Last year, researchers at The University of Nottingham discovered a new layer in the human cornea. The latest research from the team shows this new layer, called Dua's Layer, makes an important contribution to the sieve-like meshwork in the periphery of the cornea. Defective drainage in this area is an important cause of glaucoma; a condition that affects 1% to 2% of the world's population.

Professor Dua said: "Many surgeons who perform lamellar corneal transplant recognise this layer as an important part of the surgical anatomy of the cornea. This new finding resulting from a study of the microanatomy of the periphery of the layer could have significance beyond corneal surgery."

For the first time, a team of chemists and engineers at Penn State University have placed tiny synthetic motors inside live human cells , propelled them with ultrasonic waves and steered them magnetically. It's not exactly "Fantastic Voyage," but it's close. The nanomotors, which are rocket-shaped metal particles, move around inside the cells, spinning and battering against the cell membrane.

"As these nanomotors move around and bump into structures inside the cells, the live cells show internal mechanical responses that no one has seen before," said Tom Mallouk, Evan Pugh Professor of Materials Chemistry and Physics at Penn State. "This research is a vivid demonstration that it may be possible to use synthetic nanomotors to study cell biology in new ways. We might be able to use nanomotors to treat cancer and other diseases by mechanically manipulating cells from the inside. Nanomotors could perform intracellular surgery and deliver drugs noninvasively to living tissues."

Just a quick update on the progress after its first week of life:

• Thursday : registered the pipedot.org domain!
• Friday : setup the DNS and mail servers.
• Saturday : Web, database, and memcache servers built up.
• Sunday : Load balancer added to balance between the two webservers. Also finished setting up the HTTPS certificate and IPv6 support.
• Monday : Initial look, logos, icons and CSS design.
• Tuesday : Database-backed stories (no more static placeholders).
• Wednesday : Login system was enabled.
• Thursday : The first poll was posted late Thursday in time for Valentines Day on Friday.
• Saturday : Topics and the Pipe activated.
• Sunday : Threaded comments and user-submitted stories enabled.

At this point, every page, except for search, is now a completely real page that renders from the database.

The code base is all new (not based on Slashcode) and using modern web technologies (nginx instead of Apache, no Perl CGI, etc...). There are currently six servers plus a load balancer with more webservers available to spin up as needed. Sections of code that are either CPU heavy or database intensive (threaded comments) are able to be memcached to maintain performance.

Stay tuned for the next week of updates!

Friends of this website, Soylent News, have been working hard at a similar project: to replace Slashdot from the ground up. Everything is being driven by the community and volunteer work, and they are now working on a business model; truly inspiring. They have just launched this moment and we want to acknowledge their work.

I used to visit Slashdot quite often, but if Dice Holdings decide to switch the interface to what is currently known as "Beta", I'll have to find another site for my "stuff that matters"-fix.

So, Pipedot, what sites can you recommend for a "maybe-ex" /. user?