Angry antibodies

Monoclonal Antibodies: The Guided Missiles Of Medicine

Whenever anyone mentions the word “antibodies” these days, it’s sure to grab your attention. Thoughts generally flow to the human immune system and the role it plays in the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, and to how our bodies fight off disease in general. The immune system is complex in the extreme, but pretty much everyone knows that antibodies are part of it and that they’re vital to the ability of the body to recognize and neutralize invaders like bacteria and viruses.

But as important as antibodies are to long-term immunity and the avoidance of disease, that’s far from all they’re good for. The incredible specificity of antibodies to their target antigens makes them powerful tools for biological research and clinical diagnostics, like rapid COVID-19 testing. The specificity of antibodies has also opened up therapeutic modalities that were once the stuff of science-fiction, where custom-built antibodies act like a guided missile to directly attack not only a specific protein in the body, but sometimes even a specific part of a protein.

Making these therapies work, though, requires special antibodies: monoclonal antibodies. These are very much in the news recently, not only as a possible treatment for COVID-19 but also to treat everything from rheumatoid arthritis to the very worst forms of cancer. But what exactly are monoclonal antibodies, how are they made, and how do they work?

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Bringing A Ruined Game Boy Cart Back To Life With Tons Of Soldering

Retro consoles and handhelds are full of nostalgia and happy memories for many. However, keeping these machines and their media going can be a difficult job at times. [Taylor] was challenged to rescue a copy of Kirby’s Dream Land for the original Game Boy, and set about the task.

The cartridge was badly corroded, with many of the traces eaten through, rendering the game inoperable. First, all the components were removed, and the board was cleaned. This allowed easy access to the traces across the whole board. Then, the job was to delicately remove some solder mask from the parts of the traces still remaining, and bridge the gaps with fine copper wire. Even worse, several vias were damaged, which [Taylor] tackled by feeding jumper wires through the board and executing a repair on each side.

It’s a simple enough repair for the experienced hand, but virtually magic to a retro gaming fan that doesn’t know how to solder. [Taylor] has given us a great example of how to deal with corroded carts properly, with enough detail to be quite educational to the beginner.

We’ve seen other great work in this vein too, like an Amiga 2000 brought back from a horrible creeping green death. If you’ve done your own retro rescue, be sure to drop us a line!

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German Experiment Shows Horses Beating Local Internet Connections

These days, we’re blessed with wired and wireless networks that can carry huge amounts of data in the blink of an eye. However, some areas are underprovisioned with bandwidth, such as Schmallenberg-Oberkirchen in Germany. There, reporters ran a test last December to see which would be faster: the Internet, or a horse?

The long and the short of it is that Germany faces issues with disparate Internet speeds across the country. Some areas are well-served by high-speed fiber services. However, others deemed less important by the free market struggle on with ancient copper phone lines and subsequently, experience lower speeds.

Thus, the experiment kicked off from the house of photographer [Klaus-Peter Kappest], who started an Internet transfer of 4.5GB of photos over the Internet. At the same time, a DVD was handed to messengers riding on horseback to the destination 10 kilometers away. The horses won the day, making the journey in about an hour, while the transfer over [Kappest’s] copper connection was still crawling along, only 61% complete.

Obviously, it’s a test that can be gamed quite easily. The Internet connection would have easily won over a greater distance, of course. Similarly, we’ve all heard the quote from [Andrew Tanenbaum]: “Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes hurtling down the highway.”

Notably, [Kappest’s] home actually had a fiber line sitting in the basement, but bureaucracy had stymied any attempts of his to get it connected. The stunt thus also served as a great way to draw attention to his plight, and that of others in Germany suffering with similar issues in this digital age.

Top speeds for data transfer continue to rise; an Australian research team set a record last year of 44.2 terabits per second. Naturally, the hard part is getting that technology rolled out across a country. Sound off below with the problems you’ve faced getting a solid connection to your home or office.