How nanosized particles may affect skin care products
Grapple – a Grape flavored Apple
They say “An apple a day keeps the doctor away”, but now we wonder what this keeps away, the Grapple, a hyperfruit that “Grunches like an Apple. Tastes like a Grape.”
The manufacturers of the hyperfruit cheerfully present their product as the missing link between candy and traditional fruits that – according to them – could even be an answer to unhealthy eating habits:
“With childhood obesity increasing at alarming rates, Grāpple® brand apples could go a long way to improving the eating habits of children and introducing them to more produce.”
The Grapple is made by adding flavorings to a regular Washington Extra Fancy Fuji Apple, the process uses some “complex” infusion technique and adds no additional sugars or calories.
Grapples are not genetically altered in any way, which might give parents some comfort, although we should actually be disappointed that the Grapple is merely a processed apple, rather than a bred fruit, as this means that the production of every single Grapple requires additional energy and resources – then again, the same is true for traditional sugar candy.
Anyhow, parents will be in trouble when their kids ask to show them the “Grapple tree”.
See also: Who designed the Banana?, Why are Carrots Orange? It is political, Hyper fruits, Some Kids don’t like Chicken, Better than the real thing. Thanks: John Weeks.
Brain scanners to be used to 'design' political candidates
Sinister news today, as psychologists in the US unveil plans for so-called "neuromarketing" - the use of magnetic-resonance brainscans to maximise the appeal of products while they are being designed.…
(author unknown)fMRI Can Visualize Dopamine Activity Directly in the Brain
Functional MRI has become a standard tool to peer into the physiologic processes happening within the brain. Though revolutionary for what it can achieve, traditional fMRI only displays the dynamics of hemoglobin molecules. (Hemoglobin is diamagnetic when oxygenated but becomes paramagnetic when deoxygenated. Hence fMRI detects regions of the brain where oxygen transfer from blood to tissues takes place.) This is an indirect approach that doesn't provide enough functional resolution and which also results in delayed readings that can mask the nature of underlying neural processes. Now researchers at Caltech and MIT have come up with a way to monitor the activity of dopamine within the brain, greatly expanding the ability of fMRI to help understand how brain functions.
From an MIT press statement:
To build the new sensors, the MIT team worked with chemical engineers at Caltech, using an approach called “directed evolution.” They started with a protein called cytochrome P450, an enzyme found in most organisms that is paramagnetic (meaning it can become weakly magnetic when exposed to a magnetic field). Using a technique called error-prone PCR, which is a faulty version of the way cells naturally replicate their genes, they generated a large collection of different mutated forms of the gene.Each mutated gene was placed into an E. coli bacterium, which produced the mutated protein. The researchers then tested each protein for its ability to bind dopamine. At the end of each round, they took the best candidate and mutated it again for a new round of improvement. At the end of five rounds, they had two sensors that would bind strongly to dopamine but not to other neurotransmitters.
In studies of rats, the researchers showed that the sensor can effectively detect dopamine in the brain. However, in its current form, the dopamine probe must be injected into the brain, and the imaging is limited to the site of injection.
Bruce Jenkins, director of neurochemical imaging at the Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging at MGH, says the new probe is “very cleverly designed,” but points out that an important challenge is yet to come: getting the molecule to cross the layer of cells that separates the brain from circulating blood. “Trying to get a charged protein across the blood-brain barrier is very tricky,” he says.
The MIT team hopes to overcome that obstacle by applying barrier disruption techniques used historically to deliver chemotherapeutic agents to the brain. They will also try to genetically program brain cells to express the sensor, so it doesn’t have to be injected.
Abstract in Nature Biotechnology: Directed evolution of a magnetic resonance imaging contrast agent for noninvasive imaging of dopamine
MIT press release: New technique offers a more detailed view of brain activity ...
Image credit: Wellcome images: MRI scan showing the regions of the brain involved in recognising familiar faces....
Physicists look for the arrow of time, biologists find it
One of the nice things about being in the science writing business for a while is that, even when the science of a given topic doesn't make a whole lot of sense, it at least starts to look familiar. One of these topics is the arrow of time, which Sean Carroll (Caltech physicist, not Sean Carroll, Madison biologist) discussed at AAAS. Briefly, time's a bit of an annoyance to physics. For relativity, time is just another dimension in space-time. But, as Carroll pointed out, while we often find we've made a wrong turn and wound up going right when we meant to go left, we never find that we wind up in yesterday.
The panel Carroll organized was about equally divided between physicists who are dealing with time, and people who are working on understanding how different aspects of biology may reflect an arrow of time.
Read the comments on this post
jtimmer@arstechnica.com (John Timmer)083482037599083329441833562156760705545509764242758699708533New fMRI Approach Pinpoints Early Brain Disease
University of Oxford researchers have been using a technique called Resting-state fMRI to detect similarities among people with a common brain condition. In a paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the scientists had people undergo fMRI scanning while doing nothing at all. This provided a baseline reading which can be correlated with readings of others:
Clare said at the time: ‘We have shown that brain activity is different in people with this version of the gene decades before any memory problems might develop. We’ve also shown that this form of fMRI, where people just lie in the scanner doing nothing, is sensitive enough to pick up these changes. These are exciting first steps towards a tantalising prospect: a simple test that will be able to distinguish who will go on to develop Alzheimer’s.’
As well as the potential clinical relevance of this form of brain scanning, the hope is that resting-state fMRI could connect differences in people’s brain activity with factors like age, sex, genes, behaviour, or disease progression.
Another great advantage of resting-state fMRI is that everyone will be conducting their experiments in the same way. This means that data can be combined from groups all over the world to map out the functioning networks in the brain - essentially giving the complete wiring diagram of the brain.
This is what the new paper by the international collaboration set out in PNAS this week. They show how it is possible to combine data from over 1000 volunteers collected at 35 different centres across the world (including Oxford). With all the data, they show they find the same patterns of networks functioning in the brain and are able to begin to see differences between different groups of people by age and by sex.
The PNAS paper compares this approach to genomics. Indeed, the maps produced of connections in the brain are being called the ‘connectome’ in the same way that the genome is the map of all our genes.
Steve Smith does see the analogy with genomics, suggesting that mapping out the connections which determine how our brains work is similar in concept to decoding our genes to discover how our body works. And there is also the similarity in approach - big international consortiums gathering data to pinpoint variation between people to gain more understanding about disease.
Abstract in PNAS: Toward discovery science of human brain function
Oxford press statement: Resting brain reveals connections ...
Lab on a chip: Ordinary cotton thread used to stitch together low-cost microfluidic analytical device
Implanted Neurons Let the Brain Rewire Itself Again
Experiments in mice show that the brain's ability to adapt might not disappear with age.
Transplanting fetal neurons into the brains of young mice opens a new window on neural plasticity, or flexibility in the brain's neural circuits. The research, published today in the journal Science, suggests that the brain's ability to radically adapt to new situations might not be permanently lost in youth, and helps to pinpoint the factors needed to reintroduce this plasticity.
(author unknown)
Introducing RoSS, a 'flight simulator' for robotic surgery
Rom-coms, period dramas are rubbish: Mathematical proof
American boffins* have carried out detailed research into movies down the decades using chaos theory, and decreed that auteurs have - by a process akin to natural selection - gravitated towards a shot rhythm which matches an underlying mathematical pulse beat found in music, economics and even engineering.…
(author unknown)14491345865414754947A Brain Implant that Uses Light
A novel optical device could ultimately be used to treat neurological disease.
Researchers at Medtronic are developing a prototype neural implant that uses light to alter the behavior of neurons in the brain. The device is based on the emerging science of optogenetic neuromodulation, in which specific brain cells are genetically engineered to respond to light. Medtronic, the world's largest manufacturer of biomedical technologies, aims to use the device to better understand how electrical therapies, currently used to treat Parkinson's and other disorders, assuage symptoms of these diseases. Medtronic scientists say they will use the findings to improve the electrical stimulators the company already sells, but others ultimately hope to use optical therapies directly as treatments.
(author unknown)
Cell phones show human movement predictable 93% of the time
We'd like to think of ourselves as dynamic, unpredictable individuals, but according to new research, that's not the case at all. In a study published in last week's Science, researchers looked at customer location data culled from cellular service providers. By looking at how customers moved around, the authors of the study found that it may be possible to predict human movement patterns and location up to 93 percent of the time. These findings may be useful in multiple fields, including city planning, mobile communication resource management, and anticipating the spread of viruses.
It's not currently possible to know exactly where everyone is all the time, but cell phones can provide a pretty good approximation. Cell phone companies store records of customers' locations based on when the customers' phones connect to towers during calls. Researchers realized that taking this data and paring it down to users who place calls more frequently might allow them to see if they could develop any measure of how predictable human movements and locations are. The users they worked with placed calls an average of once every two hours, connecting to towers that cover an area of about two square miles.
casey.l.johnston@gmail.com (Casey Johnston)16923780734376763555005670921032402256580627206029859048346005731725882424619397055719682925938601990718735093057365974500145252068856914665
The Sound of Science
PROVIDENCE -- Seth Horowitz has super hearing. As a toddler, chicken pox invaded his ears, bursting both eardrums. When they healed, his hearing range had shifted higher. Today, he can hear a computer monitor humming three rooms away. He can hear bats chattering...
from the Boston Globe (Registration Required)
(author unknown)Neural Interfaces May Serve as Brain Rehab Devices
By preforming measurements of electrical surface potentials of the brain via electrocorticography (ECog), researchers at the University of Washington demonstrated that using a brain-computer interface to move a mouse on a screen provides a serious workout to the organ. The brain adapts quickly to the implant and devotes a lot of energy into the process. The clinical potential of this finding is pointing to using neural interfaces to train the brain after a stroke.
The researchers first recorded brain patterns when human subjects clenched and unclenched a fist, stuck out a tongue, shrugged their shoulders or said the word "move."Next, the scientists recorded brain patterns when subjects imagined performing the same actions. These patterns were similar to the patterns for actual action but much weaker, as expected from previous studies.
Finally, the researchers looked at signals when subjects imagined performing the action and those brain signals were used to move a cursor toward a target on a computer screen. After less than 10 minutes of practice, brain signals from imagined movement became significantly stronger than when actually performing the physical motion.
After less than 10 minutes of training, two of the subjects also reported they no longer had to imagine moving the body part and could just think about moving the cursor.
The new findings also provide clues about which brain signals to tap. Researchers compared the patterns in low-frequency signals, usually used to control external devices, and high-frequency signals, typically dismissed as noise. They discovered that the high-frequency signals are more specific to each type of movement. Because each one occupies a smaller portion of the brain, several high-frequency signals could be tapped simultaneously to control more sophisticated devices.
Press release: Brain-controlled cursor doubles as a neural workout ...
Open access article in PNAS: Cortical activity during motor execution, motor imagery, and imagery-based online feedback
Image: Top: Brain signals in the first trial, when the subject was able to hit the target just under half the time. Bottom: Brain activity after about 10 minutes of training, when the subject could hit the target with 94 percent accuracy.
augmented reality tattoo
we have been following the development of augmented reality for a while now and this tattoo is one of
the most unusual applications. the design is a simple barcode marker tattooed onto someone’s arm,
which when viewed through a camera transforms into a three dimensional animation of a flying dragon.
the augmented reality tattoo is a development by the buenos aires based company think an app, which
developed the software to recognize the AR barcode on curved surfaces like the human body. while this
concept is a novelty now, this unlocks a range of new possibilities for tattoo art.
http://www.thinkanapp.com
(author unknown)14919518984161450902144594917105629691690944518332488187076314733702581318442441135415898584157299181823869954861821630606674516782868565233126418492118652112150907195143645054420814940874294927873248100225205290755376060922866029393006657502661654325309838753
ABL’s Successful Shootdown
Video of a recent test shot of Boeing’s ABL test plane shooting down a short-range ballistic missile.
According to a Boeing release…
This experiment marks the first time a laser weapon has engaged and destroyed an in-flight ballistic missile, and the first time that any system has accomplished it in the missile’s boost phase of flight. ALTB has the highest-energy laser ever fired from an aircraft, and is the most powerful mobile laser device in the world.
During the experiment, the aircraft, a modified Boeing 747-400F, took off from Edwards Air Force Base and focused its high-energy laser at the missile target during its boost phase as the aircraft flew over the Western Sea Range off the coast of California.
And from the Missile Defense Agency:
A short-range threat-representative ballistic missile was launched from an at-sea mobile launch platform. Within seconds, the ALTB used onboard sensors to detect the boosting missile and used a low-energy laser to track the target. The ALTB then fired a second low-energy laser to measure and compensate for atmospheric disturbance. Finally, the ALTB fired its megawatt-class High Energy Laser, heating the boosting ballistic missile to critical structural failure. The entire engagement occurred within two minutes of the target missile launch, while its rocket motors were still thrusting.
– Christian
Tattooing One Dot for Every Casualty during Operation Iraqi Freedom
Artist Wafaa Bilal will soon be getting a tattoo that contains 1 dot [wafaabilal.com] for every casualty associated with Operation Iraqi Freedom. The full-back tattoo will be applied during a 24 hour performance on March 8th in conjunction with a fundraiser aimed at collecting $1 per death towards scholarships for Americans and Iraqis who lost their parents in the war. Kyle McDonald designed the visualization for this remarkable tattoo, which contains more than 4.000 US soldiers in red ink, and more than 100.000 "invisible" civilians depicted in ultraviolet ink.
The process of visualizing the data involved a lot of research, including reconciling plain text descriptions containing GIS place names, warping the geographic coordinates to design for the landscape of the back, and distributing the deaths in an organic but respectful way.
Watch a descriptive movie about the project below.
See also the Body as a Living Pain Map.
(author unknown)139467090862893562990841461277360774692008881166018122201170
- Touchable Holography
- Rabbis take to the skies to ward off swine flu
- SOUR - Hibi no neiro
- PowerPoint is actively hostile to thoughtful decision-making.
- Tomas Saraceno
- Claire Morgan
- The world doesn't need...
- Youtube video about demanding work for free
- Michael Jackson Shrine at O2 Centre (Millenium Dome)
- 4800-Year-Old Artificial Eyeball - Medgadget - www.medgadget.com