lucky760's Blog: "It Puts the Blog on the Sift or Else It Gets the Hose Again"



Genetically Engineered Virus that Specifically Attacks Brain Tumors (Blog Post)

From Technology Review:


A viral view: Researchers at Yale University have genetically engineered a virus (green) that specifically attacks brain tumors in mice (red). The virus kills the primary tumor masses (B) and migrating tumor cells (E), while leaving healthy tissue intact.
Credit: Van den Pol/Yale University
This year, more than 21,000 people will be diagnosed with some form of brain cancer, according to the National Cancer Institute. While benign forms are relatively easy to treat, malignant tumors require a combination of surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation. Even then, tumor cells may remain deeply lodged, replicating and spreading quickly through healthy brain tissue.

Now researchers at Yale University have found that a virus that's in the same family as rabies effectively kills an aggressive form of human brain cancer in mice. Using time-lapse laser imaging, the team watched vesicular stomatitis virus (VSV) rapidly home in on brain tumors, selectively killing cancerous cells in its path, while leaving healthy tissue intact. What's more, Anthony Van den Pol, lead researcher and professor of neurosurgery and neurobiology at Yale, says that VSV is able to self-replicate and produce secondary lines of defense.

"A metastasizing tumor is fairly mobile, and a surgeon's knife can't get out all of the cells," says Van den Pol. "A virus might be able to do that, because as a virus kills a tumor cell, it could also replicate, and you could end up with a therapy that's self-amplifying."

In the past few years, scientists have looked to viruses as potential allies in fighting cancer. Researchers at the Mayo Clinic are engineering the measles virus to combat multiple myeloma, a cancer of the bone marrow. And while various groups have seen limited results after injecting herpes and polio-related viruses directly into brain tumors in mice, Van den Pol wanted to find a more effective cancer-killing strain.

His search for a virus candidate began six years ago, when he and his colleagues tested the effect of different viruses on brain tumors in culture. Repeatedly, VSV came out "at the top of the heap." The team grew the virus through many generations, isolating strains that infected cancer cells quickly while having a slow effect on healthy cells. The researchers recently ran the most effective strain through a number of tests in live mice, and they've published their results in a recent issue of the Journal of Neuroscience.

In its experiment, the team transplanted glioblastoma--the most common and aggressive form of human brain cancer--into the brains of mice. Prior to transplantation, researchers genetically engineered the tumor cells to express a red marker, which, once inside the brain, would show up in laser microscopy scans. Similarly, Van den Pol inserted a green marker in VSV cells and injected the virus intravenously through the tail. Within a few days, researchers observed that the green virus found its way to the brain and selectively infiltrated red tumor masses and individual tumor cells, while avoiding normal cells. Van den Pol says that as the virus infects tumors, cancerous cells start to turn green, swelling up until they eventually burst.

BayImg = Free Uncensored Image Hosting (Blog Post)

Wow. I just found the site http://bayimg.com by the people who brought you The Pirate Bay. It allows anyone to anonymously, simply, and freely host photos in a matter of seconds. So if you want to embed an image in a Sift Talk or blog post and need it online somewhere to do so, you can use that service.

That's pretty awesome. Sure, there are lots of other free image hosting services out there, but here's one that's extremely simple to use and doesn't even require that you create an account.

Just thought I'd share.

Dynamic Holographic Displays Now a Reality (Blog Post)

Two scientists from the College of Optical Sciences at the University of Arizona have successfully created mankind's first dynamic holographic display.

Here is a snapshot of a human skull as displayed holographically on the device.

This initial breakthrough displays an updatable, monochromatic 3D image on a 4"-by-4" plate of glass, but is still an enormous achievement. It allows multiple viewers to view an electronically displayed three-dimensional image with a unique perspective from varying vantage points without the need for any special eyewear. This is very well the first step toward 3D motion pictures in a single flat display. Instead of attempting here to describe the specific details of the technology, read a lengthy explanation at the first of the links listed below.

Here's a video of the two researchers who developed the technology describing and demonstrating it in action (which I also submitted to the Sift).
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The 100-Year-Old Photo Blog - High Resolution Historical Photos (Blog Post)

Just thought I'd share with you this great site I stumbled across some time ago. I check in on it every once in a while. For anyone who's even a little bit of a history buff, you'll find it very interesting.

Essentially it's just filled with lots and lots of usually random, personal vintage photographs take from even well over a century ago. It really gives you an interesting perspective on what life was like in years gone by.

Below are three images from their Civil War photo listing.

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Slave Pen: Interior

Price, Birch slave pen at Alexandria c. 1865. Half of stereo pair. View full size.

Check out Shorpy - The 100-Year-Old Photo Blog for lots more if you're interested.

Turning Foxes Into House Pets (Blog Post)

A rather fascinating experiment that was started over half a century ago by geneticists in Siberia (at the Institute of Cytology and Genetics in Novosibirsk) has yielded some truly awe-inspiring results, including what can be interpreted indisputable proof of evolution.

The experiment accomplished in foxes what Mother Nature likely took thousands of years to do with wolves. It began with wild foxes that were captured and kept in captivity. Not surprisingly, most of them were very aggressive toward all humans. The experimenters selected only those which exhibited the least aggression and bred them.

This is essentially how the study continued for generation after generation of breeding over several decades. The foxes were never given much contact with any humans except for brief studies. After selecting 45,000 foxes over 35 generations, some amazing observations were made.

The foxes were not only more tame showing little to no aggression toward humans, the obvious intent of the study, but several physical changes started to happen: coats were no longer camouflaged, but had lots of different colors and even started having patterns in their fur; straight, pointy ears became floppy; legs became shorter; tails were no longer straight and long, but short and curly.

This is clearly reminiscent of the way wolves evolved into such a vast plethora of breeds that vary so greatly from one another, except this perceived evolution occurred in only a few decades rather than the assumed several millennia it took to change wolves into dogs.

Here is a 3 minute clip from NOVA about the experiment (which has been submitted to the Sift here):
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Mamma Mia Coming to the Big Screen (Blog Post)

Don't know how many Sifters are fans of stage theater or musicals, but one stage musical Charms and I have seen twice is Mamma Mia, the show based around and featuring the music of Abba. It's actually a pretty entertaining show no matter how ashamed you are to admit how much you enjoy Abba songs.

This summer they are releasing a film version of the show starring Pierce Brosnan, Meryl Streep, and the chick who played Lily Kane on Veronica Mars (an excellent show that you've probably never seen). Looks like it's going to be a big hit if even just the people who enjoyed the stage show attend. Here's the trailer...

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Heath Ledger is Dead at the Age of 28 (Blog Post)

Whoa...

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January 22, 2008 -- Actor Heath Ledger was found dead today in his Broome Street apartment, apparently from a drug overdose.

Ledger, 28, was well known for his role in "Brokeback Mountain," and he stars in the upcoming "The Dark Knight" Batman movie as the Joker.

He split last year from wife, Michelle Williams, with whom he has a daughter, Matilda.

His apartment was strewn with sleeping pills and it was unclear if it was an intentional or accidental death.

His housekeeper tried to wake Ledger up for a massage appointment and found him unresponsive at 3:20 p.m.

She then called paramedics at 3:26 p.m. and father of one was pronounced dead at 3:35 p.m.

Ledger's early career as an actor was marked by small roles in several independent features in his home country of Australia.

He broke onto the international movie scene in 1999 with his turn as the brooding high-school heart-throb who captures Julia Stiles' attention in "10 Things I Hate About You." After starring roles in "The Patriot," "A Knight's Tale," and "The Brothers Grimm," Ledger earned critical acclaim with his poignant performance as a gay cattle rancher in director Ang Lee's "Brokeback Mountain," for which he was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actor.

In 2007, he appeared in the independent film "I'm Not There," as one of many incarnations of Bob Dylan. He recently wrapped filming on 'The Dark Knight,' the sequel to 'Batman Begins,' in which he plays the villainous Joker. His most recent role was in director Terry Gilliam's 'The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus,' which is listed as still "in production" on imdb.com.

Ledger's love life earned him as many headlines as his acting career. He has been romantically linked to such A-list starlets as Naomi Watts and Heather Graham. He has a daughter, Matilda Rose, with actress Michelle Williams. The couple, praised for their down-to-earth lifestyle in Brooklyn's Carroll Gardens, announced their split earlier this year.

Condor Heroes and Wuxia in General (Blog Post)

Just wondering out loud how many fans of Wuxia are on the Sift. If you're not familiar with what it is, Wuxia is a genre of epic Chinese stories usually set hundreds or thousands of years ago featuring lots of honorable heroes and rotten villains usually doing a lot of traveling and martial arts battles in the course of working through whatever path fate has laid in their laps.

They are often based on very old, lengthy stories that are created as once-run television series. They are honestly really addictive and just plain old fascinating.









For me it's difficult to be able to watch many because they aren't usually offered with English subtitles or dubbing, but one that is available in the US on DVD is Return of Condor Heroes (ROCH) written in 1959 by Jinyong who has written several Wuxia novels. Like several other Wuxia novels, ROCH was written and published one "chapter" at a time in a Chinese newspaper. (Readers clamored every week in anticipation for each subsequent installment.) ROCH is the second in a three part series of stories that are all interrelated over multiple generations. The most recent series filming of ROCH (titled simply "Condor Heroes" in the US release) was the eighth production and filmed in 2006. ROCH is an amazing, beautiful story that spans several decades.



The sixth iteration of part one in the series, Legend of Condor Heroes (LOCH) is finally at the end of this month finishing its filming, which started in 2006. (One of the stars was in a near fatal car accident and once he recovered the other star was committed to another show.) It's scheduled to start airing in China later this year, and I'm just counting the seconds until it's released on DVD.

In LOCH the story begins with two blood brothers whose wives just gave birth to sons and are made blood brothers. Immediately afterward, the babies are separated. One of them is taken and raised by an evil Mongolian prince, while the other is raised by a group of "weirdos." A whole lot happens over many years as they both grow up. ROCH starts with the evil brother's baby as a young boy and follows him as he grows up with Dragon Girl. Because of the direct connection from LOCH to ROCH, it's most desireable to see LOCH first, but unfortunately they are obviously creating the latest LOCH series a couple years after ROCH. It's still okay to see ROCH, though.

If you are interested in getting an idea of the story of LOCH the four part movie series called The Brave Archer might be worth a look, but I'd much rather see the full-length TV series as the movies summarize and cut out a ton.

The next DVD set I'm looking forward to in the mean time is the third production of Demi-Gods and Semi-Devils from 2003 also written by Jinyong and starring Crystal Liu Yifei who stars as Dragon Girl in ROCH 2006.

Anyone else have any idea what I'm ranting about or am I all alone here?

1920 Pixel Page Width Option Available (Blog Post)

As promised, a new, larger page width is available. See the "1920" at the bottom of the page.

Out of curiosity, I checked on user screen resolutions. This is a rough breakdown of the maximum usable resolution by percentage of visitors. It doesn't add up to 100% because not all visitors were accounted for.
  1. 1024 36.19%
  2. 1280 37.32%
  3. 1600 17.46%
  4. 1920 3.44%

Caring for a LCD Monitor -or- How the Heck Do You Clean Your LCD Screen? (Blog Post)

Well, this was going to be a post just asking how you clean your LCD monitor, but while typing it it dawned on me that I should check the Samsung website. I've also checked around online and a 50/50 solution of isopropyl (NOT ethyl) alcohol and water seems the best bet. Funnily enough, Samsung also mentions vinegar, but who wants their monitor smelling like that?

I guess I'll ask anyway: How exactly do you clean your LCD screen? Is it a shiny screen or a standard dull plastic looking one? Any advice on how you shouldn't clean it?

Here're Samsung's instructions if you're wondering:
Step 1. Unplug and Turn Off Monitor
Unplug and turn off your monitor.

Step 2. Spray Cleaner On Cloth
Spray or apply a small amount of non-abrasive cleanser on a soft, lint free cloth.

Important Information:
You should never use any harsh chemicals to clean your LCD monitor. Cleansers with the following agents are OK to use:
  • Water
  • Vinegar mixed with water at a concentration of no more than 10% vinegar. That's 6 1/2 tablespoons of vinegar per quart of water, 1 1/2 tablespoons per cup, or 100 ml per liter.
  • Isopropyl Alcohol
  • Petroleum Benzene
Do Not use cleaners that contain the following agents:
  • Acetone
  • Ethyl Alcohol
  • Ethyl Acid
  • Ammonia
  • Methyl Chloride
  • Lysergic Acid Diethylamide
  • Hydrochloric Acid
  • Sandpaper
  • Lead-based Paint
Do not spray or apply any liquids directly to the monitor. Always apply the solution to your cloth first, not directly on the parts you are cleaning.

Step 3. Wipe Gently
Gently wipe the surface. Use as little pressure as possible.

Important Information:
Apply as little pressure as possible when you clean.

Applying too much pressure or spraying liquids directly onto the screen or case of the LCD Monitor may cause damage to the display which will not be covered under warranty.

The New 24 Beside the Old 17 (Blog Post)

One of the two big gifts I received from Charms this Christmas is a 24" Samsung LCD (model 245BW). I just had to share my elation after finally getting it all setup properly.

The 24" bad boy is using the DVI port and the old 17" is using the old D-Sub port of my antiquated video card. It took a few kicks and elbow drops from the top turnbuckle, but I was able to finally get them set up with DualView. This enables me to run the 17" as a separate monitor altogether that's accessible through what's sort of a continuation of the 24" monitor's right edge.

I've included a snapshot below (click to see a bigger size) and you can see that the most obvious difference aside from size is the brightness (or lack thereof) on the little guy. It's a damned awesome setup and I just can't believe how enormous this sucker is. (Thank you, my Charms! )


Microsoft Utility to Mount ISO Images in Windows XP (Blog Post)

I was just looking for a good, simple, free application to mount ISO images on my new laptop and found something pretty interesting. Though not supported, Microsoft has a utility called "Virtual CD-ROM Control Panel" which can be downloaded on Microsoft's site.

It's not quite as user friendly for the less technically inclined as Alcohol or Daemon Tools, but it's fast, free, and very simple. The installation instructions from their ReadME is below, if you're curious.

So if you're looking for a quick, trustworthy way to mount and unmount ISO, UDF, CDFS, JO, or ROCK images, you can give this puppy a shot.
1. Copy VCdRom.sys to your %systemroot%\system32\drivers folder.
2. Execute VCdControlTool.exe
3. Click "Driver control"
4. If the "Install Driver" button is available, click it. Navigate to the %systemroot%\system32\drivers folder, select VCdRom.sys, and click Open.
5. Click "Start"
6. Click OK
7. Click "Add Drive" to add a drive to the drive list. Ensure that the drive added is not a local drive. If it is, continue to click "Add Drive" until an unused drive letter is available.
8. Select an unused drive letter from the drive list and click "Mount".
9. Navigate to the image file, select it, and click "OK". UNC naming conventions should not be used, however mapped network drives should be OK.

You may now use the drive letter as if it were a local CD-ROM device. When you are finished you may unmount, stop, and remove the driver from memory using the driver control.

The Load is Balanced (Blog Post)

Well, the initial onslaught has been quieted. It wasn't a pretty transition as far as transitions go, but it could have been much worse.

We are now running a beefy set of four servers (thanks in large part to Sifter contributions) consisting of a load balancer front-end, two web servers, and a DB server.

There were several challenges we had to overcome to get this all worked out properly, but everything is now running at full speed and our load is lower on both web servers than it's been for a long, long time.

There may still be an issue here or there, but everything seems to be working surprisingly well at the moment. (Yay!) Knock on wood.

How YouTube Influences Society in Daily Life (Blog Post)

Filed under Now that's just funny...
When a robber started taking cash from his register at a New Jersey Dunkin' Donuts over the weekend, employee Dustin Hoffmann fought back by clobbering the man with a ceramic mug. But Hoffmann admits he was less worried about the stolen cash than how he might look on the video-sharing site YouTube.

"What was going through my mind at that point was that the security tape is either going to show me run away and hide in the office or whack this guy in the head, so I just grabbed the cup and clocked the guy pretty hard," Hoffman said.

- AP
Can't wait for that to actually hit YouTube. With the quote above attached, it should definitely be a top 15.

Guess the Dictator or Sitcom TV Character Game (Blog Post)

I learned of this game a few years ago and lots of you have probably played it, but I thought I'd share it with y'all.

It's quite entertaining every time you play. This is how it works: Basically you just think of the dictator of a country OR a television character. Then you answer the Yes/No questions the game asks as if you are the person you're thinking of.

It will keep asking seemingly oddball questions until it finally guesses exactly who you are. And it will, almost every time. You just answer Yes if you're certain or No if the question doesn't apply or you just don't know.

Give it a go. Let me know how it went when you're done. Who'd you play as? Did you win? (I'd bet you didn't.)

Simple text version (preferred)

Fancy Flash version (slow)

What do you want or what are you giving for Christmas? Gift Ideas Accepted Here (Blog Post)





So, it's December now with a scant one and a half fortnights until the big day. What's the forecast for your gifting season?

What are the gifts that your kids are begging for? What are you going to be giving children?

More importantly, what are you asking Old Saint Nick for? And what are you giving to your spouse or other contemporaries?

I'm just curious what everyone else is most hoping for and what they're giving to those nearest and dearest. From the extravagant to the simple, please fill me in.

To be honest, it's kind of hard for me to even imagine something that I want because I have all I'll ever desire in Charms. Hopefully some of your ideas can inspire some want in me that I have been hopelessly lacking thus far this gift-giving season.




Successfully Upgraded My New Laptop from Windows Vista to XP! (Blog Post)

Yes, I said UPgraded.

As I mentioned a little while back, my old laptop went skydiving off a counter without a parachute and went kaput on me. (It fall down go boom.) My wonderful new laptop, on which this is being typed, is amazingly wonderful. It's uber-fast, super quiet, and surprisingly not a lap scorcher. (Not to mention it looks totally bitchin'.)

So anyway, the one ginormous problem I had with it was that it came pre-installed with Vista (Yuck! ) and Toshiba refuses to offer any support in providing the appropriate drivers for downgrading to wonderful Windows XP. I wasn't sure how successful I'd be, but I'm now running this beauty with XP Pro with about 98% proper hardware functionality, and here's how I did it...

The first hurdle was attempting to install Windows XP. When I first booted with the install disk I was presented with a very ugly message, something like "There was no hard drive found." The problem is that many notebooks nowadays have a SATA controller, but XP was not designed for such an unexpected situation.

Ugh. No problem, right? All we need to do is locate the driver and tell the installer to use it. Oh, wait. The only way Microsoft allows you to provide a driver for any hardware during installation is to stick it on a floppy during boot. Oh, what's a floppy, you ask? Right. Floppies are no longer existent on new laptops. After locating the SATA controller drivers, I used a wonderful program called nLite to merge the drivers onto a copy of my boot disk. Yay! (A fantastic step-by-step demonstrating exactly how to add your SATA controller's drivers to your Windows XP boot disk CD.)

After installing, a quick look at the hardware shows that most devices aren't recognized. It took me days, but I was able to find drivers that seem to work for all the hardware on my Toshiba Satellite A205-S7466 with a couple of unfortunate exceptions. 1) My HD-DVD drive is unable to play HDDVD disks. 2) The same drive seems unable to burn discs. 3) The FN keys (function keys) don't work, so I can't turn up/down LCD brightness, among other things.

Hopefully at some point those broken features will work, but for now, I'd rather be on XP with those limitations than on Vista without. (XP has an idle footprint of ~200MB, while Vista eats up a minimum of a whopping 1GB always.)

That's my tale. Perhaps I'll upload my drivers for others trying to get past the same obstacles I faced...

Thanksgiving SiftUp in the OC (Blog Post)

Tonight, six of us spent a wonderful few hours meeting and greeting one another at the Irvine Spectrum in wonderful Orange County, California in the biggest SiftUp to date.


From left to right: Charms, Me, YouDieJoe, Firefly, Grimm, and DarkRowan

Firefly came to Southern California for Thanksgiving and that prompted several of us local, eager Sifters to get together.

Charms and I arrived at Javier's Bar and Grill at about 5pm looking for some kind of sign and were quickly joined by Firefly, DarkRowan, and Grimm, most of whom had been at the Spectrum for a little while. We sat down and enjoyed getting to know one another over dinner during the next couple of hours.

After having been informed earlier that YouDieJoe couldn't attend, we were surprised to learn that he was on his way down to join us. Once he arrived we moved over to Fox Sports Grill (which coincidentally enough is where our SiftUp with Dag took place [yes, DarkRowan, that is the glass you're not supposed to touch in the background]).

We talked and laughed and talked some more. Issues ranged from the past and future of VideoSift, to our own personal stories of Sift addiction, to what Halloween costumes were like back when we were kids.

All in all it was a wonderful four hours getting to know some very fine folks. As YDJ suggested, we'll definitely have to get together for an LA SiftUp sometime. Perhaps even you can attend...


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