Man gets seizures from sudoku

Mental puzzles are supposed to be good for the brain, but for one young man they had a surprising side effect: seizures that made his left arm jerk and twitch. The seizures started shortly after the 25-year-old student was buried in an avalanche, where his brain was deprived of oxygen for 15 minutes. Several weeks later, the tremors came on when he tried to solve a sudoku puzzle, researchers report today in JAMA Neuroscience. Sudoku puzzles are 9-by-9 grids with numbers in some of the squares; to solve them, a person must fill in the other squares with the right pattern of numbers. According to neurologist Berend Feddersen from the University of Munich in Germany, who is first author on the paper, the man tried solving the puzzles by imagining them in 3D. The harder he focused, the more his arm moved. Based on MRI scans, the researchers attribute the seizures to damaged inhibitory fibers on the right side of the man’s central parietal cortex, a brain region near the crown of the head. The unusual case suggests that when inhibitory fibers are damaged, brain activity in one area can spill into neighboring areas—in this case, the part of the brain that that controlled arm movement, Feddersen says. Despite this damage, the solution was simple: The man stopped tackling sudoku puzzles, and has been seizure-free for 5 years. 

http://news.sciencemag.org

Super-dark chameleon material shifts colour to boost solar power

It is one of the blackest materials on Earth – but it can transform light into any colour you want. Simple to make, this chameleon material could one day boost solar power.

The world record for blackness is held by a material made from carbon nanotubes, which absorb 99.8 per cent of light when they are layered a millimetre thick.

But a nano-material consisting of tiny hammer-like shapes made of gold, shown above, has achieved almost as much blackness – and researchers have discovered that with a small addition it can also reflect any colour you choose.

Andrea Fratalocchi at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology in Saudi Arabia was inspired by beetles whose thin shells reflect all wavelengths of light, making them appear whiter than any artificial material.

Fratalocchi wondered if the effect could be reversed. He designed a theoretical system that involved a tiny concave shell, attached to an infinitely long tube designed to guide waves. If you could build such a structure, light would enter the shell and then travel along the tube, never to be seen again.

Then, using plasmonics – materials that bend light along different paths and could make invisibility cloaks a real possibility – Fratalocchi approximated this design with gold nanorods.

At just a hundredth of a millimetre thick, the material absorbed 98.43 per cent of light. This level of light absorption means it could be painted onto other surfaces to turn light into heat. Because gold is an excellent conductor, it would transfer heat more efficiently than carbon nanotubes, says Yuri Kivshar at the Australian National University in Canberra.

But when a simple dye is added to the material, its behaviour changes drastically: rather than absorbing the light energy and emitting it as heat, it emits it again as light, but at a single frequency. Everything in the visual and infrared spectrum is converted to the colour of the dye.

If a lot of sunlight were focused onto the material so that it exceeded a threshold energy, “you should be able to capture a large portion of the sun spectrum and transfer it on a single colour”, says Fratalocchi. This could improve the efficiency of photovoltaic cells, which work best with particular frequencies of light, he says. “We have ongoing research in this direction.”

https://www.newscientist.com

Hacking for peace: hi-tech solutions for the humanitarian field

“Hacking a rice bag” might seem like a lot of non-sense to you – but not the enthusiastic participants ofTHE Port Hackathon, who had been hacking for “peace and health” at CERN and Campus Biotech earlier this month.

Image courtesy of THE Port and Light My Photo team.

The event (already reported in more detail here) invited experts from a variety of disciplines to put their heads (and skills) together, and develop functioning tech-enabled tools ranging from a better airdrop bag for humanitarian cargo to explosion detector with forensic precision for conflict zones.

Humanitarian food air delivery could be more efficient

Delivering aid to crisis regions is not an easy task, especially where conflict and natural disasters leave large areas completely inaccessible by land. For this reason, humanitarian organizations, e.g. Red Cross, have recently come to use “airdrop bags” for delivering food and other goods by air.

Bags are dropped from as high as 125 metres so, quite naturally, have to be reliable and burst-free. The bags are therefore often folded up to 6 times, which makes their production a time-consuming, not to mention an environmentally unfriendly process.

After three days of “tailoring and dropping” at THE Port, the team “Cargo Cult” has come up with an innovative design for an airdrop bag, which is easier to put together, yet withstands impact and leaves cargo unharmed.

Rice airdrop bag test. Credit: THE Port and Cargo Cult.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the best results were achieved with more elastic materials. The ultimate “winner” in the end was ROLAMIT®, which, according to the manufacturers, is flexible and has tear resistance, as well as puncture and chemical resistance properties. The team also proposed an inspired idea to sow the bags in an accordion-like fashion to allow easy expansion. Another inspired idea including taping, rather than sowing the bags together, which proved to be reliable and saved valuable production minutes.

While this may seem like small improvements in general, when 4 million bags like these are dropped per year, it is bound to make a big difference. Continuing experimentations and taking advantage of new high-tech materials that are increasingly becoming more affordable, could lead to even more economically and environmentally friendly solutions.

Empowering women in a crisis    

Going beyond the basic needs of crisis refugees, the team “Bridge it” took up the task to reduce the technology gender gap that is prevalent in the developing countries. Be it cultural or economic circumstances (or both), men often dominate technology in more disadvantaged places of the world; however, an ability to use something as mundane to us as a mobile phone would enable women to express their needs and feel more secure, especially so in already adverse settings.

Using a case of internally displaced person (IDP) camps in Iraq, the team developed an easy-to-use application for women, which could run on tablets and smartphones allocated to women-friendly zones in IDP camps. The interface, based on icons (already familiar in humanitarian context), text and audio, allows to send and receive information regardless of the user’s literacy.

Mock-up interface of “Bridge it” app for women in IDP camps. Credit: teambridgeit.com.

Women could use the app to submit specific requests for aid (e.g. food or diapers), anonymous complaints (e.g. reporting abuse) and receive important notifications from any NGO, which has access to the system. Gamified elements could extend the use of the technology to children as well.

The team has communicated with external advisors from the camps, to ensure the app is usable and acceptable in actual IDP settings. According to the members of “Bridge it”, this might be a small, but nevertheless significant step to bridging technology gender gap where it is most prevalent: “We won’t necessarily change the world, but if we can make even a small difference, then it is still a great start!”

One platform to collect and visualize humanitarian data real-time

Humanitarian aid faces many challenges – first and foremost, it is essential to know where and what help is needed. Unfortunately, collecting and analysing humanitarian data can be a challenge; often there is a wide variety of sources, a range of data formats, and the amount of information can simply be overwhelming to individual humanitarian workers.

Team “Datasaurus” have proposed a universal way for integrating various types of data for just this purpose. Uploaded data would be organized and analysed automatically, while a powerful visualization engine would allow to create detailed 3D maps of disaster areas. These could further be overlaid with other desired information – e.g. logs of human right violations, status and feedback of humanitarian actions taken etc.

Most importantly, such visualizations could be accessible real-time, which would help to allocate resources to regions that need them the most. Such “coordinated effort” would by all means exceed any isolated endeavours, and ensure that more people in crisis situations get at least their basic needs met, including access to food, water and safe shelter.

Forensic fingerprinting of explosions for 20$

Armed conflict did not go undetected at THE Port either – in fact, team Blastbusters.org have proposed a powerful solution for tracking explosions in warzones. According to the team, their constructed e3e Monitor (Explosion and Extreme Energy Event Monitor) could finally provide “data that bears witness”, as up until now, data on such extreme events have been limited to eye-witness reports or official statements, which can never tell the whole story.

A 7-component system would cost less than 20$ to produce, yet be able to detect precise acoustic signature of any explosion, and track pre- and post-explosion acoustics. As armed forces tend to use unique explosives and delivery mechanisms, such data could help to get “forensically close” to the source (and culprit) of the explosion. Extra power of the system would come from making the data publically available as soon as it comes in.

Acoustic signatures could be combined with other data as well, e.g. geolocated tweets and emotional mapping (Emo-mapping) of victims and witnesses. Such an approach would, for the first time, be able to generate precise empirical data around explosions, rather than relying on subjective reports.

e3e Monitor can be easily disguised and parachuted into any area, and, according to the team, “keeps its secrets safe”, as all data is encrypted. Since it is so cheap to produce, it could be easily scaled up to track extreme events throughout the world.

—

The prototypes have been developed in consultation with representatives of the humanitarian field, and have realistic potential to become functional tools that help maintain peace and equity in the world – all that in 60 hours of brainstorming and hacking at THE Port.

Written by Eglė Marija Ramanauskaitė

http://www.technology.org

Team describes rapid, sensitive test for HIV mutations

Tests that can distinguish whether HIV-positive people are infected with a drug-resistant strain or a non-resistant strain allow patients to get the most effective treatment as quickly as possible. In the edition of the Journal of Molecular Diagnostics, a team of Brown University researchers describes a new method that works faster and more sensitively in lab testing than the current standard technologies.

A Brown team has developed a new method for analyzing the the RNA (green strands) of HIV for mutations (red dot) that convey drug resistance. The system does not require reverse transcription of RNA to DNA, as current technologies do, and works within one solution (purple droplet). Image credit: Lei Zhang/Brown University

The main advance enabling that improved performance is that the system operates directly on the virus’ more readily available RNA rather than requiring extra, potentially error-prone steps to examine DNA derived from RNA. In a single tube, the system can first combine two engineered probes (ligation) if a mutation is present and then make many copies of those combined probes (amplification) for detection.

“LRA (ligation on RNA amplification) uniquely optimizes two enzymatic reactions — RNA-based ligation, and quantitative PCR (polymerase chain reaction) amplification — into a single system,” said Anubhav Tripathi, professor of engineering at Brown and corresponding author on the paper. “Each HIV contains about 10,000 nucleotides, or building blocks, in its genetic material, and a drop of blood from a patient with resistant HIV can contain thousands to millions of copies of HIV. To find that one virus, out of thousands to millions, which is mutated at just a single nucleotide is like finding a needle in a haystack.”

The experiments reported in the paper show that the LRA test was sensitive enough to find a commonly sought K103N mutation in concentrations as low as one mutant per 10,000 strands of “normal” viral RNA. The LRA detection worked within two hours, while alternative technologies such as ASPCR or pyrosequencing, can take as long as eight.

LRA works by sending in many copies of a pair of short engineered probes of genetic material to complement the RNA in the HIV sample. Under optimized conditions, those pairs that perfectly match the target HIV RNA containing a mutation that causes drug resistance can rapidly become fused together, or ligated, by an enzyme. If there is a single nucleotide difference, the pair won’t fuse.

The fusing of the engineered genetic probes is designed to happen at room temperature. After a short period, the LRA system then heats the slightly alkaline solution, which shuts off the fusing reaction but turns on the amplification (copying) of fused pairs. That allows the LRA system to produce a strong signal of fused pairs, if there are any. All this happens in a single step, without any need to change solution.

Aiming for the clinic

The development of LRA is the product of a collaboration led by Tripathi and Dr. Rami Kantor, associate professor of medicine in the Warren Alpert Medical School. Kantor, who is also an HIV specialist at The Miriam Hospital and co-senior author of the paper, works in developing nations such as Kenya and India, monitoring HIV resistance. One day when Tripathi was at the Lifespan/Tufts/Brown Center for AIDS Research Retrovirology Core Laboratory to discuss his work, Kantor suggested a collaboration with the end goal of developing a cheap, quick and accurate HIV drug resistance mutation detection system for use in developing nations.

“We met soon thereafter and started working together on various developments and implementations of the ideas and on the integration of our worlds,” Kantor said.

The authors acknowledge in the paper that what they demonstrate, while successful in the lab, is clearly not ready for deployment in the field. The lab tests, for example, are shown to work on HIV RNA derived from plasmids, laboratory viral strains, not on samples from circulating viruses found in ailing patients. The RNA fragments were prepared in Kantor’s lab by Dr. Mia Coetzer, assistant professor of medicine and a co-author on the paper.

“The next steps are to continue the development of LRA and other methods on patient samples to detect additional mutations and address specific HIV challenges related to mutation detection, such as enormous genomic diversity,” Kantor said, “and work on incorporation of such methods onto a point-of-care device that would satisfy the infrastructure and low-cost needs of resource limited settings.”

http://www.technology.org

New protein found in immune cells

Researchers of the University of Freiburg have discovered Kidins220/ARMS in B cells. They also determined that it plays a decisive role in the production of antibodies and the formation of B cells, which are a type of white blood cells. Various teams of researchers had already found that Kidins220/ARMS is present in nerve cells and in T cells of the immune system. However, that it is present in B cells was unknown until now. "We've discovered a new molecular player in the immune system," said the immunobiologist Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Schamel, adding, "This knowledge could help to develop new medications for autoimmune diseases or other illnesses in the future." The postdoc Dr. Gina J. Fiala from Schamel's lab is the lead author of the group's publication in the Journal of Experimental Medicine. Fiala studied Kidins220/ARMS in B cells for her doctoral thesis. Several other members of the cluster of excellence BIOSS Centre for Biological Signalling Studies also collaborated in this study.

B lymphocytes, also known as B cells, are the only cells to produce antibodies, which the immune system needs to fight off foreign intruders like pathogens in order to protect the human body. On their surface, B cells carry B cell receptors. These activate the B cells when an antigen -- a substance on the surface of a pathogenic germ -- binds to them. The team of scientists from the University of Freiburg has discovered that Kidins220/ARMS interacts with the B cell receptor and affects signalling pathways from the receptor to the interior of the cell. Without Kidins220/ARMS, the receptor's ability to send signals is limited. As a result, the B cells manufacture less antibodies and the immune system is weakened.

Kidins220/ARMS is also vital for the formation of B cells. If a mouse cannot produce this protein, the B lymphocytes develop in a way that makes them less functional than the B cells of a healthy immune system. The reason for this is that B cells depend on the signals from the B cell receptor and pre-B cell receptor, which is the early version of a B cell receptor, at various stages of their development. Deficiency in Kidins220/ARMS therefore obstructs the development of B cells.

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Understanding others' thoughts enables young kids to lie

Kids who are taught to reason about the mental states of others are more likely to use deception to win a reward, according to new research published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.

The findings indicate that developing "theory of mind" (ToM) -- a cognitive ability critical to many social interactions -- may enable children to engage in the sophisticated thinking necessary for intentionally deceiving another person.

"Telling a lie successfully requires deliberately creating a false belief in the mind of the lie recipient, and ToM could provide an important cognitive tool to enable children to do so," the researchers write.

Research suggests that children begin to tell lies somewhere around ages 2 and 3, and studies have shown a correlation between children's theory of mind and their tendency to lie. Psychological scientists Genyue Fu of Hangzhou Normal University in China, Kang Lee of the University of Toronto in Canada, and colleagues wanted to see if they could find causal evidence for a link between the two.

The researchers first conducted a hide-and-seek task to identify children who hadn't yet started lying. The children were shown a selection of stickers and were asked to pick their favorite one -- they were told that they could only keep the sticker if they successfully won 10 candies from the hide-and-seek game. In the game, the child was told to hide a candy under one of two cups while the researcher's eyes were closed. The researcher then opened his or her eyes, asked the child where the candy was hidden, and chose whichever cup the child pointed to. Thus, the child could only win the candy by lying to the experimenter about its location.

A total of 42 children who never lied -- who told the truth about the location of the candy on each of the 10 trials -- were selected to continue with the study. The children, who were around 3 years old, were randomly assigned to complete either theory-of-mind training or control tasks focused on quantitative reasoning.

The theory-of-mind training included the standard false-contents task, in which children were shown a pencil box and asked what they thought was inside. When it was revealed that the box didn't actually contain pencils, they were asked to reason about what other people would think was in the box. The goal of the training was to teach kids that people can know and believe different things -- that is, even though the child has learned the true contents of the box, someone else would probably believe that the box contained pencils.

The children completed the training tasks or quantitative tasks every other day, for a total of six sessions. After the sessions were complete, the researchers again tested the children on the theory-of-mind tasks and the hide-and-seek tasks.

As expected, children who received theory-of-mind training showed improvement on the theory-of-mind tasks over time, while the children in the control group did not.

More importantly, the children who received the theory-of-mind training were also more likely to lie in the hide-and-seek task compared to those in the control group. And this difference held over a 30-day period.

While the findings don't shed light on the specific components of training that underlie the effect, the researchers believe their findings provide concrete evidence for a causal link between theory of mind and social behaviors like lying.

"By increasing their sensitivity to mental states and engaging them in reasoning about false beliefs, we enabled young children not only to quickly apply their newly acquired knowledge to solve a problem in a social situation but also to continue to do so more than a month later," Lee and colleagues write. "Taken together, these two findings also suggest that children were not just mechanically memorizing what they were taught in the ToM training sessions; rather, they were able to consolidate the knowledge and use it adaptively to solve a social problem they were facing."

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Nano memory cell can mimic the brain’s long-term memory

RMIT University researchers have mimicked the way the human brain processes information with the development of an electronic long-term memory cell.

Researchers at the MicroNano Research Facility (MNRF) have built the one of the world's first electronic multi-state memory cell which mirrors the brain's ability to simultaneously process and store multiple strands of information.

The development brings them closer to imitating key electronic aspects of the human brain -- a vital step towards creating a bionic brain -- which could help unlock successful treatments for common neurological conditions such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases.

The discovery was recently published in the materials science journal Advanced Functional Materials.

Project leader Dr Sharath Sriram, co-leader of the RMIT Functional Materials and Microsystems Research Group, said the ground-breaking development imitates the way the brain uses long-term memory.

"This is the closest we have come to creating a brain-like system with memory that learns and stores analog information and is quick at retrieving this stored information," Dr Sharath said.

"The human brain is an extremely complex analog computer… its evolution is based on its previous experiences, and up until now this functionality has not been able to be adequately reproduced with digital technology."

The ability to create highly dense and ultra-fast analog memory cells paves the way for imitating highly sophisticated biological neural networks, he said.

The research builds on RMIT's previous discovery where ultra-fast nano-scale memories were developed using a functional oxide material in the form of an ultra-thin film -- 10,000 times thinner than a human hair.

Dr Hussein Nili, lead author of the study, said: "This new discovery is significant as it allows the multi-state cell to store and process information in the very same way that the brain does.

"Think of an old camera which could only take pictures in black and white. The same analogy applies here, rather than just black and white memories we now have memories in full color with shade, light and texture, it is a major step."

While these new devices are able to store much more information than conventional digital memories (which store just 0s and 1s), it is their brain-like ability to remember and retain previous information that is exciting.

"We have now introduced controlled faults or defects in the oxide material along with the addition of metallic atoms, which unleashes the full potential of the 'memristive' effect -- where the memory element's behaviour is dependent on its past experiences," Dr Nili said.

Nano-scale memories are precursors to the storage components of the complex artificial intelligence network needed to develop a bionic brain.

Dr Nili said the research had myriad practical applications including the potential for scientists to replicate the human brain outside of the body -- which would remove the ethical barriers involved in experimenting on humans.

"If you could replicate a brain outside the body, it would minimise ethical issues involved in treating and experimenting on the brain which can lead to better understanding of neurological conditions," Dr Nili said.

The research, supported by the Australian Research Council, was conducted in collaboration with the University of California Santa Barbara.

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New light shed on cause of chronic fatigue syndrome

 

New research findings may shed new light on the potential cause of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome/Myalgic Encephalomyelitis (CFS/ME).

Researchers from Griffith University's National Centre for Neuroimmunology and Emerging Diseases (NCNED) -- part of the new Menzies Health Institute Queensland -- have uncovered significant factors contributing to the pathology of this illness.
The results reveal genetic changes in important receptors associated with immunological and cellular function and contribute to the development of this complex illness.
"These findings have been achieved through a team effort involving researchers, patients, funding bodies, clinicians and the support of Griffith University and the Queensland Government," say chief investigators Professor Sonya Marshall-Gradisnik and Professor Donald Staines.
Co-researcher and consultant immunologist Professor Pete Smith said that important signalling mechanisms are disrupted as a result of these genetic changes involving the detection and response to threats.
"These are primitive genes that are involved in many cellular signals in the brain, gut, cardiovascular and immune systems, as well as in the mediation of pain."
These research findings coincide with International Neuroimmune Awareness week commencing Monday 11 May.
The Griffith Health Centre on the university's Gold Coast campus is being lit up each evening from 10 -12 May to raise awareness of neurological conditions such as CFS/ME as well as other conditions such as Fibromyalgia and Gulf War Syndrome.
"The lighting up of the Griffith Health Centre signifies Griffith's commitment to the CFS patient community and our team approach to this research," says Pro-Vice Chancellor (Health) Professor Allan Cripps.
CFS/ME is a highly debilitating disorder characterized by profound fatigue, muscle and joint pain, cerebral symptoms of impaired memory and concentration, impaired cardiovascular function, gut disorder and sensory dysfunction such as noise intolerance and balance disturbance. Many cases can continue for months or years. It is believed to affect around 250,000 Australians.
The research findings are to be presented at an international conference in London later this month.

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Long-term depression may double stroke risk despite treatment

 

Persistent depression may double the risk of stroke in adults over 50 -- and stroke risk remains higher even after symptoms of depression go away, according to research in the Journal of the American Heart Association.

"Our findings suggest that depression may increase stroke risk over the long term," said Paola Gilsanz, Sc.D., study lead author and Yerby Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Harvard University's T.H. Chan School of Public Health in Boston, Mass.

Researchers used data from 16,178 participants (ages 50 and older) who had been interviewed as part of the Health and Retirement Study about depressive symptoms, history of stroke, and stroke risk factors every two years in 1998-2010.

The study documented 1,192 strokes over 12 years. Compared to people without depression at either interview:

• People with high depressive symptoms at two consecutive interviews were more than twice as likely to have a first stroke.
• People who had depressive symptoms at the first interview but not the second had a 66 percent higher stroke risk.

Researchers did not evaluate whether depressive symptoms diminished because of treatment or for other reasons; but findings suggest that treatment, even if effective for depression, may not have immediate benefits for stroke risk. Researchers also suggest that diminished depression may have a stronger effect on women than men. However, recent onset of depression was not associated with higher stroke risk.

"Looking at how changes in depressive symptoms over time may be associated with strokes allowed us to see if the risk of stroke increases after elevated depressive symptoms start or if risk goes away when depressive symptoms do," Gilsanz said. "We were surprised that changes in depressive symptoms seem to take more than two years to protect against or elevate stroke risk."

Previous research has shown that depression is associated with an increased risk of high blood pressure, abnormalities of the autonomic nervous system and increased inflammatory responses. Depression might trigger underlying vascular problems, including infection or atrial fibrillation, and depressed people are also more likely to smoke and be less physically active.

"Although we now know that depression strongly predicts stroke on par with many other major stroke risk factors, we still need research to understand exactly why this link occurs and whether we can potentially reduce stroke risk by treating depression," said Maria Glymour, Sc.D., study senior author and an associate professor of epidemiology and biostatistics at the University of California, San Francisco School of Medicine.

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80 percent of cervical cancers found to be preventable with latest 9-valent HPV vaccine

 

The new 9-valent human papillomavirus vaccine, can potentially prevent 80 percent of cervical cancers in the United States, if given to all 11- or 12-year-old children before they are exposed to the virus.

In addition to protecting against 80 percent of cervical cancers, the new 9-Valent human papillomavirus vaccine, which includes seven cancer causing HPV-types -- 16,18,31,33,45,52 and 58 -- has the potential to protect against nearly 19,000 other cancers diagnosed in the United States, including anal, oropharyngeal and penile cancers. This is a 13 percent increase in protection against HPV-related cancers in comparison to the first vaccines on the market, Gardasil and Cervarix, which protected against HPV types 16 and 18.

These findings come from a seven-center study published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention initiated the research effort, in conjunction with Cedars-Sinai.

"This is the first comprehensive study of its kind and shows the potential to not only reduce the global cancer burden, but also guide clinical decision-making with regard to childhood vaccinations," said Marc T. Goodman, PhD, MPH, senior author of the study and director of Cancer Prevention and Genetics at the Cedars-Sinai Samuel Oschin Comprehensive Cancer Institute.

The study found the 9-Valent vaccine, under the trademark of Gardasil-9, also has the potential to protect against an additional 8 percent of oropharyngeal cancers, which include the base of the tongue and tonsils. This disease is the second-most-common HPV-associated cancer.

"We found that 70 percent of patient DNA tissue samples with cancer of the oropharynx harbored HPV," added Goodman. "This is a much higher percentage of HPV than observed in other studies, likely because of changes in sexual behaviors, such as increased oral-genital contact."

The 9-Valent vaccine was also found to potentially increase protection from other HPV-related cancers including those of the vulva, from 71 to 92 percent; vagina, from 73 percent to 98 percent; the penis, 76 percent to 90 percent; and the anus, 87 percent to 96 percent.

To compile these data, researchers examined 2,670 HPV DNA tissue samples from seven population-based cancer registries.

Study authors intend to perform additional research in the future to follow up on their estimate of how well the current vaccines protect against HPV-associated cancers.

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Controlling swarms of cooperative robots with light and a single finger

 

Using a smart tablet and a red beam of light, Georgia Institute of Technology researchers have created a system that allows people to control a fleet of robots with the swipe of a finger. A person taps the tablet to control where the beam of light appears on a floor. The swarm robots then roll toward the illumination, constantly communicating with each other and deciding how to evenly cover the lit area. When the person swipes the tablet to drag the light across the floor, the robots follow. If the operator puts two fingers in different locations on the tablet, the machines will split into teams and repeat the process.

The new Georgia Tech algorithm that fuels this system demonstrates the potential of easily controlling large teams of robots, which is relevant in manufacturing, agriculture and disaster areas.

"It's not possible for a person to control a thousand or a million robots by individually programming each one where to go," said Magnus Egerstedt, Schlumberger Professor in Georgia Tech's School of Electrical and Computer Engineering. "Instead, the operator controls an area that needs to be explored. Then the robots work together to determine the best ways to accomplish the job."

Egerstedt envisions a scenario in which an operator sends a large fleet of machines into a specific area of a tsunami-ravaged region. The robots could search for survivors, dividing themselves into equal sections. If some machines were suddenly needed in a new area, a single person could quickly redeploy them.

The Georgia Tech model is different from many other robotic coverage algorithms because it's not static. It's flexible enough to allow robots to "change their minds" effectively, rather than just performing the single job they're programmed to do.

"The field of swarm robotics gets difficult when you expect teams of robots to be as dynamic and adaptive as humans," Egerstedt explained. "People can quickly adapt to changing circumstances, make new decisions and act. Robots typically can't. It's hard for them to talk and form plans when everything is changing around them."

In the Georgia Tech demonstration, each robot is constantly measuring how much light is in its local "neighborhood." It's also chatting with its neighbor. When there's too much light in its area, the robot moves away so that another can steal some of its light.

"The robots are working together to make sure that each one has the same amount of light in its own area," said Egerstedt.

The tablet-based control system has one final benefit: it was designed with everyone in mind. Anyone can control the robots, even if they don't have a background in robotics.

"In the future, farmers could send machines into their fields to inspect the crops," said Georgia Tech Ph.D. candidate Yancy Diaz-Mercado. "Workers on manufacturing floors could direct robots to one side of the warehouse to collect items, then quickly direct them to another area if the need changes."

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Velociraptor, move over: New dinosaur's keen nose made it a formidable predator

 

A researcher from the University of Pennsylvania has identified a species of dinosaur closely related to Velociraptor, the group of creatures made infamous by the movie "Jurassic Park." The newly named species likely possessed a keen sense of smell that would have made it a formidable predator.

Steven Jasinski, a doctoral student in the School of Arts & Sciences' Department of Earth and Environmental Science at Penn and acting curator of paleontology and geology at the State Museum of Pennsylvania, discovered the new species while investigating a specimen originally assigned to a previously known species. His analysis suggests the fossil -- part of the dinosaur's skull -- actually represents a brand new species, which Jasinski has named Saurornitholestes sullivani.

Jasinski reported his findings this month in the New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science Bulletin.

The specimen, roughly 75 million years old, was discovered by paleontologist Robert Sullivan in the Bisti/De-Na-Zin Wilderness Area of New Mexico in 1999. When first described, scientists believed it was a member of Saurornitholestes langstoni, a species of theropod dinosaurs in the Dromaeosauridae family that had been found in present-day Alberta, Canada.

But when Jasinski began a comparative analysis of the specimen to other S. langstoni specimens, he found subtle differences. Notably, he observed that the surface of the skull corresponding with the brain's olfactory bulb was unusually large. This finding implies a powerful sense of smell.

"This feature means that Saurornitholestes sullivani had a relatively better sense of smell than other dromaeosaurid dinosaurs, including Velociraptor, Dromaeosaurus, and Bambiraptor," Jasinski said. "This keen olfaction may have made S. sullivani an intimidating predator as well."

S. sullivani comes from the end of the time of dinosaurs, or the Late Cretaceous, and represents the only named dromaeosaur from this period in North America south of Montana.

At the time S. sullivani lived, North America was split into two continents separated by an inland sea. This dinosaur lived on the western shores in an area called Laramidia.

Numerous dromaeosaurs, which are commonly called raptors, are known from more northern areas in Laramidia, including Alberta and Montana. However, S. sullivani represents the only named dromaeosaur from the Late Cretaceous of southern Laramidia.

S. sullivani shared its world with numerous other dinosaurs. Plant-eating contemporary dinosaurs included the duck-billed hadrosaurs Parasaurolophus walkeri and Kritosaurus navajovius, the horned dinosaur Pentaceratops sternbergii, the pachycephalsaurs Stegoceras novomexicanum and Sphaerotholus goodwini and the ankylosaurs Nodocephalosaurus kirtlandensis and recently named Ziapelta sanjuanensis. Other contemporary meat-eating theropods included the tyrannosaurs Bistahieversor sealeyi and Daspletosaurus, along with ostrich-like ornithomimids.

Though a distinct species, S. sullivani appears to be closely related to S. langstoni. Finding the two as distinct species further shows that differences existed between dinosaurs between the northern and southern parts of North America.

At less than 3 feet at its hip and roughly 6 feet in length, S. sullivani was not a large dinosaur. However, previous findings of related species suggest the animal would have been agile and fast, perhaps hunting in packs and using its acute sense of smell to track down prey.

"Although it was not large, this was not a dinosaur you would want to mess with," Jasinski said

The source

ScienceDaily

Denver Zoo mourns death of oldest hippo, 58-year-old 'Bertie'

 

Denver Zoo was mourning the death on Monday of Bertie, a 58-year-old male hippopotamus who was its longest resident and the oldest hippo accredited to a North American zoo, officials said.

Bertie was humanely euthanized after his keepers saw "a significant decline in his quality of life due to his advanced age," the zoo said in a statement. Most hippos live about 30 to 40 years in the wild, and up to 50 in zoos.

"This is a very sad loss for Denver Zoo and our community. Bert was a member of our family for more than 50 years," zoo President and Chief Executive Shannon Block said.

"He will be missed by all of us, including the many families and children who visited him and came to know his charismatic personality over the years," Block said in the statement.

The zoo said Bertie's appetite had recently decreased noticeably, and that he had become less consistently interested in training sessions with his keepers. He also became more reluctant to leave his pool and showed some difficulty walking.

The zoo said veterinarians were limited in their treatment options because he had not responded well to medications.

Diagnosing problems in hippos is particularly difficult because of their size and anatomy, the zoo said, but all of Bertie's symptoms pointed to severe old age.

Ultimately, the zoo said, his caretakers knew that his quality of life would not improve.

"This is never an easy decision, but it was the right one," said the zoo's Vice President of Veterinary Medicine Scott Larsen. "We'll all miss him very much, but were glad he lived such a long, happy life here at the zoo."

Bertie arrived in 1958 from New York's Central Park Zoo. He is the father of every hippo calf born at Denver Zoo, which said he had sired 29 offspring with two mates. One of them, Bertie's 12-year-old son, Mahali, is the only hippo now at the zoo.

(Reporting by Daniel Wallis; Editing by Eric Walsh)

The source 

Reuters

Personal microbiomes shown to contain unique 'fingerprints'

 

A new study shows that the microbial communities we carry in and on our bodies -- known as the human microbiome -- have the potential to uniquely identify individuals, much like a fingerprint. Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health researchers and colleagues demonstrated that personal microbiomes contain enough distinguishing features to identify an individual over time from among a research study population of hundreds of people. The study, the first to rigorously show that identifying people from microbiome data is feasible, suggests that we have surprisingly unique microbial inhabitants, but could raise potential privacy concerns for subjects enrolled in human microbiome research projects.

The study appears online May 11, 2015 in the journal PNAS.

"Linking a human DNA sample to a database of human DNA 'fingerprints' is the basis for forensic genetics, which is now a decades-old field. We've shown that the same sort of linking is possible using DNA sequences from microbes inhabiting the human body -- no human DNA required. This opens the door to connecting human microbiome samples between databases, which has the potential to expose sensitive subject information -- for example, a sexually-transmitted infection, detectable from the microbiome sample itself," said lead author Eric Franzosa, research fellow in the Department of Biostatistics at Harvard Chan.

Franzosa and colleagues used publicly available microbiome data produced through the Human Microbiome Project (HMP), which surveyed microbes in the stool, saliva, skin, and other body sites from up to 242 individuals over a months-long period. The authors adapted a classical computer science algorithm to combine stable and distinguishing sequence features from individuals' initial microbiome samples into individual-specific "codes." They then compared the codes to microbiome samples collected from the same individuals' at follow-up visits and to samples from independent groups of individuals.

The results showed that the codes were unique among hundreds of individuals, and that a large fraction of individuals' microbial "fingerprints" remained stable over a one-year sampling period. The codes constructed from gut samples were particularly stable, with more than 80% of individuals identifiable up to a year after the sampling period.

"Although the potential for any data privacy concerns from purely microbial DNA is very low, it's important for researchers to know that such issues are theoretically possible," said senior author Curtis Huttenhower, associate professor of computational biology and bioinformatics at Harvard Chan School. "Perhaps even more exciting are the implications of the study for microbial ecology, since it suggests our unique microbial residents are tuned to the environment of our body -- our genetics, diet, and developmental history -- in such a way that they stick with us and help to fend off less-friendly microbial invaders over time."

The source 

http://www.sciencedaily.com

Wildlife decline may lead to 'empty landscape'

Populations of some of the world's largest wild animals are dwindling, raising the threat of an "empty landscape", say scientists.

About 60% of giant herbivores - plant-eaters - including rhinos, elephants and gorillas, are at risk of extinction, according to research.

Analysis of 74 herbivore species, published in Science Advances, blamed poaching and habitat loss.

A previous study of large carnivores showed similar declines.

Prof William Ripple, of Oregon State University, led the research looking at herbivores weighing over 100kg, from the reindeer up to the African elephant.

"This is the first time anyone has analysed all of these species as a whole," he said.

"The process of declining animals is causing an empty landscape in the forest, savannah, grasslands and desert."

 

Prof David Macdonald, of Oxford University's Wildlife Conservation Research Unit, was among the team of 15 international scientists.

"The big carnivores, like the charismatic big cats or wolves, face horrendous problems from direct persecution, over-hunting and habitat loss, but our new study adds another nail to their coffin - the empty larder," he said.

"It's no use having habitat if there's nothing left to eat in it."

According to the research, the decline is being driven by a number of factors including habitat loss, hunting for meat or body parts, and competition for food and resources with livestock.

With rhinoceros horn worth more than gold, diamonds or cocaine on illegal markets, rhinos could be extinct in the wild within 20 years in Africa, said the researchers.

The consequences of large wild herbivore decline include:

• Loss of habitat: for example, elephants maintain forest clearings by trampling vegetation

• Effects on the food chain: large predators such as lions, leopards, and hyena rely on large herbivores for food

• Seed dispersal: large herbivores eat seeds which are carried over long distances

• Impact on humans: an estimated one billion people rely on wild meat for subsistence while the loss of iconic herbivores will have a negative impact on tourism

The biggest losses are in South East Asia, India and Africa.

Europe and North America have already lost most of their large herbivores in a previous wave of extinctions.

The source :

BBC 

NASA Completes MESSENGER Mission with Expected Impact on Mercury's Surface

 

A NASA planetary exploration mission came to a planned, but nonetheless dramatic, end Thursday when it slammed into Mercury's surface at about 8,750 mph and created a new crater on the planet's surface.

Mission controllers at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland, have confirmed NASA's MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry, and Ranging (MESSENGER) spacecraft impacted the surface of Mercury, as anticipated, at 3:26 p.m. EDT.

Mission control confirmed end of operations just a few minutes later, at 3:40 p.m., when no signal was detected by NASA's Deep Space Network (DSN) station in Goldstone, California, at the time the spacecraft would have emerged from behind the planet. This conclusion was independently confirmed by the DSN's Radio Science team, which also was monitoring for a signal from MESSENGER.

"Going out with a bang as it impacts the surface of Mercury, we are celebrating MESSENGER as more than a successful mission," said John Grunsfeld, associate administrator for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. "The MESSENGER mission will continue to provide scientists with a bonanza of new results as we begin the next phase of this mission--analyzing the exciting data already in the archives, and unravelling the mysteries of Mercury."

Prior to impact, MESSENGER's mission design team predicted the spacecraft would pass a few miles over a lava-filled basin on the planet before striking the surface and creating a crater estimated to be as wide as 50 feet.

MESSENGER's lonely demise on the small, scorched planet closest to the sun went unobserved because the probe hit the side of the planet facing away from Earth, so ground-based telescopes were not able to capture the moment of impact. Space-based telescopes also were unable to view the impact, as Mercury's proximity to the sun would damage optics.

MESSENGER's last day of real-time flight operations began at 11:15 a.m., with initiation of the final delivery of data and images from Mercury via a 230-foot (70-meter) DSN antenna located in Madrid, Spain. After a planned transition to a 111-foot (34-meter) DSN antenna in California, at 2:40 p.m., mission operators later confirmed the switch to a beacon-only communication signal at 3:04 p.m.

The mood in the Mission Operations Center at APL was both somber and celebratory as team members watched MESSENGER's telemetry drop out for the last time, after more than four years and 4,105 orbits around Mercury.

"We monitored MESSENGER's beacon signal for about 20 additional minutes," said mission operations manager Andy Calloway of APL. "It was strange to think during that time MESSENGER had already impacted, but we could not confirm it immediately due to the vast distance across space between Mercury and Earth."

MESSENGER was launched on Aug. 3, 2004, and began orbiting Mercury on March 17, 2011. Although it completed its primary science objectives by March 2012, the spacecraft's mission was extended two times, allowing it to capture images and information about the planet in unprecedented detail.

During a final extension of the mission in March, referred to as XM2, the team began a hover campaign that allowed the spacecraft to operate within a narrow band of altitudes from five to 35 kilometers from the planet's surface.

On Tuesday, the team successfully executed the last of seven daring orbit correction maneuvers that kept MESSENGER aloft long enough for the spacecraft's instruments to collect critical information on Mercury's crustal magnetic anomalies and ice-filled polar craters, among other features. After running out of fuel, and with no way to increase its altitude, MESSENGER was finally unable to resist the sun's gravitational pull on its orbit.

"Today we bid a fond farewell to one of the most resilient and accomplished spacecraft to ever explore our neighboring planets," said Sean Solomon, MESSENGER's principal investigator and director of Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory in Palisades, New York. "A resourceful and committed team of engineers, mission operators, scientists, and managers can be extremely proud that the MESSENGER mission has surpassed all expectations and delivered a stunningly long list of discoveries that have changed our views--not only of one of Earth's sibling planets, but of the entire inner solar system."

Among its many accomplishments, the MESSENGER mission determined Mercury's surface composition, revealed its geological history, discovered its internal magnetic field is offset from the planet's center, and verified its polar deposits are dominantly water ice.

Story Source:

http://www.sciencedaily.com

 

Walking an extra two minutes each hour may offset hazards of sitting too long

 

A new study suggests that engaging in low intensity activities such as standing may not be enough to offset the health hazards of sitting for long periods of time. On the bright side, adding two minutes of walking each hour to your routine just might do the trick. These findings were published in the Clinical Journal of the American Society of Nephrology (CJASN).

Numerous studies have shown that sitting for extended periods of time each day leads to increased risk for early death, as well as heart disease, diabetes and other health conditions. Considering that 80 percent of Americans fall short of completing the recommended amount of exercise, 2.5 hours of moderate activity each week, it seems unrealistic to expect that people will replace sitting with even more exercise.

With this in mind, scientists at the University of Utah School of Medicine investigated the health benefits of a more achievable goal, trading sitting for lighter activities for short periods of time. They used observational data from National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) to examine whether longer durations of low intensity activities (e.g. standing), and light intensity activities (e.g. casual walking, light gardening, cleaning) extends the life span of people who are sedentary for more than half of their waking hours.

They found that there is no benefit to decreasing sitting by two minutes each hour, and adding a corresponding two minutes more of low intensity activities. However, a "trade-off" of sitting for light intensity activities for two minutes each hour was associated with a 33 percent lower risk of dying.

"It was fascinating to see the results because the current national focus is on moderate or vigorous activity. To see that light activity had an association with lower mortality is intriguing," says lead author Srinivasan Beddhu, M.D., professor of internal medicine.

Beddhu explains that while it's obvious that it takes energy to exercise, strolling and other light activities use energy, too. Even short walks add up to a lot when repeated many times over the course of a week. Assuming 16 awake hours each day, two minutes of strolling each hour expends 400 kcal each week. That number approaches the 600 kcal it takes to accomplish the recommended weekly goal of moderate exercise. It is also substantially larger than the 50 kcal needed to complete low intensity activities for two minutes each awake hour over the course of one week.

"Based on these results we would recommend adding two minutes of walking each hour in combination with normal activities, which should include 2.5 hours of moderate exercise each week," says Beddhu. Moderate exercise strengthens the heart, muscles, and bones, and confers health benefits that low and light intensity activities can't.

The study examined 3,243 NHANES participants who wore accelerometers that objectively measured the intensities of their activities. Participants were followed for three years after the data were collected; there were 137 deaths during this period.

"Exercise is great, but the reality is that the practical amount of vigorous exercise that can be achieved is limited. Our study suggests that even small changes can have a big impact," says senior author Tom Greene, Ph.D., director of the Study Design and Biostatistics Center at the Center for Clinical and Translational Science.

Beddhu adds that large, randomized, interventional trials will be needed to definitively answer whether exchanging sitting for light activities leads to better health.

Story Source:

http://www.sciencedaily.com 

Facebook launches video calling in Messenger app

 

Facebook Inc introduced free video calling in its Messenger phone app on Monday as the company seeks to transform its mobile messaging service into a full-featured platform with the same reach as its 1.4 billion user social network.
Messenger, with more than 600 million users, now has a video icon at the top right corner of its screen. Earlier this year, Messenger launched voice and video calling between computers. (bit.ly/1KorYLD)
Messenger competes with Microsoft Corp's Skype, Apple Inc's FaceTime and Google Inc's Hangouts, all of which allow video calls between mobile devices or computers.
At Facebook's annual developer conference in March, Chief Executive Mark Zuckerburg said the social network would introduce myriad features within Messenger. For example, users can also send money to friends within the app. Facebook also unveiled a platform that enables developers to easily create apps that function within Messenger.
"Adding (video calling) to Messenger instead of the main Facebook app maybe ties in to Messenger's mission where it's a real core person-to-person app," said Brian Blau, research director at Gartner Inc, a U.S. technology research and advisory firm. "Now they're really enticing people with more features."
Video calling is available on devices using Apple's iOS and Google's Android mobile operating systems in Belgium, Canada, Croatia, Denmark, France, Greece, Ireland, Laos, Lithuania, Mexico, Nigeria, Norway, Oman, Poland, Portugal, the United Kingdom, the United States and Uruguay. Facebook said additional regions will be added in the next few months.
  (Reporting by Subrat Patnaik in Bengaluru; editing by Sriraj Kalluvila and Richard Chang)

The Soursce:
Reuters