Uh, that radio play for peace "It's Up To Us Alone," featuring Ed Asner as the character
Ari Shalom, has a debut date now, Friday Oct. 16, at 5PM on KPFK, the large Pacifica station in Los Angeles.
While compact fluorescent lights (CFLs) are currently the primary alternative to incandescent light bulbs, a company from Seattle predicts that its own novel light bulbs will eventually replace CFLs and LEDs. Vu1 (”view one”) Corporation has been working on its electron stimulated luminescence (ESL) bulbs, and has recently released a demo video (below).
ESL technology works by firing electrons at phosphor, which then glows. As Vu1 explains, the technology is similar to that used in cathode ray tubes and TVs. However, the bulbs have several improvements, such as in uniform electron distribution, energy efficiency, phosphor performance and manufacturing costs. “CRT and TV technology is based on delivering an electron ‘beam’ and then turning pixels on and off very quickly,” the company explains on its website. “ESL technology is based on uniformly delivering a ’spray’ of electrons that illuminate a large surface very energy efficiently over a long lifetime.”
With ESLs, Vu1 hopes to overcome some of the challenges faced by CFLs and LEDs, the two lighting technologies considered to have the most potential in the post-incandescent era. As the company explains, CFLs’ biggest problem is that they contain about 5 milligrams of mercury. If not recycled properly – or if they’re accidentally broken – CFLs release mercury into the air or groundwater. In addition, some people find the CFLs’ cooler colors less pleasing than the warmer tones of incandescent bulbs.
On the other hand, LEDs don’t contain hazardous materials like mercury, and can last for up to 50,000 hours. However, their heat dissipation requirements make them more expensive than other bulbs, with a projected retail price of about $40 each.
In contrast, ESLs don’t contain hazardous substances and should cost about $20, or the equivalent of a dimmable CFL reflector bulb, according to Vu1. Similar to CFLs, ESLs use 65% less energy than incandescent bulbs, and last for up to 6,000 hours, or about four times the lifespan of incandescents. Other advantages of ESLs include a warm color temperature similar to incandescent light, as well as the ability to be turned on instantly and be fully dimmable.
Vu1 plans to begin manufacturing ESLs by the end of the year, and hopes to market the bulb starting in mid-2010. Initially, the company will launch reflector-shaped bulbs, which are used in recessed lighting. Later they hope to expand into other bulb forms such as standard A bulbs and tubes.
China On Pace To Become World’s Largest Wind Power Market
China has doubled its installed wind power capacity every year for the past five, and is on pace this year to supplant the Unied States as the world’s largest market for new installations. But researchers from Harvard University and Beijing’s Tsinghua University suggest that the Chinese wind power industry has hardly begun to tap its potential. According to their meteorological and financial modeling, reported in the journal Science last week, there is enough strong wind in China to profitably satisfy all of the country’s electricity demand until at least 2030.
Harvard-Tsinghua project leader Michael McElroy and colleagues quantified China’s wind energy potential by first modeling the availability of wind. To do this, they chopped the Chinese map into parcels 3,335 square kilometers each and used five years of recent meteorological data to generate a wind profile for each parcel. Next, they added industry-standard 1.5-megawatt wind turbines across each parcel (excluding unfriendly terrain such as steep hills, forests, and urban areas) in the model and estimated each parcel’s energy output. Finally, they calculated the cost of the energy that could be produced as a function of the cost of installing the turbines.
The modeling reveals extensive regions, concentrated in northern and western China, where much energy can be generated at costs similar to the government-set energy rates earned by established wind farms, which range from 0.38 to 0.55 Chinese yuan (6 cents to 8 cents) per kilowatt-hour (kwh). For example, the model predicts that wind-farm operators could profitably generate 6.96 trillion kwh of wind energy — more than double China’s annual power consumption of 3.4 trillion kwh and comparable to the projected total demand by 2030 — at a contract price of 0.516 Chinese yuan (7.5 cents) per kwh.
In other words, wind offers a carbon-neutral source of energy to meet China’s power needs for the next two decades. Meeting incremental demand with coal-fired generation, in contrast, would generate 3.5 billion tons per year of carbon dioxide emissions (more greenhouse gas than the European Union expects to release by 2030).
McElroy, a Harvard professor of environmental studies, insists that such ambitious visions are realistic and worth seriously considering. For one thing, 0.516 Chinese yuan is at the low end of the tariffs for future wind farms that China’s National People’s Congress approved last month. For another, China’s wind industry is already outstripping targets “year after year.” China will reach its 2020 target for wind power next year, a decade early, as wind power capacity crests over 30,000 MW, according to the Brussels-based Global Wind Energy Council. By 2020, China is likely to have installed 135,000 MW of wind power capacity, according to analysis by consultancy Emerging Energy Research, based in Cambridge, MA.
However, McElroy acknowledges that China’s grids would need to be smarter and stronger to accommodate the variability of wind energy. In fact, the Global Wind Energy Council says China’s underdeveloped transmission system is already an impediment, delaying the start of energy production from new wind farms. And the group says the problem is becoming more acute as China’s wind developments shift to the wind-rich yet remote regions in the north and west, where the grid is weaker than average and power must travel farther to reach consumers. In China’s northern autonomous region of Inner Mongolia, grid limits are constraining proposed wind projects, according to Sebastian Meyer, director of research for the Beijing-based consultancy firm Azure International.
Meyer says the challenge will be as much administrative and financial as technical. He says that a political imperative for rural development guarantees that wind power will remain popular among local and regional officials, but how to finance the “smartening and balancing of the grid needs to be resolved.” A surcharge of 0.001-0.002 Chinese yuan per kWh that Chinese consumers pay to support integration of renewable energy barely covers the direct cost of patching wind farms into the grids. “Even for this limited end-use, funds have come back to the local grids with considerable delay,” says Meyer.
Then again, says McElroy, China is already aggressively upgrading its power grids to link remote hydropower projects with population centers – a process that could expand to distributing massive generation from notoriously unpredictable wind farms. “China certainly has the know-how to build long-distance high-voltage transmission systems,” says McElroy.
The major grid upgrades already under way in China are making extensive use of continental-scale high-voltage direct-current (HVDC) lines, which remain the stuff of supergrid blueprints in Europe and the United States. “They are leading the world in implementing long-distance transmission schemes,” says Bjarne Andersen, director of U.K.-based consultancy Andersen Power Electronic Solutions and an expert in the ultra-efficient HVDC technology. Andersen says that China already operates HVDC lines carrying 19,860 MW of power, is building lines for another 18,900 MW, and is planning for 17,900 MW more.
And Andersen says China’s power planners are innovating. An 800-kilovolt HVDC link from central Yunnan province to coastal Guangdong, which will be the world’s first when it starts up later this year, is expected to lose 30% less energy in transit than today’s 500 kV lines. Several more 800 kV lines are under construction.
The current grid upgrades mirror what would be needed to transmit remote wind power. Most new transmission lines are designed to drive power from western hydroelectric dams toward eastern megacities such as Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou, says Andersen. But there are signs that grid planners are beginning to take wind development seriously as well. Construction began last year on a 750 kV AC line to carry electricity from a wind farm in western Gansu province that is one of six national wind power megaprojects approved by the government. Gansu’s wind farm, dubbed the Three Gorges Dam on Land, is slated to grow to 20,000 MW by 2020, at an estimated cost of 120 billion Chinese yuan ($17.5 billion).
McElroy says China’s political situation may also lend itself to adding the required transmission lines. Wind-rich regions such as the ethnically Uyghur northwest are among China’s poorest, and the government has an interest in promoting their economic development. McElroy adds that local opposition, which has stymied transmission projects in North America and Europe for years, is unlikely to stop China’s wind power surge. “The government probably has more power to institute a plan once it’s approved.”
Super Efficient Next-Generation Solar Cells From Nanotubes
By Priya Ganapati
Today’s solar cells lose much of the energy in light to heat. Now researchers at Cornell University have made a photovoltaic cell out of a single carbon nanotube that can take advantage of more of the energy in light than conventional photovoltaics. The tiny carbon tubes might eventually be used to make more-efficient next-generation solar cells.
“The main limiting factor in a solar cell is that when you absorb a high-energy photon, you lose energy to heat, and there’s no way to recover it,” says Matthew Beard, a senior scientist at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, CO. Loss of energy to heat limits the efficiency of the best solar cells to about 33 percent. “The material that can convert at a much higher efficiency will be a game-changer,” says Beard.
Researchers led by Paul McEuen, professor of physics at Cornell, began by putting a single nanotube in a circuit and giving it three electrical contacts called gates, one at each end and one underneath. They used the gates to apply a voltage across the nanotube, then illuminated it with light. When a photon hits the nanotube, it transfers some of its energy to an electron, which can then flow through the circuit off the nanotube. This one-photon, one-electron process is what normally happens in a solar cell. What’s unusual about the nanotube cell, says McEuen, is what happens when you put in what he calls “a big photon” — a photon whose energy is twice as big as the energy normally required to get an electron off the cell. In conventional cells, this is the energy that’s lost as heat. In the nanotube device, it kicks a second electron into the circuit. The work was described last week in the journal Science.
There’s evidence that another class of nanomaterials called quantum dots can also convert the energy of one photon into more than one electron. However, making operational quantum-dot cells that can do this has proved a major hurdle, says Beard, whose lab, led by Arthur Nozik, is working on the problem. One of the challenges with quantum-dot solar is that it’s very difficult to get the freed electrons to leave the quantum dot and enter an external circuit. “The system is teasing you; you can’t get those charge carriers out, so what’s the point?” says Ji Ung Lee, professor of nanoscale engineering at the State University of New York in Albany. “McEuen’s group has shown this in a system where you can get the extra carriers out.”
McEuen cautions that his work on carbon nanotube photovoltaics is fundamental. “We’ve made the world’s smallest solar cell, and that’s not necessarily a good thing,” he says. To take advantage of the nanotubes’ superefficiency, researchers will first have to develop methods for making large arrays of the diodes. “We’re not at a point where we can scale up carbon nanotubes, but that should be the ultimate goal,” says Lee, who developed the first nanotube diodes while a researcher at General Electric.
It’s not clear why the nanotube photovoltaic cell offers this two-for-one energy conversion. “It’s mysterious to us,” says McEuen. However, the most likely reason is that while conventional solar materials have only one energy level for electrons to move through, carbon nanotubes have several. And two of them just happen to be very well matched: one of the energy levels, or bandgaps, is twice as high as the other. “We may have gotten lucky, and it has very little to do with the fact that it’s a carbon nanotube,” says McEuen. This means, McEuen hopes, that even if it proves too challenging to make arrays of nanotube solar cells, materials scientists can look for pairs of materials that have these kinds of matched bandgaps, and layer them to make solar cells that do with two materials what the single nanotube cells can do. “Maybe the answer won’t be in nanotubes, but in another pair of materials,” McEuen says.
World’s First Algae Powered Car Unveiled
Just yesterday San Francisco saw the unveiling of the world’s first algae fuel-powered vehicle, dubbed the Algaeus. The plug-in hybrid car, which is a Prius tricked out with a nickel metal hydride battery and a plug, runs on green crude from Sapphire Energy — no modifications to the gasoline engine necessary. The set-up is so effective, according to FUEL producer Rebecca Harrell, that the Algaeus can run on approximately 25 gallons from coast to coast!
“Powering our cars with algae-based fuel could be the next Apollo mission.” That’s what Rebecca Harrell, co-founder of the Veggie Van Organization and producer of the upcoming film FUEL, told me yesterday in front of San Francisco’s City Hall. Over the next 10 days she’ll be joined by Fuel director and Veggie Van Organization cofounder Josh Tickell as they take the Algaeus, along with a caravan of other green energy vehicles (including the Veggie Van and the biodiesel-powered big green energy bus), on a cross-country road trip. “It hit us that we needed to drive the car across the country,” Harrell said. “People think of algae fuel as this long-term, far off thing. But seeing is believing.”
And of course, the cross-country tour will also serve to promote FUEL, a film about America’s ongoing dependence on foreign oil. Unlike many environmentally-themed films that serve up upsetting bits of information without offering concrete solutions (An Inconvenient Truth, anyone?), FUEL discusses the ways that we can transition away from oil right now. “What’s important for everyday people is information. People don’t say ‘Can you give me something else to be scared about?’ They say, ‘How can I get my car to run on algae fuel?’, Tickell explained.
“Powering our cars with algae-based fuel could be the next Apollo mission.” That’s what Rebecca Harrell, co-founder of the Veggie Van Organization and producer of the upcoming film FUEL, told me yesterday in front of San Francisco’s City Hall. Over the next 10 days she’ll be joined by Fuel director and Veggie Van Organization cofounder Josh Tickell as they take the Algaeus, along with a caravan of other green energy vehicles (including the Veggie Van and the biodiesel-powered big green energy bus), on a cross-country road trip. “It hit us that we needed to drive the car across the country,” Harrell said. “People think of algae fuel as this long-term, far off thing. But seeing is believing.”
And of course, the cross-country tour will also serve to promote FUEL, a film about America’s ongoing dependence on foreign oil. Unlike many environmentally-themed films that serve up upsetting bits of information without offering concrete solutions (An Inconvenient Truth, anyone?), FUEL discusses the ways that we can transition away from oil right now. “What’s important for everyday people is information. People don’t say ‘Can you give me something else to be scared about?’ They say, ‘How can I get my car to run on algae fuel?’, Tickell explained.
From
Sundown Lounge No. 193
Geeknotes:
Astronauts of Antiquity
Writer Mama Back-to-School Giveaway
Radio Play for Peace
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Astronauts of Antiquity
THE THIRD ANNUAL WRITER MAMA BACK-TO-SCHOOL GIVEAWAY IS SEPTEMBER 1ST - 30TH!
Writer Mama Back-to-School Daily Giveaway For the third year in a row, I am giving away thirty books in thirty days. All you have to do to participate is answer the question that I will pose daily. One lucky winner will win each day. There is no limit to how many times you can enter. The drawing is for U.S. residents. You don't have to be a mom, but of course, the event is created with moms in mind, so please tell all the writer mamas you know! See ya in September at
http://thewritermama.wordpress.com
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From The Peace Team:
GET YOUR COLLECTOR'S EDITION OF "IT'S UP TO US ALONE", A RADIO PLAY FOR PEACE:
Teenager Invents Inexpensive Solar Panel Made From Human Hair
A new type of solar panel using human hair could provide the world with cheap, green electricity, believes its teenage inventor.
Milan Karki, 18, who comes from a village in rural Nepal, believes he has found the solution to the developing world’s energy needs.
The young inventor says hair is easy to use as a conductor in solar panels and could revolutionise renewable energy.
‘First I wanted to provide electricity for my home, then my village. Now I am thinking for the whole world,’ said Milan, who attends school in the capital, Kathmandu.
The hair replaces silicon, a pricey component typically used in solar panels, and means the panels can be produced at a low cost for those with no access to power, he explained.
Milan and four classmates initially made the solar panel as an experiment but the teens are convinced it has wide applicability and commercial viability.
'I'm trying to produce commercially and distribute to the districts. We've already sent a couple out to the districts to test for feasibility,' he said.
The solar panel, which produces 9 V (18 W) of energy, costs around £23 to make from raw materials.
But if they were mass-produced, Milan says they could be sold for less than half that price, which could make them a quarter of the price of those already on the market.
Melanin, a pigment that gives hair its colour, is light sensitive and also acts as a type of conductor. Because hair is far cheaper than silicon the appliance is less costly.
Terrabon Develops Process To Convert Vinegar Into Gasoline
A company that has developed a process for converting organic waste and other biomass into gasoline–Terrabon, based in Houston–recently announced a partnership with Waste Management, the giant garbage-collection and -disposal company based in Houston. The partnership could help Terrabon bring its technology to market.
Amid a profusion of new biofuels technologies, this one stands out because it will be relatively easy to scale up for producing millions of gallons of fuel, says James McMillan, the biochemical process R&D group manager at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, CO, who is not connected to the company.
Most biofuels companies fall into one of two categories. Some use enzymes to break down biomass into simple sugars and a single organism to convert sugars into fuel, such as yeast. Others use high temperatures and pressure to break biomass down into basic chemical building blocks–carbon monoxide and hydrogen–which are then chemically processed into fuels. Terrabon has developed a process that combines the two. It uses a naturally occurring mixture of organisms to convert biomass, not into fuels, but into carboxylic acids. These can be converted into fuel and other chemicals using well-known chemical processes. Gary Luce, the company’s CEO, says Terrabon’s fuels can compete with petroleum-based fuels if prices are above $75 a barrel. (The price of oil is currently about $70 a barrel.)
The approach has an advantage over single-organism-based methods because the mixture of organisms used, collected from salt marshes, are adapted to survive in the wild. They don’t require the special sterile environments needed to prevent single-organism cultures from being contaminated, which brings down the cost of equipment.
These organisms naturally break down biomass into carboxylic acids, such as acetic acid, the key component of vinegar. These acids can serve as chemical precursors for a wide variety of chemicals and fuels, including gasoline and diesel, via processing steps that convert the acids into ketones and alcohols. The acids can be made without the expensive equipment required for high-pressure and -temperature processes. They can also then be processed into fuels using equipment at existing refineries, helping keep costs down.
Because the organisms don’t require special treatment and because the acids they produce can be converted to fuels at existing refineries, it should be relatively easy to ramp up production, McMillan says. Terrabon’s partnership with Waste Management should help, he says, since one of the biggest challenges with advanced biofuels is collecting the large amounts of biomass needed. Waste Management already has trucks and other equipment for collecting garbage and separating the organic waste.
Terrabon’s composting centers, where biomass is converted into acids, can be located near sources of biomass–such as municipal landfills or farms. The acids–or solid salts made from these acids–would then be shipped to a refinery for conversion to biofuels. Terrabon also has a partnership with Valero, the major oil refiner based in San Antonio, which will help in this stage of the process.
One potential disadvantage of Terrabon’s method is that it would be extremely difficult, if not impossible, to improve the organisms via the powerful genetic engineering tools other biofuels companies are using. That’s because it uses a complex mix of organisms, rather than a single organism, each of which plays a role in breaking biomass down into sugar and converting the sugar to acids. Cesar Granda, Terrabon’s chief technology officer, calls the mix a “black box,” because the company doesn’t understand exactly how it works.
McMillan says the success of the company will depend in part on the costs and energy required for transporting raw materials and converting acids into fuels. He also says the carbon-dioxide emissions from the chemical process could be higher than with other advanced biofuels. One step in particular, hydrogenation, requires hydrogen, which is typically derived from fossil fuels. Depending on the source of the hydrogen, and the energy required in other steps, it may be difficult for Terrabon’s fuels to qualify as advanced biofuels and so qualify for key federal incentives.
Terrabon, which has been operating a pilot-scale plant in Bryan, TX, plans to begin building a 55-ton-per-day facility in Port Arthur, TX, starting early next year. With the help of Valero’s Port Arthur refinery, that facility is expected to produce about 1.3 million gallons of biofuel a year when finished in 2011.
Study Reveals How Much Cellphone Radiation You’re Getting
By Priya Ganapati
Researchers are divided on whether radiation from cellphones pose health risks or not. Now, one nonprofit organization adds some hard data to the argument: the radiation emission profiles of more than 1,200 cell phone models. The data won’t resolve the debate, but does give concrete information to consumers to help them make their buying decisions.
American cellphone radiation standards don’t make enough of an allowance for safety and ignore the impact of electromagnetic radiation on children, says the Environmental Working Group, which analyzed the radiation emissions from 1,268 cellphones. The group also looked at a number of recent research studies and supporting documentation from the handset makers to arrive at its conclusions.
“We think that based on current standards there’s increased risk of developing brain tumors in long term users — people who have used cellphones for more than 10 years — from radiation in cellphones,” says Olga Naidenko, a senior scientist at EWG, who worked on the report for about 10 months.
The group has created a database of feature phones and smartphones that lists the maximum radiation each of the devices emits. (You can look up your phone’s radiation level using the form embedded in this story, below.)
“We want consumers to take steps they can take to minimize potential risks,” says Naidenko.
About 4 billion people worldwide use cellphones. Researchers have been debating for years on whether the radiation from cellphone use leads to health hazards such as cancer and other illnesses. Perhaps, in no greater proof of how hot the debate is, infomercial peddlers such as Kevin Trudeau and television doctors such as Andrew Weil have declared that cellphone use are one of the risk factors for brain cancer.
More scientific studies have tried to assess both short term and long term impact of cellphone usage. Yet there has been no conclusive evidence so far. That’s because earlier research studies didn’t have a pool of users available who had been on their cellphones long enough, says Naidenko.
“A lot of the studies that came out in 2000 and 2001 only looked at short term exposure, which is about four to five years and they didn’t see any risks from radiation,” she says. “But now that we see results from long term studies, we are seeing more evidence to the contrary.”
Still Naidenko says the EWG’s data doesn’t conclusively prove a link between cellphone radiation and health risks.
Henry Lai, a professor of bioengineering at the University of Washington who has researched the issue in the past, reviewed EWG’s report and says the group is on the right track.
“There’s no solid conclusion right now on whether cellphone use leads to increased health risk,” he says. “But all the data shows cause of concern, and that’s very well brought out in the report.”
Cellphone radiation is transmitted by the antenna and the circuitry inside the handset by sending out electromagnetic waves (radio frequency radiation) to transmit their signal. The radiation emitted by the antenna is not directional, which means that it propagates in all directions more or less equally. Factors such as the type of digital signal coding in the network, the antenna design and its position relative to the head determine how much radiation is absorbed by a user, says EWG.
Other household appliances, such as microwave ovens, emit radiation, but no other device is in such close contact with the human body as a cellphone. “You don’t put your head inside the microwave,” says Lai. “And unless you are standing very, very close to it, the radiation from microwaves is very low.”
The Federal Communications Commission sets the acceptable U.S. radiation standards for cellphones. The effects of the radiation depend on the rate at which energy is absorbed by a mass of tissue. This is called as the Specific Absorption Rate (SAR) and measured in watts per kilogram (W/kg). Most handset makers use private certification companies to test the SAR on their devices.
Based on a recommendation from industry group, IEEE, the FCC limits SAR levels for partial-body exposure (including head) to up to 1.6 W/kg, and whole body exposure to up to 0.08 W/kg. For hands, wrists, feet, and ankles, the limit is up to 4 W/kg, averaged over 10 grams of tissue.
In general, the lower the SAR the better the phone, from a potential health hazard point of view. For instance, Apple’s iPhone 3G has a maximum SAR of 1.39 W/kg when held at the ear. Compare that to the 1.19 W/kg SAR for the iPhone 3G S.
The best phone on EWG’s list, the Samsung Impression, has a maximum radiation of just 0.35 W/kg.
But FCC’s current standards are inadequate, says EWG. FCC standards allow 20 times more radiation to reach the head than the rest of the body, says an EWG representative, and they don’t provide an adequate margin of safety for cell phone radiation exposure.
“The FCC limit for the head (SAR of 1.6 W/kg) is just two-and-a-half times lower than the level that caused behavioral changes in animals (SAR of 4 W/kg),” says the representative. “Thus, the brain receives a high exposure, even though the brain may well be one of the most sensitive parts of human body … and should have more protection.”
There’s also just one one standard for “general population exposure” which is same for adults and children. The FCC also does not have strict enforcement against violators, alleges EWG.
“The U.S. government is not paying enough attention to this health problem,” agrees Lai.
But policy makers in Washington D.C. are starting to take notice. Experts will present evidence at a conference in mid-September, arguing for and against the impact of radiation from cellphones on health, and its implications for public policy. But no cellphone companies or handset makers are expected to be present. Independent of the conference, Sen. Arlen Specter (D-Pennsylvania) is expected to chair a Sept. 14 congressional hearing on cellphones.
Still EWG’s research is just the beginning, says Lai. “It is a not a scientific paper and there are mistakes with over-interpretation and bias in use of some of the literature to support their conclusions,” he says. “But it does serve the purpose of raising awareness of the problems stemming from cellphone use.”
Forgotten Memories Are Still in Your Brain
By Brandon Keim
For anyone who’s ever forgotten something or someone they wish they could remember, a bit of solace: Though the memory is hidden from your conscious mind, it might not be gone.
In a study of college students, brain imaging detected patterns of activation that corresponded to memories the students thought they’d lost.
“Even though your brain still holds this information, you might not always have access to it,” said neurobiologist Jeffrey Johnson of the University of California, Irvine. His remarks appeared in the study he co-authored, published Wednesday in Neuron.
That recalling a memory triggers the neurological patterns encoded when the memory was formed is a tenet of cognitive science. Less understood, however, is what becomes of those patterns at moments of incomplete recall.
Maybe you remember breakfast at a certain restaurant, but not what you ate; perhaps you recall a particular conversation, but not what you said. It’s not known whether those details vanish from the mind altogether, or are subsumed by some larger pattern, or remain intact but inaccessible.
“It wasn’t quite clear what happens to them,” said Johnson of lost details. “But even when people claim that there are no details attached to their memories, we could still pick some of those details out.”
Of the the forgotten breakfast, he said that “we might still be able to pick up information about what you ate from brain activity, though you can’t access it consciously.”
Johnson’s team put eleven female and five male college students inside an fMRI machine, which measures real-time patterns of blood flow in the brain. Each student was shown a list of words, then asked to say each word backwards, think of how it could be used, and imagine how an artist would draw it.
Twenty minutes later, the researchers showed them the list again, and asked the students to remember what they could of each word.
Recollection triggered the original learning patterns, a process known technically as reinstatement; the stronger the memory, the stronger the signal.
“What I think is cool about the study is that the degree of cortical reinstatement is related to the strength of our subjective experience of memory,” said Anthony Wagner, a Stanford University memory researcher who wasn’t involved in the experiment.
But at the weak end of the gradient, where the students’ conscious recall had faded to zero, the signal was still there.
It’s possible that the students lied about what they remembered. But if not, then memory may truly persist. The question then is how long memories could last — weeks, months, even years.
“We can only speculate that this is the case,” said Johnson, who plans to run brain-imaging studies of memory degradation over days and weeks.
As for whether those memories could be intentionally guided to the surface, Johnson says that “at this stage, we’re just happy to be able to find evidence of reinstatement at a weak level. That would be something down the line.”
From
Sundown Lounge No. 192
Geeknotes:
Black Science Fiction Society
Gropius in Chicago Coalition Events
Band Pluggers
Venice Strip Plugger
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Here's a new writer group I've come across, has authors who've been published or went indy with their books and are selling them at conventions. Cool.
[Backstory: Chicago is one of four finalist cities competing for the 2016 Olympics. As part of the Olympics proposal, Chicago has purchased the site of Michael Reese Hospital (and surrounding grounds) for the purposes of creating an Olympic Village. Essentially, this means demolishing the entire complex of buildings, the work of Walter Gropius, founder of the Bauhaus and one of the undisputed world leaders of architecture during the twentieth century...]
A lot of developments have been happening recently, regarding the situation with the Michael Reese Hospital campus.
You are invited to attend three exciting events happening next week.
Sustainability Forum on Thursday, September 10 (6 p.m.)
Backstory Cafe and Social Center
Chicago, IL 60616
This forum about sustainability focuses on the Chicago region. Topics include: eco-friendly lifestyles, exploring creative adaptive reuse of architecture, and celebrating the value of our public parks. This event is free and open to the public.
The panelists include Aaron Swanton (Blackstone Bicycle Works), Joyce Fernandes (archi-treasures), LaLuce Mitchell and Grahm Balkany (Gropius in Chicago Coalition), and Robert Rudner (Chicago Greens). Robert will talk about rebuilding cities, building whole cities in balance with nature, Paolo Soleri’s arcology concept, and Richard Register’s eco-cities concept. Joyce will talk about the importance of community participation in sustainable initiatives, using archi-treasures as a model. Grahm and LaLuce will talk about current efforts to preserve the buildings at the Michael Reese Hospital campus, as those efforts relate to adaptive reuse of architecture, sustainable living, minimalizing carbon footprints, and potential energy savings.
* * *
Soundwalk by/around the MRH campus
Saturday, September 12 (10 a.m.)
The World Listening Project will facilitate a soundwalk which will happen by and around the Michael Reese Hospital campus (10 a.m.-11 a.m.). Soundmarks during this soundwalk will include the chainlink fence along the perimeter of the Michael Reese Hospital campus; the wind in the trees in front of the Singer Pavilion; a security guard’s car tires rolling over gravel on the MRH campus; traffic on Lake Shore Drive; demolition and earthmoving equipment being operated at MRH; bikers, pedestrians, and automobile drivers/passengers on the streets by MRH; and trains traveling the north-south tracks (between MRH and LSD).
This soundwalk will start on the northwest corner of 31st St. and Cottage Grove Dr. We will walk along the fenced-in perimeter of the MRH campus in a clockwise direction, and then we will turn around and return to the soundwalk’s starting point. This soundwalk is free and open to the public; it is being organized by Chad Clark, Jennifer Mosier, Norman Long, Eric Leonardson, and Dan Godston.
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Bauhaus9090 Performance Event
Saturday, September 12 (11:30 a.m.)
Lake Meadows Park
3117 S. Rhodes Ave.
Chicago, IL 60616
Following the soundwalk, a Bauhaus9090 performance event will happen in Chicago’s Bauhaus District, beginning at 11:30 a.m. Jamie Kazay, Matthew Barton, Amanda Marbais, Kevin Kilroy, and Dan Godston will read selections of their poetry. Alpha Bruton will be painting in performance.
Band pluggers from Goodnight Sunrise and the Rusty Wright Band...
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Venice Strip Plugger
I ran into this cat on the strip during the week, selling head wraps. I didn't buy one, but I got his business card and said I'd plug him on my next show.
I have the link to his website and MySpace pages, though there isn't a lot of action going on, so I also found a YouTube plugger from last year...
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Bike Camper
This innovative little contraption is a camping trailer built for a bike. The designer and sole resident of the camper, Paul, built the camper and used it as his accommodations for the recent Burning Man.
Like a regular camper, this innovative, 100-pound beauty has all the living accessories that you need: solar powered oven, solar water heater for showers and washing and a urinal funnel. The one thing that it lacks is a commode worthy of hosting a deuce, but that’s probably a good thing considering its slim, close-quarter proportions.
Paul designed the off-the-grid special as an experiment based on a what-if idea of Swine Flu leading to an isolating, apocolyptic disaster forcing him to be fully self-sufficient. It looks like a pretty successful experiment.
All visions of armaggedon aside, this camper would be downright sweet for bike touring–assuming you actually had the power to tow it around. You’d have the clean freedom of the open road with a comfortable shelter to take care of all your earthly needs (except for the always inconvenient road deuce).
Study Shows Drinking Beer Improves Bone Density
Many studies have tried to link health benefits to moderate alcohol consumption. Loss of bone density is a problem in women as they age, but beer has come to the rescue!
The study included surveys of women at various stages in life and found that those who regularly drank beer had higher bone density.
Scientists at the University of Extremadura in Caceres, Spain, conducted a study involving 1,697 healthy women, 811 of whom were postmenopausal while a further 176 were going through the menopause…
Participants were required to complete questionnaires, providing information on their smoking habits, as well as their levels of alcohol, caffeine and nutrient consumption.
The women also agreed to undergo ultrasound scans so that the density of their bones could be assessed.
The researchers found that participants who reported drinking beer on a regular basis tended to have greater bone density than those who did not drink beer or who tended to consume wine.
Aspirin Taken By Healthy People Does More Harm Than Good
Healthy people who take aspirin to prevent a heart attack are doing themselves more harm than good, researchers have said. Millions of people – including a substantial number of the “worried well” – take a daily dose of the drug in the belief it will keep them healthy.
But at a conference for leading doctors, British scientists said they have found that for healthy people taking aspirin does not significantly reduce the risk of a heart attack.
At the same time they found it almost doubles the risk of being admitted to hospital due to internal bleeding.
The findings show that for otherwise healthy people the risks of taking aspirin outweigh the benefits. The doctors stressed that patients who had already suffered a heart attack should continue to take the drug.
It has been suggested that aspirin could be included in a so-called ‘polypill’ with an anti-cholesterol statin and a blood pressure drug which could be taken by everyone aged over 50.
Experts said substantial numbers of ‘worried well’ take aspirin as a ‘just in case’ measure believing that because it has been around for such a long time it is completely safe.
The results of a study carried out in Scotland and presented at the European Society of Cardiology Congress in Barcelona has added to the growing evidence that the risks outweigh the benefits for healthy people.
Prof Gerry Fowkes of the Wolfson Unit for Prevention of Peripheral Vascular Disease in Edinburgh, said: “Our research suggests that aspirin should not be prescribed to the general population at this stage.
“Aspirin probably leads to a minor reduction in future events but the problem is that has to be weighed against an increase in bleeding. Some of that bleeding can be quite serious and lead to death.”
Prof Peter Weissberg, Medical Director of the British Heart Foundation, which part-funded the study, said: “A lot of the worried well buy a small dose of aspirin over the counter not understanding that they are increasing their risk substantially of a major bleed.”
He said it is known that aspirin does reduce the risk of cardiovascular problems but this must be countered against the increased risk of internal bleeding.
In patients who have already had a heart attack the risk of a second is so much higher that the balance is in favour of taking aspirin.
However, for people who have not had a heart attack the risks do not normally outweigh the benefits.
Prof Weissberg added: “If you have not got clear cut vascular disease that has caused an event while it does reduce the risk (of a heart attack or stroke) that benefit is offset by a worse risk of haemorrhage and potentially fatal haemorrhage.”
In the study conducted in Scotland 29,000 men and women aged between 50 and 75 were screened to see if they had furred arteries in the legs, which means they are at high risk of developing heart disease but do not yet have symptoms.
More than 3,000 men were randomly assigned to receive a daily dose of aspirin or a dummy pill and were followed up for an average of eight years.
There was no difference in the rate of heart attacks or stroke between the two groups and deaths from any cause were similar.
However there were 34 major bleeds in people taking aspirin, or two per cent, compared with 20 or 1.2 per cent of those on the placebo.
He said the tablets were only taken 60 per cent of the time during the trial which reflects real life experience in people who have not had a heart attack.
He said in secondary prevention, where people have already had one attack and are trying to prevent a second one, compliance is usually better.
Earlier this year Oxford scientists found that although aspirin could cut the chances of a heart attack in patients who had never suffered one by a fifth, it also increased the risk of stomach bleeding by a third.
Nick Henderson Executive Director of the Aspirin Foundation said: “Aspirin use to prevent primary cardiovascular events is only appropriate where individual patients are considered by their doctor to be at special risk from particular factors such as obesity, lifestyle, stress and a familial history.
“The Aspirin Foundation continues to counsel individuals always to seek medical advice before embarking on a self medication prophylactic regime with Aspirin for whatever reason.
“Medical advocates of prophylactic Aspirin in the absence of previous cardiovascular events accept that potential benefits should be weighed against potential risks such as the bleeding demonstrated in the study by Professor Fowkes.”
Tumors Feel The Deadly Sting Of Nanobees
When bees sting, they pump poison into their victims. Now the toxin in bee venom has been harnessed to kill tumor cells by researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. The researchers attached the major component of bee venom to nano-sized spheres that they call nanobees.
In mice, nanobees delivered the bee toxin melittin to tumors while protecting other tissues from the toxin’s destructive power. The mice’s tumors stopped growing or shrank. The nanobees’ effectiveness against cancer in the mice is reported in advance online publication Aug. 10 in the Journal of Clinical Investigation.
“The nanobees fly in, land on the surface of cells and deposit their cargo of melittin which rapidly merges with the target cells,” says co-author Samuel Wickline, M.D., who heads the Siteman Center of Cancer Nanotechnology Excellence at Washington University. “We’ve shown that the bee toxin gets taken into the cells where it pokes holes in their internal structures.”
Melittin is a small protein, or peptide, that is strongly attracted to cell membranes, where it can form pores that break up cells and kill them.
“Melittin has been of interest to researchers because in high enough concentration it can destroy any cell it comes into contact with, making it an effective antibacterial and antifungal agent and potentially an anticancer agent,” says co-author Paul Schlesinger, M.D., Ph.D., associate professor of cell biology and physiology. “Cancer cells can adapt and develop resistance to many anticancer agents that alter gene function or target a cell’s DNA, but it’s hard for cells to find a way around the mechanism that melittin uses to kill.”
The scientists tested nanobees in two kinds of mice with cancerous tumors. One mouse breed was implanted with human breast cancer cells and the other with melanoma tumors. After four to five injections of the melittin-carrying nanoparticles over several days, growth of the mice’s breast cancer tumors slowed by nearly 25 percent, and the size of the mice’s melanoma tumors decreased by 88 percent compared to untreated tumors.
The researchers indicate that the nanobees gathered in these solid tumors because tumors often have leaky blood vessels and tend to retain material. Scientists call this the enhanced permeability and retention effect of tumors, and it explains how certain drugs concentrate in tumor tissue much more than they do in normal tissues.
But the researchers also developed a more specific method for making sure nanobees go to tumors and not healthy tissue by loading the nanobees with additional components. When they added a targeting agent that was attracted to growing blood vessels around tumors, the nanobees were guided to precancerous skin lesions that were rapidly increasing their blood supply. Injections of targeted nanobees reduced the extent of proliferation of precancerous skin cells in the mice by 80 percent.
Overall, the results suggest that nanobees could not only lessen the growth and size of established cancerous tumors but also act at early stages to prevent cancer from developing.
“Nanobees are an effective way to package the useful, but potentially deadly, melittin, sequestering it so that it neither harms normal cells nor gets degraded before it reaches its target,” Schlesinger says.
If a significant amount of melittin were injected directly into the bloodstream, widespread destruction of red blood cells would result. The researchers showed that nanoparticles protected the mice’s red cells and other tissues from the toxic effects of melittin. Nanobees injected into the bloodstream did not harm the mice. They had normal blood counts, and tests for the presence of blood-borne enzymes indicative of organ damage were negative.
When secured to the nanobees, melittin is safe from protein-destroying enzymes that the body produces. Although unattached melittin was cleared from the mice’s circulation within minutes, half of the melittin on nanobees was still circulating 200 minutes later. Schlesinger indicates that is long enough for the nanobees to circulate through the mice’s bloodstream 200 times, giving them ample time to locate tumors.
“Melittin is a workhorse,” says Wickline, also professor of medicine in the Cardiovascular Division and professor of physics, of biomedical engineering and of cell biology and physiology. “It’s very stable on the nanoparticles, and it’s easily and cheaply produced. We are now using a nontoxic part of the melittin molecule to hook other drugs, targeting agents or imaging compounds onto nanoparticles.”
The core of the nanobees is composed of perfluorocarbon, an inert compound used in artificial blood. The research group developed perfluorocarbon nanoparticles several years ago and have been studying their use in various medical applications, including diagnosis and treatment of atherosclerosis and cancer. About six millionths of an inch in diameter, the nanoparticles are large enough to carry thousands of active compounds, yet small enough to pass readily through the bloodstream and to attach to cell membranes.
“We can add melittin to our nanoparticles after they are built,” Wickline says. “If we’ve already developed nanoparticles as carriers and given them a targeting agent, we can then add a variety of components using native melittin or melittin-like proteins without needing to rebuild the carrier. Melittin fortunately goes onto the nanoparticles very quickly and completely and remains on the nanobee until cell contact is made.”
The flexibility of nanobees and other nanoparticles made by the group suggests they could be readily adapted to fit medical situations as needed. The ability to attach imaging agents to nanoparticles means that the nanoparticles can give a visible indication of how much medication gets to tumors and how tumors respond.
“Potentially, these could be formulated for a particular patient,” Schlesinger says. “We are learning more and more about tumor biology, and that knowledge could soon allow us to create nanoparticles targeted for specific tumors using the nanobee approach.”
Funding from the National Institutes of Health and the American Heart Association supported this research.
From
Sundown Lounge No. 191
Geeknotes:
Chicago Scene Happenings
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THIRD WORLD PRESS ACCEPTING SUBMISSIONS
AN INTERNATIONAL CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS
A multi-cultural, multi-national, and multi-community anthology of literary criticism, critical essays, poetry, fiction, literary nonfiction, creative writings, and visual art on HIV and AIDS.
Edited by Kelly Norman Ellis and M L Hunter
A project of the Gwendolyn Brooks Center for Black Literature and Creative Writing at Chicago State University
Published by Third World Press.
Scheduled to be released World AIDS Day 2009.
EXTENDED Deadline for submissions: Friday, September 25, 2009
There have been great strides implemented in the research, treatment, care, and social awareness (both nationally and internationally) of HIV and AIDS. However, the critical dialogue needed to eradicate this disease seems to have dissipated. This anthology seeks to push this life-threatening issue into the consciousness of not only America, but also the world. The current climate in America, under the Obama administration, is hope and change. So what does that mean for a disease that is tied to human sexuality, morality, and the need to feel love and acceptance?
The editors are seeking creative writing in the genres of poetry, fiction, literary nonfiction, memoir writing and journaling as well as visual art that explore the intersection of the human condition with HIV and AIDS. The editors are also seeking artwork in the mediums of photography, fine and graphic arts. We are particularly interested in a vast array of literary criticism that provides social commentary and theoretical and pedagogical models that assist in understanding HIV and AIDS past and present. We also are interested in interviews with survivors and non-survivors of HIV and AIDS.
Submissions should be sent by email attachment to hivaidsanthology@gmail.com:
· A short biography including ethnic heritage and country of origin should be submitted along with your work.
· Fiction submissions can be short stories or novel excerpts, and the nonfiction section is open to personal narratives and essays.
· Scholarly essays should be no less than 5,000 words, and should not exceed 8,000 words. The length of other submissions may vary. We encourage authors to make the writing style of their submissions accessible to as wide a readership as possible, without sacrificing scholarly intellect.
· Poetry submissions are limited to five poems maximum. We will accept re-prints of some poems. Please note if poems have been published elsewhere in cover letter.
· Artwork submissions are open to all mediums, but pieces must be submitted electronically. Winning pieces are selected based on composition and originality.
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On Friday, September 25, 2009, there will be an open mic poetry set with featured readers
TONY TRIGILIO AND SANDRA LIM
at
Brothers K
500 Main St.
Evanston, IL
Open Mic 6:00 - 6:30
Featured Poets 6:45 - 7:30
This is part of the RHINO READS series
happening on the fourth Friday of every month
and sponsored by Rhino Magazine
To order the new RHINO 2009, use PayPal, via our website:
www.rhinopoetry.org
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CAFFEINE THEATRE'S UNDER MILK
WOOD
August 21, 2009 — September 27, 2009
Storefront Theater
78 E. Washington
$20; $18 Seniors; $16 students;
Caffeine Theatre, in association with Chicago DCA Theater, presents Under Milk Wood by Welsh playwright and poet Dylan Thomas. The production comes to Chicago DCA Theater’s Storefront Theater at 66 E. Randolph Street, from August 21 – September 27, 2009. Members of the press are invited to the opening performance on Thursday, August 27, at 7:30 p.m.
Under Milk Wood is Dylan Thomas’ dark, but funny play about the dreams and waking lives of a fictional Welsh town. An iconic favorite since it was first broadcast as a radio play in 1954, the play’s 47 quirky characters bring to life their inner longings bubbling beneath the surface of the town's daily life, endearing us to humanity's bawdy and magnificent possibilities. Paul S. Holmquist directs this classic but utterly relevant play with an intimate and physically intense ensemble of Chicago theater veterans and emerging talent.
Performances are Thursday, Friday, and Saturday evenings at 7:30 p.m. and Sunday afternoons at 3:00 p.m. Post-show discussions will follow the performances on Thursdays, September 3 and 17.
Tickets for Under Milk Wood are $20 for general admission, $18 for seniors, and $16 for students. The preview performances on August 21, 22, and 23 cost $15. Discounts are available for Chicago Cultural Center Mosaic Members, military personnel, theater industry affiliates, and large groups. All tickets are available by calling 312.742.TIXS (8497), visiting www.dcatheater.org, or stopping by the box office, open Tuesday through Saturday, noon to 6 p.m.; Sundays, noon to 4 p.m.; and one hour prior to each performance.
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Uptown Poetry Slam and Open Mic at Green Mill for August 30 and September 6
Green Mill
www.greenmilljazz.com
4802 N Broadway St
Chicago, IL 60640-3667
(773) 878-5552
EVERY SUNDAY
UPTOWN POETRY SLAM
7 to 10 PM, $6
SUNDAY AUGUST 30
SPECIAL GUEST(S): A special visit from Liverpool born, Wales based writer, NAIL GRIFFITHS author of six novels including Sheepshagger, Stump and Wreckage, a forthcoming film Kelly + Victor, three books of non-fiction, and more reviews, travel pieces, and radio plays than he cares to count; plus Slam Champion and all round good guy - the fabulous MIKE MCGEE; plus the music of the ROOTABAGA BAND
OPEN SLAM: read or recite your poem and maybe win $10 - WOW!
SUNDAY SEPTEMBER 6
SPECIAL GUEST(S): The second to last chance to experience the best cabaret act in Chicago at their favorite hangout - the Fabulous (soon to be gone) WEIRD SISTERS and the equally fabulous Strange Brothers www.weirdsisters.net
OPEN SLAM: read or recite your poem and maybe win $10 - WOW!
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WEEDS CONTEST #2
poetry contest #2
friends, colleagues and country folks...
thanks to the many of who have responded about coming next monday 31st...and to those who have said they could not make it for one reason or another but still want to make it another monday...there will another poetry contest at the end september...hey its 50 bucks...can't go wrong with that...and you can take that to the bank...but first put it in you calendar...
what: "Best Off The Wall Poem" poetry contest
when: August 31st
time: 9p sign up/ 10pm first contestant
where: WEEDS
1555 n. dayton
why: $50.00 prize money
host: gregorio gomez
barkeep: sergio mayora
so come on by sit right down and sign up between 9 and 10pm...first poet will be on the mike by 10pm; come hell or high water...last poet by 10:45...(which means there's a limited number of slots) and the judges will retire and unanomisly choose a winning poem...
open mike will continue soon after the last poet contestent reads...
when the judges makes their determination of a winner...i will announce it and present the "prize money"...
looking forward to seeing you at weeds.
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PLEASE COME FOR THE LAST BEACH POETS READING OF THE SEASON (and my BIRTHDAY PARTY!)
Sunday, August 30 at 4pm, Greeeleaf and the lake!
Look for the brightly painted "Beach Poets" tent South of the Heartland's "Stand in the Sand" South East of the Loyola Park Field House!
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Retina Cells Created From Skin-derived Stem Cells
A team of scientists from the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Medicine and Public Health has successfully grown multiple types of retina cells from two types of stem cells — suggesting a future in which damaged retinas could be repaired by cells grown from the patient’s own skin.
Even sooner, the discovery will lead to laboratory models for studying genetically linked eye conditions, screening new drugs to treat those conditions and understanding the development of the human eye.
A Waisman Center research team led by David Gamm, an assistant professor of ophthalmology and visual sciences, and Jason Meyer, a research scientist, announced their discovery in the Aug. 24 edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
“This is an important step forward for us, as it not only confirms that multiple retinal cells can be derived from human iPS cells using the Wisconsin approach, but also shows how similar the process is to normal human retinal development,” Gamm says. “That is quite remarkable given that the starting cell is so different from a retinal cell and the whole process takes place in a plastic dish. We continue to be amazed at how deep we can probe into these early events and find that they mimic those found in developing retinas. Perhaps this is the way to close the gap between what we know about building a retina in mice, frogs and flies with that of humans.”
Gamm says the work built on the strong tradition of stem cell research at UW-Madison. James Thomson, a School of Medicine and Public Health faculty member and director of regenerative medicine at the Morgridge Institute for Research on the UW-Madison campus, announced that he had made human stem cells from skin, called induced pluripotent stem (iPS cells), in November 2007. Su-Chun Zhang, UW-Madison professor of anatomy and a Waisman researcher, was among the first to create neural cells from embryonic stem cells. Zhang was also part of the Gamm lab’s retinal study. Meyer says the retina project began by using embryonic stem cells, but incorporated the iPS cells as they became available.
Ultimately, the group was able to grow multiple types of retina cells beginning with either type of stem cell, starting with a highly enriched population of very primitive cells with the potential to become retina. This is critical, as it reduces contamination from unwanted cells early in the process. In normal human development, embryonic stem cells begin to differentiate into more specialized cell types about five days after fertilization. The retina develops from a group of cells that arise during the earliest stages of the developing nervous system. The Wisconsin team took cells from skin, turned them back into cells resembling embryonic stem cells, then triggered the development of retinal cell types.
“This is one of the most comprehensive demonstrations of a cell-based system for studying all of the key events that lead to the generation of specialized neural cells,” Meyer says. “It could serve as a foundation for unlocking the mechanisms that produce human retinal cells.”
Because the group was successful using the iPS cells, they expect this advance to lead to studying retinal development in detail and treating conditions that are genetically linked. For example, skin from a patient with retinitis pigmentosa could be reprogrammed into iPS cells, then retina cells, which would allow researchers to screen large numbers of potential drugs for treating or curing the condition.
Likewise, someday ophthalmologists may be able to repair damage to the retina by growing rescue or repair cells from the patient’s skin. Earlier this year, scientists from the University of Washington showed that human ES cells had the potential to replace retinal cells lost during disease in mice.
“We’re able to produce significant numbers of photoreceptor cells and other retinal cell types using our system, which are lost in many disorders,” Meyer says. Photoreceptors are light-sensitive cells that absorb light and transmit the image as an electrical signal to the brain.
The team had similar success in creating the multiple specialized types of retina cells from embryonic stem cells, underscoring the similarities between ES and iPS cells. However, Gamm emphasizes that there are differences between these cell types as well. More work is needed to understand their potential and their limitations.
Other members of Gamm’s Waisman Center research team involved in this study include Elizabeth Capowski, Lynda Wright, Kyle Wallace, Rebecca Shearer and Erin McMillan.
The research was funded by the National Institutes of Health, the Foundation Fighting Blindness, the Walsh Family Foundation, the Lincy Foundation and the Retina Research Foundation.
Congo Lake Gas
Gases trapped below the surface of a lake in eastern Congo could explode any day, threatening the lives of tens of thousands of locals, the country’s environment minister warned on Tuesday.
Huge amounts of carbon dioxide and highly combustible methane gas are dissolved in Lake Kivu, which straddles the heavily populated border between Democratic Republic of Congo and neighbouring Rwanda.
Though scientists believe the overall danger across the lake as a whole is minimal, researchers have discovered a pocket of gas in the relatively shallow Gulf of Kabuno, in the lake’s northwest corner.
“The risk of explosion is imminent,” Jose Endundo said.
“It’s like a bottle of Coca-Cola or champagne. If there is too much pressure inside the bottle, it will explode. It’s the same phenomenon,” Endundo told Reuters in an interview.
An estimated three cubic kilometres of carbon dioxide lie just 12 metres below the surface of the gulf, which sits atop a tectonic faultline.
Scientists fear a major earthquake or large lava flow from a nearby volcano could provoke a giant release of gas, creating a deadly cloud.
An eruption of some 1.2 million tonnes of CO2 that had been trapped under Lake Nyos in isolated northwestern Cameroon killed around 1,700 people in 1986.
“The risk is that this gas escapes and asphyxiates thousands of people. There is an urgent need to evacuate gas from the Gulf of Kabuno, which now holds 10 times the amount of carbon dioxide that Lake Nyos contained,” Endundo said
Several large villages lie on the shores of the Gulf of Kabuno, and the city of Goma, with a population of around 1 million, is located around 20 km (13 miles) to the east.
“Anything is possible, if this cloud is pushed by the wind,” said Michel Halbwachs, a volcanologist and Lake Kivu expert with France’s Universite de Savoie.
“We could have a very light scenario or we could have a very heavy scenario … Entire neighbourhoods could be hit,” he said of a region whose inhabitants are already suffering mass killings and rapes as Congolese soldiers battle rebels.
The World Bank has set aside $3 million to fund a project to remove gas from the gulf, Endundo said, adding that Congo was looking for other sources of finance to complete the project.
Proponents of commercial extraction projects say pumping out Lake Kivu’s carbon dioxide along with its potentially lucrative methane reserves could help alleviate the danger of a gas eruption on the lake as a whole.
Earlier this year, Congo and Rwanda agreed to a joint project to produce 200 megawatts of power from Lake Kivu’s methane reserves.
Rwanda has already begun extracting small amounts of methane using a demonstration rig on its side of the lake. It was producing two megawatts of power by the end of 2008.
America’s Most Stressful Cities
For the 2nd year running, the winner is Chicago. 2nd Place – Los Angeles. 3rd Place – New York City. 4th Place – Cleveland, Ohio. 5th Place - Providence, R.I.
Sinking property values, high unemployment and prices, and poor environments add to the pressure felt by residents in these metros.
Few enjoy their commute. Just ask Stephen Dinwiddie, M.D., a psychiatrist at the University of Chicago.
“I think anybody who, like I do, commutes on the Kennedy on a daily basis knows exactly what stress is,” he says, of his daily home-to-work commute on Chicago’s expressway that extends from the Chicago Loop to O’Hare International Airport. “It takes anywhere from 30 minutes to several centuries–at least subjectively.”
But more pressing factors make Chicago for the second year in a row the country’s most stressful city. Crowding, poor air quality, a high 11% unemployment rate and free-falling home values have created a cocktail of constant worry affecting many in the Windy City.
To find the country’s most stressful cities, we examined quality of life factors in the country’s 40 largest metropolitan statistical areas, or metros–geographic entities defined by the U.S. Office of Management and Budget for use by federal agencies in collecting, tabulating and publishing federal statistics. We looked at June 2009 unemployment figures provided by the Bureau of Labor and Statistics and cost of living figures from the Council for Community and Economic Research. We examined median home-price drops from Q1 2008 to Q1 2009 that were provided by the National Association of Realtors. Population density based on 2008 data from the U.S. Census Bureau and ESRI also factored. Last, we examined the number of sunny and partly sunny days per year, based on 2007 data from the National Environmental Satellite, Data and Information Service, as well as air-quality figures, based on 2007 data from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
Fastest Evolving Technology – DNA Sequencing
Investing in technology-driven fields is risky, especially when everyone touts them as the Next Big Thing. Sure, it’s easy to see quick gains, but you’re just as likely to see those gains vanish as the next-generation technology sneaks in and replaces it — the disruptor becomes the disrupted, so to speak.
Perhaps the fastest evolving technology right now isn’t computer tech, but rather is found in DNA sequencing. We’ve gone from sequencing the first genome for about $2.7 billion in the Human Genome Project just a few years ago and rather quickly come down to $50,000 apiece. Next stop: the $1,000 genome.
This week an article in Nature Biotechnology documented the use of a Helicos BioSciences’ system to sequence the genome of one of its scientific founders at a cost of under $50,000 — excluding the cost of the $1 million machine, of course.
In June, rival Illumina (Nasdaq: ILMN) announced that it was launching a service to sequence genomes of rich people — let’s face it, they’re the only ones who can afford it at this point — for about the same cost, so the price isn’t what’s exciting. What should have makers of second-generation sequencers — Illumina, Roche and Life Technologies (Nasdaq: LIFE) — a little worried is that Helicos’ system allows for sequencing of a single DNA molecule. Removing the amplification step to generate many copies of the DNA molecule should speed up the process and theoretically make it less costly.
Don’t go running out to buy shares in Helicos just yet, though. There’s a reason the company trades at a market cap well below $100 million. Two private companies, Oxford Nanopore and Pacific BioSciences, are developing machines that can sequence much longer single molecules, which should speed up sequencing and bring down the cost.
Being private companies without disclosure issues, the businesses can operate somewhat in stealth mode, which makes it hard for investors to determine exactly who will win this battle. To keep from getting disrupted, Illumina has partnered with Oxford Nanopore to market its next-next-generation sequencer once it’s available for commercial use, so it may be positioned well if Oxford Nanopore’s technology turns out to work well.
Is it nothing more than a head fake?
So calling the above the Next Big Thing is a bit of a mistake, mostly because we, as outside investors, don’t have any real way to benefit (except, possibly, with Illumina). Rather than trying to figure out which company’s technology will eventually prevail, investors might be better off looking at companies working on making the overload of information from sequencing thousands of genes more useful for patients: deCODE Genetics, Knome, Navigenics, and 23andMe.
Unfortunately, they’re all private companies, with the exception of deCODE Genetics. And that one is a penny stock selling off assets to stay alive. You can get a piece of 23andMe by buying shares in one of its investors, Google (Nasdaq: GOOG), although that’s a fairly convoluted way to get in on the action. Keep them in mind for the future, though, if they ever go public. Presenting DNA sequence data in an understandable fashion is something customers are going to be willing to pay for. Fool co-founders Tom and David Gardner used 23andMe’s service, which eventually led David to recommend Illumina to Stock Advisor newsletter subscribers.
The real beneficiaries of the Next Big Thing
So if the winner of the sequencer war is still up in the air (or they’re all doomed to a low-margin death) and genome-information companies are all private, how can investors profit from this Next Big Thing? I think the real winners from low-priced sequencing will be drug developers.
Consider: Much of the low-hanging fruit for treating diseases has already been picked. To take drug-development to the next level, drugmakers need to know how genetic differences in patients affect the usefulness of their drugs. For instance, mutations in a gene called K-ras affect whether Amgen’s (Nasdaq: AMGN) Vectibix or Bristol-Myers Squibb’s (NYSE: BMY) and Eli Lilly’s (NYSE: LLY) Erbitux helps cancer patients or not. Knowing that ahead of time? Priceless, both to the patient and the company.
By avoiding patients a drug can’t help, drugs will become more efficient, on average, which should make everyone happy. However, a widespread personalized approach to medicine will only be possible when DNA sequencing become cheap enough. We seem to be on the road, but it will still take a while to develop drugs to take advantage of this new knowledge. So this is a long-term play for sure.
The genome craze in the early part of this decade didn’t live up to its hype — just take a look at a 10-year chart of Human Genome Sciences (Nasdaq: HGSI) to see what I mean. I truly think it’s different this time. But figuring out the best place to put your dollars to work requires more than jumping in on the obvious.
From
Sundown Lounge No. 190
Geeknotes:
White Readers Meet Black Authors
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Last week on Twitter, my poetry buddy Tara Betts, currently living on the east coast, with a new book of verse coming out (Arc and Hue, by Aquarius Press), posted a link about Denver Colo. author Carleen Brice, who'd been interviewed by Tavis Smiley recently on her efforts to get the general reading audience - which, let's face it, is still largely white - to think outside their cultural comfort level when reading fiction. Anyway, an offhand conversation with colleagues turned into a blog with very good posts and comments on topics like: the similarity between Black authors and Dr. Seuss' Whos, an introduction to authors writing about slavery in a manner that is neither guilt and/or shame-inducing, and a discussion about 'What constitutes a Black book? Very cool.
I'd like to thank Rob Simon at Burst Marketing for doing this on the quick and cheap with me. Also my wonderful and game cast of non-black people:
Karen DeGroot Carter, author of One Sister's Song and keeper of the blog Beyond Understanding
Naomi Horii, healer and writing instructor at University of Colorado, Boulder
Bella Stander, writer, book-promotion specialist and co-founder of the Literary Ladies Luncheon
Kieran Nelson, my good buddy
Special thanks to friend and bookseller Charles!
No non-black people were harmed in the making of this video.
-- Carleen Brice
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Venue Verite: "I am an African" - Thabo Mbeki
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Existing Osteoporisis Drugs Effective In Killing Flu Viruses
Two existing drugs used to treat osteoporosis may be effective in killing influenza viruses, including the new H1N1 swine flu and the H5N1 bird flu viruses, researchers in Hong Kong have found.
The two drugs are pamidronate and zoledronate, which are marketed by Novartis AG under the brand names Aredia and Reclast, respectively.
In their experiment, the researchers exposed human cells that had been infected with the influenza viruses to the two drugs.
They observed that the drugs triggered extra production of a type of white blood cell called yd-T cells, which went on to kill human cells that were infected with the flu viruses.
Flu viruses can only replicate in living human or animal cells and killing infected cells would stop the viruses from replicating, the researchers said.
Professor Lau Yu-lung at the University of Hong Kong’s pediatrics and adolescent medicine department described the infected human cells as “factories that will produce viruses.”
“These drugs attack the viruses specifically … This approach kills the factories that are producing viruses.”
Malik Peiris, also part of the research team, said the drugs could enhance immune responses of the human body.
That was especially important as flu viruses mutate constantly, which reduces the efficacy of vaccines, he added.
The researchers plan to move next into animal and then human clinical testing.
Anti-Cancer Compound Discovered
A new study conducted on mice has uncovered a chemical compound that effectively targets cancer stem cells – the key cells that spread malignant tumours and are usually resistant to treatment.
In a study published in Thursday’s edition of the journal Cell, a group of medical researchers said they had discovered that a compound called salinomycin targeted cancer stem cells directly.
“Evidence is accumulating rapidly that cancer stem cells are responsible for the aggressive powers of many tumours,” said Robert Weinberg, a member of the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research, and one of the study’s authors.
Cancer stem cells are rare but aggressive parts of tumours and their ability to seed new tumours while proving largely resistant to chemotherapy and radiotherapy makes them a key component in treating cancer patients.
“Many therapies kill the bulk of a tumour only to see it regrow,” said Eric Lander, director of the Broad Institute of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University, another author of the Cell paper.
Previous attempts to study cancer stem cells have been stymied by difficulties in locating the rare cells within tumours, and the tendency of the cells to lose their key properties when grown outside of the body.
To conduct their research, the study group found a novel way to manipulate cultured breast cancer cells into cancer stem cells that retained the tendency to seed tumours and resist anti-cancer treatments.
The researchers then analysed about 16,000 chemical compounds, looking for one that could target the cancer stem cells, eventually narrowing the field to 32, and then down to one: salinomycin.
The compound showed impressive results, both against naturally occurring and manipulated cancer stem cells, reducing the proportion of breast cancer stem cells by more than 100-fold compared with a commonly-used breast cancer treatment called paclitaxel.
It also inhibited the ability of the cancer stem cells to seed new tumours when injected into mice, and slowed the growth of existing tumours in the animals.
“It wasn’t clear it would be possible to find compounds that selectively kill cancer stem cells,” said Piyush Gupta, one of the study’s lead authors and a researcher at the Broad Institute. “We’ve shown it can be done.”
The compound even targeted groups of genes, usually linked to particularly aggressive tumours and poor patient prognoses, that are highly active in cancer stem cells, effectively decreasing their activity, the study said.
“Our work reveals the biological effects of targeting cancer stem cells,” said Gupta. “Moreover, it suggests a general approach to finding anti-cancer therapies that can be applied to any solid tumour maintained by cancer stem cells.”
The researchers are not yet sure how salinomycin works, and there are a number of pharmaceutical steps that would need to be taken before it could be used to treat cancer patients.
However, the study’s authors are positive both about the prospects for salinomycin and a number of the other chemical compounds tested, several of which also showed some ability to target cancer stem cells.
IBM Uses ‘DNA Origami’ To Make Next-Gen Microchips
International Business Machines Corp is looking to the building blocks of our bodies — DNA — to be the structure of next-generation microchips.
As chipmakers compete to develop ever-smaller chips at cheaper prices, designers are struggling to cut costs.
Artificial DNA nanostructures, or “DNA origami” may provide a cheap framework on which to build tiny microchips, according to a paper published on Sunday in the journal Nature Nanotechnology.
Microchips are used in computers, cell phones and other electronic devices.
“This is the first demonstration of using biological molecules to help with processing in the semiconductor industry,” IBM research manager Spike Narayan said in an interview with Reuters.
“Basically, this is telling us that biological structures like DNA actually offer some very reproducible, repetitive kinds of patterns that we can actually leverage in semiconductor processes,” he said.
The research was a joint undertaking by scientists at IBM’s Almaden Research Center and the California Institute of Technology.
Right now, the tinier the chip, the more expensive the equipment. Narayan said that if the DNA origami process scales to production-level, manufacturers could trade hundreds of millions of dollars in complex tools for less than a million dollars of polymers, DNA solutions, and heating implements.
“The savings across many fronts could add up significantly,” he said.
But the new processes are at least 10 years out. Narayan said that while the DNA origami could allow chipmakers to build frameworks that are far smaller than possible with conventional tools, the technique still needs years of experimentation and testing.
Astronauts could mix DIY concrete for cheap moon base
by Colin Barras
A lunar base could be built from waterless concrete composed entirely of moon dust, according to US researchers.
NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter will next year scout out a good landing site ahead of the 2020 mission that will put US astronauts back on the moon.
A four-strong team will spend seven days on the lunar surface, but NASA hopes to eventually have long-term moon bases.
However, building permanent structures on the moon would be astronomically expensive, says Houssam Toutanji, a civil engineer at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, US.
"It costs a tremendous amount of money to take even 1 kilogram of material to the moon," he says. "Depending on who you talk to, the cost could be $50,000 to $100,000."
Toutanji thinks those costs could be sidestepped by making concrete from moon dust, and moon dust alone.
Here on Earth, concrete is made from a pebbly aggregate bound together by water and cement. Lunar concrete could be made using plentiful moon dust as the aggregate, and binding it together using sulphur purified from lunar soil.
"You want the sulphur to be in a liquid or semi-liquid form to work as a binding agent," says Toutanji, which requires heating it to between 130 and 140 °C.
Once cooled, concrete made in that way quickly hardens like a rock. "Within an hour you get an ultimate-strength concrete," Toutanji says. "With normal concrete you have to wait seven days, in extreme cases even 28 days to get maximum strength."
To test the properties of lunar concrete, Toutanji and Richard Grugel, a geological engineer at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center, also in Huntsville, used a simulated lunar soil.
They added 35 grams of purified sulphur to every 100 grams of dust and cast the mix into a number of small cubes about 5cm on a side. Those were exposed to 50 cycles of severe temperature changes, each time frozen down to -27 °C and then warmed back to room temperature.
Even after that treatment the concrete could withstand compressive pressures of 17 megapascals (roughly 170 times atmospheric pressure). If the material is reinforced with silica, which can also be derived from moon dust, this can be raised to around 20 megapascals.
Moon mixer
Peter Chen of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, devised his own form of waterless concrete earlier this year, using epoxy as the binder.
"Toutanji and Grugel are of course correct in stating that, due to the high cost of going to the Moon, the amount of material to be transported must be kept to a minimum," he says.
Chen's concrete would require a supply of epoxy to be shipped to the moon, he concedes, but says once that is done it is simpler to make.
As well as a device to scoop up the soil, and a mixer to combine the soil and the epoxy, Toutanji and Grugel's concrete would also require a power source to bake sulphur out of lunar soil, and melt the concrete mixture, Chen points out.
But Toutanji thinks that those energy costs would still be lower than the costs of transporting raw material to the moon, although he has not worked out the logistics of powering the sulphur extraction and melting.
In the past researchers have claimed that temperatures of more than 1000 °C could be reached using solar furnaces that concentrate sunlight.
Wireless Power Spec Nears Completion, Official Logo Released
By Mark Hachman
A group of companies dedicated to wireless power has moved closer to a final specification, and set a procedure and logo in place for interoperability.
The Wireless Power Consortium specification announced version 0.95 on Monday, and released a "Qi" logo designed to alert consumers to wireless-power-enabled devices that can be used interchangeably. The word "Qi," (pronounced "chi") means "vital energy" in Chinese, and is often associated with the body's life force.
Fulton Innovation and its eCoupled technology is one of the leaders of the group, which also includes ConvenientPower, Duracell, Hosiden, Leggett & Platt, National Semiconductor, Olympus, Philips, Samsung, Sanyo, Shenzhen Sangfei Consumer Communications, ST-Ericsson, and Texas Instruments.
"In just seven months the Wireless Power Consortium has advanced the standard to 0.95 for interoperability testing and moved to trademark "Qi" as the first universal wireless power standard. These significant milestones have been achieved through strong collaboration among the Consortium members and pave the way for an accelerated 1.0 release schedule of the standard," Camille Tang, co-chair of Wireless Power Consortium's Promotion Work Group said.
A spokeswoman for the company said that consortium executives were unable to answer questions, as they were based in Hong Kong.
The interoperability test will be hosted in Eindhoven, The Netherlands, during the next consortium meeting and is open to existing and new members joining prior to 15 September 2009. Soon after that, the 1.0 specification is expected to be released, although the consortium did not say exactly when.
Wireless power can mean different things to different people; in this case, the technology refers to magnetic induction, which can charge a Qi-compatible device resting on a compatible power pad. WildCharger and PowerMat both use a power-charging surface, although both of the technologies aren't compatible with the eCoupled tech. To Intel, wireless power has been of a radient technology, beaming power across an air gap. The same principle guides PowerCast which used radio waves as a transmission medium. Neither of the latter three companies are part of the Wireless Power Consortium.
The Wireless Power Consortium technology is designed to provide up to 5 watts of power, enough to power a cell phone or an MP3 player, according to the consortium.
From
Sundown Lounge No. 189
Geeknotes:
Writing Classes from Fanstory and The Writer Mama
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Writing Classes - August / September
Writing Free Verse
In this class we will develop your ability to write free verse poetry. You will learn what free verse is as well as what free verse is not. You'll learn how to use it to express powerful feelings, and what's more to the point how to express feelings powerfully. Along the way we'll earn why 'free' verse is anything but; it's actually expensive, but darn well worth it.
Starts: August 19th
Seats Left: 7 seats.
Engage Readers with POV
You have a story idea, the plot and the planned twist ending have you itching to get it down on paper. But whose point of view will tell the tale? Establishing Point of View (POV) in prose and using it effectively engages readers. In this course, we will explore the nuances of point of view.
Starts: August 24th
Seats Left: 6 seats.
Write Flash Fiction
Good flash fiction advertises your writing skills and helps build a portfolio of published work. Stories of micro length (up to 300 words) and longer (up to 1000 words) are always in demand. Markets are available now--eager to accept original flash fiction stories.
Starts: August 30th
Seats Left: 2 seats.
That's why I created the Northwest Author Series, now going into our third year in my hometown of Wilsonville, Oregon.
During the selection process this time around, I was particularly looking for authors, who were experienced teachers. It's always challenging to choose from the proposals of my fellow authors but I'm very pleased with the way the 2009-2010 line-up turned out.
The series is growing in size and in momentum. If you live nearby, I'd love it if you came by for one or more of our events. You can catch the complete line-up over at the Northwest Author Series blog.
Our first author will be Y.A. author Laura Whitcomb speaking about Novel Shortcuts. If you want to receive announcements about each event, please sign up for the announcements at the blog.
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Research on Plastics that Conduct Electricity Receives Funds
Rhett Smith, a Clemson chemistry assistant professor, has been funded by the National Science Foundation CAREER Award to peruse his research regarding the new plastic material that can conduct electricity. The plastic material is said have enormous uses in a variety of applications like in thin, lightweight and flexible plastic electronic devices that include ultrathin, flexible television displays, computer screens and many other portable electronic devices.
However, the most important aspect of this research aims at utilizing this material to develop thin-film solar cells. There is no need to explain how these thin-film solar cells will contribute to the ongoing efforts to harness renewable energy from the sun. This special material is capable of absorbing and emitting different colors and therefore is ideal for the production of thin-film solar cells. The total amount of funding, that is $598,000, will assist Rhett to make further advancements in his studies of synthesis and applications of organic and inorganic materials for plastic electronic technologies.
3-D Printers Make Manufacturing Accessible
By Priya Ganapati
3-D printers can take blobs of plastic and shape them into almost any object you desire. Now, thanks to open source hardware designs and enthusiastic do-it-yourselfers, these printers are increasingly popular and accessible. People are using them to fabricate iPod docks, plastic bracelets, hair clips and miniature teapots at home.
The latest is Makerbot, a 3-D printer that started shipping in April and has sold more than 200 machines.
“You put it together, and it makes things for you,” says Bre Pettis, co-founder of Makerbot. “Engineers, artists, architects and designers are getting [Makerbots] to turn the things of their imagination into real, physical objects.”
Makerbot also has a vibrant online community that is sharing designs and tips on how to churn out shiny little toys in just a few hours.
3-D printers can make it as easy to create small objects out of plastic as it is to print text on a sheet of paper. But until recently, they cost a few thousand dollars, putting them of the reach of crafting enthusiasts. Now a wave of open source desktop prototyping devices such as Makerbot and RepRap are trying to change that. They are fairly inexpensive and backed by a robust community that is happy to share designs, tips and mods. Hobbyists call it ‘having China on your desktop.’
Makerbot is available at store.makerbot.com. It costs $750 for the basic kit and includes, among other things, three NEMA 17 motors to drive the machine; nuts, bolts, bearings, belts and pulleys to assemble it; an electronics motherboard; and a pinch-wheel extruder to shape objects. But if you want all the tools, cables and the power supply, the deluxe kit comes for $950.
Hobbyists must first assemble the Makerbot from the kit. It doesn’t require much beyond a soldering iron and some basic skills, says Pettis. Most of the electronic boards are pre-assembled and soldered, so users don’t have to do much beyond bolting the different parts together.
Once Makerbot is ready, it’s time to start printing. Users can feed in two kinds of plastics: ABS, the same material that Lego is made of, and HDPE, which is used in milk jugs. Based on the different open source designs available, they can create anything from plastic bracelets to salt and pepper shakers. Makerbot can create things up to 4 by 4 by 6 inches.
“We have a lot of users who come up with wacky items,” says Adam Mayer, a co-founder at Makerbot. “Someone printed a plug for his bath tub using the Makerbot.”
One of the first objects that Mayer created for his Makerbot machine was a ‘Utah teapot‘. The Utah teapot is a 3-D computer model of a teapot that is a standard reference object in the computer-graphics industry, explains Mayer.
“Whenever you have a computer-graphics textbook, there’s a Utah teapot in there,” says Mayer. “In movies, animators will sneak in a Utah-teapot image. I wanted to add a bottom to it and turn it into an object that can be printed off the Makerbot.”
Mayer’s Utah teapot design has been replicated by other Makerbot users. Because the Makerbot is open source, many of the designs for the objects are available online, and users can download and modify them.
Pettis and his team have created Thingiverse, a site to share the digital designs for Makerbot-created objects. Some ideas there can border on the bizarre. A Creative Commons–licensed model of Walt Disney’s head was recently uploaded to Thingiverse, combined with a model of his brain. The result is a Disney head, ready to be printed out in plastic, and in all its 3-D glory.
Last weekend, Makerbot Cupcake CNC got its own store on Etsy, an eBay-like site for handcrafted objects. The store is the first Etsy shop for 3-D printed goods, and it will carry items such as a monogrammed iPod dock.
“We will have just bot-made items in there,” says Will Langford, 18, a Makerbot user and now an intern at the company. “And keeping in mind the sensibilities of Etsy users, we will have jewelery and artistic items whose prices will be based on how long it takes to print them off the machine.”
For instance, an iPod dock, which takes about 30 minutes to print, is priced at $32.
Langford, 18, is one of the few users of the 3-D printers looking to take a shot at creating a business out of what has up to now been an extreme sport for hobbyists. He isn’t counting on making big bucks from his Makerbot Etsy store. It’s a way to get cool-looking 3-D printer products out to a larger audience, he says.
First Wi-Fi Pacemaker In US Allows Doctors To Monitor Health Over The Internet
After relying on a pacemaker for 20 years, Carol Kasyjanski has become the first American recipient of a wireless pacemaker that allows her doctor to monitor her health from afar — over the Internet.
When Kasyjanski heads to St. Francis Hospital in Roslyn, New York, for a routine check-up, about 90 percent of the work has already been done because her doctor logged into his computer and learned most of what he needed to know about his patient.
Three weeks ago Kasyjanski, 61, became the first person in the United States to be implanted with a pacemaker with a wireless home monitoring system that transmits critical information to her doctor via the Internet.
Kasyjanski, who has suffered from a severe heart condition for more than 20 years, says the device has given her renewed confidence and a new lease of life, because if her pacemaker were to malfunction or stop working, only immediate action would save her life.
“Years ago the problem was with my lead, it was nicked, and until I collapsed no one knew what the problem was, no tests would show what the problem was until I passed out,” she told Reuters Television.
Dr. Steven Greenberg, the director of St. Francis’ Arrhythmia and Pacemaker Center, said the new technology helps him better treat his patients and will likely become the new standard in pacemakers.
He said the server and the remote monitor communicate at least once a day to download all the relevant information and alert the doctor and patient if there is anything unusual.
“If there is anything abnormal, and we have a very intricate system set up, it will literally call the physician responsible at two in the morning if need be,” he said.
The wireless pacemaker, made by St. Jude Medical Inc., received FDA approval in July.
“It is a tremendous convenience for the patient from even interacting with a telephone to call the doctor,” he said.
“On a larger scale it enhances our ability to pick up and evaluate any problems with their pacemaker and certain other rhythm disorders that could be potentially dangerous or life threatening in ways we really could not do before.”
Kasyjanski, an account clerk, said it was frightening initially to be the first American patient to be implanted with the device but her fears have slowly been replaced by a sense of relief, knowing that her heart is under constant surveillance.
“Deep down I feel like I have gotten another chance,” she said. “Right now I feel like this is a new lease on life and I am here for my two children and my grandchildren and, God willing, I will be here for many more years to come.”
There are more than 3 million people internationally with pacemakers and 600,000 more are implanted each year.
Greenberg said wireless technology was likely to become far more common in patient care, and give physicians time to focus more on their patients as opposed to routine tests.
“In the future, these pacemakers may be placed not just for people with slow heartbeats. We may be monitoring high blood pressure, we may be measuring glucose, we may be monitoring heart failure,” he said,
“There are literally dozens of physiological parameters that now, with this wireless technology, we can leverage for the future of monitoring. So it is not just a rhythm monitor but a disease monitor.”
Molecular Condom Could Protect Women From HIV
A polymer gel that blocks viral particles could one day provide a way for women to protect themselves against HIV infection. The gel reacts with semen to form a tight mesh that blocks the movement of virus particles. The material, which is still in early development, could eventually be combined with antiviral gels currently in clinical trials to provide a dual defense against HIV.
Scientists have been working on microbicide gels for HIV for more than a decade. This type of prophylactic, which women could use without relying on their partners, is of particular interest in areas such as Sub-Saharan Africa, where HIV-infection rates are high and use of condoms is relatively low. But development has been slow–a number of products have failed clinical trials.
Most of the topical microbicides being tested for HIV prevention contain antiviral drugs designed to block replication of the virus once it infects a cell. The new gel, which is being developed by Patrick Kiser and colleagues at the University of Utah, in Salt Lake City, acts at the first stage of infection–when the virus moves from semen to the surface of vaginal tissue.
“This research stresses improvement not in the drugs but in the vehicle used to deliver the drugs,” says Ian McGowan, a physician and scientist at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center who was not involved in the research. “That’s a relatively neglected area, and the technology is quite exciting.”
Kiser and colleagues developed a gel from two polymers–PBA (phenylboronic acid) and SHA (salicylhydroxamic acid)–that can be spread around the vagina prior to intercourse. With the introduction of semen, the vagina reaches a higher pH level, causing molecules in the gel to bind together, creating a finer mesh that prevents HIV particles from passing through. “The idea is to use the trigger of semen to activate the gel and create a more effective barrier,” says Kiser.
In research published this week in the journal of Advanced Functional Materials, researchers showed in lab tests that the gel can block the movement of HIV particles, and that it appears safe when tested in human vaginal cells. The next step is to test the gel on human tissue collected from women who have had hysterectomies to show that it can prevent infection.
“It’s a very interesting approach to take advantage of normal vaginal physiology and alter it to inhibit HIV transmission,” says Craig Hoesley, an infectious-disease specialist at the University of Alabama, in Birmingham. But this might also prove troublesome. McGowan points out that the change in pH after intercouse can be variable, so researchers need to show that the gel can react under different chemical conditions.
Kiser and his team ultimately want to combine this type of gel with an antiviral drug in order to block both the movement of HIV and its replication. But extensive testing, including safety testing, remains to be done. For example, for use in Sub-Saharan Africa, the gel must be stable at different temperatures. “We will also need to see if it is compatible with antiviral drugs,” says McGowan.
From
Sundown Lounge No. 188
Geeknotes:
Book Soup Book Swap
PAHCOM
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Book Soup Book Swap
Date: August 15, 2009 01:00PM
Venue: Book Soup
Location: 8818 Sunset Blvd, Los Angeles, CA, The United States
Come join Goodreads and Book Soup for another fun book swap!
Bring all that embarrassing light summer reading you've been distracting yourself with and find something serious to take you into the fall...All leftover books will be donated to the new Silverlake Library. There will also be a DJ and the Kogi Taco Truck!
*To make sure that you receive all future invites to local events, please join the Goodreads Official Southern California Events group!
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From Podchick / SkyDiver Girls:
PAHCOM 21st Annual Conference, September 16-18, 2009, Phoenix, Arizona
PAHCOM is the Professional Association of Health Care Office Management. It's the largest and oldest association for the people who keep your doctor's offices running. The big annual shin dig is happening soon and I'd love for you to be there and forward this event information to others you may know in health care management. It's three days of fun and education but most importantly, networking!
If you have nothing to do with healthcare, please excuse my extra info on that but still accept my long belated hello to you. I miss my internet media and skydiving peeps a ton but have my hands full with healthcare for the next few months at least. I plan to send a proper "what's up" as soon as I can catch my breath.
xoxoxo KFC :-)
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Band Pluggers
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Venue Verite: Lands of the Midnight Sun Visual Essays
A visual essay presenting south-central Alaska in June. The video features the music of At the Still. The videography featured in this visual essay is from my documentary, Alaska: The Odds are Good and the Goods are Odd. (PetraDaher)
Tiny Battery Traps Solar Power To Run An Entire House
A small disc could be the solution for the efficient and cheap storage of the sun’s energy. A Utah-based company has found a new way to store solar energy – in a small ceramic disk which can store more power for less. Researchers at Ceramatec have created the disk, which can hold up to 20-kilowatt hours, enough to power an entire house for a large portion of the day.
The new battery runs on sodium-sulfur — a composition that typically operates at greater than 600°F. “Sodium-sulfur is more energetic than lead-acid, so if you can somehow get it to a lower temperature, it would be valuable for residential use”, Ralph Brodd, an independent energy conversion consultant, says.
Ceramatec’s new battery runs at less than 200°F. The secret is a thin ceramic membrane that is sandwiched between the sodium and sulfur. Only positive sodium ions can pass through, leaving electrons to create a useful electrical current.
Ceramatec says that batteries will be ready for market testing in 2011, and will sell for about $2000. The disk has not yet been manufactured for residential use, but the creators have spoken optimistically about the possibility.
The convergence of two key technologies — solar power and deep-storage batteries — has profound implications for oil-strapped the US.
“These batteries switch the whole dialogue to renewables,” said Daniel Nocera, professor of energy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who sits on Ceramatec’s advisory board. “They will turn us away from dumb technology, circa 1900 — a 110-year-old approach — and turn us forward.”
Living Near A Wind Farm Could Be Bad For Your Health
Living too close to wind turbines can cause heart disease, tinnitus, vertigo, panic attacks, migraines and sleep deprivation, according to new research by a leading American doctor.
Dr Nina Pierpont, a top New York paediatrician, has been studying the effects of living near wind turbines in the UK, US, Canada, Ireland and Italy for more than five years.
She has identified a new health risk – wind turbine syndrome (WTS) – causing a wide range of problems ranging from internal pulsation, quivering, nervousness, fear, chest tightness and tachycardia – increased heart rate.
Turbine noise can also cause nightmares and other disorders in children as well as harm development in the young, she claims, but points out that not all people living near turbines are at a high risk of developing problems.
Dr Pierpont’s studies indicate that humans are affected by low-frequency noise and vibrations from wind turbines through their ear bones, similar to fish and other amphibians.
‘It has been gospel among acousticians for years that if a person can’t hear a sound, it’s too weak for it to be detected or registered by any other part of the body,’ she said. ‘But this is no longer true. Humans can hear through the bones. This is amazing. It would be heretical if it hadn’t been shown in a well-conducted experiment.’
In the UK, Dr Christopher Hanning, founder of the British Sleep Society, who has also backed her research, said: ‘Dr Pierpont’s detailed recording of the harm caused by wind turbine noise will lay firm foundations for future research. It should be required reading for all planners considering wind farms.
‘Like so many earlier medical pioneers exposing the weaknesses of current orthodoxy, Dr Pierpont has been subject to much denigration and criticism and … it is tribute to her strength of character and conviction that this important book is going to reach publication,’ he added.
Until now, the Government and the wind companies have rejected any health risks associated with the powerful noises and vibrations from wind turbines. They have argued that claims by Dr Pierpont are “imaginary” and are likely to argue against her latest findings.
The American added that the wind turbine companies constantly argue that the health problems are “imaginary, psychosomatic or malingering”. But she said their claims are “rubbish” and that medical evidence supports that the reported symptoms are real.
‘The wind industry will try to discredit me and disparage me, but I can cope with that. she added. ‘This is not unlike the tobacco industry dismissing health issues from smoking. The wind industry, however, is not composed of clinicians, nor is it made up of people suffering from wind turbines.’
Lord May, the former chief scientific adviser to the UK government, describes her research as “impressive, interesting and important”.
Eating A Diet High In Fructose Impairs Memory
Researchers at Georgia State University have found that diets high in fructose — a type of sugar found in most processed foods and beverages — impaired the spatial memory of adult rats.
Amy Ross, a graduate student in the lab of Marise Parent, associate professor at Georgia State’s Neuroscience Institute and Department of Psychology, fed a group of Sprague-Dawley rats a diet where fructose represented 60 percent of calories ingested during the day.
She placed the rats in a pool of water to test their ability to learn to find a submerged platform, which allowed them to get out of the water. She then returned them to the pool two days later with no platform present to see if the rats could remember to swim to the platform’s location.
“What we discovered is that the fructose diet doesn’t affect their ability to learn,” Parent said. “But they can’t seem to remember as well where the platform was when you take it away. They swam more randomly than rats fed a control diet.”
Fructose, unlike another sugar, glucose, is processed almost solely by the liver, and produces an excessive amount of triglycerides — fat which get into the bloodstream. Triglycerides can interfere with insulin signaling in the brain, which plays a major role in brain cell survival and plasticity, or the ability for the brain to change based on new experiences.
Results were similar in adolescent rats, but it is unclear whether the effects of high fructose consumption are permanent, she said.
Parent’s lab works with Timothy Bartness, Regents’ Professor of Biology, and John Mielke of the University of Waterloo in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada to examine how diet influences brain function.
Although humans do not eat fructose in levels as high as rats in the experiments, the consumption of foods sweetened with fructose — which includes both common table sugar, fruit juice concentrates, as well as the much-maligned high fructose corn syrup — has been increasing steadily. High intake of fructose is associated with numerous health problems, including insulin insensitivity, type II diabetes, obesity and cardiovascular disease.
“The bottom line is that we were meant to have an apple a day as our source of fructose,” Parent said. “And now, we have fructose in almost everything.” Moderation is key, as well as exercise, she said.
Exercise is a next step in ongoing research, and Parent’s team will investigate whether exercise might mitigate the memory effects of high fructose intake. Her lab is also researching whether the intake of fish oil can prevent the increase of triglycerides and memory deficits. Results from that research will be presented by her graduate student Emily Bruggeman at the 2009 Society for Neuroscience meeting in Chicago this fall.
New Microbe Strain Makes More Electricity, Faster
In their most recent experiments with Geobacter, the sediment-loving microbe whose hairlike filaments help it to produce electric current from mud and wastewater, Derek Lovley and colleagues at the University of Massachusetts Amherst supervised the evolution of a new strain that dramatically increases power output per cell and overall bulk power. It also works with a thinner biofilm than earlier strains, cutting the time to reach electricity-producing concentrations on the electrode.
“This new study shows that output can be boosted and it gives us good insights into what it will take to genetically select a higher-power organism.” The work, supported by the Office of Naval Research and the U.S. Department of Energy, is described in the August issue of the journal, Biosensors and Bioelectronics, now available online.
Findings open the door to improved microbial fuel cell architecture and should lead to “new applications that extend well beyond extracting electricity from mud,” Lovley says. In the new experiments, the UMass Amherst researchers adapted the microbe’s environment, which pushed it to adapt more efficient electric current transfer methods.
“In very short order we increased the power output by eight-fold, as a conservative estimate,” says Lovley. “With this, we’ve broken through the plateau in power production that’s been holding us back in recent years.” Now, planning can move forward to design microbial fuel cells that convert waste water and renewable biomass to electricity, treat a single home’s waste while producing localized power (especially attractive in developing countries), power mobile electronics, vehicles and implanted medical devices, and drive bioremediation of contaminated environments.
Geobacter’s hairlike pili are extremely fine, only 3 to 5 nanometers in diameter or about 20,000 times finer than a human hair, and more than a thousand times longer than they are wide. Nevertheless, they are strong. Nicknamed nanowires for their role in moving electrons, pili are the secret to this particular microbe’s ability to produce electric current from organic waste and sediment. Geobacter’s pili seem critical for forming the biofilm which aids transfer of the electron products to iron in soil and sediment. In nature, bacteria colonies form gluey biofilms to anchor to a surface such as a tooth or an underwater rock, providing a living environment near a food source.
The Geobacter biofilm’s “fortuitous” electron-transferring skill, the product of natural selection, suggested a pathway to Lovley―a way he might use selective pressure to increase its capacity to produce power. He and colleagues grew Geobacter as usual on a graphite electrode, providing acetate as food and allowing a colony to form the biologically active slime, or biofilm where electron transfer takes place across the nanowires. But for this new experiment they added a tiny, 400-millivolt “pushback” current in the electrode that forced Geobacter to press harder to get rid of its electrons.
The result of providing a more challenging environment, within five short months, Lovley notes, was evolution of a beefed-up microorganism that can press at least eight times more electric current across the electrode than the original strain. “I’m really happy with this outcome,” the microbiologist notes. “It’s exceptionally fast feedback to us and a very satisfying result.” He adds, “I’m still a little amazed that they make electricity, but I’m happy to be exploring how to harness that ability. I’m sure there’ll be applications developed in the future that we can’t even envision right now.”
Lovley’s first experiments with the anaerobic microbe, Geobacter, which he and colleagues discovered in sediment under the Potomac River in 1987, explored its use in decontaminating soil due to its ability to respire iron and other metals the way we breathe oxygen. Geobacter showed promise for a variety of bioremediation tasks, but the microbiologists further discovered in 2002 that it could produce electricity from the organic matter found in soils, sediments and wastewater. This ability appeared to be a feature of the electrically conductive pili, discovered in 2005. Together, these discoveries have led to intense research on how to harness the microbes for producing electricity in microbial fuel cells.
Microbial fuel cells, which convert fuel to electricity without combustion, consist of an electrode known as an anode that accepts electrons from the microorganisms, and another electrode known as a cathode, which transfers electrons onto oxygen. Electrons flow between the anode and the cathode to provide the current that can be harvested to power electronic devices.
photo: Dr. Hana Yi takes a reading from fuel cells. (Credit: Image courtesy of University of Massachusetts Amherst)
From
Sundown Lounge No. 187
Geeknotes:
Cram 6 - The Uncensored Edition
Wade Riddle at Moving Arts
Screamfest Call for Film and Screenplay Submissions
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From the Chicago Tribune:
John Dickson, 1916-2009: Poet, grain trader
By Trevor Jensen | Tribune reporter
July 29, 2009
John Dickson, who traded grain on the floor of the Chicago Board of Trade, wrote poetry that won awards and was published in prestigious magazines and literary journals.
Mr. Dickson, 93, died of natural causes Sunday, July 26, at his Evanston home, said his daughter Susan Olenick.
Mr. Dickson wrote poems and short stories throughout his career as a trader, then turned to writing full time after selling his seat on the Board of Trade around 1979.
Hundreds of poems were published in national periodicals like Harper's and Poetry, and his work was collected in books that included "Lake Michigan Scrolls" and "Waving at Trains."
His poetry employed a meter he compared to the rhythm of his breathing, said his daughter Patty Dickson Pieczka, and it covered memories from a lifetime in the Chicago area as well as sharply insightful takes on the mundane matters of everyday life.
In his poem "Beware of Learning Basic Truths," for example, he tells of boarding a "melancholy subway/full of commuters you'd rather not know."
But the poem's subject later sees a photograph of his fellow passengers, which makes him "realize what a dull clod you've been/needing a camera to tell you what you've been looking at."
He always kept a pencil and note pad in the breast pocket of his shirt to capture observations that might later appear in his poems.
"Sometimes at dinner, he'd just start laughing and scribble something down," Pieczka said.
Outgoing by nature, he wrote in local restaurants, but also painstakingly worked out his poetry in longhand while sitting on his front porch, in his backyard, and sometimes the attic, later typing out the poems.
He read publicly often, including the poetry slam at the Green Mill tavern in Uptown. A member of various groups and workshops, he taught at area schools, including his alma mater, New Trier High School.
Dickson Grain, where he worked as a trader, was his father's firm. Mr. Dickson grew up in Chicago and on the North Shore. He attended Furman College in South Carolina, where he long said his initial tuition was paid for with the earnings of a daily double won by his dad.
World War II found him in Colorado, fixing planes for the Army.
He won top honors in a number of poetry competitions and in 1990 received a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts.
Virginia, his wife of 61 years, died in May.
Mr. Dickson is also survived by another daughter, Judy Kinsell; and a sister, Jane Clark.
Services are being planned.
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Cram 6: The Uncensored Edition will be given away free to the public on Friday, July 31, exclusively at this year's Printers Ball; everyone is invited to take one while supplies last. Poets with work included in Cram 6 may pick up copies at the Printers Ball during the Printers Pageant Poetry Cram, from 5 to 6 PM on the eighth floor of 1104 S. Wabash. Poets with work in the book who can't make the release event may request a copy to be mailed to them free of charge.
A limited number of copies are being set aside for those who would like additional Crams sent by mail. In the past, the mail order copies have disappeared within a matter of days, so if you would like to order additional copies, or if you have friends who would like a copy sent by mail, get your orders in ASAP. We expect ALL copies of Cram 6 to be in the hands of the public by August 1st.
Screamfest Call for Film and Screenplay Submissions
The 9th Annual Screamfest Horror Film Festival & Screenplay Competition takes place Oct. 16th – 25th 2009 @ Grauman’s Mann Chinese 6 at Hollywood and Highland in Hollywood. The Call For Entries deadline is approaching for new horror feature films, shorts and feature length screenplays. FINAL Film and Screenplay submission deadline is August 15th. Feature Film judges include producers Craig Perry (Final Destination) and Sean Cunningham (Friday The 13th, The Last House On The Left). Short Films will be judged by Clive Barker's Seraphim Films. Winning screenplay receives a $1,000 cash prize and Movie Magic software. Screamfest is sponsored by Write Brothers, Baseline, and Zodiac Vodka
For more info on Screamfest visit www.screamfestla.com
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Students Embed Stem Cells In Sutures To Enhance Healing
Johns Hopkins biomedical engineering students have demonstrated a practical way to embed a patient’s own adult stem cells in the surgical thread that doctors use to repair serious orthopedic injuries such as ruptured tendons. The goal, the students said, is to enhance healing and reduce the likelihood of re-injury without changing the surgical procedure itself.
The project team — 10 undergraduates sponsored by Bioactive Surgical Inc., a Maryland medical technology company — won first place in the recent Design Day 2009 competition conducted by the university’s Department of Biomedical Engineering. In collaboration with orthopedic physicians, the students have begun testing the stem cell–bearing sutures in an animal model, paving the way for possible human trials within about five years.
The students believe this technology has great promise for the treatment of debilitating tendon, ligament and muscle injuries, often sports-related, that affect thousands of young and middle-aged adults annually. “Using sutures that carry stems cells to the injury site would not change the way surgeons repair the injury,” said Matt Rubashkin, the student team leader, “but we believe the stem cells will significantly speed up and improve the healing process. And because the stem cells will come from the patient, there should be no rejection problems.”
The corporate sponsor, Bioactive Surgical, developed the patent-pending concept for a new way to embed stem cells in sutures during the surgical process. The company then enlisted the student team to assemble and test a prototype to demonstrate that the concept was sound. The undergraduates performed this work during the yearlong Design Team course, required by the school’s Biomedical Engineering Department.
The undergraduate team located a machine that could weave surgical thread in a way that would ensure the most effective delivery and long-term survival of the stem cells. The team conducted some aspects of the animal testing, although orthopedic physicians performed the surgical procedures. The students also prepared grant applications, seeking funding for additional testing of the technology, in collaboration with Bioactive Surgical.
“The students did a phenomenal job,” said Richard H. Spedden, chief executive officer of Bioactive Surgical.
As envisioned by the company and the students, a doctor would withdraw bone marrow containing stem cells from a patient’s hip while the patient was under anesthesia. The stem cells would then be embedded in the novel suture through a quick and easily performed proprietary process. The surgeon would then stitch together the ruptured Achilles tendon or other injury in the conventional manner but using the sutures embedded with stem cells.
At the site of the injury, the stem cells are expected to reduce inflammation and release growth factor proteins that speed up the healing, enhancing the prospects for a full recovery and reducing the likelihood of re-injury. The team’s preliminary experiments in an animal model have yielded promising results, indicating that the stem cells attached to the sutures can survive the surgical process and retain the ability to turn into replacement tissue, such as tendon or cartilage.
If similar results occur in future human testing, many patients may benefit. Researching the business opportunity, the students found that about 46,000 people in the United States undergo Achilles tendon repair surgery every year, with a mean age between 30 and 50 years old. The operation and subsequent therapy costs are about $40,000 per case, the students said. “After surgery, the recovery process can take up to a year. In about 20 percent of the cases, the surgery fails, and another operation is needed,” said Rubashkin, a Barrington, Ill., resident who will begin his senior year at Johns Hopkins in the fall. “Anything we can do to speed up the healing and lower the failure rate and the additional medical costs could make a big difference.”
Lew Schon, a leading Baltimore foot and ankle surgeon and one of the inventors of the technology, said, “These students have demonstrated an amazing amount of initiative and leadership in all aspects of this project, including actually producing the suture and designing the ensuing mechanical, cell-based and animal trials.” Schon, who also is an assistant professor of orthopedic surgery in the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, added that “the students exceeded all expectations. They have probably cut at least a year off of the development time of this technology, and they are definitely advancing the science in this emerging area.”
The biomedical engineering students say some of their grant applications are aimed at studying the use of stem cell–bearing sutures for other orthopedic applications, such as rotator cuff repairs. Future uses in cardiology and obstetrics are also being considered.
Along with Rubashkin, undergraduate members of the stem cell suture design team were David Attarzadeh, Raghav Badrinath, Kristie Charoen, Stephanie D’Souza, Hayley Osen, Frank Qin, Avik Som, Steven Su and Lawrence Wei.
A provisional patent has been filed covering potential improvements by the members of the Johns Hopkins student design team to the stem cell–bearing suture technology.
Ants More Rational Than Humans?
In a study released online on July 22 in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society: Biological Sciences, researchers at Arizona State University and Princeton University show that ants can accomplish a task more rationally than our – multimodal, egg-headed, tool-using, bipedal, opposing-thumbed – selves.
This is not the case of humans being “stupider” than ants. Humans and animals simply often make irrational choices when faced with very challenging decisions, note the study’s architects Stephen Pratt and Susan Edwards.
“This paradoxical outcome is based on apparent constraint: most individual ants know of only a single option, and the colony’s collective choice self-organizes from interactions among many poorly-informed ants,” says Pratt, an assistant professor in the School of Life Sciences in ASU’s College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.
The authors’ insights arose from an examination of the process of nest selection in the ant, Temnothorax curvispinosus. These ant colonies live in small cavities, as small as an acorn, and are skillful in finding new places to roost. The challenge before the colony was to “choose” a nest, when offered two options with very similar advantages.
What the authors found is that in collective decision-making in ants, the lack of individual options translated into more accurate outcomes by minimizing the chances for individuals to make mistakes. A “wisdom of crowds” approach emerges, Pratt believes.
“Rationality in this case should be thought of as meaning that a decision-maker, who is trying to maximize something, should simply be consistent in its preferences.” Pratt says. “For animals trying to maximize their fitness, for example, they should always rank options, whether these are food sources, mates, or nest sites, according to their fitness contribution.”
“Which means that it would be irrational to prefer choice ‘A’ to ‘B’ on Tuesday and then to prefer ‘B’ to ‘A’ on Wednesday, if the fitness returns of the two options have not changed.”
“Typically we think having many individual options, strategies and approaches are beneficial,” Pratt adds, “but irrational errors are more likely to arise when individuals make direct comparisons among options.”
Studies of how or why irrationality arises can give insight into cognitive mechanisms and constraints, as well as how collective decision making occurs. Insights such as Pratt’s and Edward’s could also translate into new approaches in the development of artificial intelligence.
“A key idea in collective robotics is that the individual robots can be relatively simple and unsophisticated, but you can still get a complex, intelligent result out of the whole group,” says Pratt. “The ability to function without complex central control is really desirable in an artificial system and the idea that limitations at the individual level can actually help at the group level is potentially very useful.” Pratt is a member of Heterogeneous Unmanned Networked Team (HUNT), a project funded by the Office of Naval Research (ONR) to enable to development of bio-inspired solutions to engineering problems.
What do these findings potentially say about understanding human social systems?
“It is hard to say. But it’s at least worth entertaining the possibility that some strategic limitation on individual knowledge could improve the performance of a large and complex group that is trying to accomplish something collectively,” Pratt says.
Transparent Aluminum Is ‘New State Of Matter’
Oxford scientists have created a transparent form of aluminium by bombarding the metal with the world’s most powerful soft X-ray laser. ‘Transparent aluminium’ previously only existed in science fiction, featuring in the movie Star Trek IV, but the real material is an exotic new state of matter with implications for planetary science and nuclear fusion.
In the journal Nature Physics an international team, led by Oxford University scientists, report that a short pulse from the FLASH laser ‘knocked out’ a core electron from every aluminium atom in a sample without disrupting the metal’s crystalline structure. This turned the aluminium nearly invisible to extreme ultraviolet radiation.
”What we have created is a completely new state of matter nobody has seen before,’ said Professor Justin Wark of Oxford University’s Department of Physics, one of the authors of the paper. ‘Transparent aluminium is just the start. The physical properties of the matter we are creating are relevant to the conditions inside large planets, and we also hope that by studying it we can gain a greater understanding of what is going on during the creation of ‘miniature stars’ created by high-power laser implosions, which may one day allow the power of nuclear fusion to be harnessed here on Earth.’
The discovery was made possible with the development of a new source of radiation that is ten billion times brighter than any synchrotron in the world (such as the UK’s Diamond Light Source). The FLASH laser, based in Hamburg, Germany, produces extremely brief pulses of soft X-ray light, each of which is more powerful than the output of a power plant that provides electricity to a whole city.
The Oxford team, along with their international colleagues, focused all this power down into a spot with a diameter less than a twentieth of the width of a human hair. At such high intensities the aluminium turned transparent.
Whilst the invisible effect lasted for only an extremely brief period – an estimated 40 femtoseconds – it demonstrates that such an exotic state of matter can be created using very high power X-ray sources.
Professor Wark added: ‘What is particularly remarkable about our experiment is that we have turned ordinary aluminium into this exotic new material in a single step by using this very powerful laser. For a brief period the sample looks and behaves in every way like a new form of matter. In certain respects, the way it reacts is as though we had changed every aluminium atom into silicon: it’s almost as surprising as finding that you can turn lead into gold with light!’
The researchers believe that the new approach is an ideal way to create and study such exotic states of matter and will lead to further work relevant to areas as diverse as planetary science, astrophysics and nuclear fusion power.
A report of the research, ‘Turning solid aluminium transparent by intense soft X-ray photoionization’, is published in Nature Physics. The research was carried out by an international team led by Oxford University scientists Professor Justin Wark, Dr Bob Nagler, Dr Gianluca Gregori, William Murphy, Sam Vinko and Thomas Whitcher.
Artificial Brain In 10 Years
A detailed, functional artificial human brain can be built within the next 10 years, a leading scientist has claimed. Henry Markram, director of the Blue Brain Project, has already simulated elements of a rat brain. He told the TED Global conference in Oxford that a synthetic human brain would be of particular use finding treatments for mental illnesses.
Around two billion people are thought to suffer some kind of brain impairment, he said. “It is not impossible to build a human brain and we can do it in 10 years,” he said. “And if we do succeed, we will send a hologram to TED to talk.”
‘Shared fabric’
The Blue Brain project was launched in 2005 and aims to reverse engineer the mammalian brain from laboratory data. In particular, his team has focused on the neocortical column – repetitive units of the mammalian brain known as the neocortex.
“It’s a new brain,” he explained. “The mammals needed it because they had to cope with parenthood, social interactions complex cognitive functions. “It was so successful an evolution from mouse to man it expanded about a thousand fold in terms of the numbers of units to produce this almost frightening organ.” And that evolution continues, he said. “It is evolving at an enormous speed.”
Over the last 15 years, Professor Markram and his team have picked apart the structure of the neocortical column. “It’s a bit like going and cataloguing a bit of the rainforest – how may trees does it have, what shape are the trees, how many of each type of tree do we have, what is the position of the trees,” he said. “But it is a bit more than cataloguing because you have to describe and discover all the rules of communication, the rules of connectivity.”
The project now has a software model of “tens of thousands” of neurons – each one of which is different – which has allowed them to digitally construct an artificial neocortical column. Although each neuron is unique, the team has found the patterns of circuitry in different brains have common patterns. “Even though your brain may be smaller, bigger, may have different morphologies of neurons – we do actually share the same fabric,” he said. “And we think this is species specific, which could explain why we can’t communicate across species.”
World view
To make the model come alive, the team feeds the models and a few algorithms into a supercomputer. You need one laptop to do all the calculations for one neuron,” he said. “So you need ten thousand laptops.” Instead, he uses an IBM Blue Gene machine with 10,000 processors. Simulations have started to give the researchers clues about how the brain works. For example, they can show the brain a picture – say, of a flower – and follow the electrical activity in the machine. “You excite the system and it actually creates its own representation,” he said. Ultimately, the aim would be to extract that representation and project it so that researchers could see directly how a brain perceives the world.
But as well as advancing neuroscience and philosophy, the Blue Brain project has other practical applications. For example, by pooling all the world’s neuroscience data on animals – to create a “Noah’s Ark”, researchers may be able to build animal models. “We cannot keep on doing animal experiments forever,” said Professor Markram. It may also give researchers new insights into diseases of the brain. “There are two billion people on the planet affected by mental disorder,” he told the audience. The project may give insights into new treatments, he said.
The TED Global conference runs from 21 to 24 July in Oxford, UK
From
Sundown Lounge No. 186
Geeknotes:
Quinta do Agrinho
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The Quinta do Agrinho is part of a group of enterprises concerned with the environment protection and supportive of the preservation, as well in the respect for natural spaces. All our facilities reflect our concern on reducing the impact of the local environment.
Since 1995, the Quinta do Agrinho, located in the surrounding area of the National Park of Peneda Gerês and the Caniçada dam, is elected by hundreds of national and foreign nature lovers to spend their holidays or weekends.
Inspired by the luxuriant spectacle of the Gerês mountain range, our farm is a continuous invitation for a weekend in family or for some quiet holidays, where welcome, comfort and diversion are not left at random.
If you drive on the road from Amares to Gerês, along the Caniçada dam, you won’t become aware of the existence of these centenary rural houses, carefully rebuilt by using the original materials – granite and wood.
These infrastructures, surrounded by the property vegetation, save the visitors a singular privacy and a dream landscape over the Caniçada lagoon.
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New Twists In DNA Model
At one point in time in my graduate studies, I stopped being surprised at weird biological discoveries because, as one of my college professors said, when it comes to science, “there’s an exception to every rule, including this one” (think about it for a minute).
But this discovery by Morris Schweitzer and colleagues at McGill University and Montreal’s Jewish General Hospital revealed something that is mind boggling: your DNA may not be the same in different cells in your body:
Research by a group of Montreal scientists calls into question one of the most basic assumptions of human genetics: that when it comes to DNA, every cell in the body is essentially identical to every other cell.
Except for cancer, samples of diseased tissue are difficult or even impossible to take from living patients. Thus, the vast majority of genetic samples used in large-scale studies come in the form of blood. However, if it turns out that blood and tissue cells do not match genetically, these ambitious and expensive genome-wide association studies may prove to have been essentially flawed from the outset.
Potential Neuropoison Could Be in Our Food
By Brandon Keim
One of the most comprehensive analyses yet of human exposure to PBDEs, or polybrominated diphenyl ethers, shows that the chemical — long used in everything from computers to sleeping bags — enters humans through their diets, not just their household.
“The more meat you eat, the more PBDEs you have in your serum,” said Alicia Fraser, an environmental health researcher at Boston University’s School of Public Health who headed the new study, published this month in Environmental Health Perspectives.
PBDEs are chemical cousins of polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, which are known to cause birth defects and neurological impairments. PCBs were banned throughout the world by the mid-1970s, when PBDEs were gaining popularity as flame retardants. PBDEs were soon found in most plastic-containing household products.
By the late 1990s, trace amounts of PBDEs had been found in people all over the world, with the highest exposures measured in the United States. Researchers became nervous: Low doses caused neurological damage in laboratory animals, and the highest human PBDE levels were found in breast mil
Whether PBDEs posed an immediate threat to humans was uncertain. Direct testing is unethical, and population-wide epidemiological studies are difficult to run. But there’s enough reason for concern that the European Union banned two of the three most common PBDE formulations in 2004.
The Environmental Protection Agency, which in January admitted that it lacked the ability to establish basic standards of chemical safety, has not followed suit, but three states — California, Washington and Maine — have banned PBDEs since 2007. Many manufacturers have either stopped or plan on stopping their use.
“They are persistent in the environment. They don’t get broken down. Therefore, it takes a really long time for the contamination to leave our environment and our bodies,” said Fraser. “Even though we don’t know the health effects at this point, most people would want policies that would stop us from being exposed to them.”
But though well-advised, these bans won’t eliminate the threat. Most PBDE exposure research has focused on how people can absorb it from dust and other indoor sources that would ostensibly be eliminated once PBDE-containing products were discarded. Much less attention has been paid to PBDEs in food.
Fraser’s team analyzed biological samples from 2,000 people, provided by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The same data was used in 2004 to establish baseline estimates of PBDE exposure in Americans, but that study didn’t look for patterns in food consumption. Fraser’s team found that PBDE levels were 25 percent higher in meat-eaters than vegetarians.
Though the channels of food contamination by PBDEs haven’t been conclusively established, it’s possible that “the old products are being moved to landfills, and PBDEs could enter the environment that way,” said Fraser. Earlier this year, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced that PBDEs were present in all U.S. coastal waters and the Great Lakes, with the highest levels found near urban and industrial areas.
That PBDEs would be highest in meat products makes sense, as the chemicals accumulate in fat, and it wouldn’t be hard for PBDEs to enter their feed and water.
Fraser suggested that the United States adopt chemical regulations similar to those in the European Union, which in 2007 mandated that chemicals be thoroughly tested and proven safe before used. That’s the opposite of the U.S. system, where chemicals are assumed to be safe until it’s proved otherwise.
“The industry is finding new products to use as flame retardants, and we don’t know the health and safety implications of those products either,” said Fraser. “We need to test the health and safety implications of products before they go into use, not after.”
Tsunami Risk for West Coast Higher Than Expected
In 1964, a magnitude 9.2 earthquake off the coast of Alaska generated a wall of water more than 40 feet high that hit Alaska, Oregon and parts of California, killing 130 people and causing hundreds of millions of dollars in damage. Now, geologists say an even bigger tsunami could someday be in store for the West Coast.
The 1964 earthquake occurred in the Aleutian subduction zone, where the Pacific plate is being pushed beneath the North American continent. When scientists studied evidence of older quakes in the Aleutian zone and the subduction zone immediately to the east, they found the two have ruptured simultaneously in the past. Because the size of an earthquake depends in part on the length of the fault that breaks, together these fault zones are capable of a more massive jolt.
“People knew that there’s a section of fault that extends to the east that generates earthquakes,” said geologist Ronald Bruhn of the University of Utah, who co-authored the paper published January in Quaternary Science Reviews. “But they hadn’t made the connection or had the dating information to link it to the big Aleutian subduction zone.”
Just east of the Aleutian zone, the Pacific plate is being pushed beneath a relatively small chunk of continent called the Yakutat microplate. When Bruhn and his colleagues compared evidence of past earthquakes preserved in the sediments of the two regions using radiocarbon dating, they discovered that at least twice in the past 1,500 years, both faults appear to have ruptured at once.
Tsunamis form when a major earthquake causes a sudden rise or fall in the sea floor which rapidly displaces a large amount of water. A simultaneous rupture of the faults could lead to a far larger earthquake — and more devastating tsunami — than the one in 1964. Because the Yakutat microplate lies beneath a very shallow section of the Pacific Ocean, an earthquake in this region would create a particularly massive wave.
“Try putting your hand at the bottom of a deep bathtub,” Bruhn said. “Then all of a sudden raise it up with your palm facing up — that disturbance will create a bit of turbulence. But if you place your hand in shallow water, and raise it up to do the same thing, you’ll get a considerably larger surface disturbance.”
In addition, the transition from shallow water in the Yakutat region to the much deeper ocean covering the Aleutian zone could create the perfect environment for underwater landslides, which would then generate even more big waves. Without creating numerical models, geologists can’t estimate exactly how big a multi-segment tsunami might be, but they think the damage could be devastating.
“California, and particularly San Francisco, is most vulnerable from tsunamis originating from earthquakes in the Aleutians, among all possible tsunamis emanating from the different subduction zones around the Pacific,” said geologist Costas Synolakis, director of the Tsunami Research Center at the University of Southern California, who was not involved in the research.
A multi-segment earthquake like the one described in the paper could produce waves in excess of 30 centimeters off the San Francisco coast, Synolakis said, and small waves on the open ocean become huge waves as they get close to shore. For example, the massive 2004 Sumatra tsunami, which killed more than 300,000 people, had a height of only 60 centimeters on the open ocean. “A 30-centimeter tsunami a few miles offshore the Golden Gate is something to worry about,” Synolakis said. “What’s new here is the evidence that Sumatra-style events are not only possible but likely.”
From
Sundown Lounge No. 185
Geeknotes:
Chi-town Poetry News, Book Update
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Chi-town Poetry News
DAVID HERNANDEZ AT GREEN MILL
Hey everybody-This sunday, July 19, 7p.m. at the
Uptown Poetry Slam in the Greenmill Lounge on
Broadway & Lawrence Ave. I will be doing a feature
performance with my music group Street Sounday.
It's $6 at the door so come by!
david
David Hernandez - Famous Poet
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MORE NATIVE AMERICAN SLAM POETRY
The Newberry Library's D'Arcy McNickle Center for
American Indian
History Presents
Moccasins and Microphones: Poetry Performance by
the Santa Fe
Indian School Spoken Word Team
Newberry Library Lobby
60 West Walton Street
Free admission
The Spoken Word Team is a group of indigenous
youth writers who
are nationally recognized for their performances
of poetry
incorporating Native languages and philosophies. A
team member
has been the New Mexico State Champion of Poetry
Out Loud, a
national recitation contest sponsored by the
National Endowment
for the Arts for four consecutive years,
2006-2009. In 2008, the
two team captains placed first and second
respectively in the
Native American Student Art Competition sponsored
by the US
Office of Indian Education. In 2009, SFIS students
won six of
nine possible prizes in this same national
contest. The Santa Fe
Indian School is a flagship school in Native
education that is
owned and operated by the 19 Pueblos of New Mexico
as a sovereign
territory. The student body includes youth from
these 19 Pueblo
communities and also has significant populations
of Navajo and
Apache students.
Monday, July 20, 6:00 PM
The student body includes youth from these 19
Pueblo communities and also has significant
populations
of Navajo and Apache students.
Woman Made Gallery is proud to present Her Mark
2010, a publication with art and poetry by 48
women. Juror Maria Elena Buszek made the art
selections, and Maureen Seaton juried the poetry
entries. Designed by Karin Kuzniar and edited by
Marty Bash, Her Mark 2010 includes a layout with
color reproductions, poetry, and weekly calendar
pages with holidays and moon cycles.
In addition to the publication, WMG hosts an
exhibition featuring most of the Her Mark 2010
artworks. The Artist Reception is on July 31st
from 6 to 9 p.m. The Release Party and Reading is
on August 2 from 2 to 4 p.m. Her Mark 2010 copies
are available at the Artist Reception and Release
Party or may be ordered for $15 per copy plus
shipping. Please contact WMG by phone,
312-738-0400, or by email, gallery@womanmade.org.
Visual Artists who have their work in Her Mark
2010: Grazyna Adamska-Jarecka, Adriana Baltazar,
Barbara Ciurej and Lindsay Lochman, Crisanta de
Guzman, Kathleen Elliot, Rebecca Rose Greene,
Judithe Hernández, Anjani Khanna, Margaret
LeJeune, Aliza Lelah, Suyeon Na, Bonnie Peterson,
Shari Pettis, Tara Polansky, Melissa Shook, Alice
Simpson, Sylvia Steen, Verna Todd, Kate True, Iris
Vazquez, Amy Wainwright, Angilee Wilkerson,
Beatrice Wolert, and Elizabeth Wuerffel.
Poets included in Her Mark 2010: Beverly Boyd,
Rosemary Ann Davis, Kelley Evans, Veer-Tess Frost,
Jane Ellen Glasser, Ona Gritz, H.K. Hummel, Kiki
Vera Johnson, Laurie Junkins, Elizabeth
Kerlikowske, Anna Leahy, Christine McKee, Coco
Owen, Maureen Piggins, JC Reilly, Susan
Richardson, cin salach, Mary Kolada Scott, Sheri
Sorvillo, Judith Terzi, Judith Valente, Gale Renee
Walden, Rachel Jamison Webster, and Andrena
Zawinski.
Exhibition Dates: July 31 - August 27, 2009
Release Party: August 2, 2009 - 2-4 p.m.
Her Mark 2010 Release Party & Reading
August 2 / 2-4 p.m.
Join curator Nina Corwin and a group of fabulous
poets for this special Release Party and Reading
while the Her Mark 2010 exhibition is on display.
The reading takes place on August 2, 2009 from 2
to 4 p.m at Woman Made Gallery, 685 N. Milwaukee
Ave., Chicago, IL 60642. The event is free to the
public, and refreshments will be served
685 N. Milwaukee Avenue
============================
JOB OPENING
Project Director
Literacy and Health Education Programs
The Gwendolyn Brooks Center for Black Literature
and Creative Writing at Chicago State University
Since its inception, the Gwendolyn Brooks Center
for Black Literature and Creative Writing at
Chicago State University has supported projects
that use literary and artistic approaches to
address social justice issues. For five years,
the Center’s focus has been the HIV/AIDS Youth
Prevention Education Program (H.Y.P.E.) which
targets teenagers and young adults. Our HIV Youth
Prevention Education (H.Y.P.E.) program’s mission
is to educate high school students, adult
learners, and the local community through creative
literacy programs. These programs focus on HIV
prevention and care as well as cultural
sensitivity and the removal of stigmas.
The artistic nature of the project requires the
inclusion of artists with a variety of backgrounds
and extensive experience in education. The
Project Director will provide management of the
project including logistics, marketing and
technical support. This individual will also be
the liaison between the Center’s Literacy and
Health Education programs, the schools and other
venues, and guide the educational focus. The
Project Director will be responsible for the
HIV/AIDS education component of the project. The
Project Director should have leadership abilities
and managerial expertise to implement and further
the goals of the Center’s Literacy and Health
Education programs and aid the Brooks Center in
sustaining this important work. The Project
Director will work effectively as part of a team
of Brooks Center staff and CSU administrators. The
Project Director reports to the director of the
Gwendolyn Brooks Center.
Duties
· Manage H.Y.P.E programs, most notably the
Positive Poetry Performance Troupes.
· Help identify and guide a core group of teaching
artists and serve as the conduit between the
artistic staff and Brooks Center/CSU
administrative staff.
· Aid in the establishment of a sustained and
replicable model for using the arts focusing
particularly on the literature and social justice
emphasis of Gwendolyn Brooks and other like-minded
writers and artists.
· Oversee the creation and publication of a third
international anthology of creative writing from
people of color on HIV/AIDS.
· Participate in/contribute to planning for the
expansion of GBC social justice programs.
· Enthusiastically promote partnerships, programs,
and projects to be pursued by the Brooks Center in
an effort to further the work of Gwendolyn Brooks
and Brooks Center programming.
· As meeting with administrators from schools and
other venues is critical to the success of these
programs, the Project Director must own a car and
possess a valid driver’s license and automobile
insurance.
Qualifications
· A minimum of five years experience in non-profit
or arts management
· A minimum of five years experience working in
educational settings
· Must be extremely organized and capable of
independent thought and multi-tasking
· Advanced knowledge of Chicago Public Schools and
the Chicago Artistic and Non-profit Communities
· Advanced knowledge of literature and the arts
· Must be an effective communicator in all
mediums.
· Strong administrative skills
· M.A., M.F.A. or Ph.D. preferred
Salary:
This is a full-time consultant position, renewed
annually. Salary negotiable.
Application:
Chicago State University is an equal opportunity
employer.
Interested applicants should mail a cover letter,
a C.V./résumé, and a list of personal references
to:
Quraysh Ali Lansana, Director
The Gwendolyn Brooks Center for Black Literature
and Creative Writing
Associate Professor of English and Creative
Writing
Chicago State University
Douglas Hall 210-A
9501 S. King Drive
Chicago, IL 60628-1598
The deadline for applications is August 7, 2009.
The start date is September 1, 2009.
=================================
POETRY WANTED FOR DYLAN THOMAS CABARET
Caffeine Theatre seeks short original performance
pieces of all kinds (music, dance, theatre, spoken
word, poetry, etc.) for the Dylan Thomas
Coffeehouse Cabaret, September 9, 2009, at 7pm in
the Storefront Theater Mezzanine (in the Loop, at
66 E Randolph). The Coffeehouse Cabaret
celebrates the work of Welsh poet and playwright
Dylan Thomas. Any and all pieces inspired by
Thomas’ life, work, or themes are welcome.
Out-of-Chicago artists are encouraged to send a
script, music, poem, etc. to be performed/directed
by in-town artists. Collaborations with Chicago
arts organizations are welcome and encouraged.
Please email a 1-2 page proposal (or, if the
written piece already exists, send that) to
Artistic Director Jennifer Shook at
jen@caffeinetheatre.com including (with
understanding that transformation occurs in
process) a description of your proposed piece, how
many people you expect to be involved, estimated
length, and any required resources.
(Consideration will be given to minimal pieces
with brief setup and small spatial needs.) Please
use “Coffeehouse submission” in the subject
heading.
Some rehearsal space will be available on a
first-come basis. Casting assistance is also
available as required and appropriate.
The Dylan Thomas Coffeehouse Cabaret is produced
in association with the Chicago Department of
Cultural Affairs and in conjunction with
Caffeine’s production of Dylan Thomas’ Under Milk
Wood, running at the Storefront Theater August
21-September 27.
SUBMISSION DEADLINE: August 5, 2009.
Accepted pieces will be notified by August 12,
2009.
Caffeine also seeks original poetry for Eli
Jenkins’ Five and Country Senses poetry
competition. Submissions may include any size or
style of poem, as long as it is inspired in some
way by Dylan Thomas’ life or work, or in some way
speaks in conversation with that life or work.
Winners will be posted and podcast on Caffeine’s
website, and performed at the Dylan Thomas
Coffeehouse Cabaret on September 9. Any new or
previously written poem may be submitted (provided
it can be republished/ recorded/performed).
TO SUBMIT: Email poem(s) and 3-5 sentence
description of relation to Dylan Thomas to
Caffeine Theatre Artistic Director Jennifer Shook
at jen@caffeinetheatre.com with “Eli Jenkins” in
the subject heading.
DEADLINE: August 16, 2009.
===================================
WIN FIFTY BUCKS AT WEEDS!!!
1555 N. DAYTON
MON JULY 20
friends, colleagues and country folks...
i hope one and all are having a wonderful journey
thru this our new rainy season...i've used this
new found adventure as a way to keep from cutting
the grass...and my new hobby par excellent...is
watching the weeds grow...
ah!!! and speaking of "weeds" here is a reminder
for this coming monday...in this economy not fit
even for stray dogs...you can actually be the
winner of 50 bucks, buckaroos, half a "c"
note...for the best "off the wall poem"...
so come on by sit right down and register between
9 and 10pm...first poet will be on the mike by
10pm; come hell or high water...last poet by
10:45...(which means there's a limited number of
slots) and the judges will retire and unanomisly
choose a winning poem...
open mike will continue soon after the last poet
contestent reads...
when the judges makes their determination of a
winner...i will announce it and present the "prize
money"...to the lucky winner...
looking forward to seeing you at weeds...
the ghost who walks
www.geocities.com/weedspoetry
=================================
TRAGIC NEWS
The Passing of Joe Cytrynbaum
July 2009
Dear YCA Family,
It is with a very heavy heart that I have to
inform all of you of the unexpected death of Joe
Cytrynbaum. A member of the YCA board and former
head of Umoja, Joe was instrumental in turning
LTAB into what it is today - especially the parts
of it that matter: the promotion of beauty,
change, understanding - the love. As one of our
LTAB coaches just remarked, "Joe was everything
that is good about YCA and Umoja. A huge loss to
our community and to future generations."
A note from Mariah Neuroth at Umoja:
"As many of you have heard, Joe Cytrynbaum
underwent emergency surgery after a bleed was
detected in his brain on Thursday July 9th and
passed away Friday night at 7pm. Joe has donated
every single organ and it has been amazing how
every organ has been matched, which apparently
rarely happens. His memorial service will be on
Thursday at 4 p.m at the Jewish Reconstructionist
Congregation in Evanston at 303 Dodge."
YCA and Umoja are in the beginning processes of
organizing a scholarship fund in Joe's name, as
well as a poetry and remembrance reading in the
Fall. Of course we are naming LTAB's Coach of the
Year Award after Joe, and of course this is all
cold comfort in the face of such a loss. I
encourage anyone to send me your remembrances of
Joe, which I hope to compile for the Fall event.
Those who are his friend on Facebook have begun
posting these remembrances already, and reading
them is a bitter joy. For a community of
story-tellers, sometimes the only thing we can do
in the face of life is tell some stories. Bitter
joy is still joy.
More details to come. Please be there for someone
and each other.
With our love,
YCA
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
In book news, I put up the latest podcast novel stats on Bastille Day, and I just got word that Cyber PR, the outfit I still slip and call Ariel Publicity, is going to start repping authors, including self-published writers like myself. That's excellent.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Plantagon: Dome Farm of the Future
Lots of cities have farmers markets, but most — if not all — of the produce comes from rural farmers that use oil-intensive methods of transportation to cart around their food. With 80% of all people on the planet projected to live in cities by 2050, food production will have to move into cities if it is to remain cost-efficient. A Swedish-American company called Plantagon has conceived of an incredible solution: a massive urban greenhouse contained within a geodesic dome. The vertical farm, which consists of a spiral ramp inside a spherical dome, is currently in the development stages.
According to Plantagon, the farm “will dramatically change the way we produce organic and functional food. It allows us to produce ecological with clean air and water inside urban environments, even major cities, cutting costs and environmental damage by eliminating transportation and deliver directly to consumers. This is due to the efficiency and productivity of the Plantagon® greenhouse which makes it economically possible to finance each greenhouse from its own sales.”
No word on how exactly the Plantagon system works, but the company says that consulting engineering firm Sweco has helped untangle the technical kinks of the project. Plantagon hopes to have its first vertical farm up and running within three years.
It Doesn’t Pay To Be Intelligent
If you’re so smart, why aren’t you rich? Although money and mental muscles may seem a natural match, brains, alas, may be more hindrance than help when it comes to getting rich, concludes a new study in the journal Intelligence. ”It is still not well understood why some people are rich and others are poor,” writes study author Jay Zagorsky of Ohio State University. “Luck, timing, parents, choice of spouse and many other factors play important roles in shaping an individual’s circumstances,” he acknowledges in his study, which looks for a link between intelligence scores, wages and wealth.
Past analyses have mostly just looked at income, with studies of World War II veterans finding a link between smarts and a better salary. The controversial 1994 book, The Bell Curve, by Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray, went further, arguing that few high-IQ types end up in poverty. Within a few years, that conclusion was later found lacking by Cornell University economist John Cawley and others.
But what good is it to be smart and have a better salary if you end up broke or spending it all on credit card bills? asks Zagorsky. Looking at the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979’s latest round of survey answers from more than 7,000 randomly-selected participants, he tries to tackle the question of whether better IQs lead to bulging bank accounts and less bankruptcy. (Funded by the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics, the NLSY 1979 has questioned the same people 21 times from 1979 to 2004, with participants now ranging in age from 33 to 41 and almost evenly split between men and women.)
The answer is no. “Being more intelligent does not confer any advantage along two of the three key dimensions of financial success (income, net worth and financial distress),” Zagorsky finds, looking at the data with statistical tests.
Income does weakly correspond to intelligence test scores, he finds, where “a one point increase in IQ test scores is related to an income increase of $346 per year. But at most, that same one-point increase in IQ leads to “a net worth increase of at most $83, but probably zero.”
And when it comes to financial distress, smarts are no help at all. People with 140 IQ scores (a score of 100 is average) missed payments and maxed-out their credit cards more often than their lower IQ counterparts. They went bankrupt at a rate, 14.1%, close to the rate of people with an IQ of 80, 15.2%. “Only among people slightly above-average does an increasing IQ score lead to a reduced chance of financial distress,” says the study. “The survey provides no data to explain why this occurs,” but Zagorsky offers these explanations for High IQ types getting into financial hot water:
— They might be busier and less focused on routines like paying bills.
— They might lead a lifestyle that is closer to the financial precipice because they feel they are smart enough to get away with the risks of credit card spending and saving less.
— They may have a better memory and are more likely to remember financial mistakes on their surveys.
So much for smarts. On the plus side, Zagorsky’s study does offer some comfort for those of us less IQ-endowed folks. “Since intelligence is not a factor for explaining wealth,” he writes, “individuals with low intelligence should not believe they are handicapped in achieving financial success, nor should high intelligence people believe they have an advantage.”
Solar-Powered Houseboat Can Survive the Harshness of the Ocean
Presently all houseboat designs limit innovation and their travel is limited to calm waterways, rivers, inlets and bays. The reason you can’t take your houseboat to the open ocean is that their flat bottom top heavy design provides no underlying support, which is necessary to prevent it from rocking wildly on larger waves.
Industrial designer Orhan Cileli has come up with an ingenious way to allow you to enjoy the ocean in a houseboat. The concept design promotes maneuverability and internal aesthetics. Inspired by a fishing bobber, half the home remains submerged and the other half stays above sea level with a large flotation ring placed at the beltline. This ring also serves as an exterior deck for lounging and docking other vessels.
This houseboat provides protection in ways unseen. Using high tensile reinforced acrylic curved panes, the resilience of this new material will not shatter under high volume pressure. The acrylic exterior also allows rainwater to ride into a channel, which then sends it to a storage reservoir, where it is purified and made fit for drinking and gardening.
Before the sun can directly penetrate the home, it must first trickle through the garden and render itself useful for the solar powered reinforcement beams and as natural, renewable energy for the plants and thin bed of grass. Since half the home is submerged, water touching the acrylic serves as cooling system which also lowers heat emissions.
The house reserves the fourth floor for engines and other equipment. The natural oceanic currents combined with small secondary solar driven turbines provide enough power to propel the home. When questioning navigation, one should consider the home as a sailboat rather than a speeder.
The home carries a transient feel empowering the user to enjoy the seas and get closer to nature while retaining traditional home qualities. This state of the art, environmentally friendly home is the quintessential answer to many yet-resolved nautical issues.
On Saturday the 11th, I received an email from Manko Eponymous with background info about his partner Kaihea and the whole story behind "Kaihealoha," "Eliseo," and the whole long strange sweet sad journey...
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Band Plugs:
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
ALICE PEACOCK RELEASES “LOVE REMAINS”
TO PLAY McCABE’s GUITAR SHOP IN SANTA MONICA ON JULY 19TH
July 3, 2009 (New York, NY) Alice Peacock has hit the ground running with the recent release of her new cd, “Love Remains”.
She’s looking forward to her upcoming Santa Monica Show at McCabe’s Guitar Shop on July 19th. Producer Danny Myrick helps to set this disc apart from prior releases by giving it a ’70s, California-country sound not unlike that of Linda Ronstadt during her Stone Ponies phase. Her fourth release celebrates faith and human connection with buoyant, outwardly focused lyrics, feel-good guitar hooks and heartland grooves. The skilled ensemble that helped achieve this family-style hootenanny includes players who’ve worked with the likes of Emmylou Harris, Willie Nelson, Linda Ronstadt, Brooks & Dunn, LeAnn Rimes and Gretchen Wilson. Boston’s Weekly Dig weighs in; “On Love Remains, Peacock shows off her airtight songwriting chops, and proves she can dance back and forth around a hook.”
Working with co-writer/co-producer Danny Myrick – who, like Alice, is the child of a minister – Peacock found herself addressing issues of faith in myriad ways on Love Remains, on songs like the anthemic “If I Could Talk To God,” the rollicking “Real Life,” the expansive, gospel-inflected “Trying To Hold Back Time,” the punchy, resolute “Forgiveness,” the devastating, indelible “I Am Mary” and the timeless-sounding title track.
“Can music change the world?/Yeah, I think it can,” Peacock sings in “Forgiveness.” Love Remains is a testament to the transformative power of love, belief and song.
For media requests please contact: Pati deVries patideVries@deviousplanet.com
917-751-2532
And the press raves:
“‘The record's got pop, it's got twang, it's got pedal steel reveries, it's got deeply soulful meditations, with a little bit of boot-scooting Tennessee, a little bit of kissing-in-the-sunshine SoCal, and a whole lotta sassysexycool Peacock.”
· BLURT MAGAZINE
“Superior singer/songwriter opts for a California country-rock sound on her new "Love Remains" album, with pedal-steel-scored songs worthy of comparison to the best of Sheryl Crow and Linda Ronstadt.”
* PHILADELPHIA DAILY NEWS
ALICE PEACOCK ON TOUR
07.19 Santa Monica, CA McCabe’s Guitar Shop
07.21 Santa Barbara, CA Soho Lounge
09.12 Pittsburgh, PA Club Cafe
09.26 St Croix, WI St Croix Festival Theatre
10.03 Chicago, IL Olde Towne School of Folk
10.23 South Haven, MI Foundry Hall
10.24 Scotville, MJ Centerstage
11.21 Atlanta, GA Eddie’s Attic
=========================
For one night and one night only, Urban Twang becomes Suburban Twang when we make a foray in to the suburbs to appear at Gabe's Backstage Lounge in Highwood IL (The entertainment capital of the North Shore). We have some new songs and a new attitude. Okay, we're still bitter and cranky so it will just be new songs.
Urban Twang
This Saturday, July 11
9 p.m. Set Time
Gabe's Backstage Lounge
Lounge 214 Green Bay Rd.
Highwood, IL 60040
The Urban Twang song "Better Days" is available for sale on iTunes and CD Baby.
It is part of the Fabsound Fights Autism album which benefits a non-profit organization that was developed to raise money to assist in providing therapy for developmentally delayed children. These include traditional therapies such as speech, occupational and developmental therapy as well as applied behavioral analysis, auditory and visual, integration therapies, RDI and nutritional/dietary therapies.
Date: July 16, 2009 08:15PM
Venue: Mar Vista Branch Library
Location: 12006 Venice Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA
Summer is the perfect time of year to dive into a good book!
Please bring books you'd like to share and leave with some brand new summer reading material. All remaining books will be donated to the Mar Vista branch. Author Lisa See will also be at the event signing her new book, Shanghai Girls!
This swap is in partnership with Young Literati (a fund raising organization for the Los Angeles Public Library). If you are interested, you can join this members-only organization at the end of this event.
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Tue July 14: Guild Complex Gwendolyn Brooks Open Mic Award
Medical Marijuana, Inc. (OTC: MJNA), an Oregon Corporation, was founded in March 2009 for the purpose of providing advanced business solutions to the rapidly expanding Medical Marijuana industry.
Los Angeles City Council Member Bill Rosendahl demanding a tax solution formula for medical Marijuana co-ops followed by Medical Marijuana, Inc. CEO Bruce Perlowin offering the patented tax solution, Tax Remittance Cards.
Quantrek is a 501(c)3 and a 509(a)1 tax-exempt publicly supported non-profit charitable organization. Its mission is to help humanity realize its highest hopes, dreams and visions for the best possible future. It aspires to do this by engendering unity, cooperation and collaboration on a global scale using the tools of science and the existing body of academic knowledge to enhance awareness and understanding of the nature of existence and the meaning and purpose of life.
Quantrek is dedicated to public education and scientific research focused on the science of consciousness and cutting edge quantum physics, specifically focused on the Quantum Hologram (QH) theory.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Happy birthday Nikola Tesla!
Human Sperm Created In A Lab
Researchers led by Professor Karim Nayernia at Newcastle University and the NorthEast England Stem Cell Institute (NESCI) have developed a new technique which has made the creation of human sperm possible in the laboratory.
The work is published today (8th July 2009) in the academic journal Stem Cells and Development.
The NorthEast England Stem Cell Institute (NESCI) is a collaboration between Newcastle and Durham Universities, Newcastle NHS Foundation Trust and other partners.
Professor Nayernia says: “This is an important development as it will allow researchers to study in detail how sperm forms and lead to a better understanding of infertility in men – why it happens and what is causing it. This understanding could help us develop new ways to help couples suffering infertility so they can have a child which is genetically their own.”
“It will also allow scientists to study how cells involved in reproduction are affected by toxins, for example, why young boys with leukaemia who undergo chemotherapy can become infertile for life – and possibly lead us to a solution.”
The team also believe that studying the process of forming sperm could lead to a better understanding of how genetic diseases are passed on.
In the technique developed at Newcastle, stem cells with XY chromosomes (male) were developed into germline stem cells which were then prompted to complete meiosis – cell division with halving of the chromosome set. These were shown to produce fully mature, sperm called scientifically, In Vitro Derived sperm (IVD sperm).
In contrast, stem cells with XX chromosomes (female) were prompted to form early stage sperm, spermatagonia, but did not progress further. This demonstrates to researchers that the genes on a Y chromosome are essential for meiosis and for sperm maturation.
IVD sperm
The IVD sperm will not and cannot be used for fertility treatment. As well as being prohibited by UK law, the research team say fertilization of human eggs and implantation of embryos would hold no scientific merit for them as they want to study the process as a model for research.
“While we can understand that some people may have concerns, this does not mean that humans can be produced ‘in a dish’ and we have no intention of doing this. This work is a way of investigating why some people are infertile and the reasons behind it. If we have a better understanding of what’s going on it could lead to new ways of treating infertility,” adds Professor Nayernia.
Technique
The Newcastle University team have developed a method for establishing early stage sperm from human embryonic stem cells in the laboratory.
The embryonic stem cells were cultured in a new medium containing vitamin A derivative (retinoic acid), in a new technique established by the team. Based on this technique, the cells differentiated into germline stem cells.
These expressed a protein which was stained with a green fluorescent marker and they were separated out by FACSTM (Fluorescence-activated cell sorting) using a laser.
After further differentiation, these in vitro derived germline stem cells expressed markers which are specific to primordial germ cells, spermatogonial stem cells, meiotic (spermatocytes) and post meiotic germ cells (spermatids and sperm).
These results indicated maturation of the primordial germ cells to haploid male gametes – called IVD sperm – characterised by containing half a chromosome set (23 chromosomes).
Tweel: Innovative Airless Tire
Tweel is an innovative tire design created by Michelin. The tire uses no air and therefore cannot burst or become flat.
Instead, Tweel’s base is connected to shock-absorbing polyurethane spokes which are used to support the outer rim.
Ultimate Memory Enhancer Discovered
Imagine if you could look at something once and remember it forever. You would never have to ask for directions again. Now a group of scientists has isolated a protein that mega-boosts your ability to remember what you see.
A group of Spanish researchers reported today in Science that they may have stumbled upon a substance that could become the ultimate memory-enhancer. The group was studying a poorly-understood region of the visual cortex. They found that if they boosted production of a protein called RGS-14 (pictured) in that area of the visual cortex in mice, it dramatically affected the animals’ ability to remember objects they had seen.
Mice with the RGS-14 boost could remember objects they had seen for up to two months. Ordinarily the same mice would only be able to remember these objects for about an hour.
The researchers concluded that this region of the visual cortex, known as layer six of region V2, is responsible for creating visual memories. When the region is removed, mice can no longer remember any object they see.
If this protein boosts visual memory in humans, the implications are staggering. In their paper, the researchers say that it could be used as a memory-enhancer – which seems like an understatement. What’s particularly intriguing is the fact that this protein works on visual memory only. So as I mentioned earlier, it would be perfect for mapping. It would also be useful for engineers and architects who need to hold a lot of visual images in their minds at once. And it would also be a great drug for detectives and spies.
Could it also be a way to gain photographic memory? For example, if I look at a page of text will I remember the words perfectly? Or will I simply remember how the page looked?
I can’t see much of a downside for this potential drug, unless the act of not forgetting what you see causes problems or trauma.
TIME IS ALSO RUNNING OUT TO SEE THE LAST POWELL'S READING
Next week's reading with Jenny Magnus, Abbra
Aducci, and Chris Bower will most certainly be our
last. Please see the details for that show below
and attached.
POWELL'S NORTH READING SERIES
TUESDAY JUNE 30TH, 2009: 7 PM
JENNY MAGNUS
POWELL'S BOOKSTORE
2850 N. LINCOLN (773) 248-1444
On a personal note, it's been two weeks now that my old TV has become a video game terminal and my television viewing has dropped by about 70%. What I've been missing is a ton of commercials, reruns and product placements masquerading as news. What I've gained is more real news from the world, I discovered ESPN360 so I get daily Cubs reports again, and TV now is one big podcasting smorgasborg. Now if we just had more poetry channels...
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‘Chemical Nose’ May Sniff Out Cancer Earlier
Using a “chemical nose” array of nanoparticles and polymers, researchers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst have developed a fundamentally new, more effective way to differentiate not only between healthy and cancerous cells but also between metastatic and non-metastatic cancer cells. It’s a tool that could revolutionize cancer detection and treatment, according to chemist Vincent Rotello and cancer specialist Joseph Jerry.
An article describing Rotello and colleagues’ new chemical nose method of cancer detection appears in the June 23 issue of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences online.
Currently, detecting cancer via cell surface biomarkers has taken what’s known as the “lock and key” approach. Drawbacks of this method include that foreknowledge of the biomarker is required. Also, as Rotello explains, a cancer cell has the same biomarkers on its surface as a healthy cell, but in different concentrations, a maddeningly small difference that can be very difficult to detect. “You often don’t get a big signal for the presence of cancer,” he notes. “It’s a subtle thing.”
He adds, “Our new method uses an array of sensors to recognize not only known cancer types, but it signals that abnormal cells are present. That is, the chemical nose can simply tell us something isn’t right, like a ‘check engine light,’ though it may never have encountered that type before.” Further, the chemical nose can be designed to alert doctors of the most invasive cancer types, those for which early treatment is crucial.
In blinded experiments in four human cancer cell lines (cervical, liver, testis and breast), as well as in three metastatic breast cell lines, and in normal cells, the new detection technique correctly indicated not only the presence of cancer cells in a sample but also identified primary cancer vs. metastatic disease.
In further experiments to rule out the possibility that the chemical nose had simply detected individual differences in cells from different donors, the researchers repeated the experiments in skin cells from three groups of cloned BALB /c mice: healthy animals, those with primary cancer and those with metastatic disease. Once again, it worked. “This result is key,” says Rotello. “It shows that we can differentiate between the the three cell types in a single individual using the chemical nose approach.”
Rotello’s research team, with colleagues at the Georgia Institute of Technology, designed the new detection system by combining three gold nanoparticles that have special affinity for the surface of chemically abnormal cells, plus a polymer known as PPE, or para-phenyleneethynylene. As the ‘check engine light,’ PPE fluoresces or glows when displaced from the nanoparticle surface.
By adding PPE bound with gold nanoparticles to human cells incubating in wells on a culture plate, the researchers induce a response called “competitive binding.” Cell surfaces bind the nanoparticles, displacing the PPE from the surface. This turns on PPE’s fluorescent switch. Cells are then identified from the patterns generated by different particle-PPE systems.
Rotello says the chemical nose approach is so named because it works like a human nose, which is arrayed with hundreds of very selective chemical receptors. These bind with thousands of different chemicals in the air, some more strongly than others, in the endless combination we encounter. The receptors report instantly to the brain, which recognizes patterns such as, for example, “French fries,” or it creates a new smell pattern.
Chemical receptors in the nose plus the brain’s pattern recognition skills together are incredibly sensitive at detecting subtly different combinations, Rotello notes. We routinely detect the presence of tiny numbers of bacteria in meat that’s going bad, for instance. Like a human nose, the chemical version being developed for use in cancer also remembers patterns experienced, even if only once, and creates a new one when needed.
For the future, Rotello says further studies will be undertaken in an animal model to see if the chemical nose approach can identify cell status in real tissue. Also, more work is required to learn how to train the chemical nose’s sensors to give more precise information to physicians who will be making judgment calls about patients’ cancer treatment. But the future is promising, he adds. “We’re getting complete identification now, and this can be improved by adding more and different nanoparticles. So far we’ve experimented with only three, and there are hundreds more we can make.”
Morning People And Night Owls Show Different Brain Function
Are you a “morning person” or a “night owl?”
Scientists at the University of Alberta have found that there are significant differences in the way our brains function depending on whether we’re early risers or night owls.
Neuroscientists in the Faculty of Physical Education and Recreation looked at two groups of people: those who wake up early and feel most productive in the morning, and those who were identified as evening people, those who typically felt livelier at night. Study participants were initially grouped after completing a standardized questionnaire about their habits.
Using magnetic resonance imaging-guided brain stimulation, scientists tested muscle torque and the excitability of pathways through the spinal cord and brain. They found that morning people’s brains were most excitable at 9 a.m. This slowly decreased through the day. It was the polar opposite for evening people, whose brains were most excitable at 9 p.m.
Other major findings:
* Evening people became physically stronger throughout the day, but the maximum amount of force morning people could produce remained the same.
* The excitability of reflex pathways that travel through the spinal cord increased over the day for both groups.
* These findings show that nervous-system functions are different and have implications for maximizing human performance.
Their findings were published in the June edition of the Journal of Biological Rhythms.
The research team included students Alex Tamm, Olle Lagerquist, technician Alex Ley and neuroscientist Dave Collins.
Dinosaurs May Have Been Smaller Than Previously Thought
The largest animals ever to have walked the face of the earth may not have been as big as previously thought, reveals a paper published June 21 in the Zoological Society of London’s Journal of Zoology.
Scientists have discovered that the original statistical model used to calculate dinosaur mass is flawed, suggesting dinosaurs have been oversized.
Widely cited estimates for the mass of Apatosaurus louisae, one of the largest of the dinosaurs, may be double that of its actual mass (38 tonnes vs. 18 tonnes).
“Paleontologists have for 25 years used a published statistical model to estimate body weight of giant dinosaurs and other extraordinarily large animals in extinct lineages. By re-examining data in the original reference sample, we show that the statistical model is seriously flawed and that the giant dinosaurs probably were only about half as heavy as is generally believed” says Gary Packard from Colorado State University.
The new predictions have implications for numerous theories about the biology of dinosaurs, ranging from their energy metabolism to their food requirements and to their modes of locomotion.
Cows Bred To Burp Less Will Reduce Greenhouse Gases
A prototype cow which burps less is being bred in a breakthrough that could reduce a big source of the greenhouse gases responsible for global warming.
The farm animals are responsible for nearly three-quarters of total methane emissions.
Most of the gas comes from bovine burps, which are 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas.
Stephen Moore, a professor at the University of Alberta in Canada, is examining the genes responsible for methane produced from the animal’s four stomachs in order to breed more efficient, environmentally friendly cows.
He completed tests using traditional techniques to breed efficient animals that produce 25 per cent less methane than less efficient animals.
‘We are working on producing diagnostic markers (clues to medical causes) for efficient animals,’ said Moore.
‘We are looking at the next generation of technologies that will enable us to determine the genetics of an animal through a blood test or testing some hairs that you might pluck from the animal.’
Farmers could shrink their cattle’s ecological footprint by breeding cows that grow faster, so reducing the time spent standing in fields. Cattle could also be bred to become more efficient in converting feed into muscle and producing less methane and waste, said Moore.
Another method already being used to reduce methane emissions is feeding livestock a diet higher in energy and rich in edible oils, which ferment less than grass or low-quality feed.
New Hampshire-based Stonyfield Farm, an organic yogurt producer in which Groupe Danone holds a majority stake, reduced emissions from their cows on an average of 12 percent by adding alfalfa, flax or hemp to livestock feed on a small number of its farms.
‘If every U.S. dairy farmer reduced emissions by 12 per cent it would be equal to about half a million cars being taken off the road,’ said Nancy Hirshberg, vice president of Stonyfield’s Natural Resources department.
More work needs to be done before the long-term impact is known. Professor Moore’s study was published earlier this year in the Journal of Animal Science.
Orange Solar Tent Concept Revealed
Orange is really going for it with its Glastonbury sponsorship this year. As well as the power pump mobile charger, the GlastoNav mobile app and that spot the bull comp that’s ongoing, it’s unveiled the “tent of the future” concept design.
Using “cutting edge eco-energy technology”, the Orange Solar Concept Tent, created along with US company Kaleidoscope, would allow campers to power their essential camping gadgets and keep in touch.
Further to the similar concept canvas shown off in 2003, this model gets photovoltaic fabric in three “glides” that move throughout the day to capture the sun’s energy and use it to various techie ends.
The “glo-cation” feature would see the tent glowing when the camper texts it or gets near to it (thanks to RFID), so the tent could be located in the dark, while at night a special groundsheet would provide underfloor heating.
At the heart of the Concept Tent is a central wireless control hub with a touchscreen display that provides Wi-Fi, as well as offering a wireless charging pouch with magnetic induction.
Evolution Can Occur In Less Than 10 Years, Guppy Study Finds
How fast can evolution take place? In just a few years, according to a new study on guppies led by UC Riverside’s Swanne Gordon, a graduate student in biology.
Gordon and her colleagues studied guppies — small fresh-water fish biologists have studied for long — from the Yarra River, Trinidad. They introduced the guppies into the nearby Damier River, in a section above a barrier waterfall that excluded all predators. The guppies and their descendents also colonized the lower portion of the stream, below the barrier waterfall, that contained natural predators.
Eight years later (less than 30 guppy generations), the researchers found that the guppies in the low-predation environment above the barrier waterfall had adapted to their new environment by producing larger and fewer offspring with each reproductive cycle. No such adaptation was seen in the guppies that colonized the high-predation environment below the barrier waterfall.
“High-predation females invest more resources into current reproduction because a high rate of mortality, driven by predators, means these females may not get another chance to reproduce,” explained Gordon, who works in the lab of David Reznick, a professor of biology. “Low-predation females, on the other hand, produce larger embryos because the larger babies are more competitive in the resource-limited environments typical of low-predation sites. Moreover, low-predation females produce fewer embryos not only because they have larger embryos but also because they invest fewer resources in current reproduction.”
Natural guppy populations can be divided into two basic types. High-predation populations are usually found in the downstream reaches of rivers, where they coexist with predatory fishes that have strong effects on guppy demographics. Low-predation populations are typically found in upstream tributaries above barrier waterfalls, where strong predatory fishes are absent. Researchers have found that this broad contrast in predation regime has driven the evolution of many adaptive differences between the two guppy types in color, morphology, behavior, and life history.
Gordon’s research team performed a second experiment to measure how well adapted to survival the new population of guppies were. To this end, they introduced two new sets of guppies, one from a portion of the Yarra River that contained predators and one from a predator-free tributary to the Yarra River into the high-and low-predation environments in the Damier River.
They found that the resident, locally adapted guppies were significantly more likely to survive a four-week time period than the guppies from the two sites on the Yarra River. This was especially true for juveniles. The adapted population of juveniles showed a 54-59 percent increase in survival rate compared to their counterparts from the newly introduced group.
“This shows that adaptive change can improve survival rates after fewer than ten years in a new environment,” Gordon said. “It shows, too, that evolution might sometimes influence population dynamics in the face of environmental change.”
She was joined in the study by Reznick and Michael Bryant of UCR; Michael Kinnison and Dylan Weese of the University of Maine, Orono; Katja Räsänen of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Zurich, and the Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology, Dübendorf; and Nathan Miller and Andrew Hendry of McGill University, Canada.
World’s First Mass-Produced Zero Emission Car To Hit Roads Soon
The world’s first mass-produced zero-emission minicar, the “i-MiEV”, is all set to debut in Japan next month, which promises to usher in a new age of driving that does not require fossil fuel.
Developed by the Mitsubishi Motors Corporation, the car has neither an engine nor a muffler and does not need an internal combustion engine because it runs on a motor charged with electricity.
The i-MiEV can travel 160 kilometers on its lithium-ion battery pack, but it will take 14 hours to fully recharge the battery from a 100-volt household power outlet.
It emits no carbon dioxide. Even when taking into account CO2 emissions at the power plants that generate the power needed for charging the car, it emits only about one-third of the CO2 of a gasoline minicar.
Drilling May Be Behind Texas Earthquakes
The earth moved here on June 2. It was the first recorded earthquake in this Texas town’s 140-year history - but not the last.
There have been four small earthquakes since, none with a magnitude greater than 2.8. The most recent ones came Tuesday night, just as the City Council was meeting in an emergency session to discuss what to do about the ground moving.
The council’s solution was to hire a geology consultant to try to answer the question on everyone’s mind: Is natural gas drilling - which began in earnest here in 2001 and has brought great prosperity to Cleburne and other towns across North Texas - causing the quakes?
“I think John Q. Public thinks there is a correlation with drilling,” Mayor Ted Reynolds said. “We haven’t had a quake in recorded history, and all the sudden you drill and there are earthquakes.”
At issue is a drilling practice called “fracking,” in which water is injected into the ground at high pressure to fracture the layers of shale and release natural gas trapped in the rock.
There is no consensus among scientists about whether the practice is contributing to the quakes. But such seismic activity was once rare in Texas and seems to be increasing lately, lending support to the theory that drilling is having a destabilizing effect.
On May 16, three small quakes shook Bedford, a suburb of Dallas and Fort Worth. Two small earthquakes hit nearby Grand Prairie and Irving on Oct. 31, and again on Nov. 1.
The towns sit upon the Barnett Shale, a geologic formation that is perhaps the nation’s richest natural gas field. The area is estimated to have 30 trillion cubic feet of recoverable gas and provides about 7 percent of the country’s supply.
The drilling’s economic impact has been significant, because gas companies pay signing bonuses and royalties to property owners for the right to drill beneath their land. Signing bonuses climbed to around $25,000 an acre at the boom’s peak.
Cleburne agreed to lease the mineral rights in the earliest stages of the frenzy, receiving a modest $55 an acre for 3,500 acres of city land. There are about 200 drilling sites in Cleburne, and it is not unusual to see cattle chewing grass in the shadow of gas pipes.
Cleburne has collected between $20 million and $25 million in royalties since 2001, about $6 million in 2008 alone, Reynolds said. Such riches have allowed the building of parks and sports complexes in the city of 30,000, about 30 miles south of Fort Worth.
“That’s a lot of libraries and police cars,” the mayor said proudly. “It’s enabled us to escape the worst part of the recession, enables us to keep tax rates low and lowered unemployment.”
Landowners are also getting theirs. Locals call it “mailbox money,” occasional royalty checks that arrive from the gas companies. The mayor, a contractor who owns three quarters of an acre, said his most recent check, for three months’ worth of royalties, was nearly $850.
“It’s better than a poke in the eye,” he said.
Although many residents never felt the quakes, those who did have described them in different ways. When the first few hit, some ran outside to see if a house had exploded. The city manager said he thought his wife was closing the garage door. Picture frames and windows rattled.
None of the quakes caused any damage or injuries, though city officials said they are keeping a close eye on the earthen dam at Lake Pat Cleburne.
There seems to be little fear around town of any catastrophic damage, but the ground shaking is unnerving nonetheless. Townspeople want to find out at least what is causing it, even if it is unclear whether anything can be done about it.
The gas is extracted through a process known as horizontal drilling. A company will drill roughly 5,000 feet to 7,000 feet down and then go horizontally for as much as 4,000 feet or so. Then the fracking begins.
A spokeswoman for Chesapeake Energy, which owns most of the mineral rights leases in the Cleburne area, said the company is “eager to get to the facts” and is working with the government and local researchers to determine whether there is a link.
“Drilling has occurred for more than a hundred years,” Julie Wilson said in an e-mail. “Tens of thousands of wells have been drilled with no nearby earthquakes at all; hundreds of earthquakes have occurred with no drilling nearby.”
Cliff Frohlich, a scientist at the University of Texas and author of “Texas Earthquakes,” said he believes more than 20 Texas earthquakes in the past 100 years are related to drilling for petroleum and gas. But he added: “I would be surprised if a seriously damaging earthquake came out of this.”
John Breyer, a petroleum geologist and professor at Texas Christian University, said drilling is absolutely not causing the earthquakes.
“It’s like the Great Wall of China,” he said. “If you pull a brick out of the wall every half-mile, you are not going to affect the stability of the structure.”
The mayor said he is open to any answer the city’s geologist brings him.
“We are going to find out what’s causing them and if it is something that we can deal with, I promise we will deal with it,” Reynolds said. “But it’s like the dog that chases the car and catches the car: I don’t know what you do then.”
Awesome Office In The Woods By Selgascano
Spanish architects Jose Selgas and Lucia Cano of Selgascano have designed an office for their own practice, located in the woods near Madrid in Spain.
A 20mm thick, curved window made of transparent acrylic forms the north-facing wall of the tunnel-like space.
The opaque, south-facing aspect is constructed from a 110mm thick, insulated, fiber-glass and polyester sandwich, offering shade from direct sunlight.
A hinged opening attached to a weighted pulley mechanism at one end of the building allows varying degrees of natural ventilation.
