Cancer breakthrough?

I find this article from The Independent to be borderline astonishing.  If true, it sounds like there was a giant leap forward in the treatment of prostate cancer…

Two patients with inoperable prostate cancer have made dramatic recoveries after receiving one dose of an experimental drug that is creating excitement among cancer specialists.

he results were so startling that researchers decided to release details of the two cases before the drug trial – in which the patients took part – was complete. Doctors said their progress had exceeded all expectations. The men were treated at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota in the US, one of the top medical centres in the world.

Let’s not get our hopes up yet, however, as this drug (Ipilimumab) has not experienced the same results in previous studies.  Also, further researcher is expected this fall with larger patient groups.

One thing to note, it very well may NOT be the experimental drug Impilimumab providing the results:

The other cautionary note is that both men received hormone therapy, which in some instances causes dramatic reductions in tumour size by itself.

It will be interesting to watch.

Times Reporter Held by Taliban Escapes

Apparently David Rohde, a New York Times reporter, was captured by the Taliban roughly 7 months ago as he was researching a book outside of Kabul last November. You did hear about this?  Neither did I, apparently the Times had an information embargo concerning the capture due to safety concerns.

“From the early days of this ordeal, the prevailing view among David’s family, experts in kidnapping cases, officials of several governments and others we consulted was that going public could increase the danger to David and the other hostages. The kidnappers initially said as much,” said Bill Keller, the executive editor of The Times. “We decided to respect that advice, as we have in other kidnapping cases, and a number of other news organizations that learned of David’s plight have done the same. We are enormously grateful for their support.”

I’d say this gives the concept of book research a whole new meaning.

Prototype Nokia phone recharges without wires

Now this is just… well… sexy.  A new prototype phone from Nokia is able to recharge without the need for a wired power source.

Nokia, however, has taken another baby step in that direction with the invention of a cell phone that recharges itself using a unique system: It harvests ambient radio waves from the air, and turns that energy into usable power. Enough, at least, to keep a cell phone from running out of juice.

This has the potential to be game changing.  A dead cell phone, or other small electronic device, could easily be a thing of the past.

Simply harvesting radio waves and converting the the collected waves into energy is brilliant.  The funny thing is that genius electrical engineer Nikola Tesla managed to do something very similar to this very thing over 100 years ago.  Even more impressive, Tesla managed to light bulbs over large distances, without wires, in Colorado Springs by using the Earth’s surface.

It’s too bad that the world had to wait over 100 years to put some of Tesla’s research to work.

You knew it, I knew it… but now wired.com is coming out and providing information to remind us of the truth – text costs the carriers next nothing to send.  Actually, the main article is based off of a piece in the New York Times.

The lucrative nature of that revenue increase cannot be appreciated without doing something that T-Mobile chose not to do, which is to talk about whether its costs rose as the industry’s messaging volume grew tenfold. Mr. Kohl’s letter of inquiry noted that “text messaging files are very small, as the size of text messages are generally limited to 160 characters per message, and therefore cost carriers very little to transmit.”

 

A better description might be “cost carriers very, very, very little to transmit.”

 

A text message initially travels wirelessly from a handset to the closest base-station tower and is then transferred through wired links to the digital pipes of the telephone network, and then, near its destination, converted back into a wireless signal to traverse the final leg, from tower to handset. In the wired portion of its journey, a file of such infinitesimal size is inconsequential. Srinivasan Keshav, a professor of computer science at the University of Waterloo, in Ontario, said: “Messages are small. Even though a trillion seems like a lot to carry, it isn’t.”

And why is the text limited to 160 characters?  

Perhaps the costs for the wireless portion at either end are high — spectrum is finite, after all, and carriers pay dearly for the rights to use it. But text messages are not just tiny; they are also free riders, tucked into what’s called a control channel, space reserved for operation of the wireless network.

 

That’s why a message is so limited in length: it must not exceed the length of the message used for internal communication between tower and handset to set up a call. The channel uses space whether or not a text message is inserted.

 

So, the providers have little to no cost for sending texts because they limit the size yet they charge roughly .10 to .20 per text for the average person.  

Hey, it’s capitalism and we pay for it….I’m not complaining, just point out that we are totally getting ripped.

UPDATE – Arstechnica also talks about this topic

I will be the first to come out and say I was wrong with regards to the Amazon Kindle.  The hardware looks odd, almost clunky, the screen is grayscale and the internally memory on the machine is quite limited. I truly didn’t see the appeal.  

I mean, why not use a tablet PC or simply a PDA?  Sure, a laptop may be a bit heavier (and more expensive) and a PDA may be a bit smaller, but both options really seemed more appealing to me.  There are a number of users, however, that do see the appeal – an expected 378,000 users to be more specific.  While it’s not the 3 million iPhones Apple sold, it is still impressive.

The USA Today has decided to join The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Financial Times, and Chicago Tribune with Kindle subscriptions. But are they still hurting?  Because the companies have not divested themselves of other activities taking away from their core business – publishing news.

Gannett, the company publishing the USA Today, owns a number of daily papers (as well as TV stations).  It will be interesting to see what other papers go onto the Kindle, and if the sell off their TV stations….

In the end, however, it doesn’t matter if the print media does go all digital if no distribution platform is in place.  At 378K devices in the marketplace, that is hardly enough to support all the major publishers on the market.

And for the record, no subscription price has been released as of it.

The signs were all around but, apparently, no one was paying attention:

“In a move that could help increase home ownership rates among minorities and low-income consumers, the Fannie Mae Corporation is easing the credit requirements on loans that it will purchase from banks and other lenders….

The action, which will begin as a pilot program involving 24 banks in 15 markets — including the New York metropolitan region — will encourage those banks to extend home mortgages to individuals whose credit is generally not good enough to qualify for conventional loans. Fannie Mae officials say they hope to make it a nationwide program by next spring….

In moving, even tentatively, into this new area of lending, Fannie Mae is taking on significantly more risk, which may not pose any difficulties during flush economic times. But the government-subsidized corporation may run into trouble in an economic downturn, prompting a government rescue similar to that of the savings and loan industry in the 1980’s.

”From the perspective of many people, including me, this is another thrift industry growing up around us,” said Peter Wallison a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. ”If they fail, the government will have to step up and bail them out the way it stepped up and bailed out the thrift industry.”

No one, except the New York Times.

Have you had a moment to read the New York Times article discussing the birth of Palin’s son, Trig? Personally, I think the title of the article is misleading as the story really isn’t about Politics; it’s about Sarah as a mother.

There are three things that really stand out in this piece:

But as the governor introduced her son that day, according to a friend, Kristan Cole, she said she had come to regard him as a blessing from God. “Who of us in this room has the perfect child?”

And

But her son has given Ms. Palin, 44, a powerful message. Other candidates kiss strangers’ babies; Ms. Palin has one of her own. He is tangible proof of Ms. Palin’s anti-abortion convictions, which have rallied social conservatives, and her belief that women can balance family life with ambitious careers.

And

Inside Ms. Palin’s room, her daughter Willow, 14, immediately noticed her new brother’s condition, according to People magazine. “He looks like he has Down syndrome,” Willow said. “Why didn’t you tell us?”

This article really makes her look… human, not a politician.

She is willing to accept the flaws in her child, as a mother would. She is balancing life and career, as any FAMILY would. She is protective of her family, as any good parent should be. To me the above shows Ms. Palin as a mother, not as a politician, and this, I believe, is what really helps her connect with both men and women alike.

How does one politically combat this? I mean to say, if this is a driving factor in why someone is voting or connecting to the McCain / Palin ticket, do you attack her for being a mother and Vice President? That would be sexist in every sense. Do you attack her for having a Down Syndrome child? Who are her political opponents to question what is best for her family.

This is the big issue Democrats have to face and it will be interesting to see how they attack it.