Science & Technology Buzz

In new survey, men call themselves straight but have sex with men

2006-11-20T19:41:00.000-08:00

PHILADELPHIA, A survey of 4,193 men living in New York City conducted by the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene found that nearly 10 percent of male participants who identified themselves as straight reported having sex with at least one man during the previous year.

The study, "Discordance between Sexual Behavior and Self-Reported Sexual Identity: A Population-Based Survey of New York City Men," is published in the Sept. 19, 2006, issue of Annals of Internal Medicine.

Compared to men who identified themselves as gay, these men were more likely to belong to a minority racial or ethnic group, be foreign-born, have a lower educational level, and live outside Manhattan. Seventy percent reported being married. This group also was less likely to have been tested for HIV infection during the previous year and less likely to have used a condom during the last sexual encounter than men who identified themselves as gay.

"Doctors need to ask patients about specific sexual practices instead of relying on self-reported sexual orientation to assess risk for unsafe sexual practices and risk for sexually transmitted diseases," said Preeti Pathela, DrPH, lead author of the study. "Public health prevention messages should target risky sexual activities, such as unprotected receptive anal sex, and should not be framed to appeal solely to gay-identified men."

This study is one of the largest U.S. population-based surveys to report on the contrast between a man's self-identified sexual identity and his actual sexual behaviors.

Contact: Steve Majewski
smajewski@acponline.org
215-351-2514
American College of Physicians

Exam nerves affects students' immune defense

2006-10-03T20:40:00.000-07:00

It is hardly surprising that one of the medical programmes most important exams is stressful for students. However, research now shows that this mental stress also affects the students' immune defense systems, particularly amongst those suffering from allergies.
While diseases like asthma and allergies are becoming increasingly common in the West, many people believe that we are living ever stressful lives. A new study from Karolinska Institutet (KI) in Sweden backs up what many people have suspected: that there are important links between mental stress and the complex physical inflammation reactions characteristic of allergies.
In order to understand the link between stress and allergy, the scientists have examined how a major medical exam at KI affects feelings of stress, stress hormone levels, the immune system and lung function amongst students with and without allergies. The extensive tests were made on two occasions, first with the students during a calm period of study with no exam in sight, and then shortly before a major exam. Twenty two students with hayfever and/or asthma and 19 healthy students took part.

Press Release Gold - Daily Digest on Science & Technology

For the first time on record, scientists were able to show that a group of cells that are central to the human immune system known as regulatory T cells appear to increase sharply in number in response to mental stress. A regulatory T cell is a kind of white blood cell that controls the activity of a number of other types of immune cell. This increase was observed in both groups of students.
The study also showed that blood concentrations of a group of inflammation products called cytokines had changed and shifted against a pattern associated with allergic inflammation in the allergic students, but remained normal in the healthy students.
According to Mats Lekander and Caroline Olgart Höglund, who are leading the research group, the two discoveries might very well be linked.
"There is much to suggest that the regulatory T cells are dysfunctional in people with allergies," he says. When people become stressed, they increase in number and normally have an anti-inflammatory effect. If this system does not work in people with allergies, it could explain the changed cytokine balance that we have observed in them."
Contact: Katarina Sternudd
katarina.sternudd@ki.se
46-852-483-895
Karolinska Institutet

Encoded metallic nanowires reveal bioweapons

2006-09-23T01:06:00.000-07:00

Striped nanowires of silver and gold for parallel detection of various pathogens

When dangerous infectious diseases or biological weapons are suspected, fast help is required. The first step is a reliable, sensitive, and unambiguous, yet also fast and simple, identification of the pathogen; preferably, this test should be carried out on the spot, not in a laboratory. Portable miniature biodetection systems that can detect multiple pathogens simultaneously would be ideal for this task. American researchers from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory led by Jeffrey Tok, in collaboration with groups at Stanford University, University of California at Davis, and Oxonica Inc (formerly Nanoplex Technologies Inc). have now developed a new basis for such a multiplex device: they are using silver and gold "striped" nanowires as supports for simultaneous immunological tests for various pathogens. Individual patterns of stripes act in the role of "barcodes". These "nanobarcoded" particles are manufactured by Oxonica Inc using template-assisted electrochemical deposition of metals within the tiny cylindrical pores of alumina membranes. When deposited gold and silver are alternated in a defined way, nanowires with different characteristic stripe patterns are produced. The pattern of optical reflections from each sequence of stripes can later be unambiguously recognized--just like a barcode.
Antibodies aimed at specific pathogens can be attached to these wires. For their test runs, Tok and his colleagues selected harmless model substances to stand in for anthrax spores, smallpox virus, and protein toxins such as ricin and botulinum toxin. If a simultaneous test for all of these is desired, the anthrax antibody would be attached to stripe pattern 1, the smallpox antibodies to stripe pattern 2, and the toxin antibodies to stripe pattern 3, for example. If the corresponding model pathogen is present in a sample, it is "recognized" and bound by its antibodies. At this point, free antibodies that have been tagged with a fluorescent dye are added to the sample. These also dock onto the pathogen so that it is surrounded like the filling in a sandwich; giving the technique its name, "sandwich immunoassay". Measurement of the fluorescence now gives information about the pathogen concentration. Analysis of the reflection pattern allows the "barcode" of the fluorescing nanowires to be read. If only wires with stripe pattern 1 fluoresce, for example, then the sample contains anthrax spores. One particular advantage of nanowires over other antibody supports is that the tests do not take place at a surface but instead in a suspension, which makes them run much faster and more accurately. If nickel stripes are also added to the ends of the wires, they can then be magnetically separated out during the required washing steps--a prerequisite for a portable microbiodetector.
Contact: Jeffrey B.-H. Tok
tok2@llnl.gov
925-423-1549
John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Greenland's ice loss accelerating rapidly, gravity-measuring satellites reveal

2006-09-23T01:04:00.001-07:00

A new analysis of data from twin satellites has revealed that the melting of Greenland's ice sheet has increased dramatically in the past few years, with much of the loss occurring primarily along one shoreline potentially affecting weather in Western Europe.
The loss of ice has been occurring about five times faster from Greenland's southeastern region in the past two years than in the previous year and a half. The dramatic changes were documented during a University of Texas at Austin study of Greenland's mass between 2002 and 2005.
The study was published today in the journal Science. Related results on the significant loss of ice from Antarctica were published in Science in March by other researchers participating in the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) mission. The GRACE mission is funded by NASA and the German Aerospace Center, and led by Aerospace Engineering Professor Byron Tapley at the university.
"Our latest GRACE findings are the most complete measurement of ice mass loss for Greenland," said Tapley, director of the university's Center for Space Research (CSR) and holder of the Clare Cockrell Williams Centennial Chair in Engineering. "The sobering thing to see is that the whole process of glacial melting is stepping up much more rapidly than before."
Antarctica is considered the largest, and Greenland the second largest, reservoir of fresh water on Earth, with the latter containing about 10 percent of the world's fresh water. Melting of ice from these two regions is expected to impact sea level and ocean circulation, and potentially the future of climates worldwide.
The Greenland study, for example, suggests that the amount of fresh water contributed from the melting of its ice sheet could add 0.56 millimeters annually to a global increase in sea levels, higher than all previously published measurements.
"These findings are consistent with the most recent independent measurements of Greenland's mass done by other techniques like satellite radar interferometry, but in this case they provide a direct measure of ice-mass changes," said Geology Professor Clark Wilson, a co-author on the latest Science article who helped analyze the estimates for Greenland. Wilson chairs the Department of Geological Sciences at the university and holds the Wallace E. Pratt Professorship in Geophysics.
Within the subpolar zone that includes Greenland, the rapid rise in meltwater along its eastern coast could add to other warming-related factors believed to be weakening the counterclockwise flow of the North Atlantic Current. For instance, the increased meltwater could change how more buoyant fresh water mixes with salt water in a branch of this flow called the Norwegian Current. This change could lower the temperatures of water, and thus wind, that travels past the west coast of Ireland and Great Britain.
That ocean temperature change would occur because the current might not move northward past Norway before returning to more southerly latitudes. Warmer, southerly waters would be stalled from moving northward if that happened, resulting in chillier winters in parts of Western Europe.
"If enough fresh water enters the Norwegian Current," Tapley said, "and you interrupt return flow, then there could be climate effects in Europe."
The twin GRACE satellites provide the most comprehensive monthly estimates of Greenland's ice-mass balance The satellites are sensitive to the gravitational pull of mass changes on Earth, which produce micrometer-scale variations in the distance (137 miles or 220 kilometers) that separates the two satellites as they fly in formation over Earth.
Lead author Jianli Chen, a CSR research scientist, developed a method to improve the effective spatial resolution of mass change estimates. The method used the known locations of major glaciers as information in estimating the sources of mass change.
"By using this special filtering procedure," Chen said, "we teased out additional details of mass changes in Greenland along its Southeastern and Northeastern shores separately."
The estimates showed that 69 percent of the ice-mass loss in recent years came from eastern Greenland. Of the 57 cubic miles (239 cubic kilometers) of water mass lost on average each year, 39 cubic miles (164 cubic kilometers) were from the eastern shoreline. More than half of that eastern loss involved ice from the glacier complex in southeast Greenland.
"This melting process may be approaching a point where it won't be centuries before Greenland's ice melts, but a much shorter time-frame," Tapley said, noting that it isn't possible to tell how much sooner this will be.
Tapley in the College of Engineering, and Wilson, whose department is part of the Jackson School of Geosciences, lead grants funded primarily by NASA to pursue research questions related to large-scale mass changes impacting Earth's features.
Contact: Becky Rische
brische@mail.utexas.edu
512-471-7272
University of Texas at Austin

Today's babies are fatter babies

2006-09-23T01:01:00.001-07:00

Twenty-two-year study shows that young kids are now more likely to be overweight

Boston -- By examining more than 120,000 children under age 6 in Massachusetts over 22 years, a newly published study shows that young children--especially infants--are now more likely to be overweight. This study was based at the Department of Ambulatory Care and Prevention of Harvard Medical School and Harvard Pilgrim Health Care and appears in the July issue of Obesity.
"The obesity epidemic has spared no age group, even our youngest children," says Matthew Gillman, MD, senior author of the study and associate professor in the Department of Ambulatory Care and Prevention (of Harvard Medical School and Harvard Pilgrim Health Care).
Over the course of the study, the prevalence of overweight children increased from 6.3 percent to 10 percent, a 59 percent jump (based on weight and height measures documented in medical records). The proportion of children at risk of becoming overweight grew from 11.1 percent to 14.4 percent overall, a 30 percent jump.
Infants from birth to six months of age, an age group seldom studied before, had particularly surprising results. Of all the age groups studied, these infants had the greatest jump in risk of becoming overweight, at 59 percent, and the number of overweight infants increased by 74 percent. "This information is important to public health because previous studies show that accelerated weight gain in the first few months after birth is associated with obesity later in life," says Gillman.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's national reference data, children with a weight-for-height index between the national 85th and 95th percentiles for age and gender are classified as at risk for becoming overweight, and those with a weight-for-height index greater than the 95th percentile are classified as overweight. Access the CDC's growth charts at http://www.cdc.gov/growthcharts/.
"In addition to demonstrating that we are seeing more heavy infants today than we did 20 years ago, this study illustrates the usefulness of routinely collected information from doctors' offices to address a key public health issue," says Juhee Kim, PhD, first author of the study. Kim performed this research at DACP while she was a research fellow in the Public Health Nutrition Program at the Harvard School of Public Health.
Gillman and colleagues collected data from well-child visits among more than 120,000 children younger than 6 years old at 14 Harvard Vanguard Medical Associates practices in eastern Massachusetts from 1980 through 2001. All of the children were enrolled in an HMO, which, throughout the study, used a completely electronic medical record system that contained demographic and growth data for the children.
"These results show that efforts to prevent obesity must start at the earliest stages of human development, even before birth," says Gillman. "These efforts should include avoiding smoking and excessive weight gain during pregnancy, preventing gestational diabetes, and promoting breastfeeding, all of which researchers have shown to be associated with reductions in childhood overweight."
Contact: Leah Gourley
public_affairs@hms.harvard.edu
617-432-0442
Harvard Medical School

First-ever genomic test predicts which lung cancer patients need chemotherapy to live

2006-09-22T22:57:00.000-07:00

DURHAM, N.C. –Duke University Medical Center scientists have developed the first-ever genomic test to predict which patients with early-stage lung cancer will need chemotherapy to live and which patients can avoid the toxic regimen of drugs.
The test has the potential to save thousands of lives each year by recommending chemotherapy for patients who are currently advised against it, said the test's developers at Duke's Institute for Genome Sciences & Policy.
The test's promising results have initiated a landmark multi-center clinical trial, to be led by Duke investigators next year. Patients with early-stage non-small cell lung cancer, the most common and fatal form of cancer, will receive the genomic test and its results will determine their treatment.
The new test, called the Lung Metagene Predictor, scans thousands of genes to identify patterns of gene activity in individual tumors that indicate a patient is likely to suffer a recurrence of disease. Recurrent tumors are typically fatal, so identifying at-risk patients is critical to properly treating them, said the Duke researchers.
"Using the unique genomic signatures from each tumor, our new test predicted with up to 90 percent accuracy which early-stage lung cancer patients would suffer a recurrence of their cancer and which patients would not," said Anil Potti, M.D., an assistant professor of medicine and lead author of the study. "We now have a tool that can be used to move these high-risk patients from the 'no chemotherapy' group into the aggressive treatment group."
The researchers will publish their findings in the Aug. 10, 2006, issue of the New England Journal of Medicine. The research was funded by the National Institutes of Health.

The genomic test can theoretically apply to any cancer, but the Duke team focused its effort on lung cancer because the survival rate is just 15 percent. Lung cancer now kills more Americans each year than breast, prostate and colorectal cancers combined. But toxic chemotherapy drugs are prescribed only to patients with relatively large and aggressive tumors.
Early-stage patients – those with small, stationary tumors – are considered at low risk of recurrence. Hence, they only receive surgery but not chemotherapy. The dilemma, said Potti, is that a third or more of early-stage patients who appear to be at low risk will experience a recurrent tumor.
"Until now, there simply has been no way to identify the 30 percent to 40 percent of early-stage lung cancer patients who would experience a recurrence," Potti said. "Now, with our test, we can say with confidence that we can identify this group of patients so they can be treated accordingly."
The upcoming trial is the first to use a genomic test to select treatment options for individual lung cancer patients, said David Harpole, M.D., a professor of thoracic surgery at Duke and principal investigator of the upcoming clinical trial. The trial, to begin within six months, will enroll more than 1,000 patients at multiple centers in the United States and Canada.
"If we can use the test to increase patient survival by even 5 percent, we would save 10,000 lives a year," Harpole said.
The Duke researchers developed the test by analyzing the activity of genes from early-stage lung cancer patients whose disease outcomes were known. The Duke scientists then validated the genomic test in 129 patients by comparing the test's predictions with the patient's actual outcomes. The test predicted their risk of recurrence with 90 percent accuracy, the study showed.
If proven to be effective in the clinical trial, the test will replace the current method of assessing risk, which is imprecise and provides only a broad estimate of a patient's risk, said Joseph Nevins, Ph.D., a professor of molecular genetics at Duke and senior author of the study being reported.
Physicians now assign each patient to a clinical "stage" based on the size of the patient's tumor, whether it has invaded lymph nodes and whether it has spread to other organs. They use this staging method to prescribe the best treatment options. But staging parameters are general, at best, and do not accurately define who should receive chemotherapy, Nevins said.
"Instead of placing all patients with small tumors in the same early-stage category, as physicians currently would do, we can now assess their risk based on the tumor's genomic profile," Nevins said. "The current system of 'staging' lung cancer tumors will eventually become obsolete."
To employ the test, physicians take a sample of the tumor as it is removed during surgery. They extract its "messenger RNA," which represents the activity of thousands of genes in the tumor. Messenger RNA translates a gene's DNA code into proteins that run the cell's activities. Hence, it is a barometer of a gene's activity level inside the cell.
Scientists label the messenger RNA with fluorescent tags. The fluorescent RNA is then placed on a tiny glass slide, called a gene chip. There, it binds to its complementary DNA sequence on the gene chip.
When scanned with special light, the fluorescent RNA emits a telltale luminescence that demonstrates how much RNA is present on the chip – and thus which genes are most active in a given tumor. The physicians then use a rigorous statistical analysis to assess the relative risk of large grouping of genes, called metagenes, which have similar characteristics.
The test generates a risk "number" for each patient. If their risk exceeds 50 percent, the patient is advised to get chemotherapy.
"This new genomic test is a clear example of personalized medicine, where we use the unique molecular characteristics of each patient's tumor to guide treatment decisions," said Geoffrey Ginsburg, M.D., Ph.D., a professor of medicine and co-author of the study.
Eventually, physicians will use genomic tests not only to predict patient outcomes, but also to select the individual drugs that will best match a tumor's molecular makeup, Ginsburg said.
Contact: Marla Vacek Broadfoot
marla.broadfoot@duke.edu
919-660-1306
Duke University Medical Center

New method of growing carbon nanotubes to revolutionise electronics

2006-09-22T22:56:00.001-07:00

A new method of growing carbon nanotubes is predicted to revolutionise the implementation of nanotechnology and the future of electronics. Researchers at the University of Cambridge have successfully grown nanotubes at a temperature which permits their full integration into present complementary ) technology (350 ºC).
Carbon nanotubes are the driving force for current advances in nanotechnology; they have excellent mechanical and electronic properties, the latter making them extremely attractive for new-generation electronics.
Increasing efficiency through smaller components is the key towards miniaturisation of technology. The use of carbon nanotubes could find successful use from sophisticated, niche applications to everyday electronics (mobile phones, computers).
Thus far the growth of nanotubes has been carried out at very high temperatures, and growth below 500 °C was believed impossible. This made the direct implementation of nanotubes into electronic devices unthinkable. Trying to integrate nanotubes above 400–450 °C would in fact damage the inter-metal dielectrics commonly employed in CMOS device fabrication.
A group of researchers at the Department of Engineering at the University of Cambridge, led by Mirco Cantoro, Stephan Hofmann, Andrea Ferrari and John Robertson, in collaboration with colleagues at the Cambridge Hitachi Laboratory and the Department of Materials Science, University of Cambridge, succeeded in growing single-wall carbon nanotubes at temperatures as low as 350 ºC.
These nanotubes, grown by thermal Chemical Vapour Deposition (a chemical process often used in the semiconductor industry), are promising candidates for integration into existing nanoelectronic devices.
This result also sheds new light on the possible mechanisms that occur during carbon nanotube growth. Previously, the assumption that the catalyst has to be liquid often dominated carbon nanotube growth model considerations, but at these lower temperatures evidence has been found of a solid catalyst. These findings extend to the catalytic growth of other nanostructures in general.

College Women at Risk for Eating Disorder May Benefit From Online Intervention

2006-09-22T22:52:00.000-07:00

A long-term, large-scale study has found that an Internet-based intervention program may prevent some high risk, college-age women from developing an eating disorder (http://www.nimh.nih.gov/publicat/eatingdisorders.cfm). The study, funded by the National Institutes of Health’s (NIH) National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), was published in the August 2006 issue of the Archives of General Psychiatry.
The researchers conducted a randomized, controlled trial of 480 college-age women in the San Francisco Bay area and San Diego, Calif., who were identified in preliminary interviews as being at risk for developing an eating disorder. The trial included an eight-week, Internet-based, cognitive-behavioral intervention program called “Student Bodies,” which had been shown to be effective in previous small-scale short-term studies. The intervention aimed to reduce the participants’ concerns about body weight and shape, enhance body image, promote healthy eating and weight maintenance, and increase knowledge about the risks associated with eating disorders.
The online program included reading and other assignments such as keeping an online body-image journal. Participants also took part in an online discussion group, moderated by clinical psychologists. Participants were interviewed immediately following the end of the online program, and annually for up to three years thereafter to determine their attitudes toward their weight and shape, and measure the onset of any eating disorders
“Eating disorders are complex and particularly difficult to treat. In fact, they have one of the highest mortality rates among all mental disorders,” said NIMH Director Thomas Insel, M.D. “This study shows that innovative intervention can work, and offers hope to those trying to overcome these illnesses."
Over the course of a lifetime, about 0.5 to 3.7 percent of girls and women will develop anorexia nervosa, and about 1.1 to 4.2 percent will develop bulimia nervosa. About 0.5 percent of those with anorexia die each year as a result of their illness, making it one of the top psychiatric illnesses that lead to death.
Anorexia generally is characterized by a resistance to maintaining a healthy body weight, an intense fear of gaining weight, and other extreme behaviors that result in severe weight loss. People with anorexia see themselves as overweight even when they are dangerously thin. Bulimia generally is characterized by recurrent episodes of binge eating, followed by self- induced purging behaviors. People with bulimia often have normal weights, but like those with anorexia, they are intensely dissatisfied with their bodies. All eating disorders involve multiple biological, behavioral and social factors that are not well understood.
The intervention appeared to be most successful among overweight women who had elevated body mass indexes (BMIs) of 25 or more at the start of the program. In fact, among these women in the intervention group, none developed an eating disorder after two years, while 11.9 percent of the women with comparable baseline BMIs in the control group did develop an eating disorder during the same time frame. BMI is a reliable indicator of a person’s body fat by measuring his or her weight and height.
The program also appeared to help women in the San Francisco Bay area who had some symptoms of an eating disorder at the start of the program, such as self-induced vomiting; laxative, diet pill or diuretic use; or excessive exercise. Of those in the intervention group with these characteristics, 14 percent developed an eating disorder within two years, while 30 percent of those with these characteristics in the control group developed an eating disorder during the same time frame.
The authors suggest that the intervention helped these high-risk women become less concerned about their weight and shape, while also helping them understand healthier eating and nutrition practices.
“This is the first study to show that eating disorders can be prevented among high-risk groups,” said lead author C. Barr Taylor, M.D., of Stanford University. “The study also provides evidence that elevated weight and shape concerns are causal risk factors for developing an eating disorder,” he added.
The study suggests that relatively inexpensive options such as Internet-based interventions can have lasting effects on women at high risk of developing an eating disorder. However, the authors note that the results cannot be generalized widely because there were differences in the women’s baseline characteristics and treatment responses between the two sites used in the study.
Also, the rate at which the women stuck with the program was very high — nearly 80 percent of the online program’s Web pages were read — suggesting that the participants were unusually motivated. “Women who are less motivated may be less likely to participate in or stick with this type of long-term intervention,” added Taylor.
In addition, women with restricted or no access to computers would not be able to benefit from an online intervention program. However, the authors conclude that such Internet-based programs may be a good first step in a diligent program designed to screen women for potential eating disorder risks.
Additional study authors are Susan Bryson, MS, MA of Stanford University; Kristine H. Luce, PhD of Stanford University; Darby Cunning, MA of Stanford University; Angela Celio, PhD of the University of Chicago; Liana B. Abascal, MA of San Diego State University; Roxanne Rockwell of San Diego State University; Pavarti Dev, PhD of Stanford University; Andrew J. Winzelberg, PhD of Stanford University; and Denise E. Wilfley, PhD of Washington University Medical Center.
The National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) mission is to reduce the burden of mental and behavioral disorders through research on mind, brain, and behavior. More information is available at the NIMH website, http://www.nimh.nih.gov.
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) — The Nation's Medical Research Agency — includes 27 Institutes and Centers and is a component of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. It is the primary federal agency for conducting and supporting basic, clinical and translational medical research, and it investigates the causes, treatments, and cures for both common and rare diseases. For more information about NIH and its programs, visit www.nih.gov.
Reference: Taylor CB, et al. Prevention of Eating Disorders in At-risk College-age Women. Archives of General Psychiatry. August 2006.
CONTACT:
Colleen Labbe
301-443-4536

Mobile Browsing Bonanza

2006-09-22T22:49:00.000-07:00

One billion Web pages viewed with Opera Mini™, Web search and community sites most popular
Oslo, Norway
Opera Software today announced that Opera Mini users have surfed one billion Web pages since the browser's official launch seven months ago. The most popular sites are Google search, community and dating sites, e-mail and domains for more grown-up entertainment. The little browser has been embraced by more than five million active users worldwide, and is increasingly pre-installed on mobile phones from leading operators and mobile phone manufacturers across the globe.
The aggregated statistics reveal that Google search is the most popular .com site, followed by Gmail.com, Friendster.com, MySpace.com, Yahoo Messenger and hi5.com. This suggests that finding information and staying connected while on-the-go are the two most popular activities for people when using the Opera Mini mobile browser. Other popular sites include news, maps and entertainment.
"Mobile phone users are short-changed in the range of content offered by most service providers," says Tony Cripps, senior analyst at Ovum. "Enabling handsets to access the World Wide Web greatly improves this situation, extending both mainstream and niche preferences to the mobile domain and helping to drive data traffic."
Most Opera Mini usage comes from Russia, closely followed by the United States, India, Scandinavia and the UK. Countries with low PC penetration but high mobile phone penetration, such as South Africa and Bangladesh, also rank high on the list. This may confirm the importance of having a mobile friendly Web that is accessible from mobile devices for the millions of people who do not have access to a PC, but own a mobile phone.
"Today is not just a great day for Opera; it's a pivotal day for the mobile entertainment industry and operators worldwide," says Jon S. von Tetzchner, CEO, Opera Software. "Opera Mini's success shows that mobile data services have a massive potential as long as the quality of the service matches and exceeds people's expectations. Reaching one billion page views in just seven months is a true milestone, proving that people are so satisfied with the performance and usability of Opera Mini that they use the browser actively and on a regular basis."
Many leading operators and handset manufacturers have already realized the great potential of Opera Mini. T-Mobile is pre-installing Opera Mini on selected handsets as part of its Web'n'Walk offering in Europe, and several other leading mobile players are signing up to deliver the Opera Mini Web experience to mobile phone users around the world. A long list of mobile content providers are promoting customized versions of Opera Mini to customers in order to increase usage and customer loyalty. The free browser has become one of the world's most popular mobile Java applications in just seven months.
About Opera Mini
Opera Mini is a free mobile Web browser designed to bring the real Web to the world's mobile phones. The free Opera Mini mobile Web browser was launched worldwide in January, and is available both as a free download from http://mini.opera.com as well as through pre-installments on selected handsets from leading operators and handset manufacturers such as T-Mobile, debitel and Motorola. Read more at http://www.opera.com/mini.
Get yours from http://mini.opera.com!
Illustrations and graphics: http://www.opera.com/press/images/mini/
About Opera Software ASA
Opera Software ASA has redefined Web browsing for PCs, mobile phones and other networked devices. Opera's cross- platform Web browser technology is renowned for its small size, performance and standards-compliance, while giving users a faster, safer and more dynamic online experience. Opera Software is headquartered in Oslo, Norway, with offices around the world. The company is listed on the Oslo Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol OPERA. Learn more about Opera at www.opera.com.

Microsoft Enhances Unified Communications With Speech Technology

2006-09-21T04:34:00.000-07:00

Microsoft announces Office Communications Server with speech platform services; demonstrates Speech Recognition for Windows Vista.

NEW YORK — — From the SpeechTEK 2006 conference in New York, Microsoft Corp. announced that the full capabilities of Microsoft® Speech Server 2007 will be integrated into Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007, extending the company’s commitment to unified communications and breaking down today’s silos of instant messaging, Internet Protocol telephony, voice response, audioconferencing and videoconferencing. At the show Microsoft also demonstrated Windows® Speech Recognition, which will be available in Windows Vista™ in eight languages, marking the first time a Microsoft Windows operating system will include speech recognition technologies, so the user can issue commands and dictate text in applications.
Microsoft announced Office Communications Server 2007 earlier this summer as a key component of the company’s unified communications road map. Office Communications Server 2007 is a real-time communications hub, enabling people to connect to colleagues and information quickly and easily within familiar applications, devices and networks. The addition of speech capabilities gives developers the opportunity to create new and powerful communications applications or extend existing applications using an integrated set of application programming interfaces (API) and by extending existing applications for Office Communications Server 2007, enabling new revenue streams for their businesses.
“Today, the Speech Server platform is trusted by a number of major Microsoft customers to successfully answer millions of customer calls,” said Anoop Gupta, corporate vice president of the Unified Communications Group at Microsoft. “The integration of this proven, reliable technology into Office Communications Server further demonstrates Microsoft’s commitment to providing our customers and partners with a truly unified communications solution and platform.”
Expanding Scenarios for Unified Communications
Using the new integrated APIs in Office Communications Server 2007, Microsoft today demonstrated how a unified communications solution can bridge communication methods such as instant messaging and phone calls through spoken commands and presence capabilities. The demonstrations included the use of an intelligent agent to help a caller locate and communicate with a person based on previously defined preferred methods, such as e-mail or instant messaging. A second demonstration showed an instant messaging conversation taking place with one person speaking and the other typing. The spoken words were translated to text and the typed words were converted to speech, creating a seamless communications experience for both parties. Other solutions demonstrated include presence-aware help desks, integrated contact center solutions, and multimodal applications that can be accessed from a variety of clients.
“The addition of speech technology to Office Communications Server gives us a more extensive set of capabilities on which to build compelling unified communications solutions for our customers,” said Ruchi Prasad, vice president of Global Enterprise Marketing for Nortel. “Through our Innovative Communications Alliance, with Microsoft, we have the ability to bring new and unique capabilities to communications applications with Microsoft’s speech engine technology integrated with Nortel’s own industry-leading IVR and contact center solutions.”
Introducing Windows Speech Recognition
Also being shown this week at SpeechTEK are demos of the upcoming release of Windows Speech Recognition, which is designed for users who want to significantly limit the use of mouse and keyboard while maintaining or increasing their overall productivity. The new speech technologies in Windows Vista, which will be available in eight languages, enable users to interact with their computer by voice, and dictate documents and e-mail messages in mainstream applications, fill forms on the Web, and command applications and the operating system. Users are empowered from the beginning through a new interactive training tutorial that will familiarize them with the voice commands, while simultaneously optimizing the system for their voice. Microsoft has expanded the number of Speech Recognition languages it will ship with Windows Vista. In addition to U.S. English, Windows Vista will also support U.K. English, traditional Chinese, simplified Chinese, Japanese, German, French and Spanish.
Continuing Support for Speech Server
With the integration of Speech Server 2007 into Communications Server 2007, current Speech Server customers will be fully supported by Microsoft until 2014, and Speech Server 2004 R2 will remain on the Microsoft price list until the end of 2007. In addition, current Speech Server customers who want to leverage these new capabilities will be able to migrate to Communications Server 2007 when it ships next year.
More information about Microsoft’s Unified Communications Group can be found at http://www.microsoft.com/uc. Additional information about Speech Recognition in Windows Vista is available at http://www.microsoft.com/vista.
Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq “MSFT”) is the worldwide leader in software, services and solutions that help people and businesses realize their full potential.

Purdue research helps advance new rocket technology

2006-09-21T04:31:00.000-07:00

West Lafayette, Ind. -- Purdue University engineers are conducting research to help the United States develop a type of advanced rocket technology that uses kerosene and would not require the foam insulation now used on the space shuttle's external fuel tank.
The NASA-funded research at Purdue focuses on liquid-fueled rockets. Specifically, the work deals with understanding how fuel and a component called the oxidizer interact inside the rocket engine's fuel injectors to cause unstable combustion. The instability results in extreme bursts of heat and pressure fluctuations that could lead to accidents and hardware damage.
Purdue engineers involved in the research earned a best paper award in July from the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics.
"Combustion instability is a complex phenomenon that has hindered rocket development since the beginning of the Space Age," said Nicholas Nugent, a doctoral student in Purdue's School of Aeronautics and Astronautics. "We have to learn more about instability before future engines can be developed and used for space flight. Predicting combustion instability is one of the most difficult aspects of developing a rocket engine."
The paper's findings demonstrate that an experiment can be specifically designed to study instabilities occurring spontaneously, as they do in real engines.
"There haven't been many, if any, experiments in the past that have been able to achieve an instability without actually forcing it by introducing artificial influences not ordinarily seen in the operation of a rocket engine," said doctoral student James Sisco.
The paper was written by Nugent, Sisco, former student Kevin J. Miller and William Anderson, an assistant professor in the School of Aeronautics and Astronautics. Miller now works for Space Exploration Technologies Inc., or SpaceX, in El Segundo, Calif.
The Purdue engineers have completed further research and presented new findings in July during the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics' joint propulsion conference in Sacramento, Calif. Findings for which the best paper award was received were presented at last year's joint propulsion conference in Tucson, Ariz.
"The main purpose of the work is to generate combustion and instability data so that other researchers can develop better computational models for designing rocket engines," Nugent said. "We are generating benchmark data that will improve the design analysis of all types of rocket engines."
Charles Merkle, the Reilly Professor of Engineering, is leading a research group at Purdue focusing on creating such models.
Without effective simulations, engineers must rely on trial and error, which is costly, time consuming and potentially dangerous.
"Without good models, you have to do a lot of testing, and you increase the chances of accidents," Nugent said. "If you do more computational modeling up front, you have less risk of damaging very expensive hardware, reducing the amount of testing needed and getting more out of each test."
Heat from combustion naturally fluctuates inside the combustion chamber. At the same time, the combustion chamber generates resonant sound waves that cause "acoustic pressure," which also fluctuates. When heat and pressure fluctuations coincide, the combined result can be devastating, causing accidents and damage to rocket engines.
"The interactions between combustion and chamber acoustics are very complex," Nugent said. "We are trying to measure and understand the dynamic characteristics of the phenomena. What mechanisms and physical processes occurring after you inject the propellants are causing heat release?"
Data are collected using pressure and heat sensors inside the chamber, and the researchers also take high-speed video of the combustion process to analyze instability.
In the earlier experiments detailed in the first paper, the engineers used a carefully designed injector and varied the length of the combustion chamber to see how changing acoustics affected the heat-driven pressure fluctuations. Findings in the new research paper indicate that simulations from a model created by researchers led by Merkle matched experimental results from laboratory experiments.
Future work will use optical sensors to measure more precisely the dynamic interactions between combustion fluctuations and fluctuations in acoustic pressure.
"Now that we have an experiment that can spontaneously produce instabilities, we will take the research to the next level by adding more instrumentation and looking at specific areas that we think are the root causes of the instability," Nugent said.
The U.S. Air Force also may benefit from the research results because the experiment used an injector similar to those employed in advanced, high-performance rockets that use kerosene fuel. These rockets require less time to prepare for launch than conventional rockets, meaning they could be quickly sent on military missions. Unlike the space shuttle engines, which require a foam-insulated tank for the cryogenically cooled liquid hydrogen propellant, the "oxidizer-rich stage-combustion cycle" engines on which the experiment is based use a kerosene fuel that can be stored at room temperature. Using kerosene would enable engineers to create sleeker, more compact and lighter rockets that pack the same power as liquid hydrogen rockets.
"Liquid kerosene is about 100 times more dense than hydrogen, so you use much smaller tanks," Anderson said. "With kerosene, the diameter of the rocket is smaller, causing the weight and aerodynamic drag to go down, so it makes a really nice fuel for lifting rockets off the ground. Furthermore, ground operations are greatly simplified because kerosene is much easier to handle than liquid hydrogen."
The work is based at the High Pressure Laboratory, one of six facilities at Purdue's Maurice J. Zucrow Laboratories. The lab is operated jointly by the School of Aeronautics and Astronautics and the School of Mechanical Engineering. Researchers are using the facility for work sponsored by NASA, the Air Force, U.S. Army, other federal agencies and aerospace companies.
The rocket-testing facility within the High Pressure Lab, built in 1965, was upgraded in 2001 and became fully operational in 2003.
The Zucrow labs are named after Maurice J. Zucrow, a Purdue mechanical engineering alumnus who, in 1928, earned the first doctoral degree in an engineering field granted by Purdue. His research in rocket propulsion inspired the construction of the first facility at Zucrow Labs in 1948. Since then, the Zucrow labs have evolved into a complex of six facilities on a 24-acre site west of campus where engineers perform a wide range of propulsion-related research in rockets, jet engines and other internal combustion engines.
Contact: William Anderson
wanderso@ecn.purdue.edu
765-496-2658
Purdue University

Botulinum toxin helps facial scars heal better, Mayo Clinic finds

2006-09-21T04:28:00.000-07:00

Rochester, Minn. -- Mayo Clinic researchers have found that treating a facial wound in the early healing phase with botulinum toxin (BOTOX®) improves the appearance of a scar later. The findings are published in the August issue of Mayo Clinic Proceedings.
"Our findings show that botulinum toxin offers an additional tool in preventing the formation of bad scars," says Holger Gassner, M.D., lead study researcher and former Mayo Clinic ear, nose and throat surgical resident who is now a fellow in Facial Plastic Surgery at the University of Washington in Seattle. "It will give us the option to optimize healing of forehead wounds in the first place and possibly allow us to avoid later surgeries to improve the scar's appearance."
Adds David Sherris, M.D., study investigator and former Mayo Clinic ear, nose and throat specialist who is now professor and chair of Otolaryngology at the University of New York at Buffalo, "This is the first medication found to minimize scarring. This is of substantial interest in the field of scar treatment. When a wound occurs, especially on the face, people are always worried about the scar. We can now try and improve scars with these injections."
The researchers found that an injection with botulinum toxin early after the occurrence of a wound -- such as trauma from a dog bite, motor vehicle accident or assault, or from a skin cancer biopsy or removal -- paralyzes the region, creating a smooth surface in which the wound can heal. This prevents muscle movement from wrinkling the wound site, allowing for a flat surface for healing and leaving a smoother final scar. The same process also could work if an unsightly older scar is surgically removed, and then botulinum toxin is injected into the wound at the time of the scar revision surgery, according to Dr. Gassner. "That's why our results with the botulinum toxin are so promising," says Dr. Gassner. "We can now for the first time eliminate the muscles' effect on healing for the first two to three months after the wound occurs."
Facial scarring can have a pronounced effect on patients' quality of life, according to Dr. Gassner.
"In general, we know that scars can cause functional problems -- they can interfere with eye closure, talking and eating," he says. "They also can have a deep psychological impact. For patients who have accidents that produce significant scarring, their lives can be profoundly changed. They can become depressed and withdraw socially."
Muscles may repeatedly distort wounds in the healing phase, which can result in inflammation that produces a thicker or wider scar. This is especially a problem with scars that cross muscle motion in the face, rather than lying parallel to muscle motion, a scenario common in cuts from dog bites or car accidents, says Anthony Brissett, M.D., study co-investigator and former clinician investigator at Mayo Clinic who is now director of Facial Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston.
Scar reduction techniques designed to reduce the effects of muscle tension on a wound and to improve the final appearance of the scar include special stitches that pull the wound together and local flaps that bring additional skin into the wound bed. Injections of botulinum toxin in a wound differ in that they deter the muscle tension in the first place, says Clark Otley, M.D., study co-investigator and chair of the Division of Dermatologic Surgery at Mayo Clinic.
Side effects were minimal with the botulinum toxin injections, according to Dr. Sherris, including an occasional small bruise at the injection site or a headache. The largest potential risk in injecting this substance in the facial area would be transient paralysis of an important function. For example, he says a physician would not want to inject the eyelid, as this would impede its eye protection role. Patients in the trial also experienced positive side effects, such as a "good wrinkle benefit," according to Dr. Sherris, as the amount used to treat scarring is similar to that used to treat wrinkles.
The researchers undertook this trial after seeing significant results in wound healing with botulinum toxin in a basic research study. In the human trial, the researchers recruited patients with forehead wounds from trauma such as auto accidents, or from surgery, such as skin cancer excision. Forehead wounds were selected for study as they are a frequent site of facial scarring. Patients were randomly selected to receive injections with botulinum toxin or with saline, a benign substance used for comparison. All 31 patients' wounds were photographed at the time of the initial treatment and injection and again six months after initial treatment. Two experienced facial plastic surgeons rated the wounds' appearance on a scale in which 0 was the worst appearance and 10 was the best. These assessors were not informed about which patients received which treatment. The researchers averaged the ratings of the two surgeons for a final scar appearance score for each patient's wound. They found that the facial plastic surgeons rated the cosmetic results of the wounds injected with botulinum toxin more favorably than the wounds injected with saline. Median scores for wounds injected with botulinum toxin were 8.9, versus a median score of 7.1 for those injected with saline, a significant difference in appearance, according to the researchers.
Although injections with botulinum toxin would be available at local physicians' offices throughout the country, the injections are not yet approved for this use by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
The next step in this research, according to Dr. Sherris, would be to conduct a Phase III, multicenter trial with hundreds of patients to determine the appropriate dosage of the botulinum toxin; discover whether the injections are useful for better healing of scars elsewhere on the body, such as heart surgery wounds; and to provide more findings to present to the FDA to seek approval for this treatment.
Contact: John Murphy
newsbureau@mayo.edu
507-284-5005
Mayo Clinic

Researchers find controls to gold nanocatalysis

2006-09-20T23:03:00.000-07:00

Caption: Structures of a gold cluster (depicted by yellow spheres) containing 20 atoms, adsorbed on a magnesium oxide bed ( magnesium in green and oxygen in red) which is itself supported on top of a molybdenum substrate (blue spheres). The excess electronic charge at the interface is depicted in pink and the charge depletion is shown in light blue.
Credit: Uzi Landman/Georgia Tech

Study shows catalytic activity of gold can be tuned

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

Economist explains why heat waves spur blackouts

2006-09-20T22:59:00.000-07:00

Intense heat and record-breaking energy demand strained New England's electrical grid nearly to its limit on Wednesday, Aug. 2, but the regional system rose to the challenge, says an MIT professor who studies the economics of electricity distribution.
"They did really well in managing the system on a very difficult day," said Paul Joskow, the Elizabeth and James Killian Professor of Economics and Management.
Electricity demand in New England peaked at a record-high 28,021 megawatts on Aug. 2, according to ISO New England, the company that operates the region's electrical grid.
Unlike California, which endured a two-week heat wave that left many homes in the dark, New England was lucky that the mercury approached 100 degrees for only two days last week.
"If that (heat) had gone on for a week, they would have started having failures of equipment … and there might have been rolling blackouts," said Joskow, who is also director of the MIT Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research.
To reduce the strain on the power grid, ISO New England offered payments to businesses willing to lower their electricity usage during the day. The company also bought electricity from Canada and directed excess power from Maine, the only New England state spared the heat crisis, to other states.
Last week's heat wave showed that the New England region has enough electricity to meet current peak demands, Joskow said, but no new plants are under construction, which could become a problem as electricity demand grows and as older, polluting plants need to be replaced.
"Demand continues to grow, especially peak demand on hot days, as more and more people put in air conditioning," he said.
Distribution problems
And even though the region generally produces enough electricity, blackouts often occur when the equipment that delivers electricity to neighborhoods and homes becomes overloaded. It is a common misperception that blackouts are caused by power shortages, but in any given year, about 90 percent of the power outages that customers experience are due to problems with the local distribution network, Joskow said.
For example, most of the recent blackouts in California, Missouri and New York City were caused by failures of distribution equipment due to high demand and extreme heat.
In New England, much of the distribution system was built in the 1960s and 1970s and is reaching the end of its useful life. Expenditures to replace aging equipment and to keep up with growing demand need to increase, he said. State regulators should create a robust regulatory framework that gives distribution companies sufficient resources and incentives to support these necessary investments, and consumers need to understand that they will have to pay for the associated costs, according to Joskow.
"As those facilities age and more and more demand is put on them, they're more prone to fail, especially during hot weather," Joskow said. "In the end, if your local distribution system fails, you don't get power, no matter how many generating plants there are in the region."
Anne Trafton, News Office

Study Finds Firearms Are Stored Less Safely in Homes With Older Children

2006-09-20T20:32:00.001-07:00

Boston, MA – More than 1.6 million U.S. children live in homes with firearms that are stored loaded and unlocked. Because the guns used in youth suicides and unintentional injuries primarily come from victims’ homes, storage practices that allow for easy access to a firearm pose a threat to the safety of young people. Researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) surveyed parents about household firearm storage practices and found that those with adolescents are more likely to store guns loaded and/or unlocked than those with younger children. The findings are published in the August 2006 issue of Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine.
The researchers, including Matthew Miller, assistant professor of health policy at HSPH, and Renee M. Johnson, a research fellow at HSPH, used data from the National Firearms Study 2004, a national random telephone survey of 2,770 adults that asked questions about firearm ownership. Of the 392 respondents who had at least one child and one firearm in the home, 22 percent had a loaded gun, 32 percent had an unlocked gun and 8 percent had a gun stored loaded and unlocked.
The researchers also found that gun-owning parents whose children were aged 13-17 years were significantly more likely to have an unlocked firearm in the home compared to gun-owning parents whose children were 12 or younger (42 percent vs. 29 percent). The study suggests that parents of older children may be less vigilant about keeping firearms stored securely, possibly because they believe teenagers will act responsibly around firearms. “Unfortunately, parents of older kids are not basing their decisions about storage on the true risks imposed by firearms: Teenagers are exponentially more likely than younger children to die from firearm injury, especially suicide,” said Johnson.
The authors believe that future educational efforts should focus on the risk firearms pose to adolescents as well as younger children. “Just as parents focus their energy on keeping infants and children injury-free by limiting other hazards in the home, they should also focus on keeping adolescents safe from violence and injury,” said Johnson. “Part of this involves removing guns from the home, or keeping them stored unloaded and in a locked place that young people cannot get to. This is especially important for adolescents who are experiencing depression or other mental health problems.”
The National Firearms Study 2004 was supported by a grant from the Joyce Foundation to the Harvard Injury Control Research Center.
For further information, contact:
Todd Datz
617.432.3952
tdatz@hsph.harvard.edu

New pocket sized communicator from Sony is all play and no work

2006-09-20T20:29:00.000-07:00

The mylo Personal Communication Device Enables Social Networking in the Wireless World
SAN DIEGO, Sony is launching its first WiFi broadband communication and entertainment device to capitalize on the growth of wireless Internet access. The new mylo™ personal communicator is capable of operating in any open 802.11b wireless network, often found on college campuses, in public spaces and within private homes around the country.
This product is designed for people who use instant messaging as a primary form of communication and networking for their social life. The name mylo stands for “my life online” and the communicator lets you use instant messaging, browse the Internet, listen to music, send emails and view photos concurrently.
Small enough for a pocket or purse, the slim, oblong-shaped device features a 2.4 inch color LCD (measured diagonally) with a slide out QWERTY keyboard for comfortable and quick thumb typing.
The device, available in black or white, comes embedded with popular instant messaging services: the Google Talk™ instant messaging service, Skype and Yahoo! Messenger™. These services are free and the product does not require initial computer setup or a monthly service contract.
“The mylo personal communicator puts the fun parts of a computer in the palm of your hand,” said John Kodera, director of product marketing for personal communication devices at Sony Electronics. “It’s ideal for people who want to stay connected to their online friends and family, but not be weighed down by a PC or buffeted by charges for IM and texting on cell phones.”
Get Up, Get Out and Get Online
The pocketable design encourages users to get up and away from their desks and roam available wireless networks. The product includes JiWire’s hotspot directory listing more than 20,000 WiFi networks in the United States. so you can find a hotspot near you.
The mylo personal communicator boots up in seconds and can scan for available wireless networks right away. The “What’s Up” screen serves as the hub, storing up to 90 of your friends’ avatars so you can quickly see who’s online. You can store up to nine online identities per person which allows you to first choose who you want to chat with then easily initiate conversations using your preferred application.
The embedded HTML browser lets you quickly connect to full Web pages on the Internet. You can also send and receive text emails with web mail services like Yahoo!® Mail and the Gmail™ web mail service.
The communicator comes with Skype™ software built into it, allowing registered Skype users to make free Internet calls with the 113 million other Skype users worldwide. For a limited time, Skype is offering free SkypeOut™ calls from United States and Canada to most phone numbers in the United States or Canada.
Stop, Look and Listen
While you chat or browse the Internet, the 1GB of the flash memory on the mylo personal communicator lets you enjoy your music too. It supports the playback of MP3, ATRAC® or WMA (secure and unsecure) files. The mylo communicator has a built-in speaker for listening to music so you can share your music with those around you. You can also view MPEG-4 personal videos by transferring files via USB cable or with Memory Stick Duo™ media. You can also store JPEG pictures from the Internet or your digital camera.
Providing networking possibilities without a wireless network, the mylo personal communicator detects when it comes into the presence of other mylo units. With the ad-hoc application, you can share play lists and stream music between mylo communicators one at a time.
Gotta Keep Up
To support all of this functionality, the mylo device uses a lithium-ion battery that offers up to 45 hours of music playback, around seven hours of chatting and web surfing and more than three hours of continuous Skype talk time. It comes with a microphone, stereo headphones, a USB cable and a neoprene case.
The mylo personal communicator will be available in September for about $350 online at sonystyle.com, at Sony Style® retail stores (www.sonystyle.com/retail) and at authorized dealers nationwide. For more information about the product, go to http://www.sony.com/mylo.

Microsoft Researchers Inventing New Techniques to Improve Search Engine Accuracy and Relevance

2006-09-20T20:25:00.000-07:00

Papers presented at the 2006 SIGIR conference describe new techniques for analyzing rich patterns of user interactions with search to improve the overall search experience.
SEATTLE — Scientists at Microsoft Corp. are developing new techniques for analyzing search click-through patterns and browsing behaviors to make search results more relevant. Microsoft researchers Eugene Agichtein, Eric Brill, Susan Dumais and Robert Ragno report that accurate modeling and interpretation of user interactions with a search engine can significantly improve search-result ranking, the detection of “click-spam,” Web search personalization and, ultimately, the overall Web search experience. While user interactions with the Web search engines are plentiful, new robust techniques are required to understand the relationship between user interactions and result quality.
The paper detailing this research, “Learning User Interaction Models for Predicting Web Search Result Preferences,” represents one of 13 papers to be presented by Microsoft Research at the 29th annual ACM SIGIR (Association for Computing Machinery’s Special Interest Group on Information Retrieval) conference on search and information retrieval in Seattle this week. Microsoft Research contributed the largest number of papers to this year’s conference, presenting 17.5 percent of the 74 papers accepted out of a record 399 submissions. SIGIR is a top international forum for the presentation of new research results and the demonstration of new systems and techniques in the broad field of information retrieval.
Another Microsoft Research paper by the same authors, “Improving Web Search Ranking by Incorporating User Behavior,” discusses utilizing the discovered patterns of user behavior to improve algorithms that rank search engine results. This work is significant because it demonstrates how to add a new rich set of user behavior features into ranking for large relevance gains.
“Most search engines today use a somewhat two-dimensional approach, matching user queries with the content and link structure of Web pages to return a list of results,” said Eugene Agichtein, a researcher in the Text Mining, Search and Navigation Group within Microsoft Research. “We’re looking at how to add a third dimension — the users themselves — to improve the search experience. By examining click-through and browsing patterns across a large number of users, we are able to learn a great deal about how people interact with search technologies and can thereby improve our accuracy dramatically.”
The work Microsoft Research is presenting at this year’s conference spans well beyond user behavior research, however, covering areas such as feedback relevance, cross-language retrieval, query analysis and classification, summarization, personalization, graph structure analysis, and the development of new machine learning algorithms for search.
Continuing Microsoft’s long history of collaboration with the academic community to encourage research and innovation, the majority of the work Microsoft is presenting at SIGIR 2006 was done in cooperation with researchers at academic institutions around the world. Ten of the 13 papers the company is presenting were co-written by researchers at major universities. This follows the company’s June 2006 announcement that it was making available 12 research grants and rich query logs and usage data to help support academic research and improve Internet search, data mining, discovery and analysis technologies.
Microsoft also has a long history of involvement in the search community and SIGIR. Search and information access have been central themes at Microsoft, reaching as far back as 1993. Microsoft Research has been active in the SIGIR community since 1997.
“Microsoft’s involvement in the SIGIR and the search communities is extensive,” said Efthimis Efthimiadis, chairman of this year’s SIGIR conference and associate professor at the University of Washington Information School. “In addition to openly publishing research papers in increasing numbers year after year, Microsoft researchers can be found serving on executive boards, chairing committees, reviewing papers and presenting keynote addresses at conferences. I believe the work Microsoft Research is doing is advancing the field of search, and it will improve the online experience for all users.”
Links to the papers Microsoft Research contributed to this year’s SIGIR conference, as well as to the Microsoft papers presented at the 2004 and 2005 conferences, are available at http://research.microsoft.com/news/featurestories/source/sigirpapers2006.aspx.
About Microsoft Research
Founded in 1991, Microsoft Research is dedicated to conducting both basic and applied research in computer science and software engineering. Its goals are to enhance the user experience on computing devices, reduce the cost of writing and maintaining software, and invent novel computing technologies. Researchers focus on more than 55 areas of computing and collaborate with leading academic, government and industry researchers to advance the state of the art in such areas as graphics, speech recognition, user-interface research, natural language processing, programming tools and methodologies, operating systems and networking, and the mathematical sciences. Microsoft Research employs more than 700 people in five labs located in Redmond, Wash.; Silicon Valley, Calif.; Cambridge, England; Beijing, China; and Bangalore, India. Microsoft Research collaborates openly with colleges and universities worldwide to enhance the teaching and learning experience, inspire technological innovation, and broadly advance the field of computer science. More information can be found at http://www.research.microsoft.com.

Experimental Medication Kicks Depression in Hours Instead of Weeks

2006-09-20T19:58:00.001-07:00

People with treatment-resistant depression experienced symptom relief in as little as two hours with a single intravenous dose of ketamine, a medication usually used in higher doses as an anesthetic in humans and animals, in a preliminary study. Current antidepressants routinely take eight weeks or more to exert their effect in treatment-resistant patients and four to six weeks in more responsive patients — a major drawback of these medications. Some participants in this study, who previously had tried an average of six medications without relief, continued to show benefits over the next seven days after just a single dose of the experimental treatment, according to researchers conducting the study at the National Institutes of Health’s National Institute of Mental Health.
This is among the first studies of humans to examine the effects of ketamine on depression, a debilitating illness that affects 14.8 million people in any given year. Used in very low doses, the medication is important for research, but is unlikely to become a widely used clinical treatment for depression because of potential side effects, including hallucinations and euphoria, at higher doses. However, scientists say this research could point the way toward development of a new class of faster- and -longer-acting medications. None of the patients in this study, all of whom received a low dose, had serious side effects. Study results were published in the August issue of the Archives of General Psychiatry.
“The public health implications of being able to treat major depression this quickly would be enormous,” said NIH Director Elias A. Zerhouni, M.D. “These new findings demonstrate the importance of developing new classes of antidepressants that are not simply variations of existing medications.”
For this study 18 treatment-resistant, depressed patients were randomly assigned to receive either a single intravenous dose of ketamine or a placebo (inactive compound). Depression improved within one day in 71 percent of all those who received ketamine, and 29 percent of these patients became nearly symptom-free within one day. Thirty-five percent of patients who received ketamine still showed benefits seven days later. Participants receiving a placebo infusion showed no improvement. One week later, participants were given the opposite treatment, unless the beneficial effects of the first treatment were still evident. This “crossover” study design strengthens the validity of the results.
“To my knowledge, this is the first report of any medication or other treatment that results in such a pronounced, rapid, prolonged response with a single dose. These were very treatment-resistant patients,” said NIMH Director Thomas R. Insel, M.D.
Ketamine blocks a brain protein called the N-methyl-D-aspartic acid (NMDA) receptor. Previous studies have shown that agents that block the NMDA receptor reduce depression-like behaviors in animals.
NMDA receptors are critical for receiving the signals of glutamate, a brain chemical that enhances the electrical flow among brain cells that is required for normal function. Studies indicate that dysregulation in glutamate could be among the culprits in depression. Using ketamine to block glutamate’s actions on the NMDA receptor appears to improve function of another brain receptor — the AMPA receptor — that also helps regulate brain cells' electrical flow.
Scientists think the reason current antidepressant medications take weeks to work is that they act on targets close to the beginning of a series of biochemical reactions that regulate mood. The medications’ effects then have to trickle down through the rest of the reactions, which takes time. Scientists theorize that ketamine skips much of this route because its target, the NMDA receptor, is closer to the end of the series of reactions in question.
“This may be a key to developing medications that eliminate the weeks or months patients have to wait for antidepressant treatments to kick in,” said lead researcher Carlos A. Zarate Jr., of the NIMH Mood and Anxiety Disorders Program.
The researchers who conducted the study now are zeroing in on other areas of the glutamate system. Specifying which components of the system are affected by compounds such as ketamine may help scientists understand how and why depression occurs, reveal biological markers that may one day aid in diagnosis, and point the way to more precise targets for new medications.
Dr. Zarate was joined in this research by Husseini K. Manji, chief of the NIMH Mood and Anxiety Disorders Program, and colleagues Jaskaran B. Singh, Paul J. Carlson, Nancy E. Brutsche, Rezvan Ameli, David A. Luckenbaugh, and Dennis S. Charney.
NIMH is part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the Federal Government's primary agency for biomedical and behavioral research. NIH is a component of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) — The Nation's Medical Research Agency — includes 27 Institutes and Centers and is a component of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. It is the primary federal agency for conducting and supporting basic, clinical and translational medical research, and it investigates the causes, treatments, and cures for both common and rare diseases. For more information about NIH and its programs, visit www.nih.gov.
CONTACT:
Susan Cahill
NIMH Press Office
301-443-4536

The odds of economic meltdown

2006-09-20T17:39:00.000-07:00

With interest rates and oil prices rising and consumers spending beyond their means, we may be headed for recession – and worse
Note: This article by Brad DeLong, a professor of economics at UC Berkeley, originally appeared on Salon.com.

Forecasting recessions is a fool's game. If there is enough solid economic information to make it appear highly likely that a recession is coming — that production, employment and consumer demand will actually fall — then it is highly likely that there already is a recession. Businesses are not stupid, and they don't have to wait for economists to tell them what they already know. By the time a gloomy forecast has been issued they've probably already noticed a drop in consumer demand and responded by firing workers and reducing production.
So: Never say that a recession is coming. Say only that a recession is here, or that there might be a recession on the way. Which, in fact, is what I'm saying today. As of the beginning of August 2006, a recession is not here, and I'm not going to violate my own rule by saying one is coming. But there is a good chance — for the first time since 2003 — that there might be a recession in progress six months from now.
Why? Three factors: 1) A Federal Reserve that finds itself with less inflation-fighting credibility than it thought it had; 2) upward pressure on inflation from rising energy and, perhaps, import prices; and 3) millions of middle-class homeowners who for too long have treated their houses as gigantic ATMs, using home equity loans and refinancing to generate extra spending money.
First, the Federal Reserve, now chaired by Bush appointee Ben Bernanke. The Federal Reserve sets interest rates, and when it does it tries to hit the economy's sweet spot: that point that produces maximum employment, purchasing power and growth without generating enough upward pressure on prices to produce expectations of inflation. The Federal Reserve does this by pushing interest rates up and down. Push interest rates up and businesses find it more expensive to expand capacity and production, causing them to cut back on investment spending. Push interest rates up and households' balance sheets deteriorate, causing them to cut back on consumption spending. Push interest rates down and firms find it cheaper to expand capacity and production, and so they ramp up investment spending. Push interest rates down and households find their balance sheets looking better and feel flush, expanding consumption spending.
There is one major complication: what Milton Friedman calls the "long and variable lags" in the system. Every action the Federal Reserve takes now affects production, demand and inflation roughly 15 months in the future. What the Federal Reserve has done in the past 15 months has not yet had a chance to affect the economy.
This leads to the Federal Reserve's current dilemma. The last two percentage points' worth of increases in interest rates — increases in interest rates that will in the end make businesses cut back on investment spending and households feel pinched — have not yet had a chance to affect the economy. Because of "long and variable lags," they are still "in the pipeline." When they emerge from the pipeline they will slow the economy further. By how much? Nobody is really sure.
In this situation it seems reasonable that the Federal Reserve should stop raising interest rates. Waiting to see what the interest-rate increases of the past couple of years will do to the economy would be a prudent strategy. Indeed, since last December the Federal Reserve has been quietly signaling that it is about to "pause," to adopt such a wait-and-see strategy. Yet so far it has not done so. Why not? One important reason is that the Federal Reserve is scared that if it pauses too soon it will convince many observers that it is not truly serious about fighting inflation — and a central bank has a hard time fighting inflation if businesses, speculators and workers ever conclude that it is not truly serious.
The Federal Reserve is also unwilling to stop increasing interest rates because it is afraid of recession risk factor No. 2: a rise in oil and import prices. Those fears are justified. Remember how the invasion of Iraq, besides bringing a golden age of democracy to the Middle East, was also supposed to produce $15-dollar-per-barrel oil? Oil is now at $75 a barrel, and this rise in oil prices is putting upward pressure on prices in general. As for import prices, they are vulnerable to a U.S. dollar that has been weakened by the Bush budget deficit and massive borrowing from China. Suppose the dollar declines suddenly, which is not a far-fetched possibility. Should the dollar fall by, say, 30 percent, and should importers raise their dollar prices in proportion, then the one-sixth of U.S. spending that is spending on imports will see prices rise by 30 percent. Because 30 percent times one-sixth equals 5 percent, that would boost U.S. consumer prices by 5 percent nearly overnight.
Thus there are two big reasons for the Federal Reserve to keep raising interest rates, in spite of how much downward pressure on demand is still in the pipeline. The Federal Reserve thinks it needs to do so in order to establish its long-term credibility, and there are the twin dangers of oil- and import price-triggered inflation to guard against.
Most likely the Federal Reserve's continued raises in interest rates will not send the economy into recession. But there is that chance, and the chance is raised from a low-probability possibility to a serious worry by the third factor: that home-as-ATM problem. The unprecedented use of home loans to squeeze cash out of equity has allowed middle-class consumers to spend well beyond their means. Someday this spending spree has to come to an end. If it comes to an end suddenly, at a time when the Federal Reserve has raised interest rates a little too much, then we have our recession.
Make no mistake about it: The U.S. economy is close to the edge. Retail sales in the second quarter were rising at only a 2.1 percent annual pace. Business investment in equipment and software was falling. Residential construction was falling. Either households will continue spending beyond all reason, or businesses will start boosting investment, or exports will start booming, or there will be a recession sometime in the next year. Figure the odds at 3 out of 10.
What can be done to head off the danger? Unfortunately, very little. The bag of macroeconomic tricks is empty. In 2000-2001 the Federal Reserve could lower interest rates to the floor, boosting residential construction and consumer spending to offset the decline in high-tech investment, and turn the 2001 recession into a very small event indeed. In 2002-2003 the short-run stimulative effect of the Bush tax cuts came online at exactly the right moment to offset fears of a deflationary spiral. But today further fiscal stimulus would increase global imbalances — meaning, raise the trade deficit — and do more damage to confidence than it might do good in curing a recession. And sharp reductions in interest rates would lower the value of the dollar and increase inflationary pressures from import prices in a way that the Federal Reserve does not dare allow.
The past 24 years have been an amazing run as far as the business cycle is concerned. There have been only two recessions, and both of those were short and shallow. But Ben Bernanke and Co. are now at real risk of presiding over the third.

New "Carbon-Reducing" Recycled Plastics

2006-09-20T17:35:00.000-07:00

GE Plastics unveiled two new plastic resins that it claims will significantly reduce , post-consumer waste, and petroleum use. The company aims to use the resins, derived from used water bottles and other plastic waste streams, to produce new virgin-quality plastic materials. Initially slated for automotive applications, the resins may eventually be available for use in consumer electronics, office furniture, and wireless, electrical, and lawn care products.
Known as Valox iQ and Xenoy iQ, the resins are made with polymers of polybutylene terephthalate (PBT), derived from 85-percent post-consumer plastic waste. According to GE, their manufacture results in a carbon dioxide reduction of at least 1.7 kilograms per kilo of resin and saves as much as 8.5 barrels of crude oil for every ton of resin. The company estimates that if all PBT was replaced in 2005 with the new resins, this would have created an outlet for more than 562,000 tons per year of polyethylene terephthalate (PET) waste—the equivalent of 22.5 billion plastic bottles, or enough to circle the Earth 120 times if placed end-to-end.
The resins are being developed as part of GE’s “ecomagination” initiative, a business strategy established two years ago to help GE capture the growing environmental market. As Jeffrey Immelt, CEO of GE, explained at the initiative’s launch in 2004, “we are launching ecomagination not because it is trendy or moral but because it will accelerate our growth and make us more competitive.” GE expects ecomagination to earn $20 billion by 2010.
One possible drawback with the new resins is that GE has no plans to recycle any of the auto parts or other items made from the plastics at the end of their life cycles to close the recycling loop. Vikram Gopal, Crystalline Global Program Manager for GE Plastics, explains that no infrastructure currently exists for this purpose, and that the plentiful and growing supply of plastics from today’s existing recycling infrastructure makes recovering old auto parts less of a priority. However, notes Worldwatch Institute researcher Erik Assadourian, “until GE creates the infrastructure to recapture and recycle this new material as well, the long-term environmental benefits will be minor compared to the economic benefits.”
This story was produced by Eye on Earth, a joint project of the Worldwatch Institute and the blue moon fund.

Alana Herro

Deep-sea sediments could safely store man-made carbon dioxide

2006-09-20T17:33:00.000-07:00

Deep-sea sediments could provide a virtually unlimited and permanent reservoir for carbon dioxide, the gas that has been a primary driver of global climate change in recent decades, according to a team of scientists that includes a professor from MIT.
The researchers estimate that seafloor sediments within U.S. territory are vast enough to store the nation's carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions for thousands of years to come.
"The exciting thing about this paper is that we show that CO2 injected beneath the seafloor is sequestered permanently," said Charles Harvey, an associate professor in MIT's Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. Harvey is a co-author of a paper on the work that appears in this week's issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
"CO2 injected underground on land is buoyant, and hence has the potential to escape back to the surface," Harvey said. "This is not the case under the deep ocean. Because the ocean floor is so cold, liquid CO2 stored beneath the floor is denser than water and will not rise to surface. Furthermore, the top of the injected CO2 plume will form a hydrate, an ice-like solid that plugs up the pore spaces, 'self-sealing' the injected CO2 plume into the deep sea sediments."
The leader of the work, Daniel P. Schrag, said, "Supplying the energy demanded by world economic growth without affecting the Earth's climate is one of the most pressing technical and economic challenges of our time." Schrag is a professor of earth and planetary sciences at Harvard University.
"Since fossil fuels -- particularly coal -- are likely to remain the dominant energy source of the 21st century, stabilizing the concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide will require permanent storage of enormous quantities of captured carbon dioxide safely away from the atmosphere," Schrag said.
The scientists say an ideal storage method could be the injection of carbon dioxide into ocean sediments hundreds of meters thick. The combination of low temperature and high pressure at ocean depths of 3,000 meters turns carbon dioxide into a liquid denser than the surrounding water, removing the possibility of escape and ensuring virtually permanent storage.
Injecting carbon dioxide into seafloor sediments rather than squirting it directly into the ocean traps the gas, minimizing damage to marine life while ensuring that the gas will not eventually escape to the atmosphere via the mixing action of ocean currents.
At sufficiently extreme deep-sea temperatures and pressures, carbon dioxide moves beyond its liquid phase to form solid and immobile hydrate crystals, further boosting the system's stability. The scientists say that thus stored, the gas would be secure enough to withstand even the most severe earthquakes or other geomechanical upheaval.
Other researchers have proposed storing carbon dioxide in geologic formations such as natural gas fields, but terrestrial reservoirs run a risk of leakage.
"Deep-sea sediments represent an enormous storage reservoir," said Kurt Zenz House, a Harvard graduate student involved in the research. "Some 22 percent, or 1.3 million square kilometers, of the seafloor within the United States' exclusive economic zone is more than 3,000 meters deep. Since we estimate that the annual U.S. emission of carbon dioxide could be stored in sediments beneath just 80 square kilometers, the seafloor within U.S. territory could store our nation's excess carbon dioxide for thousands of years to come."
Outside the United States' 200-mile economic zone, the scientists write, the total carbon dioxide storage capacity in deep-sea sediments is essentially unlimited.
The scientists note that thin or permeable sediments are inappropriate for carbon dioxide storage, as are areas beneath steep deep-sea slopes, where landslides could free the gas. They add that further assessment of the mechanical feasibility of delivering carbon dioxide to the seafloor, as well as study of possible effects on sea levels, is needed.
Klaus S. Lackner at Columbia University is also an author of the paper. The research was funded by the U.S. Department of Energy, the Merck Fund of the New York Community Trust and the Link Foundation.

"Barnyard" Uses Sun Technology for Groundbreaking Computer-Generated Animation

2006-09-20T17:30:00.000-07:00

SANTA CLARA, CALIF. Nickelodeon Movies' computer-animated movie "Barnyard," distributed by Paramount Pictures, which hits theaters nationwide today, features complex computer-generated animation that required unique and creative solutions from Sun Microsystems Inc. (Nasdaq: SUNW). The film is Nickelodeon's most challenging animated film to date - featuring vast landscapes with vivid details, realistic shading and lighting, and scenes that incorporate more than 200 characters that move with surprising fluidity - the complex data requires more time-intensive computing. Leveraging a rendering farm based on Sun Fire servers and Sun StorageTek data management systems, "Barnyard's" artists were able to quickly identify incomplete scenes, make necessary edits, and manage finished shots. The complex scenes were executed using high-performance 64-bit computing solutions from Sun that revolutionized how computer-generated imagery (CGI) is created and managed.

"With a state-of-the-art computer-animated movie like 'Barnyard,' a seamless interaction between the technology and artist is essential to make the characters come to life," said executive producer Aaron Parry. "Sun raised the bar by providing the only solutions that met this challenge and exceeded business expectations."
"We were thrilled that Sun was able to come up with a solution for us," said executive producer Julia Pistor. "Steve Oedekerk had some very specific and complex ideas that he wanted to see up on the screen and Sun was integral in helping Steve and his team realize them."
Sun provided a 620-node server farm and storage solution that was crucial in the completion of the complex animation required. The solution is based on Sun Fire x64 enterprise servers powered by AMD Opteron processors with Direct Connect Architecture, and 100-terabyte Sun StorageTek 3510 and 3511 FC arrays and a Sun StorageTek tape library for online storage and backup of shot files and other movie assets. Sun Customer Ready Systems helped migrate the production from its previous 32-bit render farm, and then configured, assembled and tested the new Sun render farm for the production. In addition, Sun provided continuous on-site consultation and support to the Barnyard production team.
"Barnyard's" producers believe their Sun solution may represent the first time a studio has relied entirely upon 64-bit technology to render a full-length animated movie.
"Animated movies are evolving rapidly, demanding more and more lifelike characters and scenes that are challenging artists, directors and the technology industry to create better CGI in faster and easier ways," said Pradeep Parmar, Sun's x64 product line business driver. "Sun is excited to meet these challenges with our expanded product line and range of service offerings."
About "Barnyard"
>From Steve Oedekerk and Nickelodeon Movies, two of the co-creators of "Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius," and filmed entirely in CGI, comes this hilarious look at what really happens in a barnyard when the farmer's back is turned. "Barnyard" is a lighthearted tale centering around Otis (voiced by Kevin James), a carefree party cow, who enjoys singing, dancing and playing tricks on humans. Unlike his father Ben (voiced by Sam Elliott), the respected patriarch of the farm, and Miles, the wise old mule (voiced by Danny Glover), Otis is unconcerned about keeping the animals' humanlike talents a secret. But when suddenly put in the position of responsibility, the "udderly" irresponsible cow finds the courage to become a leader.
Paramount Pictures presents in association with Nickelodeon Movies an O Entertainment production, a Steve Oedekerk film, "Barnyard." Written and directed by Steve Oedekerk, the film is produced by Steve Oedekerk and Paul Marshal. The executive producers are Julia Pistor and Aaron Parry. Animation production is by Omation Animation Studios. The film is rated PG for some mild peril and rude humor.

Astronomers Discover Double Planetary Mass Object

2006-09-20T17:26:00.000-07:00

The cast of exoplanets has an extraordinary new member. Using ESO's telescopes, astronomers have discovered an approximately seven-Jupiter-mass companion to an object that is itself only twice as hefty. Both objects have masses similar to those of extra-solar giant planets, but they are not in orbit around a star - instead they appear to circle each other. The existence of such a double system puts strong constraints on formation theories of free-floating planetary mass objects.
Ray Jayawardhana of the University of Toronto (Canada) and Valentin D. Ivanov of ESO report the discovery in the August 3 issue of Science Express, the rapid online publication service of the journal Science.
"This is a truly remarkable pair of twins - each having only about one percent the mass of our Sun," said Jayawardhana. "Its mere existence is a surprise, and its origin and fate a bit of a mystery."
Roughly half of all Sun-like stars come in pairs. So do about a sixth of brown dwarfs, 'failed stars' that have less than 75 Jupiter masses and are unable to sustain nuclear fusion in their cores. During the past five years, astronomers have identified a few dozen of even smaller free-floating planetary mass objects, or planemos, in nearby star forming regions. Oph 162225-240515, or Oph1622 for short, is the first planemo found to be a double.
The researchers discovered the companion candidate in an optical image taken with ESO's 3.5-m New Technology Telescope at La Silla, Chile. They decided to take optical spectra and infrared images of the pair with ESO's 8.2-m Very Large Telescope to make sure that it is a true companion, instead of a foreground or background star that happens to be in the same line of sight. These follow up observations indeed confirmed that both objects are young, at the same distance, and much too cool to be stars. This suggests the two are physically associated.
By comparing to widely used theoretical models, Jayawardhana and Ivanov estimate that the companion is about seven times the mass of Jupiter, while the more massive object comes in at about 14 times Jupiter's mass. The newborn pair, barely a million years old, is separated by about six times the distance between the Sun and Pluto, and is located in the Ophiuchus star-forming region approximately 400 light years away.
Planets are thought to form out of discs of gas and dust that surround stars, brown dwarfs, and even some free-floating planetary mass objects (see ESO 19/06). But, "it is likely that these planemo twins formed together out of a contracting gas cloud that fragmented, like a miniature stellar binary," said Jayawardhana. "We are resisting the temptation to call it a 'double planet' because this pair probably didn't form the way that planets in our Solar system did," added Ivanov.
Oph1622B is only the second or third directly imaged planetary mass companion to be confirmed spectroscopically (see ESO 23/04 [1]), and the first one around a primary that is itself a planetary mass object. What's more, its existence poses a challenge to a popular theoretical scenario, which suggests that brown dwarfs and free-floating planetary mass objects are embryos ejected from multiple proto-star systems. Since the two objects in Oph1622 are so far apart, and only weakly bound to each other by gravity, they would not have survived such a chaotic birth.
"Recent discoveries have revealed an amazing diversity of worlds out there. Still, the Oph1622 pair stands out as one of the most intriguing, if not peculiar," said Jayawardhana.
"Now we're curious to find out whether such pairs are common or rare. The answer could shed light on how free-floating planetary-mass objects form," added Ivanov.

Note
[1]: Another serious candidate is the low-mass companion to GQ Lupi, a young T-Tauri star (see ESO PR 09/05). Models lead to a mass for this object between 1 and 42 Jupiter masses.
Ray Jayawardhana
University of Toronto, Canada
Phone: +1 416-946-7291
Mobile: 647-233-7749
E-mail: rayjay@astro.utoronto.ca
Valentin D. Ivanov
ESO, Chile
Phone: +56 2 464 4562 or +56 2 463 3252
Email: vivanov@eso.org

5 GB of Online Storage for Free to All Web Users

2006-09-20T17:24:00.001-07:00

AOL today announced that, starting in early September, it would make 5 GB of online storage available for free to all Web users. The storage offering, powered by AOL's award-winning Xdrive® service, will allow users to back up important files like photos, documents, music, videos, and more. Users will be able to access their files from any PC or mobile device with a Web connection, share them with others by granting file/folder permission, move them via easy drag-and-drop tools, automatically back up important files or folders, and auto-upload any e-mail attachments they receive via major providers. There will be no charges for user to upload or download.
"People are accumulating personal digital assets at a fast pace, especially in areas like digital photos and videos," said John McKinley, president of AOL Digital Services. "Yet our in-home research shows that few people are taking steps to protect their digital memories from accidental loss or destruction. By offering consumers the combination of 5 GB of free secure online storage and Xdrive's powerful automated backup and online sharing tools, AOL is giving people a simple, effective and free way to protect their digital memories and have access to them anywhere they go."
Features of AOL's 5 GB free storage offer include:
* 5 Gigabytes (GB) secure online storage at no cost

* No charges for uploads or downloads

* Ability to store any type of file, including photos, music, video, and documents

* Drag and drop interface between online storage and hard drive

* Access to files through any Web-connected PC or mobile device

* Permission-based file and folder sharing

* Online collaboration via shared files

* Scheduled automatic backups

* Automatic upload of e-mail attachments from providers including AOL Mail, AIM Mail, or any non-AOL POP3 or IMAP-compatible mail providers

* Full-resolution photo storage

* Easy access to AOL Pictures for professional prints and photo gifts

The new free 5 GB storage offering will be available to any users with an AOL or AIM screenname starting in early September. All files stored on the Xdrive service are protected in secure, state-of-the-art data facilities. Users can access their files via the Web at www.xdrive.com or through special Xdrive software.
Users who need more storage can upgrade to a premium service with 50GB of storage -- enough space to store tens of thousands of files or to back up a typical hard drive in its entirety.
More information about Xdrive is available at www.xdrive.com. Video footage of AOL and Xdrive's current offering is available at http://www.thenewsmarket.com/AOL. Xdrive, a leading provider of digital asset management, online storage and backup services, was purchased by AOL in August 2005.
About AOL
AOL and its subsidiaries operate a leading network of Web brands and the largest Internet access subscription service in the United States. Web brands include the AOL.com® website, AOL® Pictures, AIM®, MapQuest® and Netscape®. AOL offers a range of digital services in the areas of education, safety and security, communications and music. The company also has operations in Europe and Canada. AOL LLC is a majority-owned subsidiary of Time Warner Inc. (NYSE:TWX) and is based in Dulles, Virginia.
Contact Info:
Andrew Weinstein
AOL
(703) 265-0185
andrewwstn@aol.com

Extreme Heat: Who is Most Likely to Die

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

Boston, MA--Researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) have recently co-authored a study that aimed to identify if certain population groups were more susceptible to dying from extreme temperatures. The authors, led by Mercedes Medina-Ramón, research fellow (lead author) and Joel Schwartz, professor (senior author), both in HSPH’s department of environmental health, also examined whether certain chronic medical conditions, such as diabetes and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, played a role in susceptibility and which mortality causes experience the largest relative increases on days with extreme temperatures. The survey data included 7,789,655 deaths across 50 U.S. cities from 1989 to 2000 and daily temperatures in those cities. This is the first large-scale study to examine how susceptibility of certain populations to extreme temperatures varies according to the cause of death.
The results suggest that public health professionals should pay particular attention to the elderly, diabetics and African Americans on days with extreme heat, such as during the current heat wave sweeping across much of the U.S.
African Americans were more susceptible to extreme heat in the case of cardiovascular-related death; diabetics were more susceptible when non-cardiovascular causes were involved.
The paper, “Extreme Temperatures and Mortality: Assessing Effect Modification by Personal Characteristics and Specific Cause of Death in a Multi-City Case-Only Analysis,” is available free in the current online Environmental Health Perspectives.
(http://www.ehponline.org/members/2006/9074/9074.pdf)
To interview Medina-Ramón, please contact:
Todd Datz
(617) 432-3952
tdatz@hsph.harvard.edu

Cambridge scholar makes rare 30,000-year-old find

2006-09-18T17:24:00.000-07:00

Archaeologists have unearthed a pair of tiny bone fragments dating back almost 30,000 years and featuring minute designs carved by some of our earliest European ancestors.
The thumbnail-sized bone fragments are engraved with parallel lines and match similar artefacts uncovered in the same area during the 19th century. They were carved by hunter-gatherers as they slowly made their way north in pursuit of moving populations of mammoth and reindeer 25-30,000 years ago.
The unusual find was made by a Cambridge scholar, Becky Farbstein, who has been working at Predmosti in north Moravia, in the Czech Republic. The excavation team comprises archaeologists from both the University of Cambridge and the Czech Republic.
Experts are, however, still not sure what significance the markings had and are trying to build up a collection to interpret their meaning. So far such finds have been few and far between.
“There has not been much in the way of decorated objects found at this site for a very long time,” Miss Farbstein said. “They are very similar in design to other decorations that were found a century ago. The designs are pretty enigmatic and understanding their meaning is still a problem. But for that reason any addition to the amount of art we have is valuable as it will enable us to piece that meaning together.”
Miss Farbstein spotted the fragments while sorting through a mixture of solid objects left over from a filtration process which the team are using to identify plant remains. Fortunately, she recently began studying this important collection of early decorated forms and recognised their significance.
“Both pieces preserve a regular series of parallel lines engraved on one side of a bone fragment,” she said. “The lines are the same distance from each other on both pieces, suggesting the two fragments might have originally been part of the same decorated object. The character of this decoration is very similar to other engraved designs found in the past at Predmosti and this addition to the corpus of enigmatic decoration from this site is very exciting.”
The joint excavation team, from the Institute of Archaeology at the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic and the University of Cambridge, is led by Professors Jiri Svoboda and Martin Jones. Predmosti, on the outskirts of the north Moravian town of Prerov, sits at a gap in the central European mountains, the start of a corridor through which these early hunters gradually migrated on to the North European Plain.
Just over 100 years ago, brickyard workers in Predmosti discovered vast quantities of mammoth bone and tusk. Many of the fragments had been cut, broken and burnt by the human communities who once lived there and a few had been fashioned into human or animal shapes, or incised with these enigmatic designs. Much of the evidence was lost to the brickyards, but the fragments that remain form the focus of both the current dig and an open-air museum sponsored by the City of Prerov to celebrate and present to visitors their world-famous prehistory.

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

2006-09-18T04:36:00.000-07:00

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

Linspire Does Away with Annual Fee for "Click 'N Run" Linux Service

2006-09-18T04:34:00.001-07:00

Popular One-Click Digital Software Management System Now Free for Desktop Linux Users

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, announced the immediate change in pricing for its popular CNR ("Click 'N Run") Service from an annual subscription fee based offering to a completely free service. The CNR Service, with access to over 20,000 desktop Linux applications, has previously been available only with annual subscriptions, ranging from $20 to $50, but will now be offered as a free service for all Linspire and Freespire users.

"For nearly five years, thousands of CNR users have paid annual subscription fees for the CNR Service," said Kevin Carmony, CEO of Linspire. "We're thrilled to now be in a position to offer this excellent service to desktop Linux users absolutely free. CNR really makes using desktop Linux easy, and we want everyone to have access to this quality service."

Due to success in offering premium products and services, Linspire is now able to make the basic CNR service available to everyone at no charge. Linspire and Freespire users will continue being able to use CNR to install, update and manage thousands of free, open source software programs with one click, but now there will be no charge for this service. All CNR users will still have the choice to purchase premium products and services, such as a DVD Player, Sun's StarOffice, Win4Lin Pro, CodeWeavers' CrossoverOffice, TransGaming's Cedega, as well as other commercial software applications including several commercial games. The strong revenue stream from the commercial desktop Linux software applications, as well as the premium "CNR Gold" service, has opened the door for Linspire to offer the basic CNR service at no charge to all Linspire and Freespire users.

"CNR is an innovative and feature-rich system for installing, updating and managing software on a desktop Linux computer," stated John Cherry, OSDL Desktop Linux Initiative Manager. "The fact that this service is now free will be an incredible boost for desktop Linux adoption worldwide as it makes thousands of applications immediately available to desktop users."

The price change is effective immediately for all Linspire and Freespire users. To get the free CNR service, Linspire and Freespire users simply use their email address to create a free CNR Service account. Those who purchased the Basic CNR Service in the past 60 days will automatically be upgraded to the CNR Gold Service at no charge.

In addition to the CNR service price change, Linspire also announced today plans for a new, open sourced version of the CNR client that will be released later this year as part of Freespire 1.1. These announcements further extend the value of the Freespire project, allowing anyone to enjoy not only a quality desktop Linux experience, but also an easy-to-use, yet extremely powerful software management system, all at no charge. Linspire is hopeful that by continuing to solve the complexity of Linux software installation, it will attract more software developers to create applications for desktop Linux.

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.

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.

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

Nanotube ink: Desktop printing of carbon nanotube patterns

2006-09-18T04:31:00.001-07:00

Troy, N.Y. - 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

Muscle cells self-destruct rather than grow with use

2006-09-18T04:28:00.000-07:00

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

Physicists invent 'QuIET' - single molecule transistors

2006-09-18T04:24:00.000-07:00

University of Arizona physicists have discovered how to turn single molecules into working transistors. It's a breakthrough needed to make the next-generation of remarkably tiny, powerful computers that nanotechnologists dream of.
They have applied for a patent on their device, called Quantum Interference Effect Transistor, nicknamed "QuIET." The American Chemical Society publication, "Nano Letters," has published the researchers' article about it online at http://pubs.acs.org/cgi-bin/abstract.cgi/nalefd/asap/abs/nl0608442.html. The research is planned as the cover feature in the print edition in November.
A transistor is a device that switches electrical current on and off, just like a valve turns water on and off in a garden hose. Industry now uses transistors as small as 65 nanometers. The UA physicists propose making transistors as small as a single nanometer, or one billionth of a meter.
"All transistors in current technology, and almost all proposed transistors, regulate current flow by raising and lowering an energy barrier," University of Arizona physicist Charles A. Stafford said. "Using electricity to raise and lower energy barriers has worked for a century of switches, but that approach is about to hit the wall."

Transistors can't shrink much smaller than 25 nanometers, or 1/40,000 the width of a pinhead, because scaling down further creates intractable energy problems, Stafford said. Even if it were possible to build an ultra-advanced laptop computer with molecule-sized transistors using current transistor technology, it would take a city's worth of electricity to run the laptop, and the thing would get so hot it would probably vaporize.
Stafford, UA physicist Sumit Mazumdar and David Cardamone, who received his doctorate from UA in 2005, began thinking about the problem of next-generation transistor technology three years ago. They realized that quantum mechanics can solve the problem of how to regulate current flow in a single-molecule transistor that would work at room temperature.
"Our approach is a little more finesse than brute force," Cardamone said. "We don't put up a wall to stop current. It's just that we can regulate how electron waves combine to turn the transistor on or off."
The simplest molecule they propose for a transistor is benzene, a ring-like molecule. They propose attaching two electrical leads to the ring to create two alternate paths through which current can flow.
They also propose attaching a third lead opposite one of the electrical leads. Other researchers have succeeded in attaching two contacts to a molecule this small, but attaching the third is the trick -- and the point. The third lead is what turns the device on and off, the "valve."
"In classical physics, the two currents through each arm of the ring would just add," Stafford said. "But quantum mechanically, the two electron waves interfere with each other destructively, so no current gets through. That's the 'off' state of the transistor."
The transistor is turned on by changing the phase of the waves so they don't destructively interfere with each other, opening up additional paths through the third lead.
"It took a while to go from the idea of how this could work to developing realistic calculations of this kind of system," Stafford said. "We were able to do the simplest kind of quantum chemical calculations which neglect interactions between different electrons within a few weeks. But it took some time to put in all the electron interactions that demonstrate this really is a very robust device."
According to the Semiconductor Research Corp., it typically takes a dozen years for a new idea to go from initial scientific publication to commercial technological application, Stafford noted.
"That means if the computer industry is to continue its recent pace in making smaller-scale computers, we should have had this idea yesterday, " Cardamone said.
Why all this effort to make incomprehensibly small computers? Why expend so much brainpower on nanocomputing?
More computing power will result in more realistic simulations, whether you're a scientist modeling global warming or supernovae explosions, or an entertainment industry animator creating believable emotion in a simulated human face, Stafford said.
Nanocomputers could have a major impact in medicine, Cardamone said. "These machines could operate in solution, in vivo. There already are clinical trials of nanoparticles to deliver medicinal drugs. Imagine how much more powerful those little nanoparticles or nanorobots would be if they could count, or do simple computation. With our transistors packed at maximum density, you could put a microprocessor as powerful as the top-of-the-line workstation on the back of an E. coli."
"Have you seen the movie, Fantastic Voyage?" Stafford asked. A nano-sized surgical team journeyed through a human body in the 1966 sci-fi flick. That's a different story, but with a similar theme.
"We're not futurists at all and can't predict it, but imagine that you could make an artificial intelligence, that you could have this little submarine that goes inside somebody's arteries and capillaries to repair them," Stafford said.
Contact: Lori Stiles
lstiles@u.arizona.edu
520-626-4402
University of Arizona

Engineers forge greener path to iron production

2006-09-18T04:14:00.000-07:00

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

Stratospheric injections could help cool Earth, computer model shows

2006-09-17T01:02:00.000-07:00

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