Weird Links

Mad cow disease and other brain disorders stemming from prion proteins have long resisted cure. Now, in a test in mice, a prion disease caught early has been reversed.

China's military is harvesting organs from unwilling live prison inmates, mostly Falungong practitioners, for transplants on a large scale - including to foreign recipients - according to a study.

Article discusses the use of dichloroacetate (DCA) in the successful treatment of lung, breast and brain cancers in cultured human cells and in live rats.

DCA works by reactivating dormant mictochondria in cancer cells, and apoptosis along with it; resulting in suicide of cancer cells, while the healthy surrounding tissue is unaffected.

Now apparently, the trouble is that DCA isn't patented, which means it can be produced dirt cheap. So, the big pharma companies won't invest in it because there's no profit to be made.

BTW, here's an insightful editorial about the whole mess - it's not as simple as the original article makes out.

A large-scale study found that those who had regularly used mobiles for longer than 10 years were almost 40 per cent more likely to develop nervous system tumours called gliomas near to where they hold their phones.

Bill S.256, also known as the “Platform Equality and Remedies for Rights Holders in Music Act” (PERFORM), would, among other things, require that Internet broadcasters protect their audio streams with DRM technology.

It’s conceivable that, if passed, the law would eliminate a large number of existing Internet broadcasters. If the cost of investing in proprietary DRM streaming systems doesn’t run broadcasters out of business, the new royalty and licensing fees just might. Keep in mind that Internet broadcasters are already paying the same licensing fees that terrestrial broadcasters pay, as well as additional fees that terrestrial broadcasters don’t pay.

One day after President Bush implored Congress to give his Iraq strategy a chance to succeed, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee approved a resolution on Wednesday denouncing the plan to send more troops to Baghdad, setting up the most direct confrontation over the war since it began nearly four years ago.

This is not designed to say, ‘Mr. President, ah-ha, you’re wrong,’ ” said Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr., a Delaware Democrat and chairman of the committee. “This is designed to say, ‘Mr. President, please don’t go do this.’

Norway's Consumer Ombudsman has ruled that Apple's digital rights management and its refusal to support competing music services on the popular iPod are illegal in the country.

The Israeli Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, dramatically raised the stakes in the international showdown with Iran last night, with a clear warning that his country was prepared to use military force to prevent Tehran from obtaining a nuclear weapon.

Microsoft is finding itself in hot water after it was revealed that the company offered to pay an Australian blogger to correct information on Wikipedia regarding its Office Open XML standard.

The military calls its new weapon an "active denial system," but that's an understatement. It's a ray gun that shoots a beam that makes people feel as if they are about to catch fire.