Latest in Science & Technology

'Air shower' set to cut water use by 30 percent

2006-11-09T19:10:00.000-08:00

As Australians become increasingly alert to the importance of using water wisely in the home, CSIRO researchers have found a way to use a third less water when you shower – by adding air.

The scientists have developed a simple 'air shower' device which, when fitted into existing showerheads, fills the water droplets with a tiny bubble of air. The result is the shower feels just as wet and just as strong as before, but now uses much less water.

The researchers, from CSIRO Manufacturing Materials Technology in Melbourne, say the device increases the volume of the shower stream while reducing the amount of water used by about 30 per cent.

Given the average Australian household uses about 200,000 litres of water a year, and showers account for nearly a third of this, the 'air shower' could help the average household save about 15,000-20,000 litres a year. If you extend this across the population, that is an annual saving of more than 45,000 Olympic-sized swimming pools.

The Aerated Showerhead creates the sensation of having a full and steady stream of water even though the water is now more like a wet shell around a bubble of air.

While the general concept of using an aerated showerhead to save water is not new, the technology behind the CSIRO's device is novel.

Developed by a team led by Dr Jie Wu, the aeration device is a small nozzle that fits inside a standard showerhead. The nozzle uses a small Venturi tube – a tube for which the diameter varies, creating a difference in pressure and fluid speed. Air is sucked into the Venturi tube as a result of the partial vacuum created, causing air and water to mix, forming tiny bubbles within the water stream.

"The nozzle creates a vacuum that sucks in air and forces it into the water stream," Dr Wu says.

"We make the water droplets in the stream hollow and the bubbles expand the volume of the shower stream."

Small-scale experiments using the aeration device found that people detected no difference in water pressure, sensation, or overall perception of showering.

After almost two years of research and development, CSIRO is ready to take the aerated shower head technology to the commercialisation stage.

"We have very promising results on the aerated showerhead's water-saving potential. Now we are looking for commercialisation partners who will be involved in the development needed to turn the technology into a marketable device," Dr Wu says.

He expects the nozzle would cost less than AUD$20 and could be installed by householders.

Contact: Dr. Dilip Manuel
Dilip.Manuel@csiro.au
61-392-526-083
CSIRO Australia

Iowa State corn/soy plastics to be made into hog feeders

2006-09-23T01:46:00.000-07:00

Larock, a University Professor of chemistry at Iowa State University, found the thin, square piece he was looking for and smacked it against his hand. This one is made from soybean oil reinforced with glass fibers, he said. And it's the kind of tough bioplastic he and his industrial collaborators will use to develop, test and manufacture new hog feeders.
Richard Larock displays some of the plastics he has made from corn, soybean and other bio-based oils. Larock said his research project is about as Iowa as you can get. The state, after all, is the country's leading producer of corn, soybeans and pork.
The project is partially supported by a grant of $96,000 from the Grow Iowa Values Fund, a state economic development program. Larock is working with AgVantage Inc., a Rockford, Ill., company with manufacturing facilities in Iowa, and R3 Composites, a Muscatine manufacturer.
Larock has invented and patented a process for producing various bioplastics from inexpensive natural oils, which make up 40 percent to 80 percent of the plastics. Larock said the plastics have excellent thermal and mechanical properties and are very good at dampening noises and vibrations. They're also very good at returning to their original shapes when they're heated.
And so Larock is optimistic about the future of bioplastics in commercial applications: "This project should create new technology and jobs, expand opportunities for bio-based industries and agricultural suppliers, decrease our dependence on oil, strengthen the agricultural economy of Iowa, utilize ISU patented technology, provide new markets for farmers and marry new agricultural product development with sophisticated manufacturing skills and the knowledge to commercialize these projects," he wrote in a summary of the hog feeder project.
Ron Hagemann, a principal with AgVantage, said designs for a bioplastic hog feeder have been drawn up. The designs include radio frequency identification technology that can monitor and record the feeding habits of individual hogs. Molds for the high-tech feeders should be completed later this year and prototypes should be ready for testing in a hog building next spring. If all goes well, he said a product should be ready for commercialization by the end of next year.
Hagemann said the feeders' biggest advantage in the marketplace will be material costs. Corn and soybean oils are significantly cheaper than petrochemicals. And that's particularly true when oil prices are high.
Hagemann said he expects this project to be a very good test of Larock's plastics.
Hogs, after all, aren't known for being gentle with their feeders.
"I've told Richard that if we can do this, it's all downhill from here," Hagemann said.
But Larock isn't stopping with the feeder project. He's looking at adding other low-cost agricultural ingredients to his bioplastics. He's now studying whether distillers dried grains, a co-product of ethanol production that's sold as animal feed, can add strength to his bioplastics.
Contact: Richard Larock
larock@iastate.edu
515-294-4660
Iowa State University

Scientists develop technology for roll-up laptop screens

2006-09-23T01:44:00.000-07:00

New ‘morphing’ structures have multiple applications

Scientists at the University of Cambridge have developed a range of unique, shape-changing structures, which can be used as roll-up display screens (such as laptop screens), re-usable packaging, roll-up keyboards and self-erecting, temporary habitats.
These structures, also known as ‘morphing’ structures, afford multiple configurations without the need of complex parts or sophisticated manufacturing. Dr Keith Seffen, from the Department of Engineering, has developed the structures and is currently exploring various applications for their ingenious behaviour with co-worker Dr Simon Guest and graduate student Alex Norman.
Dr Seffen said, “They offer substantial shape-changing capabilities whilst preserving structural integrity. They are simply made and their operation does not rely upon advanced materials. They afford compact, inexpensive solutions for multifunctional devices, which are required to be lightweight, stiff, but foldable on demand.”
By using an ordinary sheet of metal, Dr Seffen can produce structures with no moving parts but which can be configured between at least two distinct, self-locking and stable forms. For example, an A5-sized flat screen can be snapped into the shape of a tube for compact carriage in a briefcase or pocket.
The operation does not require hinges, latches or locks, and without these extra parts, production times and costs are reduced compared to traditional folding structures.
Genevieve Maul, University of Cambridge Office of Communications, Tel: + 44 (0) 1223 332300, e-mail: Genevieve.Maul@admin.cam.ac.uk
Robert Fender, Cambridge Enterprise Tel: + 44 (0) 1223 760339 e-mail: robert.fender@enterprise.cam.ac.uk

Hope for significant new diabetes treatment in Stanford discovery

2006-09-23T01:40:00.001-07:00

STANFORD, Calif. - Certain immune-suppressing drugs, such as those taken by patients who have had organ transplants, greatly increase the risk of developing diabetes. These drugs are known to put a stranglehold on a protein called calcineurin.
So it's not exactly a surprise that Seung Kim, MD, PhD, assistant professor of developmental biology at the Stanford University School of Medicine, chose to study why calcineurin inhibition leads to the disease. What is surprising is just how central calcineurin turns out to be in the health and happiness of the insulin-producing pancreatic beta cells. His findings, to be published in the Sept. 21 issue of Nature, could shake up diabetes research, lead to new classes of diabetes drugs and aid in efforts to develop stem cell treatments for diabetes.
"This work has the potential to be big," said Scott Campbell, PhD, vice president of research for the American Diabetes Association. He said that drugs based on this research could potentially expand the numbers of the few beta cells that remain in diabetics and make those cells perform better. "That would have a major impact on the lives of people with diabetes."
In diabetes, the beta cells produce too little insulin or none at all, which prevents cells of the body from being able to take in sugar after a meal. Sugar accumulates in the blood, damaging the blood vessels, kidneys and eyes. Diabetics are also prone to nerve damage. In the United States, 20.8 million people, or 7 percent of the population, have diabetes.
Knowing the potential link between calcineurin-inhibiting drugs and diabetes, Kim and MD/PhD graduate student Jeremy Heit collaborated with Gerald Crabtree, MD, professor of pathology, in a series of experiments to clarify the connection. They worked with mice that had been bred to produce calcineurin in the pancreas only until they were born. After birth, the pancreas in each mouse stopped producing the protein. By 12 weeks of age, the mice, which had been born with a normal number of beta cells, were severely diabetic.
Squelching calcineurin prevented the beta cells from increasing their numbers as the mice grew - more body mass requires more beta cells to keep blood sugar in check. It also reduced the amount of insulin made by the existing beta cells. What's more, calcineurin was found to regulate 10 genes that already had been associated with diabetes.
"This work has led us and others to think in entirely new ways about diabetes," Heit said. Until now people had identified individual genes or processes that were involved in diabetes. The new findings show that these lines of research are connected through a common regulator in calcineurin.
Heit and Kim used further genetic trickery to bypass calcineurin by artificially activating its protein sidekick, called NFAT. Beta cells lacking calcineurin but with active NFAT behaved normally, multiplying as the mice aged and producing normal amounts of insulin.
The implications of these findings are many:
Drugs that enhance the activity of calcineurin or NFAT could become a new treatment for type-2, or adult-onset diabetes, in which the beta cells don't produce enough insulin.
Drugs that inhibit calcineurin or NFAT could treat diseases in which the beta cells produce too much insulin, such as hypoglycemia or some pancreatic tumors.
Treating isolated beta cells with drugs that enhance calcineurin could make those cells divide, producing more cells for transplantation.
Activating calcineurin could help Kim in his efforts to direct embryonic stem cells to become insulin-producing cells.
Kim, whose work in diabetes includes the development of islet cells, identifying new drug targets and potential stem cell treatments, said the calcineurin findings have wide-ranging implications. "The finding that the calcineurin pathway regulates other pathways in the beta cell makes it highly relevant to many areas of diabetes research," he said.
Campbell said the next step is to verify that the findings in mice also hold true in humans. "This is a step in the right direction and a major leap forward, but now we need to take it into to humans," he said.
Contact: Amy Adams
amyadams@stanford.edu
650-723-3900
Stanford University Medical Center

Climate secrets -- past, present and future revealed with new tool

2006-09-21T04:22:00.000-07:00

Made possible through National Science Foundation funding, the XRF Core Scanner will be able to chemically analyze earth and marine sediment cores quickly to find answers to historic climate changes.
VIRGINIA KEY, FLA. A few years ago, chemical analyses of deep sea muds that used a new X-ray technology were able to help explain why the Classic Mayan civilization collapsed more than a thousand years ago. At the University of Miami Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science, a new tool will apply a similar technology to find answers to historic climate changes from earth and marine sediment core samples. The XRF (X-ray Fluorescence) Core Scanner is only the second to make its way to the United States, and the first of this new and improved model made by Avaatech, a company based in the Netherlands.
"From a paleoclimate researcher's perspective, this is a dream come true," said Larry C. Peterson, associate dean of students and the marine geology professor whose lab houses the scanner. "There is a tremendous amount of information about earth history preserved in the chemical composition of sediments deposited on the ocean floor, in lakes, and on land. By measuring the concentration of specific elements in these sediments, the XRF Core Scanner can help us document the history of drastic climate variations and past geological events, giving us more of an idea of the current and future state of our environment."
Made possible through National Science Foundation funding, the XRF Core Scanner will be able to chemically analyze sediment cores quickly and without any physical damage. "Previously, analyses of this type could only be done by a time-consuming process of sampling the cores, then preparing and chemically analyzing the individual samples. The Core Scanner now allows us to determine the complete chemical composition of the same cores without disturbing them, and at a speed and measurement resolution previously unimaginable. What normally would take weeks or months of laboratory time can now be done within a few hours," said Peterson. Data collected from each scan are transferred directly to computers in his lab for analysis. Once cores are loaded in the Core Scanner, the instrument can be operated from remote locations over the Internet.
Peterson and his German collaborator, Gerald Haug, were featured in the July/August 2005 issue of American Scientist for their work studying core samples taken from the Cariaco Basin off the Venezuelan coast. Using a similar XRF machine, the scientists were able to find geological records of severe droughts between 800 and 1000 AD – coincident with the collapse of Classic Mayan civilization.
"We have a collection of several thousand sediment cores from all the world's oceans stored here at the university," Peterson said. "For each sample we take or receive, we usually study half and archive the remaining portion. Those archives will comprise the greater part of our research right now. We have a number of ongoing research projects, focusing mostly on climate change in the tropics, for which this new instrument will be invaluable."
Contact: Ivy Kupec
ikupec@miami.edu
305-421-4704
University of Miami Rosenstiel School of Marine & Atmospheric Science

How space travel affects the hearts of Space Shuttle astronauts

2006-09-21T04:04:00.000-07:00

Study evaluates loss of heart mass in astronauts

Andover, Mass. – Royal Philips Electronics (NYSE: PHG, AEX: PHI) announced today that the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is using the Philips iE33 echocardiography system and QLAB Quantification software to evaluate the effects of space flight on the hearts of Space Shuttle astronauts and, in the near future, astronauts on the International Space Station and ground-based analogs. Of interest to NASA researchers is the loss of heart mass brought on by space flight.
Astronauts commonly are thought to lose heart mass during prolonged flight. Two-dimensional echocardiography measurements reveal a 5 percent decrease, which usually returns within three days of being back on Earth. Researchers are interested in learning the cause of these changes. Possible explanations include heart atrophy caused by weightlessness, dehydration from space travel or error caused by the geometric assumptions used in two-dimensional echo.
The new technology being used captures a full-volume image of the beating heart in less than a minute and allows physicians to examine the heart as if they were holding it in their hands. It also allows the researchers to make accurate measurements of heart mass, ejection fraction, blood flow, strain rate and cardiac wall motion pre- and post-flight.
“We have a very short window of time in which to do an echo exam on the astronauts,” said David S. Martin of Wyle Laboratories, Inc., ultrasound lead for the NASA Cardiovascular Laboratory at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. “Live 3D Echo allows us to quickly grab all the image data we need to do a full examination of the heart anatomy and function and send the astronauts on their way. Following the image acquisition, we use off-line analysis software to do several measurements that help us evaluate changes after space travel.”
The use of this heart imaging and measurement technology will be part of ongoing research at the NASA Cardiovascular Laboratory. It will also complement the imaging done by a modified Philips HDI 5000 ultrasound system that was installed in the International Space Station’s Human Research Facility in 2001.
“These new ultrasound technologies help us efficiently conduct sophisticated cardiac research of astronauts and the effects of microgravity,” said Martin.
For further information please contact:
Steve Kelly
Philips Medical Systems
Tel +1 425 487 7479
email steve.kelly@philips.com
About Royal Philips Electronics
Royal Philips Electronics of the Netherlands (NYSE: PHG, AEX: PHI) is one of the world's biggest electronics companies and Europe's largest, with sales of EUR 30.4 billion in 2005. With activities in the three interlocking domains of healthcare, lifestyle and technology and 158,000 employees in more than 60 countries, it has market leadership positions in medical diagnostic imaging and patient monitoring, color television sets, electric shavers, lighting and silicon system solutions.

Arctic summer ice anomaly shocks scientists

2006-09-20T22:53:00.000-07:00

The image is an Envisat ASAR mosaic of Arctic ice acquired on Aug. 24, 2005. (Courtesy: Polar View)

Satellite images acquired from 23 to 25 August 2006 have shown for the first time dramatic openings – over a geographic extent larger than the size of the British Isles – in the Arctic's perennial sea ice pack north of Svalbard, and extending into the Russian Arctic all the way to the North Pole.
Observing data from Envisat's Advanced Synthetic Aperture Radar (ASAR) instrument and the AMSR-E instrument aboard the EOS Aqua satellite, scientists were able to determine that around 5-10 percent of the Arctic's perennial sea ice, which had survived the summer melt season, has been fragmented by late summer storms. The area between Spitzbergen, the North Pole and Severnaya Zemlya is confirmed by AMSR-E to have had much lower ice concentrations than witnessed during earlier years.
Mark Drinkwater of ESA's Oceans/Ice Unit said: "This situation is unlike anything observed in previous record low ice seasons. It is highly imaginable that a ship could have passed from Spitzbergen or Northern Siberia through what is normally pack ice to reach the North Pole without difficulty.

"If this anomaly trend continues, the North-East Passage or 'Northern Sea Route' between Europe and Asia will be open over longer intervals of time, and it is conceivable we might see attempts at sailing around the world directly across the summer Arctic Ocean within the next 10-20 years."
During the last 25 years, satellites have been observing the Arctic and have witnessed reductions in the minimum ice extent – the lowest amount of ice recorded in the area annually – at the end of summer from around 8 million km² in the early 1980s to the historic minimum of less than 5.5 million km² in 2005, changes widely viewed as a consequence of greenhouse warming.
Satellite observations in the past couple of years have also shown that the extent of perennial ice is rapidly declining, but this strange condition in late August marks the first time the perennial ice pack appears to exhibit thinner and more mobile conditions in the European sector of the Central Arctic than in earlier years.
Both sets of images were taken by two different satellite instruments – ASAR on the left and AMSR-E on the right. In the coloured AMSR-E images, ice cover, or the concentration of ice, is represented by the colour. Pink represents pack ice and the colour blue open water. Intermediate colours orange, yellow, and green indicate lower ice concentrations of 70%, 50% and 30%, respectively. In the ASAR images, ice cover is represented by the uniform grey area which extends radially-outwards from the North Pole, represented by the central black hole.
The set of images on the top were both acquired on 24 August 2005, while the bottom left ASAR image was acquired on 23 August 2006 and the AMSR-E on 24 August 2006. In 2005, the uniform grey area in the ASAR image and the pink colour in the AMSR-E image are both consistent all the way around the pole (black hole), indicating pack ice with 100% ice concentration.
However in 2006 there is a significant extent of leads – fractures and openings in the sea-ice cover – just below the pole in both the ASAR image, seen as splashes of dark grey and black, and the AMSR-E image (with British Isles shown for scale), seen by the high concentration of yellow, orange and green colours, signifying low ice concentrations.
In the last weeks, what was open water has begun to freeze, as the autumn air temperatures over the Arctic begin to fall. Although a considerable fraction of darker leads can still be seen in the area using ASAR, the AMSR-E sensor no longer shows openings.
ASAR is an active microwave instrument which sends periodic radar pulses toward the Earth and measures the signals return. AMSR-E is a passive microwave instrument which does not send radar pulses down but receives radiation naturally emitted from the Earth. Passive microwave data contain a certain amount of ambiguity in interpretation of ice types, particularly in mid summer during melting. However, this ambiguity is removed in high resolution active microwave data.
Though the reason for the considerable change in the ice pack configuration is still unknown, it is likely due to the stormy weather conditions in August that characterised the month.
The effect stormy conditions have on ice is illustrated in this ASAR image, taken on 25 August 2006, as the ice in the red circle is divergent as a consequence of a low pressure system centred on the North Pole.
"As autumn freeze-up begins, the current pattern will undoubtedly precondition the ice situation in the Central Arctic for the subsequent ice season," Drinkwater said.
Contact: Mariangela D'Acunto
mariangela.dacunto@esa.int
39-069-418-0856
European Space Agency

You don't need a big lottery win for long term happiness

2006-09-20T22:47:00.000-07:00

Researchers at the University of Warwick and Watson Wyatt have been examining just how much money one needs to win in the lottery to have a long term impact on personal happiness. Unsurprisingly the researchers found that small wins in tens or hundreds of pound made little long term difference, but they also found one did not need to win the jackpot to gain a significant increase in long-term mental wellbeing.
In work to be published in the Journal of Health Economics, researchers Professor Andrew Oswald from the University of Warwick and Dr Jonathan Gardner from Watson Wyatt showed that medium-sized lottery wins ranging from around just ?1000 to ?120,000 had a long term sustained impact in the overall happiness of those winners. On average, two years after their win medium-sized lottery winners had a mental wellbeing GHQ score 1.4 points better than previously - meaning loosely that two years after their win they were just over 10% happier than the average person without a win or only a tiny lottery win.
Intriguingly the researchers also found that this increased happiness is not obvious immediately after the medium-sized win and takes some time to show through. Economist Professor Andrew Oswald from the University of Warwick said:
"This delay could be due the short term disruptive effect on one's live of actually winning, but a more plausible explanation of the delay is that initially many windfall lottery funds are saved and spent later."
The researchers studied 14 years of longitudinal data from the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS) which tracks 5,000 British households.
Contact: Peter Dunn
p.j.dunn@warwick.ac.uk
0247-652-3708
University of Warwick

First evidence that musical training affects brain development in young children

2006-09-20T22:44:00.001-07:00

Researchers have found the first evidence that young children who take music lessons show different brain development and improved memory over the course of a year compared to children who do not receive musical training.
The findings, published today (20 September 2006) in the online edition of the journal Brain [1], show that not only do the brains of musically-trained children respond to music in a different way to those of the untrained children, but also that the training improves their memory as well. After one year the musically trained children performed better in a memory test that is correlated with general intelligence skills such as literacy, verbal memory, visiospatial processing, mathematics and IQ.
The Canadian-based researchers reached these conclusions after measuring changes in brain responses to sounds in children aged between four and six. Over the period of a year they took four measurements in two groups of children – those taking Suzuki music lessons and those taking no musical training outside school – and found developmental changes over periods as short as four months. While previous studies have shown that older children given music lessons had greater improvements in IQ scores than children given drama lessons, this is the first study to identify these effects in brain-based measurements in young children.
Dr Laurel Trainor, Professor of Psychology, Neuroscience and Behaviour at McMaster University and Director of the McMaster Institute for Music and the Mind, said: "This is the first study to show that brain responses in young, musically trained and untrained children change differently over the course of a year. These changes are likely to be related to the cognitive benefit that is seen with musical training." Prof Trainor led the study with Dr Takako Fujioka, a scientist at Baycrest's Rotman Research Institute.
The research team designed their study to investigate (1) how auditory responses in children matured over the period of a year, (2) whether responses to meaningful sounds, such as musical tones, matured differently than responses to noises, and (3) how musical training affected normal brain development in young children.
At the beginning of the study, six of the children (five boys, one girl) had just started to attend a Suzuki music school; the other six children (four boys, two girls) had no music lessons outside school.
The researchers chose children being trained by the Suzuki method for several reasons: it ensured the children were all trained in the same way, were not selected for training according to their initial musical talent and had similar support from their families. In addition, because there was no early training in reading music, the Suzuki method provided the researchers with a good model of how training in auditory, sensory and motor activities induces changes in the cortex of the brain. Brain activity was measured by magnetoencephalography (MEG) while the children listened to two types of sounds: a violin tone and a white noise burst. MEG is a non-invasive brain scanning technology that measures the magnetic fields outside the head that are associated with the electrical fields generated when groups of neurons (nerve cells) fire in synchrony. When a sound is heard, the brain processes the information from the ears in a series of stages. MEG provides millisecond-by-millisecond information that tracks these stages of processing; the stages show up as positive or negative deflections (or peaks), called components, in the MEG waveform. Earlier peaks tend to reflect sensory processing and later peaks, perceptual or cognitive processing.
The researchers recorded the measurements four times during the year, and during the first and fourth session the children also completed a music test (in which they were asked to discriminate between same and different harmonies, rhythms and melodies) and a digit span memory test (in which they had to listen to a series of numbers, remember them and repeat them back to the experimenter).
Analysis of the MEG responses showed that across all children, larger responses were seen to the violin tones than to the white noise, indicating that more cortical resources were put to processing meaningful sounds. In addition, the time that it took for the brain to respond to the sounds (the latency of certain MEG components) decreased over the year. This means that as children matured, the electrical conduction between neurons in their brains worked faster.
Of most interest, the Suzuki children showed a greater change over the year in response to violin tones in an MEG component (N250m) related to attention and sound discrimination than did the children not taking music lessons.
Analysis of the music tasks showed greater improvement over the year in melody, harmony and rhythm processing in the children studying music compared to those not studying music. General memory capacity also improved more in the children studying music than in those not studying music.
Prof Trainor said: "That the children studying music for a year improved in musical listening skills more than children not studying music is perhaps not very surprising. On the other hand, it is very interesting that the children taking music lessons improved more over the year on general memory skills that are correlated with non-musical abilities such as literacy, verbal memory, visiospatial processing, mathematics and IQ than did the children not taking lessons. The finding of very rapid maturation of the N250m component to violin sounds in children taking music lessons fits with their large improvement on the memory test. It suggests that musical training is having an effect on how the brain gets wired for general cognitive functioning related to memory and attention."
Dr Fujioka added: "Previous work has shown assignment to musical training is associated with improvements in IQ in school-aged children. Our work explores how musical training affects the way in which the brain develops. It is clear that music is good for children's cognitive development and that music should be part of the pre-school and primary school curriculum."
The next phase of the study will look at the benefits of musical training in older adults.
Contact: Laurel Trainor
ljt@mcmaster.ca
905-525-9140 x23007
Oxford University Press

Imaging technology restores 700-year-old sacred Hindu text

2006-09-20T17:13:00.001-07:00

RIT scientists travel twice to India to work on damaged manuscript

Scientists who worked on the Archimedes Palimpsest are using modern imaging technologies to digitally restore a 700-year-old palm-leaf manuscript containing the essence of Hindu philosophy.
The project led by P.R. Mukund and Roger Easton, professors at Rochester Institute of Technology, will digitally preserve the original Hindu writings known as the Sarvamoola granthas attributed to scholar Shri Madvacharya (1238-1317). The collection of 36 works contains commentaries written in Sanskrit on sacred Hindu scriptures and conveys the scholar's Dvaita philosophy of the meaning of life and the role of God.
The document is difficult to handle and to read, the result of centuries of inappropriate storage techniques, botched preservation efforts and degradation due to improper handling. Each leaf of the manuscript measures 26 inches long and two inches wide, and is bound together with braided cord threaded through two holes. Heavy wooden covers sandwich the 340 palm leaves, cracked and chipped at the edges. Time and a misguided application of oil have aged the palm leaves dark brown, obscuring the Sanskrit writings.
"It is literally crumbling to dust," says Mukund, the Gleason Professor of Electrical Engineering at RIT.
According to Mukund, 15 percent of the manuscript is missing.
"The book will never be opened again unless there is a compelling reason to do so," Mukund says. "Because every time they do, they lose some. After this, there won't be a need to open the book."
Mukund first became involved with the project when his spiritual teacher in India brought the problem to his attention and urged him to find a solution. This became a personal goal for Mukund, who studies and teaches Hindu philosophy or "our way of life" and understood the importance of preserving the document for future scholars. The accuracy of existing printed copies of the Sarvamoola granthas is unknown.
Mukund sought the expertise of RIT colleague Easton, who imaged the Dead Sea Scrolls and is currently working on the Archimedes Palimpsest. Easton, a professor at RIT's Chester F. Carlson Center for Imaging Science, brought in Keith Knox, an imaging senior scientist at Boeing LTS, as a consultant. Mukund added Ajay Pasupuleti, a doctoral candidate in microsystems at RIT, and the team was formed.
The scientists traveled to India in December 2005 to assess the document stored at a monastery-like mathas in Udupi, India. Sponsored by a grant from RIT, the team returned to the monastery in June and spent six days imaging the document using a scientific digital camera and an infrared filter to enhance the contrast between the ink and the palm leaf. Images of each palm leaf, back and front, were captured in eight to 10 sections, processed and digitally stitched together. The scientists ran the 7,900 total images through various image-processing algorithms using Adobe Photoshop and Knox's own custom software.
"This is a very significant application of the same types of tools that we have used on the Archimedes Palimpsest," Easton says. "Not incidentally, this also has been one of the most enjoyable projects in my career, since the results will be of great interest to a large number of people in India."
The processed images of the Sarvamoola granthas will be stored in a variety of media formats, including electronically, in published books and on silicon wafers for long-term preservation. Etching the sacred writings on silicon wafers was the idea of Mukund's student Pasupuleti. The process, called aluminum metallization, transfers an image to a wafer by creating a negative of the image and depositing metal on the silicon surface.
According to Pasupuleti, each wafer can hold the image of three leaves. More than 100 wafers will be needed to store the entire manuscript. As an archival material, silicon wafers are both fire- and waterproof, and readable with the use of a magnifying glass.
Mukund and Pasupuleti will return to India at the end of November to give printed and electronic versions of the Sarvamoola granthas to the monastery in Udupi in a public ceremony in Bangalore, the largest city in the Karnataka region.
"We feel we were blessed to have this opportunity to do this," Mukund says. "It was a fantastic and profoundly spiritual experience. And we all came away cleansed."
Based on the success of this project, Mukund is seeking funding to image other Dvaita manuscripts in the Udupi region written since the time of Shri Madvacharya. He estimates the existence of approximately 800 palm leaf manuscripts, some of which are in private collections.
Contact: Susan Gawlowicz
smguns@rit.edu
585-475-5061
Rochester Institute of Technology

Ceramic microreactors developed for on-site hydrogen production

2006-09-20T17:04:00.000-07:00

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. -- Scientists at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have designed and built ceramic microreactors for the on-site reforming of hydrocarbon fuels, such as propane, into hydrogen for use in fuel cells and other portable power sources.
Applications include power supplies for small appliances and laptop computers, and on-site rechargers for battery packs used by the military.
"The catalytic reforming of hydrocarbon fuels offers a nice solution to supplying hydrogen to fuel cells while avoiding safety and storage issues related to gaseous hydrogen," said Paul Kenis, a professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering at Illinois and corresponding author of a paper accepted for publication in the journal Lab on a Chip, and posted on its Web site.
In previous work, Kenis and colleagues developed an integrated catalyst structure and placed it inside a stainless steel housing, where it successfully stripped hydrogen from ammonia at temperatures up to 500 degrees Celsius.
In their latest work, the researchers incorporated the catalyst structure within a ceramic housing, which enabled the steam reforming of propane at operating temperatures up to 1,000 degrees Celsius. Using the new ceramic housing, the researchers also demonstrated the successful decomposition of ammonia at temperatures up to 1,000 degrees Celsius. High-temperature operation is essential for peak performance in microreactors, said Kenis, who also is a researcher at the university's Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology. When reforming hydrocarbons such as propane, temperatures above 800 degrees Celsius prevent the formation of soot that can foul the catalyst surface and reduce performance.
"The performance of our integrated, high-temperature microreactors surpasses that of other fuel reformer systems," Kenis said. "Our microreactors are superior in both hydrogen production and in long-term stability." Kenis and his group are now attempting to reform other, higher hydrocarbon fuels, such as gasoline and diesel, which have well-developed distribution networks around the world.
Contact: James E. Kloeppel
kloeppel@uiuc.edu
217-244-1073
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Potential sea level rise worse than previously expected

2006-09-20T17:00:00.000-07:00

Scientific studies over the last year show that ice is being discharged from Greenland and the West Antarctic Peninsula at a much greater rate than glaciologists previously thought possible, Professor Chris Rapley told the Climate Clinic in Brighton today (Tuesday 19 September). Professor Rapley also said the discharge from Greenland, and probably also Antarctica, is accelerating. The findings have profound consequences for the world's sea levels.

The Director of the British Antarctic Survey - an acknowledged world expert - said the scientific understanding of what was happening was moving so quickly with significant new evidence on the speed of ice loss coming to light in the last few months.

Satellite gravity data shows a loss of about 210 cubic kilometres per year from Greenland. In the West Antarctic a similar amount of ice is being lost annually, while on the Antarctic Peninsula 87 per cent of glaciers are retreating. The worrying behaviour of the ice sheets is almost certainly a consequence of global warming, Professor Rapley said.

"It's like opening a window and seeing what's going on, and the message is it's worse than we thought," Professor Rapley said.

He added that although the complexity of the situation made it difficult to predict the impact on sea level, historical evidence pointed to a potential rise of five metres in mean sea levels. The most intense sea level rise in recent history, known as a `meltwater pulse' saw levels rise by 5m in a single century. Professor Rapley says a similar catastrophic rate is unlikely to occur in the near future.

But even if carbon dioxide levels are successfully stabilised, sea levels will continue to rise into the future as a result of greenhouse gases already emitted, leaving a legacy for future generations.

Politicians must respond to the urgency of the issue, he said, adding that current international political action on curbing greenhouse gas emissions is inadequate.

"Climate change is real, climate change is serious, and climate change is now," he said.

Professor Rapley was speaking at the Climate Clinic, a global warming conference within the Lib Dem conference in Brighton which has been organised by the UK's leading green organisations with the support of business and the Energy Saving Trust.

Climate Clinic Spokesperson Phillip Sellwood said:

"Politicians from all parties must listen to what Professor Rapley has to say. We are facing a situation unlike anything we have ever faced before and they must respond accordingly. All parties must support urgent action to avert crisis and prevent the kind of devastating sea level rises that Professor Rapley tells us are possible."
Notes

Organised by the UK's leading green organisations and supported by business and the Energy Saving Trust, the Climate Clinic is taking place at each of the main party political conferences this year. The Clinic is calling on politicians of all parties to support urgent government action to avert crisis by preventing global temperatures rising more than two degrees above pre-industrial levels. See www.climateclinic.org.uk

British Antarctic Survey is a world leader in research into global issues in an Antarctic context. It is the UK's national operator and is a component of the Natural Environment Research Council. It has an annual budget of around £40 million, runs nine research programmes and operates five research stations, two Royal Research Ships and five aircraft in and around Antarctica. More information about the work of the Survey can be found at: www.antarctica.ac.uk

Chris Rapley Prof Chris Rapley CBE is Director of the British Antarctic Survey (BAS). Prior to this he was for four years the Executive Director of the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme (IGBP) at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in Stockholm. This followed an extended period as Professor of Remote Sensing Science and Associate Director of University College London's Mullard Space Science Laboratory. He has a first degree in physics from Oxford, a M.Sc. in radioastronomy from Manchester University, and a Ph.D. in X-ray astronomy from University College London. He has been a Principal Investigator on both NASA and European Space Agency satellite missions and is a member of the NASA JPL Cassini mission Science Team. He has been a member of numerous national and international committees and boards including Vice President of the Scientific Committee for Antarctic Research and Chair of the International Council for Science's (ICSU) International Polar Year 2007-2008 (IPY) Planning Group. He is currently a member of the European Polar Board's Executive and ICSU - World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) Joint Committee for IPY. He is a Fellow of St Edmund's College Cambridge, and is an Honorary Professor at University College London and at the University of East Anglia.

Contact details:

Friends of the Earth
26-28 Underwood St.
LONDON
N1 7JQ

Tel: 020 7490 1555
Fax: 020 7490 0881
Email: info@foe.co.uk
Website: www.foe.co.uk

Linspire Offers Cash Incentive For Pre-installing Linux on Desktop Computers

2006-09-20T06:12:00.000-07:00

New System Builder Program Automatically Shares Revenues When Customers Purchase Linux Software and Services

SAN DIEGO, Linspire, Inc., developer of the commercial desktop Linux operating system of the same name and Freespire, the free community desktop Linux operating system, launched a revamped partner program today that pays system builders a percentage on all commercial Linux software and services purchased by users of either Linspire and Freespire pre-installed desktop and laptop computers using CNR (Click N' Run) technology. Offering 18 months of Revenue Share per computer, the new program also features an automated, real-time, revenue share system that reports computer Light-up data, CNR Registration User percentage, and average revenue per-user generated through CNR.

"Linspire has been very successful in selling products and services to desktop Linux users via our CNR technology," said Kevin Carmony, CEO of Linspire." We are excited to now share this successful model with our valued system builder partners. Providing post-sale revenue will further entice PC suppliers around the world to pre-install Linux on desktop and laptop computers, critical for Linux's success."

Free to join, the Builder Program http://www.linspire.com/builder has no annual fees or volume commitments, and offers system builders the option to build pre-installed computer systems with both the commercial Linspire and community-driven Freespire desktop Linux operating systems. By logging into a personalized portal, system builders can see real-time data when their computer systems are turned on and connected to the Internet for the first time, as well as conversion data for purchases and their share of the revenue from each purchase. Checks are then automatically mailed on a quarterly basis to participating system builders. System builders can utilize this data to help them monitor their success in the program, and make adjustments to marketing messaging, initial out-of-box experience, support, and so on.

"Having served the desktop Linux channel for over four years now, we continually listen to our partners." said Larry Kettler, Vice President, Worldwide Sales & Marketing of Linspire. "They wanted us to eliminate all barriers to enter the desktop Linux market for system builders of all sizes and help them generate more profit per computer shipped out the door...this new program does both."

In addition to the new Builder Program, a new, easy-to-use, Linspire channel web portal was launched at http://partners.linspire.com which provides marketing, sales, and support resources and tools for Resellers and software Publishers as well. The revamped Linspire Reseller Program makes it easier for computer and software resellers to effectively sell desktop Linux software and solutions. As with the Builder Program, the Reseller Program is free to join, and members can purchase products directly from Linspire or Ingram Micro. The program also includes more sales materials and sales training resources that will help resellers better promote and understand the value proposition for Linspire and desktop Linux.

About Linspire, Inc.

Linspire, Inc. (www.linspire.com) was founded in 2001 to bring choice into the operating system market. The company's flagship product, the Linspire operating system, is an affordable, easy-to-use Linux-based operating system for home, school, and business users. Linspire pioneered CNR ("Click 'N Run") Technology, which allows Linspire users access to thousands of software programs, each of which can be downloaded and installed with just one mouse click. The thousands of software titles available in the CNR Warehouse (www.linspire.com/cnr) include full office and productivity suites, games, multimedia players, photo management software, accounting tools, and more.

About Freespire

Freespire (www.freespire.org) is a community-driven, Linux-based operating system that combines the best that free, open source software has to offer (community driven, freely distributed, open source code, etc.), but also provides users the choice of including proprietary codecs, drivers and applications as they see fit. With Freespire, the choice is yours as to what software is installed on your computer, with no limitations or restrictions placed on that choice. How you choose to maximize the performance of your computer is entirely up to you.

About CNR ("Click 'N Run")

CNR, with access to over 20,000 Linux software applications, makes it extremely easy for non-technical users to install, uninstall, update and manage Linux software on their desktop or laptop computers (http://wiki.freespire.org/index.php/CNR_Warehouse). With the CNR Service you can freely install thousands of Linux software titles direct from the CNR Warehouse (http://linspire.com/warehouse), all with just a single mouse click. Users also get a powerful way to manage their entire software library, with advanced features, such as customizable "aisles" where you can install entire groups of software with a single click.

For more information and interview requests:
Linspire, Inc.
858-587-6700, ext. 283
858-587-8095 Fax
pr@linspireinc.com

Doctors cut repeat LASIK visits dramatically

2006-09-20T06:09:00.000-07:00

Ophthalmologists have developed a formula that slashes by nearly two-thirds the likelihood that patients will need repeat visits to an eye surgeon to adjust their vision after their initial LASIK visit. That's because the formula makes it more likely that surgeons will get it right the first time.
The new results, presented at the European Society of Cataract and Refractive Surgery meeting in London, are the result of a complex computer formula compiled by doctors and scientists at the University of Rochester Medical Center that takes into account myriad imperfections within the eye that weren’t even known to exist a decade ago.
Even though most patients come out of refractive surgery with vision that is 20/20 or better, doctors have noticed that some patients exit the surgery slightly farsighted – not enough to seriously degrade their quality of vision or to require contact lenses or reading glasses, but enough to be a leading reason why people complain about the results of the surgery. A few others end up slightly nearsighted. While many of these patients still see at a level around 20/20, the slight farsightedness or nearsightednessis is one of the chief barriers preventing them from seeing even better, at a level around 20/16.
Eye surgeon Scott MacRae, M.D., of the University of Rochester Eye Institute presented the results showing a dramatic drop in farsightedness among LASIK patients. In a recent study where MacRae and colleagues used the formula, known as the University of Rochester Nomogram, during surgery, just six of 445 eyes or 1.3 percent were slightly farsighted after LASIK. He compared this to results from a previous study five years ago without the formula. In that study of 340 eyes, even though 91 percent of patients had 20/20 vision or better – the highest known percentage of any large study in the world at the time – 74 of the 340 eyes treated, or 21.8 percent, were slightly farsighted.
"Though those results were among the best anyone had gotten to date, we thought we could do better," said MacRae, who worked for two years with post-doctoral associate Manoj Venkiteshwar, Ph.D., to develop the formula.
While some doctors have noticed that patients are more likely to be slightly farsighted than nearsighted after LASIK, doctors have had no way to predict which patients would be affected, MacRae said. If a doctor adjusted all of his or her surgeries to avoid the problem, then the other 80 percent of patients would wind up slightly nearsighted.
The new formula takes the guesswork out of the picture and establishes a scientific basis for the phenomenon.
The software developed by Venkiteshwar and MacRae controls how the laser beam dances around the surface of the cornea during a LASIK procedure, allowing the surgeon to sculpt the cornea into just the right shape so that it produces as flawless an image as possible. During a procedure that typically might last anywhere from 15 to 60 seconds, the laser beam hits the cornea about 50 times per second, with generally 750 to 3,000 pulses. The timing and aim, controlled by both the surgeon and the software, have to be precise.
By taking into account the unique anomalies in each person’s eye, the formula predicts which patients are most likely to be slightly farsighted after a LASIK procedure, then adjusts the laser to avoid that outcome.
Ironically, Venkiteshwar and MacRae found that the cause of the shift was the new capability doctors have to fix subtle visual imperfections that weren’t even known to exist until David Williams, Ph.D., at the University of Rochester developed a system to see them.
Williams' system opened the door, for the first time in history, to the possibility of fixing not only the three major flaws in the eye that reading glasses and contact lenses have corrected for decades, but also approximately 60 additional imperfections that were never known before. Nearly everyone has these flaws in their eyes to some extent; while most people don’t notice them, they hurt our quality of vision in subtle ways. Since Williams' discovery, several companies have introduced technology that makes possible a technique known as customized ablation, a form of LASIK that corrects these imperfections, bringing about a super-crisp quality of eyesight. Beyond making vision on the order of 20/15 or 20/16 possible or even commonplace in some groups of patients, the technology also increases the eye’s ability to see in situations where there is low light or little contrast.
MacRae and Venkiteshwar were surprised to find that fixing these subtle imperfections affects vision in unexpected ways. They found that some of the improvements make an eye undergoing LASIK more prone to becoming slightly farsighted in some patients, and slightly nearsighted in a few patients. They’ve found the relationship in at least three different laser systems used in LASIK procedures.
"This is not something anyone would have predicted," said MacRae, who is a professor of Ophthalmology and of Visual Science. "When you fix these flaws, it can affect vision in ways that were previously unpredictable."
For instance, the team found that treating coma – a subtle imperfection where a point of light looks like it has the tale of a comet – affects a patient’s astigmatism as well as his or her degree of nearsightedness or farsightedness. Other common flaws that can now be fixed, but which also affect a person’s vision more broadly, include spherical aberration, where a point of light appears to have several rings of light around it; trefoil, where a point of light seems to be surrounded by three other points; and others such as secondary astigmatism, quadrafoil and pentafoil.
MacRae credits the new formula, part of a procedure he calls second-generation customized ablation, with slashing the need for repeat treatments in patients from about 8 percent to 3 percent.
The latest results are part of an ongoing program by MacRae, a pioneer in the field of customized ablation, to bring Williams' findings to the clinic and improve patients’ vision to unprecedented levels. Each year, MacRae says, scientists and physicians learn new things that help future patients.
"We’ve taken a very good procedure and made it even better. I am extremely confident in this technology, which I’ve even had done on myself. A conscientious, systematic approach to evaluating patients is key. Not everyone is a good candidate for LASIK. Surgeons need to be extremely diligent about their pre-operative evaluations to maximize safety and the outcomes for their patients," said MacRae, the author of the best-selling book on customized ablation, Customized Corneal Ablation: The Quest for Supervision.
Contact: Tom Rickey
tom_rickey@urmc.rochester.edu
585-275-7954
University of Rochester Medical Center

Road wends its way through stomach

2006-09-20T06:03:00.000-07:00

A computer model or "virtual stomach" revealed a central "road" in the human stomach, dubbed the Magenstrasse, that could explain why pharmaceuticals sometimes have a large variability in drug activation times, according to a team creating computer simulations of stomach contractions.
"We are predicting variables that we wish we could measure, but we cannot," says Dr. James G. Brasseur, professor of mechanical engineering, bioengineering and mathematics at Penn State. "Now that we know the Magenstrasse exists, we can look for it, but, it will not be easy to measure its existence and could require expensive technology."
Brasseur, working with Anupam Pal, research associate, Penn State and Bertil Abrahamsson, AstraZeneca, was interested in how the stomach empties its contents and how material passes from the stomach into the small intestines.
"The sphincter between the stomach and the small intestine is interactive," said Brasseur. "The sphincter opens and closes in a controlled way to regulate the flow of nutrient to the small intestines. Sensor cells in the intestines modulate the opening and closing."
Two types of muscle contractions control food movement in the stomach. One type of contraction, antral contractions, occur in the lower portion of the stomach and break down and mix stomach contents. The other type of contraction, fundic contractions, is over the upper surface of the stomach. It was thought that the fundic contractions move food from the top of the stomach where it enters from the esophagus, to the bottom of the stomach where the chyme leaves and enters the small intestine. The assumption was that particles left the stomach in the same order they entered the stomach.
The researchers modeled the stomach contents and discovered that a narrow path forms in the center of the stomach along which food exits the stomach more rapidly than the regions near the walls of the stomach. They used MRI data from human subjects to create the proper geometry of the muscle contractions.
"We looked at a ten-minute window of digestion and we tagged all the particles as they left the virtual stomach," said Brasseur. "We then reversed the flow on the computer and saw where the particles came from."
In essence they ran the simulation backwards and were surprised to see a central road appear. Those particles in the virtual stomach that were on the central road, exited the stomach in 10 minutes. The Magenstrasse extended all the way from the stomach's exit up to the top of the stomach's fundus. Material that entered the stomach off this Magenstrasse could remain in the stomach a long time, even hours in the real stomach.
"This discovery might explain observed high variability in drug initiation time, and may have important implications to both drug delivery and digestion," the researchers report online in the Journal of Biomechanics. The paper will appear in a print edition in 2007.
Because most drugs target the small intestines for absorption, a pill disintegrates in the stomach and activates in the small intestines. With this new understanding of how the stomach works, where in the stomach a pill or capsule disintegrates becomes very important. Drug delivery times may differ from 10 minutes to hours depending on location.
"Therefore, drugs released on the Magenstrasse will enter the duodenum rapidly and at a high concentration," the researchers report. "Drug released off the gastric emptying Magenstrasse, however, will mix well and enter the duodenum much later, at low concentration."
For some drugs, rapid release is important, for others, slow release over long periods of time is the desired outcome.
"If you do not know a Magenstrasse exists, you will not factor it into the designs," says Brasseur. "Now that we know, perhaps researchers can design pills with higher densities to sit around at the bottom of the stomach, outside the Magenstrasse, and let the drug out slowly."
Contact: A'ndrea Elyse Messer
aem1@psu.edu
814-865-9481
Penn State

Engine on a chip promises to best the battery

2006-09-19T21:25:00.001-07:00

MIT researchers are putting a tiny gas-turbine engine inside a silicon chip about the size of a quarter. The resulting device could run 10 times longer than a battery of the same weight can, powering laptops, cell phones, radios and other electronic devices.
It could also dramatically lighten the load for people who can't connect to a power grid, including soldiers who now must carry many pounds of batteries for a three-day mission -- all at a reasonable price.
The researchers say that in the long term, mass-production could bring the per-unit cost of power from microengines close to that for power from today's large gas-turbine power plants.
Making things tiny is all the rage. The field -- called microelectromechanical systems, or MEMS -- grew out of the computer industry's stunning success in developing and using micro technologies. "Forty years ago, a computer filled up a whole building," said Professor Alan Epstein of the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics. "Now we all have microcomputers on our desks and inside our thermostats and our watches."
While others are making miniature devices ranging from biological sensors to chemical processors, Epstein and a team of 20 faculty, staff and students are looking to make power -- personal power. "Big gas-turbine engines can power a city, but a little one could 'power' a person," said Epstein, whose colleagues are spread among MIT's Gas Turbine Laboratory, Microsystems Technology Laboratories, and Laboratory for Electromagnetic and Electronic Systems.
How can one make a tiny fuel-burning engine? An engine needs a compressor, a combustion chamber, a spinning turbine and so on. Making millimeter-scale versions of those components from welded and riveted pieces of metal isn't feasible. So, like computer-chip makers, the MIT researchers turned to etched silicon wafers.
Their microengine is made of six silicon wafers, piled up like pancakes and bonded together. Each wafer is a single crystal with its atoms perfectly aligned, so it is extremely strong. To achieve the necessary components, the wafers are individually prepared using an advanced etching process to eat away selected material. When the wafers are piled up, the surfaces and the spaces in between produce the needed features and functions.
Making microengines one at a time would be prohibitively expensive, so the researchers again followed the lead of computer-chip makers. They make 60 to 100 components on a large wafer that they then (very carefully) cut apart into single units.
Challenges ahead
The MIT team has now used this process to make all the components needed for their engine, and each part works. Inside a tiny combustion chamber, fuel and air quickly mix and burn at the melting point of steel. Turbine blades, made of low-defect, high-strength microfabricated materials, spin at 20,000 revolutions per second -- 100 times faster than those in jet engines. A mini-generator produces 10 watts of power. A little compressor raises the pressure of air in preparation for combustion. And cooling (always a challenge in hot microdevices) appears manageable by sending the compression air around the outside of the combustor.
"So all the parts work…. We're now trying to get them all to work on the same day on the same lab bench," Epstein said. Ultimately, of course, hot gases from the combustion chamber need to turn the turbine blades, which must then power the generator, and so on. "That turns out to be a hard thing to do," he said. Their goal is to have it done by the end of this year.
Predicting how quickly they can move ahead is itself a bit of a challenge. If the bonding process is done well, each microengine is a monolithic piece of silicon, atomically perfect and inseparable. As a result, even a tiny mistake in a single component will necessitate starting from scratch. And if one component needs changing -- say, the compressor should be a micron smaller -- the microfabrication team will have to rethink the entire design process.
For all the difficulties, Epstein said the project is "an astonishing amount of fun" -- and MIT is the ideal place for it. "Within 300 feet of my office, I could find the world's experts on each of the technologies needed to make the complete system," he said.
In addition, the project provides an excellent opportunity for teaching. "No matter what your specialty is -- combustion or bearings or microfabrication -- it's equally hard," he said. "As an educational tool, it's enormously useful because the students realize that their success is dependent upon other people's success. They can't make their part easier by making somebody else's part harder, because then as a team we don't succeed."
This research was funded by the U.S. Army Research Laboratory.
Nancy Stauffer, Laboratory for Energy and the Environment

HP Dramatically Simplifies Network Storage for Small and Medium Businesses

2006-09-19T21:19:00.000-07:00

NEW YORK,
HP today announced the industry’s first easy-to-use storage systems that drive down cost and complexity for small and medium businesses (SMBs) grappling with the exponential growth of data.
The new HP StorageWorks All-in-One (AiO) Storage Systems deliver simple, application-centric storage management, reliable data protection and affordable data storage. Using the systems, SMBs with limited or no storage expertise are able to store, share, manage, back up and protect their rapidly growing application and file data in a flexible network storage environment.
More than 60 percent of SMBs have not deployed networked storage,(1) and the HP All-in-One Storage Systems address what industry analyst firm IDC predicts will be a $5.7 billion market opportunity by 2010.(2)
“With these systems, HP is now the benchmark for storage solutions for SMBs,” said Bob Schultz, senior vice president and general manager, StorageWorks Division, HP. “Developed from the ground up to address the specific problems SMBs face, the HP All-in-One Storage Systems deliver functionality without the complexity of competing offerings.”
The HP AiO Storage Systems handle all storage tasks and are accessed via an easy-to-use graphical interface, saving administrators time and providing newfound levels of control.
“It’s clear the HP All-in-One Storage Systems were designed with the needs of small businesses like St. John’s in mind,” said Charles Love, director of IT for St. John’s Episcopal School in Tampa, Fla. “From the intuitive set-up wizards to the easy-to-use interface, the system has proven to be an extremely simple, complete and low-cost solution to help us manage our growing storage needs.”
The systems are specifically designed for managing storage in Microsoft® environments, including point-and-click tools for working with Microsoft Exchange and SQL Server. In fewer than 10 clicks, for example, customers can fully set up shared storage for an Exchange mailstore.
“We’re excited to work with HP, a strategic partner with deep expertise in Windows and networked storage technology, to deliver a breakthrough storage innovation,” said Gabriel Broner, general manager, Storage, Microsoft Corp. “HP All-in-One Storage Systems bring together HP’s unique design with Microsoft’s Storage Server software to provide an extremely compelling offering for SMBs. Microsoft is committed to making universal distributed storage a reality, by reducing storage costs and providing customers with high-end functionality on industry-standard hardware.”
A full version of HP StorageWorks Data Protector Express Software is integrated into HP All-in-One Storage Systems to enable data back up and recovery from tape, virtual tape, optical or external disk on the network. The HP AiO Storage Systems also run Windows® Storage Server 2003 R2, which enables replication from one system to another and rapid recovery in the event of a disaster.
“The HP All-in-One is filling a hole in the market that no one else is addressing by taking the complexity out of storage,” said Don Zurbrick, sales manager, Big Sur Technologies, a Florida-based solutions and services provider. ”We are confident that the simplicity of the AiO will help drive incremental business and strengthen our position as a trusted advisor to our customers.”
The HP StorageWorks All-in-One Storage Systems are available now and will be sold primarily through HP’s extensive network of more than 145,000 channel resellers worldwide.
More information about HP StorageWorks All-in-One Storage Systems is available in an online press kit at www.hp.com/go/AiOLaunch.
About HP
HP is a technology solutions provider to consumers, businesses and institutions globally. The company’s offerings span IT infrastructure, global services, business and home computing, and imaging and printing. For the four fiscal quarters ended July 31, 2006, HP revenue totaled $90.0 billion. More information about HP (NYSE, Nasdaq: HPQ) is available at http://www.hp.com.

MSN Launches Beta of Soapbox on MSN Video

2006-09-19T21:15:00.000-07:00

MSN expands industry-leading MSN Video service by enabling people to actively participate in the MSN content experience.

REDMOND, Wash. — MSN today announced the U.S. beta release of Soapbox on MSN® Video, a user-uploaded video service that makes it easy for people to express themselves by uploading, discovering and sharing personal videos with the Soapbox community and others around the world. Soapbox will be available on MSN Video and will be deeply integrated throughout Microsoft Corp.’s portfolio of online services, including Windows Live™ Spaces and Windows Live Messenger.
“Soapbox delivers on a critical component of the MSN growth strategy of deepening audience engagement by enabling people to participate in the content experience,” said Rob Bennett, general manager of Entertainment and Video Services for MSN. “By adding a user-uploaded video service, we are rounding out our existing investments in commercially produced and original content on MSN Video.”
Advanced Technology for Exceptional Performance
Soapbox on MSN Video utilizes powerful Web 2.0 technologies to provide a dynamic, fun and entertaining experience and offers these benefits:
•
Easy uploading and sharing of video creations. By providing single-step uploading, background server-side video processing and acceptance of all major digital video formats, Soapbox makes uploading videos a snap.
•
Finding and discovering the most entertaining videos. Viewers can search, browse through 15 categories, find related videos, subscribe to RSS feeds, and share their favorites with their friends — all without interrupting whatever video they are watching.
•
Participation in the Soapbox community. Soapbox users can rate, comment on and tag the videos they view, share links with their friends via e-mail, and include the embeddable Soapbox player directly on their Web site or blog.
Availability
The beta of Soapbox on MSN Video is available on an invitation-only basis in the U.S. Those interested in participating in the beta can sign up for the waiting list now at http://soapbox.msn.com. Access to the beta will expand over time by enabling existing beta testers to invite a limited number of friends. The beta of Soapbox on MSN Video is available to users of Microsoft® Internet Explorer® 6 or later running on Windows® XP and Firefox 1.0.5 or later running on Windows XP or Macintosh OS X.
About MSN Video
MSN Video is one of the largest video-only streaming services on the Web, watched by more than 11 million unique users per month. In addition to streaming news, entertainment and sports video clips from more than 45 content partners including “Today,” FOX Sports, MSNBC, JibJab Media Inc. and Fox Entertainment Group, MSN Video presents a broad array of live events to online audiences worldwide. More than 50 top advertisers support MSN Video, which is available to consumers at no charge. MSN Video is available on the Web at c to consumers in the U.S. MSN Video is also live in Australia, Canada, Japan and the U.K., and in Spanish in the U.S.; the service also is in beta testing in France.
Overall, MSN attracts more than 465 million unique users worldwide per month. With localized versions available globally in 42 markets and 21 languages, MSN is a world leader in delivering Web services to consumers and online advertising opportunities to businesses worldwide.
About Microsoft
Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq “MSFT”) is the worldwide leader in software, services and solutions that help people and businesses realize their full potential.
Note to editors: If you are interested in viewing additional information on Microsoft, please visit the Microsoft Web page at http://www.microsoft.com/presspass on Microsoft’s corporate information pages. Web links, telephone numbers and titles were correct at time of publication, but may since have changed. For additional assistance, journalists and analysts may contact Microsoft’s Rapid Response Team or other appropriate contacts listed at http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/contactpr.mspx.

'No time to exercise' is no excuse

2006-09-18T17:16:00.000-07:00

A new study, published in The Journal of Physiology, shows that short bursts of very intense exercise -- equivalent to only a few minutes per day -- can produce the same results as traditional endurance training.

"The most striking finding from our study was the remarkably similar improvements in muscle health and performance induced by two such diverse training strategies," says Martin Gibala, an associate professor of kinesiology at McMaster University.

Gibala's team made headlines last year when they suggested that a few minutes of high-intensity exercise could be as effective as an hour of moderate activity. However, their previous work did not directly compare sprint versus endurance training.

The new study was conducted on 16 college-aged students who performed six training sessions over two weeks. Eight subjects performed between four and six 30-second bursts of "all out" cycling separated by 4 minutes of recovery during each training session. The other eight subjects performed 90-120 minutes of continuous moderate-intensity cycling each day. Total training time commitment including recovery was 2.5 hours in the sprint group, whereas the endurance group performed 10.5 hours of total exercise over two weeks. Despite the marked difference in training volume, both groups showed similar improvements in exercise performance and muscle parameters associated with fatigue resistance.

"Our study demonstrates that interval-based exercise is a very time-efficient training strategy," said Gibala. "This type of training is very demanding and requires a high level of motivation. However, short bursts of intense exercise may be an effective option for individuals who cite 'lack of time' as a major impediment to fitness."

Acoustic data may reveal hidden gas, oil supplies

2006-09-17T13:49:00.001-07:00

Just as doctors use ultrasound to image internal organs and unborn babies, MIT Earth Resources Laboratory researchers listen to the echoing language of rocks to map what's going on tens of thousands of feet below the Earth's surface.
With the help of a new $580,000 US Department of Energy (DOE) grant, the earth scientists will use their skills at interpreting underground sound to seek out "sweet spots"--pockets of natural gas and oil contained in fractured porous rocks--in a Wyoming oil field. If the method proves effective at determining where to drill wells, it could eventually be used at oil and gas fields across the country.
A major domestic source of natural gas is low-permeability or "tight" gas formations. Oil and gas come from organic materials that have been cooked for eons under the pressure and high heat of the Earth's crust. Some underground reservoirs contain large volumes of oil and gas that flow easily through permeable rocks, but sometimes the fluids are trapped in rocks with small, difficult-to-access pores, forming separate scattered pockets. Until recently, there was no technology available to get at tight gas.
Tight gas is now the largest of three unconventional gas resources, which also include coal beds and shale. Production of unconventional gas in the United States represented around 40 percent of the nation's total gas output in 2004, according to the DOE, but could grow to 50 percent by 2030 if advanced technologies are developed and implemented.
One such advanced technology is the brainchild of Mark E. Willis and Daniel R. Burns, research scientists in the Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences (EAPS), and M. Nafi Toksoz, professor of EAPS. Their method involves combining data from two established, yet previously unrelated, means of seeking out hidden oil and gas reserves.
To free up the hydrocarbons scattered in small pockets from one to three miles below ground, oil companies use a process called hydraulic fracturing, or hydrofrac, which forces water into the bedrock through deep wells to create fractures and increase the size and extent of existing fractures. The fractures open up avenues for the oil and gas to flow to wells.
To monitor the effectiveness of fracturing and to detect natural fractures that may be sweet spots of natural gas, engineers gather acoustic data from the surface and from deep within wells. "Surface seismic methods are like medical ultrasound. They give us images of the subsurface geology," Burns said. Three-dimensional seismic surveys involve creating vibrations on the surface and monitoring the resulting underground echoes. "When the echoes change, fractures are there," Willis said.
A method called time-lapse vertical seismic profiling (VSP) tends to be more accurate because it collects acoustic data directly underground through bore holes. "Putting the receivers down into a well is like making images with sensors inside the body in the medical world," Burns said. "The result is the ability to see finer details and avoid all the clutter that comes from sending sound waves through the skin and muscle tissue to get at the thing we are most interested in seeing."
Time-lapse VSP is expensive and not routinely used in oil and gas exploration. The EAPS research team, working with time-lapse VSP data collected by industry partner EnCana Corp., came up with unique ways to look at the data together with microseismic data from the tiny earthquakes that are produced when the rock is fractured. "If we record and locate these events just as the US Geological Survey does with large earthquakes around the world, we get an idea of where the hydrofrac is located. Then we look at the time-lapse VSP data at those spots and try to get a more detailed image of the fracture," Burns said.
The MIT team hopes to show that this new approach is the most effective way to find sweet spots. "If we can demonstrate the value of time-lapse VSP, this tool could be used in a wider fashion across the United States on many fields," Willis said.
Deborah Halber

Weather forecast accuracy gets boost with new computer model

2006-09-17T13:44:00.001-07:00

BOULDER--An advanced forecasting model that predicts several types of extreme weather with substantially improved accuracy has been adopted for day-to-day operational use by civilian and military weather forecasters. The new computer model was created through a partnership that includes the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), and more than 150 other organizations and universities in the United States and abroad.
The high-resolution Weather Research and Forecasting model (WRF) is the first model to serve as both the backbone of the nation's public weather forecasts and a tool for cutting-edge weather research. Because the model fulfills both functions, it is easier for research findings to be translated into improved operational models, leading to better forecasts.
The model was adopted for use by NOAA's National Weather Service (NWS) as the primary model for its one-to-three-day U.S. forecasts and as a key part of the NWS's ensemble modeling system for short-range forecasts. The U.S. Air Force Weather Agency (AFWA) also has used WRF for several areas of operations around the world.
"The Weather Research and Forecasting model development project is the first time researchers and operational scientists have come together to collaborate on a weather modeling project of this magnitude," says Louis Uccellini, director of NOAA's National Centers for Environmental Prediction.
By late 2007, the new model will shape forecasts that serve more than a third of the world's population. It is being adopted by the national weather agencies of Taiwan, South Korea, China, and India.
"WRF is becoming the world's most popular model for weather prediction because it serves forecasters as well as researchers," says NCAR director Tim Killeen.
Multiple benefits
Tests over the last year at NOAA and AFWA have shown that the new model offers multiple benefits over its predecessor models. For example:
Errors in nighttime temperature and humidity across the eastern United States are cut by more than 50%.
The model depicts flight-level winds in the subtropics that are stronger and more realistic, thus leading to improved turbulence guidance for aircraft.
The model outperformed its predecessor in more than 70% of the situations studied by AFWA.
WRF incorporates data from satellites, radars, and a wide range of other tools with greater ease than earlier models.
Advanced research
NCAR has been experimenting with an advanced research version of WRF, with very fine resolution and innovative techniques, to demonstrate where potential may exist for improving the accuracy of hurricane track, intensity, and rainfall forecasts. A special hurricane-oriented version of WRF, the HWRF, is now being developed by scientists from NOAA, the Naval Research Laboratory, the University of Rhode Island, and Florida State University to support NOAA hurricane forecasting. The high-resolution HWRF will track waves and other features of the ocean and atmosphere, including the heat and moisture exchanged between them. Its depiction of hurricane cores and the ocean below them will be enhanced by data from satellites, aircraft, and other observing tools.
WRF also is skilled at depicting intense squall lines, supercell thunderstorms, and other types of severe weather. Although no model can pinpoint hours ahead of time where a thunderstorm will form, WRF outpaces many models in its ability to predict what types of storms could form and how they might evolve.
Approximately 4,000 people in 77 countries are registered users of WRF. Many of these users suggest improvements, which are tested for operational usefulness at a testbed facility based at NCAR and supported by NOAA.
"WRF will continue to improve because of all the research and development pouring into it from our nation's leading academic and scientific institutions," said AFWA commander Patrick Condray.
Contact:David Hosansky
hosansky@ucar.edu
303-497-8611
National Center for Atmospheric Research/University Corporation for Atmospheric Research
Dennis Feltgen
dennis.feltgen@noaa.gov
301-763-0622, ext. 127
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
Miles Brown
miles.brown@afwa.af.mil
402-294-2862
Air Force Weather Agency Public Affairs

M. D. Anderson teaches the art of aromatherapy to soothe and heal

2006-09-17T13:39:00.000-07:00

A bubble bath that improves memory. A kitchen cleaner that wards off nausea and energizes. A scented handkerchief that calms a patient entering the MRI. The benefits of aromatherapy are real. Below, learn the uses, healing properties and how-tos of using aromatherapy to heal and de-stress from The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston.
Scan the shelves of the local bath and body stores and one is sure to find products labeled for aromatherapy. Many might be surprised to learn the science behind it. So what is aromatherapy, how is it used and will those products actually work?
Cherie Perez, a supervising research nurse in the Department of Genitourinary Medical Oncology, teaches a monthly aromatherapy class to answer those questions for cancer patients and caregivers undergoing treatment at M. D. Anderson Cancer Center. Perez's classes are offered free of charge through M. D. Anderson's Place... of wellness, a center within the institution that focuses on helping patients and caregivers deal with the non-medical issues of living with cancer, and is the first complementary therapy facility to be built on the campus of a comprehensive cancer center.
Perez, who first became involved with aromatherapy to help relieve the physical pain and discomfort caused by fibromyalgia, shares her professional knowledge of the basics of aromatherapy, safety precautions and interactive demonstrations in each hour-long class.
Oils and healing
While essential oils may not directly stimulate the immune system, they can complement cancer treatment by boosting the system's ability to fight off infections, says Perez.
Certain oils can also stimulate lymphatic drainage or have antibacterial properties. Since it has many potential uses ranging from managing anxiety and nausea to helping with sleep, general relaxation, memory and attention, many individuals, including cancer patients, can benefit from aromatherapy [See Sidebar 1: Five Oils to Reduce Stress and Relieve Ailments.]
There are a variety of different products and methods of diffusion to obtain the healing benefits of oils. Some oils - like lavender, ylang ylang and sandalwood can be applied directly to the skin - while others are too concentrated and need to be diluted into carriers such as massage oils, bath soaps and lotions [See Sidebar 2: Everyday Uses for Aromatherapy.] Most typically, Perez advises patients to put a few drops of an oil, or a combination of oils onto a handkerchief and "fan themselves like Scarlett O'Hara." Burning oils or incense is not recommended because most are poorly constructed and give off unhealthy fumes and soot.
Who should, or shouldn't, use oils?
Widely sold in health food stores and beauty chain stores, essential oils do have chemical properties that can affect the brain and enter the bloodstream, and for some patients may be toxic when combined with common cancer therapies such as chemotherapy and radiation therapy. Perez says essential oils, like many medicines, can increase a person's sensitivity to the sun and should be used with caution. Patients should always inform and discuss with their physicians before using aromatherapy oils to complement a medical condition.
People with high blood pressure should avoid hyssop, rosemary, sage and thyme, while diabetics should avoid angelica oil. Women who are pregnant or nursing should avoid a number of oils that stimulate the uterus including star anise, basil and juniper to name a few and should use with caution peppermint, rose and rosemary in the first trimester. According to Perez, pediatric patients can use aromatherapy essential oils in very low concentrations. [See Sidebar 3: Tips for Buying Oils.]
Aromatherapy's role in cancer treatment
"The nature of aromatherapy makes it challenging to study due to the fact that it is difficult to create a placebo and every person is different in their nasal sensitivities and skin absorption rates," says Perez. In the future, however, she would be interested in designing research to examine how aromatherapy can be used to treat/heal burns caused from radiation treatment safely and effectively, soothe pre-treatment anxiety and manage loss-of-memory issues in cancer survivors.
Contact: Lindsay Anderson
lindsay.anderson@gabbe.com
212-220-4444
University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center

Engineers forge greener path to iron production

2006-09-17T13:34:00.000-07:00

MIT engineers have demonstrated an eco-friendly way to make iron. The new method eliminates the greenhouse gases usually associated with iron production.
The American Iron and Steel Institute (AISI) announced today that the team, led by Donald R. Sadoway of the Department of Materials Science and Engineering, has shown the technical viability of producing iron by molten oxide electrolysis (MOE).
"What sets molten oxide electrolysis apart from other metal-producing technologies is that it is totally carbon-free and hence generates no carbon dioxide gases -- only oxygen," said Lawrence W. Kavanagh, AISI vice president of manufacturing and technology.
The work was funded by the AISI/Department of Energy Technology Roadmap Program (TRP). The TRP goal is to increase the competitiveness of the U.S. steel industry while saving energy and enhancing the environment. According to the AISI, the MIT work "marks one of TRP's breakthrough projects toward meeting that goal."
Unlike other iron-making processes, MOE works by passing an electric current through a liquid solution of iron oxide. The iron oxide then breaks down into liquid iron and oxygen gas, allowing oxygen to be the main byproduct of the process.
Electrolysis itself is nothing new -- all of the world's aluminum is produced this way. And that is one advantage of the new process: It is based on a technology that metallurgists are already familiar with. Unlike aluminum smelting, however, MOE is carbon-free.
"What's different this time is that we have the resources to take the time to unravel the underlying basic science," said Sadoway, the John F. Elliott Professor of Materials Chemistry. "No one has ever studied the fundamental electrochemistry of a process operating at 1600ºC. We're doing voltammetry at white heat!"
The result? "I now can confirm that in molten oxide electrolysis we'll see iron productivities at least five times that of aluminum, maybe as high as 10 times. This changes everything when it comes to assessing technical viability at the industrial scale."
MIT will continue further experiments to determine how to increase the rate of iron production and to discover new materials capable of extending the life of certain reactor components to industrially practical limits. This work will set the stage for construction of a pilot-scale cell to further validate the viability of the MOE process and identify scale-up parameters.
Elizabeth A. Thomson, News Office

Planet Earth may have 'tilted' to keep its balance

2006-09-17T06:32:00.001-07:00

Imagine a shift in the Earth so profound that it could force our entire planet to spin on its side after a few million years, tilting it so far that Alaska would sit at the equator. Princeton scientists have now provided the first compelling evidence that this kind of major shift may have happened in our world's distant past.
By analyzing the magnetic composition of ancient sediments found in the remote Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard, Princeton University's Adam Maloof has lent credence to a 140-year-old theory regarding the way the Earth might restore its own balance if an unequal distribution of weight ever developed in its interior or on its surface.
The theory, known as true polar wander, postulates that if an object of sufficient weight --such as a supersized volcano -- ever formed far from the equator, the force of the planet's rotation would gradually pull the heavy object away from the axis the Earth spins around. If the volcanoes, land and other masses that exist within the spinning Earth ever became sufficiently imbalanced, the planet would tilt and rotate itself until this extra weight was relocated to a point along the equator.
"The sediments we have recovered from Norway offer the first good evidence that a true polar wander event happened about 800 million years ago," said Maloof, an assistant professor of geosciences. "If we can find good corroborating evidence from other parts of the world as well, we will have a very good idea that our planet is capable of this sort of dramatic change."
Maloof's team, which includes researchers from Harvard University, the California Institute of Technology and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology as well as Princeton, will publish their findings in the Geological Society of America Bulletin on Friday, Aug. 25.
True polar wander is different from the more familiar idea of "continental drift," which is the inchwise movement of individual continents relative to one another across the Earth's surface. Polar wander can tip the entire planet on its side at a rate of perhaps several meters per year, about 10 to 100 times as fast as the continents drift due to plate tectonics. Though the poles themselves would still point in the same direction with respect to the solar system, the process could conceivably shift entire continents from the tropics to the Arctic, or vice versa, within a relatively brief geological time span.
While the idea that the continents are slowly moving in relation to one another is a well-known concept, the less familiar theory of true polar wander has been around since the mid-19th century, several decades before continental drift was ever proposed. But when the continents were proven to be moving under the influence of plate tectonics in the 1960s, it explained so many dynamic processes in the Earth's surface so well that true polar wander became an obscure subject.
"Planetary scientists still talk about polar wander for other worlds, such as Mars, where a massive buildup of volcanic rock called Tharsis sits at the Martian equator," Maloof said. "But because Earth's surface is constantly changing as the continents move and ocean crustal plates slide over and under one another, it's more difficult to find evidence of our planet twisting hundreds of millions of years ago, as Mars likely did while it was still geologically active."
However, the sediments that the team studied in Svalbard from 1999 to 2005 may have provided just such long-sought evidence. It is well known that when rock particles are sinking to the ocean floor to form layers of new sediment, tiny magnetic grains within the particles align themselves with the magnetic lines of the Earth. Once this rock hardens, it becomes a reliable record of the direction the Earth's magnetic field was pointing at the time of the rock's formation. So, if a rock has been spun around by a dramatic geological event, its magnetic field will have an apparently anomalous orientation that geophysicists like those on Maloof's team seek to explain.
"We found just such anomalies in the Svalbard sediments," Maloof said. "We made every effort to find another reason for the anomalies, such as a rapid rotation of the individual crustal plate the islands rest upon, but none of the alternatives makes as much sense as a true polar wander event when taken in the context of geochemical and sea level data from the same rocks."
The findings, he said, could possibly explain odd changes in ocean chemistry that occurred about 800 million years ago. Other similar changes in the ocean have cropped up in ancient times, Maloof said, but at these other times scientists know that an ice age was to blame.
"Scientists have found no evidence for an ice age occurring 800 million years ago, and the change in the ocean at this juncture remains one of the great mysteries in the ancient history of our planet," he said. "But if all the continents were suddenly flipped around and their rivers began carrying water and nutrients into the tropics instead of the Arctic, for example, it could produce the mysterious geochemical changes science has been trying to explain."
Because the team obtained all its data from the islands of Svalbard, Maloof said their next priority would be to seek corroborating evidence within sediments of similar age from elsewhere on the planet. This is difficult, Maloof said, because most 800-million-year-old rocks have long since disappeared. Because the Earth's crustal plates slide under one another over time, they take most of geological history back into the planet's deep interior. However, Maloof said, a site his team has located in Australia looks promising.
"We cannot be certain of these findings until we find similar patterns in rock chemistry and magnetics on other continents," Maloof said. "Rocks of the same age are preserved in the Australian interior, so we'll be visiting the site over the next two years to look for additional evidence. If we find some, we'll be far more confident about this theory's validity."
Maloof said that true polar wander was most likely to occur when the Earth's landmasses were fused together to form a single supercontinent, something that has happened at least twice in the distant past. But he said we should not worry about the planet going through a major shift again any time soon.
"If a true polar wander event has occurred in our planet's history, it's likely been when the continents formed a single mass on one side of the Earth," he said. "We don't expect there to be another event in the foreseeable future, though. The Earth's surface is pretty well balanced today."
Contact: Chad Boutin
cboutin@princeton.edu
609-258-5729
Princeton University

Why are so many people dying on Everest?

2006-09-17T06:28:00.000-07:00

Personal view: Why are so many people dying on Everest? BMJ Volume 333 p 452
Why are so many people dying on Mount Everest, asks doctor and climber, Andrew Sutherland in this week's BMJ?
It used to be thought that it would be physiologically impossible to climb Mount Everest with or without oxygen. In 1953 Hillary and Tenzing proved that it was possible to reach the summit with oxygen and in 1978 Messner and Habeler demonstrated it was possible without oxygen.
Although Everest has not changed, and we now have a better understanding of acclimatisation, improved climbing equipment, and established routes, it would therefore seem logical that climbing Everest might have become an altogether less deadly activity.
However, this year the unofficial body count on Mount Everest has reached 15, the most since the disaster of 1996 when 16 people died, eight in one night following an unexpected storm.
The death rate on Mount Everest has not changed over the years, with about one death for every 10 successful ascents. For anyone who reaches the summit, they have about a 1 in 20 chance of not making it down again.
So why are there so many people dying on Mount Everest? And more importantly, can we reduce this number?
The main reasons for people dying while climbing Mount Everest are injuries and exhaustion. However, there is also a large proportion of climbers who die from altitude related illness, specifically from high altitude cerebral oedema (HACE) and high altitude pulmonary oedema (HAPE).
This year, the author was on the north side of Everest as the doctor on the Everestmax expedition (www.everestmax.com) and was shocked by both the amount of altitude related illness and the relative lack of knowledge among people attempting Everest.
He writes: "On our summit attempt we were able to help with HAPE at 7000 metres, but higher up the mountain we passed four bodies of climbers who had been less fortunate. The last body we encountered was of a Frenchman who had reached the summit four days earlier but was too exhausted to descend. His best friend had tried in vain to get him down the mountain, but they had descended only 50 metres in six hours and he had to abandon him."
"Some people believe that part of the reason for the increase in deaths is the number of inexperienced climbers, who pay large sums of money to ascend Everest," he says. "In my view, climbers are not climbing beyond their ability but instead beyond their altitude ability. Unfortunately it is difficult to get experience of what it is like climbing above Camp 3 (8300 metres) without climbing Everest. Climbers invariably do not know what their ability above 8300 metres is going to be like."
He suggests that climbers need to think less about 'the climb' and more about their health on the way up.
No matter what the affliction, whether it be HACE, HAPE, or just exhaustion, the result is invariably the same – the climber starts to climb more slowly, he explains. If you are too slow this means that something is wrong and your chances of not making it off the mountain are greatly increased. But with the summit in sight this advice is too often ignored.
When the author visited the French consulate in Kathmandu to confirm the Frenchman's death, the consul, not a climbing or an altitude expert, shook his head and said, "He didn't reach the summit until 12.30; that is a 14 hour climb – it is too long."
Contact: Emma Dickinson
edickinson@bmj.com
44-207-383-6529
BMJ-British Medical Journal

New lab technique churns out fungus' potential cancer fighter

2006-09-17T06:22:00.000-07:00

For the first time, researchers have developed a way to synthesize a cancer-killing compound called rasfonin in enough quantity to learn how it works.
Derived from a fungus discovered clinging to the walls of a New Zealand cave, the chemical tricks certain cancer cells into suicide while leaving healthy cells untouched.
"In 2000, scientists in Japan discovered that this compound might have some tremendous potential as a prototype anticancer agent, but no one has been able to study or develop it because it's so hard to get enough of it from natural sources," says Robert K. Boeckman, professor of chemistry.
"You either grow the fungus that makes it, or you go through a complicated chemical synthesis process that still yields only a minute amount," he says. "Now, after five years of effort, we've worked out a process that lets researchers finally produce enough rasfonin to really start investigating how it functions, and how we might harness it to fight cancer."
In 2000, researchers from Chiba University in Japan and the University of Tokyo simultaneously discovered a compound in certain fungi that selectively destroyed cells depending upon a gene called ras--one of the first known cancer-causing genes. They had found rasfonin, a compound that seemed tailor-made to knock out ras-dependent cancers like pancreatic cancer.
After six years, however, rasfonin's secrets remain a mystery because researchers can't make enough of it to carry out tests.
To bring about a new drug, organic chemists must produce a new chemical in enough quantity to test it under many different circumstances to tease out its modus operandi. Until now, no method existed to generate rasfonin, aside from growing more fungus--a time-consuming and terribly inefficient method. Boeckman, the Marshall D. Gates, Jr. Professor of Chemistry at the University of Rochester, has now revealed a process that produces 67 times more rasfonin than any previous method. For the first time, scientists can obtain enough rasfonin to conduct proper biological tests on it.
"At a guess, I'd say that rasfonin itself will not be the final compound that might come to market," says Boeckman. "But we need to figure out how it works, how it triggers the cancer cell to shut itself down. The key is to find exactly what buttons rasfonin is pushing, and then figure out if there's a way we can safely and more simply push those same buttons. But we couldn't do that until we have enough to test."
Even Boeckman's simplified process is notably complex, employing sophisticated organic reactions. Instead of the original method's 23 steps, Boeckman's has just 16--but finding them took five years of his team's hard work, skill and intuition.
Boeckman's paper, published in the Aug. 30 issue of the Journal of the American Chemical Society, outlines the sequence of steps showing how Boeckman's group inserted, removed, or altered the three-dimensional and chemical structure of their compound until they produced complete rasfonin. Diagrams of the complete process are available on the Web at pubs.acs.org.
"Very soon, researchers should be able to scale up this process rather easily to whatever volume they need," says Boeckman. "It may be a long road to a possible treatment, but at least we're now past the first hurdle."
Contact: Jonathan Sherwood
jonathan.sherwood@rochester.edu
585-273-4726
University of Rochester

California scientists find natural way to control spread of destructive Argentine ants

2006-09-17T01:14:00.001-07:00

SAN FRANCISCO,- Pesticides haven't stopped them. Trapping hasn't worked, either. But now chemists and biologists at the University of California, Irvine, (UCI) think they may have found a natural way to finally check the spread of environmentally destructive Argentine ants in California and elsewhere in the United States: Spark a family feud.
The preliminary finding, by UCI organic chemist Kenneth Shea, evolutionary biologist Neil Tsutsui and graduate student Robert Sulc, was described today at the 232nd national meeting of the American Chemical Society, the world's largest scientific society.
Slight alterations in the "recognition" chemicals on the exoskeletons of these closely related pests, these scientists say, could transform "kissing cousins" into mortal enemies, triggering deadly in-fighting within their normally peaceful super colonies, which have numerous queens and can stretch hundreds of miles. One colony of Argentine ants is believed to extend almost the complete length of California, stretching from San Diego to Ukiah, 100 miles north of San Francisco. Their sheer numbers, cooperative behavior and lack of natural predators in the United States make these small, slender ants - only about 1/8 of an inch long - difficult to eradicate, Tsutsui and Shea say.
The ants use chemical cues on their exoskeletons to recognize other members of their colony. Because Argentine ants in the California super colony are so interrelated, they have similar "recognition" cues and generally cooperate with each other. But in their preliminary laboratory work, Shea and Tsutsui were able to create a slightly altered, synthetic version of one of these "recognition" compounds, which was composed mainly of linear hydrocarbons with one- to three-side chains called methyl groups. When coated onto experimental Argentine ants, the synthetic recognition compound caused untreated nest mates to attack.
"Our preliminary results strongly suggest that by manipulating these chemicals on the exoskeleton, one could disrupt the cooperative behavior of these ants and, in essence, trigger civil unrest within these huge colonies," Shea says. "Although further study is needed, this approach, if it proves successful, could enable us to better control this pest."
Argentine ants are one of the most widespread and ecologically damaging invasive species, Tsutsui said. When Argentine ants are introduced to a new habitat, they eliminate virtually all native species of ants. These effects ripple through the ecosystem, causing harm to species such as the imperiled Coastal Horned Lizard, which feeds exclusively on a few species of native ants. Argentine ants also cause significant harm to agricultural crops, such as citrus, by protecting aphids and scale insects from potential predators and parasites.
In their native South American habitat, Argentine ants are genetically diverse, have territories measured in yards rather than miles and are extremely aggressive toward encroaching colonies, literally tearing one another apart in battle, according to Tsutsui. But North American colonies are different. Because they are believed to be descended from a single small population of genetically similar ants, Argentine ants in United States essentially "recognize" each other as members of the same clan, he said.
"The final goal of this project would be to recognize the colony markers that distinguish one colony from another," Shea said. "Once we have an understanding of those markers, then it might be possible to use synthetic mixtures of hydrocarbons to either confuse or confound or otherwise disrupt social behavior."
Argentine ants were likely carried into the United States in the 1890s aboard cargo ships that docked in Louisiana. Although the proliferation of the ants has been slowed in the South and Southeast by the introduction of fire ants, Argentine ants are now the most common ant in California, Shea said.
Contact: Michael Bernstein
m_bernstein@acs.org
415-978-3532 (San Francisco, CA, Sept. 10-14, 2006)
202-872-4400 (Washington, DC)
American Chemical Society

Stratospheric injections could help cool Earth, computer model shows

2006-09-17T01:04:00.001-07:00

BOULDER -- A two-pronged approach to stabilizing climate, with cuts in greenhouse gas emissions as well as injections of climate-cooling sulfates, could prove more effective than either approach used separately. This is the finding of a new study by Tom Wigley of the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), published in the September 14 issue of Science.
Wigley calculates the impact of injecting sulfate particles, or aerosols, every one to four years into the stratosphere in amounts equal to those lofted by the volcanic eruption of Mt. Pintabuto in 1991. If found to be environmentally and technologically viable, such injections could provide a "grace period" of up to 20 years before major cutbacks in greenhouse gas emissions would be required, he concludes.
"A combined approach to climate stabilization has a number of advantages over either employed separately," says Wigley. His study was supported by the National Science Foundation, NCAR's primary sponsor.
The Science paper does not endorse any particular approach to reducing climate change, nor is it intended to address the many technical and political challenges involved in potential geoengineering efforts. Instead, it analyzes whether the much-discussed idea of injecting sulfates into the stratosphere could, in fact, slow down global warming and therefore provide more time for society to reduce the emissions of carbon dioxide.
If climate change were addressed only through mitigation (emissions reduction), then massive cuts in emissions would be needed in order to keep temperatures from rising more than 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit (2.0 degrees Celsius) over present levels. This amount of warming has often been cited as a benchmark of dangerous climate change.
Given the difficulties of making such massive cuts, scientists recently have begun to reexamine a variety of schemes proposed over the last few decades to reduce the impact of climate change through global-scale technological fixes. These approaches are often referred to as geoengineering. One strategy first proposed in the 1970s is to inject large amounts of sun-blocking sulfate particles into the stratosphere via aircraft or other means. The idea would be to cool the climate for a year or more with each injection, much as the largest volcanic eruptions do.
"Geoengineering could provide additional time to address the economic and technological challenges faced by a mitigation-only approach," says Wigley.
-----A model experiment with two scenarios-----
Using a computer model to track sunlight and other energy flowing into and out of the Earth system, Wigley examined two scenarios that project the impact of emissions on climate from now to the year 2400. In one scenario, total emissions would have to start dropping immediately, and would have to be cut by around 50 percent in the next 50 years, in order to keep global climate from warming by more than the 2 degrees C benchmark. An alternative scenario, the "overshoot" approach, allows a period of increasing total emissions, extending to the 2030s, before stringent cutbacks begin.
To see how geoengineering might change this picture, Wigley took the overshoot scenario and added three frequencies of Pinatubo-scale injections of sulfates into the stratosphere. The frequencies were equivalent to an eruption every year, every two years, and every four years. In all three cases, global temperature stayed approximately constant for the next 40 to 50 years. After 2050, the cumulative effect of greenhouse gases produced a slow temperature rise, though it was muted by the injections.
Injections on a scale equal to Pinatubo were examined because that volcanic eruption did not seriously disrupt the climate system beyond a short-term cooling, says Wigley.
-----No panacea-----
Geoengineering is not a panacea, Wigley notes. For example, carbon dioxide from fossil fuel burning has led to an increased acidification of Earth's oceans. Even if geoengineering could help limit global warming, the oceans would continue to acidify as greenhouse-gas emissions climb, threatening certain marine ecosystems.
Mitigation alone can potentially solve both the warming and ocean acidification problems, but it has its own set of difficulties, says Wigley. The rapid emissions reductions required to keep below the 2 degree C warming threshold would be costly, perhaps unacceptably so, and would pose severe technological challenges.
"A relatively modest geoengineering investment could reduce the economic and technological burden on mitigation by deferring the need for immediate or near-future cuts in carbon dioxide emissions," Wigley says.
Contact: David Hosansky
hosansky@ucar.edu
303-497-8611
National Center for Atmospheric Research/University Corporation for Atmospheric Research

Microscopic passengers to hitch ride on space shuttle

2006-09-16T18:46:00.001-07:00

When space shuttle Atlantis rockets into space later this week, it will take along three kinds of microbes so scientists can study how their genetic responses and their ability to cause disease change.
The 'Microbe' experiment, part of the STS-115 space shuttle mission scheduled for launch Aug. 27, will study three common microorganisms -- Salmonella typhimurium, Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Candida albicans -- that have been identified as potential threats to crew health. Sending these microbes into space will allow scientists to investigate the microbes' genetic adaptation and ability to cause infectious disease in microgravity, and to better understand the astronauts' space environment. The results of this experiment will help NASA scientists evaluate the risks to astronauts on future exploration missions planned to go to the moon and Mars.
"Spaceflight holds tremendous potential for the development of novel therapeutics, vaccines and diagnostics to treat, prevent and control infectious diseases," said Cheryl A. Nickerson, Ph.D., the experiment's principal investigator and a researcher at the Biodesign Institute at Arizona State University, Tempe. "Our Microbe experiment will be the first to investigate the effects of spaceflight on the disease-causing potential and gene expression profiles of disease-causing microbes." NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif., developed the Microbe payload for flight.
According to scientists, understanding human biological changes and microbial responses while living in enclosed quarters in space is important to the health, safety and performance of crewmembers and requires further study. The flight microorganisms, which may be carried to spacecraft on the human body and in water or food, have been identified as potential threats to astronaut health based on previous spaceflight missions. Microorganisms also are major causes of human illness on Earth, according to Nickerson.
Prior studies have indicated that spaceflight weakens the human immune system and that some microbes become more virulent when grown under conditions that simulate spaceflight, thus increasing the risk of astronauts becoming sick during flight. Whatever the mission or its duration, microbes are present where there are human beings.
This experiment will focus on investigating the effects of spaceflight on three microorganisms commonly found where human beings live. The results will be used in the risk assessment of crew environmental conditions, including drinking water and breathable atmosphere, to help prevent contamination and contagious infection while in space. Scientists also believe this research some day may benefit people on Earth by leading to new therapies to treat infection.
"This experiment requires only the minimum of space shuttle resources, but it has the potential to greatly advance infectious disease research in space and on the ground," said Steven Hing, the experiment's project manager at NASA Ames, in California's Silicon Valley.
With these 'bugs' already present or with the potential to be present in human-occupied spacecraft, this research is applicable to both current and future long-duration flights, Hing noted. Because the microbes will be contained in Group Activation Pack (GAP) hardware that provides three levels of containment, they will pose no threat of exposure to the astronauts. A total of 12 GAPs will fly on the upcoming mission.
"Spaceflight has been shown to induce key changes in both human and microbial cells that are directly relevant to infectious disease, including changes in immune system function, microbial growth rates, antibiotic resistance, and cell surface properties," explained Nickerson. "It is exciting to think of the potential benefit that research in space holds for translation to the clinical bedside by providing a better understanding of how pathogens cause disease that will lead to new ways to treat, prevent and diagnose infectious disease."
Contact: Joe Caspermeyer
joseph.caspermeyer@asu.edu
480-727-0369
Arizona State University

IBM Software Offers Companies a Simple Approach to Creating Portal Solutions

2006-09-16T18:36:00.000-07:00

ARMONK, NY IBM (NYSE: IBM) announced a new portal server for departments eager to start a small portal project and then build and expand on their initial technology investment. WebSphere Portal Server serves as the software foundation for building applications and services that reside within a portal, best known as a common entry point for business users who need to share information regardless of where the information resides.
The new portal server offering simplifies the creation and delivery of portal components by leveraging service-oriented architecture (SOA), an approach that reuses a company's existing technology systems to more closely align them with a company's business goals, resulting in greater efficiencies, cost savings and productivity. For example, a people finder or awareness feature found in instant messaging products such as Lotus Sametime can be added to a call center application to help match a returning customer with a previously-known customer service representative.

Portal Server leverages a Web 2.0 Ajax-based interface that can help portal users accomplish more with fewer clicks while also improving portal performance. Included in the server are standards-based applications using popular file formats to deliver web content through Real Simple Syndication (RSS) feeds.

Additional new features of WebSphere Portal Server include:

-- Easier integration with applications
such as Oracle, SAP and BEA, based on
IBM's open standards strategy.

-- Access to nearly 1,000 business partner applications
available at IBM's Portal Catalog at
http://catalog.lotus.com/wps/portal/portal as well as popular
collaboration portlets, including My Work, which provides
access to Microsoft Exchange, IBM Lotus Notes and IBM
Lotus Domino business collaboration software and IBM
Lotus Notes/Domino and Sametime Instant Messaging; My
Vertical News, which provides the top headlines from
MarketWatch's array of general, business and industry news
categories; and People Finder, which provides a way to
quickly locate employees based on name, current job or
organizational context.

-- Advanced personalization and customization features, such
as the use of new rules for business users to show or hide
pages to help businesses improve team productivity. In
addition, portal server offers new navigation tools with drag
and drop capabilities to dynamically rearrange page layouts.

"Business managers want to retain ownership of their portal and its content and they want a platform that allows them to easily customize their desktops," said IBM Business Partner Dennis Rot, portal architect, Portico Consultancy. "As our customers' portals mature, we're seeing a growing demand for composite applications. Portal Server will meet our customers' needs for portal solutions that reduce existing administrative loads and offer an enhanced user experience."
"Using WebSphere Portal Server as the front-end of a company's SOA ensures customers can take advantage of easy-to-use solution templates, a development environment based on open standards and aggressive pricing and packaging," said Mike Rhodin, general manager, Workplace, Portal and Collaboration Software. "The added features in this latest release gives new portal users even more powerful tools to define and create a customized workplace that significantly improves productivity."
Businesses that start with portal server as their foundation portal can easily upgrade to other offerings in the WebSphere Portal family with WebSphere Portal Enable and WebSphere Portal Extend.
Pricing and Availability
Portal Server is available through two options: purchasing 20 user packs for $2,500 or purchasing on a per processor basis for $50,000. These two options include one year of support and maintenance.
IBM WebSphere Portal Enable is $95,000 per processor while IBM WebSphere Portal Extend is $130,000 per processor.
For more information, visit: ibm.com/software/genservers/portal/
Contact(s) information
Jennifer C. Clemente
IBM Software Group Media Relations
415 545 3230
jennic@us.ibm.com
Elena Fernandez
IBM Software Group Media Relations
617 693 1606
Elena_Fernandez@us.ibm.com

Windows Live Services Reach Key Milestones

2006-09-16T10:55:00.000-07:00

Live Search, Live.com and Live Local Search released from beta; Live Search to power search on MSN.

REDMOND, Wash. — Sept. 11, 2006 — Microsoft Corp. today announced the release from beta of Live Search and of Live.com in 47 markets worldwide, and final availability of Live Local Search in the U.K. and the U.S. Microsoft also announced that Live Search will now power the Web search capability on MSN®, the company’s media and entertainment portal, attracting more than 465 million unique users worldwide per month.
“The launch of Live Search is a significant milestone for our services business, with our core search and monetization platform ready for prime time for MSN and Windows Live™ as well as for partners through syndication deals,” said Christopher Payne, corporate vice president of Live Search at Microsoft. “We now have the base to weave search through our services in ways that bring value to customers. This is just the beginning. We look forward to continued investment in search to deliver services that bring new levels of control and personalization to the Web experience.”
Extensive feedback and ongoing testing of each beta service has led to marked improvements in the user interface and the overall customer experience. These Windows Live milestones represent the first of several more to come this fall that will demonstrate Microsoft’s commitment to building and delivering services that bring new levels of control and personalization to the Web experience.
By using Live.com as their personal search home page, customers can harness the power of Live Search to find, customize and track news, images, video, RSS feeds and blogs across the Web. They can try it at http://www.live.com.
Live Local Search will offer increased availability of bird’s-eye imagery, improved mobile integration and functionality, and other user interface improvements and customization tools.
Additional details can be found on the Live Search and Live Local Search team blogs at http://livesearch.spaces.live.com and http://virtualearth.spaces.live.com, respectively.
These services are now available in select international markets, in which feature availability and beta status will vary.
About MSN and Windows Live
MSN attracts more than 465 million unique users worldwide per month. With localized versions available globally in 42 markets and 21 languages, MSN is a world leader in delivering compelling programmed content experiences to consumers and online advertising opportunities to businesses worldwide. Windows Live, a new set of personal Internet services and software, is designed to bring together in one place all the relationships, information and interests people care about most, with enhanced safety and security features across their PC, devices and the Web. MSN and Windows Live will be offered alongside each other as complementary services. Some Windows Live services entered an early beta phase on Nov. 1, 2005; these and future beta updates can be found at http://ideas.live.com. Windows Live is available at http://www.live.com.
MSN is located on the Web at http://www.msn.com. MSN worldwide sites are located at http://www.msn.com/worldwide.ashx.

Anti-inflammatory drugs following hip replacement surgery could harm rather than help

2006-09-16T10:48:00.000-07:00

The use of anti-inflammatory drugs following hip replacement surgery could do more harm than good, according to a new study co-coordinated by The George Institute for International Health in association with orthopedic centres throughout Australian and New Zealand.

The results of the study designed to determine the long-term benefits and risks of anti-inflammatory drugs in patients undergoing hip replacement surgery were published today in the British Medical Journal. The study specifically measured the effects of a short post-operative course of anti-inflammatories on the development of 'ectopic' bone formation related pain and disability, six to twelve months after surgery.

"Ectopic bone is abnormal bone that can form in the soft tissues around the operated hip. This occurs in more than one third of all patients in the months after hip replacement surgery," explained, Dr Marlene Fransen Head, Musculoskeletal Program at The George Institute and Principal Investigator of this study. Many surgeons prescribe anti-inflammatory drugs in the immediate post-operative period to avoid this outcome, or simply as part of a pain management strategy. While the researchers found the use of post-operative ibuprofen, a common anti-inflammatory drug, did indeed greatly reduce the risk of ectopic bone formation, patients reported no greater reductions in hip pain or physical disability six to twelve months after surgery, compared with those not taking the drug. However, they also found evidence suggesting there may be an increased risk of major bleeding events in those taking the drug,

"For this reason, our study shows that recommending a routine course of an anti-inflammatory drug following hip replacement surgery, is not justified,"

Chronic osteoarthritis of the hip is common among Australians aged 60 years or older and total hip replacement surgery is a well-established and highly effective treatment. Whilst joint replacement surgery greatly reduces chronic hip pain and improves physical function in most, residual symptoms are common. Over 900 patients from 20 orthopedic surgery centres across Australia and New Zealand participated in this study, half of whom were allocated to receive ibuprofen, a common anti-inflammatory drug, for 14 days commencing immediately after surgery.

"These results provide further evidence that guidelines for routine clinical care in surgery must be based on clinically important outcomes. Without such evidence, the widespread use of routine anti-inflammatory-based treatment after major orthopaedic surgery may well result in harm rather than benefit," Dr Fransen added.

Contact: Emma Orpilla
eorpilla@george.org.au
61-299-934-592
Research Australia

Latest fuel cell material advance overcomes low humidity conductivity problem

2006-09-16T00:11:00.001-07:00

Fuel cells have been a workable technology for decades – but expensive and lacking in infrastructure. In recent years, researchers have addressed durability, manufacturability, and conductivity challenges in alternative proton exchange membrane (PEM) materials for fuel cells – bringing the hydrogen-based energy source closer to reality.
James McGrath, University Distinguished Professor of Chemistry with the Macromolecules and Interfaces Institute at Virginia Tech, will announce his research group's latest development, a PEM material that retains conductivity during low humidity, during his plenary lecture at the Challenges for the Hydrogen Economy symposium during the 232nd National Meeting of the American Chemical Society (ACS) on September 10-14 in San Francisco.
Fuel cells convert chemical energy, usually from hydrogen, to electrical energy. In a PEM fuel cell, the critical exchange takes place through a thin water-swollen copolymer film that contains sulfonic acid (SO3H) groups. Electrons are peeled off by oxidation of the hydrogen atoms and hydrated protons pass through the film to combine with oxygen on the other side to form water as a byproduct.
The efficiency of the exchange process depends upon water, so efficiency – measured as proton conductivity – goes down as humidity goes down. "Up to now, a lot of water has been needed to assist the proton transfer process," said McGrath. "But, in the desert, that is pretty inefficient." McGrath, chemical engineering Professor Don Baird, and their students demonstrated a method for creating a material with improved conductivity even at lower humidity. The U.S. Department of Energy awarded McGrath and Baird's groups $1.5 million over five years to advance the research.
Instead of stirring two kinds of reactive monomers, or small molecules, together to form a new random copolymer, the new material links blocks of two different short polymers in sequences. For example, he would link polymer W (loves water) and polymer d (dry but strong) into a chain this way: WWWWWdddddddWWWWWdddddddd.
The researchers can link a 10- to 50-unit block of a polymer containing acidic groups (SO3H) that like water (hydrophilic) to an equally long block of a polymer that has mechanical strength, thermal stability, and endurance, but hates water (hydrophobic). The chains self-assemble into flexible thin films. Under an atomic force microscope, the film's swirling surface looks like a fingerprint, with light ridges and dark channels. It turns out that the soft hydrophilic polymer forms the dark channels where water is easily absorbed so that the entire film – or proton exchange membrane (PEM) – has an affinity for water transport that is two to three times higher than the present commercially available PEM.
In addition to making PEM materials with better qualities, another goal of the research is to make PEM materials that can be easily manufactured. The self-assembling nature of the block copolymer material into a nanocomposite film is an important attribute. In addition, Baird is working on processing the film from powders using a reverse roll coater, equipment commonly available in the coatings industry but not yet being used to produce PEM material. McGrath will present the paper, "Progress in alternate proton exchange membrane materials for fuel cells (Fuel 3)," at 10:15 a.m. Sunday, Sept. 10, in the Golden Ballroom of the Sheraton Palace.
Contact: Susan Trulove
STrulove@vt.edu
540-231-5646
Virginia Tech

Compounds in cranberry juice show promise as alternatives to antibiotics

2006-09-16T00:08:00.000-07:00

A group of tannins found primarily in cranberries can transform E. coli bacteria, a class of microorganisms responsible for a host of human illnesses, including urinary tract infections, in ways that render them unable to initiate an infection.

WORCESTER, Mass. Compounds in cranberry juice have the ability to change E. coli bacteria, a class of microorganisms responsible for a host of human illnesses (everything from kidney infections to gastroenteritis to tooth decay), in ways that render them unable to initiate an infection. The results of this new research by scientists at Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) suggest that the cranberry may provide an alternative to antibiotics, particularly for combating E. coli bacteria that have become resistant to conventional treatment.
The new findings, which will be presented on Sunday, Sept. 10, at the annual meeting of the American Chemical Society in San Francisco, for the first time begin to paint a detailed picture of the biochemical mechanisms that may underlie a number of beneficial health effects of cranberry juice that have been reported in other studies over the years.
Many of those studies have focused on the ability of cranberry juice to prevent urinary tract infections (UTIs), which each year affect eight million people–mostly women, the elderly, and infants--resulting in $1.6 billion in health care costs. Until now, scientists have not understood exactly how cranberry juice prevents UTIs and other bacterial infections, though they have suspected that compounds in the juice somehow prevent bacteria from adhering to the lining of the urinary tract. The new findings reveal how the compounds interfere with adhesion at the molecular level.
The new results will be incorporated in two presentations during a session that runs from 8:30 to 11:40 a.m. in the Windsor Room of the Sir Francis Drake Hotel.
The research, by Terri Camesano, associate professor of chemical engineering at WPI, and graduate students Yatao Liu and Paola Pinzon-Arango, and funded, in part, by the National Science Foundation, shows that a group of tannins (called proanthocyanidins) found primarily in cranberries affect E. coli in three devastating ways, all of which prevent the bacteria from adhering to cells in the body, a necessary first step in all infections:
They change the shape of the bacteria from rods to spheres.
They alter their cell membranes.
They make it difficult for bacteria to make contact with cells, or from latching on to them should they get close enough.
For most of these effects, the impact on bacteria was stronger the higher the concentration of either cranberry juice or the tannins, suggesting that whole cranberry products and juice that has not been highly diluted may have the greatest health effects.
The new results build on previously published work, in which Camesano and her team showed that cranberry juice causes tiny tendrils (known as fimbriae) on the surface of the type of E. coli bacteria responsible for the most serious types of UTIs to become compressed. Since the fimbriae make it possible for the bacteria to bind tightly to the lining of the urinary tract, the change in shape greatly reduces the ability of the bacteria to stay put long enough to initiate an infection.
More recently, Camesano and Liu have shown that chemical changes caused by cranberry juice also create an energy barrier that keeps the bacteria from getting close to the urinary tract lining in the first place.
New work by Camesano and Pinzon-Arango shows that cranberry juice can transform E. coli bacteria in even more radical ways. The researchers grew E. coli over extended periods in solutions containing various concentrations of either cranberry juice or tannins. Over time, the normally rod-shaped bacteria became spherical--a transformation that has never before been observed in E. coli.
Remarkably, the E. coli bacteria, all of which fall into a class called gram-negative bacteria, began behaving like gram-positive bacteria--another never-before-seen phenomenon. Since gram-negative and gram-positive bacteria differ primarily in the structure of their cell membranes, the results suggest that the tannins in cranberry juice can alter the membranes of E. coli.
A final, more preliminary result that will be presented at the ACS meeting suggests that E. coli bacteria exposed to cranberry juice appear to lose the ability to secrete indole, a molecule involved in a form of bacterial communication called quorum sensing. E. coli use quorum sensing to determine when there are enough bacteria present at a certain location to initiate a successful infection.
"We are beginning to get a picture of cranberry juice and, in particular, the tannins found in cranberries as, potentially potent antibacterial agents," Camesano says. "These results are surprising and intriguing, particularly given the increasing concern about the growing resistance of certain disease-causing bacteria to antibiotics."
Contact: Michael Dorsey
mwdorsey@wpi.edu
508-831-5609
Worcester Polytechnic Institute

Electric jolt triggers release of biomolecules, nanoparticles

2006-09-16T00:04:00.000-07:00

Reusable system could be used to deliver medication on command

Johns Hopkins researchers have devised a way to use a brief burst of electricity to release biomolecules and nanoparticles from a tiny gold launch pad. The technique could someday be used to dispense small amounts of medicine on command from a chip implanted in the body. The method also may be useful in chemical reactions that require the controlled release of extremely small quantities of a material.
The technique was described Sept. 10 in a presentation by Peter C. Searson, a Johns Hopkins professor of materials science and engineering, during the 232nd national meeting of the American Chemical Society in San Francisco. "You can think of the useful biomolecule or nanoparticle as a balloon tethered to a surface," he said. "We use an electrical pulse to cut the tether, and it floats away."
This method could be used to control the release of drug molecules; nanoparticles; biopolymers such as peptides, proteins and DNA; and protein assemblies such as viruses, said Searson, who also is director of the Institute for NanoBioTechnology at Johns Hopkins.
"The technique is relatively simple, but nothing like this has been done before," he said. "Scientists have known that molecules could be removed from a surface in this way, but it's never been considered useful. They've been more interested in preventing this from happening."
Yet Searson and Johns Hopkins biomedical engineering graduate students Prashant Mali and Nirveek Bhattacharjee concluded that this controlled release of molecules might have important applications in the growing field of nanobiotechnology.
For their experiments, the researchers used gold electrodes, each as thin as a single strand of human hair, fabricated through the same photolithography techniques used to make computer chips. "We used a gold electrode because gold is a good conductor of electricity," said Mali, "and because it's an inert metal, it wouldn't get involved in any of the chemical reactions."
To tether each useful molecule to this surface, the team used a long chain of hydrocarbon molecules. At one end, the tether was anchored to the electrode by a gold-sulfur bond. At the other end was the biomolecule they wished to release on command. The researchers then sent a brief, mild pulse of electricity through wires attached to each electrode. The current caused the bond between the sulfur atoms and the gold platform to break, setting free the tethered molecule.
In theory, the researchers said, this technique could be incorporated into a biocompatible implant chip that would release medicine inside a patient on command.
Scientists elsewhere are working on other new drug delivery techniques, such as microfabricated containers that unload their medication inside the body when a lid dissolves. Although it requires further research and development, the Searson team's approach could have several advantages over the container technology. "Because our molecules are attached to a surface, we can work with much smaller concentrations," Searson said. "We've also shown that our system is reusable. After a group of molecules is released, you can easily attach new molecules to an electrode and use it again."
Earlier this year, Searson, Mali and Bhattacharjee reported on their technique in the journal Nano Letters. A patent on the process is pending, and licensing inquiries are being handled by the Johns Hopkins Technology Transfer staff.
Contact: Phil Sneiderman
prs@jhu.edu
443-287-9960
Johns Hopkins University

Voice and signature for the identification of persons

2006-09-15T23:58:00.000-07:00

Biometric systems are automatic systems that measure the physical characteristics and behaviour of persons. The aim of such systems is to differentiate between the characteristics and behaviour of each person and, thus, identify a person immediately.
Identification of physiological traits is based on the measurement of certain parts of the body; amongst other that are used as working tools are fingerprints, facial factions, the iris, the geometry of the hand, DNA or the retina. However, with identification though behaviour, certain activities of the person are used as parameters, such as, for example, the voice, handwriting, the signature, walking gait, the manner of using a keyboard or of moving a PC mouse.
Whatever the bio-measurement, the system requires a suitable sensor in order to read such biometric data. Just as important is having a tool to contrast measured data and previously stored data, i.e. having a suitable database. Given that, in order to repeat the tests reliably over and over again and to compare the results of the algorithms, it is essential to have a well-equipped database. It is also important that the sensors are capable of detecting attempts of forgery.
With this requirement for a biometric database, some years ago the Department of Electronics and Telecommunications at the School of Engineering in Bilbao started joint work with a number of universities in Spain in order to design a database that would provide the biometric characteristics of hundreds of people. Currently, in order to complete the database, University of the Basque Country (UPV-EHU) researchers are focusing on analysing the voice, signatures and handwriting.
As regards voice detection, traditional techniques use segmental characteristics in order to differentiate between persons. One of these is the timbre of the voice. Although good results are obtained, there is always room for improvement. To this end the UPV-EHU researchers set out to enhance this system and, moreover, to measure the rhythm and intonation of the voice. All these parameters are introduced into the database. In fact, it has been shown that, when certain biometric systems are crossed or the parameters of the same bio-measurement summed, in general the average error is less than the error produced when each system is measured independently.
The signature
Not only do the research team want to incorporate the voice into the database, but also the signature of the person. Depending on the manner of data collection, the automatic recognition of the signature can be carried out in two ways: on-line and off-line.
Off-line signature recognition is based on a document which is scanned for subsequent processing. All the characteristics of a signature depend on spatial parameters and so it is easier to forge, the forger only having to imitate the way of writing the signature.
However, what is put forward by the research team for on-line signature recognition is not only the study of the spatial form of writing, but also the dynamic data – the manner of movement while writing. Using a digitalisation table and a digital pencil, data is collected in an ongoing way as the pencil writes, the pressure or force exercised when writing with the pencil, the inclination of the pencil, and so on. When registering the on-line signature recognition data, the signer has to be present in order to store in the database the movements and manner of signing and writing.
But, how is a database drawn up? In such a database own signatures as well as imitated ones of other users have to be entered for the system to function.
A biometric system should not admit erroneous data but they often do. With on-line signature recognition there is a 4 % margin of error, more or less. That is, the system rejects 4% of correct signatures and accepts the same amount of false signatures. With off-line identification, the error is significantly greater - 20 %.
As regards voice identification, quite a small error margin was found. In any case, these are provisional results. The research is ongoing, currently looking into the combination of certain voice parameters in order to obtain more precise results.
Contact: Irati Kortabitarte
iratik@elhuyar.com
34-943-363-040
Elhuyar Fundazioa

MIT team describes unique cloud forest

2006-09-15T18:06:00.001-07:00

14th September 2006
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- Trees that live in an odd desert forest in Oman have found an unusual way to water themselves by extracting moisture from low-lying clouds, MIT scientists report.
In an area that is characterized mostly by desert, the trees have preserved an ecological niche because they exploit a wispy-thin source of water that only occurs seasonally, said Elfatih A.B. Eltahir, professor of civil and environmental engineering, and former MIT graduate student Anke Hildebrandt.
After studying the Oman site, they also expressed concern that the unusual forest could be driven into extinction if hungry camels continue eating too much of the foliage. As the greenery disappears it's possible the trees will lose the ability to pull water from the mist and recharge underground reservoirs.
A report on their research was published in a recent issue of Geophysical Research Letters. They are also advising the Omani government on handling the problem.
The forest is especially unique, said Eltahir and Hildebrandt, because it "is a water-limited seasonal cloud forest" that is kept alive by water droplets gathered from passing clouds -- ground fog. The water dribbles into the ground and sustains the trees later when the weather is dry. The MIT work suggests the trees actually get more of their water through contact with clouds than via rainfall.
In general, cloud forests are not really rare. But they occur most frequently in moist tropical regions where there is ample rainfall. So it is unusual, the researchers said, to find a cloud forest in a region known for chronic dryness.
The researchers studied the area in Oman to learn how the Dhofar Mountain ecosystem "functions naturally, and how it may respond to human activity" that could lead to desertification and the need for reforestation.
Eltahir and Hildebrandt, who is now at the UFZ Center for Environmental Research, in Leipzig, Germany, said the unusual forest is an interesting remnant "of a moist vegetation belt that once spread across the Arabian Peninsula" in the distant past. At that time the regional climate was generally wetter.
The forested area in the Sultanate of Oman is now semi-arid, and most of the ancient tree vegetation is gone. This small remnant has managed to survive in the Dhofar Mountains.
But it is under threat.
Although many Omanis have moved into cities and towns as the country has grown rich on oil, Eltahir explained, a family's prestige still comes from owning many camels, and people now tend to keep more camels than they need, which is part of the problem facing the forest.
"It is an unusual place," Eltahir said. "It's a very good example of a unique and fragile ecosystem" where constant pressure from over-grazing can have consequences beyond defoliation. In fact, the forest illustrates how small changes can lead to major impact on far bigger systems, Eltahir said.
The trees in wetter ecosystems would likely recover from small amounts of over-grazing, Eltahir said, but "in this location, due to the nature of the interaction of the canopy structure with the clouds, the trees may not recover."
The two said the forest probably would not regenerate naturally once it is gone. Without the trees that sweep the extra water from clouds, the forest cannot regrow. Grass, even if abundant, cannot collect enough moisture from fog to let a forest regrow.
Contact: Elizabeth Thomson
thomson@mit.edu
617-258-5402
Massachusetts Institute of Technology

IBM Technology Translates Arabic Media Broadcasts to English

2006-09-15T18:02:00.000-07:00

Critical Mention, Inc. to Commercialize as Subscription Service for Business, Government and Media

YORKTOWN HEIGHTS, NY - 14 Sep 2006: IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced its researchers have developed technology to translate Arabic media broadcasts into English in near real-time and has licensed the technology to Critical Mention, Inc., the leading Web-based real-time television news search and broadcast monitoring service.
Codenamed "TALES" (Translingual Automatic Language Exploitation System), the IBM technology processes the audio signal from Arabic television and radio stations and translates its spoken content into English text. Once this text is indexed by the CriticalTV platform, Critical Mention's clients will be able to conduct real-time searches of Arabic media, and receive alerts instantly when a search term is detected.
Under the agreement, IBM Research will provide Critical Mention a multi-year license to its speech-to-text translation solution for Arabic and English sources, with the ability to expand to other languages in the future.
"The ever-shifting nature of the market compels business professionals to quickly and easily monitor a wide range of foreign events and world media," said Arthur Ciccolo of IBM Research. "The unique TALES technology, combined with Critical Mention's advanced real-time search and monitoring system, will benefit organizations from all industry segments."
The TALES system combines three core technologies: search, speech-to-text conversion, and statistical machine translation. If a user selects a news source and a particular video clip, for example, the spoken words in this foreign language file are converted into written words. Then, TALES translates the written foreign-language text into the target language, English in this case. To provide the most accurate results, TALES uses statistical machine translation that employs automatically extracted word-to-word and phrase-to-phrase translations as used by the United Nations' simultaneous translators. The statistical model for translation improves TALES effectiveness in capturing the meaning of the news it translates.
Critical Mention is adapting the speech-to-text conversion, and statistical machine translation components to integrate with its existing TV search & monitoring platform, CriticalTV, to provide subscribers with real-time monitoring of Arabic TV.
"This technology from IBM enables Critical Mention's customers to benefit from the most comprehensive speech-to-text technology available on the market," said Sean Morgan, founder and chief executive officer of Critical Mention. "We are very pleased to offer Arabic-to-English translation to our customers in the intelligence and energy markets, and will continue to expand our core offering to meet the needs of business and communications professionals all over the world."
CriticalTV is a comprehensive Web-based television search and monitoring service that allows users to search, track and view critical information from television news. The platform provides real-time monitoring and email alerts for organizations that require up-to-the-minute news about their company, the market, customers and competitors. CriticalTV alerts users about a relevant clip seconds after a broadcast and allows users to share the clip instantly within a workgroup via secure video-email or a private video gallery. Users can also order a professional transcript or hard copy online.
Critical Mention's current customer base, which includes many leading corporations, government agencies, public relations firms, and public interest groups, will benefit from the company's expanded coverage of world markets.
About IBM
For more information about IBM, please visit www.ibm.com.
About Critical Mention
Critical Mention Inc., providers of the most comprehensive Web-based television search and broadcast monitoring service, is changing the way corporate communications and business intelligence professionals search, track and view critical information from television news. The company's CriticalTV platform provides real-time monitoring and email alerts for organizations that require up-to-the-minute news about their company, clients and competitors. Critical Mention provides clients the ability to search over 5 million clips and 25 terabytes of indexed television information, watch a clip within seconds of airing, and securely share clips with colleagues and clients. Critical Mention currently serves more than 475 clients, including Fortune 500 companies and market leaders in corporate communications, financial services, professional services, non-profit and government industries. Founded in 2002, Critical Mention (http://www.criticalmention.com) is privately held, with headquarters in New York City.
Contact(s) information:
Steven Tomasco
IBM Media Relations
914-945-1655
stomasc@us.ibm.com

Researchers reveal 'extremely serious' vulnerabilities in e-voting machines

2006-09-15T07:34:00.000-07:00

In a paper published on the Web today, a group of Princeton computer scientists said they created demonstration vote-stealing software that can be installed within a minute on a common electronic voting machine. The software can fraudulently change vote counts without being detected.
"We have created and analyzed the code in the spirit of helping to guide public officials so that they can make wise decisions about how to secure elections," said Edward Felten, the director of the Center for Information Technology Policy, a new center at Princeton University that addresses crucial issues at the intersection of society and computer technology.
The paper appears on the Web site for the Center for Information Technology Policy.
The researchers obtained the machine, a Diebold AccuVote-TS, from a private party in May. They spent the summer analyzing the machine and developing the vote-stealing demonstration.
"We found that the machine is vulnerable to a number of extremely serious attacks that undermine the accuracy and credibility of the vote counts it produces," wrote Felten and his co-authors, graduate students Ariel Feldman and Alex Halderman.
In a 10-minute video on their Web site, the researchers demonstrate how the vote-stealing software works. The video shows the software sabotaging a mock presidential election between George Washington and Benedict Arnold. Arnold is reported as the winner even though Washington gets more votes. (The video is edited from a longer continuously shot video; the long single-shot version will be available for downloading from the center's site as well.)
The researchers also demonstrate how the machines "are susceptible to computer viruses that can spread themselves automatically and invisibly from machine to machine during normal pre- and post-election activity."
Felten said that policy-makers should be concerned about malicious software infecting the Diebold AccuVote-TS and machines like it, from Diebold and other companies. "We studied these machines because they were available to us," the researchers wrote in their Web posting. "If we had gotten access to another kind of machine, we probably would have studied it instead."
Felten said, "There is reason for concern about other machines as well, even though our paper doesn't directly evaluate them. Jurisdictions using these machines should think seriously about finding a backup system in time for the November elections."
Felten, a professor of computer science and public affairs who is known for his groundbreaking work in computer security, said that some of the problems discussed in the paper cannot be fixed without completely redesigning the machine.
Other problems can be fixed by addressing software or electronic procedures. "But time is short before the next election," he said.
According to the researchers' paper, the Diebold machine they examined and another newer version are scheduled to be used in 357 U.S. counties representing nearly 10 percent of all registered voters. About half those counties, including all Maryland and Georgia, will use the exact machine examined by Felten's group.
Felten said that, out of security concerns, the Diebold machine infected with the vote-stealing software has been kept under lock and key in a secret location.
"Unfortunately election fraud has a rich history from ballot stuffing to dead people voting," he said. "We want to make sure this doesn't fall into the wrong hands. We also want to make sure that policy-makers stay a step ahead of those who might create similar software with ill intent."
Contact: Teresa Riordan
triordan@princeton.edu
609-258-9754
Princeton University

Arctic ice meltdown continues with significantly reduced winter ice cover

2006-09-15T07:12:00.000-07:00

As far as temperatures drop in the Arctic winter -- on average to -34°C (-29°F) -- a new study shows that in the last two years sea ice is shrinking on the surface of Arctic waters to record low levels. Using satellite data, scientists have observed unusually warm wintertime temperatures in the region and a resulting decline in the length of the Arctic ice season.
The maximum amount of sea ice in the Arctic winter has fallen by six percent over each of the last two winters, as compared to a loss of merely 1.5 percent per decade on average annually since the earliest satellite monitoring in 1979. This is happening as summer sea ice continues its retreat at an average of ten percent per decade.
"This amount of Arctic sea ice reduction the past two consecutive winters has not taken place before during the 27 years satellite data has been available," said Joey Comiso, a research scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. "In the past, sea ice reduction in winter was significantly lower per decade compared to summer sea ice retreat. What's remarkable is that we've witnessed sea ice reduction at six percent per year over just the last two winters, most likely a result of warming due to greenhouse gases."
Comiso used a computer simulation and satellite data from the Defense Meteorological Space Program's Special Scanning Microwave Radiometer and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer since 1979 for his study, to be published in Geophysical Research Letters this month.
Computer simulations of the climate warming effect of greenhouse gases had predicted that winter sea ice would decline faster than summer sea ice Satellite data has shown otherwise until two years ago, when record low winter ice cover and warmer temperatures have prevailed.
Sea ice cover in the Northern Hemisphere spans nearly ten million square miles in the winter. Satellite sensors are the only means to observe such a large region effectively. Comiso confirmed the accuracy of satellite sea ice data by comparing it with high-resolution satellite information and data gathered from sensitive instruments aboard aircraft. Surface temperature data from satellite sensors are checked against measurements from meteorological stations in the region.
Adding to the plight of winter sea ice, previous research has shown a trend in which the melt period lasts about two weeks longer per year annually due to summer sea ice decline. This means that the onset of freeze-up is happening later in the fall season. As a result, the ice cover in winter never gets as extensive as it would have been if the freeze-up had begun earlier. More than that, the ice reflects the sun's radiation much more efficiently than the ocean's surface. As a result, as the ice cover declines, the ocean's surface warms, causing in turn, further decline of the ice.
According to Comiso, if the winter ice retreat continues, the effect could be very profound, especially for marine animals. "The seasonal ice regions in the Arctic are among the most biologically productive regions in the world," he said. "Some of the richest fisheries are found in the region, in part because of sea ice. Sea ice provides melt-water in spring that floats because of low density. This melt-water layer is considered by biologists as the ideal layer for phytoplankton growth because it does not sink, and there is plenty of sunlight reaching it to enable photosynthesis. Plankton are at the bottom of the food web. If their concentration goes down, animals at all tropics level would be deprived of a basic source of food."
In addition to climate warming, other factors can contribute to the observed retreat of winter sea ice. Hard blowing winds can compact ice, causing it to contract, making it thicker, but covering a smaller area. Wind direction may blow ice toward warmer waters, causing it to melt. Other processes can also affect sea ice, by way of warmer oceans to the south spinning up cyclones that will introduce warmer temperatures than normal that melt ice.
"A continued reduction of the Arctic winter ice cover would be a clear indicator of the warming effect of increasing greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. It would at least confirm our current understanding of the physics of the Arctic climate system that has been incorporated in our models," said Comiso.
Contact: Rob Gutro
rgutro@pop900.gsfc.nasa.gov
301-286-4044
NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center

BBC ONE gives Britain a healthcheck

2006-09-15T07:05:00.001-07:00

BBC ONE has commissioned a brand new, peak-time health series. Street Doctor is an innovative and compelling new concept that takes four GPs out of their surgeries and onto the streets of Britain.
The series, which will run for eight 30 minute programmes, takes the GPs to a different town or city each week. The Street Doctors will diagnose, inform and treat members of the public, wherever they are – on the street, in the shopping centres, at their office or on the bus home.
These unique open-air surgeries offer instant reassurance and treatment to patients with a wide number of common complaints.
The series will also follow more serious conditions in depth and help unsuspecting members of the public - who may be previously unaware they have a health problem - gain follow-up care and treatment.
Street Doctor is due to transmit early in 2007 on BBC ONE.
The series was commissioned by Elaine Bedell, Commissioning Editor, Features and Factual Entertainment.
Elaine Bedell says: "This is a really fresh and original factual entertainment series. It's a brand new way of doing a health show and will provide real information and entertainment."
The series will be produced by BBC Entertainment Manchester's Factual Entertainment department, which is also responsible for Dragons' Den on BBC TWO and BBC THREE's Honey, We're Killing The Kids.
The Executive Producer of Street Doctor is Kieron Collins and the Series Producer is Sally Evans.
Executive Producer Kieron Collins says: "Too many people put off going to see their GP. They can't find the time, haven't registered or are simply too worried about the outcome. But if they want to see a Street Doctor, there's no appointment necessary, no waiting room and the doctor will come to them."
The Street Doctor team of GPs includes: Dr Jonty Heaversedge from London, Dr Barbara Murray from Stockport, Dr Ayan Panja from Haringey and Dr George Rae from Newcastle Upon Tyne.

Microsoft’s Zune Delivers Connected Music and Entertainment Experience

2006-09-15T07:02:00.000-07:00

Built-in wireless technology lets consumers share experiences device to device.

REDMOND, Wash. Marking the next big milestone for its Connected Entertainment vision, Microsoft Corp. today unveiled details of the first products to be released under its Zune™ brand. Designed around the principles of sharing, discovery and community, Zune will create new ways for consumers to connect and share entertainment experiences. The Zune experience centers around connection — connection to your library, connection to friends, connection to community and connection to other devices.
“The digital music entertainment revolution is just beginning,” said J Allard, vice president, design and development, at Microsoft, who is leading the charge for building the family of Zune products. “With Zune, we are not simply delivering a portable device, we are introducing a new platform that helps bring artists closer to their audiences and helps people find new music and develop new social connections.”
The Zune Experience
Available this holiday season in the United States, Zune includes a 30GB digital media player, the Zune Marketplace music service and a foundation for an online community that will enable music fans to discover new music. The Zune device features wireless technology, a built-in FM tuner and a bright, 3-inch screen that allows users to not only show off music, pictures and video, but also to customize the experience with personal pictures or themes to truly make the device their own. Zune comes in three colors: black, brown and white.
Every Zune device creates an opportunity for connection. Wireless Zune-to-Zune sharing lets consumers spontaneously share full-length sample tracks of select songs, homemade recordings, playlists or pictures with friends between Zune devices. Listen to the full track of any song you receive up to three times over three days. If you like a song you hear and want to buy it, you can flag it right on your device and easily purchase it from the Zune Marketplace.
Zune makes it easy to find music you love — whether it’s songs in your existing library or new music from the Zune Marketplace. Easily import your existing music, pictures and videos in many popular formats and browse millions of songs on Zune Marketplace, where you can choose to purchase tracks individually or to buy a Zune Pass subscription to download as many songs as you want for a flat fee.
To get started with great music and videos out of the box, every Zune device is preloaded with content from record labels such as DTS, EMI Music’s Astralwerks Records and Virgin Records, Ninja Tune, Playlouderecordings, Quango Music Group, Sub Pop Records, and V2/Artemis Records.
Zune Accessories
To enhance the Zune experience, three accessory packs help Zune users enjoy their music where they want to, at home or on the road. The packs and the individual accessories, all designed exclusively for Zune, will be available at launch:
•
The Zune Car Pack includes everything needed to hit the road with a Zune device, such as the built-in FM tuner with AutoSeek and the Zune Car Charger.
•
The Zune Home A/V Pack enhances your experience in the home through five products that integrate Zune with the TV and music speakers: Zune AV Output Cable, Zune Dock, Zune Sync Cable, Zune AC Adapter and the Zune Wireless Remote for Zune Dock.
•
Zune Travel Pack is a set of five products designed to keep friends and family entertained on the road: Zune Premium Earphones, Zune Dual Connect Remote, Zune Gear Bag, Zune Sync Cable and the Zune AC Adapter.
Providing consumers with additional options to customize and personalize their Zune experience, Microsoft is also working with leading accessory manufacturers Altec Lansing, Belkin Corp., Digital Lifestyle Outfitters (DLO), Dual Electronics, Griffin Technology, Harman Kardon and JBL, Integrated Mobile Electronics, Jamo International, Klipsch Audio Technologies, Logitech, Monster Cable Products Inc., Speck, Targus Group International Inc. and VAF Research
The Future is Bright
In addition to the features available at launch, built-in wireless technology and powerful software provide a strong foundation to continue to build new shared experiences around music and video. As Zune evolves, the device can be easily updated. The Zune software on your PC will let you know when these updates are available for download.
About Zune
Zune is Microsoft’s music and entertainment platform that provides an end-to-end solution for Connected Entertainment. The Zune experience includes a 30GB digital media player, the Zune Marketplace music service, and a foundation for an online community that will enable music fans to discover new music. Inspired by the vast and varied community of music fans, Zune focuses on helping emerging artists shape the digital canvas. Zune is part of Microsoft’s Entertainment and Devices division and supports the company’s software-based services vision to help drive innovation in the digital entertainment space. More information can be found online at http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/presskits/zune.

Poplar holds promise as renewable bioenergy resource

2006-09-15T06:58:00.000-07:00

The first tree genome is published

WALNUT CREEK, CA--Wood from a common tree may one day factor prominently in meeting transportation fuel needs, according to scientists whose research on the fast-growing poplar tree is featured on the cover of tomorrow's edition of the journal Science.

The article, highlighting the analysis of the first complete DNA sequence of a tree, the black cottonwood or Populus trichocarpa, lays the groundwork that may lead to the development of trees as an ideal "feedstock" for a new generation of biofuels such as cellulosic ethanol. The research is the result of a four-year scientific and technical effort, led by the U.S. Department of Energy's Joint Genome Institute (DOE JGI) and Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), uniting the efforts of 34 institutions from around the world, including the University of British Columbia, and Genome Canada; Umeå University, Sweden; and Ghent University, Belgium.

"Biofuels could provide a major answer to our energy needs by giving the United States a homegrown, environmentally friendlier alternative to imported oil," said DOE's Under Secretary for Science Dr. Raymond L. Orbach. "Fine-tuning plants for biofuels production is one of the keys to making biofuels economically viable and cost-effective. This research, employing the latest genomic technologies, is an important step on the road to developing practical, biologically-based substitutes for gasoline and other fossil fuels."

"Biofuels are not only attractive for their potential to cut reliance on oil imports but also their reduced environmental impact," said Dr. Gerald A. Tuskan, ORNL and DOE JGI researcher and lead author of the SCIENCE study.

"Biofuels emit fewer pollutants than fossil fuels such as gasoline. In addition, poplar and related plants are vital managers of atmospheric carbon. Trees store captured carbon dioxide in their leaves, branches, stems, and roots. This natural process provides opportunities to improve carbon removal from the air by producing trees that effectively shuttle and store more carbon below ground in their roots and the soil. Moreover, bioenergy crops re-absorb carbon dioxide emitted when biofuels are consumed, creating a cycle that is essentially carbon neutral."

Poplar's extraordinarily rapid growth, and its relatively compact genome size of 480 million nucleotide units, 40 times smaller than the genome of pine, are among the many features that led researchers to target poplar as a model crop for biofuels production.

"Under optimal conditions, poplars can add a dozen feet of growth each year and reach maturity in as few as four years, permitting selective breeding for large-scale sustainable plantation forestry," said Dr. Sam Foster of the U.S. Forest Service. "This rapid growth coupled with conversion of the lignocellulosic portion of the plant to ethanol has the potential to provide a renewable energy resource along with a reduction of greenhouse gases."

"The challenge of global warming requires global solutions," said Martin Godbout, President, Genome Canada. "The international consortium that successfully sequenced the poplar genome provides a model for great minds working together and serves as an example of how discovery science can be applied to current environmental problems facing humanity."

Among the major discoveries yielded from the poplar project is the identification of over 45,000 protein-coding genes, more than any other organism sequenced to date, approximately twice as many as present in the human genome (which has a genome six times larger than the poplar's). The research team identified 93 genes associated with the production of cellulose, hemicellulose and lignin, the building blocks of plant cell walls. The biopolymers cellulose and hemicellulose constitute the most abundant organic materials on earth, which by enzymatic action, can be broken down into sugars that in turn can be fermented into alcohol and distilled to yield fuel-quality ethanol and other liquid fuels.

Poplar is the most complex genome to be sequenced and assembled by a single public sequencing facility and only the third plant to date to have its genome completely sequenced and published. The first, back in 2000, was the tiny weed, Arabidopsis thaliana, an important model for plant genetics. Rice was the second, two years ago. Populus trichocarpa is one of the tallest broadleaf hardwood trees in the western U.S., native to the Pacific coast from San Diego to Alaska. The sequenced DNA was isolated from a specimen collected along the banks of the Nisqually river in Washington State.

The poplar project supports a broader DOE drive to accelerate research into biofuels production, under the Bush Administration's Advanced Energy Initiative. In August, the department announced it would spend $250 million over five years to establish and operate two new Bioenergy Research Centers. The DOE-supported research into biofuels is focusing on both plants and microbes, in an effort to discover new biotechnology-based methods of producing fuels from plant matter (biomass) cost-effectively.

Earlier this year DOE published a study summarizing the views of over fifty leading scientists in the field of biofuels research that expressed optimism about the prospects for finding cost-effective methods to produce fuels such as ethanol from cellulose in the not-too-distant future (Breaking the Biological Barriers to Cellulosic Ethanol, available at http://genomicsgtl.energy.gov/biofuels/b2bworkshop.shtml). Secretary of Energy Samuel W. Bodman has set a departmental goal of replacing 30 percent of current transportation fuel demand with biofuels by 2030.

DOE scientists envision a future where vast poplar farms in regions such as the Pacific Northwest, the upper Midwest, and portions of the southeastern U.S. could provide a steady supply of tree biomass rich in cellulose that can be transformed by specialized biorefineries into fuels like ethanol. Other regions of the country might specialize in different "energy crops" suited to their particular climate and soil conditions, including such plants as switchgrass and willow. In addition, a large quantity of biofuels might be produced from agricultural and forestry waste.

Contact: David Gilbert
gilbert21@llnl.gov
925-296-5643
DOE/Joint Genome Institute

A plastic pill for periodontal problems

2006-09-15T06:45:00.000-07:00

NEW BRUNSWICK/PISCATAWAY, N.J. – Rutgers scientists today announced a revolutionary new treatment for killing the bacteria that attack gum tissue during periodontal disease, while also promoting healing and the regeneration of tissue and bone around the teeth.

Eight to 12 percent of Americans have periodontal disease serious enough to require some type of advanced treatment, such as surgery. Left untreated, the condition can lead to tooth loss.

The breakthrough technology – a polymer-based drug delivery system that may be implanted in pockets between the teeth and the gum – developed at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, was presented at the 232nd National Meeting of the American Chemical Society in San Francisco by Michelle Johnson, a graduate student in the research group of paper co-author Kathryn Uhrich, a professor of chemistry and chemical biology at Rutgers.

"There has never been anything like this available to clinicians and it will certainly find a very prominent role in periodontal therapy in the future," said Mark Reynolds, chair of the department of periodontics at the University of Maryland Dental School, who collaborates with Uhrich on the research.

The new polymer or "plastic" material, when inserted between tooth and diseased gum, treats the bacterial infection, inflammation and pain with pharmaceuticals incorporated into the material itself, Johnson explained. It employs salicylic acid, the active ingredient in aspirin, for the swelling and discomfort, and three antimicrobials each with a different release rate – compounds of clindamycin, chlorhexidrine and minocycline.

Once implanted, the polymer gradually breaks down to release the salicylic acid, which relieves pain and reduces inflammation, and the antimicrobials which inhibit infection at a sustained pace, Uhrich added.

Periodontal disease occurs when plaque that forms on the tooth surface spreads and grows below the gum line. The plaque carries with it bacteria that can irritate, inflame and eventually destroy the tissues and bone that support the teeth. Spaces or pockets form between the teeth and gums and become sites of infection which can damage the supporting structures of the teeth.

Reynolds explained that after removing the damaged tissue, periodontists often try to separate the gum tissue from the bone and tooth structure using barrier materials that remain in place for about six weeks to facilitate healing and tissue regeneration.

"The polymers that Kathryn Uhrich and her team have pioneered and developed are unique in that they can serve as barriers while also repressing any inflammatory response, setting the stage for nature to not only heal these areas, but also to regenerate the tissues that have been lost to the disease," Reynolds said.

Reynolds is testing the new biomaterial in a number of animal systems to assess tissue reactions and better define the timeline of its decomposition and drug release. He says that human clinical trials may be two or more years away depending on approvals from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

Contact: Joseph Blumberg
blumberg@ur.rutgers.edu
732-932-7084 x652
Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey

2

2006-09-14T18:32:00.000-07:00

Brown engineers build a better battery -- with plastic

1

2006-09-14T11:54:00.000-07:00

Brown engineers build a better battery -- with plastic

Researcher lights the way to better drug delivery

2006-09-14T06:11:00.000-07:00

Jun Yang, from left, a former doctoral student and researcher in the Low research group, and Philip Low, Purdue's Ralph C. Corley Distinguished Professor of Chemistry

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. - A Purdue University researcher has explained for the first time the details of how drugs are released within a cancer cell, improving the ability to deliver drugs to a specific target without affecting surrounding cells.
"As a general strategy, the indiscriminate delivery of drugs into every cell of the body for the treatment of a few specific pathologic cells, such as cancer cells, is a thing of the past," said Philip Low, the Ralph C. Corley Distinguished Professor of Chemistry. "Most new drugs under development will be targeted directly to the pathologic, disease-causing cells, and we have shed light on the details of one mechanism by which this is achieved."
An understanding of the cellular process that leads to the release of targeted drugs is a major advancement for the field, he said.
"This will help others interested in targeted drug therapy," said Low, who also is founder and chief science officer of Endocyte Inc., a Purdue Research Park-based company. "The knowledge applies not only to the treatment of cancer. The understanding of how to deliver and unload a cancer drug can be extrapolated to all sorts of other diseased cells. The uptake pathways are similar in cells involved in arthritis, multiple sclerosis, psoriasis and Crohn's disease."
Interest in how drugs are released after they enter their targeted cell led Low and his team to develop a color-coded method to visualize the cellular mechanisms. Jun Yang, a postdoctoral research associate in Low's research group, together with Ji-Xin Cheng, an assistant professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering, and his graduate student Hongtao Cheng, developed this method using a technique called fluorescence resonance energy transfer imaging.

"The drug turns from red to green when it is released inside the cell, clearly illuminating the process," Yang said. "This is the first optical method to be developed to monitor this release. The main promise of this method is that it does not damage the cells being studied. Therefore, we are able to observe the process under true physiological conditions and watch it right as it is happening."
This research, funded by Endocyte, will be detailed in a paper in Tuesday's (Sept. 12) issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and is currently available online.
In targeted drug therapy, drugs are linked to molecules that are used in excess by pathologic cells, for example a required nutrient, in order to transport drugs directly to the targeted cells while avoiding significant delivery of the toxic drug to normal cells. A commonly used agent, referred to as a ligand, is the vitamin folic acid. Cancer cells need folic acid to grow and divide and, therefore, have developed abundant receptors to capture it. These receptors are largely absent in normal cells. This means folic acid, and the drug linked to it, are attracted to the pathologic cells and are harmless to healthy cells, Low said.
Low led the team that discovered this folate-targeted treatment method in 1991 and the receptor-targeted technology is proprietary to Endocyte.
"It is desirable to have the drug released from the ligand, folic acid, once the folate-linked complex enters the cell," Yang said. "This 'conditional drug release' is usually realized by attaching folate to the drug through a linker that falls apart inside the cell. There were several linkers in common use, but with mixed efficiency. In this study we undertook to interrogate the full details of this breakdown process."
Yang examined receptor endocytosis, the process by which cells absorb materials - such as a drug attached to folic acid - that have been captured at special sites, called receptors, on the cell surface. The compound is then broken down and processed, releasing the drug.
One of the key mechanisms of this breakdown is disulfide reduction, which involves the breaking of chemical bonds. It was thought that disulfide reduction relied on the movement of the material along microtubules, hollow tubelike structures, and fusion with special digestive-enzyme containing compartments within the cell called lysosomes. However, the research showed that disulfide reduction occurred even when such components were removed from the process.
By inactivating different cellular components, Yang discovered which components are essential to the disulfide reduction process.
"It was surprising to learn that many other components of the cell, aside from those previously assumed to be responsible, were capable of releasing the drug from folic acid," Yang said. "This significantly increases the opportunity for the drug to be released. For instance, we used to believe it had to get to a specific location to be released, and now we know it can happen almost anywhere during endocytosis."
The mechanisms, locations and cellular components involved in the release of drugs within a cell had been under debate for several years, Low said.
"This is the definitive statement on how drugs are released within a cell," he said. "We will use this knowledge to develop better receptor-targeted drug therapies to treat cancer and other diseases."
Contact: Elizabeth K. Gardner
ekgardner@purdue.edu
765-494-2081
Purdue University

Motorola researchers develop selective sensors based on carbon nanotubes

2006-09-14T06:05:00.000-07:00

TEMPE, Ariz. -- A team of researchers from Arizona State University and Motorola Labs, the applied research arm of Motorola Inc., has developed sensors based on carbon nanotubes, microscopically small structures that posses excellent electronic properties. In early tests, the new devices detected the presence of heavy metal ions in water down to parts per trillion levels.
Specifically, the researchers developed a method for applying peptides to single walled carbon nanotubes (SWNT) in field effect transistors.
"This is a fairly general sensor platform for all kinds of applications," said Nongjian Tao, an electrical engineering professor at Arizona State University and one of the researchers on the project. "We tested heavy metal ions in water, but the platform can be applied to many other areas to sense toxic chemicals in the air, or they can be used as biosensors when applied to medicine."
"Integration of nanosensors into devices and sensor networks will enable the detection of biological and chemical agents at very low concentrations, which could be vital in the areas of public safety and homeland security," added Vida Ilderem, vice president of the Embedded Systems Research Labs at Motorola, Tempe, Ariz.
The researchers report the advance in a paper, "Tuning the chemical selectivity of SWNT-FETs for detection of heavy metal ions," which will be published in the journal Small. An early view of the article is available at the journal's web site (www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/jissue/109627347).
"Our sensor is based on the novel properties of peptides and carbon nanotubes," Tao explained. "Peptides can be used to recognize and detect various chemical species with high sensitivity and selectivity while carbon nanotubes are well known for their electronic properties."
The peptides are made of 20 or so amino acids, so changing the sequence of amino acids allows the researchers to "tune the peptides and recognize different compounds," Tao said. "We developed a simple way to attach different peptides to different nanotubes."
Erica Forzani, an ASU assistant research professor in electrical engineering, said the peptides are selective to specific compounds. In the heavy metal tests, the researchers developed a peptide to detect nickel and one to detect copper. If the nickel peptide were used, it would only detect the presence of nickel and be "blind" to any other heavy metal ion (copper, lead or zinc) passing over the carbon nanotubes.
Tao added it's the combination of the structure of the nanotubes and the selectivity of the peptides that make the devices so powerful.
"The nanotubes basically are a sheet of interconnected atoms rolled into a tube," Tao said. "Every single atom in the tube is exposed to the environment and can interact with chemicals and molecules. That is why it is so sensitive. But without the peptides, it would not recognize specific compounds."
"The potential for the carbon nanotubes is extraordinary," Forzani added, "because with a very simple device that does not require sophisticated electronic circuitry, you can detect very low concentrations of analytes."
The researchers now will investigate the use of the sensors on biological molecules, like RNA sequence detection, Tao and Forzani said.
Contact: Skip Derra
skip.derra@asu.edu
480-965-4823
Arizona State University

Google Introduces Featured Content for Google Earth

2006-09-14T00:12:00.000-07:00

Pilot partners include United Nations Environmental Program, Discovery Networks, and National Park Service

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., Sept. 13, 2006 – Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) today released Featured Content for Google Earth, a new showcase of multimedia overlays in Google Earth that connect users to information about the world around them from a variety of premium content providers.
Users can access these informative overlays by clicking on the “Featured Content” checkbox in the Google Earth sidebar. In doing so, icons for each Featured Content provider will span the globe, enabling users to click on individual locations and learn about the area’s significance. The Featured Content showcase will be routinely updated to include innovative and diverse contributions from additional content providers.
“We are excited to provide users with the opportunity to learn more about the natural wonders and manmade landmarks of the world with Featured Content for Google Earth,” said John Hanke, director, Google Earth and Maps. “We believe Google Earth is an excellent medium for organizing and sharing the world’s geographic information and we continue to explore opportunities to bring visually compelling and informative content into Google Earth.”
Initial Featured Content for Google Earth partners include:
United Nations Environmental Program – The UNEP overlay for Google Earth includes successive time-stamped images illustrating 100 areas of extreme environmental degradation around the world. From the deforestation of the Amazon to the fallout of raging forest fires in Sub-Sahara Africa and the decline of the Aral Sea in Central Asia, this before-and-after imagery spanning the past 30 years offers users an online resource for learning about the environmental crisis zones around the world.
Discovery Networks World Tour – The Discovery overlay enables travel enthusiasts and armchair tourists alike the opportunity to virtually visit major world attractions, cities, and natural wonders through Google Earth. Featuring streaming Discovery video segments, users can learn about the history and significance of various world landmarks, national parks, American and European cities, and African locations. These multimedia vignettes introduce users to the wonders of King Tut’s tomb in the Valley of Kings to the history of the gate of the Itsukushima Shrine in Japan.
National Park Service - The National Park Service overlay enables users to learn more about the natural recreation opportunities in their own backyard. This includes detailed park descriptions, information on visitor facilities, and more than 10,000 miles of trails within all 58 US National Parks.
Jane Goodall Institute – With the Jane Goodall Institute overlay users can visit Fifi and the other Gombe preserve chimpanzees and follow their daily exploits with the Institute’s "geo-blog" in Google Earth. Updated daily, this geo-blog captures the work of the Jane Goodall Institute, illustrating the Institute’s research on chimpanzees and the effects of deforestation in Africa.
Turn Here – This overlay features free city video guides for travel, restaurants, hotels, local events and music around the globe. Told from an insider’s perspective, these short films connect users to information about the best pizza shop in New York’s Little Italy to Pablo Picasso’s favorite hang-out in Halmstad, Sweden.
About Google Inc.
Google's innovative search technologies connect millions of people around the world with information every day. Founded in 1998 by Stanford Ph.D. students Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Google today is a top web property in all major global markets. Google's targeted advertising program provides businesses of all sizes with measurable results, while enhancing the overall web experience for users. Google is headquartered in Silicon Valley with offices throughout the Americas, Europe, and Asia. For more information, visit www.google.com.

Microsoft Hardware Brings to Light First Rechargeable Wireless and Backlit Desktop

2006-09-13T23:11:00.001-07:00

New hardware desktops and mouse combine style and performance.

REDMOND, Wash. -- Sept. 13, 2006 --Microsoft Hardware is evolving and transforming the desktop computing experience with the industry’s first wireless rechargeable and backlit desktop, the Wireless Entertainment Desktop 8000, dubbed the “ultimate keyboard” when it was unveiled in June. Today the company is shedding light on this groundbreaking desktop in addition to launching two other new sleek desktops — the Microsoft® Wireless Entertainment Desktop 7000 and the Microsoft Wireless Laser Desktop 6000 — along with its first rechargeable mouse, the Microsoft Wireless Laser Mouse 8000. Whether users are finishing a report at the office or sitting back to watch a movie in comfort at home, the innovative technologies these products harness offer the flexibility to move between work and fun with comfort and ease, and in ultimate style.
“We are pushing the envelope on hardware design to meet the new ways consumers are using their PCs at home and in the office. Keyboards and mice are no longer just about typing and clicking — they are an extension of the individual’s personality,” said Dan O’Neil, industrial designer with Microsoft Hardware. “The Hardware team took both visual and interaction cues from Windows Vista™ to help create this unique product line that keeps up with consumers’ performance expectations, comfort needs and style preferences with better recharging, real metal accents, a symmetrical form language and intelligent backlighting to continue leading industry innovations.”
The Wireless Entertainment Desktop 8000 and the Wireless Entertainment Desktop 7000 are masterful combinations of futuristic industrial design and productivity-enhancing features. These stylish desktops are only an inch thick, yet are filled with deluxe enhancements that allow users to work and play where, when and how they want. Both desktops take advantage of Windows Vista to allow users to easily accomplish everyday tasks, instantly find what they are looking for and enjoy the latest in entertainment. New features that bring key Windows® XP and Windows Vista functionality to users’ fingertips include these:
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The Windows Start Button offers one-touch access to the Windows Start Menu, with search functionality built in for searching the Internet or the PC.
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The Gadget Button reveals or hides the personalized information consumers use most, such as weather and sports.
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The Media Center Start Button allows users to instantly access media, including movies and music.
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The Windows Live Call Button provides users with the easiest way to start an instant messaging session or a video call — it’s speed dialing for webcams.
Superior Wireless Sets Users Free
The desktops tap into the most innovative wireless technology with 2.4GHz Bluetooth® technology. Featuring First Connect Technology, the desktops will work on PCs right out of the box — there are no setup hassles. For added convenience, the transceiver supports a variety of Bluetooth profiles for connections to multiple Bluetooth devices. Even with multiple wireless connections, users will find virtually no interference as a result of intelligent technology that “hops” when it encounters a trouble spot.
All Work and No Play?
To complement their many exciting productivity features, the Wireless Entertainment Desktops shine when it comes to entertainment. The transition between work and play is effortless with the new keyboards; with up to a 30-foot range and compact design, they are ideal for on- and off-desktop use. For hassle-free entertainment, both desktops feature a navigation pad on the keyboard, which allows users to control the cursor from wherever they are. Users can kick back and relax on the couch and watch a movie or flip through a collection of favorite songs; with the integrated navigation pad, there is no need to get up to find the remote control or mouse.
Backlighting Gets Smart
The Wireless Entertainment Desktop 8000, previewed in June as the “ultimate keyboard,” will take entertainment to the extreme with its smart backlighting features. When users want to kick back, they can simply dim the lights and use the keyboard to control the TV show they just downloaded. The automatic backlighting lets them easily see all the keys without compromising the relaxed atmosphere. With its ambient light sensing, the backlighting is automatically adjusted based on the amount of light in the room. It also features proximity awareness to sense when the user walks away from the keyboard, which prompts it to turn off to conserve battery life and turn back on when the user returns.
Recharging Redefined
The Wireless Entertainment Desktop 8000 is also the first rechargeable keyboard that will allow users to power both the mouse and keyboard in one easy-to-use charging station and remain fully functioning while charging. The keyboard slides under the horizontal charging station and the mouse rests on top, providing a space-saving and sturdy recharging solution. Microsoft designed the horizontal docking station based on internal research showing that users preferred that design to current vertical charging offerings.1 To enable extra convenience and enhance the entertainment features, the docking station is equipped with three available Universal Serial Bus (USB) 2.0 ports for devices such as digital cameras, MP3 players and Microsoft LifeCams.
Paired with the new Wireless Entertainment Desktop keyboards is Microsoft’s first rechargeable mouse, the Wireless Laser Mouse 8000. The new mouse is the ultimate in sophistication, introducing a chic design with metal accents. It charges on the horizontal charging station, providing a sturdy base for mouse recharging and a blinking light for charge confirmation. The Wireless Laser Mouse 8000 delivers the ultimate Bluetooth experience and incorporates several new standout features:
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Performance Slider. Users can optimize performance for intense PC tasks or lower it to extend battery life.
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Instant Viewer. One-click access enables users to view all open windows and applications at once.
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Quick charging. The mouse fully recharges in less than 90 minutes.
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Faster than wired. Users will experience virtually no latency.
The Wireless Laser Mouse 8000 also includes Microsoft’s proprietary High Definition Laser Technology and five customizable buttons, including the Magnifier and Tilt Wheel.
Performance and Comfort in a Sleek Design
Rounding out the new sleek desktops is the Wireless Laser Desktop 6000, the perfect combination of sophistication and efficiency. The desktop is also only an inch thick and includes many of the performance elements of the Entertainment line, including the Windows Start Button and Gadget Button. It features Microsoft’s Comfort Curve Keyboard design with a cushioned palm rest that encourages natural hand and wrist positioning, an easy-to-use layout for enhanced comfort and productivity, and an optional 5-degree reverse slope in addition to the standard 0-degree and positive tilts.
The included Wireless Laser Mouse 6000 features Microsoft’s High Definition Laser Technology, which delivers more responsiveness, more precision and smoother tracking, even on uneven surfaces, as well as the new Instant Viewer, Magnifier and Tilt Wheel tools.
Pricing and Availability
The new Microsoft products introduced today will be available for the following estimated retail prices:2
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Wireless Entertainment Desktop 8000: $249.95 (U.S.), available February 2007
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Wireless Entertainment Desktop 7000: $149.95 (U.S.), available January 2007
•
Wireless Laser Desktop 6000: $99.95 (U.S.), available September 2006
•
Wireless Laser Mouse 8000: $89.95 (U.S.), available October 2006

Microsoft Unveils Innovative Four-in-One Device

2006-09-13T21:09:00.000-07:00

Microsoft puts mobile productivity in the palm of your hand.
REDMOND, Wash. -- Sept. 13, 2006 -- Are you a road warrior? Tired of having so many gadgets to carry while on the road? Consider the problem solved by the revolutionary industrial design of Microsoft Corp.’s new Wireless Notebook Presenter Mouse 8000, the first notebook mouse to serve as a four-in-one device. It functions as a slide presenter, a laser pointer with digital ink, a media remote control and a 2.4GHz Bluetooth® laser notebook mouse. Whether clicking through the slides of a presentation, highlighting a key message with the laser pointer, skipping to the next track of a CD or scrolling through documents on a laptop, this mouse is the only tool consumers will need for ultimate productivity and entertainment on the go.
It’s All in the Presentation
Now more than ever people are working on the go, resulting in skyrocketing sales of notebook PCs and notebook accessories. With the versatile Microsoft® Wireless Notebook Presenter Mouse 8000, users can forget about time wasted fumbling between devices; it takes them right from content creation to presentation. With one click of the mode-switching button and a turn of the wrist, users can move from mousing to running meetings and high-stakes presentations with confidence.
The bottom side of the Wireless Notebook Presenter Mouse 8000 features all the control buttons needed for easy presentation navigation — forward, back and full screen — and even includes a laser pointer for highlighting a key statistic or graph. It’s not only a breeze to use the mouse features to show the sales team the play by play of last quarter’s results, users can also unleash their inner sports commentator, clicking the digital ink button to draw right on the screen just like the pros.
Media Remote Functionality
When consumers are ready to unwind or need to view multimedia content for work, they needn’t worry about finding a separate remote; they can just tap into the media control capabilities of the Wireless Notebook Presenter Mouse 8000. The presentation keypad also acts as a media control pad; users can play, pause, change tracks and adjust volume, or watch a DVD — and it’s compatible with RealPlayer, iTunes and Windows Media® Player.
“We pride ourselves on building cool products with cutting-edge design and innovations that lead the industry,” said Matt Barlow, director of marketing and partner development for Microsoft Hardware. “This mouse is a prime example of how we respond to the multiple ways people interact with their PC. We’re simplifying the digital puzzle of home and office peripherals with one device that puts all-in-one multifunctional control in the palm of your hand.”
A Better Wireless Experience
The Wireless Notebook Presenter Mouse 8000 is also a no-compromises notebook mouse that features superior wireless performance, including a battery life indicator and an on/off switch to help users conserve battery life. 2.4GHz Bluetooth technology delivers the ultimate wireless experience, with up to 30 feet of range and enhanced security. The mouse also comes with First Connect Technology, so there are no setup hassles; it works right out of the box. And for added convenience, the transceiver supports a variety of Bluetooth profiles for connections to multiple Bluetooth devices. The Wireless Notebook Presenter Mouse 8000 is ideal for home or corporate environments with multiple computers, with virtually no interference thanks to intelligent technology that “hops” when it encounters a trouble spot.
All That and a House for the Mouse Too
The Wireless Notebook Presenter Mouse 8000 mouse comes loaded with Microsoft’s signature comfort and performance features, including High Definition laser technology, ergonomic design, Tilt Wheel and Magnifier button. New features include the Instant Viewer tool, with which at the touch of the button users can see each project they are working on and easily switch between applications for added productivity.
The mouse also comes with a carrying case to hold the transceiver and protect the mouse. Whether users are at home or on the go, the Wireless Notebook Presenter Mouse 8000 is the only device they need to deliver effective presentations, play media content and comfortably navigate on a PC.
Pricing and Availability
The Microsoft Wireless Notebook Presenter Mouse 8000 will be available in mid-October 2006 with an ERP of $99.95.*
About Microsoft Hardware
For more than two decades, the Hardware Group has employed innovative engineering, cutting-edge industrial design and extensive usability testing to create products of exceptional quality and durability that enhance the software experience and strengthen the connection
between consumers and their PC. Microsoft Hardware leads the industry in ergonomic engineering, industrial design and hardware/software compatibility, offering consumers an easier, more convenient and more enjoyable computing experience. Microsoft IntelliMouse® Explorer, which launched in 1999, earned a place on PCWorld.com’s December 2005 list of “The 50 Greatest Gadgets of the Past 50 Years” as the first mainstream optical mouse that “brought gunk-free pointing devices” to a broad consumer base.

Do green markets actually lead to improvements in environmental quality?

2006-09-13T18:36:00.000-07:00

Goods and services with environmental benefits are a growing part of many sectors of the economy, and a timely new paper from the current issue of the Journal of Political Economy analyzes how our willingness to pay more for environmentally friendly products actually influences environmental quality and social welfare. Surprisingly, the study finds that under certain reasonable conditions, green markets can actually discourage private support of public environmental entities.
Using a model of impure public goods, Matthew J. Kotchen (University of California, Santa Barbara) analyzes goods that have both private and public components, each of which is available individually. For example, shade-grown coffee is grown not on deforested plantations, but under the canopy of tropical forests. Thus, consumers are not only buying coffee, which is a traditional private good, but also biodiversity conservation. However, consumers also have the option to buy conventional coffee and donate directly to tropical conservation.
"Although green markets are promoted to improve environmental quality and promote social welfare, their actual effects may be detrimental to both," writes Kotchen. "These results, along with the conditions sufficient to rule them out, provide new insight into the potential advantages and disadvantages of green markets as a decentralized mechanism of environmental policy."
Many governments, nongovernmental organizations, and industries promote green markets as ways to encourage private giving to environmental causes. Kotchen finds that in a sufficiently large economy, where giving is not motivated by unconditional altruism, introducing or improving a green technology will increase the level of giving but crowd out private voluntary donations.
Contact: Suzanne Wu
swu@press.uchicago.edu
773-834-0386
University of Chicago Press Journals

MIT device could prevent epileptic seizures

2006-09-13T18:33:00.000-07:00

New treatment builds on an existing therapy

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- Researchers at MIT are developing a device that could detect and prevent epileptic seizures before they become debilitating.
Epilepsy affects about 50 million people worldwide, and while anticonvulsant medications can reduce the frequency of seizures, the drugs are ineffective for as many as one in three patients.
The new treatment builds on an existing treatment for epilepsy, the Cyberonics Inc. vagus nerve stimulator (VNS), which is often used in patients who do not respond to drugs. A defibrillator typically implanted under the patient's collar bone stimulates the left vagus nerve about every five minutes, which has been shown to help reduce the frequency and severity of seizures in many patients.
The MIT researchers and colleagues at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) seek to improve the treatment by combining it with a detector that measures brain activity to predict when a seizure is about to occur. The new device would sense the oncoming seizure and then activate the VNS, in principle halting the seizure before it becomes manifest.
"Our contribution is the software that decides when to turn the stimulator on," said John Guttag, MIT's Dugald C. Jackson Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. Guttag developed the system along with Ali Shoeb, a graduate student in the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology.
"Our colleague Dr. Steven Schachter, professor of neurology at Harvard Medical School and epileptologist at BIDMC, suggested hooking our detector up to the VNS," he said. MIT and BIDMC researchers plan to test the new device in epilepsy patients this fall. If it seems effective, more comprehensive trials will be launched.
A look at brain patterns
The detector works by measuring brain activity with electrodes placed on the patient's scalp. In its current form, the patient wears something resembling a bathing cap, in which electrodes are embedded. In order to adapt the detector to work with the VNS, researchers connected wires from the cap to a laptop computer or microprocessor that activates the implanted defibrillator.
Guttag said he believes the technology could be refined so the electrodes could be worn inside of a headband or baseball cap, making the device less obvious to observers.
Each epilepsy patient has different brain activity patterns, so the detector is programmed to measure an individual's patterns to determine what the precursors to a seizure look like for each patient.
"It's quite tricky to try to detect very early signs of seizures because there are abnormal electrical signals that don't evolve into seizures," Guttag said. "If we can learn what the right profile is for an individual, we can build a seizure onset detector that works really well for that person."
Ideally, when the device senses an impending seizure, it sends a magnetic signal to the implanted stimulator, which in turn activates the left vagus nerve. The vagus nerve sends electrical signals up to the brain as well as down toward the viscera, controlling heart rate, gastrointestinal peristalsis, sweating and keeping the larynx open for breathing. The mechanism by which VNS prevents seizures is not known, but the technique has been FDA approved to treat epilepsy for about 10 years.
About 32,000 epilepsy patients already have VNS implants, according to Guttag. Some of them are able to use a handheld magnet to activate the VNS on demand, but many cannot. If the new detection device is successful, it would allow many more patients to use the VNS on demand.
The device could also be adapted to provide warnings for patients who don't need or want VNS implants. Once the device alerts the patient that a seizure is imminent, that person could take steps to minimize injury, such as sitting down or moving away from potentially dangerous objects, such as a hot stove.
"If you could just give someone a little bit of warning they're about to have a seizure, it could be hugely valuable," Guttag said. "The seizures themselves aren't usually damaging to the brain in the long term. It's mostly about the collateral damage."
Although the seizure detector could have a huge impact on epilepsy patients, there are plenty of other potential applications for technology that analyzes electrical activity in individual brains, Guttag said. Depression, schizophrenia and attention deficit disorder are just a few of the conditions that could be studied.
"My hope is that we'll be able to use some of the technology to get insight into a lot of those mysterious neurological conditions," he said.
Contact: Elizabeth Thomson
thomson@mit.edu
617-258-5402
Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Nicotine lessens symptoms of depression in nonsmokers

2006-09-13T18:26:00.000-07:00

DURHAM, N.C. -- Nicotine may improve the symptoms of depression in people who do not smoke, Duke University Medical Center scientists have discovered.
The finding does not mean that people with depression should smoke or even start using a nicotine patch, the researchers caution. They say that smoking remains the No. 1 preventable cause of death and disability in the United States, and that the addictive hazards of tobacco far outweigh the potential benefits of nicotine in depression.
But the finding suggests that it may be possible to manipulate nicotine's effects to safely reap its potential medical benefits, according to the researchers. As an example of the drug's potential, they said, pharmaceutical companies already are developing compounds for treating other brain disorders by mimicking the beneficial properties of nicotine while avoiding its addictive nature.
"The hope is that our research on nicotine will spur the development of new treatments for depression, which is a huge public health problem," said lead study investigator Joseph McClernon, Ph.D., an assistant research professor of medical psychiatry and researcher at the Duke Center for Nicotine and Smoking Cessation Research.
"Our study also provides evidence that smokers may indeed smoke, in part, to improve their mood -- a notion that has been quite controversial in the field," he said.
The team's findings are scheduled to appear the week of Sept. 11, 2006, in the online edition of the journal Psychopharmacology and will be published in print in November.
The research was supported by the National Alliance for Research on Schizophrenia and Depression.
Scientists have established that people prone to depression are twice as likely to be smokers, and are less likely to succeed in quitting smoking after taking up the habit, according to McClernon. The Duke study explored the theories behind the higher smoking rates among people experiencing depression.
"Smokers may be more prone to depression than nonsmokers," said Edward Levin, Ph.D., a professor of biological psychiatry and researcher at the Duke center, who was senior investigator in the current study. "Or, people with depression may be self-medicating by smoking, albeit in a deadly way."
In the study, the researchers recruited 11 people who did not smoke but who were experiencing symptoms of depression. Participants were randomly assigned to wear either a nicotine patch or a placebo patch that did not contain any nicotine. The researchers used a standardized method, a 20-item questionnaire called the Center for Epidemiological Studies Depression scale, to measure depression symptoms among the study participants.
"Despite the small number of participants, this is the largest study of its kind," McClernon said.
The team found that participants who wore the nicotine patch for at least eight days experienced a significant decline in their depression-assessment rating scores. McClernon said this finding indicates that the drug led to an improvement in depression symptoms.
As a possible explanation for how nicotine exerts its beneficial effect, McClernon said: "The same areas of the brain that are stimulated by nicotine appear to be involved in the regulation of mood."
Nicotine stimulates the release of specific neurotransmitters, including serotonin, dopamine, and norepinephrine, which carry messages between nerves cells. Depression has been linked to chemical imbalances of these neurotransmitters, McClernon said.
Looking ahead to possible therapeutic uses of nicotine for treating depression, the researchers say the nicotine molecule can be manipulated to remove its addictive effect while maintaining its ability to increase levels of the various brain chemicals that can alter mood. Currently, pharmaceutical companies are developing nicotinelike drugs that target chemical imbalances in the brain that are thought to cause anxiety, schizophrenia, attention deficient hyperactivity disorder, Alzheimer's disease and Parkinson's disease.
The study also suggests that people prone to depression may need extra help in order to quit smoking, such as nicotine replacement therapy, the scientists said.
Despite the positive effects of nicotine discovered in their study, the researchers emphasize that it is not currently appropriate for treatment of any medical disorder outside of nicotine dependence.
"I certainly recommend that people don't smoke," Levin said. "If you do smoke, quit."
Contact: Marla Vacek Broadfoot
marla.broadfoot@duke.edu
919-660-1306
Duke University Medical Center

Team depression care reduces suicidal thoughts in older adults

2006-09-13T11:26:00.000-07:00

New research to be presented to US Senate Special Committee on Aging, part of national suicide prevention week

WHAT: A new study shows that a team-based approach to treating depression in primary care can significantly reduce suicidal thoughts in older adults. The results of the study will be presented to the United States Senate Special Committee on Aging September 14, 2006 as part of National Suicide Prevention Week. In one of the largest depression treatment studies ever, patients receiving IMPACT depression care were half as likely as patients receiving usual depression care to report suicidal thoughts, even up to 12 months after they stopped receiving IMPACT care. (IMPACT stands for Improving Mood: Promoting Access to Collaborative Treatment.) The study results are published online in the October issue of the Journal of the American Geriatric Society.
WHEN/WHERE: David C. Steffens, M.D., M.H.S., Head of the Division of Geriatric Psychiatry at Duke University Medical Center, and a co-author of the study, will testify before the Senate Special Committee on Aging on September 14, 2006. He will discuss better depression treatment through the IMPACT program as one solution to the alarming prevalence of suicide in older adults.
WHY: Older adults, particularly white males, have the highest rate of completed suicide in the nation. White men 65 and older have a suicide rate six times higher than the overall national rate. Depression has been identified as one of the most important and most treatable risk factors, but depression in older adults, is often not detected or treated successfully. Less than 10% of depressed older adults see a mental health professional. Of those who are diagnosed with depression, less than 50% of patients follow through with referral to a mental health professional, as older adults strongly prefer to receive care from their primary care physician.
The IMPACT study confirms that primary care physicians are well positioned to identify and treat late life depression, but are most effective when they provide this treatment as part of a team. IMPACT helps improve the identification and treatment of late-life depression in primary care through a team approach in which a care manager (usually a nurse, psychologist or social worker) assists the primary care provider in providing effective depression treatment in consultation with a team psychiatrist. Results of the two year study show that patients receiving IMPACT depression care were half as likely as patients receiving usual depression care to report suicidal thoughts, even up to 12 months after they stopped receiving IMPACT care. IMPACT has also been shown to:
More than double the likelihood that a patient's depression will significantly improve and will stay improved, even 12 months after IMPACT care ends
Improve physical functioning over time while it declines in patients receiving usual care
Reduce the experience of arthritis pain and limitations on functioning caused by arthritis pain
Improve patient quality of life and satisfaction with medical care
Work as well for ethnic minorities as for whites
Be cost effective for all patients
Reduce overall healthcare costs for patients with both depression and diabetes
Improve satisfaction of primary care providers treating depression
Be effective in diverse healthcare settings including HMO, fee-for-service, Veteran's Administration
Contact: Justin Reedy
jreedy@u.washington.edu
206-543-3620
Clare Hagerty
clareh@u.washington.edu
206-543-3620
University of Washington
Connie Hofmann
chofmann@aboutscp.com
215-219-2943
610-687-5495
Strategic Communications & Planning

High-tech equipment may help reduce wildlife-vehicle collisions

2006-09-13T11:00:00.000-07:00

As part of a six-year study, the Western Transportation Institute at Montana State University helped test and develop this animal-detection system on U.S. Highway 191 in Yellowstone National Park.

As part of a six-year study, researchers at the Western Transportation Institute at Montana State University have helped test and develop an animal-detection system that may give motorists the upper hand in avoiding crashes with wildlife across the nation.
The system, by Sensor Technologies & Systems of Scottsdale, Ariz., reliably detected elk on U.S. Highway 191 in Yellowstone National Park. How effective the system is in reducing animal-vehicle collisions will be evaluated over the next two years.
The testing and development of the system was just one part of a 271-page report summarizing all the available information on animal-detection systems in the world: data from more than 30 study sites and 15 different animal-detection technologies in place across United States and Europe. One Swiss study showed collisions with large animals were reduced 82 percent in locations with animal-detection systems.
Animal detection systems use passive or active infrared signals, lasers, microwaves, or seismic sensors to activate warning signs that urge drivers to slow down, be more alert, or both, when large animals are on, or near, the road ahead.
"This is a very promising technology that can make U.S. roadways safer. Our results urge us to fine tune this technology so that it can be used across the country," said Marcel Huijser, the study's lead investigator at the WTI.
WTI researchers also calculated the average total costs associated with an animal-vehicle collision for three species: $7,890 for deer, $17,100 for elk, and $28,100 for moose. Further calculations showed that animal detection systems could be cost effective; they may pay for themselves at locations that have at least five deer, three elk or two moose collisions per mile per year on average.
Nationally, roughly 200 people are killed, more than 15,000 injured and 300,000 vehicles damaged annually from collisions with wildlife and domestic animals, according to federal safety data.
In Montana alone, five people were killed and 123 injured in 2005 out of 1,866 recorded wildlife-vehicle collisions, according to the Montana Highway Patrol.
The Oregon Department of Transportation was the lead funding agency for the study, but reducing animal-vehicle collisions has a broad national interest and the departments of transportation from California, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Maryland, Montana, Nevada, New Hampshire, New York, North Dakota, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Wyoming, Alaska, as well the Federal Highway Administration all participated.
"Animal detection systems are a relatively new application of these technologies. This study gives us some data on how effective they are," said Barnie Jones of the Oregon Department of Transportation, the lead state in managing the research project.
"Despite these technologies being exposed to extreme cold, snow and rain, the project helped develop a system that detects elk reliably," Jones said. "States such as Arizona, California, Colorado, New Mexico and Nevada are all planning on adding animal detection systems to their roadways."
The study also generated ideas on how to make animal-detection systems smaller and more reliable. Another follow-up project will aim to set standards for reliability by comparing different systems at the same location under similar circumstances in Lewistown, Mont.
Contact: Marcel Huijser
mhuijser@coe.montana.edu
406-543-2377
Montana State University

Tiny fuel cell might replace batteries in laptop computers, portable electronics

2006-09-13T05:38:00.000-07:00

SAN FRANCISCO, If you're frustrated by frequently losing battery power in your laptop computer, digital camera or portable music player, then take heart: A better source of "juice" is in the works. Chemists at Arizona State University in Tempe have created a tiny hydrogen-gas generator that they say can be developed into a compact fuel cell package that can power these and other electronic devices -- from three to five times longer than conventional batteries of the same size and weight.
The generator uses a special solution containing borohydride, an alkaline compound that has an unusually high capacity for storing hydrogen, a key element that is used by fuel cells to generate electricity. In laboratory studies, a prototype fuel cell made from this generator was used to provide sustained power to light bulbs, radios and DVD players, the researchers say.
The fuel cell system can be packaged in containers of the same size and weight as conventional batteries and is recharged by refilling a fuel cartridge, they say. Research on these battery replacement fuel cells, which they claim are safer for the environment than regular batteries, was described today at the 232nd national meeting of the American Chemical Society.
"We're trying to maximize the usable hydrogen storage capacity of borohydride in order to make this fuel cell power source last longer," says study leader Don Gervasio, Ph.D., a chemist at the University's Biodesign Institute, Center for Applied NanoBioScience. "That could lead to the longest lasting power source ever produced for portable electronics."
One of the challenges in fuel cell development is finding hydrogen-rich compounds for the fuel source. Many different hydrogen sources have been explored for use in fuel cells, including metal hydride "sponges" and liquids such as gasoline, methanol, ethanol and even vegetable oil.
Recently, borohydride has shown promise as a safe, energy-dense hydrogen storage solution. Unlike the other fuel sources, borohydride works at room temperature and does not require high temperatures in order to liberate hydrogen, Gervasio says.
Gervasio and his associates are developing novel chemical additives to increase the useful hydrogen storage capacity of the borohydride solution by as much as two to three times that of simple aqueous sodium borohydride solutions that are currently being explored for fuel cell development. These additives prevent the solution from solidifying, which could potentially clog or damage the hydrogen generator and cause it to fail.
In developing the prototype fuel cell system, the researchers housed the solution in a tiny generator containing a metal catalyst composed of ruthenium metal. In the presence of the catalyst, the borohydride in the water-based solution reacts with water to form hydrogen gas.
The gas leaves the hydrogen generator by moving across a special membrane separating the generator from the fuel cell component. The hydrogen gas then combines with oxygen inside the fuel cell to generate water and electricity, which can then be used to power the portable electronic device. Commercialization of a practical version of this fuel cell could take as many as three to five years, Gervasio says.
Contact: Michael Bernstein
m_bernstein@acs.org
415-978-3532 (San Francisco, CA, Sept. 10-14, 2006)
202-872-4400 (Washington, DC)
American Chemical Society

Spam filter design to benefit from internet routing data

2006-09-13T04:04:00.000-07:00

Internet service providers could better fight unwanted junk email by addressing it at the network level, rather than using currently available message content filters, says Georgia Tech College of Computing Assistant...

A database of more than 10 million spam email messages collected at just one Internet "spam sinkhole" suggests that Internet service providers could better fight unwanted junk email by addressing it at the network level, rather than using currently available message content filters.
Also, the research – conducted at the Georgia Institute of Technology's College of Computing -- identified two additional techniques for combating spam: improving the security of the Internet's routing infrastructure and developing algorithms to identify computers' membership in "botnets," which are groups of computers that are compromised and controlled remotely to send large volumes of spam. The findings are now directing the researchers' design of new systems to stem spam.
"Content filters are fighting a losing battle because it's easier for spammers to simply change their content than for us to build spam filters.," said Nick Feamster, a Georgia Tech assistant professor of computing. "We need another set of properties, not based on content. So what about network-level properties? It's harder for spammers to change network-level properties."
Feamster and his Ph.D. student Anirudh Ramachandran will present their findings on Sept. 14, 2006 in Pisa, Italy, at the Association for Computing Machinery's annual flagship conference of its Special Interest Group on Data Communication (SIGCOMM).
From 18 months of Internet routing and spam data the researchers collected in one domain, they have learned which network-level properties are most promising for consideration in spam filter design. Specifically, they learned that:
Internet routes are being hijacked by spammers;
they can identify many narrow ranges within Internet protocol (IP) address space that are generating only spam, and
and they can identify the Internet service providers (ISP) from which spam is coming.
"We know route hijacking is occurring," Feamster said. "It's being done by a small, but fairly persistent and sophisticated group of spammers, who cannot be traced using conventional methods."
Route hijacking works like this: By exploiting weaknesses in Internet routing protocols, spammers can steal Internet address space by briefly advertising a route for that space to the rest of the Internet's routers. The spammers can then assign any IP address within that address space to their machines. They send their spam from those machines and then withdraw the route by which they sent the spam. By the time a recipient files a complaint related to this IP address, the route is gone and the IP address space is no longer reachable.
"Even if you're watching the hijack take place, it's difficult to tell where it's coming from," Feamster explained. "We can make some good guesses. But Internet routing protocols are insecure, so it's relatively easy for spammers to steal them and hard for us to identify the perpetrators."
Feamster and researchers elsewhere are actively working to improve the security of Internet routing protocols, he added.
Better spam filtering will also result from a system, which Feamster hopes to design, based on collaborative, network-level filtering among ISP operators.
"Within the single domain that we are studying, it's interesting that you don't see the same IP addresses repeatedly being used to send spam to that domain," Feamster said. "So ISP operators need to be able to securely share information about IP addresses associated with spam."
In addition to studying network-level properties of spam, Ramachandran and Feamster compared their lists of IP addresses used to send spam against eight frequently used "blacklists" compiled by network operators to help filter spam.
"We found that these blacklists listed IP addresses for only about half of the spam being sent using route hijacking," Feamster said.
"The best case scenario is that these blacklists are still missing IP addresses from which at least 20 percent of spam is sent…. This 20 percent rate of false negatives is likely to cause a high percentage of false positives, and so this approach may also cause a lot of legitimate email to be mistakenly tagged as spam."
The researchers also plan to use this finding in the spam filter development efforts, Feamster added. Meanwhile, the researchers are continuing to collect Internet routing and spam data.
"It's always nice to have long-term data to help us see trends," Feamster noted. "These are valuable studies that help us see if people's behavior changes over time."
Indeed, it has in this case. The rate of spam has nearly doubled in the past two years in the one domain where the researchers collected their routing data for this study.
Contact: Jane Sanders
jsanders@gatech.edu
404-894-2214
Georgia Institute of Technology Research News

Scientists and engineers simulate jet colliding with World Trade Center

2006-09-13T03:29:00.000-07:00

This image was taken from a simulation created by researchers at Purdue University in connection with NSF-funded work to study what happened structurally to the World Trade Center's North Tower...

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. - Researchers at Purdue University have created a simulation that uses scientific principles to study in detail what likely happened when a commercial airliner crashed into the World Trade Center's North Tower on Sept. 11, 2001.
The simulation could be used to better understand which elements in the building's structural core were affected, how they responded to the initial shock of the aircraft collision, and how the tower later collapsed from the ensuing fire fed by an estimated 10,000 gallons of jet fuel, said Mete Sozen, the Kettelhut Distinguished Professor of Structural Engineering in Purdue's School of Civil Engineering.
It took about 80 hours using a high-performance computer containing 16 processors to produce the first simulation, which depicts how the plane tore through several stories of the structure within a half-second, said Christoph M. Hoffmann, a professor of computer science and co-director of the Computing Research Institute at Purdue.
"This required a tremendous amount of detailed work," Hoffmann said. "We have finished the first part of the simulation showing what happened to the structure during the initial impact. In the coming months, we will explore how the structure reacted to the extreme heat from the blaze that led to the building's collapse, and we will refine the visual presentations of the simulation."
The researchers are analyzing how many columns were destroyed initially in the building's core, a spine of 47 heavy steel I-beams extending through the center of the structure, Sozen said.
"Current findings from the simulation have identified the destruction of 11 columns on the 94th floor, 10 columns on the 95th floor and nine columns on the 96th floor," he said. "This is a major insight. When you lose close to 25 percent of your columns at a given level, the building is significantly weakened and vulnerable to collapse."
The simulation research, funded by the National Science Foundation, was carried out by a team that includes Hoffmann; Sozen; Ayhan Irfanoglu, an assistant professor of civil engineering; Voicu Popescu, an assistant professor of computer science; computer science doctoral student Paul Rosen; and civil engineering doctoral students Oscar Ardila and Ingo Brachmann.
The simulation research is associated with an NSF "information technology research project" called Model Reduction for Dynamical Systems, which is led by Purdue and includes researchers from Rice University, Florida State University and the Catholic University of Louvain. The project is headed by Ahmed Sameh, Purdue's Samuel D. Conte Professor of Computer Science.
"One challenge will be taking the scientific simulation and putting it into a commercial visualization software so that the package is viewer friendly," said Popescu, who is leading that portion of the work.
Mathematical models are used to represent the Boeing 767 and the building.
"The simulation is enabling us to 'look' inside the building to see what really happened structurally," Sozen said. "This is not the first simulation, but I would say it's the most scientifically realistic one. We have spent a great deal of time on details of the mechanical properties of the columns and of the airplane, and we have benefited from the results of previous efforts at simulation."
In a broader sense, results of the computational component of the work will help scientists and engineers better understand situations and phenomena that are not ordinarily accessible using other methods. Such models can lead to insights in many areas of research and industry for applications ranging from designing safer buildings to developing new pharmaceuticals, said Sozen and Hoffmann.
High-performance computing is essential for the research, Hoffmann said. The computer scientists and engineers have been using the "nano-regatta" computer, an IBM system approximately equivalent to the combined power of 128 personal computers. The computer is operated by Information Technology at Purdue as part of the Network for Computational Nanotechnology, based at Purdue's Discovery Park and supported by the NSF.
Other computations were carried out using computers operated by the Northwest Indiana Computational Grid, a consortium supported by the U.S. Department of Energy involving Purdue, the University of Notre Dame, Purdue University Calumet and the Argonne National Laboratory, as well as computers at Purdue's Robert L. and Terry L. Bowen Civil Engineering Laboratory for Large Scale Research.
A team consisting of many of the same Purdue researchers in 2002 created a similar simulation of the Sept. 11 attack on the Pentagon.
Experience gained during the Pentagon-related research and laboratory experiments have helped the Purdue civil engineers and computer scientists develop the new model, Sozen said.
"As a result of the Pentagon research, we have a better understanding of what happens when a tremendous mass of fluid such as fuel hits a solid object at high velocity," Sozen said. "We believe most of the structural damage from such aircraft collisions is caused by the mass of the fluid on the craft, which includes the fuel.
"Damage resulting solely from the metal fuselage, engines and other aircraft parts is not as great as that resulting from the mass of fluids on board. You could think of the aircraft as a sausage skin. Its mass is tiny compared to the plane's fluid contents."
The simulation represents the plane and its mass as a mesh of hundreds of thousands of "finite elements," or small squares containing specific physical characteristics. Like the previous Pentagon simulation, the software tool uses principles of physics to simulate how a plane's huge mass of fuel and cargo impacts a building.
"It is a virtual reality," Sozen said. "The building is reduced to a mathematical representation, the airplane is reduced to a mathematical representation, and then we see what happens on impact."
Santiago Pujol, an assistant professor of civil engineering, worked with the researchers to develop experimental data to test the accuracy of the simulation by using an "impact simulator" to shoot 8-ounce beverage cans at high velocity at steel and concrete targets at Purdue's Bowen Laboratory. These data enabled the researchers to fine tune and validate the theoretical model for the simulation.
"We created a mathematical model of the beverage can and its fluid contents the same way we modeled the airplane, and then we tested our assumptions used to formulate the model by comparing the output from the model with that from the experiment," Sozen said.
Contact: Emil Venere
venere@purdue.edu
765-494-4709
Purdue University

Reconstructive surgeon aims for rejection-free limb transplantation

2006-09-13T01:08:00.000-07:00

Years ago, the idea of attaching a donor limb onto a patient's body would have been the stuff of science fiction. But to date about two-dozen people around the world have received hand transplants. Thomas Tung, M.D., conducts research within this relatively unorthodox realm of surgery, investigating therapies that could potentially allow the body to accept donor tissue without the use of immunosuppressive medication.
A Washington University plastic and reconstructive surgeon at Barnes-Jewish Hospital, Tung has reattached patients' own hands, but he has never performed a hand transplant - he feels the health risks of immunosuppressive drugs are too high to warrant the surgery. But with his research, he is working toward the day when reconstructive surgery can make use of donor tissues without the danger of complications from anti-rejection medication or the risk of tissue rejection.
"Once we figure this out, it's going to open up a new whole field of reconstructive surgery," says Tung, assistant professor of surgery. "It will allow surgeons to replace not just injured hands, but lips, noses, ears, scalp and other specialized tissues anywhere on the body."
To reach this goal, Tung has been researching transplantation of hindlimbs to mice from unrelated donors - but here's the twist - without giving the mice immunosuppressive drugs. At this time, Tung is the only researcher in the United States investigating limb transplantation with this protocol, which uses proteins called costimulation-blocking antibodies.
With current treatment methods, all transplantation patients take medications that reduce the function of their immune systems so their bodies don't reject the foreign tissue. But long-term use of immunosuppressive medication raises the risk of infection and cancer because the weakened immune system is unable to ward off these threats. Furthermore, immune suppression therapy eventually fails, and transplanted organs undergo rejection an average of 10 years after surgery.
"The holy grail of transplantation research is to find a way to produce permanent tolerance without the need for any immunosuppressive medication," Tung says. "That's what I'm investigating with my mouse model."
Tung's work in limb transplantation in many ways parallels research being conducted in organ transplantation. But limb transplantation entails different challenges because it involves several kinds of tissue: skin, muscles, tendons, nerves and bone. Each of these elicits a different degree of response from the recipient.
"It's not entirely predictable that something that is successful in organ transplantation will have the same effect on a limb transplant," Tung says.
In recently published research, Tung demonstrated the effectiveness of costimulation-blocking therapy, which is designed to induce tolerance to the tissues in a transplanted hindlimb but not to globally suppress the immune system.
The mice received an antibody that blocked the action of certain molecules important for the immune system's T cells to attack foreign tissue. According to Tung, this strategy, called costimulation blockade, blocks the immune response to only the donor tissue. The immune system can still react to infections or cancer.
In addition to the costimulation blockade, mice received donor bone marrow, either as an infusion or simply as the marrow present in the bones of the donor hindlimb. Earlier research suggested that donor bone marrow could help induce transplant tolerance, and Tung found that the small amount of bone marrow within the hindlimb was as effective as a large infusion of bone marrow cells given intravenously.
While the costimulation blockade/bone marrow therapy did not result in permanent tolerance of the transplanted hindlimb, it greatly extended the time before the mice rejected the new limb.
In one set of experiments, mice not given a costimulation blockade rejected their new limbs after about 10 days, whereas the muscles and bone of the transplanted limb in blockade-treated mice survived an average of 222 days.
"Research into costimulation blockade is relatively new," Tung says. "And just over the last few years, a half dozen new costimulatory pathways have been recognized. Researchers have found that when you combine several antibodies to block several pathways at once, it may increase the effectiveness of the therapy. That's a big step toward tolerance of transplanted tissue."
The next stage of Tung's research will focus on these new costimulation blockers. In addition, Tung will collaborate with colleague Susan E. Mackinnon, M.D., the Sydney M. Jr. and Robert H. Shoenberg Professor of Surgery and chief of the Division of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery, to investigate regeneration of nerves in transplanted limbs.
"Patients receiving a hand transplant don't need it to survive -- they are getting it to improve their functionality," Tung says. "If the new hand doesn't work well because of nerve problems, that defeats the purpose of the surgery. I am also involved in research on nerve regeneration, and I would like to use that knowledge to improve regeneration of nerves in limb transplants."
Contact: Gwen Ericson
ericsong@wustl.edu
314-286-0141
Washington University School of Medicine

Latest fuel cell material advance overcomes low humidity conductivity problem

2006-09-13T01:02:00.000-07:00

Blacksburg, Va., -- Fuel cells have been a workable technology for decades – but expensive and lacking in infrastructure. In recent years, researchers have addressed durability, manufacturability, and conductivity challenges in alternative proton exchange membrane (PEM) materials for fuel cells – bringing the hydrogen-based energy source closer to reality.
James McGrath, University Distinguished Professor of Chemistry with the Macromolecules and Interfaces Institute at Virginia Tech, will announce his research group's latest development, a PEM material that retains conductivity during low humidity, during his plenary lecture at the Challenges for the Hydrogen Economy symposium during the 232nd National Meeting of the American Chemical Society (ACS) on September 10-14 in San Francisco.
Fuel cells convert chemical energy, usually from hydrogen, to electrical energy. In a PEM fuel cell, the critical exchange takes place through a thin water-swollen copolymer film that contains sulfonic acid (SO3H) groups. Electrons are peeled off by oxidation of the hydrogen atoms and hydrated protons pass through the film to combine with oxygen on the other side to form water as a byproduct.
The efficiency of the exchange process depends upon water, so efficiency – measured as proton conductivity – goes down as humidity goes down. "Up to now, a lot of water has been needed to assist the proton transfer process," said McGrath. "But, in the desert, that is pretty inefficient." McGrath, chemical engineering Professor Don Baird, and their students demonstrated a method for creating a material with improved conductivity even at lower humidity. The U.S. Department of Energy awarded McGrath and Baird's groups $1.5 million over five years to advance the research.
Instead of stirring two kinds of reactive monomers, or small molecules, together to form a new random copolymer, the new material links blocks of two different short polymers in sequences. For example, he would link polymer W (loves water) and polymer d (dry but strong) into a chain this way: WWWWWdddddddWWWWWdddddddd.
The researchers can link a 10- to 50-unit block of a polymer containing acidic groups (SO3H) that like water (hydrophilic) to an equally long block of a polymer that has mechanical strength, thermal stability, and endurance, but hates water (hydrophobic). The chains self-assemble into flexible thin films. Under an atomic force microscope, the film's swirling surface looks like a fingerprint, with light ridges and dark channels. It turns out that the soft hydrophilic polymer forms the dark channels where water is easily absorbed so that the entire film – or proton exchange membrane (PEM) – has an affinity for water transport that is two to three times higher than the present commercially available PEM.
In addition to making PEM materials with better qualities, another goal of the research is to make PEM materials that can be easily manufactured. The self-assembling nature of the block copolymer material into a nanocomposite film is an important attribute. In addition, Baird is working on processing the film from powders using a reverse roll coater, equipment commonly available in the coatings industry but not yet being used to produce PEM material. McGrath will present the paper, "Progress in alternate proton exchange membrane materials for fuel cells (Fuel 3)," at 10:15 a.m. Sunday, Sept. 10, in the Golden Ballroom of the Sheraton Palace.
Contact: Susan Trulove
STrulove@vt.edu
540-231-5646
Virginia Tech

Using Microbes to Fuel the U.S. Hydrogen Economy

2006-09-12T22:12:00.000-07:00

SAN FRANCISCO, CA - “If the U.S. is to have a future hydrogen-based economy, we’ll need a way to generate abundant quantities of hydrogen safely and economically,” said Daniel (Niels) van der Lelie, a biologist at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Brookhaven National Laboratory. Van der Lelie will discuss the prospect of using vats of microbes to brew up the hydrogen in a talk at the 232nd national meeting of the American Chemical Society in San Francisco, California, at 3:35 p.m. Pacific Time on Tuesday, September 12, 2006, in the Telegraph Hill room of the Sheraton Palace.
The focus on hydrogen as a future fuel source is compelling given dwindling supplies of oil and natural gas, as well as escalating costs and the fact that burning fossil fuels releases large amounts of carbon dioxide, a “greenhouse” gas, into the atmosphere.

In contrast, burning hydrogen gas (for example, in a fuel cell) produces no pollution. And hydrogen, a constituent of water, is widely abundant. However, finding simple, inexpensive ways to extract that abundant element and produce it in a pure gaseous form — a crucial step toward making the “hydrogen economy” a reality — has been a technological challenge.

Van der Lelie’s group reports that experimental setups using Thermatoga neapolitana bacteria given a simple glucose feedstock can generate copious amounts of hydrogen gas at temperatures between 158 and 185 degrees Fahrenheit at atmospheric to elevated pressure. In his talk, van der Lelie will describe the complex biochemistry of these reactions as well as the potential to scale up this system for continuous, farm-based, economical hydrogen production. One significant finding was that Thermatoga neapolitana produced hydrogen most efficiently in a moderately low-oxygen environment. Previously, hydrogen production by bacteria has only been reported under anaerobic, or oxygen-free, conditions.

“Oxygen normally kills anaerobic microbes like Thermatoga neapolitana,” van der Lelie said. That would be a problem for any real-world production facilities, as eliminating all oxygen from production lines could be very expensive. “Our research provides the first evidence that bacteria can efficiently produce hydrogen gas when oxygen is present.”

In collaboration with Paul King, a scientist at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, the Brookhaven team is now elucidating the mechanisms by which Thermatoga neapolitana can avoid oxygen toxicity during hydrogen production. “Understanding the oxygen tolerance of Thermatoga neapolitana will facilitate its practical application to produce hydrogen from agricultural resources,” van der Lelie said.

This research was funded by Laboratory Directed Research and Development funds at the Brookhaven National Laboratory under contract with the U.S. Department of Energy. DOE has developed a long-term national vision for moving toward a hydrogen economy — a solution that holds the potential to provide virtually limitless clean, safe, secure, affordable, and reliable energy from domestic resources.

An artificial cornea is in sight, thanks to biomimetic hydrogels

2006-09-12T19:22:00.001-07:00

If eyes are "the windows of the soul," corneas are the panes in those windows. They shield the eye from dust and germs. They also act as the eye's outermost lens, contributing up to 75 percent of the eye's focusing power. On Sept. 11 in San Francisco at the annual meeting of the American Chemical Society, chemical engineer Curtis W. Frank will present a novel biomimetic material that's finding its way into artificial corneas. It's a hydrogel, or polymer that holds a lot of water. That material may promise a new view for at least 10 million people worldwide who are blind due to damaged or diseased corneas or many millions more who are nearsighted or farsighted due to misshapen corneas.
Called DuoptixTM, the material can swell to a water content of 80 percent--about the same as biological tissues. It's made of two interwoven networks of hydrogels. One network, made of polyethylene glycol molecules, resists the accumulation of surface proteins and inflammation. The other network is made of molecules of polyacrylic acid, a relative of the superabsorbent material in diapers.
"Think of a fishnet, but think of a 3-D fishnet," says Frank, the W. M. Keck, Sr. Professor in Engineering and a professor, by courtesy, of chemistry and of materials science and engineering. "It's a strong, stretchy material." That makes it able to survive suturing during surgery. The biocompatible hydrogel is transparent and permeable to nutrients, including glucose, the cornea's favorite food.
Collaborators on the hydrogel work that Frank is presenting at the chemists' meeting are Marianne E. Harmon, a former Stanford doctoral student now with GE Corporate Research Lab in Schenectady, N.Y.; Dirk Kucklung, an assistant professor at the Institute for Polymer Science in Dresden, Germany; Wolfgang Knoll, director of the Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research in Mainz, Germany; and David Myung, a medical student jointly working on a doctorate in chemical engineering in Frank's lab.
Myung's project, funded by Stanford's Bio-X interdisciplinary biosciences program, was to design, fabricate and characterize a bioengineered cornea based on the dual-network hydrogel. The result was a disc with a clear center and tiny pores populating the periphery. Myung calls the pores engineered into his artificial cornea the "homes" he built for cells that need to infiltrate the artificial lens and integrate it with surrounding natural tissue.
"If you build it, they will come," Myung says. "The cells move in, and they bring furniture too--meaning the collagen they secrete. They even 'remodel.'" Collagen binds to the edge of the synthetic disc and forms a junction between natural and synthetic tissues. Then a clear layer of epithelial cells grow over the disc.
'Broadly interdisciplinary'
Stanford's program to develop an artificial cornea is "broadly interdisciplinary," Frank says. Christopher Ta, an assistant professor of ophthalmology and ophthalmology residency director at the Stanford University Medical Center, leads the effort with Frank. Ta says scientists have tried to develop artificial corneas for half a century, but prototypes were not well tolerated. Infections developed around implants. Eyes extruded implants. A few years ago, in a pilot study for a Bio-X grant to show proof of concept, Ta began to test the hydrogel in assays to make sure it was not toxic to cells. Soon other experts joined the effort. Jaan Noolandi in Ophthalmology managed projects, worked with potential sponsors and provided insight into polymer physics. Nabeel Farooqui in Ophthalmology developed histology procedures. Won-Gun Koh, a former postdoctoral fellow in Chemical Engineering, first synthesized the polymer that Myung ultimately developed. Qi Liao, a graduate student in Chemical Engineering, contributed to a general understanding of the hydrogels. Jennifer Cochran, assistant professor in the Bioengineering Department, is investigating how to maximize epithelial adhesion to the material. Michael Carrasco, a peptide chemist at Santa Clara University, consulted about surface modifications for cellular adhesion.
The researchers are now testing the material for biocompatibility in animal models. Animals have tolerated artificial corneas with no problems in trials as long as eight weeks, Ta says. The material remains perfectly clear, he says. Longer trials are a next step.
The current source of tissue for corneal transplants is cadavers. Donor tissue has problems, Ta notes, including a rejection rate of about 20 percent and a period for visual recovery of six months to a year. "You get a more predictable shape with an artificial cornea," Ta says.
"In many countries, tissue availability is a problem," he says. "If the tissue is artificial, we don't have to rely on donor tissue." The high prevalence of laser-assisted in situ keratomileusis, or LASIK, eye surgery may contribute to the shortage of donor tissue in developed nations, he notes, as this surgery disqualifies donation. A tissue-engineered artificial cornea could lessen or eliminate the need for donor tissue.
At least a dozen groups worldwide are working to develop artificial corneas, Myung says. "Only two or three are on the market, but they are only used in last-ditch efforts [when transplants are rejected]," he notes. Stanford's artificial cornea is "the most biomimetic," he says, with a water concentration and mechanical properties that rival those of the natural cornea.
"The dream would be to have a corneal replacement that's sterilized and dehydrated and sent off to the hospital or battlefield, and rehydrated," Frank says.
Beyond blindness
Other ocular applications of the hydrogel include more comfortable contact lenses. Onlays of hydrogel lenses on the surface of the cornea could serve as extended-wear contact lenses.
Inlays are also possible. The cornea contains layers--a top layer of protective epithelial cells, a middle layer called stroma that provides the collagen matrix that gives the cornea its shape, and an innermost endothelial layer. With inlays, some of the epithelial layer can be scraped away and replaced with a hydrogel contact lens. The lens becomes biointegrated when clear epithelial cells grow over the top of the inlayed lens.
Inlays offer an advantage over LASIK surgery, which works but isn't reversible, Myung says. He envisions implantable contact lenses that can be replaced if the prescription changes.
Hydrogel lenses may even make their way deeper into the eye as replacements for inner-eye lenses damaged by cataracts.
The researchers have filed four patents for ocular applications of the hydrogel.
Contact: Dawn Levy
dawnlevy@stanford.edu
650-725-1944
Stanford University

Sony focuses on "Place Shifting" with three new LocationFree products

2006-09-12T18:17:00.000-07:00

SAN DIEGO Continuing its focus on the concept of place-shifting, Sony Electronics today unveiled two LocationFree® Base Stations (LF-B10 and LF-B20) and the LocationFree TV Box.
With LocationFree devices, it is easy to wirelessly stream television programs, movies and personally-created content to a variety of devices – including PlayStation® Portable units, Macintosh (MAC OS X compatible software available from I-O Data) and Windows-based notebook PCs, or remotely located TV sets- wherever a broadband Internet connection is available.
“No matter if you are at home or on the road, accessing the content you want to see, when you want to see it, has never been easier,” said Hideyuki Furumi senior vice president of Sony Electronics’ IT Products Division. “The setup has been streamlined and our new models allow you to view quality video on a host of client devices.”
LocationFree Living
Featuring a lustrous black paneled, slim design that can be positioned either vertically or horizontally, the new LocationFree Base Stations are designed to integrate flawlessly into any home entertainment center. Both work with a variety of compatible viewing devices including the previously announced LocationFree® TV flat-panel LCD.
The new Base Station units also incorporate an Advanced Video Coding codec so consumers can experience quality, smoother video at less then optimal bit rates (uplink and downlink speeds of at least 300kbps required). Setup is easier as well: users simply plug the Base Station unit into a home entertainment system and follow the setup wizard to install the device registration software onto a host device.
Additionally, the LF-B20 model also serves as a wireless bridge connecting directly to an existing wireless home network. This offers flexibility in the placement of the device allowing you to place it anywhere throughout the house.
LocationFree TV Box
Sporting a glossy black design, the new LocationFree TV Box eliminates the need to run wiring to multiple televisions throughout the house.
Working seamlessly with a LocationFree Base Station unit, the TV Box is an industry first bringing all the content from a home entertainment center to other rooms in the house without the hassle of additional clutter.
Ideal for travelers, the LocationFree TV Box is small and easily connects to any remotely located TV so you can conveniently receive video content from your home setup. The TV Box also features an on-screen remote and a standard remote that can be used to control the device from a distance.

Diode laser could be vital for safeguarding aircraft

2006-09-12T18:11:00.002-07:00

Terrorists can strike anywhere, at any time, and aircraft, both military and civilian, are targets for heat-seeking missiles, one of many tactics in use by groups hostile to the United States.
Despite their name, heat-seeking missiles actually seek a characteristic infrared light given off by hot objects. Though invisible to the human eye, tiny detectors inside the missiles can detect this infrared light and use it for guidance.
To ensure the safety of aircraft, infrared countermeasure (IRCM) systems are used to confuse or blind the detectors. These systems require a high-power light source that can emit light at the correct wavelength. While various existing light sources may be able to succeed in disrupting the detectors, most are based on technology that is both bulky and expensive. Therefore, only a few military aircraft are now protected by IRCM systems. Developing a compact and inexpensive infrared light source will allow for widespread use of IRCMs, but it has proven to be a significant technical challenge.
A new type of diode laser, called the quantum cascade laser (QCL), may eventually change this situation. Diode lasers are inherently compact and suitable for mass-production, which has led to their widespread and low-cost use in everyday products, including CD and DVD players.
The Center for Quantum Devices (CQD) at Northwestern University, led by Manijeh Razeghi, Walter P. Murphy Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, has recently made great strides in laser design, material growth and laser fabrication that have greatly increased the output power and power conversion efficiency of QCLs. The center has now demonstrated individual lasers emitting at wavelengths of 3.8 and 4 microns, capable of up to 1.6 watts of continuous output power at cryogenic temperatures. These lasers have a threshold current density of less than 400 A/cm2 and a power conversion efficiency of 10 percent.
With further development, the researchers at CQD hope to use laser arrays to achieve a continuous output of 10 watts or more. At this wavelength and power level, the lasers could be extremely useful for aircraft protection.
Another significant breakthrough is the ability to operate these 3.8 and 4 micron lasers at room temperature. Room temperature continuous-wave operation has been demonstrated from the same devices with up to 150 milliwatts of output%

Death of a star

2006-09-12T11:38:00.001-07:00

Scientists watch supernova in real-time

For the first time a star has been observed in real-time as it goes supernova – a mind bogglingly powerful explosion as the star ends its life, the resulting cosmic eruption briefly outshining an entire galaxy. UK scientists, in collaboration with international colleagues, used NASA's Swift satellite and a combination of orbiting and ground-based observatories to catch a supernova in the act of exploding. The results, including an associated and intriguing Gamma Ray Burst [GRB], appear in 31 August issue of Nature.
The event began on the 18th February, 2006, in a star forming galaxy about 440 million light-years away toward the constellation Aries. At that time it was immediately realised that this was an unusual gamma-ray burst, about 25 times closer and 100 times longer than a typical gamma-ray burst. The burst lasted for almost 40 minutes as opposed to a typical GRB of a few milliseconds to tens of seconds. Because the burst was so long Swift was able to observe the bulk of the explosion with all three of its instruments: the Burst Alert Telescope, which detected the burst and relayed the location to ground observatories within 20 seconds; the X-ray telescope [XRT] and Ultraviolet/Optical Telescope [UVOT], which provide high-resolution imagery and spectra across a broad range of wavelengths.
"The fact that Swift can re-point very fast, slewing round to bring the XRT and UVOT to bear on the burst allowed us to get onto it very quickly indeed, enabling us to observe the critically important early behaviour of the event" remarked Dr. Alex Blustin from University College London's Mullard Space Science Laboratory [UCL/MSSL],
Careful, multi-wavelength analysis of space and ground-based observations has now revealed exactly what took place.
The exceptionally long burst, in the form of a jet of high-energy X-rays, pierced through the doomed star from its core and sent out a warning within minutes that a supernova was imminent. As the GRB faded away the massive star blew itself into smithereens.
"This GRB was the most extraordinary evolving object yet seen by Swift," said team member Dr. Paul O'Brien at the University of Leicester. "The three on-board telescopes all detected a slowly brightening then fading object. The results suggest a broad jet expanded into the surroundings but it was accompanied by a slower-moving and incredibly hot - two million degree - bubble of gas produced from the shock-wave of the exploding star".
Swift's three telescopes - covering gamma ray, X-ray, ultraviolet and optical wavelengths - captured X-rays fading to ultraviolet and then optical light, evidence of the shock wave from the explosion pushing exploded star material into the surrounding medium. Dr. Alex Blustin and colleague Dr. Mat Page, also from UCL/MSSL, conducted the analysis of Swift's ultra violet and optical data that tracked the expansion of the shock wave from the explosion.
Paul O'Brien added," This is the first time such an extraordinary event has been seen from a GRB. The thermal component of the supernova shock wave was clearly seen in this case as the GRB itself was fairly modest, some 100 times less than a typical GRB - a mere ten million billion times the power of the Sun!"
UK astronomers from the Universities of Leicester and Hertfordshire were part of a group led by Italy's National Institute for Astrophysics that used the European Southern Observatory's 8.2-metre Very Large Telescope [VLT] in Chile and the University of California's Lick Observatory Shane 3-metre telescope to obtain regularly-sampled optical spectroscopy of the shock wave. Two days later the classical supernova, a glowing cloud of gas powered by the decay of radioactive debris from the dead star, was beginning to outshine the fading shock wave.
Dr Andrew Levan, University of Hertfordshire said," As well as studying the early evolution of the supernova for the first time these observations also show how the material ejected in the explosion evolve in the following days and weeks, the timescales on which supernovae are normally studied". Dr. Levan added," This shows that the supernova associated with this GRB is a transition object, brighter than most supernovae in the universe, but fainter than those previously seen with GRB's. Understanding the reasons for this is a crucial step in understanding why only a small percentage of massive stars can create GRB's".
"Usually these events are not detected until after the supernova has brightened substantially in the optical wavelength, many days after the initial explosion", commented Prof. Keith Mason, UK lead investigator for the UVOT telescope on Swift and CEO of the Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council [PPARC]," but on this occasion we were able to study the remarkable event in all its glory from the very beginning".
Contact: Peter Barratt
peter.barrat@pparc.ac.uk
01-793-442-025
Particle Physics & Astronomy Research Council

Nanotechnology propels advances in regenerative medicine research

2006-09-12T06:22:00.000-07:00

SAN FRANCISCO The promise of regenerative medicine and the nanotechnology catapulting it into the forefront of chemistry are highlighted in two papers being presented on Monday, Sept. 11, in San Francisco during the American Chemical Society's 232nd national meeting. The presentations occur on the second day of a three-day symposium, "Advances in Nanomedicine," Sept. 10-12. Both papers will be presented at the Sir Francis Drake Hotel, Monterey/Cypress Rooms.
Nanotubes help adult stem cells morph into neurons in brain-damaged rats - Carbon nanotubes - 80,000 times thinner than a human hair - enhance the ability of adult stem cells to differentiate into healthy neurons in stroke-damaged rat brains, according to American and South Korean researchers. Thomas Webster, Ph.D., of Brown University in Providence, R.I, and colleagues at Yonsei University in Seoul mixed nanotubes with adult rat stem cells and then implanted the mixture into brain-damaged areas of three rats that had suffered strokes. In six other rats that had strokes, they implanted either adult stem cells or nanotubes - but not both - into brain-damaged areas. After following the animals for up to eight weeks, the researchers concluded that neither nanotubes nor adult stem cells alone triggered regeneration or repair in the brain-damaged regions. In fact, when used alone, adult stem cells migrated to healthy areas of the brain. But when combined with nanotubes, adult stem cells not only remained in the brain-damaged regions, they began to differentiate into functioning neurons. The finding could have important implications for the treatment of Alzheimer's, Parkinson's disease and other neurological disorders, Webster says. (COLL 217, Monday, Sept. 11, 3:20 p.m.)
Nanostructures promote formation of blood vessels, bolster cardiovascular function after heart attack - Injecting nanoparticles into the hearts of mice that suffered heart attacks helped restore cardiovascular function in these animals, according to Samuel Stupp, Ph.D., chemist and director of the Institute of Bionanotechnology in Medicine at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill. The finding is an important research advance that one day could help rapidly restore cardiovascular function in people who have heart disease, Stupp says. The self-assembling nanoparticles - made from naturally occurring polysaccharides and molecules known as peptide amphiphiles - boost chemical signals to nearby cells that induce formation of new blood vessels and this may be the mechanism through which they restore cardiovascular function. One month later, the hearts of the treated mice were capable of contracting and pumping blood almost as well as healthy mice. In contrast, the hearts of untreated mice contracted about 50 percent less than normal. In other recent studies using a similar technique, Stupp and his colleagues found nanoparticles hastened wound healing in rabbits and, after islet transplantation, cured diabetes in mice. Nanoparticles with other chemical compositions accelerate bone repair in rats and promote the growth of neurons in mice and rats with spinal cord injuries, he says. (COLL 218, Monday, Sept. 11, 3:50 p.m.)
Contact: Michael Bernstein
m_bernstein@acs.org
415-978-3532 (San Francisco, CA, Sept. 10-14, 2006)
202-872-4400 (Washington, DC)
American Chemical Society

World's smallest test tubes 'From the Lab to the Fab'

2006-09-12T06:19:00.001-07:00

Just by picking up the phone, Nobel Laureate and nanotube pioneer Richard Smalley convinced University of Pittsburgh R.K. Mellon Professor of Chemistry and Physics John T. Yates Jr. to enter the field of nanotube surface chemistry. "Rick Smalley's phone call resulted in six years of exciting work," says Yates, who will present highlights of research done at Pitt during a Presidential Event honoring Smalley Sept. 11 at the 232nd American Chemical Society (ACS) National Meeting in San Francisco, Calif.
In collaboration with J. Karl Johnson, who is the William Kepler Whiteford Professor of Chemical Engineering at Pitt, Yates has extensively investigated the use of single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWNTs) as tiny test tubes. SWNTs are cylindrical molecules with a diameter equivalent to about three atoms. The tube walls are made of a single curved sheet of carbon atoms. Experimenting at such a small scale presents many challenges, but offers big rewards: "Doing chemistry inside of nanoscale test tubes allows one to probe the role of extreme molecular confinement on chemical behavior," says Yates, who also directs Pitt's University Surface Science Center.
In the mid-1990s, Smalley recognized that SWNTs would likely be excellent adsorbents because of the enhanced attractive forces expected for molecules located inside the nanotubes. Yates has developed novel methods to measure the relative number of inside and outside molecules attracted to the nanotubes, while Johnson checks experimental results and provides more details through theoretical molecular modeling than could be provided by experiments alone.
Yates and Johnson, along with their students and postdoctoral fellows, obtained a striking result for water molecules confined inside SWNTs, as reported in a recent paper in the Journal of the American Chemical Society. The water molecules inside nanotubes bond together into rings made of seven water molecules. Yates and Johnson, who also are researchers in Pitt's Gertrude E. and John M. Petersen Institute of NanoScience and Engineering, found that these rings stack like donuts along the nanotube. The rings themselves are bound together by a new type of hydrogen bond that is highly strained compared to the hydrogen bonds within each molecular "donut."
The researchers first detected this novel hydrogen bond experimentally by its unusual singular vibrational frequency and later deduced its character by modeling. "The behavior of water as a solvent inside of nanotubes will probably differ strongly from its behavior in ordinary water based on the donut configuration and the new kind of hydrogen bond discovered in this work," says Yates.
In another development, research showed that reactive molecules confined inside nanotubes are well shielded by the nanotube walls from reacting with active chemical species like atomic hydrogen, one of the most aggressive chemical reactants in the chemist's toolbox. The work suggests that chemists could keep certain molecules from reacting by storing them inside nanotubes, while molecules outside the tube are free to react. "This could provide a new tool for focusing reactive chemistry in the laboratory to select one molecule and exclude another one, tucked away inside of a nanotube," Yates says.
The researchers' pioneering work could lead to future SWNT-based technologies such as time-release medications and highly efficient gas masks to decontaminate toxic gases. In addition, their research promises to yield new insights into basic chemistry. "Confining matter inside of nanotubes could lead to a range of new chemical and physical properties for the confined molecules, allowing chemists a higher degree of control of molecular behavior," says Yates.
Contact: Karen Hoffmann
klh52@pitt.edu
412-624-4356
University of Pittsburgh

Wearing a helmet puts cyclists at risk, suggests research

2006-09-12T06:10:00.000-07:00

Dr Ian Walker, Department of Psychology, University of Bath
Drivers pass closer when overtaking cyclists wearing helmets than when overtaking bare-headed cyclists, increasing the risk of a collision, the research has found.
Dr Ian Walker, a traffic psychologist from the University of Bath in the UK, used a bicycle fitted with a computer and an ultrasonic distance sensor to record data from over 2,500 overtaking motorists in Salisbury and Bristol.
Dr Walker, who was struck by a bus and a truck in the course of the experiment, spent half the time wearing a cycle helmet and half the time bare-headed. He was wearing the helmet both times he was struck.
He found that drivers were as much as twice as likely to get particularly close to the bicycle when he was wearing the helmet.
Across the board, drivers passed an average of 8.5 cm (3 1/3 inches) closer with the helmet than without
The research has been accepted for publication in the journal Accident Analysis & Prevention.
"This study shows that when drivers overtake a cyclist, the margin for error they leave is affected by the cyclist's appearance," said Dr Walker, from the University's Department of Psychology.
"By leaving the cyclist less room, drivers reduce the safety margin that cyclists need to deal with obstacles in the road, such as drain covers and potholes, as well as the margin for error in their own judgements.
"We know helmets are useful in low-speed falls, and so definitely good for children, but whether they offer any real protection to somebody struck by a car is very controversial.
"Either way, this study suggests wearing a helmet might make a collision more likely in the first place."
Dr Walker suggests the reason drivers give less room to cyclists wearing helmets is down to how cyclists are perceived as a group.
"We know from research that many drivers see cyclists as a separate subculture, to which they don't belong," said Dr Walker.
"As a result they hold stereotyped ideas about cyclists, often judging all riders by the yardstick of the lycra-clad street-warrior.
"This may lead drivers to believe cyclists with helmets are more serious, experienced and predictable than those without.
"The idea that helmeted cyclists are more experienced and less likely to do something unexpected would explain why drivers leave less space when passing.
"In reality, there is no real reason to believe someone with a helmet is any more experienced than someone without.
"The best answer is for different types of road user to understand each other better.
"Most adult cyclists know what it is like to drive a car, but relatively few motorists ride bicycles in traffic, and so don't know the issues cyclists face.
"There should definitely be more information on the needs of other road users when people learn to drive, and practical experience would be even better.
"When people try cycling, they nearly always say it changes the way they treat other road users when they get back in their cars."
The study also found that large vehicles, such as buses and trucks, passed considerably closer when overtaking cyclists than cars.
The average car passed 1.33 metres (4.4 feet) away from the bicycle, whereas the average truck got 19 centimetres (7.5 inches) closer and the average bus 23 centimetres (9 inches) closer.
However, there was no evidence of 4x4s (SUVs) getting any closer than ordinary cars.
Previously reported research from the project showed that drivers of white vans overtake cyclists an average 10 centimetres (4 inches) closer than car drivers.
To test another theory, Dr Walker donned a long wig to see whether there was any difference in passing distance when drivers thought they were overtaking what appeared to be a female cyclist.
Whilst wearing the wig, drivers gave him an average of 14 centimetres (5.5 inches) more space when passing.
In future research, Dr Walker hopes to discover whether this was because female riders are seen as less predictable than male riders, or because women are not seen riding bicycles as often as men on the UK's roads.
Contact: Andrew McLaughlin
a.mclaughlin@bath.ac.uk
44-012-253-86883
University of Bath

Mysteries of Kilimanjaro

2006-09-12T04:16:00.000-07:00

Kilimanjaro in Tanzania is Africa's highest mountain, and although it has been studied scientifically for over 100 years, it still hides some mysteries. Andreas Hemp has conducted extensive research on Kilimanjaro and reveals some of the mountain's secrets in an article published recently in the African Journal of Ecology.

The forests of Kilimanjaro are unusual for two reasons. One is that there is no bamboo zone, unlike the other East African mountains which have extensive bamboo forests. Another is that it was thought that there were only a few rare plants in the Kilimanjaro forests. Research by Hemp has explained the missing bamboo and uncovered a host of rare plants.

The missing bamboo is caused by a lack of elephants. Elephants are needed to create disturbance which encourages bamboo regeneration. However, on Kilimanjaro the lower slopes of the mountain are covered in cultivation preventing elephants from ascending into the forest "There are elephants on the dry side of the mountain" says Hemp "but the valleys are too steep and deep for elephants to traverse to the wet side where the bamboo could grow". The research demonstrates the complex links between plants and animals and the far reaching effects of changes caused by humans.

The rare plants were found in forest relicts in the deepest valleys of the cultivated lower areas suggesting that a rich forest flora once covered Mt. Kilimanjaro. The plants included a forest tree 40 m high that was new to science. "Kilimanjaro has long been excluded from the tropical rainforest biodiversity hotspot of Tanzania, but these exciting finds change the whole way we think about forest diversity of eastern Africa" said Jon Lovett, an expert in African biodiversity at the University of York.

However, the forests of Kilimanjaro are changing. Fires and logging have had a major impact on the forests. Fire in particular is reducing extent of the highest cloud forests. "The cloud forests are draped in moss and are an important water source as they catch moisture from the mist which shrouds them" explains Hemp "when they are burnt the hydrology of the whole mountain is affected".

Contact: Davina Quarterman
davina.quarterman@oxon.blackwellpublishing.com
Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

Muscle cells self-destruct rather than grow with use

2006-09-12T02:40:00.000-07:00

Muscle cells that should grow stronger with use instead self-destruct when a protein called BAG3 isn't around, researchers have shown.

Mice missing BAG3 seem fine at birth, but when they start using their muscles to breathe and stand, muscle cells rapidly degenerate and cannot regenerate, says Dr. Shinichi Takayama, cell and molecular biologist at the Medical College of Georgia.

The finding illustrates BAG3's importance in maintaining mature skeletal muscle, researchers say in the September issue of the American Journal of Pathology.

They hope it will lead to prevention of muscle atrophy that characterizes diseases such as muscular dystrophy, heart failure and a lesser-known condition called myofibril myopathy, which affects the tiniest muscle fibers. Dr. Takayama believes his BAG3 knockout is a model for the worst case of this rare disease.

"Basically we think that the degeneration starts because of usage of muscles, which should make them stronger," Dr. Takayama says. Instead, cells previously dormant in utero start dying. "They cannot breathe, they cannot use their muscles and they die quickly," he says of BAG3 knockout mice.

"When a muscle contraction happens, cytoskeletal degeneration occurs naturally," he says. Interestingly, degeneration normally stimulates regeneration, but not in these mice. Instead cells take another option: when they can't be fixed, they kill themselves.

This mass suicide in the absence of BAG3 is not a huge surprise. Dr. Takayama, the first to clone five members of the BAG family, says the proteins help regulate heat shock protein 70, which helps other proteins fold and function properly. The BAG family also has an anti-death function called antiapoptosis. Dr. Takayama is still dissecting the relationship between the anti-death function and BAG's regulatory role with the heat shock protein. "If protein folding is not happening to a cell, that cell should die, so I think the two functions are related," he says.

Without BAG3, researchers believe something goes wrong in the supporting structure of Z-discs, which help muscles contract. "The structure is tightly regulated by cytoskeletal proteins and something is wrong in the cytoskeleton of these mice," he says. They found evidence of changes in the Z-discs that predate cell death, leading them to postulate that BAG3 is required for maintaining the integrity of Z-discs and other supporting components of the muscle cytoskeleton that helps strengthen and organize cells. "The muscle, in structure, seems normal at birth," Dr. Takayama says. "But after four days, their Z-disc structure is disrupted." Myofibrils, thin, cylindrical filaments that run the length of muscle cells, then begin to degenerate.

He first cloned BAG1 as an antiapoptotic protein more than 10 years ago while looking for a way to kill cancer cells. "BAG is one of the things that helps cancer cells survive," says Dr. Takayama. In fact, BAG3 is highly expressed in cancer cells.

Last year, his group's work published in Nature Neuroscience showed a BAG1 knockout experiences massive brain cell death as an embryo. He's working on a mouse that over expresses BAG in muscle only, saying that should prevent cell death and atrophy.

Contact: Toni Baker
tbaker@mcg.edu
706-721-4421
Medical College of Georgia

Nanotube ink: Desktop printing of carbon nanotube patterns

2006-09-12T02:33:00.000-07:00

Using an off-the-shelf inkjet printer, a team of scientists has developed a simple technique for printing patterns of carbon nanotubes on paper and plastic surfaces. The method, which is described in the August 2006 issue of the journal Small, could lead to a new process for manufacturing a wide range of nanotube-based devices, from flexible electronics and conducting fabrics to sensors for detecting chemical agents.
Carbon nanotubes have enticed researchers since their discovery in 1991, offering an impressive combination of high strength, low weight, and excellent conductivity. But most current techniques to make nanotube-based devices require complex and expensive equipment. "Our results suggest new alternatives for fabricating nanotube patterns by simply printing the dissolved particles on paper or plastic surfaces," said Robert Vajtai, a researcher with the Rensselaer Nanotechnology Center at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and corresponding author of the paper.
Vajtai and his colleagues at Rensselaer - along with a group of researchers led by Krisztián Kordás and Géza Tóth at the University of Oulu in Finland - have developed an approach that uses a commercial inkjet printer to deposit nanotubes onto various surfaces. They simply fill a conventional ink cartridge with a solution of carbon nanotubes dissolved in water, and then the printer produces a pattern just as if it was printing with normal ink. Because nanotubes are good conductors, the resulting images also are able to conduct electricity.
"Printed carbon nanotube structures could be useful in many ways," Vajtai said. "Some potential applications based on their electrical conductivity include flexible electronics for displays, antennas, and batteries that can be integrated into paper or cloth." Printing electronics on cloth could allow people to actually "wear" the battery for their laptop computer or the entire electronic system for their cell phone, according to Vajtai.
The technique could be used to print optical tags on money and other paper items that need to be tracked, and it could even lead to an electronic newspaper where the text can be switched without changing the paper, he said. The researchers printed different samples, some of which show sensitivity to the vapors of several chemicals, which also could make them useful as gas sensors.
The approach is simple, versatile, and inexpensive, which makes it superior to other methods for producing conductive surfaces, according to Vajtai. "A great advantage of our process is that the printed patterns do not require curing, which is known to be a limiting factor for conventional conductive ink applications," he said. "And since our ink is a simple water-based dispersion of nanotubes, it is environmentally friendly and easy to handle and store."
Because the process uses off-the-shelf printers, cartridges, and paper or plastic surfaces, the only real expense is the cost of the nanotubes. For this experiment, the researchers made their own multi-walled carbon nanotubes, which were then chemically modified to allow them to dissolve in water. But similar nanotubes can be purchased for as little as a tenth of the price of the more expensive single-walled variety of carbon nanotubes, Vajtai said. And the cost of nanotubes should continue to drop as commercial demand for higher volumes grows.
The researchers plan to continue optimizing the process to improve the quality of the nanotube ink and the conductivity of the printed images. At present, the paper or plastic must be run through the printer multiple times to get an electrically conductive pattern, with the conductivity increasing after each repetition. They also hope to experiment with different chemical modifications to produce a diversity of ink "colors," each producing surface patterns with different properties, Vajtai said.
Contact: Jason Gorss
gorssj@rpi.edu
518-276-6098
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

Polymers show promise for lab-on-a-chip technology

2006-09-12T02:24:00.001-07:00

Researchers are touting the use of liquid crystalline polymers (LCP) as a viable tool for use in devices such as the sought-after lab-on-a-chip technology.
University of Alberta researchers, collaborating with colleagues at the Eindhoven University of Technology and Phillips Research Laboratories in the Netherlands, have shown that LCP, when formed into a thin film on a glass backing, can be fabricated and patterned on a microscale. The research was published recently in the Journal of Material Chemistry.
"Based on our research of liquid crystalline polymers, we anticipate the emergence of exciting new techniques in microfabrication that can be used to cheaply and efficiently pattern response materials," said Anastasia Elias, a PhD student in Dr. Michael Brett's group in the U of A Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and the first author of the paper.
LCPs are often described as "artificial muscles" that can convert thermal, chemical and electromagnetic stimuli into mechanical energy, Elias said. LCPs are polymers made from liquid crystalline molecules, which are well-known for their use in display applications, such as laptop computer screens, where they are used for their unique optical properties.
Elias and her colleagues conducted a number of preliminary LCP experiments on a microscale in order to better understand and describe the material's mechanical properties. They believe the material holds promise as a microscale building block. It's now up to other engineers and scientist to take this knowledge and create useful microscale devices.
The most commonly cited goal among micro- and nanoscale researchers is to create a lab-on-a-chip – a tiny system that could be used, for example, to analyze blood samples and biopsies much faster, cheaper and more comprehensively than current methods.
In the past, most microscale research and development funds have targeted silicon, the fundamental material in the semiconductor industry. But LCPs are less brittle and more pliable than silicon, Elias said, adding that LCP devices could be tailored to respond to specific external stimuli, such as temperature changes and UV radiation exposure, which could makes them easier to activate than silicon. And, perhaps most importantly of all, LCPs are less expensive than silicon and potentially easier to process, Elias said.
"Ultimately, we believe liquid crystalline polymers will be fully integrated in microelectromechanical systems, such as the emerging lab-on-a-chip applications," she said.
Contact: Ryan Smith
ryan.smith@ualberta.ca
780-492-0436
University of Alberta

Why some men go bald prematurely ?

2006-09-12T02:21:00.002-07:00

Could super furry animals provide clues for baldness?
Scientists looking at mice may have discovered why certain people are hairier than others in what could provide clues as to the reason .
The University of Manchester team has laid bare the molecular processes that determine which embryonic skin cells will form into hair follicles and determine the body's hair pattern.
The findings will be of interest to scientists looking at male-pattern baldness but have more direct implications for people who suffer from ectodermal dysplasia - a range of conditions where skin cells fail to develop into other tissue, including hair follicles.
"During human development, skin cells have the ability to turn into other types of cells to form hair follicles, sweat glands, teeth and nails," said Dr Denis Headon, who led the research. "Which cells are transformed into hair follicles is determined by three proteins that are produced by our genes.
"Our research has identified how one of these proteins working outside of the cell interacts at a molecular level to determine an individual's hair pattern as the embryonic skin spatially organises itself."
The team found that cells given the genetic command to become hair follicles will send out signals to neighbouring cells to prevent them from doing likewise, so producing a specific hair pattern.
They also demonstrated that by hyperactivating the 'hair protein' in embryonic mice, young with considerably more fur than normal were produced.
"We were able to change the number of hair follicles in the embryonic mice while they were developing in the womb," said Dr Headon, who is based in the University's Faculty of Life Sciences.
"The findings could have implications for sufferers of ectodermal dysplasia that are missing this particular protein and who are unable to develop hair follicles during embryonic development.
"The research - while not directly linked to male-pattern baldness - should be of interest to pharmaceutical companies working in this field as understanding the molecular processes at work during follicle development could provide clues as to why follicles shrink and hair growth diminishes in certain men as they get older."
Contact: Aeron Haworth
aeron.haworth@manchester.ac.uk
44-077-178-81563
University of Manchester

Snapfish by HP Boosts Online Photo Sharing and Services

2006-09-12T02:21:00.001-07:00

PALO ALTO, Calif.
Snapfish by HP today announced several new online photo services and products that enable its members – which now number more than 30 million – to share and create digital stories in new ways.
Highlighting the new services are Snapfish Group Rooms, which offer groups of users – for example, extended families, youth organizations or little league parents – a way to upload, store and share photos in a communal environment that is safe and secure.
With Group Rooms, members upload their individual photos into a common area, where they can collaborate on photo projects such as photo books, calendars or cards; share albums with family and friends outside the group; and automatically receive updates when room content has been added or changed.
Members also can customize their rooms with design themes, descriptions and personalized URLs (for example, smithreunion.snapfish.com). In addition, unlike with most competitive offerings, an unlimited number of rooms can be created at Snapfish for free.
“The Snapfish website consistently delivers a recipe of personalization, controlled community and value people are looking for,” said Ben Nelson, general manager, Snapfish by HP. “These latest features help users creatively organize and share their stories with family and friends, while complementing our basic value proposition, including high-quality prints for just 12 cents each – almost 40 percent lower than major competitors – plus free online sharing and storage.”
Snapfish also has greatly expanded options for many of its popular photo products:
Personalization options for photo calendars, including the ability to add important dates such as birthdays and anniversaries. Each addition can be made unique with custom text, borders and even photos for individual dates. Additionally, Snapfish is now offering new backgrounds, themes and caption options.
Sixty-eight new holiday greeting card designs for holiday celebrations, including Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa and New Year’s templates.
Greater selection of Snapfish’s award-winning MemoryBooks, which allow consumers to tell their stories in fresh and creative ways. In addition to the current hardbound, coffee table-quality MemoryBook, starting in mid-September Snapfish will offer softbound, “On-the-Go” MemoryBooks with 10 cover choices starting at $12.99 for the first 20 pages, and 3 x 4-inch PocketBooks, which easily fit in a purse or pocket and are sold in sets of three for $14.99.
Also available in mid-September, expanded features across the entire line of MemoryBooks, including five new background styles with exclusive designs, borders and text-only templates; the ability to preview in a full-screen viewing environment; and the ability to share online versions of MemoryBooks with family and friends.
Snapfish also has updated its site with new organizational features. Enhancements include:
A new sub-navigation system on the left side of the photo viewing experience, allowing users to access their Snapfish albums with fewer keystrokes;
Chronological, alphabetical and “by friend” organization options for easier categorization;
A “favorites” album, which can be customized with a user’s favorite photos and videos; and
A preview pop-up feature, which allows users to quickly preview the content of albums without actually opening the album, helping members save time.
About HP
HP is a technology solutions provider to consumers, businesses and institutions globally. The company’s offerings span IT infrastructure, global services, business and home computing, and imaging and printing. For the four fiscal quarters ended July 31, 2006, HP revenue totaled $90.0 billion. More information about HP (NYSE, Nasdaq: HPQ) is available at http://www.hp.com.
This news release contains forward-looking statements that involve risks, uncertainties and assumptions. If such risks or uncertainties materialize or such assumptions prove incorrect, the results of HP and its consolidated subsidiaries could differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements and assumptions. All statements other than statements of historical fact are statements that could be deemed forward-looking statements, including but not limited to statements of the plans, strategies and objectives of management for future operations; any statements concerning expected development, performance or market share relating to products and services; anticipated operational and financial results; any statements of expectation or belief; and any statements of assumptions underlying any of the foregoing. Risks, uncertainties and assumptions include the achievement of expected results and other risks that are described from time to time in HP’s Securities and Exchange Commission reports, including but not limited to the risks described in HP’s Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q for the fiscal quarter ended April 30, 2006, and other reports filed after HP’s Annual Report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended Oct. 31, 2005. HP assumes no obligation and does not intend to update these forward-looking statements.
© 2006 Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P. The information contained herein is subject to change without notice. The only warranties for HP products and services are set forth in the express warranty statements accompanying such products and services. Nothing herein should be construed as constituting an additional warranty. HP shall not be liable for technical or editorial errors or omissions contained herein.

MIT proton treatment could replace x-ray use in radiation therapy

2006-09-12T02:19:00.000-07:00

Scientists at MIT, collaborating with an industrial team, are creating a proton-shooting system that could revolutionize radiation therapy for cancer. The goal is to get the system installed at major hospitals to supplement, or even replace, the conventional radiation therapy now based on x-rays.
The fundamental idea is to harness the cell-killing power of protons -- the naked nuclei of hydrogen atoms -- to knock off cancer cells before the cells kill the patient. Worldwide, the use of radiation treatment now depends mostly on beams of x-rays, which do kill cancer cells but can also harm many normal cells that are in the way.
What the researchers envision -- and what they're now creating -- is a room-size atomic accelerator costing far less than the existing proton-beam accelerators that shoot subatomic particles into tumors, while minimizing damage to surrounding normal tissues. They expect to have their first hospital system up and running in late 2007.
Physicist Timothy Antaya, a technical supervisor in MIT's Plasma Science and Fusion Center, was deeply involved in developing the new system and is now working to make it a reality. He argues it "could change the primary method of radiation treatment" as the new machines are put in place.
The beauty of protons is that they are quite energetic, but their energy can be controlled so they do less collateral damage to normal tissues, compared to powerful x-ray beams. Protons enter the body through skin and tissue, hit the tumor and stop there, minimizing other damage.
Protons are far more massive than the photons in x-rays, and the x-rays tend to pass directly through tissues and can harm living cells along the entire path. The side effects often include skin burns and other forms of tissue damage.
The new machines, in fact, should allow radiation specialists to deposit a far bigger dose of killing power inside the tumor, but spare more of the surrounding normal tissues. This is expected to increase tumor control rates while minimizing side effects.
Because of their high energy and controllability, protons have been used as anti-cancer bullets in the past, with promising results. But medical centers can't easily come up with the $100 million or more needed to build a proton machine dedicated to this medical use. That's because protons are produced inside the huge, expensive atomic accelerators that are usually employed at major atomic research centers, including national laboratories.
Now, Antaya and his colleagues at MIT and at Still River Systems Inc. think they can provide the new machine for far less money, have it occupy just one moderate-size hospital treatment room, and achieve better results than x-ray therapy. MIT is licensing the technology to Still River Systems.
Industry is already showing acute interest in the new technology because more than half of all cancer patients are now treated with radiation, meaning there are two million radiation patients worldwide. That offers a huge market for an effective new radiation system, and the directors of major cancer research and treatment centers are already enthusiastic, Antaya said.
Antaya recalled that the initial push to build a new proton-making system came from a radiation physicist, Kenneth Gall, at the University of Texas at Dallas Medical Center. "He had a good idea for a single-room proton treatment facility, but hadn't found anyone who thought it was possible to build," Antaya said. Gall is now at Still River Systems as a co-founder.
In his own research experience, Antaya had worked with new types of cyclotrons -- they were called "atom smashers" years ago -- using new "superconducting" coils to generate the necessary magnetic fields. As a result, he could see a "nexus between all the required technologies and how we could pick a reasonable set of properties, with a good chance of being successful," he said.
Building it is quite a challenge, however. "This is an accelerator that's going to be in the room with the patient, so it's quite a difficult design exercise" just in terms of safety issues, Antaya said. But he and his colleagues are betting it will work as expected.
The magnet work of the Technology and Engineering Division of the Plasma Science and Fusion Center, led by senior research engineer Joseph Minervini, is key to the new system. That work has been funded by the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Fusion Energy Science.

'Nanocantilevers' yield surprises critical for designing new detectors

2006-09-12T02:10:00.000-07:00

This rendition depicts an array of tiny, diving-boardlike devices called nanocantilevers. The devices are coated with antibodies to capture viruses, which are represented as red spheres.
WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. - Researchers at Purdue University have made a discovery about the behavior of tiny structures called nanocantilevers that could be crucial in designing a new class of ultra-small sensors for detecting viruses, bacteria and other pathogens.
The nanocantilevers, which resemble tiny diving boards made of silicon, could be used in future detectors because they vibrate at different frequencies when contaminants stick to them, revealing the presence of dangerous substances. Because of the nanocantilever's minute size, it is more sensitive than larger devices, promising the development of advanced sensors that detect minute quantities of a contaminant to provide an early warning that a dangerous pathogen is present.
The researchers were surprised to learn that the cantilevers, coated with antibodies to detect certain viruses, attract different densities - or quantity of antibodies per area - depending on the size of the cantilever. The devices are immersed into a liquid containing the antibodies to allow the proteins to stick to the cantilever surface.
"But instead of simply attracting more antibodies because they are longer, the longer cantilevers also contained a greater density of antibodies, which was very unexpected," said Rashid Bashir, a researcher at the Birck Nanotechnology Center and a professor of electrical and computer engineering and biomedical engineering at Purdue University. The research also shows that the density is greater toward the free end of the cantilevers.
The engineers found that the cantilevers vibrate faster after the antibody attachment if the devices have about the same nanometer-range thickness as the protein layer. Moreover, the longer the protein-coated nanocantilever, the faster the vibration, which could only be explained if the density of antibodies were to increase with increasing lengths, Bashir said. The research group also proved this hypothesis using optical measurements and then worked with Ashraf Alam, a researcher at the Birck Nanotechnology Center and professor of electrical and computer engineering, to develop a mathematical model that describes the behavior.
The information will be essential to properly design future "nanomechanical" sensors that use cantilevers, Bashir said.
Findings are detailed in a research paper appearing online today (Monday, Aug. 28) in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The paper was authored by Amit K. Gupta, a former Purdue doctoral student working with Bashir and now a postdoctoral researcher at Harvard University; Pradeep R. Nair, a doctoral student in electrical and computer engineering; Demir Akin, research assistant professor of biomedical engineering; Michael Ladisch, Distinguished Professor of Agricultural and Biological Engineering with a joint appointment in the Weldon School of Biomedical Engineering; Steven Broyles, a professor of biochemistry; Alam and Bashir.
The work, funded by the National Institutes of Health, is aimed at developing advanced sensors capable of detecting minute quantities of viruses, bacteria and other contaminants in air and fluids by coating the cantilevers with proteins, including antibodies that attract the contaminants. Such sensors will have applications in areas including environmental-health monitoring in hospitals and homeland security. So-called "lab-on-a-chip" technologies could make it possible to replace bulky lab equipment with miniature sensors, saving time, energy and materials. Thousands of the cantilevers can be fabricated on a 1-square-centimeter chip, Bashir said.
The cantilevers studied in the recent work range in length from a few microns to tens of microns, or millionths of a meter, and are about 20 nanometers thick, which is also roughly the thickness of the antibody coating. A nanometer is a billionth of a meter, or approximately the length of 10 hydrogen atoms strung together.
A cantilever naturally "resonates," or vibrates at a specific frequency, depending on its mass and mechanical properties. The mass changes when contaminants land on the devices, causing them to vibrate at a different "resonant frequency, " which can be quickly detected. Because certain proteins attract only specific contaminants, the change in vibration frequency means a particular contaminant is present.
Ordinarily, when using cantilevers that are on a thickness scale of microns or larger, attaching mass causes the resonant frequency to decrease, which is the opposite of what occurs with the nanoscale-thickness cantilevers. Researchers believe the unexpected behavior is a result of the antibodies being about the same thickness as the ultra-thin nanocantilevers, meaning their vibration is more profoundly affected than a more massive cantilever would be by the attachment of the antibodies.
"The conclusion is that when the attached mass is as thick as the cantilever, then you not only affect the mass but you also affect a key property called the net stiffness constant and the resonant frequency can actually go up," Bashir said.
Gupta measured the cantilever's vibration frequency using an instrument called a laser Doppler vibrometer, which detects changes in the cantilever's velocity as it vibrates. The researchers then treated the antibodies with a fluorescent dye and took images of the proteins on the cantilever's surface, proving that the density increases with longer cantilevers.
Nair and Alam then developed a mathematical model to explain why the density increases as the area of the cantilever rises. The model uses a "diffusion reaction equation" to simulate the antibodies sticking to the cantilever's surface.
Contact: Emil Venere
venere@purdue.edu
765-494-4709
Purdue University

Hydrogen: Fuel for Our Future?

2006-09-11T23:43:00.000-07:00

Hydrogen-powered cars like this one may be commonplace in the future.
September 11, 2006

On July 18, BP and GE announced plans to jointly develop up to 15 new hydrogen power plants for generating electricity over the coming decade. The hydrogen will be derived from fossil fuels, including coal and natural gas. While the plants will emit greenhouse gases, the companies will employ carbon capture technologies they claim will reduce carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions by 90 percent. Although the operations will not be pollution-free, some environmentalists welcome the companies’ investment in hydrogen technology as a key development in bringing about a hydrogen economy.
Though often mistaken for an energy source, hydrogen is actually an artificial fuel—like gasoline—that can be used to transport and store energy. Although it can be separated from fossil fuels, its long-term promise lies in its ability to be separated from water through electrolysis, using solar power or other forms of renewable energy. Its most publicized application is in transportation: the hydrogen gas is stored in an on-board tank until combined with oxygen in a fuel cell, where the electrolysis process is essentially reversed, releasing chemical energy via an electrical charge. This electricity can then be used to power electric motors in cars, buses, boats, and other vehicles.
In the short run, fuel cells are also considered a promising source of electricity for some industries and buildings, particularly those that require steady back-up power during blackouts. In this application, hydrogen is most often derived from natural gas and propane, which already have extensive distribution systems in place.
Using fossil fuels to generate hydrogen can result in modestly lower emissions of CO2 and other pollutants than using these fuels as conventional energy sources, though this depends on the efficiency of the technologies involved. In order to get larger reductions, the CO2 must be captured and sequestered, a process that remains experimental and expensive. However, when the hydrogen separation process is based on renewable energy sources, hydrogen use is essentially pollution-free, with the only byproducts being water and heat.
Since 1999, when Iceland announced its plan to become the first hydrogen-based economy in the next 30–40 years, governments and businesses have begun to seriously consider the hydrogen option. In 2000, the small South Pacific island of Vanuatu joined Iceland in making steps towards widespread hydrogen use and deriving 100 percent of its energy from renewable sources. Hawaii, another island rich in renewable resources such as geothermal and wind energy yet still heavily dependent on oil imports, invested in hydrogen research in 2001, hoping to eventually export hydrogen to other states and nations. And California, the United States’ largest gasoline consumer, began developing the world’s first “hydrogen highway” in 2004.
Despite initial enthusiasm, some of these regions are making greater progress than others. Freyr Sverrisson, an independent energy consultant from Iceland, says that so far the Icelandic government has taken little concrete action toward meeting its hydrogen target: it is home to only one hydrogen fueling station, and the country has invested significant funds in the aluminum smelting industry that could have been placed in hydrogen development. By generating a carbon dioxide byproduct, the smelting process is helping Iceland become the world’s fastest growing emitter of CO2. The government is “squandering an opportunity,” Sverrisson says, by choosing to invest in the quick returns of aluminum smelting instead of developing the hydrogen economy with longer-term benefits.
Yet according to Jon Bjorn Skulason, general manager of Icelandic New Energy, the country is just 6–12 months behind the original plan proposed in 1999. In addition to having three operational fuel cell buses and the one fuel cell filling station, Iceland has passed a preemptive law that will eliminate all taxes on hydrogen cars once they begin to be sold domestically. With over 90 percent of citizens in favor of developing a hydrogen economy and continued support for the project from the government and business, Skulason does not foresee any further delays.
California, meanwhile, already boasts 23 hydrogen fueling stations (14 more are slated to be built this year) and has put 137 hydrogen-powered passenger cars and 9 buses on the road, more than any region in the world, according to Chris White of the California Fuel Cell Partnership. Although the partnership is still operating in a “demonstration phase,” notes White, several of its members (many of which are automotive companies) expect to make hydrogen-powered commercial vehicles as early as 2010, and to have showroom cars by 2015. According to White, this is the same way hybrid-electric cars were introduced to the market in the 1990s.
Yet transitioning to a hydrogen economy has raised some concerns. Because hydrogen is odorless and burns with a clear flame, leaks can be difficult to detect, although the gas is so light and disperses so quickly that the chance of an open explosion is considered minimal. (While many associate hydrogen with the 1937 Hindenburg disaster, the explosion of the German airship in fact began with ignition of the blimp’s highly flammable outer covering, not the gas it carried.) Even so, careful engineering is necessary to ensure that hydrogen fuel cell vehicles are safer than gasoline vehicles, according to a 1997 Ford Motor Company study.
“Hydrogen is one of the keys to a new energy economy that relies on solar and wind power rather than fossil fuels,” according to Worldwatch President Chris Flavin. “Private and public investment in hydrogen technology should be increased substantially. But in the next few years, the largest reductions in oil demand and greenhouse gas emissions will come from improved fuel economy and biofuels—both of which are fully competitive today.”
Alana Herro

Researchers find controls to gold nanocatalysis

2006-08-28T05:04:00.000-07:00

Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology have made a discovery that could allow scientists to exercise more control over the catalytic activity of gold nanoclusters. The finding – that the dimensionality and structure, and thus the catalytic activity, of gold nanoclusters changes as the thickness of their supporting metal-oxide films is varied – is an important one in the rapidly developing field of nanotechnology. This and further advances in nanocatalysis may lead to lowering the cost of manufacturing materials from plastics to fertilizers. The research appeared in the July 21, 2006 issue of the journal Physical Review Letters.

"We've been searching for methods for controlling and tuning the nanocatalytic activity of gold nanoclusters," said Uzi Landman, director of the Center for Computational Materials Science and Regents' professor and Callaway chair of physics at Georgia Tech. "I believe the effect we discovered, whereby the structure and dimensionality of supported gold nanoclusters can be influenced and varied by the thickness of the underlying magnesium-oxide film may open new avenues for controlled nanocatalytic activity," he said.

Landman's research group has been exploring the catalytic properties of gold, which is inert in its bulk form, for about seven years. In 1999, along with the experimental group of Ueli Heiz and Wolf-Dieter Schneider at the University of Lausanne, Landman's group showed that gold exhibits remarkable catalytic capabilities to speed the rate of chemical reactions if it is clustered in groups of eight to about two dozen atoms in size.

Last year in the journal Science, the teams of Landman and Heiz (now at the Technical University of Munich) showed that this catalytic activity involves defects, in the form of missing oxygen atoms, in the catalytic bed on which the gold clusters rest. These defect sites, referred to as F-centers, serve as sites for the gold to anchor itself, giving the gold clusters a slight negative charge. The charged gold transfers an electron to the reacting molecules, weakening the chemical bonds that keep them together. Once the bond is sufficiently weakened, it may be broken, allowing reactions to occur between the adsorbed reactants.

Now Landman's group has found that by using a thin catalytic bed with a thickness of up to 1 nanometer (nm), or 4-5 layers, of magnesium oxide, one may activate the gold nanoclusters which may act then as catalysts even if the bed is defect-free. A model reaction tested in these studies is one where carbon monoxide and molecular oxygen combine to form carbon dioxide, even at low temperatures. In these reactions, the bond connecting the two atoms in the adsorbed oxygen molecule weakens, thus, promoting the reaction with CO.

In this study, Landman and company simulated the behavior of gold nanoclusters containing eight, sixteen and twenty atoms when placed on catalytic beds of magnesium oxide with a molybdenum substrate supporting the magnesium oxide film. Quantum mechanical calculations showed that when the magnesium oxide film was greater than 5 layers or 1 nm in thickness, the gold cluster kept its three-dimensional structure. However, when the film was less than 1nm, the cluster changed its structure and lied flat on the magnesia bed –wetting and adhering to it.

The gold flattens because the electronic charge from the molybdenum penetrates through the thin layer of magnesium oxide and accumulates at the region where the gold cluster is anchored to the magnesium oxide. With a negative charge underneath the gold nanocluster, its attraction to the molybdenum substrate, located under the magnesia film, causes the cluster to collapse.

"It's the charge that controls the adhesive strength of gold to the magnesia film, and at the same time it makes gold catalytically active," said Landman. "When you have a sufficiently thin layer of magnesium oxide, the charge from the underlying metal penetrates through – all the way to the interface of the gold cluster."

In the previous experimental studies, defects in the magnesium oxide were required to bring about charging of the adsorbed clusters.

"Until now, the metal substrate was regarded only as an experimental necessity for growing the magnesium oxide films on top of it. Now we found that it can be used as a design feature of the catalytic system. This field holds many surprises," said Landman.

Landman's group is currently undertaking further explorations into possibilities to regulate the charge, and hence the catalytic activity, in gold nanocatalytic systems.

Landman and Heiz's book titled "Nanocatalysis" is scheduled to be published this month.

The current research was performed at the Center for Computational Materials Science by postdoctoral fellows Davide Ricci and Angelo Bongiorno under the supervision of Landman. The research team also included Dr. Gianfranco Pacchioni, a colleague from the University of Milano.

Contact: David Terraso
d.terraso@gatech.edu
404-385-2966
Georgia Institute of Technology

Microcapsules open in tumor cells

2006-08-26T23:18:00.000-07:00

Medicines are most helpful when they directly affect the diseased organs or cells - for example, tumour cells. Scientists at the Max Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces in Potsdam, Germany, and Ludwig-Maximilian-University in Munich, have come one step closer to that goal: they have intentionally released a substance in a tumour cell. The scientists placed the substance in a tiny capsule which gets channelled into cancer cells, and is then "unpacked" with a laser impulse. The laser light cracks its polymer shell by heating it up and the capsule'TMs contents are released. (Angewandte Chemie, July 2006).

Treating malignant tumours is difficult. Doctors have to destroy the tumour, but healthy tissue needs to be preserved. Chemotherapy tends to kill diseased cells, at the same time causing great damage to the body in general. So scientists are looking for ways to destroy only the rampant tumour cells. One way to achieve this is to transport substances inside of microcapsules into the tumour cells and release them there. Researchers led by Andre Skirtach and Gleb Sukhorukov at the Max Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces in Potsdam, Germany, along with Wolfgang Parak at Ludwig-Maximilian-University in Munich, have now used a laser as a means of opening microcapsules inserted into a tumour cell. The capsules subsequently release their contents, a fluorescent test substance, into the cell. The scientists used a light microscope to monitor how the luminous materials distribute themselves within the cell.

The vehicle that the researchers used was a polymer capsule only a few micrometres in diameter. The walls of the capsules were built from a number of layers of charged polymers, alternating positive and negative. In the laboratory, at least, this is an established way of producing transport containers for medicines, cosmetics, or nutrients, which can also pass through cell membranes. Andre Skirtach and his colleagues equipped the capsules with a kind of "open sesame". But it didn't require any magic - just nanoparticles made of gold or silver atoms. The scientists mixed together charged metal nanoparticles along with the polymers composing the walls of the vesicle. The tumour cells absorbed the microcapsules and then the scientists aimed an infrared laser at them. Metal nanoparticles are particularly good at absorbing the laser light and transmitting the heat further into their surroundings, heating up the walls. They became so hot that the bonds broke between the polymers and the shell and the capsules eventually opened.

For the time being, the scientists have only been trying out their methods on isolated tumour cells. "In principle, however, active substances could be released into the body this way," says Helmuth Mohwald, director of the Max Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces, and one of the participating scientists. This has to (do) with the fact that infrared laser light can penetrate at least one centimetre deep into the tissue. The cells of the body heat up negligibly because laser light at this wavelength is insignificantly absorbed in the tissue. It is the metal particles in the walls of the microcapsules only that absorb the light - even when the microcapsules are in a cell, because the laser affects only them.

Besides using a "thermal opener", the scientists have found another way of making the capsules more stable. They simply heat up the newly created microcapsules very slightly, so that the diameter of the hollow capsules becomes smaller. At the same time, the molecules in their shell are located closer to each other, thickening the capsule walls and better protecting their contents.

There is still, however, a major problem to solve before scientists can use this technology to create medicines which squeeze microcapsules into tumour cells. There is still no way to "steer" the microcapsules. Helmuth Mohwald says, "we have to add some kind of feature to the capsules so that they only recognise the target cells." Only these cells would then allow microcapsules through their membrane.

Contact: Dr. Andre Skirtach
skirtach@mpikg.mpg.de
0049-331-567-9235
Max-Planck-Gesellschaft

Burning palm oil fuels climate change

2006-08-26T23:16:00.000-07:00

Proposals by RWE npower to run the Littlebrook power station in Kent on palm oil have been criticised by Friends of the Earth. The group warned that use of palm oil as a biofuel threatens to exacerbate climate change, because it would lead to a major increase in demand for palm oil leading to even more rainforest destruction.

Palm oil is grown in lowland rainforest areas in South East Asia and growing demand is already leading to the destruction of rainforest, including through burning. This increases emissions of carbon dioxide in to the atmosphere [1]. Forest clearance also leads to the exposure and burning of lowland peat bogs, again emitting greenhouse gases. Tropical deforestation already contributes between 10 and 30 per cent of global warming emissions [2].

Palm oil, which is currently used as an ingredient in food and cosmetics, is one of the cheapest vegetable oils on the world market. As such, it is seen as an attractive option by energy companies.

Friends of the Earth's Palm Oil Campaigner Ed Matthew said:

"Current levels of demand for palm oil for the food industry are already threatening the forests of Indonesia with annihilation. It is a big enough challenge converting this into demand for sustainably grown palm oil. These forests and the people and wildlife they support simply cannot cope with a steep rise in global demand for palm oil for the energy industry. It will sound the death knell for the orang-utan and create further conflict between palm oil companies and local communities. But it will also hamper the fight against climate change, the very problem the biofuels industry is supposed to be helping overcome."

The destruction of lowland rainforest in Indonesia and Malaysia also threatens the survival of the orang-utan, one of man's closest relatives, and has resulted in accusations of human rights abuses from local communities, many of whom depend on the forests for their livelihoods.

More than 90 per cent of world exports of palm oil come from Malaysia and Indonesia where the rapid expansion of the palm oil industry is leading to forest clearance and is threatening wildlife and local communities. Last year, experts warned that the industry threatened the survival of the orang-utan, one of man's closest relatives.

Up to 10 million hectares of rainforest have already been destroyed as a result of the palm oil industry and pressure is growing to increase the area of forest available for plantations, with proposals to expand into the Tanjung Putting National Park - one of the world's most important sites for orang-utan conservation.

Friends of the Earth said that many palm oil companies in Indonesia have used fire to clear the land, exacerbating the problem. Burning forests adds to emissions of carbon dioxide. It is estimated that the great forest fires in Indonesia of 1997-1998 resulted in carbon emissions equivalent to 40 per cent of all emissions from burning fossil fuels in the world that year. Many oil palm plantations in Indonesia are also being developed in areas of peat swamp - which if degraded can also result in the release of huge amounts of global warming gases.

Palm oil should not be used as a fuel source until governments in Malaysia and Indonesia can demonstrate that rainforest is not being cleared to make way for the plantations and that the rights of indigenous peoples and local communities are fully recognised in law, Friends of the Earth said.

Why are so many people dying on Everest?

2006-08-26T23:13:00.001-07:00

Why are so many people dying on Mount Everest, asks doctor and climber, Andrew Sutherland in this week's BMJ?

It used to be thought that it would be physiologically impossible to climb Mount Everest with or without oxygen. In 1953 Hillary and Tenzing proved that it was possible to reach the summit with oxygen and in 1978 Messner and Habeler demonstrated it was possible without oxygen.

Although Everest has not changed, and we now have a better understanding of acclimatisation, improved climbing equipment, and established routes, it would therefore seem logical that climbing Everest might have become an altogether less deadly activity.

However, this year the unofficial body count on Mount Everest has reached 15, the most since the disaster of 1996 when 16 people died, eight in one night following an unexpected storm.

The death rate on Mount Everest has not changed over the years, with about one death for every 10 successful ascents. For anyone who reaches the summit, they have about a 1 in 20 chance of not making it down again.

So why are there so many people dying on Mount Everest? And more importantly, can we reduce this number?

The main reasons for people dying while climbing Mount Everest are injuries and exhaustion. However, there is also a large proportion of climbers who die from altitude related illness, specifically from high altitude cerebral oedema (HACE) and high altitude pulmonary oedema (HAPE).

This year, the author was on the north side of Everest as the doctor on the Everestmax expedition (www.everestmax.com) and was shocked by both the amount of altitude related illness and the relative lack of knowledge among people attempting Everest.

He writes: "On our summit attempt we were able to help with HAPE at 7000 metres, but higher up the mountain we passed four bodies of climbers who had been less fortunate. The last body we encountered was of a Frenchman who had reached the summit four days earlier but was too exhausted to descend. His best friend had tried in vain to get him down the mountain, but they had descended only 50 metres in six hours and he had to abandon him."

"Some people believe that part of the reason for the increase in deaths is the number of inexperienced climbers, who pay large sums of money to ascend Everest," he says. "In my view, climbers are not climbing beyond their ability but instead beyond their altitude ability. Unfortunately it is difficult to get experience of what it is like climbing above Camp 3 (8300 metres) without climbing Everest. Climbers invariably do not know what their ability above 8300 metres is going to be like."

He suggests that climbers need to think less about 'the climb' and more about their health on the way up.

No matter what the affliction, whether it be HACE, HAPE, or just exhaustion, the result is invariably the same – the climber starts to climb more slowly, he explains. If you are too slow this means that something is wrong and your chances of not making it off the mountain are greatly increased. But with the summit in sight this advice is too often ignored.

When the author visited the French consulate in Kathmandu to confirm the Frenchman's death, the consul, not a climbing or an altitude expert, shook his head and said, "He didn't reach the summit until 12.30; that is a 14 hour climb – it is too long."

Contact: Emma Dickinson
edickinson@bmj.com
44-207-383-6529
BMJ-British Medical Journal

Adult stem cells are touchy-feely, need environmental clues

2006-08-26T23:11:00.000-07:00

A certain type of adult stem cell can turn into bone, muscle, neurons or other types of tissue depending on the "feel" of its physical environment, according to researchers at the University of Pennsylvania.

The researchers discovered that mesenchymal stem cells, which regularly reside in the bone marrow as part of the body's natural regenerative mechanism, depend on physical clues from their local environment in order to transform into different types of tissue. The researchers were even able to manipulate stem cells by changing the firmness of the gel on which they were grown.

The researchers believe that their findings, which appear in the Aug. 25 issue of the journal Cell, could change the way in which people work with stem cells.

"Basically, mesenchymal stem cells feel where they're at and become what they feel," said Dennis Discher, a professor in Penn's School of Engineering and Applied Science. "The results begin to establish a physical basis for both stem-cell use against diseases and for stem-cell behavior in embryonic development,"

Much of the work in stem-cell science has involved the study of the chemical microenvironment, the soup of chemical messenger signals that are generally thought to guide stem cells through the process of differentiation, where relatively "blank" stem cells turn into specific cell types. For the first time, the Penn researchers have proven that the physical microenvironment is also crucial for guiding the cells through differentiation. According to Adam Engler, the first author on the study and a graduate student in the School of Engineering and Applied Science, soft microenvironments, that mimic the brain, guide the cells toward becoming neurons, stiffer microenvironments, that mimic muscle, guide the cells toward becoming muscle cells and comparatively rigid microenvironments guide the cells toward becoming bone.

"While I anticipated that the physical environment might limit the fate of stem cells, I never really thought that it would be sufficient to direct cell fate," said Lee Sweeney, a coauthor of the study and chairman of Physiology in Penn's School of Medicine. "When I saw Adam's first images, I was stunned to see that the physical environment alone was telling the stem cells to become neurons or muscle or bone. "

Mesenchymal stem cells sense their environment through the force it takes them to push against surrounding objects. Each cell has its own skeleton and molecular motors that it uses as muscles. According to the researchers, the amount of force the stem cell needs to move its cellular muscles triggers an internal chemical signal that, in turn, directs the cell to differentiate.

"The cytoskeleton uses motors that, like our muscles, are based on the mechanical tension created by molecules of actin and myosin," Engler said. "When we deprive these stem cells of myosin, the cells do not respond to their physical environment, only their chemical environment."

But, the physical microenvironment can change due to injury and also in disease, which would make it difficult to use these stem cells in certain types of therapy. After a heart attack, for example, the heart becomes so scarred that stem cells seem ineffective in fixing the damage by turning into replacement cardiac muscle.

"The cardiac tissue may have been so damaged during the heart attack that the stem cells do not recognize the microenvironment as a guide for turning into heart muscle," Discher said; "however, our studies show that it might be possible to 'prime' stem cells for therapy in the lab, before implanting them in the heart, spine or whatever damaged environment you want to place them."

Contact: Greg Lester
glester@pobox.upenn.edu
215-573-6604
University of Pennsylvania

Nanowire arrays can detect signals along individual neurons

2006-08-26T23:10:00.000-07:00

Merger of nanowires and neurons could boost efforts to measure and understand brain activity

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- Opening a whole new interface between nanotechnology and neuroscience, scientists at Harvard University have used slender silicon nanowires to detect, stimulate, and inhibit nerve signals along the axons and dendrites of live mammalian neurons.

Harvard chemist Charles M. Lieber and colleagues report on this marriage of nanowires and neurons this week in the journal Science.

"We describe the first artificial synapses between nanoelectronic devices and individual mammalian neurons, and also the first linking of a solid-state device -- a nanowire transistor -- to the neuronal projections that interconnect and carry information in the brain," says Lieber, the Mark Hyman, Jr., Professor of Chemistry in Harvard's Faculty of Arts and Sciences and Division of Engineering and Applied Sciences. "These extremely local devices can detect, stimulate, and inhibit propagation of neuronal signals with a spa-tial resolution unmatched by existing techniques."

Electrophysiological measurements of brain activity play an important role in understanding signal propagation through individual neurons and neuronal networks, but existing technologies are relatively crude: Micropipette electrodes poked into cells are invasive and harmful, and microfabricated electrode arrays are too bulky to detect activity at the level of individual axons and dendrites, the neuronal projections responsible for electrical signal propagation and inter-neuron communication.

By contrast, the tiny nanowire transistors developed by Lieber and colleagues gently touch a neuronal projection to form a hybrid synapse, making them noninvasive, and are thousands of times smaller than the electronics now used to measure brain activity.

Lieber's group has previously shown that nanowires can detect, with great precision, molecular markers indicating the presence of cancer in the body, as well as single viruses. Their latest work takes advantage of the size similarities between ultra-fine silicon nanowires and the axons and dendrites projecting from nerve cells: Nanowires, like neuronal offshoots, are just tens of nanometers in width, making the thin filaments a good match for intercepting nerve signals.

Because the nanowires are so slight -- their contact with a neuron is no more than 20 millionths of a meter in length -- Lieber and colleagues were able to measure and manipulate electrical conductance at as many as 50 locations along a single axon.

The current work involves measurement of signals only within single mammalian neurons; the researchers are now working toward monitoring signaling among larger networks of nerve cells. Lieber says the devices could also eventually be configured to measure or detect neurotransmitters, the chemicals that leap synapses to carry electrical impulses from one neuron to another.

"This work could have a revolutionary impact on science and technology," Lieber says. "It provides a powerful new approach for neuroscience to study and manipulate signal propagation in neuronal networks at a level unmatched by other techniques; it provides a new paradigm for building sophisticated interfaces between the brain and external neural prosthetics; it represents a new, powerful, and flexible approach for real-time cellular assays useful for drug discovery and other applications; and it opens the possibility for hybrid circuits that couple the strengths of digital nanoelectronic and biological computing components."

Contact: Steve Bradt
steve_bradt@harvard.edu
617-496-8070
Harvard University

Planet Earth may have 'tilted' to keep its balance

2006-08-26T23:09:00.001-07:00

Imagine a shift in the Earth so profound that it could force our entire planet to spin on its side after a few million years, tilting it so far that Alaska would sit at the equator. Princeton scientists have now provided the first compelling evidence that this kind of major shift may have happened in our world's distant past.

By analyzing the magnetic composition of ancient sediments found in the remote Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard, Princeton University's Adam Maloof has lent credence to a 140-year-old theory regarding the way the Earth might restore its own balance if an unequal distribution of weight ever developed in its interior or on its surface.

The theory, known as true polar wander, postulates that if an object of sufficient weight --such as a supersized volcano -- ever formed far from the equator, the force of the planet's rotation would gradually pull the heavy object away from the axis the Earth spins around. If the volcanoes, land and other masses that exist within the spinning Earth ever became sufficiently imbalanced, the planet would tilt and rotate itself until this extra weight was relocated to a point along the equator.

"The sediments we have recovered from Norway offer the first good evidence that a true polar wander event happened about 800 million years ago," said Maloof, an assistant professor of geosciences. "If we can find good corroborating evidence from other parts of the world as well, we will have a very good idea that our planet is capable of this sort of dramatic change."

Maloof's team, which includes researchers from Harvard University, the California Institute of Technology and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology as well as Princeton, will publish their findings in the Geological Society of America Bulletin on Friday, Aug. 25.

True polar wander is different from the more familiar idea of "continental drift," which is the inchwise movement of individual continents relative to one another across the Earth's surface. Polar wander can tip the entire planet on its side at a rate of perhaps several meters per year, about 10 to 100 times as fast as the continents drift due to plate tectonics. Though the poles themselves would still point in the same direction with respect to the solar system, the process could conceivably shift entire continents from the tropics to the Arctic, or vice versa, within a relatively brief geological time span.

While the idea that the continents are slowly moving in relation to one another is a well-known concept, the less familiar theory of true polar wander has been around since the mid-19th century, several decades before continental drift was ever proposed. But when the continents were proven to be moving under the influence of plate tectonics in the 1960s, it explained so many dynamic processes in the Earth's surface so well that true polar wander became an obscure subject.

"Planetary scientists still talk about polar wander for other worlds, such as Mars, where a massive buildup of volcanic rock called Tharsis sits at the Martian equator," Maloof said. "But because Earth's surface is constantly changing as the continents move and ocean crustal plates slide over and under one another, it's more difficult to find evidence of our planet twisting hundreds of millions of years ago, as Mars likely did while it was still geologically active."

However, the sediments that the team studied in Svalbard from 1999 to 2005 may have provided just such long-sought evidence. It is well known that when rock particles are sinking to the ocean floor to form layers of new sediment, tiny magnetic grains within the particles align themselves with the magnetic lines of the Earth. Once this rock hardens, it becomes a reliable record of the direction the Earth's magnetic field was pointing at the time of the rock's formation. So, if a rock has been spun around by a dramatic geological event, its magnetic field will have an apparently anomalous orientation that geophysicists like those on Maloof's team seek to explain.

"We found just such anomalies in the Svalbard sediments," Maloof said. "We made every effort to find another reason for the anomalies, such as a rapid rotation of the individual crustal plate the islands rest upon, but none of the alternatives makes as much sense as a true polar wander event when taken in the context of geochemical and sea level data from the same rocks."

The findings, he said, could possibly explain odd changes in ocean chemistry that occurred about 800 million years ago. Other similar changes in the ocean have cropped up in ancient times, Maloof said, but at these other times scientists know that an ice age was to blame.

"Scientists have found no evidence for an ice age occurring 800 million years ago, and the change in the ocean at this juncture remains one of the great mysteries in the ancient history of our planet," he said. "But if all the continents were suddenly flipped around and their rivers began carrying water and nutrients into the tropics instead of the Arctic, for example, it could produce the mysterious geochemical changes science has been trying to explain."

Because the team obtained all its data from the islands of Svalbard, Maloof said their next priority would be to seek corroborating evidence within sediments of similar age from elsewhere on the planet. This is difficult, Maloof said, because most 800-million-year-old rocks have long since disappeared. Because the Earth's crustal plates slide under one another over time, they take most of geological history back into the planet's deep interior. However, Maloof said, a site his team has located in Australia looks promising.

"We cannot be certain of these findings until we find similar patterns in rock chemistry and magnetics on other continents," Maloof said. "Rocks of the same age are preserved in the Australian interior, so we'll be visiting the site over the next two years to look for additional evidence. If we find some, we'll be far more confident about this theory's validity."

Maloof said that true polar wander was most likely to occur when the Earth's landmasses were fused together to form a single supercontinent, something that has happened at least twice in the distant past. But he said we should not worry about the planet going through a major shift again any time soon.

"If a true polar wander event has occurred in our planet's history, it's likely been when the continents formed a single mass on one side of the Earth," he said. "We don't expect there to be another event in the foreseeable future, though. The Earth's surface is pretty well balanced today."

Contact: Chad Boutin
cboutin@princeton.edu
609-258-5729
Princeton University

Researchers explore turning fuel ethanol into beverage alcohol

2006-08-26T23:07:00.000-07:00

Fuel ethanol could be cheaply and quickly converted into the purer, cleaner alcohol that goes into alcoholic drinks, cough medicines, mouth washes and other products requiring food-grade alcohol, say Iowa State University researchers.

But there's still a lot of purifying and studying to be done before fuel made from corn is turned into your next vodka or mixed into your morning mouth wash.

Jacek Koziel, an Iowa State assistant professor of agricultural and biosystems engineering, is leading a research project that's attempting to develop and refine two technologies that work together to efficiently purify and remove bad-tasting components from fuel ethanol. The project is partially supported by a $79,900 grant from the state's Grow Iowa Values Fund.

Koziel is collaborating on the project with Hans van Leeuwen, the vice president of MellO3z, a Cedar Rapids company that has developed technology for purifying alcoholic beverages. Van Leeuwen is also an Iowa State professor of civil, construction and environmental engineering.

Iowa certainly has an abundance of fuel ethanol for the researchers to work with. Iowa is the country's leading producer of fuel ethanol. The Iowa Corn Promotion Board says the state has 25 plants capable of producing 1.5 billion gallons per year with more plants on the way.

Van Leeuwen said the fuel produced by those plants and the alcohol produced for the beverage industry are very similar. But alcohol produced for fuel isn't made with the same care and purity as alcohol for consumption, he said. The multiple distillations required to make food-grade alcohol raise production costs to about 50 cents per gallon more than it costs to produce fuel ethanol.

Van Leeuwen said the researchers are working to develop technologies that can purify fuel into beverage alcohol for less than an additional penny per gallon.

"That's the whole point," van Leeuwen said. "And based on my experience treating water and wastewater with these technologies, this could cost a lot less than a cent per gallon."

The potential to cut costs has one large producer of ethanol and food-grade alcohol interested in the research project, van Leeuwen said.

Koziel said the researchers are using two purification technologies: they're bubbling ozone gas through the fuel to remove impurities and they're filtering the fuel through granular activated carbon to absorb impurities. A patent for the process is pending.

Underpinning the research is sophisticated chemical and sensory analysis of the raw fuel and the purified alcohol. Koziel will use a technology called solid phase microextraction to collect samples of the compounds in the alcohols. He'll also use a technology called gas chromatography-mass spectrometry to identify and quantify all the compounds in the samples. And he'll use his lab's olfactometry equipment to separate and analyze the smells created by the various compounds.

"If this is viable," Koziel said, "we are looking at adding a lot of value to relatively cheap fuel-grade ethanol."

Contact: Jacek Koziel
koziel@iastate.edu
515-294-4206
Iowa State University

Weather forecast accuracy gets boost with new computer model

2006-08-26T23:05:00.000-07:00

An advanced forecasting model that predicts several types of extreme weather with substantially improved accuracy has been adopted for day-to-day operational use by civilian and military weather forecasters. The new computer model was created through a partnership that includes the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), and more than 150 other organizations and universities in the United States and abroad.

The high-resolution Weather Research and Forecasting model (WRF) is the first model to serve as both the backbone of the nation's public weather forecasts and a tool for cutting-edge weather research. Because the model fulfills both functions, it is easier for research findings to be translated into improved operational models, leading to better forecasts.

The model was adopted for use by NOAA's National Weather Service (NWS) as the primary model for its one-to-three-day U.S. forecasts and as a key part of the NWS's ensemble modeling system for short-range forecasts. The U.S. Air Force Weather Agency (AFWA) also has used WRF for several areas of operations around the world.

"The Weather Research and Forecasting model development project is the first time researchers and operational scientists have come together to collaborate on a weather modeling project of this magnitude," says Louis Uccellini, director of NOAA's National Centers for Environmental Prediction.

By late 2007, the new model will shape forecasts that serve more than a third of the world's population. It is being adopted by the national weather agencies of Taiwan, South Korea, China, and India.

"WRF is becoming the world's most popular model for weather prediction because it serves forecasters as well as researchers," says NCAR director Tim Killeen.

Multiple benefits

Tests over the last year at NOAA and AFWA have shown that the new model offers multiple benefits over its predecessor models. For example:

* Errors in nighttime temperature and humidity across the eastern United States are cut by more than 50%.

* The model depicts flight-level winds in the subtropics that are stronger and more realistic, thus leading to improved turbulence guidance for aircraft.

* The model outperformed its predecessor in more than 70% of the situations studied by AFWA.

* WRF incorporates data from satellites, radars, and a wide range of other tools with greater ease than earlier models.

Advanced research

NCAR has been experimenting with an advanced research version of WRF, with very fine resolution and innovative techniques, to demonstrate where potential may exist for improving the accuracy of hurricane track, intensity, and rainfall forecasts. A special hurricane-oriented version of WRF, the HWRF, is now being developed by scientists from NOAA, the Naval Research Laboratory, the University of Rhode Island, and Florida State University to support NOAA hurricane forecasting. The high-resolution HWRF will track waves and other features of the ocean and atmosphere, including the heat and moisture exchanged between them. Its depiction of hurricane cores and the ocean below them will be enhanced by data from satellites, aircraft, and other observing tools.

WRF also is skilled at depicting intense squall lines, supercell thunderstorms, and other types of severe weather. Although no model can pinpoint hours ahead of time where a thunderstorm will form, WRF outpaces many models in its ability to predict what types of storms could form and how they might evolve.

Approximately 4,000 people in 77 countries are registered users of WRF. Many of these users suggest improvements, which are tested for operational usefulness at a testbed facility based at NCAR and supported by NOAA.

"WRF will continue to improve because of all the research and development pouring into it from our nation's leading academic and scientific institutions," said AFWA commander Patrick Condray.

Contact:David Hosansky
hosansky@ucar.edu
303-497-8611
National Center for Atmospheric Research/University Corporation for Atmospheric Research

Dennis Feltgen
dennis.feltgen@noaa.gov
301-763-0622, ext. 127
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration

Miles Brown
miles.brown@afwa.af.mil
402-294-2862
Air Force Weather Agency Public Affairs

Engineers forge greener path to iron production

2006-08-26T23:03:00.000-07:00

MIT engineers have demonstrated an eco-friendly way to make iron. The new method eliminates the greenhouse gases usually associated with iron production.

The American Iron and Steel Institute (AISI) announced today that the team, led by Donald R. Sadoway of the Department of Materials Science and Engineering, has shown the technical viability of producing iron by molten oxide electrolysis (MOE).

"What sets molten oxide electrolysis apart from other metal-producing technologies is that it is totally carbon-free and hence generates no carbon dioxide gases -- only oxygen," said Lawrence W. Kavanagh, AISI vice president of manufacturing and technology.

The work was funded by the AISI/Department of Energy Technology Roadmap Program (TRP). The TRP goal is to increase the competitiveness of the U.S. steel industry while saving energy and enhancing the environment. According to the AISI, the MIT work "marks one of TRP's breakthrough projects toward meeting that goal."

Unlike other iron-making processes, MOE works by passing an electric current through a liquid solution of iron oxide. The iron oxide then breaks down into liquid iron and oxygen gas, allowing oxygen to be the main byproduct of the process.

Electrolysis itself is nothing new -- all of the world's aluminum is produced this way. And that is one advantage of the new process: It is based on a technology that metallurgists are already familiar with. Unlike aluminum smelting, however, MOE is carbon-free.

"What's different this time is that we have the resources to take the time to unravel the underlying basic science," said Sadoway, the John F. Elliott Professor of Materials Chemistry. "No one has ever studied the fundamental electrochemistry of a process operating at 1600ºC. We're doing voltammetry at white heat!"

The result? "I now can confirm that in molten oxide electrolysis we'll see iron productivities at least five times that of aluminum, maybe as high as 10 times. This changes everything when it comes to assessing technical viability at the industrial scale."

MIT will continue further experiments to determine how to increase the rate of iron production and to discover new materials capable of extending the life of certain reactor components to industrially practical limits. This work will set the stage for construction of a pilot-scale cell to further validate the viability of the MOE process and identify scale-up parameters.

Mountain climate change trends could predict water resources

2006-08-26T09:14:00.001-07:00

New research into climate change in the Western Himalaya and the surrounding Karakoram and Hindu Kush mountains could explain why many glaciers there are growing and not melting.

The findings suggest this area, known as the Upper Indus Basin, could be reacting differently to global warming, the phenomenon blamed for causing glaciers in the Eastern Himalaya, Nepal and India, to melt and shrink.

Researchers from Newcastle University, UK, who publish their findings in the American Meteorological Society's Journal of Climate, looked at temperature trends in the Upper Indus Basin over the last century.

They found a recent increase in winter temperatures and a cooling of summer temperatures. These trends, combined with an increase in snow and rainfall - a finding from earlier in their research - could be causing glaciers to grow, at least in the higher mountain regions.

These findings are particularly significant because temperature and rain and snow trends in the Upper Indus Basin also impact on the water availability for more than 50 million Pakistani people.

Melt water from glaciers and the previous winter's snow supplies water for the summer 'runoff' which feeds irrigation both in the mountains and in the plains of the Lower Indus. The vast Indus Basin Irrigation System is the mainstay of the national economy of Pakistan, which has 170,000 square kilometres of irrigated land, an area two-thirds the size of the United Kingdom.

Being able to predict trends could contribute to more effective, forward-thinking management of the two major dams in the Upper Indus Basin - called the Mangla Dam and the Tarbela Dam - and thus allow a better long-term control of water for irrigation and power supplies. These dams have the capacity to produce around 5,000 Megawatts of electric power.

The amount of runoff depends on the elaborate interplay of weather conditions. One third of the runoff - that which comes from the higher mountain regions - is largely dependent on the temperature in the summer, research shows. Specifically, the fall of one degree centigrade in mean summer temperature since 1961 is thought to have caused a 20 per cent drop in runoff into the higher mountain rivers.

Yet two-thirds of runoff - that from the lower mountain regions - is dependent on the amount of snow in the previous winter. Heavy winter snowfall is followed by a greater volume of summer runoff.

Dr Hayley Fowler, lead author on the research paper and a senior research associate with Newcastle University's School of Civil Engineering and Geosciences, said: "Very little research of this kind has been carried out in this region and yet the findings from our work have implications for the water supplies of around 50 million people in Pakistan who are dependent on the activity of the glaciers.

"Our research suggests we could be able to predict in advance the volume of summer runoff, which is very useful in planning ahead for water resources and also the output from the dams."

Co-researcher Mr David Archer, a visiting fellow with Newcastle University, added: "Our research is concerned with both climate change and the climate variability that is happening from year to year.

"Information on variability is more important for the management of the water system as it will help to forecast the inflow into reservoirs and allow for better planning of water use for irrigation.

"However, information on the impacts of climatic change is important for the longer term management of water resources and to help us understand what is happening in the mountains under global warming."

Contact: Dr. Hayley Fowler
h.j.fowler@ncl.ac.uk
01-912-227-113
University of Newcastle upon Tyne