blog.spathis.com

    Our world is becoming an amazing place, a team of Canadian scientists appear to have reversed diabetes. The treatment works so well they were shocked by it. The essence of their discovery is that there is link between neurological activity and the production of insulin. The traditional view of diabetes is that the body's own immune system turns against itself and begins attacking the Islets of Langerhorn, the actual insulin producing cells in the pancreas. This attack suppresses the ability of the Islets to produce insulin.

    Why are the Islets attacked to begin with? This has been the key question dogging diabetes research, now it seems they may have found an answer. According to the Canadian team the nerves themselves are what cause the problem, it seems that the nerves may be signaling "pain" to the brain and the brain may be using the absence  of a neuro-peptide to suppress the insulin production. The team used capcasin (think chili pepper) to deaden these pain nerves in the pancreas. Suddenly normal insulin production.

Stunning, truly stunning.

    Read all about it in at the National Post or read the actual paper "TRPV1+ Sensory Neurons Control β Cell Stress and Islet Inflammation in Autoimmune Diabetes". What is particularly exciting is that their treatment may be applicable to a wide range of auto-immune diseases, including asthma, diabetes, & crohn's disease.

Wow, amazing work, kudos to all involved… 

Wired has a very interesting review of the Zune. The net is, don't believe the negative reviews, the Zune is actually a well-done piece of hardware & software as long as you can overlook a few minor flaws. It would be great if the product actually provides some competition to the iPod.

For approximately 3 Billion years evolution operated on a mostly single-cell basis, but then something strange happened approximately 500 millions years ago. A sudden development of multi-cellular creatures that eventually led to man. What caused that change and the resulting rapid rise of multi-cellular life? This is the essence of Darwin's Dilemma. Don E. Canfield, Simon W. Poulton, and Guy M. Narbonne have just published a paper that advances a theory to solve at least some of that dilemma. The paper titled "Late-Neoproterozoic Deep-Ocean Oxygenation and the Rise of Animal Life" ties a sudden increase in oxygen in the worlds oceans to the rise of the first known members of the Ediacara biota and that a "a prolonged stable oxic environment may have permitted the emergence of bilateral motile animals some 25 million years later"

Fascinating stuff, I'm following it over at the PhysOrg forums…

Check out Merriam-Webster's selection for 2006 Word of the Year!

Stephen Colbert should be quite proud

I had been closely following the saga of James Kim. I was greatly saddened when I read that they had found his body. So sad, best wishes to his family.

It is reviews like this one:

The reason for this is that it is easy: It just works. The first time you hand a Wiimote to someone and they point it at the screen, they know what to do. There's a little hand, representing where you're pointing, and each Wiimote has a different colored hand. Navigating menus is actually … fun, in an odd sort of way. Moving over UI elements with the little hand representing your controller causes a very slight rumble. The controller shakes just enough to give the entire experience a tactile element that, again, I've never seen in gaming before. It's the little things like this that really makes the Wii experience. Turning the Wiimote upside down inverts the hand. They didn't have to do it that way, but they did. Navigating menus is, mildly, fun. One of the first games my cousins played after they'd picked up the controllers was the "duel with their icon-hands" challenge. Odd, yes, but entirely understandable. The Wiimote, and the completely natural movements you make when using the device, require no explanation. When Nintendo went to the AARP event earlier this year, they knew what they were doing; this is the console your grandmother can use as easily as you can.

that put the Wii at the top of my post-holiday shopping list. The focus on the gaming experience and not just the raw video performance is what has distinguished this console from all others. I can't wait to get it!

Postgres Release 8.2 today! Yeah!

 Go read about the goodness at http://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/static/release-8-2.html

The implications of today's announcement are immense, NASA confirms the presence of liquid water on Mars today in a press conference, additionally they have found evidence of recent cratering (past few years). This is stunning confirmation of what many have suspected. We may be on the threshold of a new golden age of space exploration.

NASA has called a press conference tomorrow at 1 pm EST to discuss a "significant find" by the Mars Global Surveyor. Rumors are significant amounts of water have been found. The press conference is sure to be fascinating & you can watch it live over at NASA TV off the NASA homepage.

UPDATE: Rumors confirmed, NASA has announced that they have found water on Mars and that they see evidence of recent cratering. Paper will be published in the upcoming edition of Science. What a historic day!

I can't stop laughing at this. My developer friends will understand exactly why, the rest of you will think its funny but an exaggeration.

Philip is hilarious!