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Burning bush plant promises low-cal vegetable oil, biofuels

May 21, 2010 By vani Leave a Comment

Washington, May 21 (ANI): New genetic discoveries from a shrub called the burning bush, known for its brilliant red fall foliage, could pave the way for new advances in biofuels and low-calorie food oils, found Michigan State University scientists.

New low-cost DNA sequencing technology applied to seeds of the species Euonymus alatus – a common ornamental planting – was crucial to identifying the gene responsible for its manufacture of a novel, high-quality oil.

However, despite its name, the burning bush is not a suitable oil crop.

Yet inserted into the mustard weed – well known to researchers as Arabidopsis and a cousin to commercial oilseed canola – the burning bush gene encodes an enzyme that produces a substantial yield of unusual compounds called acetyl glycerides, or acTAGs.

Related vegetable oils are the basis of the world’s oilseed industry for the food and biofuels markets, but the oil produced by the burning bush enzyme claims unique and valuable characteristics.

One is its lower viscosity, or thickness.

“The high viscosity of most plant oils prevents their direct use in diesel engines, so the oil must be converted to biodiesel. We demonstrated that acTAGs possess lower viscosity than regular plant oils. The lower viscosity acTAGs could therefore be useful as a direct-use biofuel for many diesel engines,” explained Timothy Durrett.

He said that its improved low-temperature characteristics could also make it suitable for diesel fuel.

And acTAGs boast lower calorie content than other vegetable oils,“thus they could be used as a reduced-calorie food oil substitute,” added Durrett.

The researchers now are working to improve the modified mustard weed seeds’ acTAGs yield and already report purity levels of up to 80 percent.

“It should now be possible to produce acetyl glycerides in transgenic oilseed crops or single cell production systems such as algae that are the focus of much current effort in biofuels research. With the basic genetics defined and thus one major technical risk greatly reduced, the way is open to produce and assess this novel oil in food and nonfood applications,” said Pollard.

The study was published in the latest issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. (ANI)

Filed Under: International News Tagged With: Burning Bush Plant, calorie content, Dna Sequencing, Durrett, Euonymus Alatus, Fall Foliage, Food Oils, Genetic Discoveries, Glycerides, Low Calorie Food, Michigan State University, Mustard Weed, Oil Crop, Oil Substitute, Oilseed Crops, Oilseed Industry, Plant Oils, Temperature Characteristics, university scientists, Weed Seeds

Novel technology helps in prostate cancer treatment

May 13, 2010 By vani Leave a Comment

Washington, May 13 (ANI): Queen”s University scientists have created a new way of performing lab tests that could improve the way doctors manage prostate cancer treatment.

It will allow them to identify with unprecedented accuracy losses of a gene called PTEN that is associated with an aggressive group of prostate cancers.

The improved Fluorescence In-Situ Hybridization (FISH) platform uses DNA probes to analyze the three-dimensional space cancer cells occupy in routine clinical microscopic analysis of tissue sections of tumors. It will provide a more accurate way of identifying PTEN loss in biopsies and tissue sections so doctors can better match the type and amount of treatment to the aggressiveness of a tumor.

“The idea is that this test could be used in new cases of prostate cancer to help decide which of the many options is best suited for more aggressive cancers ” says Jeremy Squire, who worked with a team of researchers in the Department of Pathology and Molecular Medicine. “The patient treatment from the get-go will be more appropriately planned.”

PTEN is found in the nucleus of cancer cells and is considered one of the most important cancer-causing tumor-suppressor genes. If there is loss in the PTEN, it can inhibit the patient”s ability to fight the cancer. It plays a critical role in a variety of cancers including prostate, breast, and lung cancers. (ANI)

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Poplars, just like humans, also feel stressed

May 7, 2010 By vani Leave a Comment

Washington, May 7 (ANI): Just like humans, trees too, feel stressed. And scientists have now claimed that hormone suppression could help common poplars— cottonwoods and aspens—deal with stress.

Trees’ stress can come from a lack of water or too much water, from scarcity of a needed nutrient, from pollution or a changing climate.

A new study led by Michigan Technological University scientists, has identified the molecular mechanism that Populus—the scientific name for common poplars—uses to adapt to changing soil conditions, as well as some of the genes that turn the process off or on.

And now they look forward to apply what they’ve learned to find ways to use biotechnology or selective breeding to modify the trees to make them more stress-tolerant.

“Our hope is that by understanding how this works, we can manipulate the system so the plants can adapt faster and better to stressful conditions,” explained Dr. Victor Busov.

The researchers analysed thousands of genes in the Populus genome, the only tree genome that has been completely sequenced.

They were searching for the mechanism that regulates the plant’s decision to grow tall or to spread its roots out in an extensive underground exploration system that can sample the soil near and far until it finds what the rest of the plant needs.

The key players turned out to be a family of hormones called gibberellins, referred to by the scientists as GAs.

“GAs’ role in root development is poorly understood and the role of GAs in lateral root formation is almost completely unknown,” said Busov.

Lateral roots are the tangle of tiny roots that branch out from the primary root of a plant.

”They are the sponges, the ones that go looking for nutrients, for water—the ones that do most of the work,” explained Busov.

The researchers found that GAs interact with other plant hormones such as auxin to tell the plant whether to concentrate on reaching for the sky or on building a bigger, better network of roots under ground.

“The GAs and auxin are definitely talking, molecularly,” said Busov.

Growing poplar seedlings mutated to make them GA-deficient, the scientists compared their root and stem growth to others that contained moderate amounts of GAs and a control group of wild-type plants with normal GAs.

They found that the more GAs, the more a plant’s stem flourished, but its roots remained spindly.

When GA production was shut down, either by using mutants that lacked the necessary genes or by silencing the genes that form the molecular on-off switch, the resulting plants looked dwarfed, but their lateral roots grew luxuriant and full.

Application of GA to the GA-deficient dwarf plants rapidly reversed the process. The plants grew tall, but their lateral root systems shrivelled.

“Clearly, lack of the hormone promotes growth below ground, while the hormone itself promotes growth above ground. This is a natural mechanism that we don’t know much about. It’s always a tradeoff between growth above ground and growth below ground. Normally there is a fine balance, and this balance is a little disturbed under stress,” said Busov.

The study has been published in a recent issue of the journal The Plant Cell. (ANI)

Filed Under: International News Tagged With: Aspens, auxin, changing climate, Cottonwoods, deal with stress, Exploration System, lack of water, Lateral Root Formation, Lateral Roots, michigan technological university, molecular mechanism, plant hormones, Root Development, Selective Breeding, Soil Conditions, sponges, stressful conditions, Tiny Roots, Underground Exploration, university scientists

Even pre-human ancestors cried while cutting onions

March 20, 2010 By vani Leave a Comment

Washington, Mar 20 (ANI): The body sensors that bring tears in your eyes when you’re cutting onions have been around for 500 million years, says a new study.

According to a report by Brandeis University scientists in Nature, whenever a person chokes on acrid cigarette smoke or feels like he/she is burning up from a mouthful of wasabi-laced sushi, the response is triggered by a primordial chemical sensor conserved across some 500 million years of animal evolution.

Such substances contain tissue-damaging and irritating chemicals. When you get a taste or waft of them, a protein found throughout your body is thought to sense these irritating chemicals and send signals to your nervous system. The result is pain, which results in the tears, reports Live Science.

In the new study, chemical-sensing protein, called TRAPA1, was found in flies. And, according to the boffins, the protein could date back millions of years to the common ancestor of all the varied creatures in the animal kingdom.

“While many aspects of other chemical senses like taste and smell have been independently invented multiple times over the course of animal evolution, the chemical sense that detects these reactive compounds is different,” said study author Paul Garrity, a biologist at Brandeis University in Waltham, Mass. “It uses a detector we have inherited in largely unaltered form from an organism that lived a half-billion years ago, an organism that is not only our ancestor, but the ancestor of every vertebrate and invertebrate alive today.”

Using a variety of bioinformatic methods (bioinformactics applies computer programs and statistic techniques to study biological data), Garrity and his colleagues reconstructed TRPA1”s family tree back some 700 million years.

They then used several computer programs to figure out how the proteins would relate to each other in terms of evolution.

“We discovered that a new branch split off the tree at least 500 million years ago, and that this new branch, the TRPA1 branch, appeared to have had all the features needed for chemical sensing even back then,” Garrity said. “Since that time, it appears that most animals, including humans, have maintained this same ancient system for detecting reactive chemicals.” (ANI)

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Computers ”understand women more than men”

March 5, 2010 By vani Leave a Comment

London, Mar 5 (ANI): Voice recognition computers find men harder to understand than women, Edinburgh University scientists have found.

In the study, researchers recorded phone calls and studied how much of conversations a recognition system could understand, and after analyses they discovered that computers failed to understand men”s speech because they make “umm” and “err” sounds more frequently.

The research also revealed that computers made mistakes with words which sound similar and can occur in similar contexts, such as “I saw him” or “I saw them”, reports The BBC.

Boffins said it was hard to design a computer that could understand so many different kinds of voices but this research should help improve it.

The study, a collaboration between the University of Edinburgh and Stanford University in the US, was published in the journal Speech Communication.

Dr Sharon Goldwater, of Edinburgh University”s school of informatics, who led the research, said: “Voices vary from one person to the next and it is challenging to design a computer system that can understand lots of different voices.

“We hope that by closely studying how people speak and how machines process this, we can help create better systems that will be simple and efficient for people to use.” (ANI)

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Metal catalysts in carbon nanotubes block critical signalling pathway in neurons

August 28, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, August 28 (ANI): In what may prove very useful in improving treatments for human neurological disorders, Brown University scientists have found out why carbon nanotubes tend to block a critical signalling pathway in neurons.

Writing about their findings in the journal Biomaterials, the researchers have revealed that it is not the tubes, but the metal catalysts used to form them, that are to blame.

They say that minute amounts of a metal called ‘yttrium’ may impede neuronal activity.

They add that the findings mean that carbon nanotubes without metal catalysts may be able to treat human neurological disorders, although other possible biological effects still need to be studied.

“It’s a problem we can fix. We can purify the nanotubes by removing the metals, so it’s a problem we can fix,” said Lorin Jakubek, a Ph.D. candidate in biomedical engineering and lead author of the paper.

Taking single-walled carbon nanotubes to the laboratory of Brown neuroscientist Diane Lipscombe, the research team zeroed in on ion channels located at the end of neurons’ axons.

These channels are gateways of sorts, driven by changes in the voltage across neurons’ membranes. When an electrical signal, known as an action potential, is triggered in neurons, these ion channels “open”, each designed to take in a certain ion.

One such ion channel passes only calcium, a protein that is critical for transmitter release and thus for neurons to communicate with each other.

In experiments using cloned calcium ion channels in embryonic kidney cells, the researchers found that nickel and yttrium, two metal catalysts used to form the single-walled carbon nanotubes, were interfering with the ion channel’s ability to absorb the calcium.

Lipscombe, who specializes in neuronal ion channels and is a corresponding author on the paper, pointed out that yttrium’s ionic radius is nearly identical to calcium’s, which is why it “gets stuck and prevents calcium from entering and passing through. It’s an ion pore blocker.”

The experiments showed that yttrium in trace amounts – less than 1 microgram per milliliter of water – may disrupt normal calcium signalling in neurons and other electrically active cells, an amount far lower than what had been thought to be safe levels.

With nickel, the amount needed to impede calcium signalling was 300 times higher.

“Yttrium is so potent that … a very low nanotube dose” would be needed to affect neuronal activity, said Robert Hurt, professor of engineering and a corresponding author on the paper.

Jakubek said she was surprised that the metals turned out to be the cause.

“Based on the literature, I thought it would be the nanotubes themselves,” she said. (ANI)

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‘Bullet fingerprinting’ technique improves recovery rate of prints

July 13, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, July 13 (ANI): A team of scientists has developed ‘Bullet fingerprinting’ technology, which is a simple but effective method to visualize fingerprints even after the print itself has been removed.

The technology has been developed by Dr John Bond, from Northamptonshire Police Scientific Support Unit and an Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Leicester’s Forensic Research Centre, in collaboration with University scientists.

Continuing work exploring this forensic technique in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Leicester is uncovering new ways of recovering fingerprints from metal surfaces.

Researcher Alex Goddard has uncovered a natural technique that he believes is so simple, which can explain why it has been overlooked until now.

The technique involves studying the chemical and physical interactions occurring between the metal and the fingerprint sweat deposit.

Using advanced surface imaging techniques, such as an Atomic Force Microscope, nanoscale observations of fingerprinted brass samples can identify optimum conditions to promote the natural enhancement of the fingerprint, vastly improving their recovery rate.

It has also proven that components of the sweat deposit survive washing and wiping of the surface.

According to Goddard, “Once a finger has touched the metal surface, a residue remains behind. This starts to react with the metal and an image of the fingerprint can be developed by use of elevated temperature and humidity, with the resultant image becoming a permanent feature on the surface of the metal.”

“Currently, fingerprint recovery from bullets is very low; less than 1 percent. This uses a natural process and even if it only leads to small increase in success rate, then that would be significant,” he said.

“Previous recovery methods include applying powder to the material which can actually damage the evidence,” said Goddard.

“This new technique promotes a naturally occurring process which does not involve adding anything to, or damaging, the evidence. Instead, it employs heat and humidity to promote the enhancement of the fingerprint image.

There are also indications that it could be used after other techniques have failed, perhaps as a last resort,” he added. (ANI)

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Hi-tech brain chip lets monkey move robotic arm by thought

July 13, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

London, July 13 (ANI): Fitting a monkey with a hi-tech brain chip, Pittsburgh University scientists in the US have been able to teach the non-human primate to move a complex robotic arm using mind control.

The researchers have revealed that the monkey involved in the study was able to operate the robot with such dexterity that it could reach out to grab, and turn, a handle.

According to them, the mechanical organ the monkey was taught to move using the power of thought had an arm, elbow, wrist, and simple hand.

The research team are so excited about the results of their latest animal study that they hope to start trials on paralysed patients within a year.

“What we’re trying to do is go to a very dextrous hand – where the functionality is very similar to the human hand. If we could help stroke patients there would be a huge market for this kind of device,” Sky News quoted meurobiologist Dr. Andy Schwartz as saying.

The researchers also hope that their work may provide them with a strategy to help patients who have been paralysed by spinal chord injuries or degenerative diseases of the nervous system.

They have revealed that the electrodes they implanted in the monkey’s motor cortex, the brain’s movement control centre, picked up pulses within individual neurones.

The signals were relayed to a computer that analysed their pattern and strength to gauge what the monkey was trying to do, and then translated them to alter the speed and direction of the robotic arm.

The researchers say that their system worked so quickly that whenever the arm overshot the monkey’s intended target, it would rapidly correct the movement.

“It’s pretty amazing because monkeys aren’t used to moving tools,” Dr. Schwartz said.

“We use them all the time. Imagine you’re moving your arm to get that piece of food. Conveying that to a monkey is pretty difficult, yet the monkey learns it fairly rapidly.

“As the days go by, you see the monkeys start using it as if it is part of their own body,” he added.

As an interesting finding, the research group observed that the monkey did not feel the electrodes in its brain, or appear to be distressed by the wires leading from a socket on its head. (ANI)

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Selenium enriched eggs developed in Coimbatore

July 8, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Coimbatore, July 8 (ANI): A poultry farm in Coimbatore has developed selenium-enriched eggs to counter selenium deficiencies.

The eggs are called ‘super eggs’, which are selenium rich and are capable of curing diseases like arthritis, cancer, diabetes and cardiovascular diseases. These diseases have a common root that is less selenium intake.

Considering this a private egg producer near Palladam has developed these peculiar eggs where hens in layer farms are fed with rich organic selenium fodder, which includes fish, maize and 14 other ingredients.

“We have developed a new kind of an egg called as selenium enriched eggs, which we are able to produce by feeding hens which you see behind, with special diet rich in selenium sources now, the selenium enriched egg not only gives (meets) about your daily selenium requirements. Also, it contains a number of other benefits as well,” said Balaji, proprietor of A Hi -Tech poultry.

According to a research in Scotland University, scientists have identified around 40 diseases related to selenium deficiency.

These eggs are graded and have printed dates on them so that consumers can come to know, how fresh they are. They are even packed nicely, so that it is convenient for consumers to carry them back home.

The poultry farm has a production capacity of five lakh eggs, which are supplied, to Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Karnataka. They also plan to export these eggs to Middle East and other European countries. By Jehovah.G (ANI)

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Cardiac drug research may get a boost from new way to detect nitroxyl

July 6, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, July 6 (ANI): Wake Forest University scientists have identified unique chemical markers for detecting the presence of a compound called nitroxyl in biological systems, an achievement that can boost cardiac drug research.

The researchers point out that nitroxyl-a cousin to the blood-vessel relaxing compound nitric oxide-has already been shown to strengthen canine heart beats in previous studies.

However, they add, research into its potential benefits for humans has been slowed by a lack of specific detection methods.

“I think this is a very powerful tool to help in the development of new drugs for congestive heart failure,” said S. Bruce King, a professor of chemistry at Wake Forest who leads the team that conducted the research.

The researchers say that nitroxyl can be generated from precursor chemicals under controlled conditions, but studying the molecule’s activity in cells is difficult because its constituent elements-nitrogen, oxygen and hydrogen-react so readily with other molecules.

King and colleagues used compounds that are not present in normal cell biology to produce a reaction that yields the identifying chemical markers.

While the researchers have established that the human body naturally produces nitric oxide, natural production of nitroxyl is suspected but has not been demonstrated.

King said that the new chemical markers could help answer that question, as well.

A research article on this study has been published online in the American Chemical Society’s journal Organic Letters. (ANI)

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Why we make social gaffes

July 4, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, July 4 (ANI): Always end up making one faux pas or another, even after trying your best not to make any social gaffe? Well, researchers have now found why it happens.

Harvard University scientists have claimed that the very act of trying to avoid saying or doing something can sometimes cause it to happen.

“When these things do happen we sort of smile and look the other way. The curious thing is it’s the desire not to do those things that seems to increase the likelihood of doing them,” Live Science quoted Daniel Wegner, a psychologist at the university, as saying.

Wegner has collected evidence that suggests many of the embarrassing moments are the result of miscommunications between conscious and unconscious mental processes.

He explained that the first line of defence in such situations is conscious, in which people intentionally try to avoid thinking about, say, an inappropriate sexual act.

And distracting oneself by thinking about other things is one way to avoid the thought.

The second part involves our unconscious minds, in which people try to distract themselves, while a covert search is underway, monitoring their heads for any inkling of that unwanted thought.

If it rears its ugly head, the unwanted thought gets flagged so their conscious minds can squash it.

But Wegner said that the unconscious control system is vulnerable to blips, particularly when people are stressed or have lots of things on their minds.

Such stressors can interfere with a person’s conscious effort to avoid a thought or action.

And thus, the unconscious mind that’s been looking for such a thought takes over and leads to a blunder.

“The conscious process of trying to do the right thing is hampered, and the unconscious process is free then to increase its sway over your behavior and mind,” said Wegner.

He advised: “You can avoid being in performance situations when you’re under mental load or stress. In addition, you could practice, practice, practice.”

By practicing a way of thinking or an action it becomes automatic (not a conscious effort), and so it is more immune to the brain lapses.

The study has been published in the latest issue of the journal Science. (ANI)

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Now, a simple device for early detection of viral infections

June 29, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, June 29 (ANI): Vanderbilt University scientists in the US have developed a respiratory virus detector that is sensitive enough to detect an infection at an early stage, takes only a few minutes to return a result, and is simple enough to be performed in a doctor’s clinic.

Biomedical engineer Frederick “Rick” Haselton and chemist David Wright are the brains behind this device.

Writing in the journal The Analyst, they say that their technique, which uses DNA hairpins attached to gold filaments, can detect the presence of respiratory syncytial virus (RSV)-a leading cause of respiratory infections in infants and young children-at substantially lower levels than the standard laboratory assay.

“We hope that our research will help us break out of the catch-22 that is holding back major advances in the treatment of respiratory viruses,” says Wright.

He points out that major pharmaceutical companies are not investing into the development of antiviral drugs for RSV and the other major respiratory viruses, as there is no way to detect the infections early enough for the drugs to work effectively without harmful side-effects.

“There are antiviral compounds out there – we have discovered some of them in my lab – that would work if we can detect the virus early enough, before there is too much virus in the system,” he says.

He further points out that the lack of a reliable early detection system adds to the growing problem of antibiotic resistance.

Given that the symptoms of respiratory infections caused by viral agents are nearly identical to those caused by bacteria, Wright says that antibiotics used to target bacteria are often incorrectly prescribed for viral infections.

The researcher further says that not only is this ineffective, but it also increases the number of antibiotic-resistant strains.

The available standard tests for RSV require doctors to send a mucous sample from a patient to a special laboratory, and by the time the results come, respiratory viruses often multiply and make it too late for antiviral drugs to work.

“(By contrast) our system could easily be packaged in a disposable device about the size of a ballpoint pen,” says Haselton.

The researchers also revealed that tests on the sensitivity of their system had shown that it could detect the presence of RSV virus particles at levels that are 200 times below the minimum detection level of the standard ELISA method.

That extreme sensitivity, combined with the basic simplicity of the approach, could make it “attractive for further development as a viral detection platform,” the scientists wrote in the Analyst article.

According to them, the next major step in the development process is to see how the device performs with real patient samples. (ANI)

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Better way to develop vaccine against flu virus identified

May 13, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, May 13 (ANI): By cashing-in on the interaction between a virus and antibodies that fight infection, Princeton University scientists may have discovered a better way to make a vaccine against the flu virus.

The researchers have said that by manipulating the multi-stage interactive process- called antibody interference-to advantage, it could be possible to design more powerful vaccines than exist today.

“We have proposed that antibody interference plays a major role in determining the effectiveness of the antibody response to a viral infection. And we believe that in order to get a more powerful vaccine, people are going to want one that minimizes this interference,” said Ned Wingreen, a professor of molecular biology.

When Ndifon and colleagues analysed data about viral structure, antibody types and the reactions between them produced by virology laboratories across the country, they noticed a confusing pattern.

They found that antibodies were often better at protecting against a slightly different virus, a close cousin, than against the virus that spurred their creation-a process known as cross-reactivity.

On a closer look, they found that a phenomenon known as antibody interference was at play-it arises when a virus prompts the creation of multiple types of antibodies.

As a result, during a viral attack, antibodies vie with each other to defend the body, and sometimes crowd each other out while they attempt to attach themselves to the surface of the virus.

But, strangely, antibodies that are actually less effective at protecting the body against a specific virus are also equally adept at attaching themselves to the virus, blocking the more effective antibodies from doing their job.

Thus, the scientists have suggested that if a way can be found to weaken the binding of the less effective antibodies, this might constitute a new approach to vaccine design.

The researchers claimed that the pattern of enhanced cross-reactivities could easily be attributed to viruses that differ only at the sites on their surfaces where the less effective antibodies bind.

Such variants would make ideal vaccine strains, guiding the immune system to produce two distinct types of antibodies: effective ones that are well matched to and good at binding to the infecting virus, and ineffective ones that are poorly matched to and bad at binding to the infecting virus, and consequently stay out of the way.

The findings have been described in the online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. (ANI)

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Pizza tossing art inspires next-gen micro motors

May 2, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, Apr 28 (ANI): The physics of the perfect pizza toss has been unlocked by Monash University scientists who will use it to design the next generation of micro motors thinner that a human hair.

Daniel (Kuang-Chen) Liu, a PhD student supervised by Associate Professor James Friend and Senior Lecturer Leslie Yeo, videotaped a professional pizza tosser at work.

The team from Monash’s Micro/Nanophysics Research Laboratory, then calculated how best to describe the way the dough travels through the air – including how much the dough rotates, how quickly it spins, its stability and the energy efficiency of the toss itself.

The result is a set of nonlinear differential equations that captures the art of pizza tossing.

“In brief, if you toss a pizza dough one toss at a time – that is, if you toss then catch – your hands should move in a helical fashion, like they are moving along a spiral, a curved line laid along a cylinder,” Associate Professor Friend said.

“If you are tossing the pizza continuously, not stopping to catch it and stop every time, then your hands should move in circles,” the expert added.

The model could help researchers to design the next generation of standing wave ultrasonic motors (SWUMs), which operate on similar principles as pizza tossing.

The tiny motors have the potential to be used for minimally invasive neuro-microsurgery. In these electric motors, the fixed component, the stator, is made to vibrate ultrasonically, and this causes the moveable part, the disc-like rotor, to be “tossed” – both rotated and lifted.

“The SWUM works exactly like a pizza chef tossing dough, with the hands representing the vibrating stator of the SWUM and the dough representing the rotor. The difference is only in the details: a chef tosses dough, about once a second, a few tens of centimetres into the air. A SWUM tosses the rotor a few million times a second into the air,” Associate Professor Friend said.

He said scientists around the world have been using trial and error to make variations of the SWUMs, and while they might have worked, there had not been a thorough understanding of the forces involved until now.

“Some of the maths are a bit tricky,” Dr Friend said.

“The most puzzling questions with SWUMs are answered in this study. We think that further investigation of the work will prove fruitful for the understanding and design of SWUMs,” the expert added. (ANI)

Filed Under: Science News Tagged With: energy efficiency, human hair, Kuang, leslie yeo, micro motors, microsurgery, monash university, nanophysics, nonlinear differential equations, perfect pizza, phd student, pizza chef, pizza dough, Pizza Tossing, Professor James, senior lecturer, standing wave, stator, tosser, ultrasonic motors, university scientists

People ignore speed limit while driving on gravel roads

April 12, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, Apr 12 (ANI): Instead of following speed limit criterions on various roads, people follow their own judgement to gauge how fast they should drive on gravel roads, according to a Kansas-based study.

For the research, Kansas State University scientists Sunanda Dissanayake, associate professor of civil engineering, and Litao Liu, graduate student in civil engineering, studied the actual speeds on Kansas gravel roads and the various factors involved.

“We found that people are driving at speeds based on their perceptions and existing conditions – regardless of the speed limit,” said Dissanayake.

By state law, gravel roads in Kansas have a speed limit of 55 mph and are not posted, though local governments are allowed to reduce the speed limit within their jurisdictions.

Dissanayake said the Kansas Department of Transportation wanted to know the better approach in setting speed limits on gravel roads.

Also, the study is important for county engineers who face complaints from county residents who ask for the speed limit to be lowered.

For the project, the researchers collected speed data on Kansas gravel roads and used automatic traffic counters to collect speed of drivers without their knowledge.

They monitored 41 sites, each for about one week and tried to find out if there was a difference between actual driving speeds and the speed limit.

The researchers also looked at various factors like the different types of gravel roads; the number of crashes on the gravel roads; the width of the roads; the amount of heavy vehicles and traffic parameters like volume.

Besides, the researchers sent surveys to residents living near gravel roads.

Dissanayake said the project only looked at straight sections of roadways and avoided curves, slopes, bridges and other factors that likely would affect the drivers’ speeds.

It was found that people drove faster when gravel roads were sandier and when they were wider.

The researchers also found that heavy vehicles drove faster than smaller vehicles.

However, when it came to speed limits and the actual speeds driven, the difference was not significant between 35 mph and 55 mph roads.

Dissanayake claimed that the study shows that people drive at a speed at which they are comfortable.

An additional factor, according to her is that people know gravel roads are not highly enforced by police.

From the drivers’ surveys, it was found that those who live next to gravel roads know what the speed limit is, and they drive at a speed at which they are comfortable.

The research will be presented at the Kansas Transportation Engineering Conference at K-State. (ANI)

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Nicotine may affect bodily processes more broadly than earlier thought

April 5, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, April 4 (ANI): Brown University scientists have found that nicotine is not only addictive, but it also has the ability to interfere with several cellular interactions in the body.

The researchers say that their findings may be helpful in developing better treatments for various diseases, considering that pharmaceutical companies rely on basic research to identify new cellular interactions that can serve as targets for potential new drugs.

Professor Edward Hawrot and his graduate students William Brucker and Joao Paulo set out to provide a more basic understanding of how nicotine affects the process of cell communication through the mammalian nervous system.

They looked specifically at the alpha-7 nicotinic acetylcholine receptor in mouse brain tissue, which is very similar to a receptor that exists in humans.

The researchers said that 55 proteins were found to interact with the alpha-7 nicotinic receptor, and that those connections were previously unknown.

“This is called a “nicotinic” receptor and we think of it as interacting with nicotine, but it likely has multiple functions in the brain,” Hawrot said.

“And in various, specific regions of the brain this same alpha-7 receptor may interact with different proteins inside neurons to do different things,” he added.

He revealed that one in particular – the G alpha protein – was among the most unexpected proteins to be identified in the study, as it is usually associated with a completely different class of receptors.

The researcher says that the importance of this finding can be understood from the fact that G alpha proteins are involved in many different biochemical and signalling processes throughout the brain and the rest of the body.

According to him, 40 percent of all G alpha proteins all currently used therapeutic drugs target a member of the large GPCR family of receptors.

Based on their observations, the researchers came to the conclusion that the alpha-7 receptors have a much broader role in the body than previously suspected, and that the newly identified associated proteins could also be affected when nicotine binds to the alpha-7 receptor.

Hawrot believes that his team’s work may lead to the development of new treatments to combat smoking addiction.

He even says that the new findings may have future implications for diseases like schizophrenia, as recent studies have suggested that some cases of this condition are linked with deletions where a block of genes, including the gene for the alpha-7 receptor, is missing.

For their research, Hawrot and his colleagues studied mice genetically engineered to lack the alpha-7 nicotinic acetylcholine receptor, and compared them with normal mice.

The findings of the study have been published in the Journal of Proteome Research. (ANI)

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Log on to www.alpha60.de/research/muc/ to read love poetry from world’s first computer

March 11, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

London, Mar 11 (ANI): The first task for the world’s earliest computer – the Manchester-built Mark One – was to compose romantic verse. And now, an expert has recreated the “love poetry generator” on the Internet.

After creating the Mark One’s small-scale prototype, the Baby Computer, in 1948, Manchester University scientists earned worldwide fame.

In 1952, one of the original team of scientists, Christopher Strachey, devised a quirky software programme by entering hundreds of romantic verbs and nouns into the new machine.

Mark One “Baby” used the database to create a stream of light-hearted verse.

Now, German academic David Ward has turned up a light-hearted love-poetry generator program written by Strachey to test the machine’s ability to randomly select information, reports The Telegraph.

Ward, a German computer ‘archaeologist’ unearthed the program while researching Strachey’s papers at the Bodelian Library, Oxford, and then spent three months creating his own version of the ‘software.’

His website allows visitors to generate their own random ‘poetry’.

Also, the expert has created a working replica of the One ‘Baby’ computer which will run the love letter programme for an exhibition in Germany. (ANI)

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: bodelian library, christopher strachey, exhibition in germany, first computer, generator program, german computer, information reports, love letter, love poetry, manchester university, nouns, poetry generator, random poetry, romantic verse, scale prototype, spent three, three months, university scientists, verbs, worldwide fame

New technique to make bacteria glow under light may help fight against breast cancer

March 8, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, March 8 (ANI): Michigan Technological University scientists have come up with a way to make a strain of E. coli glow under fluorescent light, a technique that may one day help track down all sorts of pathogens, and even prove beneficial in fight against breast cancer.

Associate Professor of Chemistry Haiying Liu, who led the research project, points out that E. coli bacteria are naturally found in animal intestines and are usually harmless, but when virulent strains contaminate food, they can cause serious illness and even death.

Liu’s trick takes advantage of E. coli’s affinity for the sugar mannose.

During the study, the research team attached mannose molecules to specially engineered fluorescent polymers, and stirred them into a container of water swimming with E. coli.

The researchers said that microscopic hairs on the bacteria, called pili, hooked onto the mannose molecules like Velcro, effectively coating the bacteria with the polymers.

They later shined white light onto E. coli colonies growing in the solution, and the bugs lit up like blue fireflies.

“They became very colorful and easy to see under a microscope,” said Liu.

The researcher says that this approach may help identify a wide array of pathogens by mixing and matching from a library of different sugars and polymers, which fluoresce different colours under different frequencies of light.

If blue means E. coli, they add, fuchsia may one day mean influenza.

Liu is adapting the technique to combat breast cancer also. In place of mannose, he plans to link the fluorescent polymers to a peptide that homes in on cancer cells.

He says that upon introduction to the vascular system, the polymers would travel through the body, stick to tumour cells, and then illuminated by a type of infrared light that shines through human tissue.

The researcher says that the glowing polymers would provide a beacon to pinpoint the location of the malignant cells, and allow surgeons to easily identify and remove malignant cells while minimizing damage to healthy tissue.

An article on the team’s work on E. coli has been published in the journal Chemistry. (ANI)

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Pride can foster chances of individual success

March 5, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Washington, March 5 (ANI): Considering pride to be the seventh deadly sin may not reflect pragmatism anymore, for Northeastern University scientists have found that pride has the potential to foster the likelihood of individual success.

The researchers have found that pride not only leads individuals to take on leadership roles in teams, but also fosters admiration, as opposed to scorn, from teammates.

“We found that pride is quite undeserving of its negative reputation,” said David DeSteno, associate professor of psychology and co-author of the study.

“Pride actually constitutes a functional social emotion with important implications for leadership and the building of social capital,” he added.

Woking in collaboration with lead author Lisa Williams, DeSteno designed an experiment including individual and group activities.

For the individual activities, certain participants were induced to feel proud. The participants next interacted cooperatively on a problem-solving task, and were asked to evaluate their partners’ leadership and likability.

The researchers observed that the participant who had received the pride induction took on a dominant role, and was perceived as the most “hands-on” during the activity.

They also found that the members of such participants’ team viewed them as more likable than the other participants.

“These are some of the first findings that show functional outcomes of pride within the context of actual social behaviour. Although when taken to extremes, pride can certainly be maladaptive, this research demonstrates the emotion’s potential for fostering successful interpersonal interaction,” said Williams.

The authors believe that these findings hold implications for successful management and team dynamics, especially in the context of organizational behaviour.

“Pride can play an integral role in enhancing team functioning by fostering confidence and admiration,” they note.

A research article describing the study has been published in the journal Psychological Science. (ANI)

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