By Cynthia Herbert :: 1:42 AM
A Mississippi baby, born with the virus that causes AIDS, has likely been cured, doctors from University of Mississippi announced at an AIDS conference in Atlanta yesterday.
The child, a 2 1/2 year old who was born with the disease, has been off of medication for about one year, with no signs of infection yet.
Doctors prescribed a faster and stronger treatment than usual for the baby, starting a three-drug infusion within a day of the baby’s birth, before tests had even confirmed that the child was infected. It was assumed that the child was at least at risk of infection, due to the mother having HIV at the child’s birth.
The fast action by doctors apparently eliminated HIV from the baby’s bloodstream before it could find a place to hide and take root in the body. A team of doctors from Johns Hopkins Children’s Center in Maryland conducted an investigation that deemed the child “functionally cured” of HIV.
According to published statistics, roughly 300,000 children were born with HIV in 2011, mostly in poor countries where many infected mothers do not receive treatment that can help them from passing the virus on to their babies. In the U.S., such births are rare because HIV testing and treatment are part of routine prenatal care.
[Photo above, Dr. Hannah Gay, University of Mississippi Medical Center pediatrician who likely cured the baby as an infant]
By Paul Thomson :: 8:01 PM
NASCAR driver Danica Patrick had one of the worst hits of her career earlier today when her car crahed into the wall at the Phoenix International Raceway. Patrick was able to walk away from the collision uninjured.
She was in 26th place with about 100 laps left when her car blew a front tire coming around turn 4. The right side of her GoDaddy car collided with the wall, and then the vehicle careened back on the track and was hit by driver David Ragan. The impact with Ragan’s car caused Patrick’s hood to fly up and block her line of sight out of the windshield, and also destroyed her left front fender.
Video of Patrick’s crash is below.
By Cynthia Herbert :: 7:48 PM
A job posting by Microsoft Corp. has leaked info about when to expect the next big update for its Windows Phone mobile platform.
Last week, the company posted a job opening for a software development engineer to do phone testing:
“This is a great time to join as we’re completing our current release and getting ready for our next release targeting the holiday of this year and we’re chartered with keeping the momentum for Windows Phone by bringing new killer devices and delightful user experiences,” the post reads. “There are enormous growth opportunities in this role and organization.”
So if the job posting is correct, we’ll see the next version of the Windows Phone OS around the holidays. The latest release of Windows Phone, Windows Phone 8, debuted on October 29, 2012. The new version, Windows Phone Apollo Plus, is in the works, and is likely the release that this job opportunity is targeting.
While earlier versions of the Windows Phone software, namely 7 and 7.5Â were criticized for their high-end hardware support, Windows Phone 8’s hardware options finally give Microsoft the ability to better compete with handset offerings that feature Google and Apple operating systems.
By Cynthia Herbert :: 1:50 PM
NASA’s explorer on the red planet Mars, Curiosity, has been switched over to a backup onboard computer after issues were discovered with the main computer on the rover.
A file that was corrupted on the main computer was the source of the glitch, according to NASA. On Wednesday, the rover did not send its usual transmission of daily data collections to scientists on Earth, so Mission Control switched Curiosity over to a backup computer and suspend its scientific experiments and exploration for several days.
Like most vehicles in space, Curiosity has two computers on board. The main processor, known as the “A-side computer” is used for all day-to-day operations while the backup “B-side computer” waits for trouble, like this. When the B-side computer is upgraded with the data needed for rover control, NASA will move the rover out of its current safe mode.
Getting the B-side computer ready to control Curiosity will take some time, said NASA’s project manager at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Â “we have probably several days, maybe a week of activities to get everything back and reconfigured,” he told Space.com.
What caused the glitch in the file on Curiosity’s A-side computer is currently unknown, but scientists believe it might be the cause of a stray cosmic ray. Although the rover itself is radiation tolerant, there’s a limit to how it can hold up against cosmic rays. NASA’s Cook says that it is still possible to”get high-energy particles that can cause the memory to be corrupted. It certainly is a possibility and that’s what we’re looking into.”
Once the backup computer is updated and in control of the rover, NASA will attempt to get the main computer running again and have it function in a backup capacity.
By Gilbert Falso :: 12:49 PM
Office 365, Microsoft’s cloud-based software-as-a-service enterprise productivity suite, will receive upgrades on a schedule every three months.
Kurt Delbene, president of Microsoft’s Office product division told SlashGear that the company already has “the mechanisms in place to update the service on a quarterly basis.â€
Microsoft hopes that a regular upgrade path for customers will make the idea of a cloud-based solution seem more appealing. The updates will switch between major and minor changes for the software, with some adding new features while others will bring more agressive improvements to the software.
Regular upgrades are good, and a way to attract positive attention for the new Office product, but many are skeptical of Microsoft’s path to cloud solutions and complain that the way the company has structured the offerings is confusing to many. As ComputerWorld’s Richi Jennings recently pointed out, all of the differentiated options for Office 365 bring the number available for businesses purchases to nine, not counting all other offerings for education, government, and personal consumers.
Despite these issues, Microsoft’s Office 365 does seem to be gaining traction in the marketplace, as retailers J.C. Penney Company, and U.K.-based Tesco recently signed on as customers, as well as the Texas Department of Information Resources and the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies.