Atlas Squeaked: A Complete Map of the Brain of a Mouse - New York Times: "Scientists have gained a new window for peering into the brain, courtesy of a $41 million project financed by Paul G. Allen, the co-founder of Microsoft. "

Featured Articles : Neuroscience Gateway: "Deletion of the background potassium channel TREK-1 increases the activity of serotonergic neurons and blocks behaviors associated with depression."

Monkey Bites: "The Hack Day developer's workshops are drawing to a close. The last sessions for today include a few hands-on demonstrations of Yahoo APIs. Then, after the totally rocking party, attendees will head out to their tents and sleeping bags and work through the night on their perfect Yahoo hacks. The 90-second demos are tomorrow afternoon, and then the winners of the 'best hack' awards will be announced by emcee Mike Arrington from TechCrunch. I talked to one hacker who's actually more excited to see him than Beck."

Autopia: "One of the limitations of growing the demand for biodiesel is the lack of diesel passenger vehicles. DaimlerChrysler announced support for biodiesel and will have five 2007 diesel models while voicing support for biodiesel.

According to DaimlerChrysler, biodiesel fuel will be critical to the success of diesel-powered vehicles in the U.S. market. Diesel engines are more fuel efficient and last longer than gasoline engines, and biodiesel makes them cleaner and has the advantage of being produced domestically, which is not lost on DCX.


'If B5 (5% biodiesel blended in conventional diesel fuel) were used in all diesel fuel for on-road use in the U.S., it would reduce fuel consumption by 1.85 billion gallons, the amount of fuel made from all oil imports from Iraq.'


Hmm, what is DaimlerChrysler inferring by mentioning Iraq in a statement about fuel? That we wouldn't be there if we didn't need the oil?

The new 2007 DaimlerChrylser diesels are:

Jeep Grand Cherokee CRD SUV
Mercedes-Benz E320 luxury sedan
Mercedes-Benz utility vehicles R320 CDI, ML320 CDI, and GL320 CDI."

Honda announces cleaner, "greener" diesel power train for automobiles: "As carmakers race to find the next new technology that will meet the Tier II Bin 5 regulations that the United States plans to implement next year, representatives for Honda announced Monday that the company has developed a diesel power train that is as clean as a traditional gasoline-driven vehicle.
With gas prices continuing to climb, consumers are looking for gas-conscious alternatives to traditional gasoline-driven vehicles, but diesel engines, while about 30 percent more fuel efficient than gasoline engines, tend to spew out greater amounts of the greenhouse gas nitrogen oxide (NOx).

The new technology relies on a system that generates and stores ammonia in a two-layer catalytic converter, and turns NOx into harmless nitrogen. DaimlerChrysler AG is already working on a similar process, but Honda says its own system is superior because it is not as complicated and does not require heavy add-ons to make ammonia from urea-based additives. "

CONNECT Announces 2006 Most Innovative New Product (MIP) Awards Finalists: "SAN DIEGO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Today CONNECT announced the finalists for the 19th Annual Most Innovative New Product (MIP) Awards, once again showcasing the region as a leader in innovation and technology.
The 25 finalists were selected from more than 100 entries, the largest group in MIP’s history. Innovations highlighted among this years’ nominees range from technology in unmanned aircraft systems and water contaminant testing, to advances in the treatment of schizophrenia, diabetes and lung cancer.
“The MIP Awards demonstrate the significant advances in science and technology the companies in our region are making,” said Duane Roth, chief executive officer of CONNECT. “It’s important that we recognize these achievements that contribute to the development and commercialization of products that have such a positive impact, not just in this country, but on a global scale.”
The winners will be announced at the MIP Awards Luncheon, to be held Friday, December 15th from 11:30 a.m. to 1:00 p.m., at the Hilton La Jolla Torrey Pines. Finalists "

Life Extension Daily News: "LITTLE ROCK, AR, Sep 27, 2006 (MARKET WIRE via COMTEX) -- Renowned epigenetics expert Dr. Craig A. Cooney of The University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences announced today that he is entering the competition to win the Methuselah Mouse Prize (Mprize). The Mprize, a scientific research prize aimed at encouraging scientists to find a way to reverse the aging process, is a primary activity of the Methuselah Foundation. The Mprize fund continues to grow and currently stands at more than $3 Million. Prizes will be awarded to research groups that can most successfully extend the lifespan of laboratory mice.

'Age-related diseases cause people to die much younger than they should,' said Dr. Cooney, 'and from my research I foresee the possibility of slowing down or even curing these diseases. The Mprize is a great way to raise public awareness that the degeneration of aging is not inevitable -- I am looking forward to joining this effort.' "

Wired News: Get Rich (or at Least Paid) Quick: "The days of stuffing envelopes or selling seeds by mail and then waiting six to eight weeks for your check are gone.
A new search startup has an idea that it hopes will attract the new breed of stay-at-home freelancer -- one who makes a living doing the web's odd jobs.

ChaCha Search, a site offering human-assisted guided search, is introducing an instant-payment system that would offer its contracted guides the option of being compensated for their time immediately through debit cards."

Synthetic DNA Makes Better Hydrogels for Drug Delivery: "Hydrogels are liquid or semisolid materials composed of long-chain molecules cross-linked to one another to create many small empty spaces that can absorb water or other liquids like a sponge. If the spaces are filled with a drug, the hydrogel can dispense the drug gradually as the structure biodegrades. Widespread research also is under way on using hydrogels as scaffolds for tissue engineering and tissue repair, where the spaces in the gel might be filled with stem cells, tissue-growth factors or a combination of both.

Hydrogels for these purposes are usually made from organic or inorganic polymers (molecules that form long chains), such as alginate from seaweed. Some have been made from proteins but none entirely from ordinary DNA. So far, all these processes have used organic solvents or acids or involve high temperatures, making conditions too harsh for a drug or living cells, so the materials to be encapsulated must be loaded in afterward. "

Analyst says of new data: 'Pop goes housing bubble': "WASHINGTON - Annual existing home prices declined in August for the first time in more than a decade as sales fell for a fifth straight month.
The year-over-year drop in median sales prices represented a dramatic turnaround in fortunes for the once high-flying housing market, which last year was posting double-digit price gains.

'Pop goes the housing bubble,' said Joel Naroff, chief economist at Naroff Economic Advisors. He predicted prices will fall further as home sellers struggle with a record glut of unsold homes."

Business 2.0: 12 startups to launch now - Aug. 1, 2006: "International borders used to be the biggest barrier to entry for Americans interested in starting a business overseas. But today, as more nations ease trade regulations and restrictions on foreign investment, borders are more like invitations.

Take real estate, for instance: According to research firm Jones Lang LaSalle, Americans spent more than $12 billion on foreign commercial real estate ventures last year, almost double the amount they invested in 2004. Meanwhile, American investment in overseas businesses has nearly doubled, too, since 2002. "

Copper Circuits Help Brain Function Could Tweaking the Circuits Make Us Smarter: "The flow of copper in the brain has a previously unrecognized role in cell death, learning and memory, according to research at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. The researchers' findings suggest that copper and its transporter, a protein called Atp7a, are vital to human thinking. They speculate that variations in the genes coding for Atp7a, as well as other proteins of copper homeostasis, could partially account for differences in thinking among individuals. "

Wired News: Move Into Space, but Where?: "SAN JOSE, California -- It's not hard to sell attendees of the Space 2006 conference on permanent human settlements in space.

Where those settlements should be, however, is another question. Various scientists make their case for Mars, the moon or habitats orbiting the Earth. While the question is not a pressing one for most people, for the futurists mapping the humans path to space, the destination makes all the difference in the world."

Click Fraud Is Growing on the Web - New York Times: "A year ago, DiamondHarmony.com, an online jewelry store, decided that it had outgrown its sole source of advertising, which was eBay. The company added an elaborate marketing effort on search engines that included a pay-per-click advertising campaign based on keywords and phrases. For its trouble, DiamondHarmony became ensnared in click fraud."

Spy Agencies Say Iraq War Worsens Terror Threat - New York Times: "WASHINGTON, Sept. 23 — A stark assessment of terrorism trends by American intelligence agencies has found that the American invasion and occupation of Iraq has helped spawn a new generation of Islamic radicalism and that the overall terrorist threat has grown since the Sept. 11 attacks.

The Transition in Iraq The classified National Intelligence Estimate attributes a more direct role to the Iraq war in fueling radicalism than that presented either in recent White House documents or in a report released Wednesday by the House Intelligence Committee, according to several officials in Washington involved in preparing the assessment or who have read the final "

Bigger is not necessarily better in hydrogen storage: "In research published in the journal Angewandte Chemie, and featured in Nature and Chemistry World, they studied materials that have a porous sponge-like structure in which to store hydrogen — and found that bigger is not necessarily better. Bigger pores, they found, don't necessarily store the most hydrogen fuel.

The work gives a boost to attempts to cram hydrogen into a small space so that it can be used practically as a fuel. Fuel cells, which run on hydrogen and oxygen, are a potentially environmentally friendly way to power vehicles, producing only water as a waste product."

PASER A Novel Acceleration Scheme Demonstrated: "The technology may provide a brand new tool for the emerging field of nanoscience because the “cool” electrons produced will enable more precise x-ray probes of ultra-small structures. Both the essence of the concept and the proof-of-principle experiment performed at the ATF are described in an upcoming publication in Physical Review Letters.

“This is the first experimental evidence that energy can be transferred from excited atoms/molecules to free electrons in a coherent way,” said Samer Banna, a co-author on the paper with Levi Schächter and Valery Berezovsky. “In other words, this is the first demonstration of coherent collisions of the second kind.” "

Computer hacker group offers stealth Internet surfing: "'Torpark,' a modified version of the popular Mozilla Firefox browser, enables computer users to travel the Internet in a way that 'leaves no tracks behind,' Hacktivismo said in a statement.

Hacktivismo's website describes it as an international group of hackers, human rights workers, lawyers and artists that evolved from the renowned Texas-based hacker organization called 'Cult of the Dead Cow.' "

A Printer that Delivers 1,000 Pages a Minute: "The innovative printer head created by engineers Moshe Einat and Nissim Einat works in a similar way as a liquid crystal display (LCD). But while an LCD emits tiny pixels of light, collectively forming the picture on your laptop or television, their print head emits pixels of ink. Their basic design is small, but it can be reproduced and the copies combined into one large printer head.

“Unlike traditional printer heads that are small and have to move back and forth across the page, our print head can be enlarged into one that is the size of a sheet of paper or larger. One can think of it as an 'ink-emitting screen',” Moshe Einat told PhysOrg.com. “This means it could print one page almost instantly, and hundreds of pages in just seconds.” "

Some Hot Recorders for Those Cool Podcasts - New York Times: "Broadcasters, musicians and serious audiophiles have long been consumers of high-end portable audio gear, but podcasting has created an expanded market for this equipment.

While it is possible to create a podcast with nothing more than a computer, a microphone and some audio-editing software, there are times when it’s nice to be able to conduct interviews, gather sound or record programs when away from a PC. For that you’ll need some type of portable recording equipment. "

Some Hot Recorders for Those Cool Podcasts - New York Times: "Broadcasters, musicians and serious audiophiles have long been consumers of high-end portable audio gear, but podcasting has created an expanded market for this equipment.

While it is possible to create a podcast with nothing more than a computer, a microphone and some audio-editing software, there are times when it’s nice to be able to conduct interviews, gather sound or record programs when away from a PC. For that you’ll need some type of portable recording equipment. "

Wired News: A Question of Mind Over Matter: "MIT assistant professor Hugh Herr is an advanced prosthetics researcher and a bilateral leg amputee, two conditions that have allowed him the rare experience of testing his gadgets on himself.

'You know how it feels when you're at the airport and you hit the moving walkway? It's kind of like that,' he said of a new foot-ankle system he's developing with colleagues at MIT, Brown University and the VA Medical Center in Providence, Rhode Island.

The so-called biohybrid system sports a power pack and computer all contained within the prosthesis and uses sensors to allow more realistic movements than static, strap-on devices. The first systems have noninvasive sensors attached to the prostheses. In about two years scientists will implant sensors into study volunteers' nervous systems, Herr said."

Edenspace Systems Corporation: "Edenspace is a commercial leader in the use of plants for environmental protection and renewable fuels. With projects throughout the United States and Japan, the company is transforming the energy, environmental and agricultural industries with proprietary plants and plant-based services."

The bootless PC and terabytes on a dime: "Imagine a PC with instantaneous boot up or storing 10TB of data -- 10,000 gigabytes -- on a device the size of a dime with data-transfer rates unhampered by any latency.

Those are just two examples of the promises that storage nanotechnologies hold: combining the functions of memory chips and disk drives on a single piece of hardware that is a fraction of the size of devices today.

Nanotechnology, the science of engineering functional systems at the molecular scale, holds the possibility of billions of infinitesimally small machines working together to build products from the ground up using readily available materials."

Technology Review: Emerging Technologies and their Impact: "If this year's winner of the Loebner Prize is on the right track, call-center data could be what's needed to achieve the ultimate goal of artificial intelligence (AI): creating a computer program smart enough to hold a natural conversation.

A self-trained enthusiast with no formal academic background in AI, Rollo Carpenter created the winning program, which learns by analyzing its conversations with people as they 'chat' with it online. Regardless of the language, his program analyzes every utterance it witnesses, using what Carpenter calls contextual pattern-recognition techniques. Then, when a user asks the program a question, a database is combed for the best response, statistically speaking.

This method may work for idle chit-chat. But if his bots--automated programs meant to perform specific tasks--are ever to be used in a serious commercial application or to pass the famous Turing Test for artificial intelligence, they will need a vast number of conversations, and computing power to match, says Carpenter. 'I need more data,' he says."

Phytoremediation - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: "Phytoextraction (or phytoaccumulation) uses plants to remove contaminants from soils, sediments or water into harvestable plant biomass. Phytoextraction is growing rapidly in popularity world-wide. Generally this process has been tried more often for extracting heavy metals than for organics. It is clean, efficient, inexpensive and non-environmentally desruptive, as opposite to processes that require excavation of soil. At the time of disposal contaminants are typically concentrated in the much smaller volume of plant matter than an inital contaminated soil or sediment. 'Mining with plants', or *phytomining*, is also being experimented with.

The plants absorb contaminants through the root system and store them in the root biomass and/or transport them up into the stems and/or leaves. A living plant may continue to absorb contaminants until it is harvested. After harvest a lower level of the contaminant will remain in the soil, so the growth/harvest cycle must usually be repeated through several crops to achieve a significant cleanup. After the process, the cleaned soil can support other vegetation."

Materials scientists tame tricky carbon nanotubes: "Carbon nanotubes -- cylindrical carbon molecules 50,000 times thinner than a human hair -- have properties that make them potentially useful in nanotechnology, electronics, optics and reinforcing composite materials. With an internal bonding structure rivaling that of another well-known form of carbon, diamonds, carbon nanotubes are extraordinarily strong and can be highly efficient electrical conductors.

The problem is working with them. There is no reliable way to arrange the tubes into a circuit, partly because growing them can result in a randomly oriented mess resembling a bowl of spaghetti. "

Brain's action center is all talk: "The brain's premotor cortex shows the same activity pattern when subjects observe an action as when they hear words describing the same action, the study's authors said.

'If you hear the word 'grasp,' it's actually the premotor cortex that's active, not just a separate, abstract semantic area in the brain,' said lead investigator Lisa Aziz-Zadeh, assistant professor of occupational sciences with a joint appointment in the Brain and Creativity Institute of the USC College of Letters, Arts and Sciences.

The premotor cortex has long been identified as a center of activity for actions. The notion that it could also process verbal descriptions of those actions has met some resistance. "

Warner to Distribute Videos Through YouTube - New York Times: "SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- Warner Music Group Corp. has agreed to distribute and license its copyrighted songs and other material through online video trendsetter YouTube Inc., marking another significant step in the entertainment industry's migration to the Internet.

Under a revenue-sharing deal announced Monday, New York-based Warner Music has agreed to transfer thousands of its music videos and interviews to YouTube, a San Mateo, Calif.-based startup that has become a cultural touchstone since two 20-something friends launched the company in a Silicon Valley garage 19 months ago."

comment: why this post? convergence! technology and entertainment are coming together in new, far reaching ways.

Compounds in cranberry juice show promise as alternatives to antibiotics: "The new findings, which were presented on Sunday, Sept. 10, at the annual meeting of the American Chemical Society in San Francisco, for the first time begin to paint a detailed picture of the biochemical mechanisms that may underlie a number of beneficial health effects of cranberry juice that have been reported in other studies over the years.

Many of those studies have focused on the ability of cranberry juice to prevent urinary tract infections (UTIs), which each year affect eight million people–mostly women, the elderly, and infants--resulting in $1.6 billion in health care costs. Until now, scientists have not understood exactly how cranberry juice prevents UTIs and other bacterial infections, though they have suspected that compounds in the juice somehow prevent bacteria from adhering to the lining of the urinary tract. The new findings reveal how the compounds interfere with adhesion at the molecular level. "

A Chip That Can Transfer Data Using Laser Light - New York Times: "SAN FRANCISCO, Sept. 17 — Researchers plan to announce on Monday that they have created a silicon-based chip that can produce laser beams. The advance will make it possible to use laser light rather than wires to send data between chips, removing the most significant bottleneck in computer design.

As a result, chip makers may be able to put the high-speed data communications industry on the same curve of increased processing speed and diminishing costs — the phenomenon known as Moore’s law — that has driven the computer industry for the last four decades."

A Video Business Model Ready to Move Beyond Beta - New York Times: "The good news — and my second point — is that there’s gold in them there hills. Video delivered over the Internet is clearly shaping up to be an actual business that advertisers are interested in. The broadcasting (netcasting?) of television programs and clips on the Web moves the debate away from Internet-versus-TV because if TV executives put their best material online and get paid for it, the proposition becomes Internet-cum-TV. "

Compact Muon Solenoid magnet reaches full field: "Weighing in at more than 13,000 tons, the Compact Muon Solenoid experiment's magnet is built around a 20-foot-diameter, nearly 43-foot-long superconducting solenoid - a wire coil with multiple loops, which generates a magnetic field when electricity passes through it. The CMS solenoid generates a magnetic field of 4 Tesla, some 100,000 times stronger than the Earth's magnetic field, and stores 2.5 gigajoules of energy, enough to melt nearly 20 tons of gold. Superconductivity is achieved by chilling the coil to a temperature near absolute zero, where virtually all electrical resistance vanishes. Extremely high electrical current can then be used to generate a powerful magnetic field. "

Nissan to test 'intelligent transportation' system: "'Car approaching from left' and 'School ahead. Watch your speed,' are two voice messages which drivers will receive through the system which uses information obtained from nearby vehicles and roadside optical beacons.

The information is received by an onboard antenna on the vehicle to alert drivers to potential danger from approaching vehicles or inform them of traffic congestion ahead, Nissan Motor Co. Ltd. said in a statement. "

Synesthesia - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: "Synesthesia (also spelled synæsthesia or synaesthesia, plural synesthesiae) -- from the Greek syn- meaning union and aesthesis meaning sensation -- is a neurological condition in which two or more bodily senses are coupled. In a form of synesthesia known as grapheme → color synesthesia, letters or numbers may be perceived as inherently colored, while in ordinal linguistic personification, numbers, days of the week and months of the year evoke personalities. While cross-sensory metaphors are sometimes described as 'synesthetic,' true neurological synesthesia is involuntary and occurs in slightly more than four percent of the population (1 in 23 persons) across its range of variants (Simner et al. in press). It runs strongly in families, possibly inherited as an X-linked dominant trait. Synesthesia is also sometimes reported by individuals under the influence of psychedelic drugs, after stroke or as a consequence of blindness or deafness. Synesthesia that arises from such non-genetic events is referred to as adventitious synesthesia to distinguish it from the more common congenital forms of synesthesia."

JVC to market speaker that 'breathes' music: "The 'Pulsating Sphere Speaker' is covered with 11 pentagonal membranes that emit sound in all directions, unlike traditional speakers where the sound is projected forward through a single vibrating membrane.

'We plan to begin sales throughout Japan and the world in the first half of 2007,' said Akiko Sakakibara, spokeswoman for Victor Co. of Japan Ltd. (JVC), a unit of electronics giant Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. Ltd. "

WSJ.com - Rewriting the Rules of Fiction: "Fan fiction, stories by amateur writers about characters from their favorite books, movies and television shows, was once mainly a fringe pursuit. Now, it's changing the world of fiction, as Internet exposure helps unknown authors find mainstream success. Some Web sites are attracting unprecedented numbers of readers and, in some cases, leading to book deals. They are also feeding the appetites of readers and viewers who can't get enough of shows like 'Lost' or 'House.'"

Scientists get best look ever at waterlife connection: "Researchers led by Ohio State University physicist Dongping Zhong revealed these interactions for the first time, and report the results in the current issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Proteins are complex molecules that form the main support structure for plant and animal cells, and they also regulate biochemical reactions.

Zhong's project aims eventually to explain how water helps enable life-supporting biological functions such as protein folding or enzyme catalysis. But for now, this early result ends decades of controversy on what happens in the microscopic realm where water and proteins meet. "

Double Quantum Dots Control Kondo Effect: "The Kondo effect occurs when electrons become trapped around the magnetic impurities in semiconductor materials, which prompts the electrons to change their spin. This phenomenon has intrigued scientists, as electronic correlations can create interesting and complex behavior in materials.

SystemsIn the new work, scientists demonstrate how the two quantum dot system can behave in two different and interesting ways: As a simile for a Kondo-effect system where one quantum dot is used to 'filter' the effect of the current leads, and as a way to study 'pseudo-gapped' systems and correlations in them, which can help scientists understand structures such as superconductors. "

Engineer ramps up protein production, develops versatile viral spheres: "Scientists are taking the amazing protein-making parts out of cells and putting them into systems to mass-produce designer proteins for a wide variety of medical uses. At the annual meeting of the American Chemical Society (ACS) Sept. 13 in San Francisco, Stanford engineering Professor James Swartz will discuss advances in such 'cell-free' protein synthesis, including production of versatile, nanoscale viral spheres that can act as delivery trucks for a new class of potentially more effective vaccines.
'We want to make proteins that are important as pharmaceuticals and for other uses,' says Swartz, a professor of chemical engineering and bioengineering at Stanford. 'If we could produce them with great efficiency and at very low cost, that would be an important step.'
He emphasizes: 'A living cell has many unique demands for energy, such as for the synthesis of many types of molecules. We would like to focus all of those metabolic resources just on making our product.'
Whole cells can be difficult for researchers to use for making custom proteins because they don't always tolerate the chemical changes a researcher needs to impose to make a specific product. Cell-free techniques, in contrast, can be more robust because they use just the protein-making machinery of cells. To harvest just the parts he needs, Swartz literally rips cells open by applying intense shear forces."

Imagination Engines Inc.: "Summary - A radically new form of neural network based artificial intelligence has been conceived that in contrast to preceding forms of AI, builds itself and then enters into an intellectual bootstrapping process wherein it learns from its own mistakes and successes to create useful ideas and strategies. Not only is this technology capable of autonomously inventing and discovering new products, services, and procedures, as it has for numerous international corporations and government agencies, it has also devised several revolutionary neural network paradigms. For these reasons and more, AI visionaries and futurists, such as Dr. Dennis Bushnell, NASA Langley's chief scientist and visionary, have called this technology, known as the 'Creativity Machine,' AI's best bet at creating human to trans-human level intelligence in machines. ...This technology is produced and delivered exclusively by Imagination Engines, Incorporated as either customer tailored or mass produced products.

Details - Until recently, artificial neural networks could only recognize patterns or reconstruct learned memories using clues about the particular memory sought. In 1975, our founder, Dr. Stephen Thaler discovered a truly significant scientific principle: if the connection weights between neurons within an artificial neural network were transiently varied by just the right amount, the network would produce very plausible yet novel concepts and plans of action generalized from the neural network's learning. Subsequently, he incubated the idea of allowing another trained neural network to monitor the ideas and strategies streaming from such an internally disrupted network and to control that conceptual parade through various forms of feedback.

Wired News: Experimental AI Powers Robot Army: "Darpa's Grand Challenge may have looked tough, but it was a piece of cake compared to the challenge facing robots currently being developed by the U.S. Air Force.

Rather than maneuver driverless through miles of rough desert terrain, these will have to find their way into underground bunkers, map unknown facilities in three dimensions and identify what's in them while avoiding detection -- all without any human control."

WSJ.com - Surfing the Internet for Spoken Words: "One of the charms of Internet video and audio is that Web sites featuring such offerings are largely free of the advertising cluttering television and radio.
That may be about to change.
Several small companies are starting to pitch advertising links using their software that will search every word spoken in Web-borne video soundtracks or Internet audio programs known as podcasts. The new technology, from companies including Podzinger Inc., TVEyes Inc. and Blinkx Inc., uses voice-recognition software to translate spoken words into text or audio-wave forms that can then be searched.
Identifying spoken content of audio and video clips results in more-relevant results when using a search engine to look for a particular item or topic. From there it is only a short step to also use the new technology to match related advertising with the search results -- much as Google Inc. and others do for searches of text-based material."

Alcohol use helps boost income study: "The study published in the Journal of Labor Research concluded that drinkers earn 10 to 14 percent more than teetotalers, and that men who drink socially bring home an additional seven percent in pay.

'Social drinking builds social capital,' said Edward Stringham, an economics professor at San Jose State University and co-author of the study with fellow researcher Bethany Peters.

'Social drinkers are out networking, building relationships, and adding contacts to their BlackBerries that result in bigger paychecks.' "

Tiny fuel cell might replace batteries in laptop computers, portable electronics: "The generator uses a special solution containing borohydride, an alkaline compound that has an unusually high capacity for storing hydrogen, a key element that is used by fuel cells to generate electricity. In laboratory studies, a prototype fuel cell made from this generator was used to provide sustained power to light bulbs, radios and DVD players, the researchers say.

The fuel cell system can be packaged in containers of the same size and weight as conventional batteries and is recharged by refilling a fuel cartridge, they say. Research on these battery replacement fuel cells, which they claim are safer for the environment than regular batteries, was described today at the 232nd national meeting of the American Chemical Society. "

Reseachers discover new insights for antibiotic drug development: "In two articles published in the current online issue of Nature Chemical Biology, researchers describe an approach that is more efficient--and environmentally friendly--in developing new antibiotics, those needed to kill the increasing number of infections resistant to multiple drugs.

'We're striving to create new drugs that can have a positive impact on the growing threat of infectious diseases,' says Robert Fecik, Ph.D., an assistant professor of Medicinal Chemistry at the University of Minnesota College of Pharmacy and one of the lead authors of the study. 'This type of research can help us make new antibiotic molecules.' "

Dark Energy and Dark Matter The Results of Flawed Physics: "This is what three Italian physicists have recently asked. In a paper in the August 3 online edition of the Institute of Physics' peer-reviewed Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics, they put forth the idea that scientists were forced to propose the existence of dark energy and dark matter because they were, and still are, working with incorrect gravitational theory.

The group suggests an alternative theory of gravity in which dark energy and dark matter are effects – illusions, in a sense – created by the curvature of spacetime (the bending of space and time caused by extremely massive objects, like galaxies). Their theory does not require the existence of dark energy and dark matter. "

Organic semiconductors make cheap, flexible photovoltaics and LEDs: "The device is the first to use an 'ionic junction,' which researchers say could lead to improved performance. Since organic semiconductors can be made in thin, flexible sheets, they could create displays on cloth or paper.

'Flexible means low-cost fabrication,' said George Malliaras, Cornell associate professor of materials science and engineering, in whose laboratory the research was done. And that means another result of the research could be mass-produced, inexpensive solar cells.

The work is described in the Sept. 7 issue of the journal Science in a paper by Cornell graduate researchers Daniel Bernards and Samuel Flores-Torres, Héctor Abruña, the E. M. Chamot Professor of Chemistry and Chemical Biology at Cornell, and Malliaras. "

Spinning new theory on particle spin brings science closer to quantum computing: "Spintronics, also known as spin electronics, is an emerging technology that looks to develop devices that exploit the quirky world of quantum physics, or physics at the incredibly small atomic level, particularly the up-or-down spin property of electrons. Conventional electronics use the charge of the electron. Spintronic devices would use both the spin and charge, achieving new functionality.

Scientists across the globe are racing to develop the spintronics field. It could revolutionize the computing industry with chips that are more versatile and exponentially more powerful than today's most cutting-edge technology.

Physicists Dimitrie Culcer and Roland Winkler, along with Christian Lechner of Regensburg University, Germany, will publish their theoretical findings in the Sept. 8 issue of Physical Review Letters. Culcer and Winkler are at Northern Illinois University, in addition to their affiliation with the Advanced Photon Source at Argonne. "

Samsung Develops 40nm 32 Gb NAND Flash: "The new CTF-based NAND flash memory increases the reliability of the memory by sharply reducing inter-cell noise levels. Its surprisingly simple structure also enables higher scalability which will eventually improve manufacturing process technology from 40 nm to 30 and even 20nm.

In each 32Gb device, the control gate in the CTF is only 20 percent as large as a conventional control gate in a typical floating gate structure. With CTF, there is no floating gate. Instead, the data is temporarily placed in a “holding chamber” of the non-conductive layer of the flash memory composed of silicon nitride (SiN). This results in a higher level of reliability and better control of the storage current. "

Mechanism to Organize Nervous System Conserved in Evolution: "In the September 12 issue of the journal Public Library of Science Biology, the researchers report that in both fruit fly and chick embryos proteins called BMPs play similar roles in telling cells in the early embryo to switch certain genes on and off, specifying the identity of the cells making up the three primary subdivisions of the central nervous system. The findings suggest a unified model of early neural development in which at least part of the mechanism for creating neural patterning has been preserved from a shared ancestral organism that lived over 500 million years ago.

“We have provided the first evidence for a common role of BMPs in establishing the pattern of gene expression along the dorsal-ventral axis of the nervous system of vertebrates and invertebrates,” said Ethan Bier, a professor of biology at UCSD and senior author on the study. “Our results suggest that this process has been conserved from a common ancestor rather than evolving separately as had been previously believed.” "

About Sirna: Sirna Therapeutics: "The scientific community considers RNA RNA
Ribonucleic acid. A long chain polymer of genetic material similar to DNA except that it is usually found in a single-stranded form rather than as a double helix, it is made up of the ribo nucleotides A, G, C, and U (instead of T), it is somewhat less resistant to cellular degradation enzymes than DNA, and it functions most often as a transient messenger of genetic information rather than as a permanent store-house as is the case for DNA.interference (RNAi)RNAi

RNA interference. A natural cellular mechanism by which RNA is recognized as “foreign” due to its existence in a double-stranded form. This results in the degradation of the double-stranded RNA, along with single-stranded RNA having the same sequence. the breakthrough biological discovery of the decade with the potential to change how diseases are treated. Sirna Therapeutics, Inc. is leading the industry in developing a new class of drugs based on RNAi—drugs that we believe will significantly improve human health.
With our unmatched chemistry and biology expertise, seasoned leadership and broad therapeutic pipeline, Sirna is demonstrating that short interfering RNA (siRNA)siRNA
short interfering RNA. An intermediate in the RNAi process in which the long double-stranded RNA has been cut up into short (~21 nucleotides) double-stranded RNA. The siRNA stimulates the cellular machinery to cut up other single-stranded RNA having the same sequence as the siRNA. can be chemically optimized and efficiently delivered to create therapeutically relevant compounds with drug-like properties and clinical effect.

In short, Sirna Therapeutics is at the forefront of the effort to create RNAi-based therapies, leverage the vast potential of this technology to ultimately treat patients in need."

Acuity: "Acuity Pharmaceuticals is a product-focused ophthalmic pharmaceutical company leveraging its strong technology portfolio in RNA interference. Acuity is focusing on developing treatments for age-related macular degeneration (AMD) and diabetic retinopathy (DR), two of the leading causes of vision loss in the developed world.

Ophthalmic therapeutics represent an ideal market with favorable development dynamics for an early stage company. The ophthalmic market is rapidly growing and is underserved both domestically and internationally.

Acuity's initial priority is to commercialize the company's core technology by developing a therapeutic product to arrest and potentially reverse vision loss resulting from AMD and DR. Our lead compound, Cand5, is a proprietary RNAi-based pharmaceutical compound which has been shown to arrest VEGF production central to neovascularization in AMD. Cand5 substantially retards the growth of unwanted new blood vessels that lead to blindness in AMD and DR.

Additional ophthalmic conditions that can be treated with the same compound, perhaps with different formulations or administration, are also being explored. "

comments: RNAi therapeutics company -

Independent Online Edition > Science & Technology: "Imagine a treatment for cancer, a cure for infectious diseases such as Aids, or maybe an effective therapy for blindness or a lethal brain disease. Now imagine that one breakthrough is responsible for all this medical hope.

The breakthrough is RNA interference (RNAi), which some scientists believe could be the biggest advance in healthcare since the development of antibiotics. There is barely an area of medicine that may not be touched by future advances in RNAi - a technique for switching off genes selectively and precisely.
RNAi was only formally recognised in 1998 but over the past few years it has emerged as one of the hottest developments in the field of medical science. Yet another international conference on RNAi (titled RNAi Europe) is planned at the end of September in Prague."

Arizona State University - When Film School Isn’t Enough: Welcome to the EnterTech Age - New York Times: "TEMPE, Ariz. — On a blinding, 104-degree day at Arizona State University, the heat outside was fairly matched inside the classroom by a fervid debate over the past, in a new course on the convergence of entertainment and technology."

Wired 14.09: Posts: "Ever since the birth of the free software movement, its defenders have struggled to explain just what 'free software' is. If it is free, how do coders eat? And how do businesses that support the software – IBM, Hewlett-Packard – make any money from it?

The standard answer has been a slogan: 'Think free,' the movement's founder, Richard Stallman puts it, 'as in free speech, not free beer.' You can charge whatever you want for free software. But what you can't do is lock up the knowledge that makes it run. Others must be allowed to learn from and tinker with it. No one is permitted a monopoly on the teaching that stands behind it."

Gene Found to Switch Off Stem Cells During Aging - New York Times: "Biologists have uncovered a deep link between lifespan and cancer in the form of a gene that switches off stem cells as a person ages.

p16INK4a Induces an Age-dependent Decline in Islet Regenerative Potential (Nature)
Increasing p16INK4a Expression Decreases Forebrain Progenitors and Neurogenesis During Ageing

Stem-Cell Ageing Modified by the Cyclin-Dependent Kinase Inhibitor p16INK4a (Nature)The critical gene, already well known for its role in suppressing tumors, seems to mediate a profound balance between life and death. It weighs the generation of new replacement cells, required for continued life, against the risk of death from cancer, which is the inevitable outcome of letting cells divide. To offset the increasing risk of cancer as a person ages, the gene gradually reduces the ability of stem cells to proliferate."

HyperScope: The Story: "You may know that Doug Engelbart built the first collaborative hypertext system in the 1960s, among his many other firsts. What you may not know is that that system -- NLS/Augment -- still runs, and that Doug and others continue to use it every day.

Augment has capabilities not found in any other software, features that make us smarter and more productive. You can read about many of these capabilities, but you can't actually experience them first-hand (although this is changing). This is a huge loss, and not just for those curious about history. With today's high-speed networks and computers, some of these capabilities are potentially more relevant today than they were forty years ago."

Anticipation Plays a Powerful Role in Human Memory: "Probing deeper into how such memories form, researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have found that the mere anticipation of a fearful situation can fire up two memory-forming regions of the brain - even before the event has occurred.

That means the simple act of anticipation may play a surprisingly important role in how fresh the memory of a tough experience remains.

The findings of the brain-imaging study, which appear in the current issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, have important implications for the treatment of psychological conditions such as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and social anxiety, which are often characterized by flashbacks and intrusive memories of upsetting events."

New Oil Field in Gulf May Yield Billions of Barrels - New York Times: "What could be a major discovery of domestic oil in the Gulf of Mexico was announced today by a trio of companies led by Chevron Corporation.

The discovery, in the deepest water yet explored in the Gulf, could be the biggest domestic oil field since the northern Alaska field opened a generation ago. "

http://www.nature.com/news/2006/060828/full/060828-5.html: "A newly discovered mystery gene may have helped build the modern human brain, researchers report today.

Scientists don't know what the gene does. But they do know that humans have more copies of it than chimpanzees, monkeys, rats and mice. And they know that the gene makes a protein that is found in the human brain. That suggests that it may help to give the human brain its unique ability to think and reason, they say. "

Scientists plan new space mission to observe quantum gravity: "A University of Aberdeen scientist is leading this research to show, for the first time, how quantum gravity may be observed in space. According to Dr Charles Wang, a Reader in the College of Physical Sciences and a member of the Aberdeen Centre for Applied Dynamics Research, space-time is constantly deformed by ‘gravitons’ - particles that are believed to mediate gravity at an extremely small scale. This is just like the way in which pollen grains or smoke particles in air have a random ‘Brownian motion’ as they are buffeted by much smaller molecules. He said: “By observing these tiny distortions in a quantum experiment, we think it will be possible to extract information on the ultimate theory of space-time.”

Dr Wang explains that there is a widely held perception in modern physics that the perpetual warping of space-time due to its quantum properties is too small to be seen in any normal circumstances. "

New Clue to World's Tiniest Particles: "The proton, one of the three main components of an atom, is known to consist of point-like particles called quarks, bound together by gluons. There are six different types of quarks and the most mysterious of these is the strange quark, which 'boils up' inside the proton and then 'simmers back out of existence'.

The new finding, published recently in the prestigious international journal Physical Review Letters, is a precise calculation of the strange quark's distribution within the proton. The calculation predicts that the short-lived strange quarks display an unanticipated level of symmetry in their journey.

'Technically the strange quark contribution to the proton's charge distribution has proven elusive,' said Dr Leinweber, who is Deputy Director of the University’s Special Research Centre for the Subatomic Structure of Matter. 'At the University of Adelaide, working with physicists at the University of Edinburgh and the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility in the US, we've been able to calculate the strange contribution with unprecedented accuracy by applying a unique combination of cutting-edge numerical and analytical approaches. "

Wired News: Finally, a Sirius IPod Threat: "But the story behind Zing is almost more intriguing than the capabilities of its devices.

Zing CEO Tim Bucher founded the company in 2005. Aside from being the man who coined the term 'automagically,' Bucher was a founding member of WebTV, which was acquired by Microsoft. There, he eventually became a member of the Xbox team -- oddly enough, the same team which spawned Microsoft's upcoming Zune player.

Bucher also spent a couple years as an Apple executive, overseeing development of the Mac Mini and the iPod's core technology. Those years ended in bitter acrimony in late 2004, when Jobs fired Bucher."

Wired 14.09: START: "What's faster than a speeding bullet and more powerful than a locomotive? Beams of gold ions slamming into each other at light-speed. Although the thermal release from this collision is a million times hotter than the surface of the sun, scientists at Brookhaven National Lab say this won't create a galaxy-swallowing black hole or fundamentally alter the universe. Probably."

Wired News: Finally, a Sirius IPod Threat: "But the story behind Zing is almost more intriguing than the capabilities of its devices.

Zing CEO Tim Bucher founded the company in 2005. Aside from being the man who coined the term 'automagically,' Bucher was a founding member of WebTV, which was acquired by Microsoft. There, he eventually became a member of the Xbox team -- oddly enough, the same team which spawned Microsoft's upcoming Zune player.

Bucher also spent a couple years as an Apple executive, overseeing development of the Mac Mini and the iPod's core technology. Those years ended in bitter acrimony in late 2004, when Jobs fired Bucher."

USATODAY.com - 3-in-1 heart pill could save millions: "BARCELONA, Spain (AP) — A new three-in-one pill to treat heart disease could save millions worldwide, said experts Monday at the World Congress of Cardiology. The so-called 'polypill' would target developing countries, where rates of heart disease are climbing dramatically.

The pill would be packed with aspirin, statins and ACE inhibitors—the three drugs known to prevent recurrent heart disease. 'Potentially, millions of lives could be saved worldwide by this,' said Sidney Smith, of the World Heart Federation. 'These therapies are known to reduce mortality by up to 50% or more,' said Smith."

New Web Sites Seeking Profit in Wiki Model - New York Times: "Every day, millions of people find answers on Wikipedia to questions both trivial and serious. Jack Herrick found his business model there. Jack Herrick started wikiHow, a how-to Web site that allows anyone to write and edit entries, in January 2005.

A page from the wikiHow site, which hopes to turn a profit based on advertising and now has 10,000 entries in English, Spanish and German. In 2004, Mr. Herrick acquired the how-to guide eHow.com, which featured articles written by paid freelance writers. Although the business made a profit, he realized that the revenue brought in by selling advertising would not support the extensive site he had in mind. “If the page were about how to get a mortgage, it would work,” he said. “But the idea was to be the how-to guide to everything.”"

TDK Announces Blue Laser Disc Technology to Support 200GB Capacity: "TDK, a world leader in digital recording solutions, has reached a landmark in the development of recordable blue laser technology, achieving a groundbreaking capacity of 200GB. Surpassing existing optical media technologies several times over, a 200GB blue laser disc would double the capacity of TDK's existing 100GB Blu-ray prototype. One of TDK's new 200GB blue laser discs could store approximately 18 hours of high definition video (encoded at 24Mbps). "

Quantum cascade diode laser could be vital for safeguarding aircraft: "Despite their name, heat-seeking missiles actually seek a characteristic infrared light given off by hot objects. Though invisible to the human eye, tiny detectors inside the missiles can detect this infrared light and use it for guidance.

To ensure the safety of aircraft, infrared countermeasure (IRCM) systems are used to confuse or blind the detectors. These systems require a high-power light source that can emit light at the correct wavelength. While various existing light sources may be able to succeed in disrupting the detectors, most are based on technology that is both bulky and expensive. Therefore, only a few military aircraft are now protected by IRCM systems. Developing a compact and inexpensive infrared light source will allow for widespread use of IRCMs, but it has proven to be a significant technical challenge. "

Researchers Provide Evidence of How Proteins Fold: "The theory proposes that proteins start to fold in specific places along an amino acid chain (called a polypeptide chain) that contains nonpolar groups, or groups of molecules without a charge, and continue to fold by aggregation, i.e., as several individuals of these nonpolar groupings combine. Using the same principle that separates oil and water, these molecules are hydrophobic -- they avoid water and associate with each other.

In the water-based cell fluid, where long polypeptide chains are manufactured and released by ribosomes, the polypeptide chains rapidly fold up into their biologically functional structure. The theory proposes that there are sites along the polypeptide chains where hydrophobic groups initially fold in on themselves, creating small nonpolar (hydrophobic) pockets that are protected from the water. "

Reinventing nature for cheaper solar power: "A leaf is an amazingly cheap and efficient solar cell,” says Dr Deanna D’Alessandro, a postdoctoral researcher in the Molecular Electronics Group at the University of Sydney. “The best leaves can harvest 30 to 40 percent of the light falling on them. The best solar cells we can build are between 15 and 20 percent efficient, and expensive to make.”

“We’ve recreated some of the key systems that plants use in photosynthesis,” says Deanna.

Bacteria and green plants use photosynthesis to convert light energy into usable chemical energy. Wheel-shaped arrays of molecules called porphyrins collect light and transfer it to the hub where chemical reactions use the light energy to convert carbon dioxide into energy-rich sugar and oxygen. "

Harvard scientists identify compounds that stimulate stem cell growth in the brain: "BETHESDA, Md.--Scientists at Harvard University have identified key compounds that stimulate stem cell growth in the brain, which may one day lead to restored function for people affected by Parkinson's disease, strokes, multiple sclerosis, and a wide range of neurological disorders. These findings, which appear in the September 2006 issue of The FASEB Journal, provide important clues as to which compounds may be responsible for causing key brain cells, neurons, to regenerate and ultimately restore brain function.
The research study focused on two compounds--LTB4 and LXA4. Both play a role in inflammation and are regulators of proliferation of several cell types. When stem cells isolated from the brains of mouse embryos were exposed to LTB4 they proliferated and differentiated, giving rise to additional stem cells and to differentiated neurons with limited or absent capacity to divide. When exposed to LXA4, these cells experienced decreased growth and apoptosis. "

The Seattle Times: Gene-therapy results touted in 2 advanced-cancer cases: "Two men, both with the rapidly growing skin cancer melanoma, were given immune-system cells taken from their own blood and engineered to attack their tumors. They are alive, with no evidence of cancer, 18 months later. Fifteen other patients who got the same treatment died.

The senior author of the study and others cautioned it would take several years to translate the treatment into a practical therapy.

The report, published online by the journal Science, is the latest result of a 30-year effort by Dr. Steven Rosenberg to find ways to manipulate the human immune system to fight cancer.
Four years ago, Rosenberg, a surgeon, and his colleagues treated a group of melanoma patients with naturally occurring anti-cancer cells extracted from their tumors, and some of those patients also have had long-term disappearance of their cancers.

The new study, however, is believed to be the first time genetically engineered immune-system cells — specifically, T lymphocytes — produced the same effect."