TaiSPO Stars: Riding the e-bike Towards a Brighter Future

TAIPEI, Taiwan–(Business Wire)–
Joy Ride Tech Co., Ltd. has created an exciting range of green devices for
travel and fun by land, water and air.

In recent years, the company, which has specialized in developing high-quality
electric vehicles since its establishment in 2002, has made huge breakthroughs
in the development of environmentally friendly transportation devices,
incorporating electric engines with energy-saving designs.

For land, Joy Ride has designed the e-bike, folding e-bike, e-scooter, e-go
kart, and e-ATV vehicles. For water, the company has created the e-boat,
e-surfboard, e-rubber dinghy, and e-motor; whilst those wishing to take to the
skies can choose Joy Ride’s e-paragliding or e-delta wings.

Recently the company successfully applied for a U.S. patent for the design of
its e-surfboard, which boasts a maximum speed of 35 km per hour, utilizing a
water-turbine as a drive motor.

This innovative surfboard is not only perfect for water-sports enthusiasts, but
its environmentally friendly design and streamlined shape ensures that the
device creates no noise or pollution. Surfers can enjoy a brand new water sports
experience, whilst Joy Ride’s specialized technology ensures catching a wave
will not be a problem. The e-surfboard should be able to operate for up to 20
minutes when fully charged.

Another important aspect of Joy Ride’s thoughtful design is that e-bike riders
can choose between full electric-powered or assisted electric-powered riding.

In an age in which many people are choosing to ride a bicycle rather than take
the car to save energy and reduce carbon emissions, there is no doubt that Joy
Ride’s utility e-products are a smart choice for today’s traveler.

Visit Joy Ride Tech Co., Ltd. in TaiSPO (Taipei International Sporting Goods
Show) from 29 April to 2 May, 2010 at NANGANG Exhibition Hall.

More information please go to http://www.taispo.com.tw

To pre-register online, please visit

http://www.taispo.com.tw/en_US/member/visitor/preregister.html

Photo:

http://www.cna.com.tw/postwrite/cvpread.aspx?ID=54976

TAITRA
Valentina Pien, 886-2-2725-5200 ext. 2865
valentina@taitra.org.tw

Copyright Business Wire 2010

All Formula One teams are cheats, claims Irvine

London, Sep 18 (ANI): Ex-Ferrari driver Eddie Irvine has claimed that all Formula One teams are cheats.

Irvine says there has been an overreaction to the race-fixing charges being levelled at the Renault team.

He admitted the Crashgate scandal that cost Renault team chief Flavio Briatore and technical boss Pat Symonds their jobs had gone too far.

“F1 is a war and all is fair in war. When I was in various teams you would do anything to win. You pushed people off, you did whatever you could do to win,” he said.

“This is probably slightly on the wrong side of the cheating thing, but in F1 – if you look back at days gone past – then every team has done it. They will cheat, bend the rules, do whatever they could, sabotage opponents.

“Nothing was beyond the realms of decency and that is what F1 always is. It is not a pure sport,’ The Sun quoted Irvine, as saying.

The Renault team still has to appear before the World Motor Sport Council in Paris on Monday where they face a massive fine, race suspension or even being kicked out of the sport.

But Irvine reckons they could escape with a more lenient penalty amid fears that another team is about to leave the sport.

Irvine, who also raced for Jordan and Jaguar, added: “If you think that McLaren got a 100 million dollars fine for having some papers of the Ferrari team, what punishment is relevant here? It is complete banning. But I don’t believe that is going to happen as F1 cannot afford to lose more teams.”

Briatore threatened to sue Piquet Snr after the three-time world champ made the revelations about his son. (ANI)

Stem cell transplantation may correct rare genetic disorder in kids

Washington, Sep 18 (ANI): Scripps Research Institute scientists have offered new hope for parents whose children suffer from the rare genetic disorder ‘cystinosis’ by showing through an experiment on mice that stem cell transplantation can successfully correct the defect.

“After meeting the children who suffer from this disease, like an 18-year-old who has already had three kidney transplants, and the families who are desperately searching for help, our team is committed to moving toward a cure for cystinosis, a lysosomal storage disorder. This study is an important step toward that goal,” said principal investigator Stephanie Cherqui.

In the study, the researchers used bone marrow stem cell transplantation to address symptoms of cystinosis in a mouse model.

The procedure virtually halted the cystine accumulation responsible for the disease, and the cascade of cell death that follows.

Cystine is a by-product of the break down of cellular components the body no longer needs in the cell’s “housekeeping” organelles, called lysosomes.

Normally, cystine is shunted out of cells, but in cystinosis a gene defect of the lysosomal cystine transporter causes it to build up, forming crystals that are especially damaging to the kidneys and eyes.

Cystinosis is a rare but devastating disease affecting children as young as six months, who begin to suffer renal dysfunction, which grows progressively worse with time. Other symptoms include diabetes, muscular disease, neurological dysfunction, and retinopathy.

The only available drug to treat cystinosis, cysteamine, while slowing the progression of kidney degradation, does not prevent it, and end-stage kidney failure is inevitable.

In the new study, the researchers found that transplanted bone marrow stem cells carrying the normal lysosomal cystine transporter gene abundantly engrafted into every tissue of the experimental mice.

This led to an average drop in cystine levels of about 80 percent in every organ.

Not only it prevented kidney dysfunction, there was less deposition of cystine crystals in the cornea, less bone demineralization, and an improvement in motor function.

“The results really surprised and encouraged us. Because the defect is present in every cell of the body, we did not expect a bone marrow stem cell transplant to be so widespread and effective,” says Cherqui.

Cherqui said that adult bone marrow stem cell therapy is particularly well suited as a potential treatment for cystinosis because these cells target all types of tissues.

In addition, stem cells reside in the bone marrow for the duration of a patient’s life, becoming active as needed, a particular benefit for a progressive disease like cystinosis.

The study has been published in the journal Blood. (ANI)

Jharkhand man begs for alms to run orphanage

Dampara (Jharkhand), Sept 17 (ANI): Kantha Singh, a former motor mechanic, plays good samaritan for 42 orphans from tribal communities and runs an orphanage by begging for alms at Dampara village in Jharkhand.

Started in 2007, the orphanage had just 15 children. These children have been rendered homeless due to reckless alcoholism and polygamy prevalent in the area.

“They do not have any guardian. Some of them were even working, while others were living with relatives. We started the orphanage with 15 children, now we have 42. They are all taken care of and they are all studying,” said Singh.

Singh has voluntary workers at the orphanage, who beg for alms in the surrounding villages. The offerings by the people are not always enough. At times, the children have to make do with just salt and rice.

“We go from village to village begging for alms,” said Ramchandra Hembrum, a worker.

Singh’s service has earned him an invitation from the President. He and the other workers at the orphanage are now hopeful that the President would do something for the children.

The unexpected development has left them all overwhelmed.

“He will meet the President and talk to her about how difficult it is to run the orphanage. He will also talk about the needs of the children and all we need to run the orphanage well. He will also talk about their educational and other needs,” said Pather Saran, another worker.

Singh has also been taking care of the education of the orphans. He runs a school within the orphanage and hopes that the President will extend help, in his efforts to educate the children and ensure a good life for them. By Girija Shankar Ojha (ANI)

Dial auto service launched in Chandigarh

Chandigarh, Sept 17 (ANI): In a bid to provide quick, hassle free and reasonably charged mode of transportation, a dial-an-auto service equipped with GPS navigation system has been launched for the first time in Chandigarh.

The neat and clean pink coloured motor rickshaws, known as Tuk Tuk, are changing the way people travel in the city.

The fleet of 10 dial-an-auto-rickshaw, which is only a phone call away, also boasts of two lady drivers, the first in Chandigarh.

Women passengers, who feel safer traveling with lady drivers, are appreciating their services.

“Chandigarh is one city where people are safe anyway. We have been told we are safe with the service,” said Alka Thapar, a lady auto driver.

One has to just dial 4242424 for calling an auto rickshaw to get it at your doorstep.

The autos are equipped with tamper proof fare meters to assure passengers of not being overcharged.

“We maintain our call center. Whenever any individual requires an auto he rings up and the call centre picks up the call. They record the call and then convey to the driver by selecting the vehicle nearby to pick up the customer. That’s the procedure and customer has to pay from the pick up point to the drive point only,” said VS Dhillon, Managing Director of the Tuk Tuk Auto Rickshaw Company.

The service aims at providing a quick, reliable and safe journey to people who can relax and sit back without the fear of getting fleeced by drivers.

“I’m using it for the first time It’s reasonably priced and I’m really liking it,” says Charanjit, a customer.

The new service is a welcome change for commuters. With the new service in place, passengers can hope for a change in the attitude of traditional auto drivers who are often accused of fleecing customers. By Sunil Sharma (ANI)

Lover of collapsed MG Rover director paid 1.7-mn pounds for a year’s work

London, Sep 12 (ANI): MG Rover’s director paid his lover 1.7 million pounds for a year’s work, according to a report on the collapse of the car manufacturing giant.

In May 2000, the Phoenix consortium-John Towers, Nick Stephenson, Peter Beale and John Edwards-acquired the business for a nominal 10 pounds from BMW.

BMW ensured that MG Rover could survive for a few years. But from the outset, it was clear that it had no long-term future unless it could find a substantial business partner within the motor industry.

The report into the demise of the giant compiled by Gervase MacGregor, a partner at the accountants BDO Stoy Hayward, and the barrister Guy Newey QC condemns the consortium which made a fortune out of the collapsed car maker, The Independent reports.

They reported that the four directors supplied inaccurate and misleading information about Rover’s finances to MPs, and singled out evidence Beale gave to the Commons trade and industry select committee.

They expressed concern over the plainly excessive fee of almost 1.7 million pounds paid to Dr Qu Li for advice she gave the Phoenix management about potential business partners in China.

For some of the time Dr Li was paid by Rover, she and Stephenson were having an affair. The report protested about the poor “corporate governance” of the Phoenix team: some board members were not invited to several board meetings and inaccurate minutes were taken of discussions.

Despite the failure of MG Rover between 2000 and 2005, the Phoenix Four continued to pay themselves generously right up to the group’s demise in 2005.

Towers, who led the buyout, was paid 8.96 million pounds, Stephenson 8.98 million pounds and Edwards received 9.02 million pounds. Beale, who is accused of misleading the parliamentary inquiry into the company’s collapse, was paid 8.98 million pounds over the four years, while Howe pocketed 5.71 million pounds.

The report cleared ministers of blame for MG Rover’s demise. (ANI)

Playing Tetris could boost brain power

London, September 2 (ANI): Playing Tetris may help increase brain efficiency, says a new research.

Researchers from Mind Research Network in Albuquerque, New Mexico, examined the effects of practice in the brain using two image techniques.

Dr. Rex Jung and Dr. Richard Haier, co-investigators in the Tetris study, made use of brain imaging and Tetris to see if practice makes the brain efficient because it increases gray matter.

Jung, a clinical neuropsychologist, said: “One of the most surprising findings of brain research in the last five years was that juggling practice increased gray matter in the motor areas of the brain.

“We did our Tetris study to see if mental practice increased cortical thickness, a sign of more gray matter. If it did, it could be an explanation for why previous studies have shown that mental practice increases brain efficiency.

“More gray matter in an area could mean that the area would not need to work as hard during Tetris play.”

Haier, lead author of a 1992 research that discovered practicing Tetris led to greater brain efficiency, also added: “We were excited to see cortical thickness differences between the girls that practiced Tetris and those that did not.

“But, it was surprising that these changes were not where we saw more efficiency. How a thicker cortex and increased brain efficiency are related remains a mystery.”

The study has been published in the open access journal BMC Research Notes. (ANI)

Tata Motors suffer Q1 loss, but confident of improvement

Mumbai, Sep 1 (ANI): Tata Motors, India’s largest vehicle maker have posted a consolidated loss for its fiscal first quarter, but remained confident about the prospects of its loss-making Jaguar and Land Rover (JLR) unit.

This was disclosed by the C Ramakrishnan, Chief Financial Officer at a press conference that was also addressed by Ravi Kant, Vice Chairman and Prakash Telang, Managing Director of the company here on Monday.

The company, which controls about 60 percent of the world’s fifth-biggest truck and bus market, said that increased borrowing to support investments and new product development caused an increase in depreciation and interest costs.

It said JLR unit’s sales fell about 52 percent in the quarter from a year ago due to adverse global market conditions.

The company is eyeing some support from the commercial banks to meet the crisis.

“We are working on to tie up our working facilities with commercial banks for Jaguar and Land Rover (JLR)…this has been put in place, some work is still going on which would be finalise in next few weeks,” said Ramakrishnan.

The company reported 3.29 billion rupees consolidated loss for April-June.

In the year-ago quarter, Tata Motors posted a net profit of 7.2 billion rupees, but said the figures were not comparable as the previous period contained JLR numbers only for June 2-30. Tata said JLR made a loss before tax of 62 million pounds during the fiscal first quarter. JLR sold 35,900 units during the quarter, up from 32,600 in the March quarter.

In July, Tata Motors reported a standalone net profit of 5.14 billion rupees for its Indian operations. But officials hoped that market would recover despite a weal monsoon.

“I can say that things would have been better, but the monsoon has not been so good that caution optimism but we still believe that things would be slightly better in coming time,” said Prakash Telang, Managing Director, Tata Motors.

Auto sales in India have been rising on an improving economy, easier finance and new launches, including Tata Motor’s Nano, the world’s cheapest car, which hit the roads in July.

The company’s consolidated debt at the end of June stood at 240 billion rupees. The company has said it would look at capital raising at an appropriate time to deleverage its balance sheet. (ANI)

Non-lethal blast waves can cause brain injuries even without direct head impacts

Washington, August 27 (ANI): In a new research, scientists have discovered that non-lethal blast waves can cause human brain injury even without direct head impacts, which could lead to an enhanced understanding of head injuries and improved military helmet design.

Using numerical hydrodynamic computer simulations, Lawrence Livermore scientists Willy Moss and Michael King, along with University of Rochester colleague Eric Blackman, have discovered that non-lethal blasts can induce enough skull flexure to generate potentially damaging loads in the brain, even without direct head impact.

Traumatic brain injury (TBI) results from mechanical loads in the brain, often without skull fracture, and causes complex, long-lasting symptoms.

TBI in civilians is usually caused by direct head impacts resulting from motor vehicle and sports accidents. TBI also has emerged among military combat personnel exposed to blast waves.

As modern body armor has substantially reduced soldier fatalities from explosive attacks, the lower mortality rates have revealed the high prevalence of TBI.

But, TBIs resulting from blast waves without head impacts have not been well understood.

To tackle this puzzle, the research team used three-dimensional hydrodynamic simulations to prove that direct action of the blast wave on the head causes skull flexure, producing mechanical loads in brain tissue comparable to those in an injury-inducing impact, even at non-lethal blast pressures as low as 1 bar above atmospheric pressure.

The Army’s Advanced Combat Helmet replaced the older Personal Armor System for Ground Troops helmet.

Its Kevlar shell provides ballistic and impact protection, and its reduced edge cut, although reducing area of coverage, improves soldiers’ field of vision and hearing.

In particular, the team showed that blast waves affect the brain very differently from direct impacts.

The primary source of injury from direct impacts is the force resulting from the bulk acceleration of the head.

In contrast, a blast wave squeezes the skull, creating pressures as large as an injury-inducing impact and pressure gradients in the brain that are much larger.

This occurs even when the bulk head accelerations induced by a blast wave are much smaller than from a direct impact.

“The blast wave sweeps over the skull like a rolling pin going over dough,” said King, LLNL co-principal investigator.

Although the simulations show that the skull is deformed only about 50 microns, “this is large enough to generate potentially damaging loads in the brain,” according to Moss.

“The possibility that blasts may contribute to traumatic brain injury has implications for injury diagnosis and improved armor design,” he added. (ANI)

Brit car smashes century-old speed record by clocking 225 kms per hour

London, August 26 (ANI): A British-built car has broken the land speed record for steam-powered cars for the first time in more than 100 years, after it achieved an average speed of 225 kilometres per hour.

According to a report in New Scientist, Charles Burnett III has reached speeds of 219 km/hr (136 mph) and 243 km/hr (151 mph) during two drives at California’s Edwards Air Force Base.

That smashes the previous official record of 204 km/hr (127 mph) set in 1906 by Fred Marriott of the US in a modified version of the then-popular steam car known as the Stanley Steamer.

Officials from motor sport’s governing body, the Federation Internationale de l’Automobile (FIA), are expected to ratify the new record shortly.

Burnett drove a 7.6-metre-long, 3-tonne car called “Inspiration” that grew out of a 1997 student project at Southampton University.

The car’s engine burns liquid petroleum gas to heat water in 12 suitcase-sized boilers, creating steam heated to 400 degrees Celsius.

The steam then drives a two-stage turbine that spins at 13,000 revolutions per minute to power its wheels.

The FIA requires two 1.6-km-long runs to be performed in opposite directions – to cancel out any effect from wind – within 60 minutes.

Inspiration made the first run on August 25 and turned around for the return run with just eight minutes to spare.

Before and after each timed run, it took 4 km to accelerate and another 4 km to slow down.

The record-setting drives came after several earlier attempts had been thwarted by electrical faults, valve problems, a storm and a tyre puncture the previous week.

But, the team is planning another run today, to try to get even closer to the car’s theoretical top speed of 274 km/hr (170 mph). (ANI)

Tone-deaf people lack an important neural pathway

Washington, Aug 19 (ANI): Researchers have found that the nerve fibres that link perception and motor regions of the brain are disconnected in tone-deaf people.

According to experts’ estimates, at least 10 percent of the population may be tone deaf – unable to sing in tune.

The new finding has pinpointed a particular brain circuit that is believed to be absent in these individuals.

“The anomaly suggests that tone-deafness may be a previously undetected neurological syndrome similar to other speech and language disorders, in which connections between perceptual and motor regions are impaired,” said Dr. Psyche Loui, of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Harvard Medical School, one of the study’s authors.

For the study, the researchers used an MRI-based technique called diffusion tensor imaging to examine connections between the right temporal and frontal lobes.

It is known that this region, a neural “highway” called the arcuate fasciculus, is involved in linking music and language perception with vocal production.

They took brain images of 20 people, half of whom had been identified as tone-deaf through listening tests.

The arcuate fasciculus was smaller in volume, and had a lower fibre count in the tone-deaf individuals.

Particularly, the superior branch of the arcuate fasciculus in the right hemisphere could not be detected in the tone-deaf individuals.

Thus, the researchers speculated that this could mean the branch is missing entirely, or is so abnormally deformed that it appears invisible to even the most advanced neuroimaging methods.

“The findings are clear. They show that the arcuate fasciculus, a structure long-known to join perceptual and motor areas, has reduced connectivity in individuals with tone deafness. Beyond improving our understanding of the anatomical underpinnings of tone-deafness, this study provides new insight into a person’s ability to detect pitch,” said Dr. Nina Kraus, at Northwestern University.

The findings add to previous work by the same researchers demonstrating that tone-deaf people could not consciously hear their own singing, and work by other researchers indicating abnormalities in brain regions that affect sound perception and production.

The study has been published in the latest issue of The Journal of Neuroscience. (ANI)

Indian-origin boffin offers potential new spinal muscular atrophy treatment

Washington, July 28 (ANI): A team of researchers led by Indian origin scientist has come up with a potential new treatment for spinal muscular atrophy, the second-leading cause of infant mortality in the world.

Ravindra Singh, associate professor in biomedical sciences at Iowa State University’s College of Veterinary Medicine said that more than 95 percent of the sufferers have a mutated or deleted gene called Survival Motor Neuron 1 (SMN1) that doesn’t correctly do its job of creating functional SMN proteins.

He suggested that replacing poor-performing gene with another gene could help treat the disease.

Humans need a certain level of SMN protein to ward off Spinal Muscular Atrophy.

When SMN1 fails to create functioning proteins, Spinal Muscular Atrophy is the result.

There is a gene already in humans that looks very much like SMN1, so much so that it’s called SMN2. The SMN2 gene doesn’t seem to serve any function that researchers can identify.

Singh has discovered a way of using SMN2 to produce the working SMN protein. When SMN2 makes enough SMN, it compensates for the mutated or malfunctioning SMN1 gene.

However, SMN2 doesn’t produce normal protein because of the presence of a specific intronic sequence in the gene or DNA.

To make SMN2 behave as SMN1, Singh has introduced a small antisense oligonucleotide that blocks this specific intronic sequence.

When the intronic sequence is blocked, SMN2 produces normal proteins and acts, in effect, like SMN1.

“The significance of our work is that we have this stuff called junk DNA in SMN2,” said Singh.

“We found that we could get SNM2 to behave as SMN1 by introducing a small oligonucleotide. It is a very simple experiment if you think about it,” he added.

The resulting proteins are normal just like a regular cell – free from Spinal Muscular Atrophy.

“Our cells are healthy and survive. From that point of view, this is a major achievement,” he added.

The study appears online in Landes Bioscience.(ANI)

3-D mapping breakthrough helps docs remove fist-sized tumour from a woman’s brain

Washington, July 15 (ANI): Experts at the University of Cincinnati (UC) have successfully removed a fist-sized tumour from the brain of an Indiana woman, using a technology that involves the fusion of four different types of images into a 3-D map of a patient’s brain.

An eight-member team from the Brain Tumor Center at the UC Neuroscience Institute carried out the operation at University Hospital.

“This marks the culmination of one of the most important developments in brain tumor surgery in the last 100 years,” says Dr. John Tew, a neurosurgeon with the Mayfield Clinic, professor of neurosurgery and clinical director of the UC Neuroscience Institute.

For the surgery, Tew and his team fused and installed the multiple brain scans into a surgical guidance computer, whose function is similar to a global positioning system.

They say that the technology revealed the tumour’s relationship to all of the functional centres, electrical pathways and arteries and veins in the patient’s brain, which is why they were able to map out a safe pathway to the tumour.

“This fusion of images is exciting in that it allows us to maximize resection (removal) of the tumour while preserving function for the patient,” says Dr. James Leach, an associate professor of neuroradiology at UC who performed the processing and fusion of images.

Since early 2007, specialists have used the fusion of three types of imaging as a guide to stereotactic surgery-Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) that creates detailed pictures of the body by detecting differences in magnetic signals between different types of tissues; functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) that creates a series of images that capture blood oxygen levels in parts of the brain that are responsible for movement, perception and cognition; and diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) that provides a map of critical white-matter tracts, which facilitate electrical connections between different parts of the brain.

Leach revealed that the latest work added the fusion of computed tomography angiography (CTA), which provides a map of blood vessels-arteries and veins.

“The 3T system allows us to image the functional areas of the brain using various language, motor and vision tasks with the patient in the MRI scanner. The addition of the DTI sequence allows the connections between these areas and other parts of the nervous system to be identified at the same time,” Leach says.

Tew said that the three-dimensional brain-mapping enabled his team to navigate a trajectory through the patient’s brain, and to remove 90 percent of the malignant tumour, an anaplastic astrocytoma, without harming the healthy brain tissue-including the deep nerve-fibre tracts-that surrounded it.

According to the researcher, the patient was talking normally right after surgery, and she was walking the halls and able to take a shower without assistance one day after surgery. he team sought to eradicate the remaining tumour by applying a course of 33 computer-guided, fractionated radiotherapy treatments as a first approach. (ANI)

History’s worst inventions revealed

London, July 14 (ANI): Exploding dogs, flying cars, and parachute suits are some of history’s worst inventions, according to a new book.

Authored by Eric Chaline, ‘History’s Worst Inventions’ describes some of the funniest and freakiest ideas that have gone awry.

Published by New Holland Publishers, the tome is priced at 10.99 pounds, reports the Sun.

Some of history’s worst inventions are:

Anti-tank dogs (1939-1945)

During World War Two the Russians faced the mechanical might of the German Army’s tanks, which made Soviet engineers to create canine mines or “anti-tank dogs”. The dogs, fitted with explosives, would be starved before battles and trained to search for food under vehicles, where they would explode.

But the biggest problem was the dogs often ran towards their own lines, blowing up tanks on their own side.

The Parachute Jacket (1912)

The “flying tailor” Franz Reichelt jumped from the Eiffel Tower to demonstrate his parachute overcoat. Huge crowds gathered to watch the magical event.

Sadly things didn’t go to plan, and he fell to his death.

The Flying Car (1930s)

Waldo Waterman created two Chitty Chitty Bang Bang-style flying cars between 1930-40. The American inventor’s 20ft-long Aerobile had a top air speed of 112mph and he flew it from California to Ohio.

It was never put into commercial production because of technical problems and flight regulations.

Wicker Chair Spaceship (1500)

A Chinese official named Wan Hoo dreamed up the idea of flying to the moon using 47 large rockets strapped to his wicker chair. For his first flight, he instructed his servants to light the rocket fuses ready for blast off. There was a huge explosion but when the smoke cleared Wan had disappeared.

Mythical tales told of him living in space but recent reconstructions show he was probably blown to bits.

Animal testes as cure for erectile dysfunction (19th Century)

Before testosterone was discovered, Mauritian-born Dr Charles-Edouard Brown-Sequard (1817-94) injected himself with his preparation made from the testes of guinea pigs and dogs.

He believed it would stave off old age and improve his potency, but his tests flopped.

The TWIKE (mid-1980s)

Short for two in a bike, the pedal-powered three-wheeler TWIKE looked like a kids’ toy. An updated Nineties version had an AC motor and could hit 53mph.

Despite sounding like a good idea, the Swiss firm behind the machine are said to have sold just 2,000 of their machines.

Betamax (1975)

Sony lost billions of pounds with their failed Betamax video format in 1975. It was blown out of business by the release of VHS a year later.

Sony’s 100 per cent share of the VCR market in 1975 shrunk to just 25 per cent by 1981 as a result. (ANI)

Alzheimer’s disease drug may treat traumatic brain injury too

Washington, July 13 (ANI): A class of drugs used for the treatment of Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) has been found to be effective in treating traumatic brain injury as well, according to researchers from Georgetown University Medical Center (GUMC).

The scientists have found that the destructive cellular pathways activated in AD are also triggered after traumatic brain injury, indicating that a new therapy could successfully treat both conditions.

Now, the researchers are all set to show that deactivating these pathways in part by using a class of AD drug, called gamma secretase inhibitor, could reduce loss of neurons in animal models of traumatic brain injury.

The drug also protected the animals against motor and cognitive deficits.

“The goal for both diseases is to prevent neuronal cell death, and this study suggests that one therapy could possibly work for both,” said the study’s lead author, neuroscientist Dr. Mark Burns.

Both disorders are associated with build-up of beta amyloid, a toxic brain peptide.

Burns says that build-up of beta amyloid occurs in a second wave of damage that follows immediate “necrotic” death of nerve cells after traumatic brain injury.

This secondary injury can last months, if not years, resulting in large holes within brain tissue.

Amyloid peptides are produced when a long brain protein known as the amyloid precursor protein (APP) is cut in two by the enzyme beta secretase, and then cut once again by a second enzyme known as gamma secretase.

Agents that inhibit the activity of gamma secretase are now being studied as treatment for Alzheimer’s disease.

In the study, researchers used mice that were either treated with DAPT, an experimental gamma secretase inhibitor, or mice which were “BACE knock-outs” -genetically altered in such a way that they could not produce beta secretase.

It was found that DAPT and BACE knockout mice had brain lesions that were as much as 70 percent smaller than control animals and they experienced minimal impairment.

Burns said that the findings further cement the connection between Alzheimer’s disease and traumatic brain injury.

In addition, the study showed that “modulation of beta and gamma secretase may provide novel therapeutic targets for the treatment of traumatic brain injury.”

The findings of the study will be presented at the Alzheimer’s Association 2009 International Conference on Alzheimer’s Disease. (ANI)

New discovery can help thwart Parkinson’s disease

Washington, July 8 (ANI): Scientists from King’s College London say that blocking the release of chemical glutamate in the brain may help prevent Parkinson’s disease.

Dr. Susan Duty said that one of the contributing factors to nerve cell death is an excess of the chemical glutamate in the motor control pathways in the brain.

An excess of this chemical changes the way these pathways operate, and makes movement even less well controlled.

She said that stimulating ‘trigger points’ responsible for the release of a chemical that can kill brain cells can help thwart Alzheimer’s.

“The way we hope to achieve this is by stimulating protein targets on the nerve cell called metabotropic glutamate receptors. Certain types of these receptors, when stimulated, are known to prevent release of glutamate in other brain regions,” said Duty.

“We, and others, have now taken these ideas into regions relevant to Parkinson’s disease in the hope of reversing both the clinical signs and cell death associated with this condition.

“We, and others, have now taken these ideas into regions relevant to Parkinson’s disease in the hope of reversing both the clinical signs and cell death associated with this condition,” she added.

Duty said that current drugs could only treat the symptoms but not the underlying cause of the disease.

“They provide relief of symptoms by replacing the chemical, dopamine, which the dying cells would normally secrete in order to maintain proper control of movement,” she said.

“However, they do little to combat the ongoing progressive cell death meaning that symptoms get worse, higher doses of drug are needed to control the worsening symptoms, the result being appearance of disabling side-effects such as involuntary flailing limb movements and painful twisting of joints.

“Given the disease is progressive in nature, the continued death of cells in the substantia nigra leads to gradual worsening of symptoms and decline in patients’ quality of life over time.

“Finding drugs that can provide protection or repair to the dying cells – as well as relieve the clinical signs of Parkinson’s – is therefore a key area of interest in this field,” she added.

The study was presented at The British Pharmacological Society’s Summer Meeting in Edinburgh. (ANI)

Single gene mutation behind catastrophic epilepsy

Washington, July 8 (ANI): Researchers at Baylor College of Medicine have found a mutation in a single gene to be responsible for catastrophic epilepsy – characterized by severe muscle spasms, persistent seizures, mental retardation and sometimes autism.

Dr. Jeffrey Noebels, professor of neurology, neuroscience and molecular and human genetics at BCM and director of the Blue Bird Circle Developmental Neurogenetics Laboratory at BCM, said that the team replicated the defect in mice, developing a mouse model of the disease that could help researchers figure out effective treatments for and new approaches to curing the disease.

“While many genes underlying various forms of childhood epilepsy have been identified in the past decade, most cause a disorder of ‘pure’ seizures,” said Noebels.

Why some children have a more complicated set of disorders beginning with major motor spasms in infancy followed by cognitive dysfunction and developmental disorders such as autism remained a mystery until the discovery by the BCM team that a mutation in only a single gene explains all four features of catastrophic epilepsy.

A gene known as Aristaless-related homeobox or ARX has a specific mutation called a triplet repeat, which means that a particular genetic (in this case, GCG) is repeated many times in the gene.

When the researchers duplicated this particular mutation in specially bred mice, the animals had motor spasm similar to those seen in human infants.

Recordings of their brain waves showed that they had several kinds of seizes, included absence epilepsy and general convulsion. They also had learning disabilities and were four times more likely to avoid contact with other mice than their normal counterparts.

This behaviour is similar to that seen in children with autism or similar disorders in the same spectrum.

“The new model is an essential tool to find a cure for the disorder,” said Noebels.

The study appears in the current issue of the Journal of Neuroscience. (ANI)

How practice improves zebra finch’s singing performance

Washington, July 7 (ANI): A study on zebra finches conducted by neuroscientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has shed some light on how practice improves performance.

The researchers say that studying the chirps of zebra finches helped them determine that as these tiny songbirds fine-tune their songs, their brains initially store improvements in one brain pathway, before transferring this learned information to the motor pathway for long-term storage.

They believe that their findings may further scientists’ understanding of the complicated circuitry of the basal ganglia, brain structures that play a key role in learning and habit formation in humans.

The basal ganglia are also linked to disorders like Parkinson’s disease, obsessive-compulsive disorder and drug addiction.

“Birds provide a great system to study the fundamental mechanisms of how the basal ganglia contributes to learning. Our results support the idea that the basal ganglia are the gateway through which newly acquired information affects our actions,” said senior author Michale Fee, an investigator in the McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT.

The researchers point out that young zebra finches learn to sing by mimicking their fathers, whose song contains multiple syllables in a particular sequence.

Like the babbling of human babies, young birds initially produce a disorganized stream of tones, but after practicing thousands of times they master the syllables and rhythms of their father’s song.

Studies conducted in the past have identified two distinct brain circuits that contribute to this behaviour in zebra flinches.

A motor pathway is responsible for producing the song, and a separate pathway is essential for learning to imitate the father. The learning pathway, called the anterior forebrain pathway (AFP), has similarities to basal ganglia circuits in humans.

“For this study, we wanted to know how these two pathways work together as the bird is learning. So we trained the birds to learn a new variation in their song and then we inactivated the AFP circuit to see how it was contributing to the learning,” said first author Aaron Andalman, a graduate student in Fee’s lab.

With a view to training the birds, the research team monitored their singing and delivered white noise whenever a bird sang a particular syllable at a lower pitch than usual.

“The bird hears this unexpected noise, thinks it made a ‘mistake’, and on future attempts gradually adjusts the pitch of that syllable upward to avoid repeating that error. Over many days we can train the bird to move the pitch of the syllable up and down the musical scale,” Fee said.

On a particular day, after four hours of training in which the birds learned to raise the pitch, the researchers temporarily inactivated the AFP with a drug. The pitch immediately slipped back to where it had been at the start of that day’s training session – suggesting that the recently learned changes were stored within the AFP.

The research group, however, observed that over the course of 24 hours, the brain had transferred the newly learned information from the AFP to the motor pathway. The motor pathway was storing all of the accumulated pitch changes from previous training sessions. (ANI)

Robotic grasshopper to help explore Mars’ rocky geography

London, July 6 (ANI): Scientists have come up with the first robotic grasshopper based on the spring mechanism the insect has to propel itself, which may help explore Mars’ rocky terrain.

The Jollbot was masterminded by Rhodri Armour, who spent a year building the robot with colleagues at the University of Bath.

The robot, which can jump and roll, enjoys an edge over other machines due to its ability to launch itself over obstacles.

The remote-controlled Jollbot runs on a motor connected to a battery pack and a series of springs around the circumference, which help it leap up to half a metre.

Weighing only one kilogram, it has been made from soft plastic, and borrows dynamics from insects when it bounces on landing.

Armour said: “I was inspired by the way insects like the grasshopper jump around in extremely rough environments. Even with their comparatively long legs, an insect’s small size limits the possibility of using its muscles to directly provide the contraction needed for take-off.”

The researcher added: “That means all insects and smaller jumping animals use some sort of spring mechanism to store muscle energy and release it when required. It’s a bit like a mechanical catapult – with a lengthy energy storage phase and rapid release.”

The boffin further revealed that the project was meant to be low-cost, adding: “Jollbot was always intended to be inexpensive and as such many could be sent on exploratory missions in place of a single conventional robot. This would allow for some of them to fail.”

Dr David Williams, director general of the British National Space Centre, said that the University of Bath’s research helped boost homegrown innovation in space exploration.

He added: “We wish the project all the best.” (ANI)

Parents cry foul over police gunning of their MBA son

Dehradun (Uttaranchal), July 4 (ANI): Parents of an MBA student who was allegedly shot dead by police in an encounter, are crying foul.

Twenty-two year-old Ranbir Singh’s parents said on Saturday that there son had no criminal background and his killing was a clear case of mistaken identity.

Singh was shot dead on Friday in the Ladpur jungles.

The state’s Principal Secretary (Home), Subhash Kumar, said that a magisterial inquiry has been ordered into the incident.

Senior Superintendent of Police (Dehradun) said Singh was riding a motor cycle along with two others and snatched the revolver of a constable when their two-wheeler was stopped during a checking of vehicles in view of president Pratibha Patil’s visit.

His inconsolable parents maintained his innocence and demanded that his criminal record be shown to them.

The police just killed him to get (gallantry) medals. And the police are threatening me now,” his father said.

Uttarakhand Inspector General of Police N A Ganapati said the three boys were asked to stop by G D Bhatt, a sub-inspector at Dalanwala area. When the police searched their bag, a weapon was found in it, he said, adding that the boys overpowered Bhatt, snatched his revolver and fled.

When the SI flashed a message over the wireless, the boys were intercepted at another place and there was an encounter in which Ranbir was killed, Ganapati said.(ANI)