Thursday 4 July 2013

Biotechnology - Exercise Reorganizes the Brain to Be More Resilient to Stress



Physical activity reorganizes the brain so that its response to stress is reduced and anxiety is less likely to interfere with normal brain function, according to a research team based at Princeton University.

The researchers report in the Journal of Neuroscience that when mice allowed to exercise regularly experienced a stressor -- exposure to cold water -- their brains exhibited a spike in the activity of neurons that shut off excitement in the ventral hippocampus, a brain region shown to regulate anxiety.
These findings potentially resolve a discrepancy in research related to the effect of exercise on the brain -- namely that exercise reduces anxiety while also promoting the growth of new neurons in the ventral hippocampus. Because these young neurons are typically more excitable than their more mature counterparts, exercise should result in more anxiety, not less. The Princeton-led researchers, however, found that exercise also strengthens the mechanisms that prevent these brain cells from firing.

For further reading : http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/07/130703160620.htm

Biotechnology - Antifreeze, Cheap Materials May Lead to Low-Cost Solar Energy

     



          A process combining some comparatively cheap materials and the same antifreeze that keeps an automobile radiator from freezing in cold weather may be the key to making solar cells that cost less and avoid toxic compounds, while further expanding the use of solar energy.

          And when perfected, this approach might also cook up the solar cells in a microwave oven similar to the one in most kitchens.
Engineers at Oregon State University have determined that ethylene glycol, commonly used in antifreeze products, can be a low-cost solvent that functions well in a "continuous flow" reactor -- an approach to making thin-film solar cells that is easily scaled up for mass production at industrial levels.


For further reading refer to: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/07/130704100841.htm

Source: www.sciencedaily.com

Thursday 4 April 2013

Third-Generation Device Significantly Improves Capture of Circulating Tumor Cells



A new system for isolating rare circulating tumor cells (CTCs) -- living solid tumor cells found at low levels in the bloodstream -- shows significant improvement over previously developed devices and does not require prior identification of tumor-specific target molecules. Developed at the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) Center for Engineering in Medicine and the MGH Cancer Center, the device rapidly delivers a population of unlabeled tumor cells that can be analyzed with both standard clinical diagnostic cytopathology and advanced genetic and molecular technology.

For further study visit : http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/04/130403141436.htm

Thursday 21 March 2013

Saturn V Engines Recovered in Atlantic


Some of the powerful engines that sent the first humans to the moon have been recovered from the sea. Jeff Bezos, the founder and Chief Executive Officer of the aerospace company Blue Origin and Amazon.com, announced on Wednesday, March 20, that his expedition has recovered two of the Saturn V's first-stage engines from the Atlantic Ocean.

The F-1 engine -- the most powerful single-nozzle, liquid-fueled rocket engine ever developed -- boosted the Saturn V rocket off the launch pad and on to the moon during NASA's Apollo program during the 1960s and 1970s. NASA is again looking at the large gas generator cycle engine to help develop the nation's next heavy-lift launch vehicle the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket.

For more visit: http://www.nasa.gov/topics/history/features/f1_engine.html

Sunday 17 March 2013

Hope for Autism Lies in Century-Old Drug



Testing a new theory, researchers have used a newly discovered function of an old drug to restore cell communications in a mouse model of autism, reversing symptoms of the disorder.

“Our cell danger theory suggests that autism happens because cells get stuck in a defensive metabolic mode and fail to talk to each other normally, which can interfere with brain development and function,” says Robert Naviaux, M.D., Ph.D., professor of medicine and co-director of the Mitochondrial and Metabolic Disease Center at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine. “We used a class of drugs that has been around for almost a century to treat other diseases to block the ‘danger’ signal in a mouse model, allowing cells to return to normal metabolism and restore cell communication.”

Nearly a dozen UC San Diego scientists from different disciplines collaborated to find a unifying mechanism that explains autism. Describing a completely new theory for the origin and treatment of autism using antipurinergic therapy (APT), Dr. Naviaux and colleagues introduce the concept that a large majority of both genetic and environmental causes for autism act by producing a sustained cell danger response—the metabolic state underlying innate immunity and inflammation.“When cells are exposed to classical forms of dangers, such as a virus, infection, or toxic environmental substance, a defense mechanism is activated,” Dr. Naviaux explained. “This results in changes to metabolism and gene expression, and reduces the communication between neighboring cells. Simply put, when cells stop talking to each other, children stop talking.”

Since mitochondria play a central role in both infectious and noninfectious cellular stress, innate immunity, and inflammation, Dr. Naviaux and colleagues searched for a signaling system in the body that was both linked to mitochondria and critical for innate immunity. They found it in extracellular nucleotides like adenosine triphosphate (ATP) and other mitokines—signaling molecules made by distressed mitochondria.

These mitokines have separate metabolic functions outside of the cell where they bind to and regulate receptors present on every cell of the body. Fifteen types of purinergic receptors are known to be stimulated by these extracellular nucleotides, and the receptors are known to control a broad range of biological characteristics with relevance to autism.The researchers tested suramin—a well-known inhibitor of purinergic signaling used medically for the treatment of African sleeping sickness since shortly after it was synthesized in 1916—in mice. They found that this APT mediator corrected autism-like symptoms in the animal model, even if the treatment was started well after the onset of symptoms.

For more visit - http://www.genengnews.com/gen-news-highlights/hope-for-autism-lies-in-century-old-drug/81248100/

Tuesday 12 March 2013

Philips Wants Devs' Bright Ideas for Its Web-Connected Light Bulbs




Dutch electronics giant Philips, which launched its Hue Web-connected LED home lighting system in October, released a development kit Monday in the hopes of integrating official applications -- and more possible home uses -- for its technology.

Developers can use the API as they choose, and can keep all their earnings from commercializing products. Some have already developed unofficial Hue apps, and Philips is trying to organize a robust development community that can lead to other potential devices for consumers to monitor and control home environments.


"It's my understanding that Philips does see a broad market for this offering and has invested appropriately in developing and promoting the product and the technology behind it," said Jonathan Collins, a principal analyst at ABI Research.
"There's a market for not just light bulbs, but also for connecting devices in the home," Julien Blin, a directing analyst at Infonetics, told TechNewsWorld. "But, until you add more intelligence -- meaning if you can make it connected to all other appliances in the home and add a smart algorithm that could learn and predict personal behaviors -- this might remain a science project."



For details visit: Philips Wants Devs' Bright Ideas for Its Web-Connected Light Bulbs

Indian Origins of Pumpkins and Cucumbers Confirmed



  In 2010, it was shown that melons and cucumbers can be traced back to India. Because of the importance of the region for an understanding of Cucurbitaceae evolution and diversity, a new checklist of the Cucurbitaceae of India was produced to update the information on that family.


   The study was published in the open access journal PhytoKeys.
   Vegetables are essential components of a healthy daily diet, not just in India but around the globe. Compared to grains and pulses, however, vegetables are under-investigated taxonomically, and information on their genome is scarce. The cucumber family, Cucurbitaceae, includes many of our favorite foods: pumpkins, melon, cucumber, watermelon, bottle gourds, and bitter gourd. Molecular data have recently revealed that both cucumber (Cucumis sativus L.) and melon (Cucumis melo L.) are indigenous to India and likely to have originated from the foothills of the Himalayas.
   Arun Pandey from the Department of Botany, University of Delhi, India and Susanne Renner from the Departments of Systematic Botany and Mycology, University of Munich, Germany decided to produce a checklist of the Cucurbitaceae of India that would bring up-to-date the information available for that family. The list treats 400 relevant names and provides information on the collecting locations for all type specimens. The list includes 94 species (10 of them endemic to India) from 31 genera.


For more visit: Indian origins of pumpkins and cucumbers confirmed

Thursday 7 March 2013

Species Revival: Should We Bring Back Extinct Animals?


On May 6, 1930, a Tasmanian farmer named Wilfred Batty grabbed a rifle and shot a thylacine—commonly known as a Tasmanian tiger—that was causing a commotion in his henhouse. The bullet hit the animal in the shoulder. Twenty minutes later, it was dead. A photograph taken soon afterward shows Batty kneeling beside the stiffened carcass, wearing a big floppy hat and a young man's proud grin.

You can't begrudge him some satisfaction in killing a threat to his livestock. What Batty did not know—could not know—is that he'd just made the last documented kill of a wild thylacine, anywhere, ever. In six years, the wonderfully odd striped-back creature—the largest marsupial carnivore known—would be extinct in captivity as well.

The thylacine is one of 795 extinct species on the International Union for Conservation of Nature's Red List, which since 1963 has been tracking the planet's biodiversity. The animals and plants on the list are organized into categories of increasing degrees of urgency, from "near threatened" through "critically endangered," until you reach the last "extinct" group, whereupon the urgency abruptly plummets to zero. An endangered species is like a very sick person: It needs help, desperately. An extinct species is like a dead person: beyond help, beyond hope. (Endangered animal portraits: See pictures-and bleak numbers.)

Or at least it has been, until now. For the first time, our own species—the one that has done so much to condemn those other 795 to oblivion—may be poised to bring at least some of them back. (Interactive map: Get a close look at 20 endangered species in the U.S.)

The Question of De-extinction

The gathering awareness that we have arrived at this threshold prompted a group of scientists and conservationists to meet at National Geographic headquarters in Washington, D.C., last year to discuss the viability of the science and the maturity of the ethical argument surrounding what has come to be known as de-extinction. Next week an expanded group will reconvene at National Geographic headquarters in a public TEDx conference.

People were fantasizing about reviving extinct forms of life long before Hollywood embedded the idea into our collective consciousness with Jurassic Park. Can we really do it? And if we can, why should we?


More at : Species Revival: Should We Bring Back Extinct Animals?

Evil Empire Beware: Gas Giant Planets are Hard to Destroy

Full article at: Space & Astronomy news - Technology Org

Last year, physicists worked out the plausibility of a fully functional (if not fictional) Death Star being able to destroy planets, and found that the Galactic Empire’s technological terror could indeed destroy Earth-like rocky planets, but a Jupiter-sized gas planet would be a tough challenge.

Now, real but theoretical modeling confirms that gas giants like Jupiter would be really hard to destroy by any means, including by stars that undergo periodic outbursts. Actual stars, that is, not Death Stars.

Alan Boss is a noted astrophysicist at the Carnegie Institution of Washington Department of Terrestrial Magnetism, who likes to create three dimensional models of planetary systems. In his recent work, he created a 3-D model to help understand the possible origins of Jupiter and Saturn, two gas giants in our Solar System.

“Gas giant planets, once formed, can be hard to destroy,” said Boss, “even during the energetic outbursts that young stars experience.”

Wednesday 6 March 2013

Google's latest Android browser promises faster surfing


Faster Web browsing and lower data use might be on the cards for Android mobile phone users if they download a new version of the Chrome Web browser offered by Google.
  • The latest Chrome Beta for Android, which was made available on Tuesday, includes an "experimental data compression feature" that Google said could reduce data loads by up to 60 percent on some sites.
  • The system works by sending most Web requests through a proxy server, which sits in between the user's browser and the destination Web server. 
  • The server is running SPDY, a Google-developed protocol designed to reduce the data size of Web content.
  • It does this through tricks such as compressing the text in pages, sending multiple simultaneous requests to a Web server and by transcoding images into a more efficient format called WebP.

WebP is a Google-developed image format that is said to reduce image size by 26 percent against PNG (Portable Network Graphics) images and by between 25 percent and 34 percent against the JPEG format. Support for the format is already in Chrome, Opera and Android from version 4.0 "Ice Cream Sandwich," and can be added to Internet Explorer with the Chrome Frame plug-in.

UNESCO seeks entrenchment of biotechnology in Africa for development



The United Nations Educational, Scientific & Cultural Organisation, UNESCO wants African governments to commence popularisation of biotechnology as the surest route to drive development in the continent.

The recommendation came at an international seminar on biotechnology held to formally commission the International Centre for Biotechnology, UNESCO Category 2 at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka recently.

Speaking, Director of Basic Sciences, Professor Maciej Nalecz, said biotechnology would enable Africa leapfrog competition from other continents because “it already has its hubs, so it does not need to be started from zero.’’

He said advocacy for and popularisation of biotechnology is needed in Africa in order to tackle agricultural- related issues such as food and nutrition safety, drought-resistant plant and tissue culture; health-related issues like tropical diseases, vaccines, pharmaceuticals; biomedical engineering such as artificial organs; energy issues biomass; and, material sciences, nanotechnology and many others.

For UNESCO, biotechnology is imperative in Africa. Nalecz justified the call stating that “’The issues of food and nutrition security and tropical diseases remain prime development challenges facing the African continent and there are tremendous opportunities to harness the power of modern biotechnology in addressing these challenges’’.

For further reading refer to : nationalmirroronline.net/new/unesco-seeks-entrenchment-of-biotechnology-in-africa/

New NASA Space Technology App Educates Users at Hypersonic Speeds



WASHINGTON -- Want to try your hand at landing an inflatable spacecraft? All you need is a smart phone, a computer or a tablet.

 NASA has released a new educational computer Web game based on its Hypersonic Inflatable Aerodynamic Decelerator (HIAD) project. The game can be played on the Internet and Apple and Android mobile devices.

 The application can be downloaded free from those mobile device stores and on NASA's HIAD website at:


         HIAD is an innovative inflatable spacecraft technology NASA is developing to allow giant cones of inner tubes stacked together to transport cargo to other planets or bring cargo back from the International Space Station. 

"This game will help introduce new generations to NASA technologies that may change the way we explore other worlds," said Mary Beth Wusk, HIAD project manager at NASA's Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va. "It gives players an idea of some of the engineering challenges rocket scientists face in designing spacecraft, and does it in a fun way."

The game's premise is an inflatable heat shield that returns cargo from the space station to Earth. As the HIAD summary puts it, "to successfully guide an inflatable spacecraft through the super heat of atmospheric reentry requires the right stuff. If you inflate too early, your shape is incorrect or your material isn't strong enough - you burn up. And if you get all that right and miss the target the mission is a bust."

The game offers four levels of engineering mastery and gives stars for each successful landing.
     
For more information refer to : www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2012/sep/HQ_12-309_HIAD_APP.html

Tuesday 5 March 2013

Modified bacteria turn waste into fat for fuel


               Feeding a plant waste-derived “sugar sauce” to genetically modified E. coli bacteria produces fatty acids in a project under development at Rice University. The carbon-rich acids can then be turned into fuel. Rice is part of a project funded by the Department of Agriculture to scale up the production of fuel and other petroleum-like products from biomass. Rice University "Green" chemistry developed at Rice University is at the center of a new government effort to turn plant waste into fatty acids, and then into fuel.

               The Rice lab of bioengineer Ka-Yiu San is part of a recently announced $25 million United States Department of Agriculture project to develop a new generation of renewable energy and bio-based products from switchgrass and forestry residues and from a new hybrid of sorghum being developed at Texas A&M University.

For further reading refer to: phys.org/news/2013-02-bacteria-fat-fuel.html





Twitter to stop Tweetdeck for Android and iPhone

       

     The micro-blogging platform Twitter  to stop Tweetdeck for Android and iPhone. The news reported on Monday. In the year 2011, May Twitter acquired Tweetdeck an application for organizing the display of tweets, for near $40 million.

         The report was confirmed in Tweetdeck’s blog post. The post says “TweetDeck is the most powerful Twitter tool for tracking real-time conversations. Its flexibility and customizable layout let you keep up with what’s happening on Twitter, across multiple topics and accounts, in real time. To continue to offer a great product that addresses your unique needs, we’re going to focus our development efforts on our modern, web-based versions of TweetDeck. To that end, we are discontinuing support for our older apps: TweetDeck AIR, TweetDeck for Android and TweetDeck for iPhone. They will be removed from their respective app stores in early May and will stop functioning shortly thereafter. We’ll also discontinue support for our Facebook integration.

For further reading refer to :http://www.socialpositives.com/2013/03/twitter-to-stop-tweetdeck-for-android-and-iphone/
http://www.ign.com/articles/2013/03/05/twitter-is-dropping-tweetdeck-for-ios-android-and-facebook
http://thenextweb.com/twitter/2013/03/05/twitter-kills-tweetdeck-for-iphone-android-and-desktop-to-focus-on-modern-web-editions/


The Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS-02)



         The Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS-02) is a state-of-the-art particle physics detector designed to operate as an external module on the International Space Station. It will use the unique environment of space to study the universe and its origin by searching for antimatter, dark matter while performing precision measurements of cosmic rays composition and flux. The AMS-02 observations will help answer fundamental questions, such as "What makes up the universe's invisible mass?" or "What happened to the primordial antimatter?"

             After final testing at ESA's European Space Research and Technology Centre (ESTEC) facility in the Netherlands,delivery to the Kennedy Space Center in Florida took place on 26 August 2010. The launch of Space Shuttle Endeavour flight STS-134 carrying AMS-02 took place on 16 May 2011, and the spectrometer was installed on 19 May 2011. In July 2012, it was reported that AMS-02 had recorded over 18 billion cosmic ray events since its installation. 

Monday 4 March 2013

Another asteroid similar to Russian meteor zooming past us harmlessly




A newly found asteroid will pass by Earth at about the distance of the moon's orbit on Monday.

    Its name is 2013 EC, and was discovered by the Mount Lemmon Observatory in Arizona on Saturday. It is roughly the size of the space rock that exploded over Russia two and a half weeks ago, measuring somewhere between 10 and 17 meters (33 to 55 feet) wide. The asteroid that sparked the Russian meteor is estimated to have been about 17 meters wide when it entered Earth’s atmosphere.There is no chance this asteroid will hit Earth.

For further reading refer to: http://science.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/03/03/17171923-another-asteroid-similar-to-russian-meteor-zooming-past-us-harmlessly?lite

Early warning system provides four-month forecast of malaria epidemics in northwest india


Mar. 3, 2013 — Sea surface temperatures in the tropical South Atlantic Ocean can be used to accurately forecast, by up to four months, malaria epidemics thousands of miles away in northwestern India, a University of Michigan theoretical ecologist and her colleagues have found.

Colder-than-normal July sea surface temperatures in the tropical South Atlantic are linked to both increased monsoon rainfall and malaria epidemics in the arid and semi-arid regions of northwest India, including the vast Thar desert, according to Mercedes Pascual and her colleagues, who summarize their findings in a paper to be published online March 3 in the journal Nature Climate Change.

For further reading refer to : Early warning system provides four-month forecast of malaria epidemics in northwest india

Brooklyn Museum presents new installation of Masterpieces of Arts of the Americas Collection

Google open-sources Zopfli compression algorithm to speed up Web downloads


Google is open-sourcing a new general purpose data compression library called Zopfli that can be used to speed up Web downloads.
The Zopfli Compression Algorithm, which got its name from a Swiss bread recipe, is an implementation of the Deflate compression algorithm that creates a smaller output size compared to previous techniques, wrote Lode Vandevenne, a software engineer with Google's Compression Team, on the Google Open Source Blog on Thursday.


The smaller compressed size allows:
  •  better space utilization
  •  faster data transmission
  • lower Web page load latencies
  • additional benefits in mobile use, such as lower data transfer fees and reduced battery use.

The more exhaustive compression techniques used achieve higher data density but also make the compression a lot slower. This does not affect the decompression speed though, Vandenne wrote.

  • Zopfli is a compression-only library and existing software can be used to decompress the data, he said.
  •  Zopfli is compatible with Zip, PNG, gzip and HTTP requests among others, Vandevenne added.
  • Zopfli's output is generally 3 percent to 8 percent smaller compared to zlib, another compression library based on the Deflate compression algorithm, according to Vandevenne. 
  • "We believe that Zopfli represents the state of the art in Deflate-compatible compression," he said.
  • "This compressor takes more time (~100x slower), but compresses around 5 percent better than zlib and better than any other zlib-compatible compressor we have found," Google said on Zopfli's Google Code page. 
  • The code is available under Apache License 2.0.
  • The new compression library however requires 2 to 3 times more CPU time than zlib at maximum quality. Therefore, it is best suited for applications where data is compressed once and sent over the network many times, such as static content for the Web, Vandevenne said.

Vandevenne and his colleague Jyrki Alakuijala, a Google software engineer who also worked on the project, recommend in their research paper to use Zopfli "for compression of static content and other content where data transfer or storage costs are more significant than the increase in CPU time."
"By open sourcing Zopfli, thus allowing webmasters to better optimize the size of frequently accessed static content, we hope to make the Internet a bit faster for all of us," Vandevenne said.


Sunday 3 March 2013

Reprogramming Adult Cells to Stem Cells Works Better With One Gene Turned Off

The removal of a genetic roadblock could improve the efficiency of converting adult cells into stem cells by 10 to 30 times, report scientists from The Methodist Hospital Research Institute and two other institutions in the latest issue of Cell.




"The discovery six years ago that scientists can convert adult cells into inducible pluripotent stem cells, or iPSCs, bolstered the dream that a patient's own cells might be reprogrammed to make patient-specific iPSCs for regenerative medicine, modeling human diseases in petri dishes, and drug screening," said Rongfu Wang, Ph.D., Principal Investigator and Director of the Center for Inflammation and Epigenetics. "But reprogramming efficiency has remained very low, impeding its applications in the clinic."

For further reading refer to http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/03/130301153247.htm

SpaceX Unmanned Dragon Cargo Capsule Arrives at Space Station



The unmanned Dragon cargo capsule, built by the private spaceflight company SpaceX, was captured by astronauts wielding the space station's robotic arm at 5:31 a.m. EST (1031 GMT) on March 3 as both spacecraft sailed 243 miles above Northern Ukraine.

        For further reading refer to http://www.space.com/20041-spacex-dragon-capsule-space-station.html