Molecular decay of enamel-specific gene in toothless mammals supports theory of evolution

Biologists at the University of California, Riverside have found molecular decay of enamel-specific gene in toothless mammals, which provides fresh support for Charles Darwin's theory of evolution. The researchers were able to correlate the progressive loss of enamel in the fossil record with a simultaneous molecular decay of a gene, called the enamelin gene, which is involved in enamel formation in mammals. Enamel is the hardest substance in the vertebrate body, and most mammals have teeth capped with it. Examples exist, however, of mammals without mineralized teeth (e.g., baleen whales, anteaters, pangolins) and of mammals with teeth that lack enamel (e.g., sloths, aardvarks, and pygmy sperm whales). Further, the fossil record documents when enamel was lost in these lineages. "The fossil record is almost entirely limited to hard tissues such as bones and teeth," said Mark Springer, a professor of biology, who led the study. "Given this limitation, there are very few opportunities to examine the co-evolution of genes in the genome of living organisms and morphological features preserved in the fossil record," he added. In 2007, Springer, along with Robert Meredith and John Gatesy in the Department of Biology at UC Riverside, initiated a study of enamelless mammals in which the researchers focused on the enamelin gene. They predicted that these species would have copies of the gene that codes for the tooth-specific enamelin protein, but this gene would show evidence of molecular decay in these species. "Mammals without enamel are descended from ancestral forms that had teeth with enamel," Springer said. "We predicted that enamel-specific genes such as enamelin would show evidence in living organisms of molecular decay because these genes are vestigial and no longer necessary for survival," he added. Now, his lab has found evidence of such molecular "cavities" in the genomes of living organisms. Using modern gene sequencing technology, Meredith discovered mutations in the enamelin gene that disrupt how the enamelin protein is coded, resulting in obliteration of the genetic blueprint for the enamelin protein. Darwin argued that all organisms are descended from one or a few organisms and that natural selection drives evolutionary change. The fossil record demonstrates that the first mammals had teeth with enamel. Mammals without enamel therefore must have descended from mammals with enamel-covered teeth. "We could therefore predict that nonfunctional vestiges of the genes that code for enamel should be found in mammals that lack enamel," Springer said.

Short- and long-term memories require same gene, but in different brain circuits

Conducting experiments on fruit flies, a group of scientists have found that long-term and short-term memories are stored very differently because they depend upon the activity of a gene in different circuits of the brain. Assistant Professor Josh Dubnau, of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL), has ofund that both short- and long-term memories require the same gene, known as rutabaga, of which humans also have a similar version. He and his colleagues say that a rapidly occurring, short-lived trace in a group of neurons that make up a structure called the "gamma" lobe produces a short-term memory, while a slower, long-lived trace in the "alpha-beta" lobe fixes a long-term memory. During the study, the researchers placed flies in a training tube attached to an electric grid, and administered shocks through the grid right after a certain odour was piped into the tube. They observed that the flies with normal rutabaga genes learnt to associate the odour with the shock, and, if given a choice, buzzed away from the grid. On the other hand, the flies that carried a mutated version of rutabaga in their brains lacked both short- and long-term memory, did not learn the association, and failed to avoid the shocks. However, the researchers also found that total memory deficit did not occur when flies carried the mutated version in either the gamma or in the alpha-beta lobes. They said that restoring the normal rutabaga function in the gamma lobe caused the flies to regain short-term memory, but not long-term memory. Similarly, added the researchers, restoring the gene's function in the alpha-beta lobe alone restored long-term memory, but not short-term memory. "This ability to independently restore either short- or long-term memory depending on where rutabaga is expressed supports the idea that there are different anatomical and circuit requirements for different stages of memory," Dubnau said. His team will next try to determine how much cross talk, if any, is required between the two lobes for long-term memory to get consolidated, hoping that it may add to the progress that scientists have already made in treating memory deficits in humans with drugs aimed at molecular members of the rutabaga-signalling pathway to enhance its downstream effects. A research article describing the study has been published in the journal Current Biology.

Blind people may soon be using their tongues to 'see'

In a groundbreaking innovation, scientists have created an electronic device that may allow blind people to "see" using their tongues. The extraordinary technology works by taking pictures filmed by a tiny camera, and turns the information into electrical pulses, which can be felt on the tongue. Tests have shown that the nerves send messages to the brain, which turn these tingles back into pictures. The tool, called the BrainPort vision device, resembles a pair of sunglasses attached by cable to a plastic lollipop. Its users have revealed that they can make out shapes, and even read signs with fewer than 20 hours training only. The scientists behind this innovation say that learning to picture images felt on the tongue is similar to learning to ride a bike. The device, which collects visual data through a small digital video camera about 2.5cm in diameter, which sits in the middle of a pair of sunglasses worn by the user, could be available for sale later this year. The information is then transmitted to a hand-held control unit, which is about the size of a mobile phone. The unit converts the digital signal into electrical pulses and sends this to the tongue via the lollipop that sits on the tongue. The lollipop contains a grid of 600 electrodes, which pulsate according to how much light is in that area of the picture. The control unit allows users to zoom in and out and control light settings and electric shock intensity. "At first, I was amazed at what the device could do. One guy started to cry when he saw his first letter," News.com.au quoted William Seiple, research director at Lighthouse International, which has been testing it, as saying. Robert Beckman, president of US-based Wicab which is developing the BrainPort, said: "It enables blind people to gain perception of their surroundings, displayed on their tongue. They cannot necessarily read a book but they can read a sign." Beckman is hoping that the device would be used to improve people's mobility and safety.

'NanoPen' may revolutionise electronics sector, medical diagnostic tests

A team of scientists in California have announced the creation of a 'NanoPen' that can simplify the method of laying down patterns of nanoparticles-from wires to circuits-for making futuristic electronic devices, medical diagnostic tests, and other much-anticipated nanotech applications. Writing about their work in ACS' Nano Letters, Ming Wu and colleagues point out that researchers have already developed several different techniques for producing patterns of nanoparticles, which are barely 1/50,000th the width of a human hair. However, the researchers add, current techniques tend to be too complex and slow because they require bulky instrumentation and take minutes or even hours to complete. The researcher further point out that these techniques also require the use of very high temperatures to apply the nanostructures to their target surfaces. According to them, such limitations prevent widespread application of these techniques. They claim that their NanoPen can solve all these problems. The researchers have used the novel device in their lab to deposit various nanoparticles into specific patterns in the presence of relatively low light and temperature intensities. They say that the process, which requires the use of special "photoconductive" surfaces, takes only seconds to complete with their NanoPen. They further state that manufacturers can adjust the size and density of the patterns by adjusting the voltage, light intensity, and exposure time applied during the process.

'Telepathic' microchip can help paraplegics operate PCs, TV by thought

A British scientist has developed a "telepathic" microchip that can enable paraplegics to operate PCs and television by thought alone. Jon Spratley, 28, who works for Cornwall-based specialist engineering company 42 Technology, developed this chip while studying for a PhD at Birmingham University. He says that the chip takes advantage of the fact that even though paraplegics are unable to move their limbs, their brains still produce an electronic signal when they try. He adds that once implanted onto the surface of the brain, the chip captures this electronic "thought" and transmits it wirelessly to control a range of simple devices. He hopes that this chip may prove very help paraplegics, amputees, and those with motor neurone disease to operate light switches, PCs and even cars by the power of thought alone.pratley, from Stevenage, Hertfordshire, revealed that the main aim of his research was to "help patients communicate". "We are just trying to help people with severe communication problems or motor neurone disease - like Dr Stephen Hawking or Christopher Reeve," the Telegraph quoted him as saying. "What we have designed would allow them to control a computer with their thoughts - if they imagine their muscles moving that could flick a light switch for example," he added. Spratley, honoured with the MediMaton prize by the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, claims that implanting the chips will require minimal invasive surgery. Tests conducted in the laboratory have shown the technology to work, but human trials have not been conducted as yet.

Open-source camera may help reinvent digital photography

Stanford scientists may revolutionize digital photography with the aid of an open-source digital camera, which will give programmers around the world the chance to create software that will teach cameras new tricks. Marc Levoy, professor of Computer Science and of Electrical Engineering, says if the technology catches on, camera performance will be no longer be limited by the software that comes pre-installed by the manufacturer. He has revealed that virtually all the features of "Frankencamera" - focus, exposure, shutter speed, flash, etc. - are at the command of software that can be created by inspired programmers anywhere. "The premise of the project is to build a camera that is open source," said Levoy. Graduate student Andrew Adams, who has helped design the prototype of the Stanford camera, imagines a future where consumers download applications to their open-platform cameras the way Apple applications are downloaded to iPhones today. The camera's operating software is expected to be publicly available in a year. Users will be able to continuously improve it, along the open-source model of the Linux operating system for computers or the Mozilla Firefox web browser. Programmers will have the freedom to experiment with new ways of tuning the camera's response to light and motion, adding their own algorithms to process the raw images in innovative ways. Levoy's plan is to develop and manufacture the "Frankencamera" as a platform that will first be available at minimal cost to fellow computational photography researchers. Within about a year, after the camera is developed to his satisfaction, Levoy hopes to have to have the funding and the arrangements in place for an outside manufacturer to produce them in quantity, ideally for less than 1,000 dollars.

Vast farming projects eroding earth's surface

Mammoth farming projects can erode the earth's surface at rates comparable to those of the world's largest rivers and glaciers. A new University of British Columbia (UBC) study offers stark evidence of how humans are reshaping the planet. It also finds that contrary to previous studies, rivers are as powerful as glaciers at eroding landscapes. 'Our initial goal was to investigate the scientific claim that rivers are less erosive than glaciers,' says Michele Koppes, UBC professor of geography and lead study author. 'We found that many of the areas currently experiencing the highest rates of erosion are being caused by climate change and human activity such as modern agriculture,' says Koppes, who conducted the study with David Montgomery of Washington University. The highest erosion rates have typically been seen at high altitudes where tectonic forces pit rising rock against rivers and glaciers, says Koppes. He created an updated database of erosion rates with Montgomery, for more than 900 rivers and glaciers worldwide, documented over the past decade with new geologic measuring techniques. In some cases, researchers found large-scale farming eroded lowland agricultural fields at rates comparable to glaciers and rivers in the most tectonically active mountain belts, says an UBC release. 'This study shows that humans are playing a significant role in speeding erosion in low lying areas,' says Koppes. 'These low-altitude areas do not have the same rate of tectonic uplift, so the land is being denuded at an unsustainable rate.' The study was published online in Nature Geoscience.

Internet turns 40 today

The 'Internet' turned 40 today. It may sound strange, but today it is quite impossible to think of world without the 'World Wide Web'. On Sept 2, 1969, around about 20 people gathered in a lab at the University of California, Los Angeles and two bulky computers were used to pass test data through a 15-foot gray cable. That was the beginning of the Internet. Now, 40 years later, we take a look at the Internet timeline. Key milestones in the development and growth of the Internet

1969: On September 2, two computers at University of California, Los Angeles, exchange meaningless data in first test of Arpanet, an experimental military network. The first connection between two sites UCLA and the Stanford Research Institute in Menlo Park, California takes place on October 29, though the network crashes after the first two letters of the word "logon." UC Santa Barbara and University of Utah later join.

1970: Arpanet gets first East Coast node, at Bolt, Beranek and Newman in Cambridge, Mass.

1972: Ray Tomlinson brings e-mail to the network, choosing "at" symbol as way to specify e-mail addresses belonging to other systems.

1973: Arpanet gets first international nodes, in England and Norway.

1974: Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn develop communications technique called TCP, allowing multiple networks to understand one another, creating a true Internet. Concept later splits into TCP/IP before formal adoption on January 1, 1983.

1983: Domain name system is proposed. Creation of suffixes such as ".com," ''.gov" and ".edu" comes a year later.

1988: One of the first Internet worms, Morris, cripples thousands of computers.

1989: Quantum Computer Services, now AOL, introduces America Online service for Macintosh and Apple II computers, beginning an expansion that would connect nearly 27 million Americans online by 2002.

1990: Tim Berners-Lee creates the World Wide Web while developing ways to control computers remotely at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research.

1993: Marc Andreessen and colleagues at University of Illinois create Mosaic, the first Web browser to combine graphics and text on a single page, opening the Web to the world with software that is easy to use.

1994: Andreessen and others on the Mosaic team form a company to develop the first commercial Web browser, Netscape, piquing the interest of Microsoft Corp. and other developers who would tap the Web's commerce potential. Two immigration lawyers introduce the world to spam, advertising their green card lottery services.

1995: Amazon.com Inc. opens its virtual doors.

1996: Passage of US law curbing pornography online. Although key provisions are later struck down as unconstitutional, one that remains protects online services from liability for their users' conduct, allowing information and misinformation to thrive.

1998: Google Inc. forms out of a project that began in Stanford dorm rooms. US government delegates oversight of domain name policies to Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or ICANN. Justice Department and 20 states sue Microsoft, accusing the maker of the ubiquitous Windows operating system of abusing its market power to thwart competition from Netscape and others.

1999: Napster popularizes music file-sharing and spawns successors that have permanently changed the recording industry. World Internet population surpasses 250 million.

2000: The dot-com boom of the 1990s becomes a bust as technology companies slide. Amazon.com, eBay and other sites are crippled in one of the first widespread uses of the denial-of-service attack, which floods a site with so much bogus traffic that legitimate users cannot visit.

2002: World Internet population surpasses 500 million.

2006: World Internet population surpasses 1 billion.

2008: World Internet population surpasses 1.5 billion. China's Internet population reaches 250 million, surpassing the United States as the world's largest. Netscape's developers pull the plug on the pioneer browser, though an offshoot, Firefox, remains strong. Major airlines intensify deployment of Internet service on flights.

Now, an intelligent system to help the elderly avoid forgetting everyday tasks

Scientists at the University of Granada (UGR) have announced the creation of a system that uses Artificial Intelligence techniques to help elderly people, or those with special needs, avoid forgetting certain everyday tasks. The researchers have revealed that their system uses sensors distributed in the environment to detect people's actions, and mobile devices to remind them. Suppose, say the researchers, an elderly lady who is about to go to bed goes into her room, sits down on the bed, takes off her slippers, and turns off the light. According to them, before she gets into bed, a small alarm will go off, and a mobile device will remind her that she has forgotten to take her tablets. "It is a prototype which, in a non-intrusive manner, facilitates the control of the activity of people with special needs and increases their independence," said Maria Ros Izquierdo, from the Higher Technical School of Computer Engineering of the UGR. The system recognizes the everyday actions of the users by means of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) labels. These labels are discreetly placed on the objects that the individuals touch most often, in such a way that, when they do so, a signal is sent to a computer or mobile device situated in the house itself or at an assistance centre some distance away. To compile a list of actions-such as remembering to take the keys or the mobile phone before leaving home-the activities of the people are assessed with Artificial Intelligence techniques. "It is not necessary to use cameras or microphones, and the devices which are used do not entail any technological complications for users, nor do they modify their daily routines," said Ros. To evaluate the novel system, the university team have also designed an intelligent space called 'Tagged World', which simulates the rooms of a house, with sensors embedded in the environment helping to recognize the behaviour of its occupants. The researchers monitored each user so as to obtain an individualized database. They later verified with a test the reliability of the system and the degree of intrusion felt by the participants. "The system does not modify the life of the users, but does positively modify that of the people who look after them," indicated Ros, who recalled that elderly people or those with special needs often reject the aid of others and demand more independence. The researcher believes that the new system may help to achieve this objective. A research article describing the new system has been published in the Expert Systems with Applications magazine.

ESA investigates new methods of mapping tropical forests from space

The European Space agency (ESA) is investigating new methods of mapping tropical forests from space. Tropical forests play an important role in the terrestrial carbon budget by absorbing huge amounts of carbon from the atmosphere through photosynthesis and sequestering it as biomass. These regions are, however, also subject to high rates of deforestation, which then releases the carbon back into the atmosphere. Tropical forest biomass and its distribution across the world are currently poorly known. Since tropical regions are often covered by clouds and therefore at times inaccessible to optical sensors, it is difficult to assess these carbon stocks from space. In addition, forests are highly complex in structure and the large trees and dense canopy greatly complicate the generation of biomass maps from satellite images. An airborne campaign, being carried out in South America, is showing how spaceborne radar could be an answer. Appropriately, how best to map tropical forest biomass from space using radar is the focus of ESA's Tropisar airborne campaign. The campaign is currently being carried out, in collaboration with French space agency CNES, in French Guiana, South America. By providing answers to this crucial question, the campaign is helping to address one of the key objectives of ESA's candidate Earth Explorer mission BIOMASS. The main objective of the BIOMASS mission is to provide consistent global estimates of forest biomass, its distribution and changes over time. In this manner, the mission is expected to greatly improve our knowledge of carbon stored in forests, and better quantify the carbon fluxes to and from the atmosphere from land. To reach this goal, the mission, if selected for implementation, would exploit the longest radar wavelength available to Earth observation - P-Band and its unique sensitivity to forest biomass. An airborne radar system called Sethi is central to the Tropisar campaign, and is flown on a Mystere-20 jet. According to Jerome Chave, a member of Ecologie des Forets de Guyane and expert in tropical forest biomass estimation, "French Guiana represents an ideal site for such a campaign because we can build on long-standing efforts in the region to measure forest properties with the help of the many different organisations here." In total, it is expected that approximately 3.5 million gigabytes of radar data will have been collected during the campaign. The last flight of the Tropisar campaign is planned for September 1. After this, the data will be processed by experts at ONERA in France and analysed by the Tropisar team.

The curious case of the 2,500-yr-old bizarre Nok people of Nigeria

A team of German archaeologists is looking for clues to explain the mysterious culture of the 2,500 years old Nok people in Nigeria. The Nok people left behind bizarre terracotta statues, broken pots, storage vessels, a clay lizard and fragments of clay faces with immense nostrils. The chipped head of a statue depicts an African man with a moustache, a fixed glare and hair piled high up on his head. He looks gloomy, almost sinister. Peter Breunig from the University of Frankfurt am Main runs an excavation near the Nigerian highlands of Jos, where the mysterious Nok culture once blossomed. Spanning more than 80,000 square kilometers (31,000 square miles), the tropical region they lived in was larger than Ireland. Its inhabitants lived in wooden huts and ate porridge made from pearl millet. Some women subjected themselves to bloody "scar ornaments" scratched into their breasts with knives. As archaeologists imagine it, smoke hung in the air as people fired masterly terracotta creations in kilns heated to 700 degrees Celsius (1,300 degrees Fahrenheit). The most astonishing fact about what Breunig calls "a society without writing" is its age. It dates from around 2,500 years ago, a time when a wave of change in belief systems washed over other continents. Nok sculptors were contemporaries of Solon, Buddha and the early Mayans. For years, people have believed that Africa was left behind at that time - but Breunig knows better. "Around 500 B.C., the population exploded," he said. People that had been living a Stone Age-like nomadic existence suddenly settled. Breunig speaks of a "cultural Big Bang." In their excavations, the team discovers shards of clay statues everywhere - on rock slopes, in ancient refuse pits and in open spaces. The largest of these impressive figures can stand up to one meter (3.3 feet) tall and resemble what might be kings or members of a social elite. Others wear horned helmets or carved-out gourds on their heads. A third of these figures are women. The clay figures are strangely uniform, almost as if they had been mass produced. The eyes are always triangular, the pupils are pierced, and the eyebrows are high and arched. They look sedate and immersed in their thoughts. Lightning-shaped tattoos adorn their cheeks.cientists are puzzled about who could have created this collection of curiosities. The German researchers have now used state-of-the-art analytical devices to examine this area. The project could finally shed some light on a phenomenon that is one of the biggest mysteries of early history.

3 bodies of 1,000-yr-old mysterious tribal group found in Alaska

Construction workers unearthed the remains of three humans in Kivalina, Alaska, who are believed to have been members of a mysterious tribal group from about 1,000 years ago. According to a report in The Arctic Sounder, the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium was doing excavation for Kivalina's new wastewater treatment plant when they came across some old bones, which an onsite archeologist determined to be animal bones. Construction resumed until more bones were found - this time human. Three bodies were found close to each other, two together and one in what could have been a wooden house. Archeologists won't be certain how old the Kivalina remains are until radiocarbon dating is done, but they believe the bodies were members of the Ipiutak - a group that lived in Alaska from about 500 to 900 A.D. Artifacts found with the bodies show the elaborate, stylized engravings on ivory and artistic motifs that were characteristic of the group. The discovery shows that Kivalina was occupied by humans about a thousand years longer than historians previously knew. It also sheds light on a mysterious group whose range and numbers are only just coming to light. Ipiutak are culturally distinct from the western Thule, who were whale hunters that are more clearly ancestors of the modern Inupiaq. Ipiutak hunted seals and smaller mammals on the coast but don't seem to have hunted whale. Caribou bones and the use of wood suggest that they also used areas in the Interior. How the Ipiutak would have sustained a village of hundreds on the resources of the area, without evidence of whaling, is a puzzle to historians and archeologists, as is where the Ipiutak went. "It seems to be a prehistoric population that was functioning quite well on both the Siberian and the Alaskan side up until 900 AD," said Peter Bowers, principal archeologist with Northern Land Use Research, which is studying the site. "Finding out what happened after that is one of the mysteries we're trying to solve and the reason this (discovery) is important," he added. As for the bones unearthed in Kivalina,city administrator Janet Mitchell said that the remains are being kept by the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium until the excavation was finished in case more bodies are found.

Indian defence establishment gears up to thwart cyber threat

Facing mounting attacks from the virtual world, the Indian defence establishment is now gearing up for cyber warfare. Officials working in South Block, where the Indian defence ministry is located, have been receiving mails from fake email identities (IDs) on a regular basis that is aimed at hacking into its computer systems. 'We regularly receive emails from fake IDs like from Chief of Army Staff Secretariat, director media, media cell etc. We know that it is from a fake ID so we do not open it lest it bugs our systems,' a senior Indian Army official working in the defence ministry official told IANS. He wished to remain anonymous as he was not authorised to speak to the media. Recently, mediapersons covering defence related matters received an email from the DPR (Defence Press Relations) ID outlining plans of the Pakistan Army against India. The defence ministry immediately took note of the email and swung into action. 'The email ID on Yahoo was used by the defence public relations office earlier. However, when an ID was created on gmail it was abandoned. Somebody apparently hacked the ID and sent the mail,' a defence ministry official said. 'The password of the abandoned email was immediately restored. The matter is currently being looked into,' the official added. There have been attempts in the past where Chinese hackers have broken into the computer network of the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA), prompting the government to fortify their systems. Earlier this year a number of computers were reportedly found to be compromised with a malicious spyware that had been sending copies of internal e-mail messages to a rogue address. During last year's Army Commanders' Conference it was decided to boost the 'cyber-security' of its information networks right down to the level of divisions, which are field formations with over 15,000 troops. Apart from creating cyber-security organisations down to the division-level to guard against cyber warfare and data thefts, the army top brass also underlined the urgent need for 'periodic cyber-security audits' by the Army Cyber Security Establishment. 'We have our cyber experts conducting cyber audit on our systems from time-to-time to check against possible bugs,' said an armed forces official. During the cyber audits, the experts check the password strength of the accounts. 'We are being advised to give an alpha-numeric password with characters in upper and lower case,' the official added. Generally the armed forces refrain from finding the sender's identity as it involves a long procedure of writing to the Google headquarters with proper authorisation. However, the Indian armed forces have also issued a set of 'do's and dont's' to contain the menace of cyber crime. 'We have been instructed to work on stand-alone computers with no internet connections. Moreover, we cannot keep any confidential data in our hard disks. Nobody is allowed to use a pen drive inside the South Block and the rule is strictly adhered to,' said another Indian Army official. Also the Indian Army had issued circular to its officials asking them not to post work-related information like ranks, place of posting etc on social networking sites like Orkut and Facebook. The circular had asked soldiers to remove such information from their networking profiles in case they had already posted it. The armed forces have also undertaken various measures to sensitise its officials on cyber usage.

Why is the sun hotter outside than inside?

The mystery of why temperatures in the sun's outer atmosphere soar to several million degrees, far hotter than temperatures near the sun's surface, has been solved. New observations made with instruments aboard Japan's Hinode satellite reveal the hotter outer atmosphere is due to nanoflares. Nanoflares are small, sudden bursts of heat and energy. 'They occur within tiny strands that are bundled together to form a magnetic tube called a coronal loop,' said James Klimchuk, an astrophysicist at the Goddard Space Flight Centre's Solar Physics Lab in Maryland. Coronal loops are the fundamental building blocks of the thin, translucent gas known as the sun's corona. Scientists previously thought steady heating explained the corona's million degree temperatures. Observations from the NASA-funded X-Ray Telescope (XRT) and Extreme-ultraviolet Imaging Spectrometer (EIS) instruments aboard Hinode reveal that ultra-hot plasma is widespread in solar active regions. The XRT measured plasma at 10 million degrees Kelvin, and the EIS measured plasma at five million degrees Kelvin; 273 degrees Kelvin equal zero degree Celsius. 'These temperatures can only be produced by impulsive energy bursts,' said Klimchuk, who presented the findings at the International Astronomical Union General Assembly meeting in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

The Cool Hand Of Technology

A young engineer slips a glove on his right hand and wiggles it around at the wrist, then curls in his fingers. A shiny, black robotic hand mounted upright on his desk whirs and clicks as it mirrors his "real" hand with rapid movements. Very cool. But ask any of the other engineers what they think this hand could be used for and they have one, enthusiastic response: "Everything." That's a problem for Shadow Robot, the tiny London company (2008 sales: 350,000 pounds or $577,000) that has been developing this robotic hand, considered one of the most dexterous in the world, for more than decade. It proudly counts NASA and the British defense department as clients, along with several universities. But the device has yet to be put to practical use or find itself a market, much less make a profit. Rich Walker, the company's 38-year-old managing director, wants to change that.

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Shadow Robot's hand is unique in its lifelike size and complexity. Its joints comprise 24 different degrees of freedom (or angles of independent movement) and are powered by "air muscles," which consist of tiny rubber tubes covered in a plastic mesh. When the tubes inflate, the mesh contracts, moving a tendon in a certain way. The technology is also easily compatible with other systems. Most other robotic hands, as developed by competitors like Barrett Technologies and Germany's Schunk Group, are simpler or larger. Barrett's hand has three fingers and is mainly used for manufacturing, while it also sells a robotic arm used for performing surgery. There are around 11 or 12 multinational companies in the world today selling 99% of the world's robotic arms, says Bill Townsend, the founder and CEO of Barrett. About 70% of them are used for making cars, and 30% are for other industrial manufacturing. But Shadow Robot's hand is so dexterous, Townsend notes, it is better suited to "emerging applications" that are more human friendly than his machines. "Emerging" describes it well. Over the course of a decade, Shadow Robot has sold about a dozen hands retailing at approximately 100,000 pounds ($165,830) each, but most of its clients have been so intrigued by its human-like qualities that they buy just to research it. NASA has been cagey about what it's doing with the hand, Walker says, but he knows the agency took it apart immediately after purchase. Britain's Ministry of Defense isn't doing such reverse surgery. It paid Shadow Robot 200,000 pounds ($331,660) to build and develop a robotic hand that could be integrated onto another robot used to defuse bombs, though it won't give the company much more information than that. This seems to be along the lines of where Walker, a Cambridge math graduate with dreadlocks down to his waist, wants to take the company: robots that can do things any human hand could, but shouldn't because it's too dangerous, including working with hazardous materials. He also imagines specialists using the hand to fix things from great distances--even many miles--with the help of a video camera. This is still years in the future, though. After a decade of struggling along with 250,000 pounds ($414,560) investment capital from founder Richard Greenhill and another director, Shadow Robot is currently at that difficult stage met by many high-tech companies, where the people behind it start to realize they cannot continue to just make cool-looking technology anymore--they have to make money too. Shadow Robot has never made a profit. Most years it has either booked a loss or broken even; it only started being funded by its own sales last year. Recently its accounts have started to show some promise. Shadow brought in revenues of 100,000 pounds ($164,880) in 2007, then 350,000 pounds ($577,089) in 2008 and is projecting sales of 700,000 pounds ($1.2 million) this year. A big chunk of that, or 200,000 pounds ($331,660), will come from the sale of a hand to Britain's Ministry of Defense, and another 150,000 pounds ($248,750) is the first installment of a four-year research contract with the European Union, via a lengthy grant application through Pierre et Marie Curie university in Paris. Shadow Robot is 50% owned by 66-year-old Greenhill, who was able to fund it until 2008 with money from a stock photography firm he started with his wife. The rest of the company is owned by its eight, full-time employees. Greenhill is the ultimate geek. He would happily continue tinkering with his robots for the remainder of his life and finds the notion of making money from them jarring and a "commercial pipe dream," according to Walker. One reason for his view may be the difficulty he had making money from robots in the past: he set up an educational robotics company in the early 1980s, which quickly folded. For many years Greenhill's anti-commercial stance bothered Walker and the company's main board member, Nick Singer, a banjo-playing design engineer who took care of about a third of Shadow's funding in the 1990s. After a number of heated discussions--"We provided hours of entertainment," Walker says of himself and Greenhill--he and Singer finally confronted the founder last year. "Greenhill didn't want to run a business. Singer and I felt that a commercial approach would enable us to get the company off the rocks financially, and Greenhill agreed to step back." The company's advisors recommended that Walker take over. It was a stark change in roles. Walker had first met Greenhill when he was just 15 and attending a summer camp devoted to computers. He became something of a protégé for the older inventor, and went on to spend his summers working with Greenhill and his small team of robot enthusiasts out of the attic of the founder's home in Islington, North London. (The company transferred to a store front just 400 yards away in 1993 after Greenhill bought the building. It remains there to this day.) While Walker has pulled away from robotics designing and started managing the office and accounts, Greenhill also pulled away geographically - he spends much of his time in the English mountains of Cumbria, hiking in remote areas with no mobile phone access. Occasionally he lends his advice to the company on research. This may be a good thing if Shadow is to succeed. "Richard is a visionary," says Walker. "And his long-term goal is building humanoid robots that will do everything." But while the protégé likes that long-term goal too, he wants to add "shorter goals and road maps and plans." With Greenhill having come up with the new ideas to prove people wrong, Walker wants to avoid reinventing the wheel. Whereas the founder avoided books, his energetic successor walks out of the library with 12 of them, all about business and marketing. "A few years ago we were focused inwards and assuming that people would find out about us. We thought that if you built a better mousetrap the world would beat a path to your door." Now Walker, a lover of metaphors, is the one knocking on doors and picking up the phone to companies or people he reads about in trade magazines. He tried hiring sales people, but found that research departments were put off by their pitches, so he stopped. Now Walker takes care of much of the selling himself, as well as of the grant applications; for three months out of the year he spends 75% of his time applying for grants. He's learned to spend as much of the rest of his time attending trade fairs, meeting potential customers, or reminding an engineer to drop a line to someone who could find their robotic hand useful. It's how they got that Ministry of Defense contract. "You sow bread on the water and eventually something bites." With the company now refocused, Walker is trying to find other markets to tap besides defense. The Defense gig has the potential to become much bigger, but until that is confirmed he's sniffing around in biomedicine, nuclear energy and hazardous waste. Gaining traction in those markets has been difficult, but Walker at least knows that Shadow Hand is a product that could one day minimize risk to humans, in war zones or with hazardous materials. More importantly, he's caught on to the basic principle behind running a business: "If you don't have somebody that's interested in what you're doing, there's not a lot of point doing it."

Can video games boost memory, thinking skills in the elderly

Whether video games can boost memory and thinking skills in the elderly is being investigated as part of a new study, funded by the National Science Foundation in the US. Having received a 1.2million-dollar grant for the study as part of the federal stimulus package, researchers at North Carolina State University and the Georgia Institute of Technology now hope that their findings will eventually pave the way for a prototype video game that will be helpful in boosting thinking skills among old people. The researchers have revealed that their research will run in two phases. In phase one, they will ascertain whether certain qualities that can be found in video games result in improved cognitive functioning in older adults. Cognitive functioning refers to memory, problem-solving, critical thinking and other mental skills. Dr. Anne McLaughlin, assistant professor of Psychology at NC State and the principal investigator (PI) for the grant, explains that the first phase asks: "What qualities does a game need to contain to improve cognition? We want to determine the components an effective game should have." The second phase will begin after the researchers have determined which qualities result in the most significant improvements, and it will focus on the development of a set of guidelines that can be used to design a new class of video game for older adults, as well as a prototype video game that follows those guidelines. McLaughlin says previous research suggests three qualities in video games may foster improved cognitive functioning: attentional demand, novelty and social interaction. Attentional demand is the degree to which an individual has to focus attention on a task in order to complete it successfully. Novelty, or exposure to a task one has not encountered before, "may also be relevant," McLaughlin says, "because existing research shows that novelty is a catalyst for learning." According to McLaughlin, social interaction should also encourage players to devote more attention and effort to the game. The researchers have revealed that they will test the cognitive functioning of participants, men and women 65 years old and older to establish a baseline, and then have participants play BOOM BLOX or BOOM BLOX(tm) Bash Party, Wii(tm) video games developed by Electronic Arts, before testing the participants' cognitive functioning again. BOOM BLOX and BOOM BLOX Bash Party are games in which novelty, attentional demand and social interaction may be manipulated by the researchers. "For example, if we find that novelty and attentional demand improve cognition, we'll then develop a game that focuses on that," McLaughlin says. Co-principal investigator Dr. Jason Allaire, an assistant professor of psychology at NC State, believes that a game that highlights the qualities that seemed to have the greatest impact on cognitive functioning "will allow us to see if we can get greater benefits that might transfer to real-world outcomes such as remembering to take medication." McLaughlin and Allaire will be working with Georgia Tech Research Scientist Maribeth Gandy to develop the prototype game based on their research findings.

Microsoft's Windows 7 to debut on Oct 22

Microsoft said Tuesday that it will debut its new operating system Oct 22 as it seeks to block a growing challenge from Google, Apple, and the open-source Linux operating system. The world's largest software company is releasing Windows 7 just 33 months after launching Windows Vista which has been widely panned for its demanding hardware requirements and slow response time. No price has been named for Windows 7 but the release date is seen as good news for the computer industry which will now be able to offer machines running the new software to customers for the crucial holiday season. Microsoft also said that it will offer upgrades to the new program to customers who bought Windows Vista from July onwards. Microsoft's announcement came as reports emerged that two Taiwanese computer makers Asus and Acer would both begin offering laptops running Google's Android operating system that was originally developed for mobile phones. Though Windows operating systems still run an estimated 90 percent of the world's personal computers, rival programs from Apple and from vendors of the open source Linux operating system are steadily growing in prominence.

World's smallest laser unveiled

The world's smallest laser, contained in a silica sphere just 44 nanometres across, and about 10 times smaller than the wavelength of light, has been unveiled. According to a report in Nature News, the laser has been named as the 'spaser'. Whereas a laser amplifies light, using a mirrored cavity to intensify it, a spaser amplifies surface plasmons - tiny oscillations in the density of free electrons on the surface of metals, which, in turn, produce light waves. The spaser could be used as a light source for scanning near-field optical microscopes, which can resolve details beyond the reach of standard light microscopy, and in nanolithography, to etch patterns much smaller than the width of a human hair. The device also opens the door to nanoscale circuits that could process information thousands of times faster than the microelectronic chips inside today's computers. "This work has utmost significance," said Mark Stockman of Georgia State University in Atlanta, who with David Bergman of Tel Aviv University in Israel proposed the spaser concept in 2003. "The spaser is the smallest possible quantum amplifier and generator of optical fields on the nanoscale - without it, nanoplasmonics is like microelectronics would have been without a transistor," he added. According to Nikolay Zheludev, a physicist at the Optoelectronics Research Centre at Southampton University, UK, "I can think of applications in tagging large biochemical assays and in security marking, where the spaser's narrow spectral output gives better tagging capacity than existing semiconductor quantum dot emitters." Such applications are not far off, according to the US team. But, Noginov thinks that the spaser's ability to generate coherent surface plasmons may be even more important than its uses as a nanolaser, and could herald a new generation of ultrafast nanoelectronics. So far, researchers have made plasmonic circuit elements that serve as wires, resistors and capacitors, but the spaser should enable the development of amplifiers and generators. For the spaser to have realistic applications in computing, however, researchers need to find a way to make it work electrically using a semiconductor, rather than using light to pump an organic dye. That would allow the spaser to be integrated with photonic nanocircuitry. According to Stockman, such devices are about a year away. "There is already a nanolaser with electrical pumping, and its extension to the spaser is very realistic," he said.

Scientists find evidence of high-speed planet smash-up

NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope has found evidence of a high-speed collision between two burgeoning planets around a young star, in the form of vaporized rock and massive plumes of hot lava in space. Astronomers say that two rocky bodies, one as least as big as our moon and the other at least as big as Mercury, slammed into each other within the last few thousand years or so. The impact destroyed the smaller body, vaporizing huge amounts of rock and flinging massive plumes of hot lava into space. Spitzer's infrared detectors were able to pick up the signatures of the vaporized rock, along with pieces of refrozen lava, called tektites. "This collision had to be huge and incredibly high-speed for rock to have been vaporized and melted," said Carey M. Lisse of the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, Laurel, Maryland. "This is a really rare and short-lived event, critical in the formation of Earth-like planets and moons. We're lucky to have witnessed one not long after it happened," he added. Lisse and his team observed a star called HD 172555, which is about 12 million years old and located about 100 light-years away in the far southern constellation Pavo, or the Peacock. The astronomers used an instrument on Spitzer, called a spectrograph, to break apart the star's light and look for fingerprints of chemicals, in what is called a spectrum. What they found was very strange. "I had never seen anything like this before. The spectrum was very unusual," said Lisse. After careful analysis, the researchers identified lots of amorphous silica, or essentially melted glass. Silica can be found on Earth in obsidian rocks and tektites. Obsidian is black, shiny volcanic glass. Tektites are hardened chunks of lava that are thought to form when meteorites hit Earth. Large quantities of orbiting silicon monoxide gas were also detected, created when much of the rock was vaporized. In addition, the astronomers found rocky rubble that was probably flung out from the planetary wreck. The mass of the dust and gas observed suggests the combined mass of the two charging bodies was more than twice that of our moon. Their speed must have been tremendous as well. The two bodies would have to have been traveling at a velocity relative to each other of at least 10 kilometers per second (about 22,400 miles per hour) before the collision.

Archaeologists discover oldest map in Western Europe

Researchers at the University of Zaragoza have unearthed what they believe is man's earliest map, dating from almost 14,000 years ago. The research team, led by archaeologist Pilar Utrilla, discovered a stone tablet in a cave in Abauntz in the Navarra region of northern Spain in 1993 but it has taken them 15 years to disentangle the mess of etched lines. The artefact found during excavation of the cave is believed to contain the earliest known representation of a landscape. Engravings on the stone, which measures less than seven inches by five inches, and is less than an inch thick, appear to depict mountains, meandering rivers and areas of good foraging and hunting. "We can say with certainty that it is a sketch, a map of the surrounding area," the Telegraph quoted Utrilla as saying. "Whoever made it sought to capture in stone the flow of the watercourses, the mountains outside the cave and the animals found in the area. "The landscape depicted corresponds exactly to the surrounding geography. Complete with herds of ibex marked on one of the mountains visible from the cave itself," she added. The research adds to further understanding of early modern human capacities of spatial awareness, planning and organised hunting. "We can't be sure what was intended in the making of the tablet but it was clearly important to those who populated the cave 13,660 years ago. Maybe it was to record areas rich in mushrooms, birds' eggs, or flint used for making tools," Utrilla said. According to the researchers, it may also have been used as a storytelling device or to plan a hunting expedition. "Nothing like this has been discovered elsewhere in western Europe," she said. The research has been published in the latest edition of the Journal of Human Evolution.