Month: October 2016

Enlarge / The structure of the human factor VIII. (credit: University of Washington)

Rational drug design seems so promising. So, you know, rational. How could it not work? Here’s the premise:

• 1. Identify a drug that has a desired effect. This is usually done either by screening a library of possible drugs or even of random chemicals, or by actively searching for a molecule hypothesized to be active against a cellular target of interest.
• 2. Figure out how the candidate drug works. What is its target is in the cell? How does it interact with said target?
• 3. Design a drug that optimizes its attraction to the target so that the final drug binds more strongly to its target, or stays bound for longer, or doesn’t accidentally also bind to something else.

Optimizing can be done by tweaking a drug’s interaction with its target: changing its shape, size, or electric charge so that it fits better. These modifications can be designed and assayed on a computer before a drug is synthesized and tested in the real world—first against a drug’s isolated target, then in cultured cells, and then animals. If all those work out, the modified drug may eventually be tested in humans.

The strategy has yielded some spectacular successes, most notably HIV protease inhibitors. But rational drug design is costly, in terms of time, money, materials, and effort. And too often it yields end products that are too toxic to be used pharmacologically, even if they bind their target well.

SAN JOSE, Calif.—As great as it is enjoying untethered virtual reality on devices like Samsung's Gear VR and Google Daydream, these portable experiences are held back by their lack of full head-tracking. Without it, you're pretty much stuck sitting in one place and tilting your head on a swivel—you can't even shift side-to-side or lean down to look at a virtual object without the entire virtual world moving along with you.

As Oculus announced Thursday, the company is actively looking to fix this problem with "a completely new category" of virtual reality headset with "inside-out" tracking technology. By using cameras built in to the device itself, combined with computer vision algorithms, inside-out tracking lets a headset calculate your position and head angle as you walk freely about a room, with no external cameras or PC/console tether required.

I got a chance to try out an early prototype of Oculus' effort, dubbed the "Santa Cruz" prototype, at the company's Oculus Connect conference late this week. The prototype isn't perfect, but it already shows a lot of promise and a distinct vision for what portable VR will look like in the future.

We review the McLaren 570S. Video shot and edited by Jennifer Hahn. (video link)

Few car companies have quite the same cachet as McLaren Automotive (just ask Apple). Some of that stems from the halos of the mighty McLaren F1, still in effect almost two decades after it ceased production, and the P1 hybrid hypercar. But the total number of those models in existence is still under 500. For the past few years, the company's bread and butter—if one can refer to handmade carbon fiber supercars as such—has been the Super Series. First we got the MP4-12C (which quickly dropped the MP4- bit), then the 650S and 675LT.

The 650S impressed us more than almost any other car we drove in 2015, but McLaren wants to sell between 4,000 and 5,000 cars a year by 2022. That's hard to do when vehicles cost $300,000 a pop. Enter the Sports Series, AKA the 570S. This, you see, is the entry-level McLaren—but entry level in this case means the base price starts at $184,900. It's built in the same space-age fantasy production center in Woking, UK, as the rest of the McLaren range, and the 570S shares much of the same core technology.

Enlarge (credit: Nate Anderson)

Welcome to Ars Cardboard, our weekend look at tabletop games. Check out our complete board gaming coverage at cardboard.arstechnica.com.

Trump: The Game has a tagline: “It takes brains to make millions. It takes Trump to make billions.”

And if you plan on playing, you’d better enjoy trying to become Donald Trump. Though the underlying gameplay is simply about auctioning off properties and trying to make more money than other players, this is one of those board games where you have to at least not dislike the theme—because Trump’s gold-plated presence is everywhere.

Enlarge (credit: Valentina Palladino)

As smart home security cameras become more and more common, you'd think their prices would start coming down. However, most new cameras still retail for $200 or more, and that's just for one camera that monitors one area of your home. Blink's approach is different: much like smart light bulbs, a Blink system connects multiple smart cameras via a hub and makes all of them controllable via a mobile app.

For just $169, you get two cameras you can place throughout your home, which is a great deal considering you'll pay more for just one camera from competitors. While the Blink system has most security cameras beat in price, some caveats are worth considering before taking the plunge.

Design: More for your money

Every Blink system starts with a hub and one or more cameras. One camera and a hub costs $99, but there are two-, three-, and five-camera bundles to choose from. After starting your system, additional cameras are just $75 per unit. I tested a system that came with a hub and two separate cameras, all of which came in small, square boxes to reflect their small, square shapes.