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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http://www.sciencedaily.com/

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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http://www.sciencedaily.com/