#Algae cell switch also controls tumor growth Original Studyposted by Layne Cameron-Michigan State on October 15 2014 Scientists have discovered that a protein called CHT7 is a likely repressor of cellular quiescence
and oil production also wields control of cellular growth and tumor growth in humans. Christoph Benning professor of biochemistry and molecular biology at Michigan State university and his colleagues unearthed the protein's potential
while seeking ways to improve algae's capacity as a biofuel. Its application in cancer research
however was a surprise finding that is leading Benning's lab in a new direction. lgae provide us with model organisms that rival
and study algae which have the genomic repertoire that make them relevant in their capacity to drive advances in human medicine. he discovery was made
when it's under stresssays coauthor Chia-Hong Tsai a doctoral candidate in the Michigan State-department of Energy Plant Research Laboratory
and department of plant biology. hey go into quiescence to conserve energy and nutrients. That's when they produce the equivalent of vegetable oil.
and gives scientists a way to potentially produce high amounts of oil and biomass. In terms of human medicine this discovery gives scientists a promising new model to study tumor suppression and growth.
Because quiescent cells are found in many plants and animals it's a model that can provide important insights into the regulation of cellular behavior in organisms such as us humans in ways that traditional yeast models simply can't replicate. he switch that tells an organism to grow
and grow uncontrollably that's exactly what we want to understandsays Benning. hat is the first step of tumor growth. he study appears in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences h
#Light makes mice forget scary memories University of California Davis rightoriginal Studyposted by Andy Fell-UC Davis on October 14 2014to test a longstanding idea about how the brain retrieves memories about specific places
or events scientists zapped mice with light to make them forget. he theory is that learning involves processing in the cortex
and the hippocampus reproduces this pattern of activity during retrieval allowing you to re-experience the eventsays Brian Wiltgen of the University of California Davis
Normally mice placed in a new environment will nose around and explore. But when placed in a cage where they have received previously a shock the mice freeze will in place in a ear response. n this study the scientists used mice genetically modified
which nerve cells in the cortex and hippocampus were activated in learning and memory retrieval and switch them off with light directed through a fiber-optic cable.
They followed fibers from the hippocampus to specific cells in the cortex and showed that turning off other cells in the hippocampus did not affect retrieval of that memory. he cortex can t do it alone it needs input from the hippocampuswiltgen says. his has been a fundamental assumption in our field for a long time
and the data provides the first direct evidence that it is true. hey could also see how the specific cells in the cortex were connected to the amygdala a structure in the brain that is involved in emotion
Grants from the Whitehall Foundation Mcknight Foundation Nakajima Foundation and the National Science Foundation funded the work.
#Control your smartphone with pinchy fingers ETH Zurich Posted by Peter Ruegg-ETH Zurich on October 9 2014a new app uses a smartphone s built-in camera to detect hand gestures that resemble sign language.
however they re for controlling the smartphone. Holding the phone in one hand a user can use the other to move an index finger to the left sometimes to the right.
Other gestures include spreading fingers imitating a pair of pliers and pretending to pull a trigger. The trigger-pulling motion for example lets you switch to another browser tab change the map s view from satellite to standard
or shoot down enemy planes in a game. Spreading out your fingers magnifies a section of a map or scrolls the page of a book forwards.
All this gesturing wizardry is made possible by a new type of algorithm developed by Jie Song a master s student in the working group headed by Otmar Hilliges professor of computer science at ETH Zurich.
The researchers presented the app to an audience of industry professionals at the UIST symposium in Honolulu Hawaii.
The program uses the smartphone s built-in camera to register its environment. It does not evaluate depth or color.
and warns the user when the hand is either too close or too far away. any movement-recognition programs need plenty of processor
and memory powerexplains Hilliges adding that their new algorithm uses a far smaller portion of computer memory
and is thus ideal for smartphones. He believes the application is the first of its kind that can run on a smartphone.
The app s minimal processing footprint means it could also run on smart watches or in augmented reality glasses like the Apple Watch or Google glass.
The program currently recognizes six different gestures and executes their corresponding commands. Although the researchers have tested 16 outlines this is not the app s theoretical limit.
Hilliges is convinced that this new way of operating smartphones greatly increases the range of interactivity.
so that users can operate their smartphone with very little effort. But will smartphone users want to adapt to this new style of interaction?
Hilliges is confident they will. Gesture control will not replace touchscreen control but supplement it. eople got used to operating computer games with their movements. ouchscreens Hilliges reminds us also required a very long adjustment period before making a big impact in consumers lives.
He is therefore certain that this application or at least parts of it will find its way onto the market.
Source: ETH Zuric
#Hybrid#dots#offer cheaper way to run fuel cells Last year chemist James Tour made graphene quantum dots from coal.
Now his team has combined the dots with tiny sheets of graphene. The result is a hybrid material that could make it much cheaper to generate energy with fuel cells.
The lab discovered boiling down a solution of graphene quantum dots (GQDS) and graphene oxide sheets (exfoliated from common graphite) yielded self-assembling nanoscale platelets that could then be treated with nitrogen and boron.
The hybrid material combined the advantages of each component: an abundance of edges where chemical reactions take place
The boron and nitrogen collectively add more catalytically active sites to the material than either element would add alone. he GQDS add to the system an enormous amount of edge
So it s a superb hybridization. he material outperformed commercial platinum/carbon hybrids commonly found in fuel cells.
and 70 percent larger current density than platinum-based catalysts The materials required to make the flake-like hybrids are much cheaper too Tour says. he efficiency is better than platinum in terms of oxygen
The Office of Naval Research Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative program and the Air force Office of Scientific research supported the work. p
#Google glass software adds captions to conversation Georgia Institute of technology Posted by Jason Maderer-Georgia Tech on October 3 2014new speech-to-text software for Google glass can help hard-of-hearing people with everyday conversations.
while a second person speaks directly into a smartphone. The speech is converted to text sent to Glass
and displayed on its heads-up display. A group in Georgia Tech s College of Computing created the Glassware
when one of its own said he was having trouble hearing and thought Glass could help him. his system allows wearers like me to focus on the speaker s lips
and facial gesturessays Jim Foley computing professor in the Georgia Tech School of Interactive Computing. f hard-of-hearing people understand the speech the conversation can continue immediately without waiting for the caption.
I need and get back into the conversation. oley s colleague Professor Thad Starner leads the Contextual Computing Group working on the project.
He says using a smartphone with Glass has several benefits as compared to using Glass by itself. lass has its own microphone
but it s designed for the wearersays Starner who is also a technical lead for Glass. he mobile phone puts a microphone directly next to the speaker s mouth reducing background noise
and helping to eliminate errors. tarner says the phone-to-Glass system is helpful because speakers are more likely to construct their sentences more clearly avoiding hsand ms
. However if captioning errors are sent to Glass the smartphone software also allows the speaker to edit the mistakes
which sends the changes to the person wearing the device. he smartphone uses the Android transcription API to convert the audio to textsays Jay Zuerndorfer
the Georgia Tech computer science graduate student who developed the software. he text is streamed then to Glass in real time. aptioning on Glass is currently available to install from Myglass.
More information and support can be found at the project website here. Foley and the students are working with the Association Of late Deafened Adults in Atlanta to improve the program.
The same group is also working on a second project Translation on Glass that uses the same smartphone-Glass Bluetooth connection process to capture sentences spoken into the smartphone translate them to another language
and send them to Glass. The only difference is that the person wearing Glass after reading the translation can reply.
The response is translated back to the original language on the smartphone. Two-way translations are currently available for English Spanish French Russian Korean
and Japanese. or both uses the person wearing Glass has to hand their smartphone to someone else to begin a conversationsays Starner. t s not ideal for strangers
#Double twist radio waves send data faster In the past, scientists have twisted light to send data super fast,
but new research shows that a similar technique with radio waves can also reach high speeds.
The new approach also avoids some of the hassles that can go with optical systems. The researchers reached data transmission rates of 32 gigabits per second across 2. 5 meters of free space in a basement lab at the University of Southern California.
For reference, 32 gigabits per second is fast enough to transmit more than 10 hour -and-a-half-long HD movies in one second and is 30 times faster than LTE wireless. ot only is this a way to transmit multiple spatially collocated radio data streams through a single aperture,
it is also one of the fastest data transmission via radio waves that has been demonstrated, says study leader Alan Willner, electrical engineering professor at the USC Viterbi School of engineering.
Faster data transmission rates have been led achievedillner himself a team two years ago that twisted light beams to transmit data at a blistering 2. 56 terabits per secondut methods to do so rely on light to carry the data. he advantage
of radio is that it uses wider, more robust beams. Wider beams are better able to cope with obstacles between the transmitter and the receiver
and radio is affected not as by atmospheric turbulence as optics, Willner says. To achieve the high transmission rates,
the team took a page from Willner previous work and twisted radio beams together. They passed each beamhich carried its own independent stream of datahrough a piral phase platethat twisted each radio beam into a unique and orthogonal DNA-like helical shape.
A receiver at the other end of the room then untwisted and recovered the different data streams. his technology could have very important applications in ultra-high-speed links for the wireless ackhaulthat connects base stations of next-generation cellular systems,
says Andy Molisch, who co-designed and co-supervised the study with Willner. Future research will focus on attempting to extend the transmission range and capabilities.
Willner is the corresponding author of an article about the research in Nature Communications. Additional coauthors come from USC, the University of Glasgow,
and Tel aviv University. The Intel Labs University Research Office and the DARPA Inpho (Information in a Photon) Program supported the work n
#New nanothreads are like diamond necklaces Scientists say super-thin iamond nanothreadsould be stronger and stiffer than the strongest nanotubes
and polymers that exist today. rom a fundamental-science point of view our discovery is intriguing because the threads we formed have a structure that has never been seen beforeays study leader John V. Badding a professor of chemistry at Penn State.
The core of the nanothreads is a long thin strand of carbon atoms arranged just like the fundamental unit of a diamond s structure zigzag yclohexanerings of six carbon atoms bound together in
which each carbon is surrounded by others in the strong triangular-pyramid shape of a tetrahedron. t is
as if an incredible jeweler has strung together the smallest possible diamonds into a long miniature necklacebadding says. ecause this thread is diamond at heart we expect that it will prove to be extraordinarily stiff extraordinarily strong
and extraordinarily useful. he team s discovery comes after nearly a century of failed attempts by other labs to compress separate carbon-containing molecules like liquid benzene into an ordered diamondlike nanomaterial. e used the large
high-pressure Paris-Edinburgh device at Oak ridge National Laboratory to compress a 6-millimeter-wide amount of benzene a gigantic amount compared with previous experimentssays coauthor Malcolm Guthrie of the Carnegie Institution for Science. e discovered that slowly releasing the pressure after sufficient
compression at normal room temperature gave the carbon atoms the time they needed to react with each other
and to link up in a highly ordered chain of single-file carbon tetrahedrons forming these diamond-core nanothreads. adding s team is the first to coax molecules containing carbon atoms to form the strong tetrahedron shape then link each tetrahedron end to end to form a long thin nanothread.
He describes the thread s width as phenomenally small only a few atoms across hundreds of thousands of times smaller than an optical fiber enormously thinner that an average human hair. heory by our coauthor Vin Crespi
suggests that this is potentially the strongest stiffest material possible while also being light in weighthe says.
The molecule they compressed is benzene a flat ring containing six carbon atoms and six hydrogen atoms.
The resulting diamond-core nanothread is surrounded by a halo of hydrogen atoms. During the compression process the scientists report the flat benzene molecules stack together bend
and break apart. Then as the researchers slowly release the pressure the atoms reconnect in an entirely different yet very orderly way.
The result is a structure that has carbon in the tetrahedral configuration of diamond with hydrogens hanging out to the side and each tetrahedron bonded with another to form a long thin nanothread. t really is surprising that this kind of organization happensbadding says. hat the atoms
so that when we release the pressure very slowly an orderly polymerization reaction happens that forms the diamond-core nanothread.
arts of these first diamond nanothreads appear to be somewhat less than perfect so improving their structure is a continuing goal of Badding s research program.
He also wants to discover how to make more of them. he high pressures that we used to make the first diamond nanothread material limit our production capacity to only a couple of cubic millimeters at a time so we are not yet making enough of it to be useful on an industrial scalebadding says. ne of our science goals is to remove that limitation by figuring out the chemistry
necessary to make these diamond nanothreads under more practical conditions. he nanothread also may be the first member of a new class of diamond-like nanomaterials based on a strong tetrahedral core. ur discovery that we can use the natural
alignment of the benzene molecules to guide the formation of this new diamond nanothread material is really interesting
of making many other kinds of molecules based on carbon and hydrogenbadding says. ou can attach all kinds of other atoms around a core of carbon and hydrogen.
and therefore less-polluting vehicles. ne of our wildest dreams for the nanomaterials we are developing is that they could be used to make the super-strong lightweight cables that would make possible the construction of a pace elevatorwhich so far has existed only as a science-fiction ideabadding says.
#Compressed bits store tons of quantum data University of Toronto Posted by Lindsay Jolivet-U. Toronto on September 29 2014scientists recently demonstrated that it s possible to compress quantum bits or qubits without losing information.
The ability to compress quantum information just as we do with digital data could open up huge potential for more powerful computing.
Digital compression in the world of classical information theory is fairly straightforward. As a simple example if you have a string of 1000 zeros
or millions of qubits. ur proposal gives you a way to hold onto a smaller quantum memory
as if you d held onto them all in the first placesays Aephraim M. Steinberg of the University of Toronto and a senior fellow at the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIFAR).
However many experiments in quantum information make use of just such identically prepared qubits making the technique potentially very useful. his work sheds light on some of the striking differences between information in the classical and quantum worlds.
It also promises to provide an exponential reduction in the amount of quantum memory needed for certain taskssteinberg says.
University of Toronto via CIFA o
#Rare molecule found in space hints at life s origins The discovery of an unusual carbon-based molecule near the galactic center of the Milky way suggests that the complex molecules needed for life may have their origins in interstellar space.
The carbon structure of this molecule known as isopropyl cyanide is branched making it the first interstellar detection of such a molecule says Rob Garrod a senior research associate at the Center for Radiophysics and Space Research at Cornell University.
which are the building blocks of proteins. The discovery reported in the journal Science lends weight to the idea that biologically crucial molecules like amino acids that are commonly found in meteorites are produced early in the process of star formation even before planets such as Earth are formed.
Garrod along with lead author Arnaud Belloche and Karl Menten both of the Max Planck Institute for Radio astronomy and Holger MÃ ller of the University of Cologne sought to examine the chemical makeup of Sagittarius
The purpose of the ALMA Observatory is to search for cosmic origins through an array of 66 sensitive radio antennas from the high elevation and dry air of northern Chile s Atacama desert.
The array of radio telescopes works together to form a gigantic yepeering into the cosmos. nderstanding the production of organic material at the early stages of star formation is critical to piecing together the gradual progression from simple molecules
#3, 600 crystals in wearable skin monitor health 24/7 A new wearable medical device that uses up to 3600 liquid crystals can quickly let you know
When the device turns color the wearer knows something is awry. ur device is mechanically invisible it is ultrathin and comfortable much like skin itselfsays Yonggang Huang professor of civil and environmental engineering and mechanical engineering at Northwestern University.
and its relevance to basic medicine have been demonstrated in the study but additional testing is needed before it can be put to use.
and research assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering. hen your skin is stretched compressed or twisted the device stretches compresses
When skin is dehydrated the thermal conductivity property changes. The device is an array of up to 3600 liquid crystals each half a millimeter square laid out on a thin soft and stretchable substrate.
An algorithm translates the temperature data into an accurate health report all in less than 30 seconds. hese results provide the first examples of epidermal photonic sensorssays John A. Rogers the paper s corresponding author
and professor of materials science and engineering at the University of Illinois. his technology significantly expands the range of functionality in skin-mounted devices beyond that possible with electronics alone. ith its 3600 liquid crystals the photonic device has 3600 temperature
points providing sub-millimeter spatial resolution that is comparable to the infrared technology currently used in hospitals.
#Computer recreates powerful solar flares ETH Zurich rightoriginal Studyposted by Barbara Vonarburg-ETH Zurich on September 26 2014physicists have used computers to model solar explosions
and hope the work will lead to better ways to predict flares which can disable power grids and communications On earth.
The computer model demonstrates that the shorter the interval between two explosions in the solar atmosphere the more likely it is that the second flare will be stronger than the first one. he agreement with measurements from satellites is strikingwrite the researchers from ETH Zurich in the journal
Hans Jurgen Herrmann a professor at the Institute for Building materials says solar flares were not the original focus of the work.
A theoretical physicist and expert in computer physics Herrmann developed a method to examine phenomena from a range of diverse fields.
Similar patterns to those in solar flares can also be found in earthquakes avalanches or the stock market. olar explosions do not of course have any connection with stock exchange ratessays Hermann
. Nevertheless they do behave in a similar way: they can interlock until they reach a certain threshold value before discharging.
or energy fed into it but only does so in bursts Herrmann explains. Experts call this self-organized criticality.
One example for this is a pile of sand being created by a trickle of sand grains.
The pile continues to grow until every now and then an avalanche is triggered. Smaller landslides occur more frequently than larger ones.
By organizing itself around a so-called critical state the pile maintains its original height when viewed over an extended period of time.
In the case of solar flares the build up of magnetic energy is emitted in sudden bursts. The sun consists of hot plasma made of electrons and ions.
Magnetic field lines extend from the solar surface all the way into the corona. Moving and twisting bundles of field lines form magnetic flux tubes.
When two tubes intersect they merge (physicists call this reconnection) causing an explosion that gives off large quantities of heat and electromagnetic radiation.
The radiation extends across the entire electromagnetic spectrum from radio waves and visible light to X-rays and gamma rays.
In mathematical terms it is a scale-free energy distribution that follows a power law. Conventional computer models have been able to qualitatively reconstruct this statistic size distribution
but unable to make any quantitative predictions. Any model relying on the intersection of flux tubes
he system is turbulentthe magnetic field lines in the corona do not move in a random pattern
but are rooted in the photosphere s turbulent plasma whose behavior is described in terms of fluid dynamics the science of the movement of fluids and gases.
However calculations based solely on plasma turbulence were also unable to reproduce the occurrence of solar flares in full.
Using a supercomputer the team was able to show that the model consistently generated correct results even when changing details such as the number of flux tubes or the energy of the plasma.
#Biochar changes how water flows through soil Rice university rightoriginal Studyposted by Jade Boyd-Rice on September 25 2014new research could help settle the debate about one of biochar s biggest benefits#its seemingly contradictory ability
to make clay soils drain faster and sandy soils drain slower. As more gardeners and farmers add ground charcoal
or biochar to soil to both boost crop yields and counter global climate change the study offers the first detailed explanation for this mystery. nderstanding the controls on water movement through biochar-amended soils is critical
to explaining other frequently reported benefits of biochar such as nutrient retention carbon sequestration and reduced greenhouse gas emissionssays lead author Rebecca Barnes an assistant professor of environmental science at Colorado College who began the research as a postdoctoral research associate at Rice university.
Biochar can be produced from waste wood manure or leaves and its popularity among DIY types
and gardening buffs took off after archaeological studies found that biochar added to soils in the Amazon more than 1000 years ago was still improving the water-and nutrient-holding abilities of those poor soils today.
Studies over the past decade have found that biochar soil amendments can either increase or decrease the amount of water that soil holds
but it has been tough for experts to explain why this occurs due partly to conflicting results from many different field tests.
In the new study biogeochemists at Rice conducted side-by-side tests of the water-holding ability of three soil types#sand clay and topsoil#both with and without added biochar.
The biochar used in the experiments derived from Texas mesquite wood was prepared to exacting standards in the lab of Rice geochemist Caroline Masiello a study coauthor to ensure comparable results across soil types. ot all biochar
is created equal and one of the important lessons of recent studies is that the hydrological properties of biochar can vary widely depending on the temperature
and time in the reactormasiello says. t s important to use the right recipe for the biochar that you want to make
and the differences can be subtle. For scientific studies it is critical to make sure you re comparing apples to apples. arnes says the team chose to make its comparison with simple relatively homogenous soil materials to compare results to established hydrologic models that relate water flow to a soil s physical properties like bulk density
and porosity. his is helped what us explain the seeming disconnect that people have noted when amending soils with biocharshe says. iochar is light and highly porous.
When biochar is added to clay it makes the soil less dense and it increases hydraulic conductivity
which makes intuitive sense. dding biochar to sand also makes it less dense so one would expect that soil to drain more quickly as well;
but in fact researchers have found that biochar-amended sand holds water longer. tudy coauthor Brandon Dugan assistant professor of Earth science at Rice says e hypothesize that this is likely due to the presence of two flow paths
for water through soil-biochar mixtures. One pathway is between the soil and biochar grains
and a second pathway is water moving through the biochar itself. arnes says the highly porous structure of biochar makes each of these pathways more tortuous than the pathway that water would take through sand alone.
Moreover the surface chemistry of biochar#both on external surfaces and inside pores#is likely to promote absorption
and further slow the movement of water. y adding our results to the growing body of literature we show that
when biochar is added to sand or other coarse-grained soils there is a simultaneous decrease in bulk density
and hydraulic conductivity as opposed to the expected result of decreased bulk density correlated with increased hydraulic conductivity that has been observed for other soil typesbarnes says.
Study coauthors include co-first author Morgan Gallagher a former Rice graduate student who is now a postdoctoral researcher at Rice and an associate in research at Duke university s Center for Global Change
and Rice graduate student Zuolin Liu. The findings appear in PLOS ONE. Source: Rice Universityyou are free to share this article under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noderivs 3. 0 Unported license A
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