Brain structure generates pockets of sleep within the brain

 

MIT neuroscientists have discovered a brain circuit that can trigger small regions of the brain to fall asleep or become less alert, while the rest of the brain remains awake. Credit: Illustration by Jose-Luis Olivares/MIT Sleep is usually considered an all-or-nothing state: The brain is either entirely awake or entirely asleep. However, MIT neuroscientists have discovered a brain circuit that can trigger small regions of the brain to fall asleep or become less alert, while the rest of the brain remains awake. This circuit originates in a brain structure known as the thalamic reticular nucleus (TRN), which relays signals to the thalamus and then the brain's cortex, inducing pockets of the slow, oscillating brain waves characteristic of deep sleep. Slow oscillations also occur during coma and general anesthesia, and are associated with decreased arousal. With enough TRN activity, these waves can take over the entire brain. The researchers believe the TRN may help the brain consolidate new memories by coordinating slow waves between different parts of the brain, allowing them to share information more easily. "During sleep, maybe specific brain regions have slow waves at the same time because they need to exchange information with each other, whereas other ones don't," says Laura Lewis, a research affiliate in MIT's Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences and one of the lead authors of the new study, which appears in the journal eLife. The TRN may also be responsible for what happens in the brain when sleep-deprived people experience brief sensations of "zoning out" while struggling to stay awake, the researchers say. The paper's other first author is Jakob Voigts, an MIT graduate student in brain and cognitive sciences. Senior authors are Emery Brown, the Edward Hood Taplin Professor of Medical Engineering and Computational Neuroscience at MIT and an anesthesiologist at Massachusetts General Hospital, and Michael Halassa, an assistant professor at New York University. Other authors are MIT research affiliate Francisco Flores and Matthew Wilson, the Sherman Fairchild Professor in Neurobiology and a member of MIT's Picower Institute for Learning and Memory. Local control Until now, most sleep research has focused on global control of sleep, which occurs when the entire brain is awash in slow waves -- oscillations of brain activity created when sets of neurons are silenced for brief periods. However, recent studies have shown that sleep-deprived animals can exhibit slow waves in parts of their brain while they are still awake, suggesting that the brain can also control alertness at a local level. The MIT team began its investigation of local control of alertness or drowsiness with the TRN because its physical location makes it perfectly positioned to play a role in sleep, Lewis says. The TRN surrounds the thalamus like a shell and can act as a gatekeeper for sensory information entering the thalamus, which then sends information to the cortex for further processing. Using optogenetics, a technique that allows scientists to stimulate or silence neurons with light, the researchers found that if they weakly stimulated the TRN in awake mice, slow waves appeared in a small part of the cortex. With more stimulation, the entire cortex showed slow waves. "We also found that when you induce these slow waves across the cortex, animals start to behaviorally act like they're drowsy. They'll stop moving around, their muscle tone will go down," Lewis says. The researchers believe the TRN fine-tunes the brain's control over local brain regions, enhancing or reducing slow waves in certain regions so those areas can communicate with each other, or inducing some areas to become less alert when the brain is very drowsy. This may explain what happens in humans when they are sleep-deprived and momentarily zone out without really falling asleep. "I'm inclined to think that happens because the brain begins to transition into sleep, and some local brain regions become drowsy even if you force yourself to stay awake," Lewis says. Natural sleep and general anesthesia Understanding how the brain controls arousal could help researchers design new sleep and anesthetic drugs that create a state more similar to natural sleep. Stimulating the TRN can induce deep, non-REM-like sleep states, and previous research by Brown and colleagues uncovered a circuit that turns on REM sleep. Brown adds, "The TRN is rich in synapses -- connections in the brain -- that release the inhibitory neurotransmitter GABA. Therefore, the TRN is almost certainly a site of action of many anesthetic drugs, given that a large classes of them act at these synapses and produce slow waves as one of their characteristic features." Previous work by Lewis and colleagues has shown that unlike the slow waves of sleep, the slow waves under general anesthesia are not coordinated, suggesting a mechanism for why these drugs impair information exchange in the brain and produce unconsciousness.   http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/10/151013182735.htm

A New Way to Fight Aging in the Brain

 

For the first time, scientists can take skin cells from people of various ages and transform them into brain cells reflecting the ages of their donors. By Faye Flam on October 9, 2015 Why It Matters Aging is the number-one risk factor for Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases. Studying how living human brain cells age could speed the development of treatments for disease and cognitive decline. Scientists created these aging human brain cells not from old brains but from the skin cells of older people. Our brain cells change with age: various genes become more or less active, the membrane that holds the nucleus together starts to degenerate, and molecules that in young cells are neatly compartmentalized become scattered and disorganized. Now scientists have found a way to transform ordinary skin cells into living cultures of aging human neurons—test beds for ways we might reverse these effects of time. In the past, scientists have created neurons in a dish using stem-cell technology, but those efforts produced the equivalent of embryonic neurons. Jerome Mertens of the Salk Institute for Biological Studies and his colleagues took skin cells from donors of different ages and transformed them into neurons that retained the effects of aging. This technique opens up new avenues for studying aging, age-associated diseases, and the possibility that drugs might stave off what was once inevitable. “These results are obviously going to have an impact,” says John Gearhart, director of the Institute for Regenerative Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, who was not part of the study. The results will not only advance research into aging, he says, but could aid in the continued quest to create new cells to repair or replace damaged organs. Gearhart says that the new findings address a major problem in his field. There are several ways to force cells to switch from one type to another, but scientists haven’t been sure how the neurons made from a skin cell differ from the neurons that develop normally in people’s brains. The earliest method for reprogramming cells set the aging clock back to zero, he says, because the skin cells first had to be turned into a type of stem cell similar to those in early embryos. Mertens and his colleagues tried a newer technique, first developed at Stanford University, in which a series of biochemical tweaks switched skin cells directly into brain cells. What nobody knew, says Mertens, was how the cells created by this more direct route differed from the ones that had been first returned to an embryonic state. Were they making baby neurons or ones that reflected the ages of the donors? To find out, he and his colleagues collected skin cells from 19 people of different ages from infancy to 89, turned them directly into brain cells, and compared them with cells obtained from autopsies of people at different ages. They found that the transformed neurons carried certain telltale signs of aging in proportion to the age of the donors. Indeed, he says, they found that skin cells from older people could be turned into the equivalent of neurons from older people. They published their results in the latest issue of the journal Cell Stem Cell. The older neurons show different patterns of gene activation, says Martens. Age also disrupts what’s called compartmentalization—the ordered way in which some proteins stay confined to the nucleus of cells and others to the surrounding cytoplasm. Martens says the membrane separating the nucleus from the rest of the cell starts to fail, so as our cells age, more proteins end up in the wrong place. He’s eager to understand how this process affects the way our brains age and our susceptibility to diseases such as ALS and Alzheimer’s. The cell-transforming technique might also be expanded to produce three-dimensional structures called organoids, he says, which can be used as models of human organs.   http://www.technologyreview.com/news/542336/a-new-way-to-fight-aging-in-the-brain/

Viral and parasitic diseases are not only worth killing off, they are also increasingly vulnerable

 

Oct 10th 2015 | From the print edition TO EXTERMINATE a living species by accident is normally frowned on. To do so deliberately might thus seem an extraordinary sin. But if that species isPlasmodium falciparum, the sin may be excused. This parasitic organism causes the most deadly form of malaria. Together with four cousins, it is responsible for about 450,000 deaths a year, and the ruination of the lives of millions more people who survive the initial crisis of disease. Besides the direct suffering this causes, the lost human potential is enormous. The Gates Foundation, an American charity, reckons that eradicating malaria would bring the world $2 trillion of benefits by 2040.   Malaria is one of the worst examples of the damage that transmissible diseases can wreak. But it is not alone. AIDS carries off fit, young adults by the millions and tuberculosis by the hundreds of thousands. Measles, whooping cough and diarrhoea together kill over 1m children a year. Parasitic worms and mosquito-borne viruses like dengue, though they take relatively few lives, debilitate many. Campaigns have brought the toll down heroically. As recently as 2000, malaria killed around 850,000 people a year; likewise, since 2000 deaths from measles have fallen by 75%, to around 150,000. These successes are to be celebrated, but an even greater prize exists: to go beyond controlling infections and infestations and instead to eradicate some of them completely, by exterminating the pathogens and parasites that cause them. That has been accomplished a couple of times in the past, for smallpox (a human disease) and rinderpest (a cattle disease similar to measles). The end is reckoned to be close for polio (a virus that once killed and crippled millions) and dracunculiasis (a parasitic worm). But more must follow. Swat teams Some diseases are not suitable for eradication because the organisms that cause them hang around in the environment, or have other animal hosts. Others, such as tuberculosis, can infect people “silently”, without causing symptoms, so are invisible to doctors. But sometimes the culprit is a poverty of ambition. A list of five plausible targets—measles, mumps, rubella, filariasis and pork tapeworm—has hardly changed since the early 1990s, yet measles, mumps and rubella are all the subjects of intensive vaccination campaigns that could easily be converted into ones of eradication. And even though Swaziland is poised to become the first malaria-free country in sub-Saharan Africa (see article), only a few dare to make explicit the goal of ridding the planet of the disease. Hepatitis C should be made a target, too. It kills half a million a year, and affects rich and poor countries alike, yet new drugs against it are almost 100% effective and there are no silent carriers. Eradicating these seven diseases—the five, plus malaria and hepatitis C—would save a yearly total of 1.2m lives. It would transform countless more. People argue that the cost of chasing down the last few cases of a disease is not worth it. If the mass-vaccination campaigns under way can lower the incidence of measles, mumps, rubella and so on in poor countries to something close to rich-world levels, the argument goes, that is surely good enough. Well, it isn’t. A disease can bounce back. That is what malaria did in the 1960s, when political attention waned, and the parasites that cause it evolved resistance to drugs and the mosquitoes that spread it evolved resistance to insecticides. Three big improvements underpin the argument for throwing eradication’s net more widely. The first is better communications. The technology for locating and monitoring cases of disease in poor countries, even when few and far between, has improved immeasurably in the past two decades with the spread of mobile phones and the internet, and the expansion of road networks. The second is better medical technology. The reason filariasis is on the “possibles” list, for example, is the invention of ivermectin, a drug that kills the worm which causes it. The inventors of this drug won half of this year’s Nobel prize for medicine (see article). The other half was won by the woman who came up with an answer to drug resistance in malaria—a medicine called artemisinin, which has been crucial to the success of the recent push against the disease. (This time, alert to the risk of resistance, doctors have formulated it with other drugs to create combination therapies that natural selection finds hard to get around.) Even better technology is in the pipeline. In the case of mosquito-borne illnesses such as malaria and dengue, genetic engineering promises ways of making the insects resistant to the pathogens that they pass on to people, of crashing the mosquito population, and even of attacking insects and pathogens with genetically modified fungi and bacteria. Genetic engineering also promises a wide range of new vaccines. The third reason for seeking eradication is a change in political attitudes. The emergence of AIDS, in particular, made governments everywhere sit up and take notice. Last year’s west African outbreak of Ebola only reinforced the message. Political attention leads to better medical infrastructure. To deal with AIDS, new networks of clinics were created and staffed with trained personnel. These can serve as the backbone of the campaigns that would be the starting-point for many extermination programmes. The Dalek doctrine The list of candidates for such programmes should be extended as and when circumstances change. The biggest prize might be AIDS itself. Smallpox, the first target for eradication, was picked in part because the virus that caused it had only humans as hosts and could not survive independently for more than a few hours. It had, in other words, no hiding place. Both of these are true of HIV, the AIDS-causing virus. What is missing is the third ingredient for smallpox: a reliable vaccine. Throughout history, humans and disease have waged a deadly and never-ending war. Today the casualties are chiefly the world’s poorest people. But victory against some of the worst killers is at last within grasp. Seize it. From the print edition: Leaders   http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21672213-viral-and-parasitic-diseases-are-not-only-worth-killing-they-are-also-increasingly?fsrc=scn%2Fesp%2FFB

China's middle class overtakes US as largest in the world

 

World's second largest economy has seen its middle class grow to 109 million Luxury homes in Shanghai By Agency 7:37AM BST 14 Oct 2015 Comments China's middle class has overtaken the United States to become the largest in the world according to a comprehensive new report on the distribution of global wealth. Despite fears of a global growth slowdown in the emerging world, Asia is set to be the scene for the greatest expansion of the world's middle class, said Credit Suisse, in its annual wealth report. • How the world's up and coming rich spend their money The Swiss bank said with 109 million adults "this year, the Chinese middle class for the first time outnumbered" that in the United States at 92 million. While the number of middle class worldwide grew last year at a slower pace than the wealthy, it "will continue to expand in emerging economies overall, with a lion's share of that growth to occur in Asia," said Credit Suisse chief executive Tidjane Thiam. Number of middle-class adults (million), 2015, by region and country "As a result, we will see changing consumption patterns as well as societal changes as, historically, the middle class has acted as an agent of stability and prosperity," he added. The report said size and wealth of the middle class was a key factor in economic development, and the middle class was often at the heart of political movements and new consumption trends. China now accounts for a fifth of the world population, while holding nearly 10pc of the global wealth. The report used a floor for the middle class as having wealth double the annual medium income for their country. While wealth may still be mostly concentrated in Europe and the United States, Mr Thiam said "the growth of wealth in emerging markets has been most impressive, including a fivefold rise in China since the beginning of the century." Overall, the report found that global wealth fell by nearly 5pc in the year to mid-2015 to $250 trillion due a strengthening of the US dollar in which income is compared. However if currency effects are stripped out, wealth continued to expand at the trend rate since the beginning of the century. The report also found the number of millionaires is forecast to increase 46pc to 49.3 million over the next five years, with Malaysia more than doubling the number of affluent individuals with $1 million.   http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/china-business/11929794/Chinas-middle-class-overtakes-US-as-largest-in-the-world.html?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter

Dinheiro traz felicidade? Não, diz Nobel de Economia

 

O economista Angus Deaton durante coletiva de imprensa realizada nesta segunda-feira, após o anúncio de seu nome como vencedor do Prêmio Nobel de Economia 2015(Dominick Reuter/Reuters) Dinheiro traz felicidade? A pergunta, combustível para algazarrentas conversas de mesa de bar, também tem sido objeto de estudos de alguns dos cérebros mais brilhantes do mundo. O professor Angus Deaton, da Universidade de Princeton, nos Estados Unidos, anunciado nesta segunda-feira como vencedor do Prêmio Nobel de Economia de 2015, é uma das mentes que já se dedicaram à questão. A conclusão do professor: dinheiro não necessariamente traz felicidade - mas a falta dele pode acentuar a angústia de quem já não anda muito animado. Deaton escreveu sobre o tema em 2010, em parceria com Daniel Kahneman - também ele vencedor do Nobel de Economia, em 2002. No estudo publicado pela dupla, eles fizeram a correlação entre o nível de renda de diferentes estratos da população americana e uma série respostas sobre satisfação pessoal e bem-estar emocional colhidas entre 2008 e 2009 pelo Instituto Gallup. Ao longo desses dois anos, o instituto ouviu diariamente um grupo de mais de 1.000 pessoas que moram nos Estados Unidos. Ao fim do levantamento, havia mais de 450.000 respostas para ser dissecadas. Primeiro, escreveu Deaton, é preciso mostrar que existe diferença entre bem-estar emocional e avaliação de vida. Embora a diferença pareça ser apenas semântica, ela é fundamental para dar profundidade ao debate - e a confusão entre os conceitos é a origem de tantas pesquisas inócuas sobre o tema, afirma o professor. Bem-estar refere-se a sensações do cotidiano, como alegria, tristeza, raiva e estresse, e a avaliação de vida é a leitura "de fundo" que o indivíduo faz sobre si mesmo. "Como você estava ontem?" é uma pergunta sobre bem-estar. "No geral, você está satisfeito com a vida que leva?" trata de avaliação de vida. Ao separar esses dois grupos de respostas e cruzar os dados com os diferentes níveis de renda, Deaton e Kahneman descobriram que pessoas que ganham bons salários aparecem com mais frequência entre as que têm uma avaliação positiva sobre suas vidas - mas não necessariamente se dizem felizes. "Nós concluímos", diz a pesquisa, "que renda alta compra satisfação de vida, mas não felicidade." O que não quer dizer que o dinheiro não seja um bom estimulante para o estado de espírito: na pesquisa, pessoas com renda muito baixa foram as que disseram com mais frequência estar insatisfeitas tanto com seu cotidiano quanto com sua vida em linhas mais gerais. Deaton e Kahneman escreveram ainda que o grau de bem-estar é maior quanto mais alta é a renda, segundo as respostas da pesquisa, mas, a partir de uma renda de 75.000 dólares anuais (montante 25% maior que a renda per capita americana, que é de 55.000 dólares), o teor das respostas praticamente não muda. Em outras palavras: aumentar a renda indefinidamente não aumenta a felicidade indefinidamente. O tema do estudo publicado em 2010 pode soar demasiadamente "mundano", mas isso não diminui sua relevância. Ao dar ênfase à diferenciação de dois "tipos" de felicidade, os autores ajudam a dar norte para pesquisas de amostragem sobre renda, consumo e saúde pública, por exemplo, o que pode abrir novas perspectivas para a definição de políticas públicas. "Se ambos os aspectos de bem-estar subjetivo são considerados importantes, a separação de suas medidas é uma vantagem", dizem os economistas. Ênfase aos desiguais - É claro que não foi um artigo de cinco páginas, com a resposta (que não é definitiva, salientaram os autores) a uma pergunta tão prosaica, que deu ao escocês Angus Deaton o Nobel de Economia de 2015. Mas esse artigo é uma amostra dos temas abordados e também do modus operandi do professor: a valorização da voz dos indivíduos em detrimento de amostragens sem rosto, a recusa a mensurar bem-estar apenas com base exclusivamente em consumo - uma prática comum entre acadêmicos na atualidade - e o esforço de cruzar teorias e dados para encontrar onde está o ponto cego das conclusões de seus colegas. A primeira grande contribuição de Deaton à literatura acadêmica foi a de atestar que as medidas agregadas de consumo nacional não são a previsão exata do comportamento de cada indivíduo. Embora isso soe óbvio hoje, era um tema controverso quando Deaton começou a se debruçar sobre ele, no começo da década de 70. Ao se dedicar ao estudo da diferença entre os indivíduos - o que exige a criação de modelos mais precisos para estudar o conjunto da população -, Deaton acabou seguindo um caminho correlato: o de estudar o comportamento dos consumidores. Dessa linha de estudo surgiu o "Paradoxo de Deaton", segundo o qual o consumo varia muito lentamente, mesmo com variações bruscas de renda. Por se debruçar sobre a identificação de desigualdades, Deaton acabou enveredando para o estudo dos mais desiguais entre os desiguais: as economias pobres e emergentes. Nessa seara, o Nobel de Economia de 2015 tem tentado entender a origem e as consequências da pobreza dos países e apontar como são imprecisos os critérios de mensuração de consumo e pobreza adotados por acadêmicos e organismos internacionais, como o Banco Mundial. A Índia tem sido um objeto de particular atenção de Deaton. Mais uma vez, não parece ser casualidade: a Índia é o país mais desigual do G-20, segundo a Organização das Nações Unidas, e um dos mais desiguais do mundo.   http://veja.abril.com.br/noticia/economia/dinheiro-traz-felicidade-nao-diz-nobel-de-economia

Creator of 5-hour Energy Wants to Power the World's Homes—With Bikes

 

The mystery man behind the popular caffeine shot plans to roll out 10,000 stationary bikes next year in India. Manoj Bhargava, creator of the 5-hour Energy drink, demonstrates his Free Electric bike. By pedaling for one hour, he says, a person can power a home's lights and basic appliances for an entire day. Photograph by Paul Sheppard The man who created the 5-hour Energy drink says he has more money than he needs—about $4 billion more. So he’s giving it away, spending his fortune on a quest to fix the world's biggest problems, including energy. Manoj Bhargava has built a stationary bike to power the millions of homes worldwide that have little or zero electricity. Early next year in India, he plans to distribute 10,000 of his Free Electric battery-equipped bikes, which he says will keep lights and basic appliances going for an entire day with one hour of pedaling. Bhargava, who dropped out of Princeton University after a year because he was bored and then lived in ashrams in his native India for 12 years, doesn’t stop at bikes. He’s working on ways to make saltwater drinkable, enhance circulation in the body, and secure limitless amounts of clean geothermal energy—via a graphene cord. “If you have wealth, it’s a duty to help those who don’t,” says Michigan resident Bhargava, 62, in a documentary released Monday, Billions in Change, about hisStage 2 Innovations lab. “Make a difference in people’s lives,” he says, “Don’t just talk about it.” Could his bike really work? Will people want to pedal for power? Could they afford it or even have room for it in their homes? It holds “huge potential and opportunity for rural households,” says Ajaita Shah, CEO of Frontier Markets, a company selling solar lamps and lighting kits in India. (Read about her work.) She says she’d like to test the bike with her rural customers. “It’s so simple that we think we can make it for $100 … A bicycle repairman anywhere can fix it,” Bhargava says in an interview. Pedaling turns a turbine generator that creates electricity, stored in a battery. The first 50 bikes will be tested in 15 or 20 small villages in the northern state of Uttarakhand before a major rollout in the first quarter of next year. He says they’ll be made in India but doesn’t give details.   Who Is He? Bhargava’s a bit of a mystery man. He grew up in an affluent home with servants in India, but his family struggled financially after coming to the United States when he was 14. He worked odd jobs and got academic scholarships. “It was worth a year,” he says of studying math at Princeton. After a spiritual quest in India, he built companies, including Living Essentials, maker of the popular two-ounce caffeine shot that’s sold at checkout counters. Though generally low-profile, he’s not without controversy. He’s sued to fend off copycats of his blockbuster product and countered challenges from state attorneys general for alleged deceptive marketing. The Center for Public Integrity dubbed him the “political kingmaker nobody knows,” saying he’s donated millions to mostly GOP political candidates via limited liability companies. Also unknown: exactly how much money he has. The documentary says his net worth is $4 billion, but Forbes does not list him among America’s richest 400 people, which includes those with at least $1.7 billion. Bhargava has said it’s difficult to put a specific valuation on his private companies, but he’s signed the Giving Pledge, a Bill Gates-led challenge for the rich to donate their fortunes to charitable causes. He says he didn’t want to “ruin” his son by giving him money. “I told him when he was 10, 'You’re not getting anything.' His attitude: 'Great. I want to do it on my own,'” Bhargava says about his now adult son. Instead Bhargava has funded hospitals in India and his cutting-edge Stage2 labin Farmington Hills, Michigan, begun in 2011 with former Chrysler CEO Tom LaSorda. “It’s the most well-funded playhouse for engineers you can possibly have,” lab engineer Kevin Moran says in the documentary. This is going to affect a few billion people. Manoj Bhargava   Big Problems, Simple Fixes Bhargava’s team has come up with innovative ideas in health, water, and energy. It’s pursuing Renew, a medical device that functions as an auxiliary heart by squeezing blood from the legs into the body’s core. To address drought, it’s building the Rain Maker to convert 1,000 gallons an hour of any kind of water into drinkable water. Bhargava says potable water could be piped from offshore barges with this machine, now being tested at a desalination research facility in New Mexico. He has an even grander idea—one aimed at nixing the world’s reliance on fossil fuels, which emit greenhouse gases when burned. Whatever people think of climate change, he says in the documentary, “pollution is a problem.” His answer: tap the heat from deep beneath the Earth. While geothermal energy is already widely used in some countries, including Indonesia and Iceland, Bhargava takes a novel approach. Rather than using steam—mixed with chemicals—to bring the heat to the surface, he would instead pull it up with a graphene cord. He notes graphene, stronger than steel, is an incredible conductor of heat. “You don’t need to burn anything…Once you bring [heat] up, you don’t change any of the infrastructure,” he says, explaining that utilities could simply distribute it instead of coal, oil, or natural gas. “That’s going to be, in my mind, the final answer,” he says, estimating this type of geothermal could replace 85 percent of today’s fossil fuels. He says maps show half of the world has plentiful underground heat, and since graphene cables could run horizontally, they could route it to the other half as well. “I think someone’s going to kill me,” he says with a laugh, noting how such an idea could upset geopolitics. He’s working with a graphene research center in Singapore to develop a cable and plans to have pictures available later this year. It’s not giving back. It’s what else am I going to do? Manoj Bhargava The Bike Ridden Round the World? Bhargava gets most animated when talking about his graphene cable, but he sees the most immediate potential in Free Electric. He says it could provide electricity for the developing world and offer post-storm backup power in wealthier countries. The stationary Free Electric bike has a battery to store electricity generated when the rider is pedaling. Its monitor shows how much the battery is charged. Photograph by Billions in Change “This is going to affect a few billion people,” he says, noting the main challenge will be distribution—a subject he knows well. He won’t give the bike away, because he says people won’t take care of something that’s free. Rather, he’d prefer to incentivize distributors with profits. He says a village can also pool its resources, buying one bike but multiple batteries that can be swapped out to power individual homes. Those working in rural India welcome the idea. “The problem of universal energy access is so big and diverse that we need multiple innovations to solve it...Free Electric appears to be one such product innovation,” says Piyush Mathur, chief financial officer of Simpa Networks, a company that offers pay-as-you-go financing for its solar lighting. Others doubt the appeal of off-grid solutions. “The poor...want grid-based power like urban households that can run TV sets at the flick of a switch,” says Lydia Powell, senior fellow and energy expert at the New Delhi-based Observer Research Foundation. Bhargava agrees “they want exactly what we want,” and he says his bike will help them make a living and take care of their families. He says he wants to give them something useful, not buff his public image. “I want publicity for the project but not for me,” Bhargava says, referring to the documentary made by Film 45’s Peter Berg, who directed the 2013 war movieLone Survivor. “There’s no purpose in being famous unless you have a hobby like Donald Trump. That’s his hobby.” He also says he doesn’t see altruism in his philanthropy. “I like work,” he says. “It’s not giving back. It’s what else am I going to do?” The story is part of a special series that explores energy issues. For more, visit The Great Energy Challenge. On Twitter: Follow Wendy Koch and get more environment and energy coverage atNatGeoEnergy.   http://news.nationalgeographic.com/energy/2015/10/151006-energy-drink-billionaire-wants-to-power-homes-with-bikes/

These 14 Sleek Solar Homes Do More Than Produce Power

 

Fewer college teams built homes to compete in this year’s Solar Decathlon, but their gee-whiz features might offer a surprising glimpse of the future. Reporters view the compact, stackable home designed and built by students at New York City College of Technology on October 7, 2015, at the U.S. Department of Energy's biennial Solar Decathlon in Irvine, California. Photograph by Thomas Kelsey, U.S. Dept. of Energy They’re not simply places to live. They charge cars, grow food, collect water, and generate electricity during blackouts. These Dwell-like beauties might just make those with bigger homes a bit envious. The University at Buffalo home, for example, has an indoor greenhouse for growing food year-round. Orange County’s team features a vertical garden, surf shower and—for the boomerang generation—detached studio. To withstand storms like the tornado that flattened the nearby town of Joplin, Missouri’sCrowder College and Drury University use reinforced walls surrounded by an impact-resistant fence. The homes offer smart windows, accordion doors, and movable walls. Plus, they can charge a car. “We’re going to hook it up and charge it with the power of the sun,” Steve Speights, an engineering student at California State University in Sacramento, says in a video about his team’s home, complete with carport. Welcome to the Solar Decathlon 2015, a biennial U.S.-sponsored contest that began Thursday in Irvine, California. Collegiate teams from around the world compete to build the most attractive, affordable, and energy-efficient home. Via solar panels, the homes produce at least as much energy as they use. Via rainwater capture, they reuse water. These small homes—1,000 square feet or less—go well beyond solar technology to showcase not only smart design but also innovative ways to address drought or extreme weather. Some are engineering marvels. “It’s like the biggest jigsaw puzzle you’ve even seen,” Solar Decathlon director Richard King says of Clemson University’s home, made of thousands of pieces of flat-packed plywood that lock together like LEGO. Despite its wow factor, this competition has a cloudy future. It's losing competitors at a time when the U.S. solar industry is booming and other countries—China, Colombia, and United Arab Emirates—are planning similar decathlons. Six of the initial 20 teams withdrew, including Stanford, Yale, and Vanderbilt. The result: This year’s event is the smallest since the Department of Energy launched the U.S. decathlon in 2002. What Happened? “It was a confluence of things,” King says, noting two teams dropped out almost immediately, because their faculty advisers had moved to other schools. Another reason: cash. The projects often cost at least $250,000, and DOE gave each team $50,00 in seed money, down from $100,000 in prior years. Several teams said they couldn’t raise enough money. They get in-kind donations from companies, but they still have to design and build homes, ship them in pieces, and reassemble them within days at the competition. Triple-filtered, recycled greywater waters at hydroponic garden at the home of Missouri University of Science and Technology on October 6, 2105, at the Solar Decathlon in Irvine, California.  Photograph by Thomas Kelsey/U.S. Department of Energy Yale pulled out less than two months ago, citing inadequate funds. Architecture student Pablo Ponce de Leon, who worked on the project, said Yale’s endowment—one of the largest in the world for universities—is locked in investments or earmarked for other purposes such as building residential colleges. University at Buffalo's home “If you raise the money, fine, but we’re not going to fundraise for you,” he says was the message from the development office. He says his student-led team didn’t get started early enough or have a dedicated faculty adviser. “It’s a little disappointing,” he says of the withdrawal, adding the decathlon encourages cutting-edge solutions. “It’s very expensive and time-consuming,” says Sandy Stannard, architecture professor at California Polytechnic State University, citing the demands of creating a smart home. Her team’s house doubles its living space with a 15-foot glass wall in the living room that folds back like an accordion, and it reduces energy demand with a bio-based material that absorbs and releases heat. She says Cal Poly participated in the 2005 contest, adding with a laugh: “It took 10 years to recover.” “It’s become increasingly competitive,” says Alex McDonald, a graduate student in mechanical engineering at the University of California, Irvine. He says the Orange County team’s house, which mimics California’s state flower—the golden poppy—by opening to the sun during the day and closing at night—is quite ambitious. Team Orange County's home The house has windows that automatically open and close, depending on the weather, as well as a personal 3D printer and small thermoplastic recycling system that allow residents to break down unneeded objects and reuse the material for new products. “We pushed hard to develop disruptive technologies,” McDonald says, noting his team was still working out some glitches. He says the home is so complex that it needs a project manager with “borderline OCD.”   Homes Gain Complexity King agrees that each subsequent decathlon “raises the bar.” In 2011, to encourage affordability, the competition began penalizing homes that cost more than $250,000. This year, it required them to charge a car to run 25 miles a day. A circular window inside the home built by students at the Missouri University of Science and Technology provides a unique view of the entry by the California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, on October 5, 2015, at the U.S. Department of Energy's biennial Solar Decathlon in Irvine, California. Photographby Thomas Kelsey, U.S. Dept. of Energy Solar Decathlon “We expanded the Solar Decathlon from the house to the household,” King says. Why? He says he cut his electric bill to zero when he built his own solar-powered home six years ago, but because of his family’s cars, its total carbon emissions were only halved. So he wanted the competition to address that other half—the cars. The teams address local conditions. To deal with urban density, New York City College of Technology built a stackable house. To address the drought, theUniversity of Texas at  Austin—partnering with Germany’s Technische Universitaet Muenchen—captures rainwater and reuses the greywater that’s left from showers or dishwashers. It has an under-deck system to purify and store the water for drinking or irrigation. Crowder College and Drury University's house Several built storm-proof homes. Recalling the damage of Hurricane Sandy in 2012, students at New Jersey-based Stevens Institute of Technology use fiber-composite shutters and an “islanding” solar array that will power the house during blackouts and even allow neighbors to charge their electronic devices. The teams, some of which include community colleges or foreign universities, are judged on 10 criteria that include affordability, architecture, engineering, and market appeal. The overall winner is named October 17, after which the competition ends. King says he expects good public turnout despite having fewer homes. As for 2017, he plans a different approach to avoid teams dropping out. Rather than giving them upfront cash, he’ll offer each a prize ranging from $50,000 to $300,000. Right now, winners only get bragging rights. Next time, he says: “You’ll have to show up to get your money.” California State University, Sacramento's home The story is part of a special series that explores energy issues. For more, visit The Great Energy Challenge. On Twitter: Follow Wendy Koch and get more environment and energy coverage atNatGeoEnergy.   http://news.nationalgeographic.com/energy/2015/10/151009-14-Sleek-Solar-Homes-Do-More-Than-Produce-Power/

Panasonic develops most efficient solar panel ever with 22.5% sunlight conversion

 

We’ve reported a lot this year on the ever-dropping price of solar powertechnology, but the other incredibly cool thing happening is the steady increase in efficiency. This combination of lower price and higher energy conversion is securing solar power’s top spot in the renewable energy race. Now, Panasonic says its next solar panels will snag a record-breaking 22.5 percent efficiency rating, busting SolarCity’s reign by 1.4 percent. That may not sound like much, but in the world of solar power, it’s a substantial jump. SolarCity plans to manufacture its high-efficiency solar panels starting at the company’s new Buffalo, New York plant next year, but even those panels are only expected to convert 22.1 percent of sunlight into usable electricity. Panasonic isn’t quite as far along in its development, but the company has created a prototype of a commercial-sized solar panel that boasts a 22.5 percent conversion efficiency. And we don’t have to take Panasonic’s word for it; theJapanese National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology has confirmed it in testing. Related: New hybrid solar cells generates 5 times more energy by harnessing sunlight and heat at the same time Although it will be a while before Panasonic’s most efficient solar panels can be put into mass production, the company isn’t holding its proverbial breath. It is gearing up to launch the HIT® N330, the latest addition to the company’s high-efficiency hetero-junction photovoltaic module product line, with a 19.7 percent module-level efficiency rate. And then Panasonic’s most powerful PV module to date will be available in the UK and other European markets starting in March 2016. Via Clean Technica Images via Panasonic   http://inhabitat.com/panasonic-develops-most-efficient-solar-panel-ever-with-22-5-sunlight-conversion/

10 Things You Never Knew About the Clitoris

 

October 5, 2015 | By Kristine Thomason Brace yourselves ladies, there’s a whole lot to know about the clitoris that they didn’t teach us in health class. While you’ve probably heard the many unfortunate nicknames for this body part (including “the bean”— who came up with that?), and you definitely know a thing or two about the ahem, functions, of the clitoris, you might not know that it actually gets erect, for example. Yep, “lady boners” (another very unfortunate nickname, sorry) are real. To help you become a bit more “cliterate,” here are 10 facts about this amazing part of your anatomy. It’s truly unique When it comes to climaxing, “the clitoris is really, really crucial,” says Jim Pfaus, PhD, professor and sex researcher at Concordia University in Montreal. But that’s not the only thing that makes it special: the clitoris is actually the only organ in the body with the sole function of providing pleasure. It’s long been a mystery Until 1998 most textbooks only illustrated the external glans. That’s when Helen O’Connell, an Australian urologist, revealed through a series of MRI studies that the clitoris is actually a complex, powerful organ system composed of a total of eighteen parts, two thirds of which are interior. It’s much more than meets the eye “When people talk about the clitoris, they’re usually just talking about the glans—the very sensitive outside part,” says Rebecca Chalker, PhD, Professor of Sexology at Pace University and author of The Clitoral Truth ($12, amazon.com). But the bump you can see on the vulva is only the tip of an iceberg. The internal part is connected to the glans by the corpora cavernosa, two spongey areas of erectile tissue. Farther down, the corpora cavernosa branches off into a pair of wings known as the crura which extend into the body and around the vaginal canal like a wishbone. Then, underneath the crura are the clitoral vestibules, or vestibular bulbs. Like much of the clitoris, these sac-like structures of tissue become engorged with blood when you get aroused. It’s got a lot of nerve The clitoris is the most nerve-rich part of the vulva, says Debra Herbenick, PhD, a sexual health educator from The Kinsey Institute. The glans contains about 8,000 nerve endings, making it the powerhouse of pleasure. To get some perspective, that’s twice as many nerve endings as the penis. And its potential doesn’t end there. This tiny erogenous zone spreads the feeling to 15,000 other nerves in the pelvis, which explains why it feels like your whole body is being taken over by your O-M-G moment. Every woman’s is different Women are all unique, so why would clitorises be any different? Every woman needs a different kind of stimulation to feel satisfied, depending on her unique biology. “Just because it’s sensitive doesn’t mean everyone wants it to be stimulated directly,” Herbenick says. “Some women prefer touching near the clitoris but not on it.” Pfaus agrees: “If she’s too sensitive with direct stimulation, more of that may make her want to kill you.” It’s the real G-spot We’ve all heard about the infamous G-spot: Does it exist? Do all women have one? Yes and yes. That’s because the G-spot is actually the clitoris. This notorious pleasure zone became sensationalized back in the 80s which, as Chalker explains, “created this idea that if you could only access the G-spot inside the vagina, it would promote female orgasm.” But we’ve since learned that some women may feel more sensation via the internal shafts of the clitoral complex (hence why some women might like vaginal penetration more than others), while others prefer external touch. One way is not better than another way, Pfaus adds; it’s really about exploring the possibilities to find out what you like best. It’s very similar to the penis… “The clitoris and the penis are somewhat mirror images of each other, just organized differently,” Chalker explains. “In fact, up until two weeks of pregnancy, all embryos appear to be female.” It’s not until week eight of gestation that testosterone kicks in and the penis starts to form. “None of these parts disappear, they just get rearranged,” Chalker says. For example the internal part of the clitoris, also made of erectile tissue, becomes the frame of the penis. With this concept in mind, Chalker points out: “If you consider the clitoris only consisting of the glans, then that’s like saying the only part of a penis is the tip.” …It even gets erect “When we talk about erection, we can’t just talk about the penis,” Pfaus says. “We have to talk about the clitoris.” Sure, it might be less noticeable for women, but it can definitely be observed and felt. This occurs when the vestibular bulbs become engorged with blood during arousal. The blood is then trapped here until released via orgasmic spasms. Size doesn’t matter Like men, women can get self-conscious about their sexy parts. But guess what? Just like penises, clits come in all shapes and sizes. And size doesn’t matter for either, Chalker explains.  Think of it this way: since the brain is your main sex organ, the genitals are simply the receptors of pleasure. “It has to do with visual, tactile, and oral stimulation,” Chalker says, “rather that the actual size of the clit. So while glans may vary from woman to woman, this shouldn’t affect the pleasure-potential.” Also worth noting: chances are size doesn’t (or, at least,shouldn’t) matter to your partner. It can grow with age Although the size of your clitoris doesn’t impact your sex life, don’t be surprised if it changes dimensions over your lifetime. According to Chalker, due to a change in hormone levels after menopause, the clit may enlarge for many women. So if you notice some differences in the size of your lady parts over time, don’t be alarmed. http://news.health.com/2015/10/05/10-things-you-never-knew-about-the-clitoris/

NASA reveals roadmap to Mars

 

Mars has released a document outlining its steps to Mars (Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS) That NASA has aspirations for a manned mission to the Red Planet is already well known, but the space agency has now revealed in greater detail how it plans to make such a mission reality. In a document titled "NASA's Journey to Mars: Pioneering Next Steps in Space Exploration," the expedition is broken down into three separate phases, painting a picture of the incremental scientific advances needed to land humans on the Martian surface. "NASA’s strategy connects near-term activities and capability development to the journey to Mars and a future with a sustainable human presence in deep space," says William Gerstenmaier, associate administrator for Human Exploration and Operations at NASA Headquarters. The first of NASA's steps to Mars falls under the title "Earth Reliant," and centers on research to be carried out on the International Space Station (ISS). In this microgravity test-bed, the agency will continue developing technologies aimed at improving human health to prepare for manned missions to deep space. In the second stage, NASA will carry out manned missions in cislunar-space, that is the area between the Earth and the Moon or the Moon's orbit. Dubbed "Proving Ground," this phase will entail developing and validating capabilities required to allow humans to live in environments further away from our home planet, such as on a certain dusty, red planet. The third and final stage, called "Earth Independence," is intended to capitalize on the advances in the previous steps to bring humans to the Mars vicinity, first to low-Mars orbit and possibly one of the planet's moons, and then to touch down on the surface. Together, the phases are intended to address three hurdles NASA sees as fundamental in getting to Mars: transportation (the ability for humans and cargo to safely travel into deep space), working in space (so crew members and robots can be productive once they get there) and staying healthy (for survival). The agency will discuss the plan with congress and partners in the coming weeks. The entire Journey to Mars: Pioneering Next Steps in Space Exploration document can be read online here. Source: NASA   http://www.gizmag.com/nasa-journey-to-mars-plans/39804/