers used a probe that was something like one of these spikes to see what antibodies they could reel in.
The team screened 25 million antibody-producing white blood cells, called B cells, from 15 people with HIV-1 [the most common strain of the virus], searching for those that bound to their probe. Only 29 cells fit the bill. From those, the researchers isolated three broadly neutralizing antibodies. [Nature News]
Of the “broadly neutralizing” antibodies, two could neutralize 90 percent of the HIV-1 mutations.
Step 3: Antibodies for Everyone
Donor 45 contracted HIV because his body produced the antibodies after he was already infected, but what if he had been prepared with the antibodies before the virus attacked? Perhaps he then could have thwarted infection all together. That’s the ideal case for a vaccine.
“I am more optimistic about an AIDS vaccine at this point in time than I have been probably in the last 10 years,” Dr. Gary Nabel of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, who led the study, said in a telephone interview…. “This is an antibody that evolved after the fact. That is part of the problem we have in dealing with HIV — once a person becomes infected, the virus always gets ahead of the immune system,” Nabel said.”What we are trying to do with a vaccine is get ahead of the virus.” [Reuters]
Getting ahead isn’t easy. For one, the antibodies don’t seem to work the moment the B cells start producing them–the antibodies have to mutate and mature themselves to become effective virus-blockers. These broad neutralizing antibodies have an unusually large number of mutations.
“Antibodies are like people: every single one is unusual in its own specific way,” says Peter Kwong, a structural biologist at the Vaccine Research Center, and a co-author on both papers. “These antibodies are freaks of nature.” [Nature News]
Getting the body to produce these antibodies naturally in this mature state would be an ideal–though difficult given their complexity. Researchers are also looking into treatments based on applying pre-made antibodies directly.
Related content:
80beats: Gene Therapy Hope for HIV: Engineered Stem Cells Hold Promise
80beats: Did the Eradication of Smallpox Accidentally Help the Spread of HIV?
80beats: Researchers Track the HIV Virus to a Hideout in the Bone Marrow
80beats: S. African HIV Plan: Universal Testing & Treatment Could End the Epidemic
80beats: If Everyone Got An Annual AIDS Test, Could We Beat Back the Epidemic?
Image: Wikimedia / HIV Budding
Lifehacker came up with a good way to get free Google Voice calls on your desktop with Sipgate, but Sipgate seems to have run out of free numbers, rending that method broken (for now). VoxOx can do something similar. More »
googlevoice - Google - Searching - Search Engines - Companies
I'm a bit confused. When you view a blog, there is an opportunity to post a reply. In the past, I have posted a reply, but never got any response. I also see that there are never any great amounts of replies to a blog as compared to a question or discussion. The latest blog on straightness of barsto
aCircuit Board is a live wallpaper for Android that shows you the beautiful circuit board—from the chips to the conductive traces—in all its geeky glory. If you love a good ol' gadget teardown, this is your wallpaper. More »
Android - Wallpaper - Handhelds - Desktop Customization - Walls
A complaint titled "Apple & ATTM Antitrust Litigation" has been granted class-action status by judge James Ware of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. The complaint accuses Apple and AT&T of forming an iPhone monopoly. More »
Greetings all; I have been an avid reader of this post for some time and enjoy it immensely. I have a problem which I am hoping someone out here can help with. I am about to rebuild a "Wallace" mandrel pipe bender ( 6 inch) circa 1946+-, and have no shop drawings or repair manual. I would be eternal
Seattle Post Intelligencer | Community Remembers James Popkowski WABI ... a 1990 graduate of Schenck High School and veteran of the US Marine Corps was killed Thursday by law enforcement officers near the VA Medical Center at ... Friends recall ex-Marine killed at TogusBangor Daily News Armed vet shot, killed outside Maine VA hospitalThe Associated Press Veteran killed in Togus standoff struggled with illnessBangor Daily News allvoices all 302 news articles » |
Week two of the all-new, all-inclusive weekly app roundup brings some truly excellent iPad games—Osmos, Monkey Island 2, and Samurai: Way of the Warrior—in addition to a whole host of other excellent apps for both iPhone and Android. More »
iPhone - Handhelds - Smartphones - Games - Video Games
Los Angeles police say that Lonnie Franklin Jr. may be the “grim sleeper” serial killer they have sought for more than 20 years. And if indeed they do have their man, they have his son to thank—for getting arrested himself.
Franklin is one of the first major suspects nabbed by police using familial DNA. With this controversial method, investigators look for partial matches between DNA left at a crime scene and DNA profiles that are stored in police databases; a partial match may indicate that the person is related to the target individual sought by the cops.
The trail began to heat up when the DNA of Franklin’s son was entered in a state database after he was convicted in a weapons case, authorities said. The son’s DNA was similar to genetic material found on the victims, and authorities soon began following around Franklin to get his DNA and see if he was the suspected killer [AP].
The cops posed as waiters at a restaurant where the elder Franklin ate, which is how they obtained a complete DNA sample from him–they grabbed a plate and napkin he tossed after eating a slice of pizza. The investigators say that when they found the match to the samples in their evidence, it eased 25 years of frustration at not being able to track him down.
In 2009, LAPD Det. Dennis Kilcoyne, who led a special unit assigned to find the Grim Sleeper, expressed frustration with knowing who the killer was, but only in a language of numbers and dashes. “We’ve got this beautiful DNA profile — all these dashes and dots, and this and that, but there’s no name to go with it,” Kilcoyne said [CNN].
It was just two years ago that California Attorney General Jerry Brown gave the OK to testing the state’s DNA data bank for these familial matches. Colorado is the only other state that currently allows the practice. Brown promises that only convicted felons are in that database for testing, but that’s just the thing that raised the hackles of opponents.
Familial DNA database searches have come under fire from privacy and civil liberty advocates, who argue, among other things, that they put more minorities, who are disproportionally represented in the database, in an at-risk group [ABC News].
However, as DISCOVER blogger Razib Khan writes at Gene Expression, this testing is coming whether we like it or not (and besides, it’s probably more reliable than eyewitness testimony or fingerprinting). So, Khan says, the issue we should worry about is not privacy but accuracy.
Related Content:
Gene Expression: To Catch a Predator: Familial DNA
Gene Expression: The State May Have Your Genome Sooner Than You Think
80beats: Could Forensic Scientists ID You Based on Your “Bacterial Fingerprint?”
80beats: Think DNA Evidence Can’t Be Faked? Think Again
Image: iStockphoto
