Civil Engineering: October 2011

Monday, October 31, 2011

Human Cells Engineered to Make Functional Anal Sphincters in Lab

"In essence, we have built a replacement sphincter that we hope can one day benefit human patients. This is the first bioengineered sphincter made with both muscle and nerve cells, making it 'pre-wired' for placement in the body," said senior author Khalil N. Bitar, Ph.D., a professor of regenerative medicine at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center's Institute for Regenerative Medicine. Bitar performed the work when he was on the University of Michigan faculty and it included a colleague from Emory University.

Sphincters are ring-like muscles that maintain constriction of a body passage. There are numerous sphincters in the human body, including those that control the release of urine and feces. There are actually two sphincters at the anus -- one internal and one external. Fecal incontinence is the result of a weakened internal sphincter.

There is a high incidence of weakened internal fecal sphincters in older adults; and women who have had episiotomies during childbirth can also be affected. "Many individuals find themselves withdrawing from their social lives and attempting to hide the problem from their families, friends, and even their doctors," said Bitar. "Many people suffer without help."

Current options for repair of the internal anal sphincter include grafts of skeletal muscle, injectable silicone material or implantation of mechanical devices, all of which have high complication rates and limited success.

To engineer an internal anal sphincter in the laboratory, the researchers used a small biopsy from a human sphincter and isolated smooth muscle cells that were then multiplied in the lab. In a ring-shaped mold, these cells were layered with nerve cells isolated from mice to build the sphincter. The mold was placed in an incubator for nine days, allowing for tissue formation. The entire process took about six weeks.

Numerous laboratory tests of the engineered sphincters, including stimulating the nerve cells, showed normal tissue function, such as the ability to relax and contract. The sphincters were then implanted just under the skin of mice to determine how they would respond in the body. Mice with suppressed immune systems were selected so that there would be no issues with rejection.

Building Better HIV Antibodies: Biologists Create Neutralizing Antibody That Shows Increased Potency

Current advances in isolating antibodies from HIV-infected individuals have allowed for the discovery of a large number of new, broadly neutralizing anti-HIV antibodies directed against the host receptor (CD4) binding site -- a functional site on the surface of the virus that allows for cell entry and infection. Using a technique known as structure-based rational design, the team modified one already-known and particularly potent antibody -- NIH45-46 -- so that it can target the binding site in a different and more powerful way. A study outlining their process was published in the Oct. 27 issue of Science Express.

"NIH45-46 was already one of the most broad and potent of the known anti-HIV antibodies," says Pamela Bjorkman, Max Delbrück Professor of Biology at Caltech and senior author on the study. "Our new antibody is now arguably the best of the currently available, broadly neutralizing anti-HIV antibodies."

By conducting structural studies, the researchers were able to identify how NIH45-46 interacted with gp120 -- a protein on the surface of the virus that's required for the successful entry of HIV into cells -- to neutralize the virus. Using this information, they were able to create a new antibody (dubbed NIH45-46G54W) that is better able to grab onto and interfere with gp120. This improves the antibody's breadth -- or extent to which it effectively targets many subtypes of HIV -- and potency by an order of magnitude, according to Ron Diskin, a postdoctoral scholar in Bjorkman's lab at Caltech and the paper's lead author.

"Not only did we design an improved version of NIH45-46, our structural data are calling into question previous assumptions about how to make a vaccine in order to elicit such antibodies," says Diskin. "We hope that these observations will help to guide and improve future immunogen design."

Vısta Finds New Globular Star Clusters and Sees Right Through the Heart of the Milky Way

The dazzling globular cluster called UKS 1 dominates the right-hand side of the first of the new infrared images from ESO's VISTA survey telescope at the Paranal Observatory in Chile. But if you can drag your gaze away, there is a surprise lurking in this very rich star field -- a fainter globular cluster that was discovered in the data from one of VISTA's surveys. You will have to look closely to see the other star cluster, which is called VVV CL001: it is a small collection of stars in the left half of the image.

But VVV CL001 is just the first of VISTA's globular discoveries. The same team has found a second object, dubbed VVV CL002. This small and faint grouping may also be the globular cluster that is the closest known to the centre of the Milky Way. The discovery of a new globular cluster in our Milky Way is very rare. The last one was discovered in 2010, and only 158 globular clusters were known in our galaxy before the new discoveries.

These new clusters are early discoveries from the VISTA Variables in the Via Lactea (VVV) survey that is systematically studying the central parts of the Milky Way in infrared light. The VVV team is led by Dante Minniti (Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile) and Philip Lucas (Centre for Astrophysics Research, University of Hertfordshire, UK).

As well as globular clusters, VISTA is finding many open, or galactic clusters, which generally contain fewer, younger, stars than globular clusters and are far more common. Another newly announced cluster, VVV CL003, seems to be an open cluster that lies in the direction of the heart of the Milky Way, but much further away, about 15 000 light-years beyond the centre. This is the first such cluster to be discovered on the far side of the Milky Way.

Could a Computer One Day Rewire Itself? New Nanomaterial 'Steers' Electric Currents in Multiple Dimensions

As electronic devices are built smaller and smaller, the materials from which the circuits are constructed begin to lose their properties and begin to be controlled by quantum mechanical phenomena. Reaching this physical barrier, many scientists have begun building circuits into multiple dimensions, such as stacking components on top of one another.

The Northwestern team has taken a fundamentally different approach. They have made reconfigurable electronic materials: materials that can rearrange themselves to meet different computational needs at different times.

"Our new steering technology allows use to direct current flow through a piece of continuous material," said Bartosz A. Grzybowski, who led the research. "Like redirecting a river, streams of electrons can be steered in multiple directions through a block of the material -- even multiple streams flowing in opposing directions at the same time."

Grzybowski is professor of chemical and biological engineering in the McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science and professor of chemistry in the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences.

The Northwestern material combines different aspects of silicon- and polymer-based electronics to create a new classification of electronic materials: nanoparticle-based electronics.

The study, in which the authors report making preliminary electronic components with the hybrid material, will be published online Oct. 16 by the journal Nature Nanotechnology. The research also will be published as the cover story in the November print issue of the journal.

Production Of Biofuel from Forests Will Increase Greenhouse Gas Emissions, Study Finds

The findings are contrary to assumptions and some previous studies that suggest biofuels from this source would be carbon-neutral or even reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

In this research, that wasn't true in any scenario.

The study was published in Nature Climate Change, by scientists from the College of Forestry at Oregon State University and other institutions in Germany and France. It was supported by the U.S. Department of Energy.

During the past four years, the study examined 80 forest types in 19 eco-regions in Oregon, Washington and California, ranging from temperate rainforests to semi-arid woodlands. It included both public and private lands and different forest management approaches.

"On the West Coast, we found that projected forest biomass removal and use for bioenergy in any form will release more carbon dioxide to the atmosphere than current forest management practices," said Tara Hudiburg, a doctoral candidate at OSU and lead author on the study.

"Most people assume that wood bioenergy will be carbon-neutral, because the forest re-grows and there's also the chance of protecting forests from carbon emissions due to wildfire," Hudiburg said. "However, our research showed that the emissions from these activities proved to be more than the savings."

The only exception to this, the researchers said, was if forests in high fire-risk zones become weakened due to insect outbreaks or drought, which impairs their growth and carbon sequestration, as well as setting the stage for major fires. It's possible some thinning for bioenergy production might result in lower emissions in such cases if several specific criteria are met, they said.

"Until now there have been a lot of misconceptions about impacts of forest thinning, fire prevention and biofuels production as it relates to carbon emissions from forests," said Beverly Law, a professor in the OSU Department of Forest Ecosystems and Society and co-author of this study.

Birthplace for Primitive Life On Earth? Researchers Identify Mud Volcanoes in Greenland as Niche for Early Life

This work is published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Serpentinite is a dark green mineral used in decoration and jewelry. In nature, it is formed when sea water infiltrates into Earth's upper mantle, at depths that can reach 200 km in subduction zones. According to the scientists, this mineral, often found in the walls of hydrothermal sources, could play a major role in the appearance of the first biomolecules.

It has often been presumed that life developed near to hydrothermal sources known as black smokers(1), such as those found at the bottom of the oceans along mid-ocean ridges. The abundance of hydrogen, methane and ammonia produced by these underwater geysers seemed favorable to the emergence of primitive life. Unfortunately, these black smokers are very acid, which prevents amino-acid stabilization, and thus the formation of organic molecules.

The team of scientists publishing this article focused their studies on serpentinites from Isua, in south-west Greenland, which date from the start of the Archean(2). Dating back some 3.8 billion years, the rocks of Isua are some of the oldest in the world. Using isotopes of zinc as indicators of the basic or acid nature of an environment, the researchers highlighted the basic character of the thermal fluids that permeated the Isua serpentinites, thus demonstrating that these minerals formed a favorable environment for amino-acid stabilization.

The researchers also compared these serpentinites with recent equivalents from the mid-oceanic ridge of the Artic Ocean, the Alps and Mexico: the Isua rocks are markedly depleted in heavy isotopes of zinc compared to the latter. On the other hand, their zinc is isotopically similar to that from mud volcanoes of the Marianas Trench. Nearly four billion years ago, at a time when the continents only occupied a very small part of the surface area of the globe, the oceanic crust of Isua was permeated by basic hydrothermal fluids, rich in carbonates, and at temperatures ranging from 100 to 300°C. Phosphorus, another indispensable element to life, is abundant in environments where serpentinization takes place(3). As this process generates mud volcanoes, all the necessary conditions were gathered at Isua for organic molecules to form and be stable. The mud volcanoes at Isua thus represent a particularly favorable setting for the emergence of primitive terrestrial life.

Antarctic Killer Whales May Seek Spa-Like Relief in the Tropics

"The whales are traveling so quickly, and in such a consistent track, that it is unlikely they are foraging for food or giving birth," said John Durban, lead author from NOAA's Southwest Fisheries Science Center in La Jolla, California. "We believe these movements are likely undertaken to help the whales regenerate skin tissue in a warmer environment with less heat loss."

As evidence, the researchers point to the yellowish coating on Antarctic killer whales caused by a thick accumulation of diatoms or algae on the outer skin of the animals. The coloring is noticeably absent when they return from warmer waters indicating the upper epidermis of the skin has been shed.

One tagged Antarctic killer whale monitored by satellite traveled over 5,000 miles to visit the warm waters off southern Brazil before returning immediately to Antarctica just 42 days later. This was the first long distance migration ever reported for killer whales.

The coloring is noticeably absent when they return from warmer waters indicating the upper layer of skin has been shed. The scientists tagged 12 Type B killer whales (seal-feeding specialists) near the Antarctic Peninsula and tracked 5 that revealed consistent movement to sub-tropical waters. The whales tended to slow in the warmest waters although there was no obvious interruption in swim speed or direction to indicate calving or prolonged feeding.

"They went to the edge of the tropics at high speed, turned around and came straight back to Antarctica, at the onset of winter," said Robert Pitman, co-author of the study. "The standard feeding or breeding migration does not seem to apply here."

New Hybrid Technology Could Bring 'Quantum Information Systems'

The technology hinges on using single photons -- the tiny particles that make up light -- for switching and routing in future computers that might harness the exotic principles of quantum mechanics.

The quantum information processing technology would use structures called "metamaterials," artificial nanostructured media with exotic properties.

The metamaterials, when combined with tiny "optical emitters," could make possible a new hybrid technology that uses "quantum light" in future computers, said Vladimir Shalaev, scientific director of nanophotonics at Purdue University's Birck Nanotechnology Center and a distinguished professor of electrical and computer engineering.

The concept is described in an article published on October 28 in the journal Science. The article appeared in the magazine's Perspectives section and was written by Shalaev and Zubin Jacob, an assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Alberta, Canada.

"A seamless interface between plasmonics and nanophotonics could guarantee the use of light to overcome limitations in the operational speed of conventional integrated circuits," Shalaev said.

Researchers are proposing the use of "plasmon-mediated interactions," or devices that manipulate individual photons and quasiparticles called plasmons that combine electrons and photons.

One of the approaches, pioneered at Harvard University, is a tiny nanowire that couples individual photons and plasmons. Another approach is to use hyperbolic metamaterials, suggested by Jacob; Igor Smolyaninov, a visiting research scientist at the University of Maryland; and Evgenii Narimanov, an associate professor of electrical and computer engineering at Purdue. Quantum-device applications using building blocks for such hyperbolic metamaterials have been demonstrated in Shalaev's group.

Technology Strategy Board Looks İnto Ways İn Which Buildings İn The UK Can Withstand The Climate Of The Future

Larkfleet Group has been selected to work alongside LDA Design, Buro Happold, Wormald Burrows and Capita Symonds on behalf of the Technology Strategy Board to develop ways in which buildings in the UK can be adapted so that they are better able to withstand the climate of the future.

Work will focus on the impact of external factors such as shrinkable clay soils on a building’s structural strength. The research will also investigate the resilience of buildings to high temperatures and flood risk.

Larkfleet Group will work as the developer-contractor on the LDA Design led project to test the research project’s suggested climate change adaptations for housing on three properties on Phase 1 of Larkfleet’s Oakham North development in Rutland. The Oakham North development will include around 1,100 homes (including affordable housing), a continuing care retirement community (CCRC), local centre, meeting places, public open space and structural landscaping.

The climate change adaptations for new housing identified through the research will be developed so that the solutions appeal not just to the Oakham development but also to other developers and the wider housing market. The research project hopes to confirm that successful climate change solutions must incorporate realistic design and ‘green thinking’ if they are to be deliverable.

Larkfleet Group managing director Karl Hick commented: “Larkfleet Group is delighted to be able to help with this research study. By testing strategies on properties at Oakham North, feedback can be gained on the way adaptation strategies can be prepared and implemented. Larkfleet Group has an excellent reputation for building high quality, energy–efficient homes but the next challenge is to make sure buildings are able to cope with the changing environmental conditions that will occur over the coming decades.”

John Brash's JB Antislip Plus Decking Specified For Cube Development İn Manchester

Designed to a high specification and with full height windows offering stunning city views, the the 108 apartments and townhouses at the prestigious Cube development in Manchester are being marketed as ‘city chic without the city prices’. The development has been led by Manchester Ship Canal Developments (MSCD), which is a joint venture partnership between developer Peel Land & Property and Manchester City Council.

John Brash’s JB Antislip Plus® decking has been specified for communal areas around the 108 homes, where it will provide a secure, anti-slip surface all year round. The decking has been used extensively on walkways, external staircases and a communal social area at the development, which comprises a range of high quality, modern, affordable homes close to city centre amenities. The John Brash JB Antislip Plus® decking was installed by Russells Construction.

The project required 10,800 linear metres of JB Antislip Plus® which was supplied with two grey anti-slip inserts, injected into John Brash’s treated Softwood deck boards.

The company’s John Brash® range was used at The Cube. This is a structural timber deck board manufactured from kiln dried European Redwood, carefully selected to BS 4978:2007 strength class C16. It is vacuum preservative treated and is unique in carrying a 25 year guarantee against wood rotting fungi and insect attack.

JB Antislip Plus® is created using a unique formula of resin-based aggregate inserts. A number of inserts per board can be specified, depending on the slip resistance levels required.

Saturday, October 29, 2011

Social Networking Reaches The Building Sector

It was only a matter of time before someone in the smart building space took the best aspects of Facebook and the iPhone app store and weaved them into a solution that would help building owners, managers, and occupants harness big data to drive new levels of efficiency and building performance monitoring. Johnson Controls took a step in that direction recently when it announced the launch of the Panoptix platform at Greenbuild in Toronto.

At its core is an open technology platform that can pull together building data from systems that rarely, if ever, speak to each other - from the building automation system (BAS) to the meter system to weather data, security systems, and others.

A suite of cloud-hosted building efficiency applications allows users to link their own building management systems to the platform and start monitoring and managing their buildings. The initial suite consists of four applications:

- Continuous Diagnostics Advisor

- Measurement and Verification Monitor

- Carbon and Energy Reporter

- Custom Analyzer

Over time, Johnson Controls and its partners, such as IBM, will continue to develop new applications. By 2012, the app suite will be open to independent software developers, as well. Users buy the apps on a subscription basis rather than as a one-time purchase, thereby making them accessible and affordable to a broader base of potential customers. And the apps, of course, can be accessed from any Internet-connected device.

Oracle Can Use Google Email İn Patent Case--judge

Oracle sued Google last year, alleging the Web search leader's Android mobile operating technology infringes Oracle's Java patents.

In addition to those patent claims, Oracle also leveled copyright infringement claims against Google. Oracle acquired the Java programming language through its purchase of Sun Microsystems in 2010.

Shortly before Oracle filed its lawsuit, a Google engineer drafted an email saying Google needs to negotiate a license for Java.

Google investigated alternatives to Java for Android and concluded "they all suck," the email said. Google sought to prevent Oracle from using the email in its case.

But in an order on Thursday, U.S. District Judge William Alsup ruled that a magistrate judge got it right by finding the email was not protected by the attorney client privilege.

"Google has failed to identify any aspect of the challenged order that was clearly erroneous or contrary to law," Alsup wrote.

Google representatives did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Radio Prophet Gone From Airwaves On New Judgment Day Eve

Days after the apocalypse he originally predicted for May 21 conspicuously failed to materialize, Harold Camping emerged from a brief seclusion to say he had merely miscalculated by five months, and he pronounced a new Judgment Day, October 21.

The following month, the now 90-year-old former civil engineer was said by his California-based Christian radio network to have suffered a stroke that left him hospitalized.

He has largely dropped out of sight since then, and his daily radio program, "Open Forum," broadcast on more than 60 U.S. stations, has been canceled.

Moreover, there is little evidence that swarms of believers who once fanned out in cities nationwide with placards advertising Camping's message -- some giving up life savings in anticipation of being swept into heaven -- were following a new doomsday countdown.

Gone, too, are the billboards posted around the country by Camping's Family Radio network declaring that Judgment Day was at hand.

Reached by telephone on Thursday, network spokesman Tom Evans declined to comment on Camping or his prophecies, except to say that he had "retired" as a radio host but remained chairman of the board of Family Stations Inc.

Camping himself had little else to say when he answered the door of his home in nearby Alameda, wearing a bathrobe and leaning on a walker.

"We're not having a conversation," he said, shaking his head with a chuckle. "There's nothing to report here."

Dividing Corn Stover Makes Ethanol Conversion More Efficient

Not all parts of a corn stalk are equal, and they shouldn't be treated that way when creating cellulosic ethanol, say Purdue University researchers. When corn stover is processed to make cellulosic ethanol, everything is ground down and blended together. But a research team found that three distinct parts of the stover -- the rind, pith and leaves -- break down in different ways.

Michael Ladisch, a distinguished professor of agricultural and biological engineering and director of Purdue's Laboratory of Renewable Resources Engineering; Eduardo Ximenes, a Purdue research scientist in LORRE; and doctoral graduate student Meijuan Zeng are trying to determine if there is a better method to process corn stover and optimize efficiency.

Cellulosic ethanol is created by using enzymes to extract sugars from cellulosic feedstocks, such as corn stover, grasses and woods, and then fermenting and distilling those sugars into fuels.

"Today, researchers grind the parts together and treat it based on what's needed to get at the hardest part," Ximenes said. "We show that there are major differences in degradability among the tissues."

Stover's pith, the soft core that makes up more than half the weight of a corn stalk, is the easiest for enzymes to digest, according to the findings in two papers published in the journal Biotechnology and Bioengineering. Rind is the most difficult, while leaves fall in between. Significant amounts of lignin, the rigid compound in plant cell walls, make the cellulose resistant to hydrolosis, a process in which cellulose is broken down into sugars.

Controversy Over Reopening The 'Sistine Chapel' Of Stone Age Art

Plans to reopen Spain’s Altamira caves are stirring controversy over the possibility that tourists’ visits will further damage the 20,000-year old wall paintings that changed views about the intellectual ability of prehistoric people. That’s the topic of an article in the current edition of Chemical & Engineering News, ACS’ weekly newsmagazine. The caves are the site of Stone Age paintings so magnificent that experts have called them the “Sistine Chapel of Paleolithic Art.” Carmen Drahl, C&EN associate editor, points out in the article that Spanish officials closed the tourist mecca to the public in 2002 after scientists realized that visitors were fostering growth of bacteria that damage the paintings. Now, however, they plan to reopen the caves. Declared a World Heritage Site by the United Nations’ Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), Altamira’s rock paintings of animals and human hands made scientists realize that Stone Age people had intellectual capabilities far greater than previously believed.

The article explains how moisture and carbon dioxide from tourists’ breath, body heat and footsteps (which kick up bacterial spores) foster growth of bacteria on the cave walls. Those bacteria damage the precious wall paintings, which supposedly influenced great modern artists like Picasso. Drahl discusses the scientific controversy over limited reopening of the caves to tourism and measures that could minimize further damage to the paintings.

Restraint İmproves Dielectric Performance,Lifespan

Just as a corset improves the appearance of its wearer by keeping everything tightly together, rigidly constraining insulating materials in electrical components can increase their energy density and decrease their rates of failure. Many electrical components, like wiring, are typically surrounded by a material that keeps the electricity from passing to its surroundings. These insulating materials are known as dielectrics, and can take many forms, with the most common being "soft" materials known as polymers. However, since these dielectrics are constantly being submitted to electrical voltage, they tend to break down.

Duke University engineers have demonstrated that rigidly constraining dielectric materials can greatly improve their performance and potentially lengthen their lifespans. This insight follows their discovery earlier this year of the exact mechanism that causes soft dielectric materials to break down in the presence of electricity.

"We found that increasing voltage can cause polymers to physically crease and even crater at the microscopic level, eventually causing them to break down," said Xuanhe Zhao, assistant professor of mechanical engineering and materials science at Duke's Pratt School of Engineering. "So we thought if we wrapped the polymer tightly, that would prevent this creasing from occurring. Experiments proved this hypothesis to be true."

The results of the Duke study were published online in the journal Applied Physical Letters.

In their experiments, the Duke researchers constrained three different soft polymer dielectrics with epoxy. Epoxy is a type of polymer created by the reaction of a resin with a hardening agent. When mixed, a hard and inflexible coating is formed.

Researchers Use New Approach To Overcome Key Hurdle For Next-generation Superconductors

Researchers from North Carolina State University have developed a new computational approach to improve the utility of superconductive materials for specific design applications -- and have used the approach to solve a key research obstacle for the next-generation superconductor material yttrium barium copper oxide (YBCO). A superconductor is a material that can carry electricity without any loss -- none of the energy is dissipated as heat, for example. Superconductive materials are currently used in medical MRI technology, and are expected to play a prominent role in emerging power technologies, such as energy storage or high-efficiency wind turbines.

One problem facing systems engineers who want to design technologies that use superconductive materials is that they are required to design products based on the properties of existing materials. But NC State researchers are proposing an approach that would allow product designers to interact directly with the industry that creates superconductive materials -- such as wires -- to create superconductors that more precisely match the needs of the finished product.

"We are introducing the idea that wire manufacturers work with systems engineers earlier in the process, utilizing computer models to create better materials more quickly," says Dr. Justin Schwartz, lead author of a paper on the process and Kobe Steel Distinguished Professor and head of NC State's Department of Materials Science and Engineering. "This approach moves us closer to the ideal of having materials engineering become part of the product design process."

To demonstrate the utility of the process, researchers tackled a problem facing next-generation YBCO superconductors. YBCO conductors are promising because they are very strong and have a high superconducting current density -- meaning they can handle a large amount of electricity. But there are obstacles to their widespread use.

To Diagnose Heart Disease, Visualization Experts Recommend A Simpler Approach

A team of computer scientists, physicists, and physicians at Harvard have developed a simple yet powerful method of visualizing human arteries that may result in more accurate diagnoses of atherosclerosis and heart disease. The prototype tool, called "HemoVis," creates a 2D diagram of arteries that performs better than the traditional 3D, rainbow-colored model. In a clinical setting, the tool has been shown to increase diagnostic accuracy from 39% to 91%.

Presented October 27 at the IEEE Information Visualization Conference(InfoVis 2011), the new visualization methodoffers insight to clinicians, imaging specialists, engineers, and others in a wide range of fields who need to explore and evaluate complex, branching structures.

"Our goal was to design a visual representation of the data that was as accurate and efficient for patient diagnosis as possible," says lead author Michelle Borkin, a doctoral candidate at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS). "What we found is that the prettiest, most popular visualization is not always the most effective."

HemoVis takes data from patient-specific blood flow simulations, combined with traditional imaging data, and visually displays a tree diagram of the arteries with areas of disease highlighted to assist in diagnosis.

Tools for artery visualization in both clinical and research settings commonly use 3D models that portray the shape and spatial arrangement of vessels of interest. These complex tools require users to rotate the models to get a complete perspective of spatial orientation.

New Oncolytic Virus Shows İmproved Effectiveness İn Preclinical Testing

A new fourth-generation oncolytic virus designed to both kill cancer cells and inhibit blood-vessel growth has shown greater effectiveness than earlier versions when tested in animal models of human brain cancer. Researchers at the Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center -- Arthur G. James Cancer Hospital and Richard J. Solove Research Institute (OSUCCC -- James) are developing the oncolytic virus as a treatment for glioblastoma, the most common and deadly form of brain cancer (average survival: 15 months after diagnosis).

The new oncolytic virus, called 34.5ENVE, improved survival of mice with transplanted human glioblastoma tumors by 50 percent in a majority of cases compared with the previous-generation oncolytic virus.

The study was published online in the journal Molecular Therapy.

"These findings show the amazing therapeutic efficacy of this new oncolytic virus against four different glioblastoma models in animals," says cancer researcher Dr. Balveen Kaur, associate professor of neurological surgery, and a member of the OSUCCC -- James viral oncology research program.

The new oncolytic virus is engineered to replicate in cells that express the protein nestin. First identified as a marker for neuronal stem cells, nestin is also expressed in glioblastoma and other malignancies including gastrointestinal, pancreatic, prostate and breast cancer.

"We believe that nestin-driven oncolytic viruses will prove valuable for the treatment of many types of cancer," Kaur says.

The new oncolytic virus also carries a gene to inhibit tumor blood-vessel growth. That gene, called Vstat120, was added to increase its anti-tumor effectiveness and prolong the virus's presence within tumors.

In this study of eight animals with intracranial tumors, six lived longer than 80 days, and these were later found to be tumor free. By comparison, control mice survived a median of 20 days, and mice treated with a first-, a second-, and a third-generation oncolytic virus survived 33, 34 and 53 days, respectively.

Belief İn God Cuts Two Ways,Study Finds

Being reminded of the concept of God can decrease people's motivation to pursue personal goals but can help them resist temptation, according to new research published by the American Psychological Association. "More than 90 percent of people in the world agree that God or a similar spiritual power exists or may exist," said the study's lead author, Kristin Laurin, PhD, of the University of Waterloo in Canada. "This is the first empirical evidence that simple reminders of God can diminish some types of self-regulation, such as pursuing one's goals, yet can improve others, such as resisting temptation."

A total of 353 college students, with an average age 19 and 186 of whom were women, participated in six experiments to determine how the idea of God can indirectly influence people's motivations, even among those who said they were not religious. The students did not have to have an opinion on the existence of a god or any other spiritual power. The findings were reported in the online version of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology®.

In one experiment, engineering students completed a "warm-up" word task. They were asked to form grammatically correct sentences using four words from sets of five. Some students were provided either God or God-related words (divine, sacred, spirit and prophet), while the control group used more neutral words (ball, desk, sky, track and box). Next, each student had to form as many words as they could in five minutes, using any combination of specific letters. The researchers determined the students' motivation level by the number of words they produced. The more motivated they were, the more words they produced. They were told that a good performance could help predict if they would succeed in an engineering career.

Several weeks before this experiment, the students had been asked if they believed outside factors (other people, beings, forces beyond their control) had an influence on their careers. Among participants who said outside factors such as God might influence their career success, those who did the God-related word task performed worse than those who used neutral words. There was no difference in performance among the participants who did not believe outside factors influenced their career success.

Thursday, October 27, 2011

In One Of Nation’s Most Democratic Cities, Emanuel Goes After Chicago Labor Unions One By One

He’s mayor of a city where Democrats and organized labor are famous for working side by side, but Rahm Emanuel is now turning up the heat on Chicago’s unions one by one.

Emanuel has ridiculed the practice of paying heavy equipment operators overtime just to get ready for work. He’s invited private trash haulers to square off against city crews to see who does a better, cheaper job. And he’s called out transit workers for getting paid time off not only for their birthdays but for the day they landed their jobs.

Mayors and governors across the country have criticized organized labor in their efforts to ease budget problems. But the public spats between union leaders and the former White House chief of staff are a brand-new spectacle in Chicago, where for generations unions have kept a tight hold on many jobs and played an important role in the party political machine that kept mayors in office.

“It’s an effort to demonize the workforce,” complained Robert Kelly, president of the Amalgamated Transit Union Local 308, which city officials blamed this month for the need to cut $277 million in public transportation funds.

Since taking office in May, Emanuel has portrayed himself as the champion of taxpayers and even the city’s schoolchildren as he targets the overtime pay, perks and work schedules of teachers, garbage collectors and other workers in the three dozen unions that represent more than 60,000 city employees.

Center For Biological Diversity, Others Plan To Sue Over Proposed Puerto Rico Pipeline

Eleven individuals and environmental groups served notice on the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers on Wednesday that they will sue to block construction of a proposed natural gas pipeline in Puerto Rico.

The proposed 92-mile (148-kilometer) pipeline is the signature infrastructure project of Gov. Luis Fortuno, who says it will lower power bills for island consumers who pay twice what they would on the U.S. mainland

The groups, including the Sierra Club and the Center for Biological Diversity, accuse the Corps of Engineers of failing to follow legal requirements to determine the project’s impact on at least 38 plant and animal species. One of those is the coqui llanero, a tiny frog that U.S. environmental officials recently said should be included on the endangered species list.

The Corps of Engineers found that the project would not affect the species, including the Puerto Rican parrot, the crested toad, several turtles and 29 plants. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service agreed with those findings.

The groups say in their 101-page letter that the Corps of Engineers conducted formal environmental consultations only on the Puerto Rican boa, sharp-shinned hawk and broad-winged hawk.

“A project as complex as this one cannot be dealt with through a fast-track process,” said Gustavo Casalduc, spokesman for the Utuadeno Committee, a local group fighting the proposed pipeline.

Nigerian İmmigrant Wants To Give Hope To Children Laboring İn Hidden Jobs

Omolara Aribisala was 12 when her parents sent her from Nigeria to live with relatives in Maryland. An older cousin, with three young children and another on the way, needed help around the house. In exchange, Aribisala would be able to go to school in the United States.

And so the young African girl joined fifth grade at Beacon Heights Elementary School in Prince George’s County and became caregiver for a family of six. The next nine years were an exhausting regimen of cooking and cleaning under the supervision, she said, of a controlling and sometimes-disparaging female relative.

“I wouldn’t say I had a childhood or anything that resembles a childhood,” Aribisala recalled in an interview.

The older cousin declined to discuss Aribisala’s upbringing. “Whatever happens in the family, the family handles it,” the cousin said in an interview.

Aribisala ran away from her family’s Prince George’s home when she was 21. Today she is a 39-year-old single mother of two in Silver Spring. She is a PTA vice president at Brookhaven Elementary School and plays defensive end for the D.C. Divas, a professional women’s tackle football team.

She’s offering her story because she wants to help other young children laboring in hidden jobs with little hope. “I want them to know it can get better,” she said.

Government Making Slow Progress On Listing,İnspecting Levees 6 Years After Hurricane Katrina

More than six years after Hurricane Katrina’s rampage, authorities have taken only halting steps toward identifying weaknesses in a nationwide patchwork of levees intended to protect millions of Americans’ lives and property during potentially catastrophic floods.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, accused of building substandard levees and floodwalls that failed when Katrina swamped the Gulf Coast in 2005, has spent $56 million since then developing the initial phase of a national levee inventory as required by Congress. The Corps on Thursday was releasing a database with information about nearly 14,000 miles of levees under its jurisdiction.

Computer Scientist Cracks Mysterious 'Copiale Cipher'

The manuscript seems straight out of fiction: a strange, handwritten message in abstract symbols and Roman letters meticulously covering 105 yellowing pages hidden in the depths of an academic archive. Now, more than three centuries after it was devised, the 75,000-character Copiale Cipher finally has been broken.

The mysterious cryptogram, bound in gold and green brocade paper, reveals the rituals and political leanings of an 18th-century secret society in Germany. The rituals detailed in the document indicate the society had a fascination with eye surgery and ophthalmology, though it seems members of the society were not eye doctors.

"This opens up a window for people who study the history of ideas and the history of secret societies," said computer scientist Kevin Knight of the USC Viterbi School of Engineering, part of the international team that finally cracked the cipher. "Historians believe that secret societies have had a role in revolutions, but all that is yet to be worked out, and a big part of the reason is because so many documents are enciphered."

To break the cipher, Knight and colleagues Beáta Megyesi and Christiane Schaefer of Uppsala University in Sweden tracked down the original manuscript, which was found in the East Berlin Academy after the Cold War and now is in a private collection. They transcribed a machine-readable version of the text, using a computer program created by Knight to help quantify the co-occurrences of certain symbols and other patterns.

"When you get a new code and look at it, the possibilities are nearly infinite," Knight said. "Once you come up with a hypothesis based on your intuition as a human, you can turn over a lot of grunt work to the computer."

Dividing Corn Dtover Makes Ethanol Conversion More Efficient

Not all parts of a corn stalk are equal, and they shouldn't be treated that way when creating cellulosic ethanol, say Purdue University researchers. When corn stover is processed to make cellulosic ethanol, everything is ground down and blended together. But a research team found that three distinct parts of the stover -- the rind, pith and leaves -- break down in different ways.

Michael Ladisch, a distinguished professor of agricultural and biological engineering and director of Purdue's Laboratory of Renewable Resources Engineering; Eduardo Ximenes, a Purdue research scientist in LORRE; and doctoral graduate student Meijuan Zeng are trying to determine if there is a better method to process corn stover and optimize efficiency.

Cellulosic ethanol is created by using enzymes to extract sugars from cellulosic feedstocks, such as corn stover, grasses and woods, and then fermenting and distilling those sugars into fuels.

"Today, researchers grind the parts together and treat it based on what's needed to get at the hardest part," Ximenes said. "We show that there are major differences in degradability among the tissues."

Stover's pith, the soft core that makes up more than half the weight of a corn stalk, is the easiest for enzymes to digest, according to the findings in two papers published in the journal Biotechnology and Bioengineering. Rind is the most difficult, while leaves fall in between. Significant amounts of lignin, the rigid compound in plant cell walls, make the cellulose resistant to hydrolosis, a process in which cellulose is broken down into sugars.

Controversy Over Reopening The 'Sistine Chapel' Of Stone Age Art

Plans to reopen Spain’s Altamira caves are stirring controversy over the possibility that tourists’ visits will further damage the 20,000-year old wall paintings that changed views about the intellectual ability of prehistoric people. That’s the topic of an article in the current edition of Chemical & Engineering News, ACS’ weekly newsmagazine. The caves are the site of Stone Age paintings so magnificent that experts have called them the “Sistine Chapel of Paleolithic Art.” Carmen Drahl, C&EN associate editor, points out in the article that Spanish officials closed the tourist mecca to the public in 2002 after scientists realized that visitors were fostering growth of bacteria that damage the paintings. Now, however, they plan to reopen the caves. Declared a World Heritage Site by the United Nations’ Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), Altamira’s rock paintings of animals and human hands made scientists realize that Stone Age people had intellectual capabilities far greater than previously believed.

The article explains how moisture and carbon dioxide from tourists’ breath, body heat and footsteps (which kick up bacterial spores) foster growth of bacteria on the cave walls. Those bacteria damage the precious wall paintings, which supposedly influenced great modern artists like Picasso. Drahl discusses the scientific controversy over limited reopening of the caves to tourism and measures that could minimize further damage to the paintings.

Restraint İmproves Dielectric Performance,Lifespan

Just as a corset improves the appearance of its wearer by keeping everything tightly together, rigidly constraining insulating materials in electrical components can increase their energy density and decrease their rates of failure. Many electrical components, like wiring, are typically surrounded by a material that keeps the electricity from passing to its surroundings. These insulating materials are known as dielectrics, and can take many forms, with the most common being "soft" materials known as polymers. However, since these dielectrics are constantly being submitted to electrical voltage, they tend to break down.

Duke University engineers have demonstrated that rigidly constraining dielectric materials can greatly improve their performance and potentially lengthen their lifespans. This insight follows their discovery earlier this year of the exact mechanism that causes soft dielectric materials to break down in the presence of electricity.

"We found that increasing voltage can cause polymers to physically crease and even crater at the microscopic level, eventually causing them to break down," said Xuanhe Zhao, assistant professor of mechanical engineering and materials science at Duke's Pratt School of Engineering. "So we thought if we wrapped the polymer tightly, that would prevent this creasing from occurring. Experiments proved this hypothesis to be true."

The results of the Duke study were published online in the journal Applied Physical Letters.

In their experiments, the Duke researchers constrained three different soft polymer dielectrics with epoxy. Epoxy is a type of polymer created by the reaction of a resin with a hardening agent. When mixed, a hard and inflexible coating is formed.

Improved Characterization Of Nanoparticle Clusters For EHS and Biosensors Research

The tendency of nanoparticles to clump together in solution -- "agglomeration" -- is of great interest because the size of the clusters plays an important role in the behavior of the materials. Toxicity, the persistence of the nanomaterials in the environment, their efficacy as biosensors and, for that matter, the accuracy of experiments to measure these factors, are all known to be affected by agglomeration and cluster size. Recent work at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) offers a way to measure accurately both the distribution of cluster sizes in a sample and the characteristic light absorption for each size. The latter is important for the application of nanoparticles in biosensors. A good example of the potential application of the work, says NIST biomedical engineer Justin Zook, is in the development of nanoparticle biosensors for ultrasensitive pregnancy tests. Gold nanoparticles can be coated with antibodies to a hormone produced by an embryo shortly after conception. Multiple gold nanoparticles can bind to each hormone, forming clusters that have a different color from unclustered gold nanoparticles. But only certain size clusters are optimal for this measurement, so knowing how light absorbance changes with cluster size makes it easier to design the biosensors to result in just the right sized clusters.

The NIST team first prepared samples of gold nanoparticles -- a nanomaterial widely used in biology -- in a standard cell culture solution, using their previously developed technique for creating samples with a controlled distribution of sizes. The particles are allowed to agglomerate in gradually growing clusters and the clumping process is "turned off" after varying lengths of time by adding a stabilizing agent that prevents further agglomeration.

They then used a technique called analytical ultracentrifugation (AUC) to simultaneously sort the clusters by size and measure their light absorption. The centrifuge causes the nanoparticle clusters to separate by size, the smaller, lighter clusters moving more slowly than the larger ones. While this is happening, the sample containers are repeatedly scanned with light and the amount of light passing through the sample for each color or frequency is recorded. The larger the cluster, the more light is absorbed by lower frequencies. Measuring the absorption by frequency across the sample containers allows the researchers both to watch the gradual separation of cluster sizes and to correlate absorbed frequencies with specific cluster sizes.

Most previous measurements of absorption spectra for solutions of nanoparticles were able only to measure the bulk spectra -- the absorption of all the different cluster sizes mixed together. AUC makes it possible to measure the quantity and distribution of each nanoparticle cluster without being confounded by other components in complex biological mixtures, such as proteins. The technique previously had been used only to make these measurements for single nanoparticles in solution. The NIST researchers are the first to show that the procedure also works for nanoparticle clusters.

H+H Aircrete Blocks Specified For Batheaston Primary School Project

Batheaston Primary School in Bath is a ‘Green Flag’ awarded primary school and is part of the international ‘Eco-Schools’ programme guiding educational establishments towards sustainability by working various green principles into the everyday running of the school.

The school is heavily involved with conservation and sustainability and this is reflected in the recent changes at the school. Bearing this in mind H+H was an ideal partner as the company shares these commitments to sustainable production and operation.

H+H UK Ltd's Hi Seven Grade 100mm and 140mm aircrete blocks have been specified for a £1.7 million project at Batheaston Primary School. The blocks have been used to build a new hall, reception, classrooms and a kitchen facility with the aim of the project to achieve U values 25% better than the current Building regulation requirements for walls.

CMS Bath Ltd was appointed to complete the detail design. Richard Helliar, the architectural technologist leading the project explains: ‘The u value of 0.26W/m2K was achieved using H+H aircrete blockwork with 100mm Rockwool cavity fill for external walls. BREEAM assessment is also being carried out and aims to achieve a 'Good' rating. We are extremely pleased with these results.’

Wednesday, October 26, 2011

New Engineering Programs Make Hopkins Students Job-ready

The Johns Hopkins University has added three new engineering master’s degree programs to prepare students to immediately enter the work force.

Most other engineering programs at Hopkins are designed for working professionals or students who plan to go on to earn a doctoral degree, but the new programs will help students quickly find a job in this harsh economy, school officials said.

The programs are designed to be completed in a year to a year and a half, and they are in engineering management, bioengineering innovation and design, and financial mathematics.

The university’s Whiting School of Engineering will hold an open house from 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. today, in the Sherwood Room of the Levering Hall on the Homewood campus. Representatives from the programs will be available to discuss the new master’s degrees.

City Engineering Firm Moving To Baltimore County

A local engineering firm is moving to Baltimore County.

RMF Engineering, with headquarters in Baltimore, has signed a lease to move its headquarters to bwtech@UMBC, the University of Maryland Baltimore County research and technology park.

The company will be the first tenant in the park’s new 107,000-square-foot building at 5520 Research Park Drive.

RMF’s headquarters are currently located on West Ostend Street in Baltimore.

The company, with other offices in New York, North Carolina, South Carolina and Virginia, employs about 100 people at its Baltimore office. RMF plans to expand to about 130 by the end of 2009, following relocation to Baltimore County.

RMF plans to work with UMBC’s College of Engineering and Information Technology by assisting in curriculum development, consulting with faculty and guest lecturing in engineering courses.

“Companies at bwtech@UMBC recognize the business value of locating next to the university campus and building collaborations with faculty, researchers and students,” David Iannucci, executive director for the Baltimore County Department of Economic Development, said in a statement.

Navy Yard Engineer Charged İn $10m Kickback Scheme

A senior engineer at the Washington Navy Yard and a founder of a Georgia-based technology services company have been charged in a $10 million kickback and bribery scheme, federal prosecutors announced. Ralph M. Mariano, 52, of Arlington, and Anjan Dutta-Gupta, 58, of Roswell, Ga., were charged and released last week in a Rhode Island federal court. The men face up to 15 years in prison and fines of $250,000 if convicted of the federal bribery charges.
Prosecutors said the kickback scheme goes back to 1998 and has cost the taxpayers millions of dollars, most of which was funneled back to Mariano, his father, brother, girlfriend and associates.

In return, prosecutors said, Dutta-Gupta's Advanced Solutions for Tomorrow technology company received lucrative contracts. The Georgia-based company has an office in Rhode Island and 10 Navy contracts worth $120 million.

"The Navy has paid millions of dollars in inflated costs to ASFT, much of which was then paid to Mariano," states the charging document signed by Patrick J. Hegarty, a criminal investigator with the U.S. Defense Department.

Mariano's attorney Paul Mastrocola did not immediately return a call for comment.

Mariano is a civilian employee, a senior systems engineer for the Naval Sea Systems Command, or NAVSEA, with offices at the Washington Navy Yard and in Newport, R.I. He is also a technical adviser for the Navy's Small Business Innovation and Research program, which funds early-stage research to stimulate innovation and increase small participation in federal programs.

Engineers inspect Washington National Cathedral

The same engineers who captivated tourists by rappelling down the Washington Monument are conducting a similar operation at the National Cathedral.

Two members of the team began rappelling down a 234-foot tower at the front of the cathedral Monday afternoon. The engineers are looking for damage caused by a 5.8-magnitude earthquake that shook the nation's capital on Aug. 23.

The cathedral also sustained damage during Hurricane Irene a few days later.

Last week, stone masons removed 2 tons of stonework from a pinnacle of the cathedral that had been damaged. Three of the four pinnacles on the central tower, which date to 1963, were severely damaged in the earthquake

Sick Engineer Evacuated From South Pole Had Stroke

An American engineer who was successfully evacuated from the South Pole to New Zealand says preliminary medical tests indicate she had a stroke.

Renee-Nicole Douceur told The Associated Press in an email Tuesday night that she's expected to recover, although not 100 percent.

Douceur landed in Christchurch, New Zealand, on Monday, two months after she began experiencing vision, language and memory problems while working at the National Science Foundation's South Pole research station.

The 58-year-old Seabrook, N.H., resident says the neurologist who reviewed her medical tests believes she had a stroke on the left side of her brain.

Douceur asked for an emergency evacuation in August, but officials rejected her request because of bad weather, saying that sending a rescue plane was too dangerous and her condition wasn't life-threatening.

Finnish Metals, Engineering Workers Strike

About 30,000 Finnish metals and engineering industry workers began a strike Friday, expected to hit the country's vital export trade, with fears it could spread in two weeks' time.

The industrial action came after unions and management rejected National Conciliator Esa Lonka's mediation proposal on wages and working conditions, following days of negotiations.

The two-week strike will affect about 40 companies, including some of Finland's largest metals industry exporters. The union of professional workers has warned it would expand the strike to include 78 companies on Nov. 7, unless talks are resumed and agreement is reached.

The Federation of Finnish Technology Industries has estimated that a two-week strike would cost export companies $16 billion (€11.5 billion) in lost earnings. The sector accounts for 60 percent of Finland's exports and 80 percent of all investments in the country's research and development.

Last week, central trade unions and main employers organizations agreed on the outlines of a centralized labor contract that would have hiked wages by 4.3 percent over two years for about 2 million workers. But local union chiefs in technological industries, including the metals and engineering sectors, rejected the deal against the recommendations of central trade union leaders.

Computer Scientist Cracks Mysterious 'Copiale Cipher'

The manuscript seems straight out of fiction: a strange, handwritten message in abstract symbols and Roman letters meticulously covering 105 yellowing pages hidden in the depths of an academic archive. Now, more than three centuries after it was devised, the 75,000-character Copiale Cipher finally has been broken.

The mysterious cryptogram, bound in gold and green brocade paper, reveals the rituals and political leanings of an 18th-century secret society in Germany. The rituals detailed in the document indicate the society had a fascination with eye surgery and ophthalmology, though it seems members of the society were not eye doctors.

"This opens up a window for people who study the history of ideas and the history of secret societies," said computer scientist Kevin Knight of the USC Viterbi School of Engineering, part of the international team that finally cracked the cipher. "Historians believe that secret societies have had a role in revolutions, but all that is yet to be worked out, and a big part of the reason is because so many documents are enciphered."

To break the cipher, Knight and colleagues Beáta Megyesi and Christiane Schaefer of Uppsala University in Sweden tracked down the original manuscript, which was found in the East Berlin Academy after the Cold War and now is in a private collection. They transcribed a machine-readable version of the text, using a computer program created by Knight to help quantify the co-occurrences of certain symbols and other patterns.

"When you get a new code and look at it, the possibilities are nearly infinite," Knight said. "Once you come up with a hypothesis based on your intuition as a human, you can turn over a lot of grunt work to the computer."

Dividing Corn Stover Makes Ethanol Conversion More Efficient

Not all parts of a corn stalk are equal, and they shouldn't be treated that way when creating cellulosic ethanol, say Purdue University researchers. When corn stover is processed to make cellulosic ethanol, everything is ground down and blended together. But a research team found that three distinct parts of the stover -- the rind, pith and leaves -- break down in different ways.

Michael Ladisch, a distinguished professor of agricultural and biological engineering and director of Purdue's Laboratory of Renewable Resources Engineering; Eduardo Ximenes, a Purdue research scientist in LORRE; and doctoral graduate student Meijuan Zeng are trying to determine if there is a better method to process corn stover and optimize efficiency.

Cellulosic ethanol is created by using enzymes to extract sugars from cellulosic feedstocks, such as corn stover, grasses and woods, and then fermenting and distilling those sugars into fuels.

"Today, researchers grind the parts together and treat it based on what's needed to get at the hardest part," Ximenes said. "We show that there are major differences in degradability among the tissues."

Stover's pith, the soft core that makes up more than half the weight of a corn stalk, is the easiest for enzymes to digest, according to the findings in two papers published in the journal Biotechnology and Bioengineering. Rind is the most difficult, while leaves fall in between. Significant amounts of lignin, the rigid compound in plant cell walls, make the cellulose resistant to hydrolosis, a process in which cellulose is broken down into sugars.

Students Coax Yeast Cells To Add Vitamins To Bread

Any way you slice it, bread that contains critical nutrients could help combat severe malnutrition in impoverished regions. That is the goal of a group of Johns Hopkins University undergraduate students who are using synthetic biology to enhance common yeast so that it yields beta carotene, the orange substance that gives carrots their color. When it's eaten, beta-carotene turns into vitamin A. The students' project is the university's entry in iGEM, the International Genetically Engineered Machine competition. After a regional judging earlier this month, the undergraduates' project, called VitaYeast, has advanced to the iGEM finals, scheduled for Nov. 5-7 at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In the annual iGEM contest, students from around the world present projects based on synthetic biology, a burgeoning field in which researchers manipulate small bits of DNA and other biological material to make cells carry out new tasks.

The Johns Hopkins participants say that no matter what happens at the iGEM finals, they will continue to tout their enhanced bread as a relatively simple way to help hundreds of thousands of people who are suffering from malnutrition.

Team member Arjun Khakhar, a junior biomedical engineering major, grew up in Bombay, India, where he saw widespread poverty and malnutrition. "The major problem in developing countries right now is not that people are hungry and starving because they don't have enough food," he said. "What people don't have now is the [right type of] food that they need to survive. Vital nutrients like vitamins are just missing from their diets because they can't afford fruits and vegetables. That's what we wanted to provide through VitaYeast."

Producing a new food to save malnourished people around the globe may sound like an audacious goal for a group of 15 to 20 students who haven't yet picked up their college diplomas. But Arjun doesn't think so. "How do I get the idea in my mind that I want to change the world?" he said. "I would ask, How can you not have the idea that you want to change the world?"

To curb global malnutrition, Arjun and his teammates envisioned an enhanced starter dough that could be shared easily and cheaply among large groups of impoverished people. The bread baked from this dough could avert health problems that occur when vitamins and other nutrients are missing from their diets. Such health problems can be serious. The World Health Organization has described vitamin A deficiency as the leading cause of preventable blindness in children.

Premium New Houses İn Windsor Obtain İnstant Curbside Appeal With Redland's Heathland Concrete Tiles

Redland's Heathland range of concrete tiles are virtually indistinguishable from the hand-made equivalents at 50% of the cost. Heathland concrete tiles were launched as a near-perfect imitation of the hand-made clay tiles that are particularly popular in the South of the country. The manufacturing process faithfully reproduces the attractive aesthetic and random irregularities in the size and surface texture that are expected with a hand-made product.

A development of premium new houses in Windsor is one of the first completed projects to use the Elizabethan colour of Redland’s Heathland tile range. For this development A2Dominion New Homes wanted a high-quality finish that would make a positive contribution to the kerb-appeal of the semi-detached houses: one which would sit comfortably with the established style of the surrounding architecture.

Commercial Director Christopher Swordy at A2Dominion New Homes was clear on the reasons for specifying the Heathland product: “With our higher value properties, we find it worthwhile spending additional money on the roof tiles to obtain that instant kerbside appeal, particularly in an area like Windsor with very discerning buyers.”

The Heathland range now includes the established Ember, Autumn, Manor House Mix colours together with the Elizabethan and Wealden Red launched in 2010.

Tuesday, October 25, 2011

Solidcam İmachining Halves cycle Times and Makes Cutters Last 5 Times Longer For Mill-turn Operations At Dixons Surgical

Since 1948, Dixons Surgical in Wickford, Essex has been manufacturing reuseable surgical instruments. As the market has matured, Dixon Surgical has now progressed to making more complex orthopedic instruments, modelled in CAD. These changes encouraged the company to invest in both SolidWorks and SolidCAM, including its revolutionary iMachining module.

Jay Dixon, Managing Director says, “We have been using CNC machining since the early ‘90s. Programming was either manual or on-machine conversational. Now we have standardised on Mazak machines, including a Quick Turn Nexus 200 MSY, which has milling, Y-axis and sub spindle, and a VCN 410A vertical machining centre. During 2010 we started to get requests for parts which were difficult to program on the machine, especially the mill- turn, and which were already modelled in 3D, so we started to look for a suitable CAM system.”

Dixon Surgical had already invested in SolidWorks from Cadtek Systems Ltd, so it was looking for a package which would integrate with it and which would also be able to program its mill-turn machines. Jay Dixon continues, “We rapidly appreciated the benefits of 3D CAD for both new and existing parts. The parametric tools inside SolidWorks allow us to model just one part of a family of parts and, with a parametric table, automatically create the multiple versions, common in our industry. Our two main criteria for a CAM system – seamless integration in SolidWorks and the ability to program our Mazak Quick Turn Nexus - eliminated every system we looked at, except SolidCAM.”

SolidCAM is fully integrated inside SolidWorks and allows Dixons Surgical to make just one machining program and use the CAD system’s parametric tables to produce the other variants. Jay Dixon says, “A Ring Fixator instrument we make comes in 12 different sizes and, with other CAM systems we would have had to create a separate model for each variation. SolidCAM really extends the reach of the CAD system. It enables us to design and manufacture the jigs and produce the CNC program for each of the three operations required to machine each Fixator from one CAD model and one CAM program, compounding time saving on top of time saving. It really impressed our machinists when they realised amount of duplication of effort they had avoided!”

Lantek, Kaltenbach and Remmert Bring Their Open Technology İnnovations Together

Lantek, a global leader in the development and commercialization of integral software solutions (CAD/CAM/MES/ERP) for the machine tool sector, has recently carried out an open innovation process along with Kaltenbach, a machine tool and sheet metal machining product manufacturer, and Remmert, a company specialized in the robotization and automation of industrial warehouses, in order to reach an important technological solution.

Through this collaboration, the three companies have gathered together their respective technological and innovative skills to develop and create a plasma cutting machine and robot to speed up the component extraction processes, providing an answer for the requirements posed by Goldbeck, an engineering company focused on the design, construction and maintenance of office buildings, halls and car parks. It is a cutting-edge innovation as it is the first automatic evacuation system with a robotic arm for heavy parts.

This initiative is clear evidence of the commitment that Lantek, Kaltenbach and Remmert have regarding innovation and the development of effective solutions that provide added value and which guarantee a more direct and closer service for their customers.

As a proof of concept of this innovation, a prototype of the machine robot assembly was presented at the annual “International Partners in Steel “(IPS) fair held in Lörrach (Germany). The assembly has already been installed and is fully operative at the Goldbeck company.

ISG Starts Work On Liverpool John Moores University's Camps Upgrade

The General Engineering Research Institute is one of the UK’s leading research centres within manufacturing and related technologies. The Institute, which specialises in optical measurement systems and advanced manufacturing technology, will see part of an existing workshop area rationalised into a new reception, boardroom and open plan office facilities for up to 50 researchers.

ISG has commenced an £860k project for Liverpool John Moores University to build new office space and meeting areas for the General Engineering Research Institute and to convert office accommodation at its Byrom Street Campus into new laboratory facilities. The project is the latest phase of the University’s £multi-million five year master plan to enhance research and teaching facilities across the campus.

Following the demolition of an existing building on site, ISG will also construct a steel frame structure with an aluminium rain screen cladding and glass façade to blend seamlessly with the architecture of the surrounding buildings. This two-storey extension to the front of the building will contain office areas, meeting rooms and study spaces for postgraduate doctoral students.

Genetic Difference İn Staph İnfects Some Heart Devices, Not Others

Infectious films of staph bacteria that collect around an implanted cardiac device, such as a pacemaker, often force a second surgery to replace the device at a cost of up to $100,000. But not all implanted cardiac devices become infected. Now researchers from Duke University Medical Center and Ohio State University (OSU) have discovered how and why certain strains of staphylococcus aureus (SA) bacteria, the leading cause of these device infections, have infected thousands of implanted cardiac devices. About 4 percent of the one million annually implanted devices become infected.

The researchers examined SA's ability to bind to a sticky human (mammalian) substance called fibronectin that circulates in blood and sticks to the surfaces of implanted devices, like pacemakers.

Staph bacteria have fibronectin-binding molecules and bind to the human protein to establish an infection on the implanted medical device. Once established, these infections are difficult or impossible to eradicate without removing the device itself.

"This the first step in biofilm-based disease work," said Vance Fowler, MD, MHS, an associate professor of infectious diseases in the Duke Department of Medicine and co-corresponding author of the study. "I would expect the findings would be relevant for most implanted devices. The difference is that the cardiac devices are in direct contact with the bloodstream, and thus with fibronectin, so we need to do further work to clarify."

The study appears online in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

"The question was, 'are all SA created equal when binding with fibronectin?' and the answer is no," Fowler said. "We identified differing SA isolates from the blood of patients. All of the patients had SA, but some of the cardiac devices were infected and some were not, and we wanted to learn why. Most people had the infection but a lucky few didn't."

New Device Measures Viscosity Of Ketchup and Cosmetics

A device that can measure and predict how liquids flow under different conditions will ensure consumer products -- from make-up to ketchup -- are of the right consistency. The technology developed at the University of Sheffield enables engineers to monitor, in real time, how the viscous components (rheology) of liquids change during a production process, making it easier, quicker and cheaper to control the properties of the liquid.

The research is a joint project between the University's Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering and the School of Mathematics and Statistics. A paper describing the innovation is published Oct. 24, 2011 in the journal Measurement Science and Technology.

Dr Julia Rees from the University's Department of Applied Mathematics, who co-authored the study, said: "Companies that make liquid products need to know how the liquids will behave in different circumstances because these different behaviours can affect the texture, the taste or even the smell of a product."

The viscosity of most liquids changes under different conditions and designers often use complicated mathematical equations to determine what these changes might be.

The team from Sheffield has now developed a way of predicting these changes using a non-invasive sensor system that the liquid simply flows through. The sensor feeds information back through an electronic device that calculates a range of likely behaviours.

Mechanical Stress Can Help Or Hinder Wound Healing Depending On Time Of Application

A new study demonstrates that mechanical forces affect the growth and remodeling of blood vessels during tissue regeneration and wound healing. The forces diminish or enhance the vascularization process and tissue regeneration depending on when they are applied during the healing process. The study found that applying mechanical forces to an injury site immediately after healing began disrupted vascular growth into the site and prevented bone healing. However, applying mechanical forces later in the healing process enhanced functional bone regeneration. The study's findings could influence treatment of tissue injuries and recommendations for rehabilitation.

"Our finding that mechanical stresses caused by movement can disrupt the initial formation and growth of new blood vessels supports the advice doctors have been giving their patients for years to limit activity early in the healing process," said Robert Guldberg, a professor in the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology. "However, our findings also suggest applying mechanical stresses to the wound later on can significantly improve healing through a process called adaptive remodeling."

The study was published last month in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The research was supported by the National Institutes of Health, the Armed Forces Institute of Regenerative Medicine and the U.S. Department of Defense.

Because blood vessel growth is required for the regeneration of many different tissues, including bone, Guldberg and former Georgia Tech graduate student Joel Boerckel used healing of a bone defect in rats for their study. Following removal of eight millimeters of femur bone, they treated the gap with a polymer scaffold seeded with a growth factor called recombinant human bone morphogenetic protein-2 (rhBMP-2), a potent inducer of bone regeneration. The scaffold was designed in collaboration with Nathaniel Huebsch and David Mooney from Harvard University.

Research Finds Gallium Nitride İs Non-toxic,Biocompatible-holds Promise For İmplants

Researchers from North Carolina State University and Purdue University have shown that the semiconductor material gallium nitride (GaN) is non-toxic and is compatible with human cells -- opening the door to the material's use in a variety of biomedical implant technologies. GaN is currently used in a host of technologies, from LED lighting to optic sensors, but it is not in widespread use in biomedical implants. However, the new findings from NC State and Purdue mean that GaN holds promise for an array of implantable technologies -- from electrodes used in neurostimulation therapies for Alzheimer's to transistors used to monitor blood chemistry.

"The first finding is that GaN, unlike other semiconductor materials that have been considered for biomedical implants, is not toxic. That minimizes risk to both the environment and to patients," says Dr. Albena Ivanisevic, who co-authored a paper describing the research. Ivanisevic is an associate professor of materials science and engineering at NC State and associate professor of the joint biomedical engineering program at NC State and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Researchers used a mass spectrometry technique to see how much gallium is released from GaN when the material is exposed to various environments that mimic conditions in the human body. This is important because gallium oxides are toxic. But the researchers found that GaN is very stable in these environments -- releasing such a tiny amount of gallium that it is non-toxic.

The researchers also wanted to determine GaN's potential biocompatibility. To do this they bonded peptides -- the building blocks that make up proteins -- to the GaN material. Researchers then placed peptide-coated GaN and uncoated GaN into cell cultures to see how the material and the cells interacted.

Researchers found that the peptide-coated GaN bonded more effectively with the cells. Specifically, more cells bonded to the material and those cells spread over a larger area.

Stanford Researchers Build Transparent, Super-stretchy Skin-like Sensor

Imagine having skin so supple you could stretch it out to more than twice its normal length in any direction -- repeatedly -- yet it would always snap back completely wrinkle-free when you let go of it. You would certainly never need Botox. That enviable elasticity is one of several new features built into a new transparent skin-like pressure sensor that is the latest sensor developed by Stanford's Zhenan Bao, associate professor of chemical engineering, in her quest to create an artificial "super skin." The sensor uses a transparent film of single-walled carbon nanotubes that act as tiny springs, enabling the sensor to accurately measure the force on it, whether it's being pulled like taffy or squeezed like a sponge.

"This sensor can register pressure ranging from a firm pinch between your thumb and forefinger to twice the pressure exerted by an elephant standing on one foot," said Darren Lipomi, a postdoctoral researcher in Bao's lab, who is part of the research team.

"None of it causes any permanent deformation," he said.

Lipomi and Michael Vosgueritchian, graduate student in chemical engineering, and Benjamin Tee, graduate student in electrical engineering, are the lead authors of a paper describing the sensor published online Oct. 23 by Nature Nanotechnology. Bao is a coauthor of the paper.

The sensors could be used in making touch-sensitive prosthetic limbs or robots, for various medical applications such as pressure-sensitive bandages or in touch screens on computers.

The key element of the new sensor is the transparent film of carbon "nano-springs," which is created by spraying nanotubes in a liquid suspension onto a thin layer of silicone, which is then stretched.

Nanoparticles and Their Size May Not Be Big İssues

If you've ever eaten from silverware or worn copper jewelry, you've been in a perfect storm in which nanoparticles were dropped into the environment, say scientists at the University of Oregon. Since the emergence of nanotechnology, researchers, regulators and the public have been concerned that the potential toxicity of nano-sized products might threaten human health by way of environmental exposure.

Now, with the help of high-powered transmission electron microscopes, chemists captured never-before-seen views of miniscule metal nanoparticles naturally being created by silver articles such as wire, jewelry and eating utensils in contact with other surfaces. It turns out, researchers say, nanoparticles have been in contact with humans for a long, long time.

The project involved researchers in the UO's Materials Science Institute and the Safer Nanomaterials and Nanomanufacturing Initiative (SNNI), in collaboration with UO technology spinoff Dune Sciences Inc. SNNI is an initiative of the Oregon Nanoscience and Microtechnologies Institute (ONAMI), a state signature research center dedicated to research, job growth and commercialization in the areas of nanoscale science and microtechnologies.

The research -- detailed in a paper placed online in advance of regular publication in the American Chemistry Society's journal ACS Nano -- focused on understanding the dynamic behavior of silver nanoparticles on surfaces when exposed to a variety of environmental conditions.

Survey Finds Public Support For Geoengineering Research

Research on geoengineering appears to have broad public support, as a new, internationally-representative survey revealed that 72 per cent of respondents approved research into the climate-manipulating technique. The study, published Oct. 24 in IOP Publishing's journal Environmental Research Letters, is the first international survey on public perception of geoengineering and solar radiation management (SRM) and shows that these terms are becoming increasingly embedded into public discourse.

Public awareness of geoengineering is remarkably broad. Eight per cent of the sample were able to provide a correct definition of geoengineering, an increase on previous estimates; however, 45 per cent of the sample correctly defined the alternative term "climate engineering," adding weight to the argument that "geoengineering" may be misleading and difficult to understand.

The 18 question, internet-based survey was completed by 3,105 participants from Canada, the United Kingdom and the United States at the end of 2010, and was designed to ascertain how widespread public knowledge of geoengineering was and how the public actually perceived it.

Professor David Keith of Harvard University said: "Some reports have suggested that opposition to geoengineering is associated with environmentalists, but our results do not support this view.

Monday, October 24, 2011

How Chronic Stress Short-circuits Parenting

In the best of circumstances, raising a toddler is a daunting undertaking. But parents under long-term stress often find it particularly challenging to tap into the patience, responsiveness, and energy required for effective child rearing. Now research from a University of Rochester team helps to explain why chronic stress and parenting are such a toxic mix. The study finds that ongoing strains, like poverty or depression, disrupt the body's natural stress response, making mothers more likely to engage in a host of problematic parenting behaviors, including neglect, hostility, and insensitivity.

"Stress gets under your skin," explains Melissa Sturge-Apple, assistant professor of psychology at the University of Rochester and lead author on the Development and Psychopathology paper to be published in October. "It literally changes the way a mother's body responds to the normal demands of small children and those changes make it much harder to parent positively."

Although the effects of stress have been well documented in children and linked to a variety of diseases in adults, this is one of the first studies to look specifically at stress and parenting, according to the researchers. The findings point to the corrosive effects of poverty or depression on an individual's physiology and help to explain why people feel and act the way they do when faced with ongoing psychological or economic pressure, she says.

"Stress is not just in our heads, it's in our bodies," says Sturge-Apple.

This is also the first study to measure physiological stress response in real time, says Fred Rogosch, research director at the University of Rochester's Mt. Hope Family Center and a fellow author on the paper. Participants' reactions were captured using a novel wireless electrocardiograph (ECG) monitor developed for the study by University of Rochester engineers Zeljko Ignjatovic and Wendi Heinzelman. The unobtrusive device allowed the team to analyze subtle changes in participants' heart rhythms as they were happening, providing a non-behavioral window into how the study moms were reacting. Other methods, such as measuring the stress hormone cortisol, require a 20-minute delay and are not nearly as precise, explains Rogosch.

Advance Offers New Opportunities İn Chemistry Education, Research

Researchers at Oregon State University have created a new, unifying method to describe a basic chemical concept called "electronegativity," first described almost 80 years ago by OSU alumnus Linus Pauling and part of the work that led to his receiving the Nobel Prize. The new system offers simplicity of understanding that should rewrite high school and college chemistry textbooks around the world, even as it opens important new avenues in materials and chemical research, with possible applications in everything from solar energy to solid state batteries.

The findings were just published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society, in work supported by the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Energy.

"This is a quantum leap forward in understanding basic tendencies in chemical bond formation," said John Wager, a professor of electrical engineering at OSU. "We can now take a concept that college students struggle with and I could explain it to a kindergarten class.

"Even advanced scientists will gain new insights and understanding into the chemical processes they study," Wager said. "Using this system, I could look at various materials being considered for use in new solar energy cells and determine quickly that this one might work, that one doesn't stand a chance."

Electronegativity, as defined by Pauling, is "the power of an atom in a molecule to attract electrons to itself." This concept is useful for explaining why some atoms tend to attract electrons, others share them and some give them away. In the 1930s, Pauling was the first to devise a method for numerically estimating the electronegativity of an atom. Other researchers later developed different approaches.

University Of Nevada, Reno, Engineers Simulate Large Quake On Curved Bridge

Six full-size pickup trucks took a wild ride on a 16-foot-high steel bridge when it shook violently in a series of never-before-conducted experiments to investigate the seismic behavior of a curved bridge with vehicles in place. The 145-foot-long, 162-ton steel and concrete bridge was built atop four large, 14-foot by 14-foot, hydraulic shake tables in the University of Nevada, Reno's Large-Scale Structures Earthquake Engineering Laboratory. "We took the bridge to its extreme, almost double what we planned at the outset," Ian Buckle, professor of civil engineering and director of the large-scale structures lab, said. "Preliminarily we see that in low amplitude earthquakes the weight of the vehicles actually helps the seismic effects on the structure, while at higher amplitudes the trucks hinder considerably the bridges ability to withstand an earthquake."

The trucks bounced and swayed as the four-span bridge's concrete columns deflected more than 14 inches in each direction, the steel girders twisted and the floor of the lab shook from the energy applied to the bridge. The bridge, with 80 feet of curvature, filled the cavernous high-bay lab on the University of Nevada, Reno campus from end-to-end.

A 3-minute video featuring the largest motion applied to the bridge can be viewed by clicking on this link http://imedia.unr.edu/media_relations/VNR_shake_trucks_2b.mp4.

"Whether you saw the experiment in person or watch the video, remember that this is a 2/5 scale model, and the movement you see would be two and a half times greater on a full-scale bridge," Buckle, principal investigator of the research project, said. "It would be scary to be driving under those conditions."

Nasa To Demonstrate Communications Via Laser Beam

It currently takes 90 minutes to transmit high-resolution images from Mars, but NASA would like to dramatically reduce that time to just minutes. A new optical communications system that NASA plans to demonstrate in 2016 will lead the way and even allow the streaming of high-definition video from distances beyond the Moon. This dramatically enhanced transmission speed will be demonstrated by the Laser Communications Relay Demonstration (LCRD), one of three projects selected by NASA's Office of the Chief Technologist (OCT) for a trial run. To be developed by a team led by engineers at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., LCRD is expected to fly as a hosted payload on a commercial communications satellite developed by Space Systems/Loral, of Palo Alto, Calif.

"We want to take NASA's communications capabilities to the next level," said LCRD Principal Investigator Dave Israel, who is leading a multi-organizational team that includes NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. and Lincoln Laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Mass. Although NASA has developed higher data-rate radio frequency systems, data-compression, and other techniques to boost the amount of data that its current systems can handle, the Agency's capabilities will not keep pace with the projected data needs of advanced instruments and future human exploration, Israel added.

"Just as the home Internet user hit the wall with dial-up, NASA is approaching the limit of what its existing communications network can handle," he said.

The solution is to augment NASA's legacy radio-based network, which includes a fleet of tracking and data relay satellites and a network of ground stations, with optical systems, which could increase data rates by anywhere from 10 to 100 times. "This transition will take several years to complete, but the eventual payback will be very large increases in the amount of data we can transmit, both downlink and uplink, especially to distant destinations in the solar system and beyond," said James Reuther, director of OCT's Crosscutting Technology Demonstrations Division.

The country ranks 13th in the look at business regulations by the World Bank and its International Financial Corp. arm, and is lauded particularly in the area of starting up a business. Canada actually slipped one notch, to 13th spot overall, but is still among the top countries of 183 listed.

Ranking ahead of Canada are Singapore, Hong Kong, New Zealand, the U.S., Denmark, Norway, Britain, South Korea, Iceland, Ireland, Finland and Saudi Arabia.

Those at the bottom of the list include a handful of African countries and Venezuela. The winner of the bottom spot is Chad, which got knocked off the second-to-last position that it held last year by the Central African Republic.

Overall in the world, things are getting better, according to the report, notably in Sub-Saharan Africa, where both starting a business and doing business have become easier. Around the world, 125 governments brought in 245 reforms.

"Starting a business is a leap of faith under any circumstances," the report said

For the poor, starting a business or finding a job is an important way out of poverty. In most parts of the world small and medium-size businesses are often the main job creators.Yet entrepreneurs in developing economies tend to encounter greater obstacles than their counterparts in high-income economies."

The elaborate mission to recover a moon rock led NASA agents to one of the most down-to-earth places: a Denny's restaurant in Riverside County.

But at the end of the sting operation, agents were left holding a speck of lunar dust smaller than a grain of rice and a 74-year-old suspect who was terrified by armed officials.

Five months after NASA investigators and local agents swooped into the restaurant and hailed their operation as a cautionary tale for anyone trying to sell national treasure, no charges have been filed, NASA isn't talking and the case appears stalled.

The target, Joann Davis, a grandmother who says she was trying to raise money for her sick son, asserts the lunar material was rightfully hers, having been given to her space-engineer husband by Neil Armstrong in the 1970s.

“It's a very upsetting thing,” Ms.Davis told The Associated Press. “It's very detrimental, very humiliating, all of it a lie.”

The strange case centers on a speck of authenticated moon rock encased in an acrylic-looking dome that appears to be a paperweight. For years, NASA has gone after anyone selling lunar material gathered on the Apollo missions because it is considered government property, so cannot be sold for profit

Still, NASA has given hundreds of lunar samples to nations, states and high-profile individuals but only on the understanding they remain government property

Google Asks Canadians To Update Google Maps

Changes are vetted by a team at Google and fellow users before being seen by the world on Google Maps

Google’s objective here is to create an accurate atlas of the world and the reality is that Google’s not big enough to do this (alone),” said Google Canada spokesman Aaron Brindle.

When it comes to our assumptions around who actually is in possession of the most relevant information to any user, I think it’s hubris to assume Google alone can do it without the help of the community of our users.

It's a model that’s worked with Wikipedia and a model that’s worked astoundingly well when it comes to the maps (elsewhere in the world) that are already online

Map Maker, a pet project of Google engineers in Bangalore, India, was first released in 2008 in a number of countries including Cyprus, Iceland and Pakistan. It was released earlier this year in the United States

Before the product launched in Canada, some Canadian Google employees were testing it out and making their own additions and edits. Among them was engineer James MacLean, who lives in Hawkestone, Ont., about an hour and a half north of Toronto

Will A Better Air Filter İmprove My Car’s Performance?

Thanks in advance for your thoughts, Tony

Yes and no, Tony. High flow air filters have been around for a long time, and they have consistently been one of the quickest and cheapest ways to boost engine performance. However, these gains were more noticeable when intake systems and OEM air filter housings were nowhere near as efficient as they are today. These low flow filters removed one of the restrictions in the very restrictive intake passages that delivered outside air to a carburetor.

Nowadays, these air passages are far more efficient with (mostly) radiused corners between the air filter housing and the intake manifold. However, that’s not to say that this design can’t be improved upon. These new filter designs are made of a filter media that is inherently high in mass air flow handling capacity and in many cases come with an optional ducting and housing assembly that completes the package. The other cool thing about these filters is that most of them are cleanable. That is, you have the ability to remove the filter and clean it with spirits and re-install in the housing, saving the cost of purchasing a new filter while keeping the old filter out of the landfill – win, win.

Because of this design, you will notice an increase in engine performance and if you keep off the throttle, you’ll notice a slight increase fuel economy as well. The problem is: many people like the renewed sound that the engine makes after the installation of one of these devices so they tend to stuff the throttle more than normal. I’m asking that you keep this in consideration because after I’ve recommended these low flow filters, I get complaints that the fuel economy has gone down.

It’s unlikely that auto makers will install these filters at the factory due to the extra cost. Imagine a manufacturer like Honda that sells about 1.5 million vehicles in North America having to add build costs of (on the low side) $50 per vehicle. That’s a $75-million hit to the bottom line that has to be passed along to the consumer.

As for warranty issues, air filters are considered a consumable so of course, they are not warrantable. As for effect on your warranty, you should not have an issue, but as I always say, check with your dealer or the manufacturer whenever making modifications to a vehicle.

Psychologists Defend The İmportance Of General Abilities

What makes a great violinist, physicist, or crossword puzzle solver? Are experts born or made? The question has intrigued psychologists since psychology was born -- and the rest of us, too, who may secretly fantasize playing duets with Yo Yo Ma or winning a Nobel Prize in science. It's no wonder Malcolm Gladwell stayed atop the bestseller lists by popularizing the "10,000-hour rule" of Florida State University psychologist K. Anders Ericsson. Using Ericsson's pioneering work -- but omitting equally prominent, contradictory, research -- Gladwell's book Outliers argued that given a certain level of intelligence and a bit of luck, virtually anybody can get to Carnegie Hall -- provided they practice, practice, practice. In a new paper in Current Directions in Psychological Science, a journal published by the Association for Psychological Science, psychologists David Z. Hambrick of Michigan State University and Elizabeth J. Meinz of Southern Illinois University Edwardsville disagree strongly. "We don't deny the importance of the knowledge and skill that accrue through practice," says Hambrick. " But, we think that for certain types of tasks, basic abilities and capacities -- ones that are general, stable across time, and substantially heritable -- play an important role in skilled performance. " Such basic capacities are a component of talent, Hambrick and Meinz believe.

The authors' work involves a particular basic measure of cognitive ability: working memory capacity, the ability to store and process information at the same time, which correlates with success in many cognitive tasks, from abstract reasoning to language learning. In one experiment Hambrick and Meinz tested 57 pianists with a wide range of deliberate practice under their belts, from 260 to more than 31,000 hours, to see how well they did on sight-reading -- playing a piece from a score they'd never seen before. Those who had practiced more did better. In fact, practice -- even specific sight-reading practice -- predicted nearly half of the differences in performance across the subjects. But working memory capacity still had a statistically significant impact on performance. In other words, regardless of amount of deliberate practice, working memory capacity still mattered for success in the task. The psychologists surmised that the capacity influences how many notes a player can look ahead as she plays, an important factor in sight-reading.

Challenging another "experts-are-made" contention -- that beyond a certain threshold, intelligence makes less and less of a difference in accomplishment -- the authors cite a study by Vanderbilt University researchers that looked at the math SAT scores of people with PhDs in science, technology, engineering, or math. Those who scored in the 99.9th percentile at age 13 were 18 times more likely to go on to earn a PhD than those who scored better than only 99.1 percent of their teenage peers. "Even at the highest end, the higher the intellectual ability -- and by extension, the higher the working memory capacity -- the better," says Hambrick.

"Some would consider this bad news. We'd all like to think that basic capacities and abilities are irrelevant -- it's the egalitarian view of expertise," Hambrick says. "We're not saying that limitations can't be overcome." Still, no matter how hard you work, it may be what you're born with or develop very early in life that "distinguishes the best from the rest."

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