Spam helps cure AIDSNice it has a useBy Nick Farrell: Wednesday 02 March 2005, 06:35BOFFINS at the Royal Perth Hospital in Western Australia and techies from software giant Microsoft are working out a way of killing spam and AIDS in one go.Apparently the two outfits think that if you can come up with computer techniques that kill spam, you can also develop a vaccine against the killer illness.The cunning plan uses \"machine learning\" and data mining to decipher HIV's genetic ability to constantly change and disguise itself from immune system deletion.A physician and computer scientist at the Vole hill Dr David Heckerman said that AIDS mutates a lot but there was a definite pattern. It is just that finding it is so difficult that it is impossible to make a vaccine.The are hoping that technology that was developed in the fight against spam will show them the way to find this pattern of mutation.According to the Seattle Post Intelligencer, it is hoped a computer can learn to decipher fundamental repeat patterns about HIV's genetic variability and narrow the search for vaccine targets.
