Microsoft announced on Wednesday that it has released to the AIDS research community the source code for four analytical software tools, a move intended to aid the development of a vaccine for the disease.
The source code, available as a free download from Microsoft's CodePlex Web site, is designed to use the software giant's machine-learning technology to sort through thousands of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) strains. Researchers hope to use the technology to identify genetic patterns that could help them train an infected person's immune system to combat the virus.
AIDs researchers will have the choice of either downloading the four tools and using their preconfigured format or using the source code to develop their own applications.
One tool, PhyloD, seeks correlations between a patient's human leukocyte antigen (HLA)--a key component of the immune system--and the virus. A second tool, Epitope Prediction, is designed for people with any type of HLA and aims to scan proteins for the part of the antigen that elicits an immune response, or epitope.
The HLA Assignment tool, meanwhile, aims to improve the accuracy in finding epitopes, while the HLA Completion tool is designed to provide greater granular detail about a person's genetic makeup by addressing the hierarchy of his or her immune system's HLA types.
The HLA Completion tool was released Wednesday.
Microsoft began applying some of its technology to AIDS research in 2005, after it discovered its machine-learning technology could be used for such purposes. The research has included the efforts of roughly a dozen Microsoft researchers, who worked with doctors and scientists in Microsoft labs.
"We apply technology to some of the world's toughest technical and societal challenges," David Heckerman, lead researcher of Microsoft's Machine Learning and Applied Statistics Group, said in a statement. "And with 10,000 people per day dying of AIDS, this world health crisis is certainly one of those challenges."
In anticipation of this annoucement, the Open Source and Free Software communities have since 1980 released the source code to *all* of their software to researchers in AIDS, Tuberculosis, Smallpox, Anthrax, Ebola, Lou Gherig's Disease, Multiple Sclerosis, Quasars, Black Holes, Quantum Dots, Deforestation, Climate Change, and Sports Scores, as well as that strange dude down the street who can't do anything unless it's somehow a Star Wars reference.
MIT creates a simulation to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Spacewar. A relic of the early days of minicomputers, it was one of the first computer video games and set the stage for many others, including Asteroids.
AstrologyDating.com is a new site that tries to find you your perfect love on the basis of birth date, birth time, and birthplace. But will it tell you the truth? Well, it asks you to pay only per match. So I tried it.
The Web fulminates when it is revealed that executives from VEVO--vehement music industry antipirates--played a pirated stream of an NFL playoff game at a party. VEVO claims it left its Wi-Fi unsupervised. Have we heard that argument before?
Tor's "obfsproxy" technology would make encrypted data look innocuous and let it dodge government censors. That could help citizens in Iran reach blocked sites as antigovernment protests reportedly loom.
iPhones and Angry Birds aside, the arcade endures. Crave pays a visit--and offers up an homage to games and gamers of years past and a tribute to the possibly endangered, but not yet dead, atmosphere of the arcade itself.
This news is a Good Thing. Don't knock them for it.