Scientist and Nobel Peace Prize winner Norman Borlaug rose from his childhood on an Iowa farm to develop a type of wheat that helped feed the world, fostering a movement that is credited with saving up to 1 billion people from starvation.
Borlaug, 95, died last week from complications of cancer at his Dallas home, said Kathleen Phillips, a spokesman for Texas A&M University where Borlaug was a distinguished professor.
"Norman E. Borlaug saved more lives than any man in human history," said Josette Sheeran, executive director of the UN World Food Programme."His heart was as big as his brilliant mind, but it was his passion and compassion that moved the world."
He was known as the father of the "green revolution", which transformed agriculture through high-yield crop varieties and other innovations,helping to more than double world food production between 1960 and 1990.Many experts credit the green revolution with averting global famine during the second half of the 20th century and saving perhaps 1 billion lives.
"He has probably done more and is known by fewer people than anybody that has done that much," said Dr Ed Runge, retired head of Texas A&M University's Department of Soil and Crop Sciences and a close friend who persuaded Borlaug teach at the school."He made the world a better place - a much better place."
Borlaug began the work that led to his Nobel in Mexico at the end of World War II. There he developed diseaseresistant varieties of wheat that produced much more grain than traditional strains.
He and others later took those varieties and similarly improved strains of rice and corn to Asia, the Middle East, South America and Africa. In Pakistan and India,two of the nations that benefited most from the new crop varieties, grain yields more than quadrupled.
His successes in the 1960s came just as experts warned that mass starvation was inevitable as the world's population boomed.
"More than any other single person of his age, he has helped to provide bread for a hungry world," Nobel Peace Prize committee chairman Aase Lionaes said in presenting the award to Borlaug in 1970."We have made this choice in the hope that providing bread will also give the world peace."
But Borlaug and the Green Revolution were also criticised in later decades for promoting practices that used fertiliser and pesticides, and focusing on a few high-yield crops that benefited large landowners.
Borlaug often said wheat was only a vehicle for his real interest, which was to improve people's lives.
"We must recognise the fact that adequate food is only the first requisite for life," he said in his Nobel acceptance speech."For a decent and humane life we must also provide an opportunity for good education, remunerative employment, comfortable housing, good clothing and effective and compassionate medical care."
Borlaug also pressed governments for farmer-friendly economic policies and improved infrastructure to make markets accessible. A 2006 book about Borlaug
is titled The Man Who Fed the World .Norman Ernest Borlaug was born March 25,1914, on a farm near Cresco, Iowa, and educated through the eighth grade in a one-room schoolhouse.
He left home during the Great Depression to study forestry at the University of Minnesota.While there he earned himself a place in the university's wrestling hall of fame and met his future wife, whom he married in 1937. Margaret Borlaug died in 2007 at the age of 95.
After a brief stint with the US Forest Service, Norman Borlaug returned to the University of Minnesota for a doctoral degree in plant pathology. He then worked as a microbiologist for DuPont, but soon left for a job with the Rockefeller Foundation. Between 1944 and 1960,Borlaug dedicated himself to increasing Mexico's wheat production.
In 1963, Borlaug was named head of the newly formed International Maize and Wheat Improvement Centre in Mexico, where he trained thousands of young scientists.
Borlaug retired as head of the centre in 1979 and turned to university teaching,first at Cornell University and then at Texas A&M, which presented him with an honorary doctorate in December 2007.
He remained active well into his nineties, campaigning for the use of biotechnology to fight hunger. He also helped found and served as president of the Sasakawa Africa Foundation, an organisation funded by Japanese billionaire Ryoichi Sasakawa to introduce the green revolution to sub-Saharan Africa.
In 1986, Borlaug established the Des Moines, Iowa-based World Food Prize,a $250,000 award given each year to a person whose work improves the world's food supply.
He received the Congressional Gold Medal, the highest civilian honour given by Congress, in 2007.
He is survived by daughter Jeanie Borlaug Laube and her husband Rex; son William Gibson Borlaug and his wife Barbie; five grandchildren and six greatgrandchildren.
Wednesday, September 23, 2009
A piece of the action
And the crowd went wild as Steve "President for Life" Jobs of Apple Computer came out on the stage to emcee the now-annual September music sales pitch, with loads of new stuff; in the biggest news, the iPod Nano got a video camera and FM radio, and Steve showed off the new iTunes Ver 9 management software; he also showed off the iPhone OS 3.1, available for download, which actually recommends apps you might like, has better synching for music and video, and lets you save video from email attachments into your playlist, aka Camera Roll.
Apple cut the prices of its old iPod models just hours ahead of announcing new iPod models; the price of the 32-gigabyte iPod Touch was cut $120 to $279, or 9,500 baht in real money; a 120-gig iPod Classic now costs $229, a $20 cut by the generous folks who run Apple. Palm introduced a smaller,cheaper smartphone than the successful Pre; the Pixi, as it's called, is aimed at younger users; it's slimmer, has a smaller screen, but features a Qwerty keyboard,8GB of memory and a two-megapixel camera.
US President Barack Obama, in a controversial school-time speech to most US children, advised them to be careful about what they put on Facebook and other social networks;"Whatever you do, it will be pulled up again later somewhere in your life," he warned.
First Solar of America signed a contract with the Chinese government to build the world's largest solar power plant in Inner Mongolia; assuming it is built, the Ordos City plant will push out 2,000 megawatts of electricity,around four times the size of the projects being built by the US Army in the Mojave Desert and by First Solar in California;the China project isn't near anything much; Ordos City is a coal-producing,eight-year-old, planned low-carbon development with about 1.5 million residents, roughly 800km west of Beijing.
Networking firm Huawei of China,which has suffered a scandal or two in its Thailand work, was stung to the quick by mean stories in the Australian media that it might be tied to the Chinese espionage services; Guo Fulin, managing director of Huawei in Australia, was hurt by the insensitive stories that his company was under investigation by the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation; Huawei is a public-owned company, he said, and it is unthinkable that any government agency would be using Huawei to conduct spying.
The government of Cuba took a huge security gamble, and authorised post offices to provide Internet access to the public - just in case the Cuban government ever authorises the public to use the Internet at some point in the future; the only public access currently allowed is to an inside-Cuba intranet for email, provided by post offices at a cost of the equivalent of 55 baht an hour, in a country where the average wage is 680 baht a month.
Japan fired an unmanned cargo craft into orbit; the 16.5-tonne unmanned H-II Transfer Vehicle (HTV) is on a mission to re-supply the space station;it will stay up there to continue ferrying stuff to the US shuttle fleet next year.
Prime Minister Gordon Brown publicly apologised for the way that people treated World War Two code-breaker and extraordinary computer geek Alan Turing for being gay; Turing was prosecuted for homosexual conduct in 1952,and a mere two years later, he committed suicide;"I am pleased to have the chance how deeply sorry I and we all are," said Mr Brown.
Google , which plans to give away grazillions of books in order to get the (commercial) goods on its customers,offered to let all its opponents have a piece of the action;Amazon.com , which wants to sell grazillions of books to make tonnes of money directly, scoffed.Rupert Murdoch, the American media mogul, began collecting money at the tollgate to his news sites, in an interesting experiment to see if people will actually pay for news on the Net.
IBM, Microsoft, Oracle Corp and Google all responded to a plaintive "Help" from the Newspaper Association of America on how to get money from customers who don't want to pay for news; Randy Bennett, who is the senior president for vice in newspapers, said he's looking over 11 different proposals on how to squeeze money out of you;Google, to no one's surprise, offered to put all newspapers behind one vast,semi-expensive firewall, because that would be so convenient for everyone to just pay one company one time, and then Google would spread the money around; sure, that ought to work.
South African technology firm Unlimited IT dispatched Winston, a pigeon,from its office in Pietermaritzburg, with some data for its main hub in Durban strapped to the bird's leg; it took Winston one hour and eight minutes to fly the data card; meanwhile, Unlimited IT tried to send the same data via the speedchallenged Internet connections provided by leading Internet Telkom , and that download was four percent finished by the time Winston arrived; so it's not only countries that start with "T" that have Internet problems.
T-Mobile of Germany and Orange of France merged their yuppiephone operations in Britain, creating a new $13.5 billion company with 28.4 mobile phone customers; the Deutsche Telekom-France Telecom venture will be the biggest provider in the UK, with a 37 percent market share, larger than O2 of Telefonica.
Apple cut the prices of its old iPod models just hours ahead of announcing new iPod models; the price of the 32-gigabyte iPod Touch was cut $120 to $279, or 9,500 baht in real money; a 120-gig iPod Classic now costs $229, a $20 cut by the generous folks who run Apple. Palm introduced a smaller,cheaper smartphone than the successful Pre; the Pixi, as it's called, is aimed at younger users; it's slimmer, has a smaller screen, but features a Qwerty keyboard,8GB of memory and a two-megapixel camera.
US President Barack Obama, in a controversial school-time speech to most US children, advised them to be careful about what they put on Facebook and other social networks;"Whatever you do, it will be pulled up again later somewhere in your life," he warned.
First Solar of America signed a contract with the Chinese government to build the world's largest solar power plant in Inner Mongolia; assuming it is built, the Ordos City plant will push out 2,000 megawatts of electricity,around four times the size of the projects being built by the US Army in the Mojave Desert and by First Solar in California;the China project isn't near anything much; Ordos City is a coal-producing,eight-year-old, planned low-carbon development with about 1.5 million residents, roughly 800km west of Beijing.
Networking firm Huawei of China,which has suffered a scandal or two in its Thailand work, was stung to the quick by mean stories in the Australian media that it might be tied to the Chinese espionage services; Guo Fulin, managing director of Huawei in Australia, was hurt by the insensitive stories that his company was under investigation by the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation; Huawei is a public-owned company, he said, and it is unthinkable that any government agency would be using Huawei to conduct spying.
The government of Cuba took a huge security gamble, and authorised post offices to provide Internet access to the public - just in case the Cuban government ever authorises the public to use the Internet at some point in the future; the only public access currently allowed is to an inside-Cuba intranet for email, provided by post offices at a cost of the equivalent of 55 baht an hour, in a country where the average wage is 680 baht a month.
Japan fired an unmanned cargo craft into orbit; the 16.5-tonne unmanned H-II Transfer Vehicle (HTV) is on a mission to re-supply the space station;it will stay up there to continue ferrying stuff to the US shuttle fleet next year.
Prime Minister Gordon Brown publicly apologised for the way that people treated World War Two code-breaker and extraordinary computer geek Alan Turing for being gay; Turing was prosecuted for homosexual conduct in 1952,and a mere two years later, he committed suicide;"I am pleased to have the chance how deeply sorry I and we all are," said Mr Brown.
Google , which plans to give away grazillions of books in order to get the (commercial) goods on its customers,offered to let all its opponents have a piece of the action;Amazon.com , which wants to sell grazillions of books to make tonnes of money directly, scoffed.Rupert Murdoch, the American media mogul, began collecting money at the tollgate to his news sites, in an interesting experiment to see if people will actually pay for news on the Net.
IBM, Microsoft, Oracle Corp and Google all responded to a plaintive "Help" from the Newspaper Association of America on how to get money from customers who don't want to pay for news; Randy Bennett, who is the senior president for vice in newspapers, said he's looking over 11 different proposals on how to squeeze money out of you;Google, to no one's surprise, offered to put all newspapers behind one vast,semi-expensive firewall, because that would be so convenient for everyone to just pay one company one time, and then Google would spread the money around; sure, that ought to work.
South African technology firm Unlimited IT dispatched Winston, a pigeon,from its office in Pietermaritzburg, with some data for its main hub in Durban strapped to the bird's leg; it took Winston one hour and eight minutes to fly the data card; meanwhile, Unlimited IT tried to send the same data via the speedchallenged Internet connections provided by leading Internet Telkom , and that download was four percent finished by the time Winston arrived; so it's not only countries that start with "T" that have Internet problems.
T-Mobile of Germany and Orange of France merged their yuppiephone operations in Britain, creating a new $13.5 billion company with 28.4 mobile phone customers; the Deutsche Telekom-France Telecom venture will be the biggest provider in the UK, with a 37 percent market share, larger than O2 of Telefonica.
HI-TECH HEALTH PLAN WITHOUT A FRAMEWORK?
To make Thailand into a country where people can expect equality in receiving high-quality health and medical services no matter where they seek them, the country needs a distinguished national e-health policy as a frame-woke for its investment in healthcare technology.
So says Boonchai Kijsanayoti, health-informatics officer at the Public Heath Ministry.
Moreover, he says the country's health and medical systems need a national e-health governance body as well as additional investment in healthcare-related information and communications technology(ICT).
At present, Thailand's annual information-technology(IT) expenses for the healthcare industry amount to 3-6 per cent of gross domestic product(GDP), whereas the United States spends 15 per cent of its GDP per year on healthcare-related IT investments.
The World Health Organisation(WHO) says e-health means the use of information and communications technology(ICT) to improve the quality of healthcare, the overall health of the population and the efficiency of the healthcare system.
Boonchai said the establishment of an e-health system required a development model, and there were three main elements involved: foundation policy and strategy - such as governance, fixing of policy, funding and infrastructure; enabling policy and strategy - such as citizen protection, equality and interoperability; and e-Health applications - such as public health services, knowledge services and providers of service.
Meanwhile, the Public Health Ministry has rolled out the second phase of the National Health Information System, covering the three years between 2010 and 2012. The plan aims to improve healthcare services by providing a health information system at 11,160 healthcare points of service throughout the country.
Under the plan, there are four stages of implementation. First is the establishment of the infrastructure and net works for the new system, connecting healthcare service facilities with the Internet and establishing health data centres at provincial health offices. It will also connect central health-information offices with provincial health data centres and develop health-information security systems.
Second, the ministry will develop both the infrastructure for a Health Information Exchange and national standards for minimal health-data sets, health-information messaging standards, health-information privacy and security standards and health-terminology standards.
The third stage will involved the implementation of telemedicine services using an Internet connection(Web technology) to provide teleconsultations between primary care providers and secondary care providers in provincial of district hospital. It will enable 252 provincial or district hospitals around the country to serve 1,500 sub-district health-promotion hospitals.
The fourth stage will be the implementation of a health television system with the aim of providing health-education broadcasting and health-threat alerts from the minstry's central office facilities across country.
The government has allocated Bt2.97 billion to roll out the plan over the next three years.
Additionally, the ministry is working on the second phase of the National Health Standard Data Set, concerning standards for clinical data. It has been working with the National Electronics and Computer Technology Centre and the National Health Security Office, Boonchai said.
He said the ministry was also continuing work on the first phase of National Health Standard Data Set, which was due to end this year. The work involes harmonising reimbursement data sets of three health-insurance schemes: social security insurance, national health security insurance and civil service medical benefits, as well as decreasing the reporting workloads of health-service providers.
"We will continue to work on the development of national standare codes, including medical disease classifications, drug codes, the Thailand drug code, the health facilities code and the laboratory code," Boonchai said.
So says Boonchai Kijsanayoti, health-informatics officer at the Public Heath Ministry.
Moreover, he says the country's health and medical systems need a national e-health governance body as well as additional investment in healthcare-related information and communications technology(ICT).
At present, Thailand's annual information-technology(IT) expenses for the healthcare industry amount to 3-6 per cent of gross domestic product(GDP), whereas the United States spends 15 per cent of its GDP per year on healthcare-related IT investments.
The World Health Organisation(WHO) says e-health means the use of information and communications technology(ICT) to improve the quality of healthcare, the overall health of the population and the efficiency of the healthcare system.
Boonchai said the establishment of an e-health system required a development model, and there were three main elements involved: foundation policy and strategy - such as governance, fixing of policy, funding and infrastructure; enabling policy and strategy - such as citizen protection, equality and interoperability; and e-Health applications - such as public health services, knowledge services and providers of service.
Meanwhile, the Public Health Ministry has rolled out the second phase of the National Health Information System, covering the three years between 2010 and 2012. The plan aims to improve healthcare services by providing a health information system at 11,160 healthcare points of service throughout the country.
Under the plan, there are four stages of implementation. First is the establishment of the infrastructure and net works for the new system, connecting healthcare service facilities with the Internet and establishing health data centres at provincial health offices. It will also connect central health-information offices with provincial health data centres and develop health-information security systems.
Second, the ministry will develop both the infrastructure for a Health Information Exchange and national standards for minimal health-data sets, health-information messaging standards, health-information privacy and security standards and health-terminology standards.
The third stage will involved the implementation of telemedicine services using an Internet connection(Web technology) to provide teleconsultations between primary care providers and secondary care providers in provincial of district hospital. It will enable 252 provincial or district hospitals around the country to serve 1,500 sub-district health-promotion hospitals.
The fourth stage will be the implementation of a health television system with the aim of providing health-education broadcasting and health-threat alerts from the minstry's central office facilities across country.
The government has allocated Bt2.97 billion to roll out the plan over the next three years.
Additionally, the ministry is working on the second phase of the National Health Standard Data Set, concerning standards for clinical data. It has been working with the National Electronics and Computer Technology Centre and the National Health Security Office, Boonchai said.
He said the ministry was also continuing work on the first phase of National Health Standard Data Set, which was due to end this year. The work involes harmonising reimbursement data sets of three health-insurance schemes: social security insurance, national health security insurance and civil service medical benefits, as well as decreasing the reporting workloads of health-service providers.
"We will continue to work on the development of national standare codes, including medical disease classifications, drug codes, the Thailand drug code, the health facilities code and the laboratory code," Boonchai said.
"Strange lights" seen after Nasa launch
Nasa says it successfully launched a rocket in Virginia as part of an experiment, and the blast may have caused dozens of people to report seeing strange lights in the sky.
The US space agency said it launched the Black Brant XII on Saturday evening to gather data on the highest clouds in the Earth's atmosphere. Around the time of the launch, people in the northeast US reported seeing strange lights.
Along the east coast, reports of the bright, cone-shaped light poured into weather stations and news organisations.
The calls came from as far away as Boston, which is about 610km northeast of the launch site.
The rocket is designed to create an artificial cloud. Nasa hopes the experiment will provide information on the formation and properties of noctilucent clouds, which form at high altitudes.
The US space agency said it launched the Black Brant XII on Saturday evening to gather data on the highest clouds in the Earth's atmosphere. Around the time of the launch, people in the northeast US reported seeing strange lights.
Along the east coast, reports of the bright, cone-shaped light poured into weather stations and news organisations.
The calls came from as far away as Boston, which is about 610km northeast of the launch site.
The rocket is designed to create an artificial cloud. Nasa hopes the experiment will provide information on the formation and properties of noctilucent clouds, which form at high altitudes.
Monday, September 21, 2009
A DAINTY DINO IS DUSTED OFF
A relatively tiny new ancestor of the Tyrannosaurus rex has been unearthed in China, researchers said Thursday.
The three-metre-long dinosaur dubbed the Raptorex only weighed about 60 kilograms and was nearly 100 times smaller than the king of the dinosaurs.
But it was nearly identtical in structure-even down to the scrawny arms-and had all of the traits which made T Rex such a successful preda-tor, says lead author Paul Sereno, a paleontologist with the University of Chicago.
"It was jaws on legs," he says.
This unexpected new link in the evolution of the mighty predator which once dominated the northern half of the globe has provided researchers with an entirely new pic-ture of how T Rex evolved.
"Raptorex, the new species, really throws a wrench into the observed pattern," says co-author Stephen Brusatte of the American Museum of Natural History.
"Hers we have an animal that's 1/100th of the size of T Rex-about my size-but with all of the signature features-big head, strong muscles, tiny little arms-that werd thought to be necessary adaptations for a large-body predator"
The Raptorex fossil shows that the skinny arms evolved not in order to help it offset a heavier overall bodyweight, but instead as a trade-off for agility and speed.
The powerful muscles of the back legs would have helped the T Rex chase down its prey while the smaller front legs allowed it to remain upright and attack with its deadly jaws.
The Raptorex fossil-which was estimated to be a juvenile of five to six years old when it died-is about 125 million years old.
The tyrannosaurus genus did not reach its full size until about 85 million years ago and was wiped out about 65 million years ago in the great extinction, which ended the Cretaceous Period.
"What that means is that for most of their evolutionary history, about 80 per cent of the time that they were on earth, tyrannosauruses were small animals that lived in the shadow of other types of very large dinosaur predators," says Brusatte.
It's likely that T Rex was able to grow to its colossal size because other competing predators became extinct.
"We connot say that this incredibly successful, scalable blueprint for a predator was responsible for their total domination... because we never saw them cohabiting in environ-ments with these other, earlier types of predators," says Brusatte.
But once tyrannosauruses were able to expand in body size, "there was no turning back until the aster-oid hit because they really had it down pat".
The incredibly well-preserved and nearly complete fossil was almost lost to science after it was unearthed illegally and spirited out of China for sale on the private market.
An american eye surgeon and dinosaur enthusiast purchased the still-embedded fossil and recognised its potential value to science.
Henry Kriegstein contacted Sereno, who agreed to analyse the fossil so long as Kriegstein was willing to return it to China once the work is complete.
"We repidly achieved that agreement and Raptorex sees the light of day," Sereno explains
"I hope this is a pathway that can be used again so that other importhant specimens that do find their way out of the ground in the dark of night do not get lost to science."
The full name of the new species is Raptorex kriegsteini, in honour of Kriegstein and the dinosaur's link to raptors and the T Rex.
The study was published in the journal Science.
The three-metre-long dinosaur dubbed the Raptorex only weighed about 60 kilograms and was nearly 100 times smaller than the king of the dinosaurs.
But it was nearly identtical in structure-even down to the scrawny arms-and had all of the traits which made T Rex such a successful preda-tor, says lead author Paul Sereno, a paleontologist with the University of Chicago.
"It was jaws on legs," he says.
This unexpected new link in the evolution of the mighty predator which once dominated the northern half of the globe has provided researchers with an entirely new pic-ture of how T Rex evolved.
"Raptorex, the new species, really throws a wrench into the observed pattern," says co-author Stephen Brusatte of the American Museum of Natural History.
"Hers we have an animal that's 1/100th of the size of T Rex-about my size-but with all of the signature features-big head, strong muscles, tiny little arms-that werd thought to be necessary adaptations for a large-body predator"
The Raptorex fossil shows that the skinny arms evolved not in order to help it offset a heavier overall bodyweight, but instead as a trade-off for agility and speed.
The powerful muscles of the back legs would have helped the T Rex chase down its prey while the smaller front legs allowed it to remain upright and attack with its deadly jaws.
The Raptorex fossil-which was estimated to be a juvenile of five to six years old when it died-is about 125 million years old.
The tyrannosaurus genus did not reach its full size until about 85 million years ago and was wiped out about 65 million years ago in the great extinction, which ended the Cretaceous Period.
"What that means is that for most of their evolutionary history, about 80 per cent of the time that they were on earth, tyrannosauruses were small animals that lived in the shadow of other types of very large dinosaur predators," says Brusatte.
It's likely that T Rex was able to grow to its colossal size because other competing predators became extinct.
"We connot say that this incredibly successful, scalable blueprint for a predator was responsible for their total domination... because we never saw them cohabiting in environ-ments with these other, earlier types of predators," says Brusatte.
But once tyrannosauruses were able to expand in body size, "there was no turning back until the aster-oid hit because they really had it down pat".
The incredibly well-preserved and nearly complete fossil was almost lost to science after it was unearthed illegally and spirited out of China for sale on the private market.
An american eye surgeon and dinosaur enthusiast purchased the still-embedded fossil and recognised its potential value to science.
Henry Kriegstein contacted Sereno, who agreed to analyse the fossil so long as Kriegstein was willing to return it to China once the work is complete.
"We repidly achieved that agreement and Raptorex sees the light of day," Sereno explains
"I hope this is a pathway that can be used again so that other importhant specimens that do find their way out of the ground in the dark of night do not get lost to science."
The full name of the new species is Raptorex kriegsteini, in honour of Kriegstein and the dinosaur's link to raptors and the T Rex.
The study was published in the journal Science.
A mammoth find in Serbia
Wading through the swamps that hundreds of thousands of years later would become eastern Serbia, "Vika" became stuck, never managing to pull herself ree, and eventually died.
Now Vika, a mammoth whose skeleton was found perfectly preserved in a crouched postion, has been hailed as a "sensational" find despitr disputes over her age, species and even sex.
In the millennia since the animal's death, 27 metres of earth were deposited on her until in May when a digger in the Kosolac mine pit, 60 kilometres east of Belgrade, exposed her skeleton.
Fortunately, no damage was done during the surprise discovery and now vika's remains, preserved at the site by a climatised tent, have been made accessible to scientific visitors.
"Our geologists dated Vika's age at 4.8 million years, based on the age of the surrounding stratum," says the director of the Belgrade Natural Museum, Zoran Markovic.
If Serbian experts are correct, Markovic says, Vika's remains are the oldest ever found in Europe.
Serbian scientists say that Vika was a sounthern mammoth Mammuthus Meridionalis, standing four metres tall and weighing seven tonnes, with 2.5-metre-long tusks.
For now, Serbian scientists have decided to leave Vika exactly where she (or he) was and in the crouched position in which she was found. This was due to one last posthumous event. Shortly after she died in the mud of Kostolac, Serbian experts say, her stomach literally exploded, breaking her spine and scattering a few ribs.
Leaving the ancient skeleton as it was found allows scientists to continue arguing over her age, species and gender, while also allowing tourists to created their own picture of Vika's final days long ago.
Vika, a mammoth whose skeleton was found perfectly preserved in a crouched position, has been hailed as a "sensational" find despite disputes over her age, species and even ses.
Now Vika, a mammoth whose skeleton was found perfectly preserved in a crouched postion, has been hailed as a "sensational" find despitr disputes over her age, species and even sex.
In the millennia since the animal's death, 27 metres of earth were deposited on her until in May when a digger in the Kosolac mine pit, 60 kilometres east of Belgrade, exposed her skeleton.
Fortunately, no damage was done during the surprise discovery and now vika's remains, preserved at the site by a climatised tent, have been made accessible to scientific visitors.
"Our geologists dated Vika's age at 4.8 million years, based on the age of the surrounding stratum," says the director of the Belgrade Natural Museum, Zoran Markovic.
If Serbian experts are correct, Markovic says, Vika's remains are the oldest ever found in Europe.
Serbian scientists say that Vika was a sounthern mammoth Mammuthus Meridionalis, standing four metres tall and weighing seven tonnes, with 2.5-metre-long tusks.
For now, Serbian scientists have decided to leave Vika exactly where she (or he) was and in the crouched position in which she was found. This was due to one last posthumous event. Shortly after she died in the mud of Kostolac, Serbian experts say, her stomach literally exploded, breaking her spine and scattering a few ribs.
Leaving the ancient skeleton as it was found allows scientists to continue arguing over her age, species and gender, while also allowing tourists to created their own picture of Vika's final days long ago.
Vika, a mammoth whose skeleton was found perfectly preserved in a crouched position, has been hailed as a "sensational" find despite disputes over her age, species and even ses.
ROBOT CAN SWITCH BED TO WHEELCHAIR
Japan's Panasonic Corp has developed a "Robotic Bed" that can transform into a wheelchair to make life easier for elderly and disabled people, it announced yesterday.
The invention in designed to help people with limited mobility maintain an independent lifestyle, the firm said in a statement.
"Now, the user can join the family meal by converting the bed into a wheelchair and moving to the dining table without the need of assistance from other people," it said.
Panasoinc will exhibit the Robotic Bed at a home care and rehabilitation exhibition in Tokyo from September 29 to October 1, it said.
"It is still a concept model and we will not be selling it soon," said Panasonic spokeswoman Yuka Arii. "We plan to bring it to markets in or after 2015. But we don't know the price yet."
Japan has one of the owrld's oldest populations and faces a constant shortage of care workers.
The invention in designed to help people with limited mobility maintain an independent lifestyle, the firm said in a statement.
"Now, the user can join the family meal by converting the bed into a wheelchair and moving to the dining table without the need of assistance from other people," it said.
Panasoinc will exhibit the Robotic Bed at a home care and rehabilitation exhibition in Tokyo from September 29 to October 1, it said.
"It is still a concept model and we will not be selling it soon," said Panasonic spokeswoman Yuka Arii. "We plan to bring it to markets in or after 2015. But we don't know the price yet."
Japan has one of the owrld's oldest populations and faces a constant shortage of care workers.
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
Thunderstorm on Saturn is a record-buster
A tempest that erupted on Saturn in January has become the Solar System's longest continuously observed lightning storm, astronomers reported yesterday.
The storm broke out in "Storm Alley",a region 35 degrees south of the ringed giant's equator, researchers told the European Planetary Science Congress in Potsdam, near Berlin.
Thunderstorms there can be as big as 3,000km across.
The powerful event was spotted by the US space probe Cassini, using an instrument that can detect radiowaves emitted by lightning discharge.
"The reason why we see lightning in this peculiar location is not completely clear," said Georg Fischer of the Austrian Academy of Sciences in a press release.
"It could be that this latitude is one of the few places in Saturn's atmosphere that allow large-scale vertical convection of water clouds, which is necessary for thunderstorms to develop."
The storm broke out in "Storm Alley",a region 35 degrees south of the ringed giant's equator, researchers told the European Planetary Science Congress in Potsdam, near Berlin.
Thunderstorms there can be as big as 3,000km across.
The powerful event was spotted by the US space probe Cassini, using an instrument that can detect radiowaves emitted by lightning discharge.
"The reason why we see lightning in this peculiar location is not completely clear," said Georg Fischer of the Austrian Academy of Sciences in a press release.
"It could be that this latitude is one of the few places in Saturn's atmosphere that allow large-scale vertical convection of water clouds, which is necessary for thunderstorms to develop."
Monday, September 14, 2009
High-yield crop genius Borlaug dies
Norman Borlaug,the US agricultural scientist who received the 1970 Nobel Peace Prize for developing high-yielding crops to prevent famine in the developing world,has died aged 95.Norman Borlaug Borlaug, hailed as a central figure in the "green revolution" that made more food available for the world's hungry, died on Saturday night from cancer complications in Dallas. The "green revolution"- the development of crops such as wheat that delivered better yields than traditional strains - is credited with helping avert massive famines that had been predicted in the developing world in the last half of the 20th century.
Borlaug served as a distinguished professor of international agriculture at Texas A&M University, located in College Station, Texas. Experts have said his crusade to develop high-yielding, diseaseresistant crops saved the lives of millions of people worldwide who otherwise may have been doomed to starvation.
His efforts to develop new crop varieties helped alleviate food shortages in places such as India and Pakistan, helping make developing countries self-sufficient in food production.
He was awarded the 1970 Nobel Peace Prize. In 2007, Borlaug also received the Congressional Gold Medal, the highest civilian honour of the United States.
"We all eat at least three times a day in privileged nations, and yet we take food for granted," Borlaug said in a recent interview."There has been great progress,and food is more equitably distributed.But hunger is commonplace, and famine appears all too often."
In 1944, he was appointed as geneticist and plant pathologist assigned the job of organising and directing the Cooperative Wheat Research and Production Programme in Mexico. Within two decades, he succeeded in finding a highyielding disease-resistant wheat. He then worked to put newly developed cereal strains into production.
Borlaug served as a distinguished professor of international agriculture at Texas A&M University, located in College Station, Texas. Experts have said his crusade to develop high-yielding, diseaseresistant crops saved the lives of millions of people worldwide who otherwise may have been doomed to starvation.
His efforts to develop new crop varieties helped alleviate food shortages in places such as India and Pakistan, helping make developing countries self-sufficient in food production.
He was awarded the 1970 Nobel Peace Prize. In 2007, Borlaug also received the Congressional Gold Medal, the highest civilian honour of the United States.
"We all eat at least three times a day in privileged nations, and yet we take food for granted," Borlaug said in a recent interview."There has been great progress,and food is more equitably distributed.But hunger is commonplace, and famine appears all too often."
In 1944, he was appointed as geneticist and plant pathologist assigned the job of organising and directing the Cooperative Wheat Research and Production Programme in Mexico. Within two decades, he succeeded in finding a highyielding disease-resistant wheat. He then worked to put newly developed cereal strains into production.
Friday, September 11, 2009
Repaired Hubble dazzles
The freshly repaired and outfitted Hubble Space Telescope has spotted a new butterfly-shaped galaxy and wisps of stardust containing the elements of life being recycled into new galaxies, Nasa said on Wednesday.
The space agency released the first batch of images from the orbiting Hubble,repaired by shuttle astronauts in May,and said they show the once-doomed telescope has been reinvented yet again.
"The telescope was given an extreme makeover and now is significantly more powerful than ever, well-equipped to last into the next decade," Ed Weiler,associate administrator for Nasa's Science Mission Directorate, said at a news conference.
The newly installed Cosmic Origins Spectrograph got detail data on a galaxy called Markarian 817 being pulled into a supermassive black hole, and an exploded star in the Large Magellanic Cloud that are both spewing matter into space.
"We believe that most of the matter in space is actually wispy filaments between the galaxies," James Green of the University of Colorado told the news conference. Hubble is making these wisps visible for the first time.
The spectral imager detected oxygen,nitrogen and carbon."The elements of life are being produced in stars ... but they are also being distributed through the cosmos," Mr Green said.
Another star has jets, material being blasted out "from what probably is going to be a planetary system by the time this thing settles down", said Bob O'Connell of the University of Virginia.
In May, astronauts fixed two shortedout instruments and installed a new camera and the spectrograph.
The space agency released the first batch of images from the orbiting Hubble,repaired by shuttle astronauts in May,and said they show the once-doomed telescope has been reinvented yet again.
"The telescope was given an extreme makeover and now is significantly more powerful than ever, well-equipped to last into the next decade," Ed Weiler,associate administrator for Nasa's Science Mission Directorate, said at a news conference.
The newly installed Cosmic Origins Spectrograph got detail data on a galaxy called Markarian 817 being pulled into a supermassive black hole, and an exploded star in the Large Magellanic Cloud that are both spewing matter into space.
"We believe that most of the matter in space is actually wispy filaments between the galaxies," James Green of the University of Colorado told the news conference. Hubble is making these wisps visible for the first time.
The spectral imager detected oxygen,nitrogen and carbon."The elements of life are being produced in stars ... but they are also being distributed through the cosmos," Mr Green said.
Another star has jets, material being blasted out "from what probably is going to be a planetary system by the time this thing settles down", said Bob O'Connell of the University of Virginia.
In May, astronauts fixed two shortedout instruments and installed a new camera and the spectrograph.
Wednesday, September 9, 2009
Humans can learn to look with their ears, says study
With just a click of the tongue,anyone can learn to "see" with their ears, according to a new study of human echolocation.
Several animals, such as bats,dolphins, whales and some shrews, are known to use echolocation - sound waves bounced off nearby objects - to sense what's around them. Inspired by a blind man who also navigates using sound, a team of Spanish scientists has found evidence that suggests most humans can learn to echolocate. The team also confirmed that the so-called palate click - a sharp click made by depressing the tip of the tongue against the roof of the mouth - is the most effective noise for people to use.
Daniel Kish, executive director of World Access for the Blind in Huntington Beach, California, was born blind. He taught himself to "see" using palate clicks when he was a small child. Kish is able to mountain bike, hike in the wilderness and play ball games without traditional aids.
To better understand Kish's skill, Juan Antonio Martinez and his colleagues at the University of Alcala in Madrid trained 10 sighted students to echolocate.
"It was very difficult to persuade some people to take part in the experiments, because most [of our] colleagues though that our idea was absurd,"Martinez said.
The students were asked to close their eyes and make sounds until they could tell whether any objects were nearby. After just a few days of training,the students had all acquired basic echolocation skills, the scientists report in the March/April 2009 issue of the journal Acta Acustica .The team then recorded the students making three different noises: a "ch"noise made with the tongue, a "ch"made with the lips and the palate click.After studying the shape of the sound wave that each noise produced,Martinez and his colleagues found that the palate click gives the most detailed feedback about a person's surroundings.
For animals that echolocate, the skill is often key to survival, and they have specially adapted organs for the task,Martinez noted. Dolphins, for example,have special structures in their noses that can produce 200 clicks a second.Humans can manage just three or four clicks a second.
"It seems reasonably tough, perhaps tougher for those who can see, because we are very visual animals and don't tend to use that ability at all, so there is a 'visual bias' to overcome," said Peter Scheifele, a bioacoustician at the University of Connecticut who wasn't involved in the study.
The average person can develop good echolocation skills in about a month if he or she trains for one to two hours a day. Blind people are likely to pick up the skill more quickly, Martinez said.
In addition to aiding the blind,echolocation could help rescue teams locate people in foggy conditions or help firefighters quickly find exit points in smoky buildings.
The researchers add that artificial echolocation devices, such as wristbands that beep, can't yet outperform the simple tongue click.
"Such devices are worse than natural echolocation at present," Martinez said,"because they don't reproduce the complete haptic [touch] perception of the echoes".
Several animals, such as bats,dolphins, whales and some shrews, are known to use echolocation - sound waves bounced off nearby objects - to sense what's around them. Inspired by a blind man who also navigates using sound, a team of Spanish scientists has found evidence that suggests most humans can learn to echolocate. The team also confirmed that the so-called palate click - a sharp click made by depressing the tip of the tongue against the roof of the mouth - is the most effective noise for people to use.
Daniel Kish, executive director of World Access for the Blind in Huntington Beach, California, was born blind. He taught himself to "see" using palate clicks when he was a small child. Kish is able to mountain bike, hike in the wilderness and play ball games without traditional aids.
To better understand Kish's skill, Juan Antonio Martinez and his colleagues at the University of Alcala in Madrid trained 10 sighted students to echolocate.
"It was very difficult to persuade some people to take part in the experiments, because most [of our] colleagues though that our idea was absurd,"Martinez said.
The students were asked to close their eyes and make sounds until they could tell whether any objects were nearby. After just a few days of training,the students had all acquired basic echolocation skills, the scientists report in the March/April 2009 issue of the journal Acta Acustica .The team then recorded the students making three different noises: a "ch"noise made with the tongue, a "ch"made with the lips and the palate click.After studying the shape of the sound wave that each noise produced,Martinez and his colleagues found that the palate click gives the most detailed feedback about a person's surroundings.
For animals that echolocate, the skill is often key to survival, and they have specially adapted organs for the task,Martinez noted. Dolphins, for example,have special structures in their noses that can produce 200 clicks a second.Humans can manage just three or four clicks a second.
"It seems reasonably tough, perhaps tougher for those who can see, because we are very visual animals and don't tend to use that ability at all, so there is a 'visual bias' to overcome," said Peter Scheifele, a bioacoustician at the University of Connecticut who wasn't involved in the study.
The average person can develop good echolocation skills in about a month if he or she trains for one to two hours a day. Blind people are likely to pick up the skill more quickly, Martinez said.
In addition to aiding the blind,echolocation could help rescue teams locate people in foggy conditions or help firefighters quickly find exit points in smoky buildings.
The researchers add that artificial echolocation devices, such as wristbands that beep, can't yet outperform the simple tongue click.
"Such devices are worse than natural echolocation at present," Martinez said,"because they don't reproduce the complete haptic [touch] perception of the echoes".
Tuesday, September 8, 2009
Supercomputers to pursue diseases
For over 10 years, Eric Schadt has been one of a handful of scientists blending mathematics, biology and supercomputers to pursue a new understanding of human biology, one that suggests that the mechanisms of human disease are far more complex than anticipated.
The chief scientific officer for Pacific Biosystems in Menlo Park, California,Schadt,44, is known for finding unorthodox solutions to problems - and for wearing shorts, sandals and rumpled polo shirts, even in business meetings.
When he and other scientists in his field began their work, biologists had long thought that common diseases such as cancer and heart disease could be characterised by identifying a single cause - perhaps an errant gene - and treated with a drug aimed at that gene,or, more likely, the protein the gene produced.
Some of the drugs developed that way, including Herceptin for breast cancer and antiretroviral drugs to treat Aids,were great successes. But that method has faltered. For instance, of drugs that enter human clinical trials,89 percent fail, according to a 2004 study in Nature Reviews ,usually because of unanticipated side effects.
The problem is no surprise to Schadt."It turns out that common diseases involve thousands of genes and proteins interacting on complex pathways," he said.
In 2003, Schadt was first noticed as a co-author of a paper in Nature that articulated the need to move beyond the impact of individual genes on disease and to create computer models of diseases that included the interaction of genes and proteins.
He went on to create some of those models in detail and to report on pilot projects for diabetes and heart disease that analysed in actual patients the complicated series of biochemical interactions that together form a metabolic pathway implicated in a disease. The results of his work offered new possibilities for developing drug treatments and diagnostic tests for predicting risk factors for disease.
Schadt has helped energise the growing field of systems biology, developed and championed by researchers that include Lee Hood, founder and president of the Institute for Systems Biology in Seattle; George Church, a geneticist at the Harvard Medical School; and Steven Friend, a geneticist who is the director of the non-profit Sage Bionetworks in Seattle and who is also Schadt's longtime colleague and co-author on many important studies.
"He has the ability to take what everyone knows and think about it in novel ways," Hood said."He is exceptional at thinking outside the box."
Schadt is a warm, intense man whose casual wardrobe has become legendary in classrooms and boardrooms. He was raised in the small town of Stevensville,Michigan, in a working class family that he said had little interest in science or in a university education.
After high school, he enlisted in the Air Force and was assigned to an elite rescue unit."I would never have known about biology or mathematics, except for an accident," he said.
While rappelling down a cliff he badly dislocated his shoulder, which forced him to leave his unit. Because his scores in an aptitude and an intelligence test were off the charts, the Air Force sent him to the California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo. He soon discovered mathematics and later genetics before earning a doctorate in biomathematics at the University of California, Los Angeles.
"My non-conventional background makes me non-conventional," Schadt said."I don't like to be told that I have to do things certain ways."
From 1999 until last month, Schadt worked as the head of genetics and bioin-ABOVE Dr Eric Schadt, chief scientific officer for Pacific Biosystems, in his lab in Menlo Park, California.SCIENCE TIMES formatics for Rosetta Inpharmatics, a company based in Seattle.
Founded in 1996 by Hood, Friend and the biologist and Nobel Laureate Lee Hartwell, Rosetta was bought by the pharmaceutical giant Merck in 2001 for $620 million. At Merck, the Rosetta team was provided with resources beyond those usually available in academia,Schadt said.
Rosetta built one of the fastest supercomputers in the drug industry,running 16 trillion calculations a second.Researchers also developed specialised chips to sequence and analyse tissues from throughout the body.
"Merck dropped a hell of a lot of money into this," Schadt said.
Peter Kim, president of Merck Research Laboratory, said,"The investment has paid off for us."
The company now has in clinical trials eight drugs that emerged out of Rosetta's platform, Kim said, with more than a dozen others in preclinical trials. He declined to provide specifics about the costs of the candidate drugs.
Kim said that Merck was developing some cancer drugs that would be directed at various subpopulations of patients rather than the one-size-fits-all approach that has been a hallmark of modern pharmaceutical companies."We're going to target specific networks and pathways," he said.
Despite Schadt's success, Merck disbanded Rosetta this summer and is closing the Seattle research facility as part of a plan to cut $4.2 billion (143.3 billion baht) and 7,200 jobs. But Merck is donating data, research and hardware from Rosetta to Sage Bionetworks, a non-profit founded this summer by Schadt and Friend, the co-founder of Rosetta, who just stepped down as senior vice-president for cancer research at Merck.The new organisation has received a $5 million (170.6 million baht) anonymous donation as well.
Friend, who is working full-time for Sage, wants to carry on Rosetta's work of modelling highly complex systems by adopting an open-source model such as the one used in software design, where thousands of people from around the world work together in a loose network.
For biology, the idea is to link up scientists and huge databases on everything from genetic pathways to patient records."The complexity of human biology is simply too huge to work out in a single company," Friend said."We need a contributor approach, like Twitter,which sets up a platform and is run by a few people that maybe a billion people contribute to."
Church, the Harvard geneticist, said,"The idea of Sage and open-source is fantastic, but losing Merck's resources may be a net loss to the science, at least in the short term."
When Schadt left Merck last month,he took on two jobs - as the co-director of Sage with Friend, and as the chief technology officer of Pacific Biosystems,a company founded in 2004.
He was attracted to the company's novel use of nanotechnology and lasers to sequence DNA and other molecules."It's like the best microscope in the world for accurate reads of DNA," said Schadt, who will head efforts to analyse data that is expected from Pacific Biosystems next year.
"What Eric is doing has a controversial side," said Dr Eric Topol, a cardiologist and the director of the Scripps Translational Science Institute in San Diego."First, is it going to really work? Also, we may yet find that some of the single gene markers are actually powerful predictive indicators for disease."
But Schadt said,"It's all about learning to connect the dots - lots and lots of dots."
The chief scientific officer for Pacific Biosystems in Menlo Park, California,Schadt,44, is known for finding unorthodox solutions to problems - and for wearing shorts, sandals and rumpled polo shirts, even in business meetings.
When he and other scientists in his field began their work, biologists had long thought that common diseases such as cancer and heart disease could be characterised by identifying a single cause - perhaps an errant gene - and treated with a drug aimed at that gene,or, more likely, the protein the gene produced.
Some of the drugs developed that way, including Herceptin for breast cancer and antiretroviral drugs to treat Aids,were great successes. But that method has faltered. For instance, of drugs that enter human clinical trials,89 percent fail, according to a 2004 study in Nature Reviews ,usually because of unanticipated side effects.
The problem is no surprise to Schadt."It turns out that common diseases involve thousands of genes and proteins interacting on complex pathways," he said.
In 2003, Schadt was first noticed as a co-author of a paper in Nature that articulated the need to move beyond the impact of individual genes on disease and to create computer models of diseases that included the interaction of genes and proteins.
He went on to create some of those models in detail and to report on pilot projects for diabetes and heart disease that analysed in actual patients the complicated series of biochemical interactions that together form a metabolic pathway implicated in a disease. The results of his work offered new possibilities for developing drug treatments and diagnostic tests for predicting risk factors for disease.
Schadt has helped energise the growing field of systems biology, developed and championed by researchers that include Lee Hood, founder and president of the Institute for Systems Biology in Seattle; George Church, a geneticist at the Harvard Medical School; and Steven Friend, a geneticist who is the director of the non-profit Sage Bionetworks in Seattle and who is also Schadt's longtime colleague and co-author on many important studies.
"He has the ability to take what everyone knows and think about it in novel ways," Hood said."He is exceptional at thinking outside the box."
Schadt is a warm, intense man whose casual wardrobe has become legendary in classrooms and boardrooms. He was raised in the small town of Stevensville,Michigan, in a working class family that he said had little interest in science or in a university education.
After high school, he enlisted in the Air Force and was assigned to an elite rescue unit."I would never have known about biology or mathematics, except for an accident," he said.
While rappelling down a cliff he badly dislocated his shoulder, which forced him to leave his unit. Because his scores in an aptitude and an intelligence test were off the charts, the Air Force sent him to the California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo. He soon discovered mathematics and later genetics before earning a doctorate in biomathematics at the University of California, Los Angeles.
"My non-conventional background makes me non-conventional," Schadt said."I don't like to be told that I have to do things certain ways."
From 1999 until last month, Schadt worked as the head of genetics and bioin-ABOVE Dr Eric Schadt, chief scientific officer for Pacific Biosystems, in his lab in Menlo Park, California.SCIENCE TIMES formatics for Rosetta Inpharmatics, a company based in Seattle.
Founded in 1996 by Hood, Friend and the biologist and Nobel Laureate Lee Hartwell, Rosetta was bought by the pharmaceutical giant Merck in 2001 for $620 million. At Merck, the Rosetta team was provided with resources beyond those usually available in academia,Schadt said.
Rosetta built one of the fastest supercomputers in the drug industry,running 16 trillion calculations a second.Researchers also developed specialised chips to sequence and analyse tissues from throughout the body.
"Merck dropped a hell of a lot of money into this," Schadt said.
Peter Kim, president of Merck Research Laboratory, said,"The investment has paid off for us."
The company now has in clinical trials eight drugs that emerged out of Rosetta's platform, Kim said, with more than a dozen others in preclinical trials. He declined to provide specifics about the costs of the candidate drugs.
Kim said that Merck was developing some cancer drugs that would be directed at various subpopulations of patients rather than the one-size-fits-all approach that has been a hallmark of modern pharmaceutical companies."We're going to target specific networks and pathways," he said.
Despite Schadt's success, Merck disbanded Rosetta this summer and is closing the Seattle research facility as part of a plan to cut $4.2 billion (143.3 billion baht) and 7,200 jobs. But Merck is donating data, research and hardware from Rosetta to Sage Bionetworks, a non-profit founded this summer by Schadt and Friend, the co-founder of Rosetta, who just stepped down as senior vice-president for cancer research at Merck.The new organisation has received a $5 million (170.6 million baht) anonymous donation as well.
Friend, who is working full-time for Sage, wants to carry on Rosetta's work of modelling highly complex systems by adopting an open-source model such as the one used in software design, where thousands of people from around the world work together in a loose network.
For biology, the idea is to link up scientists and huge databases on everything from genetic pathways to patient records."The complexity of human biology is simply too huge to work out in a single company," Friend said."We need a contributor approach, like Twitter,which sets up a platform and is run by a few people that maybe a billion people contribute to."
Church, the Harvard geneticist, said,"The idea of Sage and open-source is fantastic, but losing Merck's resources may be a net loss to the science, at least in the short term."
When Schadt left Merck last month,he took on two jobs - as the co-director of Sage with Friend, and as the chief technology officer of Pacific Biosystems,a company founded in 2004.
He was attracted to the company's novel use of nanotechnology and lasers to sequence DNA and other molecules."It's like the best microscope in the world for accurate reads of DNA," said Schadt, who will head efforts to analyse data that is expected from Pacific Biosystems next year.
"What Eric is doing has a controversial side," said Dr Eric Topol, a cardiologist and the director of the Scripps Translational Science Institute in San Diego."First, is it going to really work? Also, we may yet find that some of the single gene markers are actually powerful predictive indicators for disease."
But Schadt said,"It's all about learning to connect the dots - lots and lots of dots."
Sunday, September 6, 2009
CROWDS SWAMP GERMANY'S BIGGEST ELECTRONICS TRADE FAIR
Dominated by flat-panel televisions in every variation, the IFA consumer electronics trade fair began on Friday in Berlin, offering hundreds of thousands of European fans a look at the world's newest audio and video gadgets.
Chancellor ANgela Merkel ceremonially opened IFA at a Thursday evening reception at the city fairgrounds, where an industry leader told her the booming sector was all but recession-proof.
"Our sector is defying the crisis," said Rainer Kecker, head of the GFU German consumer electronics trade association that runs the event.
A total of 1,164 manufacturers from 60 nations are axhibiting at the event, which runs until September 9.
Many products are being promoted with claims of green technology inside through reduced use of heavy metals and other pollutants.
Cutting power use by plasma and liquid-crystal-display (LCD) television sets is a key aim of the industry.
LCD sets with light-emitting diode (LED) backlights are centrepieces at this year's show.
Backlights shine through the screens to create an image.
Makers say thatg converting backlights to LED light sources, instead of using fluorescent tubes, reduces electricity use by up to 40 per cent.
Merkel said many products introduced at IFA quickly become big sellers but she chided German broadcasters for their long delay in introducing high-definition television, which is only now starting in Germany.
"It was first demonstrated at IFA 24 years ago, she said.
Two big Japanese-based electronics groups, Sony and Panasonic, have said this week they are on the verge of launching home televisions that play three-dimensional (3D) recordings and broadcasts.
The illusion requires viewers to wear special spectacles.
But the two company's systems are currently incompatible, raising fears of a new format war in the industry.
Crowds of consumer-electronics fans swarmeld trough the fairground on Friday.
Europe's biggest annual gadgets event features 1,164 brands from 60 nations.
Temporary cinemas demonstrated big-screen 3D movies, whihc manufacturers Sony and Panasonic hope to introduce on home television screens next year.
However some executives grumbled that too much talk of the future was distracting the public from the new products that are actually on display, including high-definition televisions and DVD players.
Unlike trade-only events such as the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, IFA encourages crowd attendance, with masses of leaflets and plenty of products to try out, mostly held by steel cables to deter thieves.
"Would you like me to demonstrate our new television?" says one smiling hostess to anyone who will listen.
"Have you heard about our new coffee maker?" warbles another.
At IFA, nobody goes home without having accepted several free cups of hot coffee from the hostesses.
Celebrity chefs from German television food shows were manning many of the home-appliance booths, demonstrating labour-saving kitchen gear and handing out titbits.
Chancellor ANgela Merkel ceremonially opened IFA at a Thursday evening reception at the city fairgrounds, where an industry leader told her the booming sector was all but recession-proof.
"Our sector is defying the crisis," said Rainer Kecker, head of the GFU German consumer electronics trade association that runs the event.
A total of 1,164 manufacturers from 60 nations are axhibiting at the event, which runs until September 9.
Many products are being promoted with claims of green technology inside through reduced use of heavy metals and other pollutants.
Cutting power use by plasma and liquid-crystal-display (LCD) television sets is a key aim of the industry.
LCD sets with light-emitting diode (LED) backlights are centrepieces at this year's show.
Backlights shine through the screens to create an image.
Makers say thatg converting backlights to LED light sources, instead of using fluorescent tubes, reduces electricity use by up to 40 per cent.
Merkel said many products introduced at IFA quickly become big sellers but she chided German broadcasters for their long delay in introducing high-definition television, which is only now starting in Germany.
"It was first demonstrated at IFA 24 years ago, she said.
Two big Japanese-based electronics groups, Sony and Panasonic, have said this week they are on the verge of launching home televisions that play three-dimensional (3D) recordings and broadcasts.
The illusion requires viewers to wear special spectacles.
But the two company's systems are currently incompatible, raising fears of a new format war in the industry.
Crowds of consumer-electronics fans swarmeld trough the fairground on Friday.
Europe's biggest annual gadgets event features 1,164 brands from 60 nations.
Temporary cinemas demonstrated big-screen 3D movies, whihc manufacturers Sony and Panasonic hope to introduce on home television screens next year.
However some executives grumbled that too much talk of the future was distracting the public from the new products that are actually on display, including high-definition televisions and DVD players.
Unlike trade-only events such as the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, IFA encourages crowd attendance, with masses of leaflets and plenty of products to try out, mostly held by steel cables to deter thieves.
"Would you like me to demonstrate our new television?" says one smiling hostess to anyone who will listen.
"Have you heard about our new coffee maker?" warbles another.
At IFA, nobody goes home without having accepted several free cups of hot coffee from the hostesses.
Celebrity chefs from German television food shows were manning many of the home-appliance booths, demonstrating labour-saving kitchen gear and handing out titbits.
Friday, September 4, 2009
Nasa tracks large debris close to ISS
Nasa yesterday tracked a large piece of space debris set to pass close to the International Space Station (ISS) as astronauts prepared for the second of three spacewalks.
Astronauts Danny Olivas and Christer Fuglesang planned to camp out in the Quest airlock in order to acclimatize their bodies for their outing in space more than 12 hours later.
Mission Control was keeping a close watch on the remains of the three-yearold Ariane 5, a European space rocket,that was moving in an oval-shaped orbit.
The piece, around 19sq m in size,was expected to pass almost 3km from the ISS today.
Nasa Flight Director Office chief John McCullough said it did not appear that the ISS would have to move to avoid the space junk.
A final decision was to be made during the last hour of yesterday's spacewalk,but Mission Control was developing a contingency plan to potentially "reboost"the station-shuttle complex that currently holds 13 astronauts. The linked spacecraft are currently orbiting 354km above the Earth.
During their spacewalk, Mr Olivas and Sweden's Mr Fuglesang were to install a new liquid ammonia tank used to keep the ISS cool.
On Wednesday, Mr Olivas and fellow astronaut Nicole Stott performed the first spacewalk of the space shuttle Discovery 's nine-day mission at the ISS,removing an old tank from the outpost's truss. The tank will return to Earth with Discovery .The duo also fetched US and European experiment equipment from the orbiting station's Columbus laboratory that will be brought back to scientists on Earth.
Discovery 's mission is the fourth of five planned for the shuttle programme this year. The last is scheduled for November.
The two crews continued unloading equipment from the Leonardo MultiPurpose Logistics Module, a huge pressurised chamber carrying 7.5 tonnes of supplies, including new station crew quarters, a freezer, two research racks and a treadmill named after popular US talkshow comedian Stephen Colbert.
The freezer will store samples of blood,urine and other materials that will eventually be brought back to Earth for study on the effects of zero-gravity.
Discovery , which blasted off from Cape Canaveral, Florida, on Friday is due to return to Earth on Sept 10.
The mission is the 128th for the space shuttle programme, and the 30th mission to the ISS.
Once the Discovery mission is complete, just six more shuttle flights remain before Nasa's three shuttles are retired in September next year.
Astronauts Danny Olivas and Christer Fuglesang planned to camp out in the Quest airlock in order to acclimatize their bodies for their outing in space more than 12 hours later.
Mission Control was keeping a close watch on the remains of the three-yearold Ariane 5, a European space rocket,that was moving in an oval-shaped orbit.
The piece, around 19sq m in size,was expected to pass almost 3km from the ISS today.
Nasa Flight Director Office chief John McCullough said it did not appear that the ISS would have to move to avoid the space junk.
A final decision was to be made during the last hour of yesterday's spacewalk,but Mission Control was developing a contingency plan to potentially "reboost"the station-shuttle complex that currently holds 13 astronauts. The linked spacecraft are currently orbiting 354km above the Earth.
During their spacewalk, Mr Olivas and Sweden's Mr Fuglesang were to install a new liquid ammonia tank used to keep the ISS cool.
On Wednesday, Mr Olivas and fellow astronaut Nicole Stott performed the first spacewalk of the space shuttle Discovery 's nine-day mission at the ISS,removing an old tank from the outpost's truss. The tank will return to Earth with Discovery .The duo also fetched US and European experiment equipment from the orbiting station's Columbus laboratory that will be brought back to scientists on Earth.
Discovery 's mission is the fourth of five planned for the shuttle programme this year. The last is scheduled for November.
The two crews continued unloading equipment from the Leonardo MultiPurpose Logistics Module, a huge pressurised chamber carrying 7.5 tonnes of supplies, including new station crew quarters, a freezer, two research racks and a treadmill named after popular US talkshow comedian Stephen Colbert.
The freezer will store samples of blood,urine and other materials that will eventually be brought back to Earth for study on the effects of zero-gravity.
Discovery , which blasted off from Cape Canaveral, Florida, on Friday is due to return to Earth on Sept 10.
The mission is the 128th for the space shuttle programme, and the 30th mission to the ISS.
Once the Discovery mission is complete, just six more shuttle flights remain before Nasa's three shuttles are retired in September next year.
Andromeda galaxy is a "cosmic cannibal"
Earth's nearest major galactic neighbour is a cosmic cannibal.And it is heading this way.
Astronomers have long suspected that Andromeda is a space predator, consuming dwarf galaxies that wander too close. Now, cosmic detectives are doing a massive search of the neighbourhood and have found proof of Andromeda's sordid past: They have spotted leftovers in Andromeda's wake.
Early results of a massive telescope scan of Andromeda and its surroundings found about a half-dozen remnants of Andromeda's galactic appetite. Stars and dwarf galaxies that got too close to Andromeda were ripped from their usual surroundings.
"What we're seeing right now are the signs of cannibalism," said the study's lead author Alan McConnachie of the Herzberg Institute of Astrophysics in Victoria, British Columbia."We're finding things that have been destroyed ... partly digested remains."
Andromeda and the Milky Way, Earth's galaxy, are the two big dogs of this galactic neighbourhood. Andromeda is about 2.5 million light years away. A light year is about 9.4 trillion kilometres.
Astronomers have known for decades that galaxies consume each other, some-times violently, sometimes just creating new mega-galaxies. But this study is different because "of the scale of the cannibalism, and we've found evidence directly in front of our eyes", said coauthor Mike Irwin, an astrophysicist at the University of Cambridge in England.
And just because Andromeda consumes a galaxy, it does not make the victim disappear, he said.
The cannibalistic behaviour often just strips stars from where they had been,rearranging the night sky. Most of a galaxy is empty space, so there is little if any crashing of stars and planets going on, Mr Irwin said
Astronomers have long suspected that Andromeda is a space predator, consuming dwarf galaxies that wander too close. Now, cosmic detectives are doing a massive search of the neighbourhood and have found proof of Andromeda's sordid past: They have spotted leftovers in Andromeda's wake.
Early results of a massive telescope scan of Andromeda and its surroundings found about a half-dozen remnants of Andromeda's galactic appetite. Stars and dwarf galaxies that got too close to Andromeda were ripped from their usual surroundings.
"What we're seeing right now are the signs of cannibalism," said the study's lead author Alan McConnachie of the Herzberg Institute of Astrophysics in Victoria, British Columbia."We're finding things that have been destroyed ... partly digested remains."
Andromeda and the Milky Way, Earth's galaxy, are the two big dogs of this galactic neighbourhood. Andromeda is about 2.5 million light years away. A light year is about 9.4 trillion kilometres.
Astronomers have known for decades that galaxies consume each other, some-times violently, sometimes just creating new mega-galaxies. But this study is different because "of the scale of the cannibalism, and we've found evidence directly in front of our eyes", said coauthor Mike Irwin, an astrophysicist at the University of Cambridge in England.
And just because Andromeda consumes a galaxy, it does not make the victim disappear, he said.
The cannibalistic behaviour often just strips stars from where they had been,rearranging the night sky. Most of a galaxy is empty space, so there is little if any crashing of stars and planets going on, Mr Irwin said
Tuesday, September 1, 2009
Researchers train minds to move matter
Learning to move a computer cursor or robotic arm with nothing but thoughts can be no different from learning how to play tennis or ride a bicycle,according to a new study of how brains and machines interact.
The research, which was conducted in monkeys but is expected to apply to humans, involves a fundamental redesign of brain-machine experiments.
In previous studies, the computer interfaces that translate thoughts into movements are given a new set of instructions each day - akin to waking up each morning with a new arm that you have to figure out how to use all over again.
In the new experiments, monkeys learned how to move a computer cursor with their thoughts using just one set of instructions and an unusually small number of brain cells that deliver instructions for performing movements the same way each day.
"This is the first demonstration that the brain can form a motor memory to control a disembodied device in a way that mirrors how it controls its own body,"said Jose M. Carmena, an assistant professor of computer and cognitive science at the University of California,Berkeley, who led the research.
The experiments were described yesterday in the journal PloS Biology .The results are very "dramatic and surprising", said Eberhard E. Fetz, an expert in brain-machine-interface technology at the University of Washington, who was not involved in the research."It goes to show the brain is smarter than we thought."
In this experiment, as in previous ones, electrodes are implanted directly into the brain to record activity from a population of 75 to 100 cells that help guide movement. As animals move a hand or arm, the activity pattern of those cells is recorded.
Later the limb is immobilised, and researchers can predict what the animal wants to do with it by looking at the cells' activity; that pattern is then sent to a socalled decoder - a computer algorithm that transforms the brain signals into commands that a machine can carry out.
But because of the variability caused by motions of the electrodes and changes in brain cells, researchers have assumed that a new population of cells would be in control of the movements each day. They recalibrated the decoder each day, and the subject had to relearn the task - move a cursor, reach with a robot arm every time.
Carmena wondered what would happen if he kept the decoder constant as it measured the activity of just a few neurons observed to fire reliably with a given task. Could an initially random group of 10 to 15 neurons,with practise, be coaxed into forming a stable motor memory? Could the brain, not the decoder, do the learning?
Carmena's team trained two monkeys to use a joystick to move a computer cursor to blue targets on a circle and extracted a decoder for the movements. The animals then practised moving the cursor with their thoughts for 19 days.
In the beginning, the cursor trajectories were hit or miss. But over time the pattern of cell firing stabilised,and the monkeys developed a stable mental model for cursor control.
This is exactly how you learn to ride a bicycle or play tennis, Carmena said. At first your movements are uncoordinated. But with time, a motor memory is engraved in your brain.
Carmena then decided to test the memory in his monkeys. He changed the decoder. Instead of moving the cursor to blue targets, for example, the colour changed to yellow.
Within a couple of days, the monkeys learned the new task using the same small group of cells, he said.Moreover, they could switch back and forth between the tasks with ease. They had two mental maps that did not interfere with one another.
This is similar to learning to play tennis on a clay court and switching to a grass court or like switching between a mountain bike and a motorbike, he said.The brain can acquire multiple skills using the same set of neurons to carry out different movements.
If brain machine interfaces can be made safe enough for use in humans - a feat that is by no means guaranteed - paralysed people may one day operate prosthetic limbs as naturally as they use their own limbs, Carmena said.
The research, which was conducted in monkeys but is expected to apply to humans, involves a fundamental redesign of brain-machine experiments.
In previous studies, the computer interfaces that translate thoughts into movements are given a new set of instructions each day - akin to waking up each morning with a new arm that you have to figure out how to use all over again.
In the new experiments, monkeys learned how to move a computer cursor with their thoughts using just one set of instructions and an unusually small number of brain cells that deliver instructions for performing movements the same way each day.
"This is the first demonstration that the brain can form a motor memory to control a disembodied device in a way that mirrors how it controls its own body,"said Jose M. Carmena, an assistant professor of computer and cognitive science at the University of California,Berkeley, who led the research.
The experiments were described yesterday in the journal PloS Biology .The results are very "dramatic and surprising", said Eberhard E. Fetz, an expert in brain-machine-interface technology at the University of Washington, who was not involved in the research."It goes to show the brain is smarter than we thought."
In this experiment, as in previous ones, electrodes are implanted directly into the brain to record activity from a population of 75 to 100 cells that help guide movement. As animals move a hand or arm, the activity pattern of those cells is recorded.
Later the limb is immobilised, and researchers can predict what the animal wants to do with it by looking at the cells' activity; that pattern is then sent to a socalled decoder - a computer algorithm that transforms the brain signals into commands that a machine can carry out.
But because of the variability caused by motions of the electrodes and changes in brain cells, researchers have assumed that a new population of cells would be in control of the movements each day. They recalibrated the decoder each day, and the subject had to relearn the task - move a cursor, reach with a robot arm every time.
Carmena wondered what would happen if he kept the decoder constant as it measured the activity of just a few neurons observed to fire reliably with a given task. Could an initially random group of 10 to 15 neurons,with practise, be coaxed into forming a stable motor memory? Could the brain, not the decoder, do the learning?
Carmena's team trained two monkeys to use a joystick to move a computer cursor to blue targets on a circle and extracted a decoder for the movements. The animals then practised moving the cursor with their thoughts for 19 days.
In the beginning, the cursor trajectories were hit or miss. But over time the pattern of cell firing stabilised,and the monkeys developed a stable mental model for cursor control.
This is exactly how you learn to ride a bicycle or play tennis, Carmena said. At first your movements are uncoordinated. But with time, a motor memory is engraved in your brain.
Carmena then decided to test the memory in his monkeys. He changed the decoder. Instead of moving the cursor to blue targets, for example, the colour changed to yellow.
Within a couple of days, the monkeys learned the new task using the same small group of cells, he said.Moreover, they could switch back and forth between the tasks with ease. They had two mental maps that did not interfere with one another.
This is similar to learning to play tennis on a clay court and switching to a grass court or like switching between a mountain bike and a motorbike, he said.The brain can acquire multiple skills using the same set of neurons to carry out different movements.
If brain machine interfaces can be made safe enough for use in humans - a feat that is by no means guaranteed - paralysed people may one day operate prosthetic limbs as naturally as they use their own limbs, Carmena said.
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