Unlike traditional gene therapy, which attempts to replace a mutated gene with a functional copy, exon skipping relies on a variation of a technique called antisense, in which short synthetic DNA or RNA molecules are designed to bind to a region of DNA or RNA and block its function. Companies are developing antisense therapies for cancer, diabetes, heart disease, and autoimmune diseases, among others.

Technology Review: Fixing a Genetic Flaw

The List.

YouTube - Banned from TV Family Guy Clip

President Obama’s trade officials met with several civil society groups and promised a thorough review of the USTR policies regarding transparency.

This may have been prompted by the controversy over their decision to keep the copyright treaty a national security secret.

Knowledge Ecology Notes- Obama trade officials promise thorough review of transparency policies

The indispensible jamie found a report out of Kentucky of exactly the kind of shenanigans that voting-transparency advocates have been warning about: a circuit court judge, a county clerk, and election officials are among eight people indicted for gaming elections in 2002, 2004, and 2006. As described in the indictment (PDF), the election officials divvied up money intended to buy votes and then changed votes on the county's (popular, unverifiable) ES&S touch-screen voting systems, affecting the outcome of elections at the local, state, and federal levels.

Slashdot | Kentucky Officials "Changed Votes At Voting Machines"

I need to loose weight. I'm obese and I have multiple risk factors for heart disease. If I don't exercise I'm literally going to die. So, I did a lot of snowboarding this season. It was fun, and it helped. I lost 10 pounds. I was proud of myself and looking forward to next year. Then wham, some celebrity dies after an accident on the bunny slope and all of a sudden everyone thinks skiing is crazy!

Besides the obvious high-risk activities such as smoking, being overweight, and failing to exercise, there are pastimes like skiing, riding a motorcycle, operating a motor vehicle without wearing a seatbelt, hunting, and consuming alcohol at neighborhood bars, which are consistently proven to subject the individual to injury or death at an inordinate rate.

Seriously? You're equating skiing with refusing to wear a seat belt? Maybe CNN will have a more balanced take?

Accidents pick up in the afternoon -- a time ski patrollers call the "witching hour"

The "witching hour?" Do ski patrollers really call the afternoon the "witching hour?" Great. Maybe I should wear a helmet?

"What we've found is that helmet usage did not affect fatalities," Byrd says.

He says helmets tend to be helpful in preventing lesser head injuries such as scalp lacerations or mild concussions.

In almost a decade of snowboarding I've never gotten a scalp laceration or mild concussion and if I ever did get one of those things - it would heal. So there is no point in wearing a helmet, is there? Maybe I should try bicycling instead? Or perhaps surfing?

According to the most recently available data from 2006, there were 2.07 skiing/snowboarding fatalities per million participants, whereas there were 29.4 bicycling fatalities per million participants, and 72.7 swimming fatalities per million participants.

Argh. Maybe there is some other sort of exercise I can engage in?

The National Safety Council (Injury Facts, 2008 edition) points out: 44,700 Americans died in motor-vehicle accidents (2006); 6,100 pedestrians were killed (2006); 8,600 died from unintentional public falls (2006); 5,100 died from unintentional public poisoning (2006); 43 died from lightning (2006); and 67 died from tornadoes (2006).

Maybe the problem is more fundamental...

Most fatalities occur in the same population that engages in high-risk behavior. Victims are predominantly male (85 percent) from their late teens to late 30s (70 percent)... Most of those fatally injured are usually above-average skiers and snowboarders who are going at high rates of speed on the margins of intermediate trails. This is the same population that suffers the majority of unintentional deaths from injury. For example, in 1995 this population suffered 74 percent of fatal car accidents and 85 percent of all industrial accidents, Dr. Shealy reports. Males comprise about 60 percent of skiing participants, and more than 75 percent of snowboarding participants.

Sigh. I can see where this is heading.

Dangers of skiing -- chicagotribune.com

You are twice as likely to die from being struck by lightning than suffer a fatality from skiing or snowboarding.

This is a bit of a statistical slight of hand, but really the risk is very low.

NSAA : National Ski Areas Association : Helmet safety fact sheet

Robotic systems continue to evolve, slowly penetrating many areas of our lives, from manufacturing, medicine and remote exploration to entertainment, security and personal assistance. Developers in Japan are currently building robots to assist the elderly, while NASA develops the next generation of space explorers, and artists are exploring new avenues of entertainment. Collected here are a handful of images of our recent robotic past, and perhaps a glimpse into the near future.

Robots - The Big Picture - Boston.com

Google notes that more than half (57%) of the takedown notices it has received under the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act 1998, were sent by business targeting competitors and over one third (37%) of notices were not valid copyright claims.

New Zealand PC World Magazine - Google submission hammers section 92A

The state of our global economy: foreclosures, evictions, bankruptcies, layoffs, abandoned projects, and the people and industries caught in the middle. It can be difficult to capture financial pressures in photographs, but here a few recent glimpses into some of the places and lives affected by what some are calling the "Great Recession".

Picture 30 is the best one.

Scenes from the recession - The Big Picture - Boston.com

"Because wireless carriers regularly generate and retain the records at issue, and because these records provide only a very general indication of a user's whereabouts at certain times in the past, the requested cell-site records do not implicate a Fourth Amendment privacy interest," the Obama administration wrote (.pdf) Feb. 13 to the federal appeals court.

The sad thing is that their position on this isn't totally insane. Phone company records have generally been considered a constitution free zone, which was a stupid idea in the first place, but thats where we're at and statues like the stored communications act referenced in this filing are legislative band-aids that have prevented what I think would be broad calls for a constitutional amendment resulting from that silly conclusion. Now - Phone company records have accidentally become records of your physical location and movements - records they keep around for 18 months. Does that bring the Constitution into play? No, probably not.

The theory is that anything you've told the phone company or google or "the cloud" is fair game for the police.

Given that everything that anyone would ever want to know about you is in the cloud - the 4th amendment is basically useless. Stick a fork in it. The sooner people get this, the better off we'll be.

In order to resolve the problem you need one of the following:

1. A radical shift in the way courts interpret the Constitution.
2. A new Constitutional Amendment.
3. More band-aid legislation.

This physical location problem is likely to be resolved behind door number three. The frogs will need to be a great deal warmer before 1 or 2 will happen.

(But they WILL inevitably happen. Probably the first one, but only after a series of very carefully argued Supreme Court victories.)

Obama Administration: Constitution Does Not Protect Cell-Site Records | Threat Level from Wired.com