Cancer Cure Human Trials Begin

Bring it on.

Scientists at Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center are about to embark on a human trial to test whether a new cancer treatment will be as effective at eradicating cancer in humans as it has proven to be in mice.

The treatment will involve transfusing specific white blood cells, called granulocytes, from select donors, into patients with advanced forms of cancer. A similar treatment using white blood cells from cancer-resistant mice has previously been highly successful, curing 100 percent of lab mice afflicted with advanced malignancies.

Obviously, I hope this works out.

Dangers of Portable Generators

When your world is tossed upside down (sometimes literally) due to a natural distaster, other priorities can sometimes overrule everyday common sense. If you're using a portable generator to get through a power outage, pay attention to the carbon monoxide exhaust.

From PM:

To most people, safe generator use is a matter of common sense. Gasoline-engine generators were never designed for indoor use. Every generator manual includes several pages of warnings urging users to operate their generators in a dry, well-ventilated area to avoid both electrocution and CO poisoning.

"It's strange. People understand not to run their car in the garage, but they should also understand the same rule applies to generators," says Sage Marie, a Honda spokesman.

During hurricanes, however, many people move their generators into areas protected from wind and rain that they assume are well ventilated. A CDC report traced several poisonings to generators placed outside, but near windows or air conditioners. The best bet is to put some distance between the generator and your house, advises Jon Hoch, founder of Electric Generators Direct, a Web-based retailer that sells thousands of generators a year. He recommends using a heavy-duty 25-ft.-long extension cable called a generator cord.

Don't use a generator indoors, ever. And make sure it's far enough away from your home and your neighbor's home.

State of Solar Power

Unless your state gives you a substantial rebate for installing a solar panel system on your home, it's still too expensive.

From SmartE:

Where I live in Tennessee is listed at the high end of "good" on the "solar scale" of available solar energy. But a 3 or 4 kW system that costs $40K or so will only generate about $35 per month worth of electricity. That's a payback of about 95 years!

And large solar projects for regional use? Enviromentalists are waving a large stop sign.

From Telegraph.co.uk:

The Bureau of Land Management says the moratorium on solar proposals is needed to determine how a new generation of large-scale projects could affect plants and wildlife on the land it manages.

Unbelievable.

New Towed Array for Surface Ships

First new towed array for surface ships being developed since the Cold War.

From YourDefenceNews:

The MFTA is the next generation passive and active sonar receiver configured as a long three inch diameter array that can be towed behind surface ships. It provides several enhancements to the legacy AN/SQR-19 Tactical Towed Array System (TACTAS) enabling greater coverage and increased capability and reliability. The MFTA significantly contributes to the capability of surface ships to detect, localize and prosecute undersea threats, and is a critical sensor for the ship's combat systems suite.

Information for the system it is replacing is here.

Congrats to Lockheed.

DoD Brain Drain

From IHT.com:

Over the past decade, as spending on new military projects has reached its highest level since the Reagan years, the Pentagon has increasingly been losing the people most skilled at managing them. That brain drain... is a big factor in a breakdown in engineering management that has made huge cost overruns and long delays the maddening norm.

The article primarily focuses on a report about the Air Force, but this Brain Drain effects all defense contractors.

Jet Engines Get a Timely Innovation

Fuel savings rank highest for me, but there are substantial CO2 emission and noise reductions. Good news all around for environmentalists, passengers, and airlines.

From Wired.com:

Pratt & Whitney has spent the better part of two decades developing the geared turbofan engine that burns 12 to 15 percent less fuel than other jet engines and cuts carbon dioxide emissions by 1,500 tons per plane per year. It's being called one of the most exciting developments commercial aviation has seen in years...

Current jet engines have fans that suck air into the combustion chamber, where it is compressed, mixed with fuel, and ignited. Then it's blown through a turbine, generating thrust. It works, but it's inefficient because the fan is connected to the engine and turns at the same speed as the turbine. Fans work best at low speed, while turbines work best at high speed.

Pratt & Whitney solved that problem with a gearbox that lets the fan and turbine spin independently. The fan is larger and it spins at one-third the speed of the turbine, creating a quieter, more powerful engine the company says requires less fuel, emits less C02 and costs 30 percent less to maintain. Pratt & Whitney has been torture-testing the engines, and its engineers have simulated more than 40,000 takeoffs and landings.

Congrats to the Pratt & Whitney team. May they have immense profits.

In Orbit

Beautiful.

Sanctions Against Iran

The editor of Computer World wrote about Iran's heroic engineers managing to get around the technology embargo (he called it a darkness) of their country by assembling a 'super computer' from a large number of AMD processors.

They published my emailed response.

We're not the problem, as Don Tennant had it in his Dec. 17 Editor's Note, "They Were Like Us." Iran's political and religious leaders are the ones perpetuating the "darkness" by not agreeing to the world community's demands on many issues, including, but not limited to, civil liberties, uranium enrichment and support of worldwide terrorism. Tennant's heartfelt support of the scientists and engineers working hard in their day-to-day lives to make life better is genuine, but their actions in avoiding the repercussions of their government can only exacerbate the problem.

Any technological achievements deriving from their hard work using sanctioned technology will only empower and enable the Iranian government to continue its restrictions on the lives and liberties of those scientists and engineers our world so desperately needs.

To the Moon

NASA Awards New Spacesuit Contract:

Suits and support systems will be needed for as many as four astronauts on moon voyages and as many as six space station travelers. For short trips to the moon, the suit design will support a week's worth of moon walks. The system also must be designed to support a significant number of moon walks during potential six-month lunar outpost expeditions. In addition, the spacesuit and support systems will provide contingency spacewalk capability and protection against the launch and landing environment, such as spacecraft cabin leaks.

Congrats to Oceaneering International.

Army Fielding RFID

In the heat of battle, the last thing any warfighter wants to do is paperwork. Yet soldiers have to keep track of how many times they fire their weapons during combat, largely so the Army can better estimate when each weapon has reached the end of its useful life. ...

“We envision a system that will automatically count rounds fired, perform basic health monitoring, and upload this information directly into existing or modified databases,” said Kevin Miner, program manager at the Army’s Armament Research, ... “The goal is to automate counting of ammo fired and to provide increased operational and maintenance capabilities through automation.”

From GCN.com