The Semi-pro Luxury Bike

 

The Semi-pro Luxury Bike Posted: 04 Jun 2015 09:34 AM PDT As you might’ve guessed from the name, the Diamante’s cutting-edge frame takes inspiration from the precious stone. Not only a symbol of luxury, its shape is ideal for strength and even weight distribution. Despite its pristine aesthetic, it’s still a muscle-bike with 9-speed transmission and semi-pro front shocks. Minimal and sleek with an uber-lux look,  it’s the bike you might even want to valet! Designer: Venn Industrial Design Consultancy   from : www.yankodesign.com

5 Simple Fixes for Most Computer Problems

 

Try These Ideas Before You Pay for Computer Service (and You May Not Have To!) You may have already decided that the computer problem you're dealing with is too hard to fix yourself, or at least not something you're interested spending your time doing. I'd argue that you should almost always try to fix your own computer problem, but I understand if you're just completely against it. No hard feelings. However, before you call tech support, or run off to the computer repair shop, I get one more shot to convince you to at least try something before you pay someone else for help. Having worked in the computer service industry for years, I'm very familiar with the simple things that most people overlook, things that could completely eliminate the need to have a computer worked on at all. You could quite literally save hundreds of dollars, and an equally valuable amount of frustration, by following some of the really easy things below. 1.  Restart Your Computer It's a long running joke that the only thing tech support folks know how to do is tell people to restart their computers. I've had the displeasure of working with a few "professionals" that might have inspired that joke, but please don't overlook this extraordinarily simple step. More times than you would believe, I would visit a customer's home or business, listen to a long story about an issue, and then simply restart the computer to fix the problem. Contrary to accounts otherwise, I do not have a magic touch. Computers sometimes encounter very temporary issues that a restart, which clears its memory and reruns processes, solves. How Do I Restart My Computer? Make sure you restart your computer at least one time before scheduling computer repair with anyone. The problem, assuming its of a certain nature, might simply go away. Tip: If the computer problem you're having means that restarting properly isn't possible, powering off and then back on accomplishes the same thing. More » 2.  Clear Your Browser's Cache Yet another joke, albeit a more recent one, is that clearing your browser's cache, the collection of recently visited pages that's saved to your computer's hard drive, is the fix for all possible Internet problems. That's certainly an exaggeration - clearing cache won't fix every broken website or Internet related problem - but it is often helpful. Clearing the cache is very easy to do. Every browser has a straightforward method for doing so, even if it is hidden a few layers deep in a menu. If you have any sort of Internet related issue, especially if it's impacting only some pages, be sure to clear the cache before taking your computer in for service. How Do I Clear My Browser's Cache? Tip: While most browsers refer to cache as cache, Internet Explorer refers to this collection of saved pages as Temporary Internet Files. More » 3.  Scan for Viruses & Other Malware No doubt scanning for a virus infection was the first thing that came to mind if a virus or other malicious program (collectively called malware) made itself obvious. Unfortunately, most problems caused by malware don't always clearly point to an infection. It's great if your antivirus program warns you of a problem, but it won't always. Often times, virus-caused problems appear as general computer sluggishness, random error messages, frozen windows, and things like that. Before you take your computer in for any reason, be sure to run a full malware scan using whatever antivirus software you're running. How To Scan Your Computer for Viruses & Other Malware This tutorial is really helpful if you're not sure what you're doing, don't have antivirus software (I link to several free options), can't access Windows, or can't run a scan for some reason. More »  4.  Reinstall the Program That's Causing Trouble A lot of computer problems are software-specific, meaning that they only happen when starting, using, or stopping a particular program that's installed. These sorts of problems can make it seem like your whole computer is falling part, especially if you use the offending program a lot, but the solution is often very simple: reinstall the program. How Do I Reinstall a Software Program? Reinstalling a program means to uninstall it, and then install it again from scratch. Every program has an automated process for removing itself from, as well as installing itself onto, your computer. If you think the problem you're experiencing is software-specific, gather up the original installation disc or download the program again, and then reinstall it. Check out the tutorial if you've never reinstalled a software program or you run in to trouble. More » 5.  Delete Your Browser's Cookies No, there aren't real cookies in your computer (wouldn't that be nice?) but there are tiny files called cookies which are sometimes the cause of problems browsing the web. Like the cached files mentioned in #2 above, the browser stores these files to make surfing the web easier. How Do I Delete Cookies From My Browser? If you're having problems logging in to one or more websites, or you see a lot of error messages when browsing that other people don't seem to see, be sure to clear your browser's cookies before you pay for computer repair. More » Some More Ideas Before You Pay for Support I know, I know, we've been over this. You don't want to fix it yourself! But before you pay someone for help, I wanted to let you know that I'm available to help out as well, and I don't charge anything at all! Just head over to my Get More Help page for more on that, as well as some other free options for support. from: www.about.com

Chimps Are No Chumps: Give Them An Oven, They'll Learn To Cook

 

June 03, 2015 2:14 PM ET Kanzi the bonobo (a species closely related to chimps) holds a pan of vegetables he cooked at the Great Ape Trust in Des Moines, Iowa, November 2011. Kanzi was taught to cook. However, a new study is the first to show that animals can acquire a cooking-like skill on their own. Laurentiu Garofeanu/Barcroft Media /Landov hide caption itoggle caption Laurentiu Garofeanu/Barcroft Media /Landov If you give a chimp an oven, he or she will learn to cook. That's what scientists concluded from a study that could help explain how and when early humans first began cooking their food. "This suggests that as soon as fire was controlled, cooking could have ramped up," says Alexandra Rosati, an evolutionary biologist at Yale and a co-author of the study, which was published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B. Evidence suggests early humans learned to control fire between 400,000 and 2 million years ago. Rosati and Felix Warneken, a psychologist at Harvard University, carried out the study at a chimpanzee sanctuary in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. First, the researchers gave the chimps a device that appeared to work like an oven. "You can think of it as a chimpanzee microwave where, basically, if the chimpanzees placed raw food in the device and then we shook the device, [the food] came out cooked," says Rosati, who will be moving from Yale to Harvard this summer. The device was actually just a bowl with a false bottom that held cooked food. The researchers didn't use fire because it could have injured the chimps, and because some chimps might have already seen how humans used it to cook food. After providing the "oven," Rosati and Warneken gave the chimps slices of uncooked white sweet potato. "At first, the chimps pretty much ate the food. But then you almost could see them have this insight like, Oh, my goodness, I can put it in this device and it comes back cooked," Rosati says. About half the chimps became regular users of the faux oven, Rosati says. And those chimps pretty much ignored a second device that returned their food uncooked. Other experiments showed that chimps understood the concept of cooking. When researchers gave them a cooked potato slice, they simply ate it. But when they got a raw carrot, they immediately put it in the device. And their preference for cooked food was so strong that they would hold on to raw potatoes, or carry them to other locations, in order to have them cooked. Previously, chimps and their close cousins, bonobos (like Kanzi, who is pictured above), have been taught to cook by people. But this is the first study showing that animals can acquire a cooking-like skill on their own. The results add to a debate about whether early humans had the brain power to figure out cooking, an activity that requires planning, a willingness to delay gratification and sophisticated use of a tool, Rosati says. The new study was inspired by the work of a colleague at Harvard, Richard Wrangham, a professor of biological anthropology. His book Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human argues that early humans began cooking almost immediately after learning to control fire, something Wrangham believes happened about 2 million years ago. The new study suggests that even back then, our ancestors had brains that were ready to barbecue, Wrangham says. "All they needed, I think, would be to see a piece of food drop in the fire, pick it out and realize that it tasted good, and then the cultural transmission of that behavior would spread very quickly," Wrangham says. The study also offers a reminder that very few behaviors are uniquely human, Wrangham says. "What we're seeing here is that the chimps are surprisingly similar to humans, even though the whole process of cooking seems like something that is a huge divide between humans and other animals." Source : npr.org

Seamless closure of surgical incisions

 

Tue, 06/02/2015 - 12:33pm American Friends of Tel Aviv University Some 30,000 years ago, prehistoric man wielded animal bones as needles to suture otherwise lethal wounds. This tactic has been used, and improved upon, over time and remains the basis of surgical procedures conducted today. Even with radical new surgical techniques, which rely on metallic and polymeric staples or chemical adhesives to seal incisions, infection and permanent scarring remain major concerns. The success of any wound closure is entirely dependent on the physician's skill set alone. Prof. Abraham Katzir, Head of the Applied Physics Group at Tel Aviv Univ.'s School of Physics and Astronomy, has spent much of his career honing a technique he devised called "laser welding," by which incision edges are heated in a precisely controlled manner for optimal wound closure. Now a study recently published in the Journal of Biomedical Optics explores a radical new application of this technique—sealing corneal transplants. A corneal transplant can restore vision in people suffering from corneal conditions, such as bulging corneas, Fuchs' dystrophy, thinning corneas, corneal scarring caused by infection or injury, cataracts, corneal swelling, corneal ulcers, or complications caused by previous eye surgery. "Every year, for 50,000  people living in the USA on the verge of losing their sight, corneal transplants are the only option. It is a torturous procedure followed by many months of painful recovery caused by sutures left in the eye," said Prof. Katzir. "Using our special optical fiber, we were able to seamlessly bond corneal tissue without causing damage to the surrounding eye or leaving lingering stitches." An innovative fiber "A surgeon needs great skill to perform internal stitching, to bond tiny blood vessels or to mend cuts on the skin almost without a trace," said Prof. Katzir. "Therefore, there has been great interest in the medical community in levelling the playing field, devising new technology that all surgeons—even those without years upon years of suturing experience—can use." Prof. Katzir's group at TAU developed unique optical fibers made of silver halides that are transparent in the infrared. Such fibers deliver an infrared laser beam, which carefully heat the approximated edges of an incision spot by spot. Simultaneously, the same fiber delivers infrared light from the heated spot to an infrared detector, which monitors the temperature at each spot, much like an ear thermometer. This makes it possible to heat each spot to a desirable temperature (140 to 150 F), which creates a strong bond without causing thermal damage. "The most important aspect of our technique is temperature," said Prof. Katzir. "Take an egg, for example. If you cook it at 70 to 80 F, nothing happens. However, if you fry it at 250 F, you destroy it altogether. At an intermediate temperature, however, one gets a hard-boiled egg. The same goes for laser bonding, where heating at an intermediate temperature, under precise controls, ensures strong bonding without scarring." Prof. Katzir and his team, in collaboration with surgeons from Tel Aviv Medical Center and Sheba Medical Center, conducted corneal transplant experiments in eyes taken from deceased cows and pigs. They used the fiber-optic laser system to achieve a permanent tight seal with minimal thermal damage to the surrounding eye tissue. Conducting biopsies on the eyes, the researchers found neither leaks nor signs of overheating. A broad range of applications Based on these results, Prof. Katzir has received approval to conduct corneal transplant experiments on live animal models. In parallel, he is applying his technique to endoscopic surgeries. "This least invasive surgery is the way the medical world is moving," said Prof. Katzir. "One of the most difficult tasks facing surgeons is the closure of incisions in such surgeries. Our technique is based on thin and flexible optical fibers that can be inserted through the endoscope to facilitate laser bonding within the body. This new technique is poised to be a major player in such surgeries and in the fast growing field of robotic surgery in particular." In clinical trials conducted recently by members of Prof. Katzir's group and by general surgeons on incisions in the skins of 10 human patients, wounds treated with the fiber-optic laser technique successfully healed, with almost no scar tissue. "There are endless applications for the fiber-optic laser system," said Prof. Katzir. "Plastic surgery, urology, ENT, brain surgery, emergency medicine, battlefield wounds—the possibilities are truly endless. I hope that we will be able to apply our innovative technology to some of these fields." Source: American Friends of Tel Aviv University

Evolving Electron Microscopes Push Even Deeper

 

Wed, 06/03/2015 - 2:58pm Tim Studt Technological advances in electron microscopes provide images and information of yet unknown materials and reactions. Image of FEI’s Titan.Electron microscopy is a multi-scale, multi-modal and multi-dimensional technique for imaging materials down to the atomic level. Developed in 1931 by German physicist Ernst Ruska and electrical engineer Max Knoll, the electron microscope (EM) has evolved from Ruska’s initial 400X capabilities to its current 10,000,000X performance. The much smaller wavelength of electron beams, compared to visible light for optical microscopes, allows EMs a much higher resolving power for imaging samples. EMs consist of two similar configurations—the transmission EM (TEM) and the scanning EM (SEM). The primary focus of a SEM is to image a sample surface, while that of a TEM is to look what is inside or beyond the surface. EM technologies continue to evolve, each year improving upon limitations inherent in the devices. It was long recognized the resolution of TEMs was limited by intrinsic imperfections in the device’s electromagnetic focusing lenses, commonly referred to as spherical aberrations. A five-year research collaboration between the U.S. Dept. of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Argonne National Laboratory, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, the Univ. of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, FEI Co. and CEOS (Corrected Electron Optical Systems) GmbH solved these issues with a 0.05-nm resolution research target obtained in 2009. FEI and CEOS recently announced a new collaboration with Germany’s Univ. of Ulm to develop a sub-Angstrom, low-voltage electron (SALVE) microscope. This multi-year collaboration will involve the development of a dedicated aberration-corrected TEM capable of imaging radiation-sensitive materials, such as 2-D and organic samples, and selected molecules with molecular or even atomic-scale resolution. The device is also expected to provide spectroscopic information at very low acceleration voltages. “After the commercial introduction of spherical aberration corrections in TEMs, the main interest lay in the development and routine application of aberration-corrected wide-field TEM,” says Don Kania, CEO of FEI. Over the past five years, researchers have focused on the combination of analytical methods with superior lateral resolution. “Through simultaneous acquisition of various signals from the sample, a better understanding of the sample properties now became possible,” says Kania. With the detection of four simultaneously acquired STEM (scanning TEM) signals, we can now image phase-contrast dependent structures together with z-number dependent large angle detection.” These STEM applications can be combined with EDS (energy dispersive x-ray spectroscopy) and/or EELS (electron energy loss spectroscopy) for new applications, such as 3-D imaging of proteins and associated complexes using reconstruction software. By utilizing a STEM detector divided into four quadrants, researchers can also measure the intrinsic magnetic and electrical fields of samples. “These electrical fields, in particular, can now be measured down to 50-pm resolution” says Kania. These differential phase-contrast imaged fields can be compared to electron holography and combined with simultaneously acquired EDS and EELS signals. Electron holography is holography created with electron waves that are created in an off-axis scheme. The holographic image is created by a split electron beam that produces and interference pattern of equidistant spaced fringes. Aberration-corrected TEM and STEM systems can also be used to image electron-beam-sensitive 2-D materials like graphene with atomic resolution. In these applications, the TEM/STEM systems are optimized toward lower high tensions. Direct electron detectors, such as FEI’s Falcon II CMOS camera which enhances the detector’s quantum efficiency, have initiated a revolution in cryo-microscopy, according to Kania. With these detectors, users can collect thousands of high-quality images per day with standard 1-sec exposures. This detector can operate continuously without interruption 24/7. High-end EMs Hitachi Ltd. recently announced its development of an atomic-resolution holography EM accelerated at 1.2 MV, with a claim for the world’s highest point resolution of 43 pm. The instrument incorporates the first spherical aberration corrector in an ultra-high-voltage EM. It also has a new field emission electron gun with a vacuum 100X greater than conventional field emission guns (3 x 10-10 Pa). The gun can thus operate stably for more than 10 hr, without the need for readjustments of the spherical aberration corrector. The solid base in which the instrument is installed is lined with acoustic damping materials to minimize the effects of vibration, which special alloys also surround the instrument to act as a magnetic barrier. The instrument is expected to be used for research in the R&D of advanced functional materials through the understanding of quantum phenomena relating to the functions and properties of high-performance materials such as magnets, batteries and superconductors. Carl Zeiss AG also recently introduced a new generation of field-emission SEMs (FE-SEMs) with a novel optical design. Their GeminiSEM includes a Nano-twin lens design providing high contrast with sub-nanometer resolution. Resolution improvements are also enhanced at low beam voltages. Zeiss’ NanoVP (variable pressure) design allows the use of in-lens detection at pressures up to 150 Pa, and ensures efficient signal detection by detecting secondary (SE) and backscattered (BSE) electrons in parallel, minimizing the time to image. Detector signals are boosted by up to 20X under low-voltage imaging conditions. The objective lens design combines electrostatic and magnetic fields to maximize the optical performance while reducing field influences at the sample to a minimum. This enables excellent imaging, even on challenging magnetic material samples. The high-resolution gun mode also minimizes aberrations and allows for smaller probe sizes. Hybrid systems WITec GmbH integrated its alpha300 confocal Raman imaging system with a SEM to create its RISE microscope. With this system, ultra-structural surface properties can be connected to molecular compound data. The instrument allows fast and easy switching between the SEM and Raman measurements, and enables automated sample transfers from one measuring position to the other. Once positioned on the instrument’s scan table, the sample is automatically transferred and repositioned between the EM and Raman measuring procedures. The sample remains inside the vacuum chamber during the complete measurements to ensure a convenient workflow with ease-of-use. The instrument has in-beam SE and BSE, as well as in-chamber SE and BSE detectors. “RISE was developed as part of the EU-funded project UnivSEM, which supports the development of supplementary analysis tools for SEMs and underlines the importance of hybrid microscopes,” says Philippe Ayasse, RISE product manager. Its integrated software interface provides easy measurement controls and doesn’t compromise on either of the SEM or Raman imaging capabilities. The device includes advanced 3-D beam technologies for true stereoscopic imaging, 3-D experience and 3-D navigation. It also has a diffraction limited lateral resolution of 200 to 300 nm. An ultra-fast Raman imaging option is also available with only 0.76 msec integration times per spectrum. Other options include a high- and low-vacuum operation and a combined electron beam and focus ion beam (FIB) system are available. Future developments for this system include the integration of a new automated Raman imaging system to RISE. “Its automated and user-friendly setup is an ideal complement to a SEM environment featuring a push-button instrument,” says Ayasse. “This system features pre-defined calibration routines, automated laser wavelength selection and automated absolute laser power determination that facilitates quick and user-friendly system maintenance.” HybriScan Technologies offers a similar Raman-SEM hybrid instrument, its HSCMM, which is an integrated Raman microscope and SEM. The HSCMM provides a correlation between chemical and morphology properties. The Raman-based device requires no optical realignment and it is directly coupled with the SEM, it can also work as a stand-alone Raman instrument. FEI offers a correlation system that leverages both light and electron microscopy in a workflow approach. “A light microscope is used to find a feature of interest and then the sample is seamlessly transferred to the electron microscope for high-resolution imaging,” says FEI’s Kania. Their system for doing this is CorrSight, the only purpose-built light microscope designed around the requirements in a correlative experiment. In the CorrSight, the automated imaging system is run by FEI’s MAPS (modular automated processing software) which manages the entire workflow from the light microscope to the EM, ensuring automated registration of the instruments and images together. Features on the user’s light microscopy images are used as the basis for correlation, including fiducials and cellular structures. Expected changes “Over the next five years in the electron microscopy arena, we expect to see advances primarily in software, workflows, usability and productivity,” says Kania. “The time to results (or data throughput) will also significantly improve due to advances in automation procedures and algorithms. Both hardware and software requirements will be boosted by user requests for more data within a shorter timeframe. “We also believe that the classical life science market for routine 2-D and 3-D imaging of plastic-embedded material will go more in the direction of SEM and small-stage Dual-Beam, due to the increased resolution and contrast in these tools. The life science TEM market will have more emphasis toward 2-D and 3-D cryo-TEM.” source : www.rdmag.com