Three-Parent IVF Could Reduce Disease, But Stirs Debate

Human genetic material is stored at a laboratory in Munich,
Researchers say devastating birth defects caused by tiny genetic errors in a mother’s DNA could be prevented with a controversial procedure that would produce an embryo from the recombined DNA of a mother, a father and a second female donor. The in-vitro fertilization technique, known as 3-parent IVF, would correct the mother's defective egg with the healthy genetic material from a female donor. The experimental procedure is stirring a big debate in Britain, where medical researchers are hoping to win government approval for human trials.

Three-parent IVF involves producing embryos for implantation in the womb that contain the genetic material of three individuals - two women and a man. It is designed to correct mitochondrial diseases - inherited conditions passed down through the mother's DNA. Mitochondria are the biochemical power plants in every human cell. When they don't function properly, the result is a wide range of mostly neuromuscular problems, some of them devastating. But they also can affect the heart, and cause vision and hearing loss, seizures and serious digestive problems.

To correct the mitochondrial glitch, doctors say they would fertilize the mother’s defective egg with the father’s sperm, and then transfer their genetic material into a hollowed-out egg containing a female donor's healthy mitochondrial DNA. The corrected egg then would be implanted into the mother to carry to term, permanently eliminating the risk of mitochondrial disorders from the family line. That's the theory, anyway.

Elizabeth Chao is medical director of Ambry Genetics in California, which develops prenatal tests for genetic disorders.  

Chao said mitochondrial diseases are rare worldwide, with anywhere from one in 6,000 to one in 10,000 children born with the incurable genetic defect. If approved by regulators in Britain, though, where three-parent IVF is now being studied, Chao said the procedure could make a huge difference in the lives of affected families.

“A lot of these diseases are very devastating, and the options to date have been very few for them to prevent disease and to treat disease in their children," said Chao. "And I think this is a real breakthrough that could be remarkable to help a small number of individuals - when used appropriately."

But to David King, director of the British health watchdog group Human Genetics Alert, three-parent IVF is unnecessary and dangerous. He compares it to widely discredited schemes for social engineering.

“That opens the door then to starting to create so-called supposedly superior children with enhanced intelligence and appearance and so on.  And we may end up going down much the same road as the Nazis. But rather than it ends up being controlled by the state, it will be controlled by market forces,” said King.

Pointing to experiments in which cloned animals have shortened life spans or are bigger than normal, King also is concerned that the genetically engineered embryos could result in babies with unforeseen physical disabilities that would be passed down to future generations in the modified DNA.  

British regulators are expected to rule on the safety of the three-parent IVF procedure next year.

Mars Rover Preparing for First Major Drive

This image from NASA's Curiosity rover shows the open inlet where powered rock and soil samples will be funneled down for analysis. (NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS)
The Mars rover Curiosity will undergo a final round of mechanical checks Thursday before making its first lengthy drive across the surface of the Red Planet.

Engineers with the U.S. space agency NASA have kept Curiosity parked in one spot for the past week while testing its sophisticated instruments, including a high-resolution camera and a tool designed to analyze a Martian rock's chemical makeup.  Tests have also been run on Curiosity's 2.1-meter-long arm, which will scoop up dirt and rock for processing.

This image shows the Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) on NASA's Curiosity rover, with the Martian landscape in the background. Image was taken by Curiosity's Mast Camera, Sept. 8, 2012, UTC). (NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS)

​​​In addition to final tests on the robotic arm, engineers will also use Curiosity's camera to record video of the Martian moon Phobos passing in front of the sun.

Mission manager Jennifer Trosper told reporters Wednesday that Curiosity has "performed almost flawlessly" during the tests.  Trosper said the six-wheeled rover will start to "drive, drive, drive" towards a site dubbed Glenelg where three types of terrain intersect.  Scientists hope to find rock and soil suitable enough for Curiosity's first sample testing.

This photo, taken by the Curiosity rover, shows the layered geology of Mars.

​​Curiosity landed in the planet's Gale Crater last month to begin a two-year mission to determine if the Martian environment has ever been hospitable to life.  It has traveled on the Martian surface about 109 meters since then, with its ultimate destination Mount Sharp, a mountain rising from the floor of the crater.

With Instant-Pay Apps, Wallets Can Stay Home

A lot of people gave up carrying much cash a long time ago, since they knew “plastic” - a credit or debit card, or a store or public transit “smart card” - would be accepted just about everywhere.

But to hear tech companies tell it, plastic cards will be museum pieces as well before long.

Smartphone online payment apps could soon make wallets, and plastic credit cards, obsolete. (denharsh, Flickr Creative Commons)

​​
It’s all because young people, in particular, love their mobile devices so much - and despise the time-wasting process of digging out a credit card, presenting it to a clerk or swiping it on a card reader, waiting for the sale to be approved, then writing their signatures on a paper receipt or the reader.

It’s all so 20th Century.

So companies such as Google developed technology that allows customers to simply wave their phones against a reader. It instantly picks up the product and your account information, confirms the sale, and sends a receipt to your phone.  

The idea has come so far that technology inside some stores - or even on the street near one - can detect that your handheld phone or other device is in the area and send you quick messages, telling you about sales or special discounts.  

And all that’s getting a run from an even newer application, called “Card Case,” devised by the payments company Square. With it, you walk into a store, or pass a vendor on the street who has the right technology, and see something you’d like to buy.  

You simply give the salesperson your name, and he or she calls it up on a small screen. If the picture there matches you, the device instantly checks your balance and approves the sale, and the item is yours. No swiping. No signing. No receipt. The details of the transaction show up on your phone.

“In one case, I walked into Pinkie’s Bakery [in San Francisco] and asked for a cupcake,” tech writer Farhad Manjoo wrote in the online magazine Slate.  

“The cashier told me my total, and I said, ‘Put it on Farhad’s tab.’  She saw my name and photo on her iPad, tapped it, and I was done.  The experience was magical - almost creepy.”

“Bye-bye, Wallets,” wrote Time magazine when reviewing this trend last month. Its technology writer, Harry McCracken, went a whole week without carrying one.  

Or almost a whole week. At a baseball game, his “Google Wallet” payment app wouldn’t work. Since he had no physical wallet he was, he wrote, “reduced to begging [my] wife for beer.”

Foto te reja nga planeti Mars

Agjensia Hapsinore Amerikane (NASA) prezantoi fotografitë e saj të para me rezolucion të lartë të marra në Mars nga “Couriosity”, roboti i zbarkuar në Planetin e Kuq më parë gjatë muajit. 
Imazhet e mrekullueshme tregojnë peisazhe të larmishme dhe spektakolare, me një mal 4 500 metra të lartë në sfond.

Aktualisht, roboti “Couriosity” është duke dërguar çdo ditë imazhe dhe të dhëna të ndryshme shkencore nga planeti më i ngjashëm me Tokën brenda sistemit tonë diellor.



Megjithatë, do të duhet kohë që i gjithë planeti të eksplorohet, pasi roboti është në gjendje që të lëvizë vetëm disa qindra metra në ditë.

Misioni i NASA-s pritet të zgjasë dy vjet.



Aktualisht, po punohet për të realizuar zbarkimin e njeriut të parë në Mars, diçka që NASA programon të bëjë rreth vitit 2020.



Megjithatë, të dhëna nga Agjensia Hapsinore Ruse tregojnë se rusët mund të jenë më të përparuar në këtë objektiv.

Africa Seeks to Minimize Risks of Nuclear Medicine

DOUALA, Cameroon — A few years ago nuclear medicine was too expensive for both hospitals and patients in Africa.

Today, that’s changing.  Countries across the continent are racing to develop, promote and control the use of radiation-emitting substances in the detection and treatment of disease.

Angola is fleshing out plans to set up a nuclear medicine center as the number of cancer patients continues to grow. Sudan, Ghana and Cameroon already have such centers.

South Africa is a leader in the field, thanks to research conducted by its Nuclear Energy Corporation. It’s currently adapting apartheid-era nuclear technology, created for weaponry, to be used for medical purposes, such as imaging applications which look into the human body.

But experts warn there are still risks to be considered.

Professor Sietske Rubow, a nuclear medicine specialist at the University of Stellenbosch in South Africa, said nuclear medicine comes with its own set of problems, including possible damage to the skin and eyes and long-term harm to the environment.

"It’s lovely that we now have radiopharmacy and nuclear medicine in Africa, " she said.  "But we must make sure that the people who handle the radioactivity are not exposed and patients must get exactly the right dose.  Products and radiopharmaceuticals that we work with must meet all the requirements for medicine. So we have special containers and special areas in which we work. We must be very careful."

Professor Rubow issued the warning at a radiopharmacy conference in the Cameroonian capital, Yaoundé, in July.  It brought together experts in nuclear medicine and radiopharmacology from 30 African countries affiliated with the International Atomic Energy Agency, IAEA, the global nuclear energy watchdog. The IAEA has been supporting the expansion of medical technologies on the continent.

The talks covered practical ways of reducing the risks of nuclear medicine in hospitals and the environment. Participant also discussed the appropriate design and upgrading of facilities.

The number of nuclear medicine institutes in Africa is a tiny fraction of those in the U.S., which amounts to about 15 for every million people.

But the IAEA warns that institutions dealing with nuclear medicine often lack sufficient safety regulations and qualified experts and support staff. 

As a result, it says it promotes the safe and effective use of radiation therapy by helping to provide machines for hospital use and professional training and guidance on how to control radioactive materials.

Rene Kamgeng, an official with the National Agency for Radio-Protection in Cameroon, said although the challenges are huge, African countries are determined to address them.

"The stakes," he said, "are about seeking ways to reinforce capacities with regards to radiopharmaceutical products containing radioactive substances: how to prepare them, how to ensure compliance with quality standards, how to ensure protection, how to manage the products and to ensure mastery of the techniques of usage."

The first African conference on nuclear medicine was held in Sudan in 2008. It urged African governments to support nuclear medicine as a basic part of national programs to fight cancer, cardiac diseases and other metabolic disorders. Since then the IAEA has been sponsoring workshops to strengthen safeguards across the continent.

US Jury Orders Samsung to Pay Apple $1 Billion

Samsung Electronics' Galaxy S III (R) and Apple's iPhone 4S are displayed at a mobile phone shop in Seoul, South KoreaA U.S. jury has ruled that South Korea's Samsung Electronics infringed on several patents for mobile devices owned by the U.S. company Apple in the latest stage of a multibillion dollar global legal battle between the two technology powerhouses.

The jury in the state of California awarded Apple more than $1 billion in damages in its decision Friday. In a statement, an Apple spokeswoman said "the evidence showed that Samsung's copying went far deeper than we ever knew."

In return, Samsung said the verdict "should not be viewed as a win for Apple, but as a loss for the American consumer," and warned it will lead to less innovation and potentially higher prices.  Samsung is likely to appeal the verdict.

Earlier Friday, a South Korean court ruled that both Apple and Samsung infringed on the others' patents.

The Seoul court said that Apple infringed on two Samsung wireless patents, while Samsung violated one of Apple's design patents. It awarded small damages to each side and imposed a limited ban on the sale of each company's products in South Korea.

Industry analysts say the smartphone market is valued at more than $200 billion.

Astronaut Neil Armstrong dies aged 82

Sad news. Astronaut Neil Armstrong has died aged 82. The first man to step foot on the moon suffered complications following heart surgery three weeks ago, NBC News reports.

As well as uttering the famous line: "One step for man, one giant leap for mankind" in 1969, when he jumped off of the Apollo 11 spacecraft onto the surface of the moon, he said some other really great things, like: "My thumb blotted out the planet Earth. I didn't feel like a giant. I felt very, very small."

After the moon landing, when him and Buzz Aldrin spent three hours walking on its surface, he started teaching in the Aerospace Engineering department of the University of Cincinatti. He also worked on his own farm, became a businessman and continued to advise NASA.

Washington Co-op Capitalizes on Low Solar Costs

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Greg Watson has promoted solar power around the world for years. 

“I work in green [technology] for an international development bank, [and] I’m always saying, ‘Look, the costs are down, there are all these incentives, really it makes economic sense for you,'" he says, describing how he convinces others to go solar.

But this year the Washington, D.C., resident decided to take his own advice.

"It’s nice to be able to see that actually happening for me, too, in the United States,” he says.

For years the high cost of photovoltaic (PV) panels, which convert sunlight into electricity, meant that only wealthy Americans could afford them. But that cost has been falling steadily, and panel installations in the U.S. jumped 31 percent in 2011, many of them on middle-income households.

A Group Enterprise

In D.C., 17 neighborhood networks -- so-called solar cooperatives -- have sprung up over the past six years. Mike Barrette, who started one of these co-ops just down the street from the U.S. Capitol, says recent changes in the market have only worked to his advantage.

"We interviewed vendors [and] brought experts in," he says. "We started talking the language, learning the acronyms and all that. I put on a 4.4-kilowatt system in 2010, and since that original decision, the prices of solar have dropped significantly, about 30 or 40 percent."

That drop, combined with federal tax credits, rebates and and utility-cost savings, means that a typical residential solar-power system can pay for itself fairly quickly.

For D.C.resident Sean Carroll, it was these additional factors that finally persuaded him to take the solar plunge.

"For a while people expected it would take five, six, seven years to get a return on investment, [but] now, with these rebates and tax credits, it’s down to about a year or a year and a half," he says. "Once you see that you break even pretty quickly, it makes you say, 'Wow, of course I’m gonna do this'.”

Carroll and other co-op members have also saved money on their PV panels and installation costs by negotiating group discounts.

According to Watson, also a member of a D.C. solar co-op, his group's leader bargained for a deal with local solar companies, an increasingly common practice in some states. In Massachusetts, for example, Boston is just one of 17 municipalities whose leaders are negotiating discounts for all residents.

"She basically had talked to some of the providers in DC and said, 'If I can get five or ten houses together to purchase at the same time, could they get a better price?' he says.

Beyond negotiating group rates, solar-panel leasing arrangements are also bringing new consumers into the fray.

Sixteen companies currently lease panels to home owners, which means that even those who can’t afford a large down-payment are still able to go solar and see huge cuts in their monthly electrical bills.

"I think I have about 18 panels on my roof," says Monyna Dorsey, who began leasing the equipment in April. "Last year, my [monthly electrical] bill was running $375. In my very first month with [my provider], my bill was $29, [so] it has already paid for itself."

But whether the cost of going solar will continue to fall is uncertain. Prices are still being driven down by a global surplus of PV panels, and the silicon wafers at their core -- the very devices that make efficient energy production possible -- are cheaper than ever to make.

But surpluses can dry up, and so can government incentives and tax rebate programs.

While some critics believe the public shouldn’t be obligated to subsidize private solar-power installations, others say that every source of energy gets subsidized one way or another.

As for Dorsey, her main concern is spreading the word.   

"My neighbor next door, I told her about it, she’s ecstatic," she says. "She wanted to take me to dinner!"

Science Images of the Week

This enhanced-color image shows sand dunes trapped in an impact crater on Mars. (Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. of Arizona)

A Kelp Crab captured in a beach fishing net in Washington state during a Bainbridge Island survey which focused on the abundance, habitat use and food habits of larval forage fish. (Photo: Department of the Interior/USGS)

The space shuttle Enterprise shortly after the grand opening of the Space Shuttle Pavilion at the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum in New York. (Photo: NASA/Bill Ingalls)

Artist’s conception of a storm of comets around a star near our sun, called Eta Corvi. Evidence for this barrage comes from NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope. (Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech)

An aerial view of drought-affected Colorado farm lands, 83 miles east of Denver, Colorado on Saturday, July 21, 2012 (Photo: USDA)

This Infrared observation of the Orion nebula highlights fledgling stars hidden in gas and clouds. It was taken by NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope and the European Space Agency’s Herschel mission. (Photo: (NASA/ESA/JPL-Caltech/IRAM )

More than 300 feet off the ground, workers Jonathan Wiley and Eric Kuntzelman perform maintenance on a wind turbine at the National Wind Technology Center (NWTC) near Boulder, Colorado. (Photo: Dennis Schroeder/NREL)

Most of the Universe’s galaxies look like small, amorphous clouds of vapor. One of these galaxies is DDO 82, captured here in an image from the Hubble Space Telescope. (Photo: NASA/ESA)

A magnet girder (in the foreground) for the National Synchrotron Light Source II, a new state-of-the-art, medium-energy electron storage ring. Each girder is a 14-foot, 8-ton structure which holds multiple magnets in the NSLS-II accelerator ring. (Brookhaven National Laboratory/USDOE)

Artist’s conception of NASA’s Mars Odyssey spacecraft passing above Mars’ South Pole.  The spacecraft has been orbiting Mars since October 24, 2001. (Photo: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. of Arizona)

This instrument for exploring the cosmos and the quantum world was developed by researchers at JPL and Caltech. The new type of amplifier boosts electrical signals and can be used for everything from studying stars, galaxies and black holes, to exploring the quantum world and developing quantum computers. ( Photo: NASA/JPL-Caltech)

Google may be near record fine to settle FTC privacy charges

Google is close to paying a record settlement to resolve charges related to bypassing Apple user privacy settings, The Wall Street Journal reported this evening.
The Web giant is expected to pay $22.5 million to settle charges it sidestepped user privacy settings in Apple's Safari Web browser -- the largest penalty the U.S. Federal Trade Commission has ever levied against a single company, unidentified officials told the newspaper.
In a practice it has since ceased, Google used special code to get around Safari's privacy controls, allowing the company to track users on computers and mobile devices. Google has previously told CNET that the company used known functionality in Safari to provide features that Google users had enabled. Further, the advertising cookies generated did not collect personal information, Google added.
The FTC was reportedly looking into whether Google's action violated a 2011 settlement agreement between the agency and the company over privacy concerns related to the launch of Google Buzz. That settlement required Google to "obtain express affirmative consent" from users -- opt-in, in other words -- any time it proposes any "additional sharing" of certain types of user information.
Sanctions for violating the agreement could reach $16,000 a day.
That agreement, in which Google did not admit to any wrongdoing, also mandated regular reports on the company's privacy practices prepared by an independent professional for the next 20 years. Google would eventually close Buzz and replace it with another social-networking experiment called Google+
Google said it could not comment on the specifics of the investigation.
"The FTC is focused on a 2009 help center page published more than two years before our consent decree, and a year before Apple changed its cookie-handling policy. We have now changed that page and taken steps to remove the ad cookies, which collected no personal information, from Apple's browsers," a Google representative told CNET.
CNET also contacted the FTC for comment and will update this report when we learn more.
A Google representative previously defended the company's behavior as "[providing] features that signed-in Google users had enabled. However, the Safari browser contained functionality that then enabled other Google advertising cookies to be set on the browser."
Google has been involved in a number of privacy tussles over the years, the most recent of which involves a revision of its privacy policy to grant it explicit rights to "combine personal information" across multiple products and services.
Last month, a U.K. regulator announced it was reopening its investigation into how the Web giant's Street View program gathered personal data, saying that information provided in an earlier U.K. investigation appeared to have been contradicted by information provided to the Federal Communications Commission. Google responded by denying that it misled the U.K. regulator.

Lenovo IdeaPad U310

The ultrabook revolution of 2011 has become a deluge in 2012, which means one thing: lower prices. If you were hunting for a reasonably thin Windows laptop with good battery life at a reasonable cost, you couldn't have picked a better time. The Lenovo IdeaPad U310 is a perfect example: it's an update of sorts to the IdeaPad U300s, one of the first Windows ultrabooks we reviewed last fall that carried a MacBook Air-like $1,195 price tag. This time, the cost is a mere $799 -- but, with some compromises made along the way.
The IdeaPad U310 is a different machine: it's got a significantly heavier and thicker chassis and a standard magnetic platter-type mechanical hard drive instead of a solid-state drive (SSD). However, its internal specs are very good, with a third-gen 1.7GHz Intel Core i5-3317U processor, 4GB of RAM, a 500GB hard drive, and all the ports you'd need (Ethernet, USB 3.0, SD card reader, HDMI). It's still an ultrabook by definition, but not quite as sleek a product.
It's a pretty similar package to what the identically priced Sony Vaio T offers, although the Vaio T is lighter and has a better battery life. It's also similar to what the new Dell Inspiron 14z offers, although the Inspiron 14z also has dedicated AMD graphics.

 

So, where does that leave the IdeaPad U310? It's not a bad deal for what's under the hood, but the U310 doesn't feel as surprising as last year's U300s. Nor is it. It's really the smaller cousin of the IdeaPad U400: a MacBook-like Lenovo laptop with a good keyboard, a solid set of features, and a pleasing design that could make an excellent back-to-school computer. Students should look into the IdeaPad U310, especially if it's on sale. You might want to comparison-shop the growing landscape of affordable ultrabook-alikes at the time of purchase and see if you can do better, but the bottom line is this: be happy. Ultrabooks have larger hard drives (without SSD), and are cheaper than ever. That's a good thing.

The Samsung Galaxy S3 is innocent.

The Samsung Galaxy S3 is innocent.

Samsung says that its Galaxy S3 has been exonerated following an earlier report of it burning up.
According to the company, it hired a third-party organization, Fire Investigations U.K., to inspect the damaged device. That investigation found that the trouble occurred in June after an "energy source" was used to heat the device and cause the damage.
"The only way it was possible to produce damage similar to the damage recorded within the owner's damaged device was to place the devices or component parts within a domestic microwave," the investigation found, according to Samsung.
Last month, an Ireland-based forum poster published images on Boards.IE showing what appeared to be a Galaxy S3 with burns along the bottom. According to the poster, "dillo2k10," the device was sitting in a "car mount when suddenly a white flame sparks and a bang came out of the phone." The device, the forum poster said, "burned from the inside out" and melted its case. The phone kept working, but had lost its signal.

"The phone was destroyed and it slightly burned a piece of plastic on the inside of my car," the person wrote. "And they are refusing to give me a replacement; they had to send it off. Probably nothing I can do, but I'm really annoyed. That could have burned the side of my face or through my pocket and my leg, or set fire to my bed. It's very dangerous."
Samsung, which said at the time that it would investigate the issue, pointed back to the Boards.ie over the weekend to highlight an update from the forum poster "admitting that he was responsible for the damage."
"I would like to retract my original statement," the poster wrote on Saturday. "The damage to the phone was caused by another person, although they were attempting to recover the phone from water, this later caused the damage shown on the phone. It occurred due to a large amount of external energy and there was no fault with the phone. This was not a deliberate act but a stupid mistake."
Samsung's Galaxy S3 has quickly become one of the most sought-after smartphones. In her review of the Galaxy S3, CNET's Jessica Dolcourt said that the new handset "is an excellent, top-end phone" and awarded it an Editors' Choice with four stars out of a possible five.

Score one for Samsung Electronics

The Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1.

(Credit: Josh Miller/CNET)

Score one for Samsung Electronics.
After several legal defeats resulting in a product ban, Samsung finally got a court to side with it. The company said that the High Court of England and Wales ruled that its Galaxy Tab did not infringe upon Apple's tablet designs, and found 50 different recognizable traits.
The victory is a measure of relief after a few rough weeks in which a U.S. judge ordered a ban on the Galaxy Nexus, resulting in Google pulling it from the Google Play store before putting it back up Saturday. Samsung has filed an appeal and the ban has temporarily lifted.

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The moves are part of a broader legal skirmish between the two largest smartphone makers in the world, and part of Apple's legal campaign against Android and any company supporting the operating system. Apple and Samsung have lawsuits filed in different courts around the world, and are looking for a ban or decision so devastating that both companies will be forced to sit down and work out a resolution. So far, both sides have only seen minor victories.
Apple declined to comment on the ruling, but reiterated its claims about the similarities between its products and Samsung's lineup.
"This kind of blatant copying is wrong and, as we've said many times before, we need to protect Apple's intellectual property when companies steal our ideas," said an Apple representative.
Today's ruling affects three versions of the Samsung tablet: the Galaxy Tab 10.1, Galaxy Tab 8.9, and Galaxy Tab 7.7. Differences the court cited were the thickness of the devices, front and rear surface designs, and lack of physical buttons.
Samsung said it had requested this voluntary trial to get ahead of Apple's claims that Samsung's tablets copy the iPad and its design. Samsung said it welcomed today's ruling.

Protein Rallies Immune System Against Flu

Researchers have found that a synthetic protein, called EP67, instructs the body to respond against disease-causing organisms

A synthetic protein given shortly after exposure to the flu bug might keep you from getting sick. The protein acts by rallying the immune system against the invading virus more quickly than usual.

Researchers began taking a closer look at the man-made protein, called EP67, in 2004, after discovering that when combined with vaccines, it helped increase the body’s immune response against a variety of disease-causing microorganisms.  

Biologist Joy Phillips and colleagues at San Diego State University in California then wondered whether EP67 alone would boost the immune system.

In experiments with a strain of influenza A virus that infects mammals, including humans, Phillips narrowed down EP67’s mechanism. She says the protein doesn’t attack the virus. Instead, it stimulates the body's immune system, which acts as a sentry and instructs the body to produce specific immune responses against the disease-causing organism.

“It basically tells the immune system, ‘Look out. There’s a giant problem right here. You need to send in help,’” Phillips says.

Phillips led a team of researchers that infected mice with influenza A.  Rodents that received a dose of EP67 within 24 hours of exposure to the pathogen did not get nearly as sick as mice that were not treated with the protein.

The rodent's level of illness was measured by weight loss. The untreated mice lost 20 percent of their body weight and some of them died, compared to the other mice that lost only six percent of their weight. Most importantly, treated mice given a normally lethal dose of influenza survived.

Phillips says the results suggest that - if given within a day of exposure - EP67 can be effective against virtually any strain of virus, bacteria, or fungus and even some pathogens that haven’t yet been identified. The flu vaccine, for example, must exactly match the currently circulating strain in order to work.

“It’s designed to respond against everything," Phillips says, "and to save your life until your very specific immune system can come up and clean up the final parts of the threat.”

But there may be one virus EP67 can’t protect against - HIV. The problem, according to Phillips, is that the virus that causes AIDS cripples the body's immune system by infecting its most important components, the T cells. That is one of the reasons it has been so difficult for scientists to develop an effective vaccine against HIV.

Nailing Down the Elusive Higgs Boson

Illustration of two protons beams colliding in the Large Haldron Collider. Experiments similar to this one will be analyzed for Higgs boson particle production. (© 2011 CERN – Atlas collaboration)

Although it was the Fourth of July holiday in the United States, there were plenty of fireworks in Europe, where scientists announced they’d probably found the elusive Higgs boson, a particle believed to give all objects mass.
At  CERN headquarters in Geneva, two independent scientific teams – ATLAS and CMS – announced they’ve observed a new particle in the mass region around 125-126 GeV (gigaelectron volt).
But is this newly-discovered particle actually the previously-unseen Higgs boson first proposed in 1964 by British theoretical physicist Peter Higgs?
Well, they’re pretty sure it is, but can’t say with 100 percent  certainty.
“We observe, in our data, clear signs of a new particle at the level of 5 sigma, in the mass region around 126 GeV,” said ATLAS experiment spokesperson Fabiola Gianotti, “but a little more time is needed to prepare these results for publication.”

Peter Higgs is best known for his theory explaining the origin of mass of elementary particles in general and the Higgs Boson in particular. (Photo: Gert-Martin Greuel via Wikipedia Commons)

CERN describes “Five sigma” as the top end of a scale particle physicists use to describe the certainty of a discovery. One sigma means the results could be random fluctuations in the data, three sigma counts as an observation and a five-sigma result is a discovery.
“This is indeed a new particle. We know it must be a boson and it’s the heaviest boson ever found,” said CMS experiment spokesperson Joe Incandela. “The implications are very significant and it is precisely for this reason that we must be extremely diligent in all of our studies and cross-checks.”
The Higgs boson is believed to play a critical role in physics, as a building block of the universe.
The theoretical subatomic particle should help explain the origins of mass and why matter has mass. It is considered to be a key component of “The Standard Model of particle physics.”
“It’s hard not to get excited by these results,” said Sergio Bertolucci, CERN research director. “We stated last year that in 2012 we would either find a new Higgs-like particle or exclude the existence of the Standard Model Higgs. With all the necessary caution, it looks to me that we are at a branching point: the observation of this new particle indicates the path for the future towards a more detailed understanding of what we’re seeing in the data.”

The Large Hadron Collider at CERN (Photo: CERN)

The results presented this week in Geneva are based on data collected by CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the the world’s largest atom smasher, in 2011 and 2012.  More 2012 LHC data is being processed, so a complete analysis isn’t expected until around the end of July.
Next week, I talk with Dr. Pierre Savard,  an Atlas team member, who will give us an insider’s view of the search for most sought-after particle in modern science.
If you have any questions you’d like to ask Dr. Savard, please let me know through our comments section below.

my work in Albania

my work :)

Fondacioni Vodafone Albania dhe kompanite e tjera konkuruese

Programi më i ri i Fondacioneve lokale Vodafone dhe kompanive lokale Vodafone në mbarë botën për mbledhje fondesh. 

Fondacionet lokale Vodafone dhe kompanitë lokale Vodafone në mbarë botën do të bashkëveprojnë për të iniciuar një program që shërben për mbledhjen e fondeve nëpërmjet SMS-ve, të quajtur “Vodafone Red Alert”. Në sajë të “Red Alert”, punonjësit e Vodafone Albania dhe klientët Vodafone do të mund të kontribojnë nëpërmjet celularit në raste të fatkeqësive natyrore dhe emergjencave humanitare. Pjesë e këtij programi janë 21 vende ku operon Vodafone dhe Fondacionet lokale te saj. Ky program do të jetë funksional në të gjitha këto vende, që prej datës 1 prill 2010 dhe pa limit kohor. Pjesë e kesaj nisme është sigurisht edhe Shqipëria.

Programi “Vodafone Red Alert” do të jetë veprues në momentin që një situatë do të konsiderohet si fatkeqësi natyrore apo emergjence humanitare dhe për pasojë do të njoftohet "thirrje për kontribute në ndihmë të popullsisë së prekur" në rang kombëtar apo dhe ndërkombëtar. Në këto raste, klientët e Vodafone Albania dhe punonjësit e Vodafone Albania mund të dergojne SMS nga celulari i tyre në kodin e shkurtër 54444 për të dhënë kontributin individual. Në fund të çdo iniciative humanitare për mbledhje kontributesh me ane të thirrjes "Red Alert", Vodafone Albania do bëjë publike shumën e dhuruar nga SMS-të e dërguara, shumë e cila do te vihet ne dispozicion të Fondacionit Vodafone Albania për të kryer sa më shpejt dhe në mënyrën më efikase këtë dhurim.

Gjithashtu mesohet se disa komani jane duke konkuruar per te hyre ne tregun shqiptar, si pershembull, O2, 3G Three, Giffgaff, Orange, dhe T-mobile

Robotic Fish Attracts the Real Thing

Looks do matter to zebrafish, which were attracted to this robot fish because of its bright color and round female-like shape. (M.Porfiri/Polytechnic Institute of New York University)

Robotic fish could one day play an important role in steering schools of real fish away from aquatic dangers, such as invasive species, pollution and other hazards, according to experimental evidence released in a new study.

Mechanical engineer Maurizio Porfiri works with zebrafish, the so-called lab rats of the aquatic world. He and his colleagues at New York University’s Polytechnic Institute designed a remote controlled, motorized zebrafish robot.

Painted blue with bright yellow stripes, the robotic fish was shaped to resemble a female which was ready to mate.

It was then put into a 65-liter tank, separated from the school by a transparent piece of Plexiglas.

Real fish like look of 'robo-fish'

And, says, Porfiri, "It worked!"

Mechanical engineer Maurizio Porfir holds one of his "robofish" creations in his New York lab. (Polytechnic Institute of New York University)

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Mechanical engineer Maurizio Porfir holds one of his "robofish" creations in his New York lab. (Polytechnic Institute of New York University)

The zebrafish were attracted to the shape and color of the robot as well as the movement of its tail.

Although the real fish preferred each other to the robot, they preferred spending time beside the robot to staying next to an empty space.

Both individual and groups of fish preferred the company of the robot.

Porfiri says even its large size didn’t seem to matter.

However, the researchers did notice the zebrafish tended to ignore the robot in the dark and were scared away by the noise of its motor.

Leading real fish away from danger

The findings bring scientists a step closer to deploying autonomous, self-directing robots to monitor and control fish behavior.

“So, for example, there can be an oil spill and you may want to have like a "sheep dog" that can guide your fish away to a safer area," Porfiri says. "Or you may simply have a hydro-powered plant where there are turbine blades that are spinning and they may be very dangerous to animals. So you may want to have a sentinel [fish] sitting there [to] guide your animals away from those dangerous situations.”

While submersible robots already help scientists with surveillance, exploration and data monitoring, Porfiri says a number of challenges remain before robotic fish can jump into an aquatic environment to manage fish behavior.

“What we need to understand from a scientific point of view is how to change the behavior and the performance of the robot so that it can exert different actions on different fish and behave differently in the presence of other stimuli. There are other animals living there. There are other obstacles.”

Report: Israel, US Behind Iranian Spying Virus

 
This undated screen grab taken released by the Kaspersky Lab site shows code related to the computer virus known as Flame.
A U.S. cyber security expert says it is "pretty likely" the United States and Israel are behind a sophisticated computer virus that appears to have been used to gather intelligence about Iran's nuclear program.

Tofino Security chief technology officer Eric Byres said there are only a few countries in the world with the resources to develop something as advanced as the so-called Flame virus.

The Washington Post newspaper reports Israeli and U.S. security agencies used Flame to collect information about Iran's preparation for a cyber attack aimed at slowing its nuclear program.

Byres says the virus can be used in a variety of ways.

"The primary focus of Flame as it is currently configured appears to be stealing or collecting intelligence, and that can be everything from what we call autoCAD drawings about factories, to emails, to even things like voice conversations or video of what is happening in the office around the computer that is infected," said Byres.

An Iranian state-run media report says Communications and Technology Minister Reza Taqupour has lodged complaints with unspecified "international organizations" about alleged "state cyber-terrorism."  The report said Iranian officials blame detected computer viruses, including Flame, on Israel and "certain Western countries."

Earlier this month, The New York Times said U.S. President Barack Obama authorized cyber attacks on Natanz, Iran's main nuclear-enrichment facility.   The report said the so-called Stuxnet computer virus was used to hamper operations at the site.

Byres says analysis reports indicate the Flame virus may be more targeted than Stuxnet.

"I would say it's a Middle East-focused piece of malware," said Byres.  "There's also indications that it's designed to only run if it's in those time zones, that it's designed not to spread around the world like Stuxnet did and try and stay close to its drop area."

Western news reports say Flame came to light in May, after Iran detected cyberattacks against its oil industry.  Some reports indicate the virus may have been developed at least five years ago.

Iran has been engaged in talks with world powers about the nature of its nuclear program.  Tehran says its nuclear ambitions are peaceful, but the United Nations and some world powers have imposed sanctions on Tehran because of its uranium-enrichment activities.

Facebook acquires Face.com for undisclosed sum

One of Face.com's API examples

Facebook has acquired Face.com, confirming rumors that the companies were in talks.

Face.com announced the acquisition on its blog today, saying that its work with Facebook will offer it "more opportunities" to build products.

The Tel Aviv, Israel-based startup offers application programming interfaces (API) for third-party developers to incorporate Face.com's facial-recognition software into their applications. The company has released two Facebook applications: Photo Finder, which lets people find untagged pictures of themselves and their Facebook friends, and Photo Tagger, which lets people automatically bulk-tag photos on Facebook. Face.com launched its open API in 2010 to help third-party developers get into the mix.

"People who use Facebook enjoy sharing photos and memories with their friends, and Face.com's technology has helped to provide the best photo experience," a Facebook spokesperson told CNET today in an e-mailed statement. "This transaction simply brings a world-class team and a long-time technology vendor in house."

In today's blog post, Face.com specifically mentioned mobile as a "critical part of people's lives," but didn't say exactly what it might do at Facebook. That said, Face.com did note that Facebook will continue to support Face.com's developer community.

Facebook has been on a bit of a spending spree lately. After acquiring Instagram for $1 billion in April, the company picked up social-discovery service Glancee and social-gifting company Karma for undisclosed amounts.Last month, reports cropped up, suggestingFacebook and Face.com were in talks, though neither company confirmed that was the case. Israel-based publication Newsgeek said at the time that Facebook might pay between $80 million and $100 million for the facial-recognition company.