Human Genetic Variation Alters Anthrax Toxin Sensitivity
Martchenko, Candille et al., PNAS
Researchers at Stanford University School of Medicine show that genetic variation affecting capillary morphogenesis gene 2, or CMG2, dramatically alters toxin sensitivity in humans. In its analysis, the team reports on "a CMG2 single-nucleotide polymorphism occurring frequently in African and European populations [that they found] independently altered toxin uptake." The group goes on to suggest "testing of genomically characterized human cell populations may offer a broadly useful strategy for elucidating effects of genetic variation on infectious disease susceptibility."
The Data Center of the Future
July 21, 2010
In case you were not able to attend, some slides and presentation information from the second biennial Building the Data Center for the Future workshop are online for your viewing pleasure. The workshop, sponsored by the National Center for Supercomputing Applications, IBM, and HP Critical Facilities Services, was held on June 23rd and 24th in Champaign, Ill., and featured a range of presentations from academia, government, and the IT industry sounding off on the challenges involved in planning, designing, engineering, constructing, and maintaining HPC data centers of the distant and not-so-distant future. The themes of the workshop covered efficiency of extreme scale data centers, with an extensive look at different cooling strategies including water cooling technology and Green data center design.