HP Stream laptops and tablets provide Windows on a budget

 

All Stream range devices come with a year of cloud storage

 

HP has announced a new range of Windows-based tablets and notebooks. The devices, all of which carry the Stream moniker, hit a low-end price point and come with cloud storage solutions – a signal that the company is taking aim at the Chromebook market.

The Stream 7 and 8 tablets follow the recent trend of affordable slates running full Windows 8.1. HP is yet to provide detailed specs for any of the machines, but we do know that they'll be be powered by quad core Intel chips and offer HD displays.

What’s perhaps more interesting than their internals is the extras that the company is throwing in with a purchase. Pick up one of the low-end slates and you’ll get 1 TB of OneDrive cloud storage and 60 minutes of Skype time for one year. There will also be 4G variants of the tablets available, providing 200 MB data per month for the life of the device, with no annual contract.

Though the company’s new tablets look like good budget Windows offerings, it's the Stream 11.6 and 13.3 laptops that are the headline products. The new notebooks are still very much low-end offerings, but provide a Chromebook alternative that fits the same form-factor we’ve come to expect from those systems.

The Stream laptops instantly bring to mind HP’s Chromebook 11, and like that system they offer a fanless design and island-style keyboard. Like the tablets, there’s 1 TB of OneDrive cloud storage included alongside 32 GB of internal flash storage, as well as a US$25 gift card for use in the Windows Store.

If you’re viewing the new laptops in the context of low-end Chromebooks, then you’ll know not to expect much in terms of performance. That said, the dual core Celeron chip powering the Stream notebooks should be speedy enough for casual computing, and the HD (read 768p) displays are standard for the money.

They’re available in pink or blue, and HP claims the 13.3-inch system will run for 7 hours 45 minutes on a single charge, while the 11.6 variant should manage a slightly better 8 hours 15 minutes.

The new laptops join the already announced $300 Stream 14 notebook, which offers a 14-inch 1,366 x 768 panel, 2 GB of RAM and is powered by a quad core AMD A4 chip. The larger system offers a lower capacity 100 GB of cloud storage, but for a longer period of two years.

The Stream 7 and 8 tablets start at $100 and $150 respectively, while the 11.6-inch and 13.3-inch notebooks come in at $200 and $230. You’ll be able to pick up the 13.3-inch laptop with an optional touch display, though we don’t yet know how much more that version will cost. The entire range starts shipping in November.

Source: HP

Breakthrough in LED construction increases efficiency by 57 percent

 

Researchers at Princeton University claim to have increased the light output of organic LEDs by 57 percent (Photo: Shutterstock)

With LEDs being the preferred long-lasting, low-energy method for replacing less efficient forms of lighting, their uptake has dramatically increased over the past few years. However, despite their luminous outputs having increased steadily over that time, they still fall behind more conventional forms of lighting in terms of brightness. Researchers at Princeton University claim to have come up with a way to change all that by using nanotechnology to increase the output of organic LEDs by 57 percent.

Much of this realized increase has been achieved by using a new method devised by the researchers for the way the light is emitted from the LED. Current commercial LED design actually reduces the amount of light that gets transmitted because light is not channeled from where it is generated at the semiconductor junction, but rather focused by the rudimentary lens of the epoxy resin medium in which the semiconductor is contained. As a result, although LEDs are renowned for their efficiency, only a fraction of the light generated within an LED actually makes it beyond the lens.

"It is exactly the same reason that lighting installed inside a swimming pool seems dim from outside – because the water traps the light," said professor Stephen Chou, the Joseph C. Elgin Professor of Engineering at Princeton. "The solid structure of a LED traps far more light than the pool's water."

An LED is a very efficient way to produce visible light; much more so than incandescent bulbs which actually produce more heat than they do light. An inorganic semiconductor LED is basically just a specialized type of semiconductor diode made from various mixes of metals (usually combinations dominated by Gallium Arsenide and, to a lesser extent, Silicon Carbide).

Simply put, when the diode has power applied in the correct ("forward") direction, this causes electrons to recombine with holes to release sufficient energy to produce photons which emit light.

Similarly, an organic semiconductor LED (better known as an OLED – the lighting technology behind flexible screen TVs) is made by placing a series of organic thin films between two conductors. Power applied in a comparable manner to an inorganic LED results in a somewhat similar hole/electron recombination, though the injected positive and negative charges recombine in the emissive layer to produce light.

In the Princeton research, the team used a nanoscale structure of its own design dubbed a PlaCSH (plasmonic cavity with subwavelength hole-array) to manipulate light in a way that ordinary material or non-metallic nanostructures cannot. Not only did this vastly improve the efficiency of light output, this method also improved the image clarity of LED displays by around 400 percent compared with standard displays.

The PlaCSH device contains a layer of light-emitting material approximately 100 nanometers thick housed inside a cavity that has one surface made of a thin metal film, while the opposite cavity surface is coated with a metal mesh just 15 nanometers thick. Though tiny, they aren't the thinnest LEDs so far developed, but by being on a scale smaller than a single wavelength of light, this combination of reflector and mesh guides the light out of the emissive layer with almost no absorption or scattering.

This latest work was the culmination of previous research by Chou and his team where they first developed the PlaCSH structure to be used on solar cells to more efficiently focus incoming light. This increased the absorption to as high as 96 percent of the solar energy being received by the photovoltaic cell, which resulted in an increased efficiency of 175 percent. As such, the team figured that if such a device was so efficient at absorbing light then, logically, it could also be used for light extraction as well.

"From a view point of physics, a good light absorber, which we had for the solar cells, should also be a good light radiator," Professor Chou said. "We wanted to experimentally demonstrate this is true in visible light range, and then use it to solve the key challenges in LEDs and displays. It is so flexible and ductile that it can be weaved into a cloth."

The team also claims that the PlaCSH organic LEDs are exceptionally cheap to make as they are made using a system called "nanoimprint," a technology Professor Chou invented to make nanostructures in a similar way to a printing press produces newspapers.

Professor Chou was recently awarded a grant from the US Department of Energy to further advance the use of PlaCSH, and patent applications for organic and inorganic LEDs using PlaCSH have been filed by Princeton University. The team is now researching the use of PLaCSH in red and blue organic LEDs, as well as the original green LEDs developed.

The research was published in the journal Advanced Functional Materials

Source: Princeton University

LocName gives your address a URL

 

LocName allows users to share place location information via a URL and mobile app, as well as navigate to a location

Repeatedly typing out addresses to share via email can be time-consuming, especially if they are written in a foreign language. A new service wants to make the need to type out addresses a thing of the past. LocName allows users to create a URL for an address that can then be easily shared.

LocName is short for "Location Name." It aims to simplify our communication of place locations by applying a short, reusable URL to them, where relevant information about the place is stored. Visitors to the URL will see the written address, an embedded Google map of its location, a description and image of the location and contact information. It's also possible to print a QR code for the location and to check-in.

In addition to using LocName URLs to share location information about a place, the service's iOS/Android mobile app can also be used to navigate to a registered location. Like other navigation apps, the LocName app will locate an individual using GPS and then provide directions to the desired location. Users can also share their own GPS position with others and have the app provide directions.

In order to create a LocName URL for an address, users must first register with the service. It is then possible to register different places using the service and to add places to a list of favorites. An API is also offered, which allows e-commerce websites to capture the locations of customers for use when delivering goods.

Users can sign up to LocName by inputting their details or using their Facebook account. Creating a new place, meanwhile, can be done using GPS data, typing in location and name, longitude and latitude coordinates or by pasting a Google Maps URL. The service is still in beta and is working out some bugs here and there, but I found it simple enough to use and having place location info stored in one place that can easily shared via URL has definite time-saving potential.

Source: LocName

 

Artificial intelligence program that learns like a child

 

An artificial intelligence program created at the University of Gothenburg imitates a child's cognitive development to learn basic arithmetic, logic, and grammar with no pre-existing knowledge (Image: Shutterstock)

Artificial intelligence programs may already be capable of specialized tasks like flying planes, winning Jeopardy, and giving you a hard time in your favorite video games, but even the most advanced offerings are no smarter than a typical four-year-old child when it comes to broader insights and comprehension. It makes sense, then, that researchers at the University of Gothenburg have developed a program that imitates a child's cognitive development.

"We have developed a program that can learn, for example, basic arithmetic, logic, and grammar without any pre-existing knowledge," says Claes Strannegård. Starting from a set of simple and broad definitions meant to provide a cognitive model, this program gradually builds new knowledge based on previous knowledge. From that new knowledge it then draws new conclusions about rules and relations that govern the world, and it identifies new patterns to connect the insight to.

The process is similar to how children develop intelligence. A child can intuit, for example, that if 2 x 0 = 0 and 3 x 0 = 0 then 5 x 0 will also equal 0, or they could draw the conclusion that the next number in the series "2, 5, 8" will be 11. And the same kinds of intuition carry across to other areas, such as grammar, where it's easy to identify rules for standard verb conjugations from examples like sing becoming sang and run becoming ran in the past tense.

"We postulate that children learn everything based on experiences and that they are always looking for general patterns," Strannegård says.

The researchers' system, which they call O*, follows the principle of Occam's razor – that you should favor short and simple explanations over long and complex ones. It identifies patterns by itself and combines them with prior knowledge to solve problems.

Sometimes this will lead to errors, such as when children say "I brang my lunch" instead of "I brought my lunch," but O* managed not only to learn arithmetic from scratch, but also to perform above the average human level on propositional logic problems. And given enough information the researchers hope their program could learn and reason its way to correct conclusions across a range of domains without any need for a programmer to explicitly formulate which rules it should apply in a given situation.

"We are hoping that this type of program will eventually be useful in several different practical applications," says Strannegård. "I think a versatile household robot would be tremendously valuable, but we’re not there yet."

Strannegård and his colleagues presented a paper describing O* at the Seventh Conference on Artificial General Intelligence in August.

Source: University of Gothenburg

 

Google Glass now plays movie trailers, closed-captions your conversations

 

 

Captioning on Glass lets wearers see transcriptions of a conversation on their screens

Google Glass hasn't exactly set the world on fire – or, for that matter, even left beta status. But that doesn't mean there aren't still some cool potential uses for the headset. Today Glass has two big new apps: one that can turn it into a life-changing tool for the hearing-impaired, and another that, erm, helps movie theaters sell tickets.

Captioning on Glass (CoG) is a real-time closed-captioning app for Google Glass. If you're deaf or hard of hearing, you'll see the words that a partner is speaking to you on your Glass display – almost instantly.

The only catch is that the speaker needs to be talking into a paired Android smartphone with a companion app installed. Google Glass has its own built-in microphone and voice recognition software, but it's much better at recognizing the wearer's voice than it is background voices. The CoG service uses the paired phone's microphone, held near the mouth of the person that's speaking, to deliver much more accurate transcription.

If the Captioning app transcribes something wrong, the speaker can easily correct it from within the phone app (either from a list of suggestions or entered manually). And if the Glass wearer is also visually-impaired, he or she can adjust the text size.

Like most other Glass functions, the process is triggered with an "OK Glass" command (in this case, followed by "... recognize this!").

Preview for Glass offers new functionality as well, but it's of a more commercial nature. After installing the app, you simply wear Glass to a movie theater, look at a coming attraction poster and say "OK Glass, recognize this!" (yep, the same command as CoG). The movie's trailer will then play on your head-mounted display.

If you aren't yet convinced of Google Glass' merits, then Preview won't likely change that. After all, it isn't exactly hard to whip out your smartphone and open the YouTube app while waiting for a flick to start. But if you're already a happy Glass Explorer, then perhaps it could save you the trouble of reaching into your pocket the next time you pass that new Mockingjay poster.

 

2014 MacBook Pro with Retina Display vs. Lenovo Yoga 2 Pro

 

Gizmag compares the features and specs of the 13-in MacBook Pro with Retina Display to the Lenovo Yoga 2 Pro

Image Gallery (22 images)

You could easily argue that Apple's MacBook Pro with Retina Display is the best laptop around. But what happens when you pit the newest model against one of the best Windows 2-in-1s, Lenovo's Yoga 2 Pro? Read on, as Gizmag compares their features and specs.

Before we get started, note that we're only looking at the 13-in Retina MacBook Pro. Apple also makes a larger 15-in version, but it's less of a direct rival to the Yoga 2 Pro.

In case it wasn't already clear, we're comparing a dedicated notebook to a laptop/tablet hybrid, or 2-in-1. The Yoga doesn't, however, have a detachable keyboard like the Surface. Instead its hinged keyboard folds behind its screen for tablet use.

Sizes are similar, with the Yoga 2 Pro measuring 5 percent wider and 11 percent thinner. The Yoga is a great size for a notebook, but it's enormous for a tablet. For a little extra perspective, the Yoga is 29 percent taller and 38 percent wider than the iPad Air (in landscape mode).

Weight

The Yoga is 12 percent lighter than the Retina MacBook, but remember that Apple's notebook isn't designed to be held as a tablet. Similar to the size situation, the Yoga is going to make for an unusually heavy tablet.

Build

The MacBook's metallic build gives it the higher-end build quality over the Yoga, which sports a plastic/metal hybrid chassis.

Display (size)

Riddle me this, Batman: when is one 13.3-in screen bigger than another 13.3-in screen? Why, when they have different aspect ratios, that's when. The Yoga's more elongated 16:9 screen means it's only 95 percent as big as the MacBook's 16:10 screen.

Display (resolution)

Both devices have impressively sharp screens. The MacBook's resolution may be lower, but it's as razor-sharp as you'd need a laptop to be. In tablet mode, though, you'll likely hold the Yoga much closer to your eyes. It needs those extra pixels to maintain a similar level of crispness in those close quarters.

Touch screen

Though some Windows laptops have touch screens, Apple hasn't shown any interest in going that route.

Processor

This visual only shows the processors for the entry-level versions of each machine. More expensive versions of the MacBook go all the way up to an Intel Core i7 (clocked at 3 GHz), while the Yoga maxes out with an Intel Core i7 clocked at 1.8 GHz.

Graphics

Both machines have integrated Intel graphics, with the MacBook's having the advantage.

One of the biggest upgrades in the latest version of the Retina MacBook is its boost to a minimum 8 GB of RAM. Though you can pay extra to get a MacBook with 16 GB RAM, the Yoga also sits pretty with 8 GB across the board.

Storage

The MacBook gives you more storage options, but the entry-level Yoga gives you double the space of the base Retina MacBook.

SD reader

Both machines give you built-in full-sized SD card readers.

USB ports

Both systems have two USB ports each, but the MacBook has the advantage. Both of its use the USB 3.0 standard, while one of the Yoga's ports is built on the slower USB 2.0.

Thunderbolt

No surprise here, as Apple has embraced the Thunderbolt standard in its line of notebooks, while most Windows OEMs have opted to skip it.

Video out

The MacBook lets you plug in a standard HDMI cable for video out, while you'll need a special cable or an adapter for the Yoga.

Battery

Both PCs' Haswell processors will have them lasting longer than any pre-2013 notebook ever could. For Apple, that's an estimated nine hours of web browsing, while Lenovo estimates six hours of (full HD) video streaming.

Webcam

Each device has a front-facing 720p webcam. Though the Yoga doubles as a tablet, it lacks a rear-facing camera.

802.11ac Wi-Fi

If you have a new-ish router that supports 802.11ac Wi-Fi, then the MacBook will play nicely with those faster speeds. Of course both PCs still support older (and much more common) Wi-Fi standards.

Software

The MacBook runs the latest version of OS X, 10.9 Mavericks, and will soon be upgraded to OS X 10.10 Yosemite. The Yoga 2 Pro runs either Windows 8.1 or Windows 8.1 Pro, depending on which pricing tier you choose.

Release

Apple just updated the Retina MacBook Pro a couple of weeks ago, while the Yoga 2 Pro launched before the 2013 holidays. We wouldn't be surprised to hear about the Yoga 3 at IFA next month.

Starting price

Technically the Yoga 2 Pro starts at $1,400. But if you hop over to Lenovo's product page, you'll be able to snag the Yoga 2 Pro for $1,000. We'd imagine this is some house-cleaning, in advance of the next-gen models.

Going off of that price, you could make a strong argument for the Yoga 2 Pro as the better buy. It has a sharper screen, double the storage in the entry-level model and can serve as both tablet and laptop. Of course that argument would assume that you're at least as happy with Windows as you are with OS X, and that you actually want a transforming device that tries to do two things at once. If you just want a damn good laptop, then it's still hard to beat the Retina MacBook Pro.

For more on the Retina MacBook, you can read our full review of the late 2013 13-in model. And if you're eyeing the Yoga's 2-in-1 form factor, you can see how it sizes up against its competition in our Windows 2-in-1 Comparison Guide.

Updated 8/17 to clarify that the Yoga 2 Pro has a hybrid plastic/metal build.

Tyon gaming mouse sports a dorsal fin for extra control

 

Roccat's Tyon packs in new controls to help you gain the gaming edge

Image Gallery (6 images)

Roccat’s Tyon offers everything you would expect from a wired gaming mouse, including a wealth of customizable buttons and a precision laser sensor. The new peripheral goes a little beyond this however, introducing new controls that the company calls the Dorsal Fin Switch and X-Celerator thumb paddle.

The Tyon is fitted with 16 assignable buttons (plus an Easy-Shift button that lets you double up their functionality), an 8,200 DPI laser sensor, and a mouse wheel that offers “millions of ultra-precise steps.” The accessory is fitted with a 32-bit processor and 576 KB of internal memory, allowing the user to store a wide range of button-mapping presets on the mouse itself.

Though that might all look like pretty standard stuff for a gaming mouse, the Roccat product manages to stand out by offering previously unseen control functionality. First up is the Dorsal Fin Switch – a two-way clickable button that sits behind the wheel, designed to be activated with the knuckle of a middle finger. The company doesn’t specifically highlight a use for this, but we can see it being great for tasks such as quickly cycling between weapons in first person shooters.

The second big addition is the X-Celerator thumb paddle, which can be pulled up or down to perform a number of functions such as throttling a vehicle or controlling aircraft tilt and pitch.

Last but not least, the Tyon offers two levels of lighting, located around the base of the mouse and on the sides of its wheel.

The Roccat Tyon is available now for US$100.

 

Source: Roccat

Attacking type 2 diabetes from a new direction with encouraging results

 

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Victor Shengkan Jin says it is important to find a drug for type 2 diabetes that attacks the root cause of the disease and not just symptoms.

Type 2 diabetes affects an estimated 28 million people in the USA  according to the American Diabetes Association, but medications now available only treat symptoms, not the root cause of the disease. New research from Rutgers shows promising evidence that a modified form of a different drug, niclosamide -- now used to eliminate intestinal parasites -- may hold the key to battling the disease at its source.

The study, led by Victor Shengkan Jin, an associate professor of pharmacology at Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, has been published online by the journal Nature Medicine.

Jin says it is important to find a suitable medication to correct the cause of the disease as quickly as possible because the only way now known to "cure" the disease involves major gastric bypass surgery. "The surgery can only be performed on highly obese people," Jin explains, "and carries significant risks that include death, so it is not a realistic solution for most patients."

And the number of patients continues to rise. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention projects that 40 percent of all Americans now alive will develop type 2 diabetes.

Type 2 is the form of diabetes once known as "adult onset," in which the body produces insulin that ordinarily would keep blood sugar under control, but either it does not produce enough insulin or the body's ability to use that insulin is degraded.

According to Jin, a major cause of insulin resistance is the accumulation of excess fat in the cells of the liver, as well as in muscle tissue. The fat disrupts the process where, ordinarily, insulin would cause body tissues to correctly absorb glucose -- blood sugar -- and use it as a fuel.

With nowhere else to go, much of the excess glucose remains in the bloodstream, where in high concentrations it can damage tissues throughout the body -- potentially leading to blindness, kidney damage, cardiovascular diseases and other severe health problems.

"Our goal in this study was to find a safe and practical way of diminishing fat content in the liver. We used mice to perform proof-of-principle experiments in our laboratory," says Jin. "We succeeded in removing fat, and that in turn improved the animals' ability to use insulin correctly and reduce blood sugar."

The modified medication -- whose full name is niclosamide ethanolamine salt (NEN) -- burned the excess fat in liver cells, through a process known as mitochondrial uncoupling. Mitochondria are the microscopic energy source for each cell in the body, and ordinarily -- like a well-tuned car engine -- they burn fuels including fats and sugars in modest quantities to keep the cells functioning.

Revving up cells' internal engines to burn away harmful fat

"The cell is like a car and the mitochondria are the engine," Jin explains. "What we're doing inside cells is like putting the car's transmission into neutral by uncoupling it from the transmission. Then you step on the gas so the engine runs full throttle but the car doesn't move. If too much of the fuel in the cell is fat, you keep burning it until the fuel gauge reaches empty. Without the interference of fat, you hope that sugar will then enter the cell normally."

Getting rid of the interference of fat in liver and muscle tissue is the key to restoring the cells' ability to respond to insulin properly, which would allow the right amount of sugar to be taken up by cells and ultimately reverse the diabetes entirely. That outcome is far from certain, but Jin says the positive changes he saw in the mice are encouraging.

Jin says it also is significant that the drug he used is a modified form of a medication that the FDA already approved for human use. That was a deliberate choice. "We wanted a safe and practical compound to deplete fat inside cells," says Jin. "We went to the literature and found an approved drug that does in parasitic worms what we wanted to do in liver cells. The modified form of the medication, although itself is not a drug used in humans, has an excellent safety profile in other mammals -- so very likely it would have a good safety profile in humans too."

Also, excess fat in the liver is not just a condition of the obese; people of normal weight can develop fatty livers and type 2 diabetes. Jin says this kind of medication, if shown to be effective, could safely treat patients of all weights.

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Story Source:

The above story is based on materials provided by Rutgers University. The original article was written by Rob Forman. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.

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Journal Reference:

1. Hanlin Tao, Yong Zhang, Xiangang Zeng, Gerald I Shulman, Shengkan Jin. Niclosamide ethanolamine–induced mild mitochondrial uncoupling improves diabetic symptoms in mice. Nature Medicine, 2014; DOI: 10.1038/nm.3699

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'Programmable' antibiotic harnesses an enzyme to attack drug-resistant microbes

 

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Rockefeller University researchers colonized mouse skin with a mix of bacterial cells, some resistant to the antibiotic kanamycin. They made the resistant cells glow (left) and treated the mix with an enzyme that targeted and killed off most resistant cells (right).

The multitude of microbes scientists have found populating the human body have good, bad and mostly mysterious implications for our health. But when something goes wrong, we defend ourselves with the undiscriminating brute force of traditional antibiotics, which wipe out everything at once, regardless of the consequences.

Researchers at Rockefeller University and their collaborators are working on a smarter antibiotic. And in research to be published October 5 in Nature Biotechnology, the team describes a 'programmable' antibiotic technique that selectively targets the bad bugs, particularly those harboring antibiotic resistance genes, while leaving other, more innocent microbes alone.

"In experiments, we succeeded in instructing a bacterial enzyme, known as Cas9, to target a particular DNA sequence and cut it up," says lead researcher Luciano Marraffini, head of the Laboratory of Bacteriology. "This selective approach leaves the healthy microbial community intact, and our experiments suggest that by doing so you can keep resistance in check and so prevent certain types of secondary infections, eliminating two serious hazards associated with treatment by classical antibiotics."

The new approach could, for instance, reduce the risk of C. diff, a severe infection of the colon, caused by the Clostridium difficile bacterium, that is associated with prolonged courses of harsh antibiotics and is a growing public health concern.

The Cas9 enzyme is part of a defense system that bacteria use to protect themselves against viruses. The team coopted this bacterial version of an immune system, known as a CRISPR (clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats) system and turned it against some of the microbes. CRISPR systems contain unique genetic sequences called spacers that correspond to sequences in viruses. CRISPR-associated enzymes, including Cas9, use these spacer sequences as guides to identify and destroy viral invaders.

The researchers were able to direct Cas9 at targets of their choosing by engineering spacer sequences to match bacterial genes then inserting these sequences into a cell along with the Cas9 gene. The cell's own machinery then turns on the system. Depending on the location of the target in a bacterial cell, Cas9 may kill the cell or it may eradicate the target gene. In some cases, a treatment may prevent a cell from acquiring resistance, they found.

"We previously showed that if Cas9 is programmed with a target from a bacterial genome, it will kill the bacteria. Building on that work, we selected guide sequences that enabled us to selectively kill a particular strain of microbe from within a mixed population," says first author David Bikard, a former Rockefeller postdoc who is now at the Pasteur Institute in Paris.

In initial experiments, Bikard and colleagues targeted a strain of the common skin and respiratory bacteria Staphylococcus aureus that is resistant to the antibiotic kanamycin. Treatment by Cas9 programmed to target a part of the resistance gene killed most of the resistant Staph, but left behind the kanamycin-susceptible Staph.

Targeted bacterial genocide is only one option. Bacteria share genes, including those conferring drug resistance, in the form of rings of DNA known as plasmids. In a second series of experiments, researchers turned Cas9 on tetracycline resistance-harboring plasmids in a strain of the potentially deadly multidrug resistant bacteria Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA). Not only did the resistant cells become sensitive to tetracycline after Cas9 destroyed the plasmids, but the arrival of Cas9 in other Staph cells acted as an immunization, preventing them from taking on resistance-carrying plasmids.

And, in a final set of experiments, conducted in collaboration with Vincent Fischetti's Laboratory of Bacterial Pathogenesis and Immunology, adjunct faculty member Chad Euler confirmed their test tube results on living skin, by using Cas9 to selectively kill kanamycin-resistant Staph infecting the shaved backs of mice.

In spite of the promising results, the delivery system needs improvement. The researchers used bacteria-infecting viruses to inject the programmed Cas9 enzymes into the bacterial cells, but these viruses only attack specific types of cells. Scientists need to devise a less discriminating method of delivery, before the technology can be used to develop a new class of antibiotics, Marraffini says.

In addition to its potential as a much-needed new weapon against drug-resistant microbes, the new system could also be used to advance research on the complex populations of microbes in the body, about which very little is known. "There are enormous microbial communities in the human body," Marraffini says. "Programmable Cas9 enzymes may make it possible to analyze these populations by eliminating their members, one by one, and studying the effects."

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Story Source:

The above story is based on materials provided by Rockefeller University. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.

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Journal Reference:

1. David Bikard, Chad W Euler, Wenyan Jiang, Philip M Nussenzweig, Gregory W Goldberg, Xavier Duportet, Vincent A Fischetti, Luciano A Marraffini. Exploiting CRISPR-Cas nucleases to produce sequence-specific antimicrobials. Nature Biotechnology, 2014; DOI: 10.1038/nbt.3043

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Seis em cada dez homens com câncer têm mais de 60 anos

 

Idosos são 50% dos atendidos no Instituto do Câncer de SP; doença ocupa 2º lugar como causa de morte nessa faixa etária

DO IG SAÚDE

No Dia Mundial do Idoso, pesquisa inédita realizada pelo Instituto do Câncer do Estado de São Paulo (Icesp), ligado a Secretaria de Estado da Saúde e à Faculdade de Medicina da USP, maior centro de oncologia da América Latina aponta que os idosos representam 50% dos pacientes em tratamento na unidade.
Os homens são maioria, 61% no total, e entre os tipos de tumores mais comuns nesta faixa etária estão os dos órgãos genitais (próstata, pênis e testículos), órgãos digestivos (estômago, esôfago, intestino, cólon e reto) e aparelho respiratório.
Cenário: 'O Brasil está às vésperas de uma epidemia de câncer'
Já entre as mulheres – 39% no total –, o câncer nos órgãos digestivos vem na frente, seguido de tumores na mama e nos órgãos genitais. O levantamento ainda mostra que os pacientes com mais de 60 anos respondem por 54% das cirurgias.
“A parcela da população brasileira que mais cresce é a de idosos e o câncer já ocupa o segundo lugar como causa de morte entre essa faixa etária. É de extrema importância, portanto, estarmos preparados para oferecer um acompanhamento geriátrico completo, que, aliado as novas técnicas cirúrgicas e as drogas modernas, proporcione mais possibilidades de tratamento e, principalmente, qualidade de vida aos pacientes maduros”, destaca o oncologista Paulo Hoff, diretor geral do Icesp.
Muitas pessoas ainda acreditam que o principal fator para o surgimento do câncer é o genético, mas apenas 10% dos tumores têm esta correlação. Por isso é fundamental que homens e mulheres acima dos 50 anos realizem, anualmente, check-up para detectar o câncer no início, como o exame físico da próstata (toque retal), a mamografia e o papanicolau, por exemplo.
Veja alimentos que ajudam na prevenção do câncer:
Abacate: rico em ácidos-graxos poli-insaturados e em vitaminas do grupo B, essenciais no combate ao câncer .
Além disso, existem outros cuidados importantes que valem ser seguidos por toda a população. Manter uma dieta equilibrada, evitando o consumo excessivo de carnes vermelhas e bebidas alcoólicas, não fumar e praticar exercícios físicos – pelo menos 30 minutos diários – são atitudes que ajudam no combate a doença.
Exposição
Para homenagear os idosos, o Instituto promove durante todo o mês de outubro a exposição “Retratos da Maturidade”. Quem passar pelo hall de entrada vai se deparar com uma seleção de 25 fotos de pacientes e familiares, registradas em diversos locais e situações distintas. “Nós percebemos que os idosos costumam lidar melhor com o diagnóstico de câncer, uma vez que a maturidade traz mudanças positivas como o alinhamento de expectativas e prioridades, além de maior controle emocional. As imagens selecionadas para a exposição conseguem, justamente, demonstrar esses sentimentos”, explica a coordenadora de humanização Maria Helena Sponton.

2014 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine: Cells that constitute a positioning system in the brain

 

October 6, 2014

Nobel Foundation

The 2014 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine has been awarded to John O´Keefe, May-Britt Moser and Edvard I. Moser for their discoveries of cells that constitute a positioning system in the brain. The discoveries have solved a problem that has occupied philosophers and scientists for centuries -- how does the brain create a map of the space surrounding us and how can we navigate our way through a complex environment?

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Grid cells, together with other cells in the entorhinal cortex that recognize the direction of the head of the animal and the border of the room, form networks with the place cells in the hippocampus. This circuitry constitutes a comprehensive positioning system, an inner GPS, in the brain. The positioning system in the human brain appears to have similar components as those of the rat brain.

The Nobel Assembly at Karolinska Institutet has today decided to award The 2014 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with one half to John O´Keefe and the other half jointly to May-Britt Moser and Edvard I. Moser for their discoveries of cells that constitute a positioning system in the brain

How do we know where we are? How can we find the way from one place to another? And how can we store this information in such a way that we can immediately find the way the next time we trace the same path? This year´s Nobel Laureates have discovered a positioning system, an "inner GPS" in the brain that makes it possible to orient ourselves in space, demonstrating a cellular basis for higher cognitive function.

In 1971, John O´Keefe discovered the first component of this positioning system. He found that a type of nerve cell in an area of the brain called the hippocampus that was always activated when a rat was at a certain place in a room. Other nerve cells were activated when the rat was at other places. O´Keefe concluded that these "place cells" formed a map of the room.

More than three decades later, in 2005, May-Britt and Edvard Moser discovered another key component of the brain's positioning system. They identified another type of nerve cell, which they called "grid cells," that generate a coordinate system and allow for precise positioning and pathfinding. Their subsequent research showed how place and grid cells make it possible to determine position and to navigate.

The discoveries of John O´Keefe, May-Britt Moser and Edvard Moser have solved a problem that has occupied philosophers and scientists for centuries -- how does the brain create a map of the space surrounding us and how can we navigate our way through a complex environment?

How do we experience our environment?

The sense of place and the ability to navigate are fundamental to our existence. The sense of place gives a perception of position in the environment. During navigation, it is interlinked with a sense of distance that is based on motion and knowledge of previous positions.

Questions about place and navigation have engaged philosophers and scientists for a long time. More than 200 years ago, the German philosopher Immanuel Kant argued that some mental abilities exist as a priori knowledge, independent of experience. He considered the concept of space as an inbuilt principle of the mind, one through which the world is and must be perceived. With the advent of behavioural psychology in the mid-20th century, these questions could be addressed experimentally. When Edward Tolman examined rats moving through labyrinths, he found that they could learn how to navigate, and proposed that a "cognitive map" formed in the brain allowed them to find their way. But questions still lingered -- how would such a map be represented in the brain?

John O´Keefe and the place in space

John O´Keefe was fascinated by the problem of how the brain controls behaviour and decided, in the late 1960s, to attack this question with neurophysiological methods. When recording signals from individual nerve cells in a part of the brain called the hippocampus, in rats moving freely in a room, O'Keefe discovered that certain nerve cells were activated when the animal assumed a particular place in the environment. He could demonstrate that these "place cells" were not merely registering visual input, but were building up an inner map of the environment. O'Keefe concluded that the hippocampus generates numerous maps, represented by the collective activity of place cells that are activated in different environments. Therefore, the memory of an environment can be stored as a specific combination of place cell activities in the hippocampus.

May-Britt and Edvard Moser find the coordinates

May-Britt and Edvard Moser were mapping the connections to the hippocampus in rats moving in a room when they discovered an astonishing pattern of activity in a nearby part of the brain called the entorhinal cortex. Here, certain cells were activated when the rat passed multiple locations arranged in a hexagonal grid. Each of these cells was activated in a unique spatial pattern and collectively these "grid cells" constitute a coordinate system that allows for spatial navigation. Together with other cells of the entorhinal cortex that recognize the direction of the head and the border of the room, they form circuits with the place cells in the hippocampus. This circuitry constitutes a comprehensive positioning system, an inner GPS, in the brain.

A place for maps in the human brain

Recent investigations with brain imaging techniques, as well as studies of patients undergoing neurosurgery, have provided evidence that place and grid cells exist also in humans. In patients with Alzheimer´s disease, the hippocampus and entorhinal cortex are frequently affected at an early stage, and these individuals often lose their way and cannot recognize the environment. Knowledge about the brain´s positioning system may, therefore, help us understand the mechanism underpinning the devastating spatial memory loss that affects people with this disease.

The discovery of the brain's positioning system represents a paradigm shift in our understanding of how ensembles of specialized cells work together to execute higher cognitive functions. It has opened new avenues for understanding other cognitive processes, such as memory, thinking and planning.

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Story Source:

The above story is based on materials provided by Nobel Foundation. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.

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O poder da vitamina D: 17 fatos que você precisa saber

 

Você já ouviu falar na vitamina D? A substância é fundamental à saúde, pois atua em diversas funções do organismo. A principal delas está ligada à saúde dos ossos, já que ela auxilia na absorção de cálcio, aumenta a força dos ossos e ajuda a prevenir fraturas.

Mas o micronutriente atua ainda em muitas outras áreas: combate a hipertensão, auxilia na regulagem de hormônios, colabora no desempenho dos músculos, entre outros fatores.

A lista abaixo foi elaborada com a orientação da nutricionista Denise Real e indica 17 fatos interessantes que você precisa saber sobre essa vitamina cheia de benefícios. Confira!

1. A vitamina D é conhecida como a vitamina do sol. Isto porque as maiores quantidades dessa vitamina são obtidas pela exposição da pele aos raios solares.
2. Ao contrário de outras vitaminas, apenas cerca de 10% da vitamina D de que o corpo necessita vem dos alimentos. Os outros 90% são produzidos pelo próprio organismo.
3. Pessoas de pele clara absorvem a Vitamina D com mais facilidade. Quanto mais escura a pele, mais tempo de exposição ao sol é necessária para metabolizar a substância.
4. Um dos principais benefícios da vitamina para o organismo é o aumento na força dos ossos. Isso acontece porque ela estimula a absorção do cálcio, um nutriente indispensável para os ossos e dentes. A vitamina D é, inclusive, considerada uma grande aliada no combate à osteoporose.
5. Ela também é fundamental para a redução dos níveis de estrogênio na menopausa.
6. Combater a hipertensão e auxiliar na manutenção do peso são mais algumas de suas muitas funções.
7. A vitamina D desempenha um importante papel no bom funcionamento da tireóide e na secreção de insulina pelo pâncreas.
8. Por conta do auxílio no controle da insulina, alguns estudos sugerem que a deficiência dessa vitamina poderia causar diabetes.
9. A vitamina atua no sistema imunológico e ajuda na proteção do organismo. Acredita-se ainda que ela seja responsável por controlar cerca de 10% das funções das células.
10. O nutriente colabora no desempenho de músculos, nervos, coagulação do sangue, crescimento celular e utilização de energia.
11. Novos estudos apontam que a vitamina também é importante no combate ao estresse, na síntese da melanina e na diferenciação das células da pele e sangue.
12. Pesquisas indicam a eficácia da vitamina em tratamentos de esclerose múltipla. Segundo indica o estudo, quanto mais baixo for o nível de vitamina D, mais virulenta será essa doença.
13. A exposição ao sol não é a única fonte desta vitamina. Ela também pode ser encontrada em alimentos como leite, iogurte, ovos, manteiga, peixes e fígado de boi. No entanto, acredita-se que a síntese da vitamina pela exposição ao sol seja muito maior que aquela relacionada à ingestão alimentar.
14. Um estudo mostrou que cerca de 1 bilhão de pessoas no mundo apresentam níveis baixos de vitamina D1. Em nosso país, 99,3% da população ingerem a vitamina em níveis abaixo dos recomendados.
15. Nem sempre se consegue níveis suficientes de vitamina D através da exposição aos raios solares. Às vezes, é necessário que a substância seja administrada de outras formas.
16. Alguns dos sintomas da falta dessa vitamina são fraqueza muscular e riscos de infecção. Em idosos, a falta de vitamina D pode contribuir para ossos quebradiços.
17. A quem tem deficiência desta vitamina, é possível conseguir a quantidade ideal de vitamina D por meio de suplementos receitados por um médico.

Para contar com os benefícios da vitamina D, procure expor-se ao sol por cerca de 15 a 20 minutos por dia. Mas, sempre com cautela: evite tomar sol das 10:00 às 16:00 e use sempre o filtro solar.

Fonte: Dicas de Mulher

Estudo mostra que exercícios de resistência podem melhorar a memória

 

Resultados semelhantes já haviam sido obtidos com longos períodos de exercícios aeróbicos, mas a nova pesquisa indica que os benefícios podem ser alcançados mais rapidamente

Pesquisa: o grupo que fez exercícios se saiu melhor no teste de memória (Lear Miller/Getty Images)

Se exercitar na academia por pelo menos 20 minutos pode ajudar a melhorar a memória de longo prazo. É o que diz um estudo realizado por pesquisadores do Instituto de Tecnologia da Geórgia, em Atlanta, Estados Unidos, e publicado no periódico Acta Psychologica. Estudos anteriores já haviam mostrado que a memória pode ser beneficiada por diversos meses de exercícios aeróbicos, como corrida ou natação, porém o novo estudo demonstra que um resultado semelhante pode ser obtido em um período muito menor. “Nosso estudo indica que as pessoas não precisam dedicar grandes quantidades de tempo para beneficiar o cérebro”, afirma Lisa Weinberg, estudante do Instituto e principal autora.

A pesquisa contou com a participação de 29 mulheres e 17 homens, que foram divididos em dois grupos. Na primeira parte do experimento, todos viram uma série de 90 imagens mostradas na rela de um computador, que podiam ser positivas, neutras ou negativas (como crianças brincando em um tobogã, relógios e imagens de corpos mutilados), e foram instruídos a memorizar quantas pudessem. Os voluntários foram então divididos em um grupo ativo e outro passivo. Os integrantes do primeiro deveriam realizar um exercício de esticar e encolher as pernas em um equipamento de academia 50 vezes, na maior intensidade que conseguissem, enquanto o outro simplesmente se sentou e permitiu que a máquina movesse suas pernas.

A pressão sanguínea e os batimentos cardíacos dos participantes foram monitorados, e amostras de saliva foram coletadas para que fosse possível avaliar os níveis de neurotransmissores ligados ao stress provocado pelo exercício. Depois dias depois, foi mostrada aos participantes uma nova série de imagens, com as 90 que eles haviam visto antes e 90 novas, para que eles reconhecessem aquelas que já tinham visto. Os resultados mostraram que o grupo passivo se lembrou de cerca de 50% das imagens originais, enquanto o outro chegou a 60%.

Leia também:
Doze maneiras de prevenir a perda de memória
Exercício físico, mesmo em pequena quantidade, pode prevenir perda de memória em idosos

A escolha de fazer os participantes estudarem as imagens antes de realizar a atividade física se baseou em descobertas feitas em pesquisas com modelos animais, que mostraram que o período depois do aprendizado (denominado consolidação) é quando o stress causado pelo exercício pode ser mais benéfico para a memória. Apesar de a pesquisa ter sido feita com um exercício usando pesos, os pesquisadores afirmam que atividades de resistência como agachamentos podem produzir o mesmo efeito. “Nós agora podemos tentar determinar a aplicabilidade desta descoberta a outros tipos de memória, e o melhor tipo e quantidade de exercício em diversas populações, como idosos e pessoas com problemas de memória”, disse Minoru Shinohara, professor da escola de psicologia aplicada e um dos autores do estudo.

Fast, cheap nanomanufacturing: Tiny conical tips fabricate nanoscale devices cheaply

 

The technology has a range of promising applications: depositing or etching features onto nanoscale mechanical devices; spinning out nanofibers for use in water filters, body armor, and "smart" textiles; or propulsion systems for fist-sized "nanosatellites."

In the latest issue of the IEEE Journal of Microelectromechanical Systems, Velásquez-García, his graduate students Eric Heubel and Philip Ponce de Leon, and Frances Hill, a postdoc in his group, describe a new prototype array that generates 10 times the ion current per emitter that previous arrays did.

Ion current is a measure of the charge carried by moving ions, which translates directly to the rate at which particles can be ejected. Higher currents thus promise more-efficient manufacturing and more-nimble satellites.

The same prototype also crams 1,900 emitters onto a chip that's only a centimeter square, quadrupling the array size and emitter density of even the best of its predecessors.

"This is a field that benefits from miniaturizing the components, because scaling down emitters implies less power consumption, less bias voltage to operate them, and higher throughput," says Velásquez-García, a principal research scientist at MTL. "The topic we have been tackling is how we can make these devices operate as close as we can to the theoretical limit and how we can greatly increase the throughput by virtue of multiplexing, with massively parallel devices that operate uniformly."

When Velásquez-García speaks of a "theoretical limit," he's talking about the point at which droplets -- clumps of molecules -- rather than ions -- individual molecules -- begin streaming off of the emitters. Among other problems, droplets are heavier, so their ejection velocity is lower, which makes them less useful for etching or satellite propulsion.

The ions ejected by Velásquez-García's prototype are produced from an ionic salt that's liquid at room temperature. Surface tension wicks the fluid up the side of the emitters to the tip of the cone, whose narrowness concentrates the electrostatic field. At the tip, the liquid is ionized and, ideally, ejected one molecule at a time.

Slow the Flow

When the ion current in an emitter gets high enough, droplet formation is inevitable. But earlier emitter arrays -- those built both by Velásquez-García's group and by others -- fell well short of that threshold.

Increasing an array's ion current is a matter of regulating the flow of the ionic salt up the emitters' sides. To do that, the MIT researchers had previously used black silicon, a form of silicon grown as closely packed bristles. But in the new work, they instead used carbon nanotubes -- atom-thick sheets of carbon rolled into cylinders -- grown on the slopes of the emitters like trees on a mountainside.

By carefully tailoring the density and height of the nanotubes, the researchers were able to achieve a fluid flow that enabled an operating ion current at very near the theoretical limit.

"We also show that they work uniformly -- that each emitter is doing exactly the same thing," Velásquez-García says. That's crucial for nanofabrication applications, in which the depth of an etch, or the height of deposits, must be consistent across an entire chip.

To control the nanotubes' growth, the researchers first cover the emitter array with an ultrathin catalyst film, which is broken into particles by chemical reactions with both the substrate and the environment. Then they expose the array to a plasma rich in carbon. The nanotubes grow up under the catalyst particles, which sit atop them, until the catalyst degrades.

Increasing the emitter density -- the other improvement reported in the new paper -- was a matter of optimizing existing manufacturing "recipe," Velásquez-García says. The emitters, like most nanoscale silicon devices, were produced through photolithography, a process in which patterns are optically transferred to layers of materials deposited on silicon wafers; a plasma then etches the material away according to the pattern. "The recipe is the gases, power, pressure level, time, and the sequence of the etching," Velásquez-García says. "We started doing electrospray arrays 15 years ago, and making different generations of devices gave us the know-how to make them better."

Nanoprinting

Velásquez-García believes that using arrays of emitters to produce nanodevices could have several advantages over photolithography -- the technique that produces the arrays themselves. Because they can operate at room temperature and don't require a vacuum chamber, the arrays could deposit materials that can't withstand the extreme conditions of many micro- and nanomanufacturing processes. And they could eliminate the time-consuming process of depositing new layers of material, exposing them to optical patterns, etching them, and then starting all over again.

"In my opinion, the best nanosystems are going to be done by 3-D printing because it would bypass the problems of standard microfabrication," Velásquez-García says. "It uses prohibitively expensive equipment, which requires a high level of training to operate, and everything is defined in planes. In many applications you want the three-dimensionality: 3-D printing is going to make a big difference in the kinds of systems we can put together and the optimization that we can do."

Story Source:

The above story is based on materials provided by Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The original article was written by Larry Hardesty. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.

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Journal Reference:

1. Frances Ann Hill, Eric Vincent Heubel, Philip Ponce de Leon, Luis Fernando Velasquez-Garcia. High-Throughput Ionic Liquid Ion Sources Using Arrays of Microfabricated Electrospray Emitters With Integrated Extractor Grid and Carbon Nanotube Flow Control Structures. Journal of Microelectromechanical Systems, 2014; 23 (5): 1237 DOI: 10.1109/JMEMS.2014.2320509