LG’s Smartphone arena seems to be augmenting day by day for good. Another 3G smartphone by LG, ‘KS20’, is on the verge of its debut at IFA 2007. This magnificent mobile gizmo is just 12.8mm thick and sports a 2.8-inch all-touch-screen display.

With its special dedicated software for browsing, one can leaf through the web with an ease. It comes with best features in the industry running ‘Windows Mobile 6.0’ and offering the highly efficient HSDPA network, 3.6Mbps of download speed, push email service, 2Megapixel camera, mp3 playback, Bluetooth 2.0, cursive script recognition and video calling functionality. LG would launch it in the last quarter of 2007 in Europe.

We all have heard about Spiderman since we were kids. Read about him in comic stories, watched movies and still wondered if it beith some fantasy or reality. For sure many of us when asked in our kinder days, what would you like to become when you grow up? Instantly, the answer would be Spiderman as he could do all kinda crazy stuff from climbing a vertical wall to spinning webs. My fantasy is about to turn into a reality soon and it won’t be far off when kids will have my name whenever in trouble. Wow, I’ll be a hero, and so can be you!

Thought’s breeding ground

Italian scientists have come up with an idea to design a suit based on the Spiderman concept wherein people could climb vertical walls just like spiders, insects, lizards and geckos. Previous research concluded that van der Waals forces – the weak attraction that molecules have for each other when they are brought very close together - are responsible for spiders’ amazing sticking power. It is the tiny hairs on spiders’ feet that attract to the molecules of surfaces, even smooth glass, and keep them steady.

Professor Nicola Pugno’s view

An engineer and physicist at Polytechnic of Turin, Italy, has formulated how adhesive forces can be strong enough to suspend a person’s full body weight against a wall or on a ceiling, while also being easy to detach!

Disadvantages

• Man’s muscles are different to those of a gecko. We would suffer great muscle fatigue if we try to stick to a wall for many hours.
• Size-effects on the adhesion strength, so adhesion strength would vary from person to person.
• Risk factor plays a vital role(boom to the insurance industry)
• Thieves turning into billionaires and law and order hitch.

Every innovation has its pros and cons and unlike others this to me seems no different. When one hears about such an innovation it always looks appealing but to accept and make it a part of our day-to-day activity is really worth giving a thought!

Mempile has joined the warriors indulged in the war of formats, which appeared to have reached the heights with Blu-ray and Mempile HD DVD’s 50 GB capacity and hopes get a leading position in next three years.

What’s so special? I won’t say much, but just think about a 1TB disc which will store for you about 212 DVD quality movies, 250,000 MP3 files, and 1,000,000 large Word documents for 50 years of life span.

Wow! Not a difficult task at all as prototypes with 800 GB storage capacity has already paved the way for this technology, which uses 200 layers of 5GB to create disc completely transparent to red-lasers. However, warriors are not going to relax and will fight to achieve the target of 5TB once 1TB hits the market.

Finally, South Korea based Hynix Semiconductor Inc. has launched the industry’s smallest 1 gigabyte mobile DRAM to use in mobile phones. The first commercially available 1 gigabyte DRAM memory is based on company’s 66 nm process technology.

Hynix’s Mobile DRAMs are designed to fulfill the memory requirements of feature rich portable applications, which demands high memory density, high throughput and very low power dissipation features in a small form factor package. The 1GB Mobile DRAM operates at a maximum clock speed of 200 MHz, which offers data troughput of up to 1.6 GBps with a 32-bit I/O.

Hynix’s Mobile DRAMs works under in worst conditions and consumes very low power. It also extends battery life in wide range of portable electronic devices. The 1 Gb Mobile DRAM is ‘One Chip Solution’ from Hynix, which combines SDRAM/DDR DRAM interfaces, and x16/x32 organizations on a single chip to provide the flexibility to meet with the specific needs of the customer.

The company is planning to start the mass production in the first quarter of 2008. The product would be available as ‘NAND flash Multi-Chip Package (NAND MCP)’, which combines DRAM and NAND flash in a single package. Now days Mobile DRAM is widely used in wireless and handheld devices like mobile phones, digital still and video cameras, PDAs, PMPs and GPS navigation systems.

Here is some good news for the iPhone users. They can now enjoy Skype service from their handsets. Germany-based software giant, Shape Services has just launched a new web application called ‘IM+ Skype’ that enables iPhone users to make Skype calls and send Skype messaging using Apple Safari browser.

The IM+ Skype application works in any network without WiFi. The iPhone users can access the IM+ Skype iPhone version by registering at skypeforiphone.com.

They can make free Skype to Skype calls and low cost PSTN calls to mobiles and landlines using SkypeOut credits.

The Shape Service IM+ application is also available for other smartphones including Windows Mobile, Blackberry devices, Palm, J2ME devices and Symbian phones.

The Shape Service IM+ enabled mobile devices can connect to MSN Live Messenger, AIM, Yahoo Messenger, Jabber, ICQ, Google Talk and Oracle IM.

Sculpture can be visually appealing in a number of ways, particularly when created from the hands of Lawrence Northey. He has created the most entertaining collection of robotic sculptures.

Northey has rightly been awarded the esteemed Spectrum & chelsey Awards in the field of best Three-Dimensional Art. Some of the pieces are evidently out for sale.

One piece worth mentioning is the robotic lamp designed by him, which is a limited edition item, made only on order. Each piece carries a price tag of $3000.

The lamp is shaped in polyester resin, which is a form of thermosetting plastic, with painted legs and arms made of aluminium. The space helmet is made of glass, whereas the inner helmet and raygun are lit with enduring LEDs. Its base is lit with two, 5W fluorescent lamps.

Science Daily — The pharmaceutical industry is going to the dogs -- and the cats -- as people in the United States and other countries devote more income to keeping beloved pets healthy and comfortable, according to a recent article. U. S. pet owners alone spent $18.5 billion last year on veterinary care, medications, and other non-food supplies, a figure expected to grow by more than 6 percent annually.

Written by C&EN associate editor Rachel A. Petkewich, the article describes how global pharmaceutical companies, best known for making medicines for humans, have animal health divisions that are devoting more effort to discovering and developing new kinds of medications for companion animals.

That research already has yielded a bounty of new medicines and vaccines to keep Fido and Fluffy healthy and comfortable. Petkewich cites, for instance, the first diet drugs for dogs; the first approved drug for vomiting in dogs, including vomiting due to motion sickness or cancer chemotherapy; and a new medication for the barking and other undesirable behavior of separation anxiety, which can occur when dogs are left home alone.

Just as drug companies are shifting some human health focus to geriatric medications, their animal health divisions are working on products to treat cancer, heart disease and other age-related conditions in companion animals. People also may benefit from the increase in research on animal health, with products originally developed for animals being repurposed for diseases in humans, Petkewich notes.

The article, "Big Pharma Chases Dogs and Cats: Products developed for companion animals boost bottom line and also may benefit human health too," is scheduled for the June 25 issue of Chemical & Engineering News.

Science Daily — The ancient gray wolves of Alaska became extinct some 12,000 years ago, and the wolves in Alaska today are not their descendents but a different subspecies, an international team of scientists reports in the July 3 print edition of the journal Current Biology.

A wolf in Yellowstone. (Credit: Barry O'Neill)

X-ray Images Help Scientists Explain Insect Gigantism

Recently, the scientists at the Argonne National Laboratory of US Dept. of Energy, used x-ray to explain the anatomy of giant insects. This was published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of science. The study was funded by the National science foundation.

During the Paleozoic era, some insects developed into giants as atmospheric oxygen levels reached record highs. However, as the level of oxygen diminished, the giant insects were slowly killed. The researchers believe that the gigantism is mainly caused by the respiratory mechanism. The humongous beetle species are the ones that were studied mostly.

The research team used a bunch of well defined xray images that were produced in the Advanced Photon Source(APS) labs of Midwestern and Arizona state University. The main goal of the team was to study the tracheal system, and how it is influenced when the body size increases. These folks believe that the tracheal system is where the answer lies to the question of gigantism. I think that the insect x-ray proved the hypothesis of the team.

The discoveries were very interesting. The bodies of the larger beetle species(Titaneus giganteus) were mostly used up by the tracheal tubes. I had no idea that tracheal tubes could be that big! No wonder, those bugs were huge. The main orifices were bottlenecks of the tracheal tubes. This study is a first step towards understanding the control factor of the insect body sizes.

A Golden Sales Pitch

By Julie J. Rehmeyer

Can mathematics sell blue jeans? One company is hoping so.

The ProportionofBlu is a Los Angeles–based vendor of blue jeans designed to incorporate the celebrated golden ratio. The golden ratio is approximately 1.618:1, and it's defined as the ratio a : b such that a/b = (a + b) / a. Many have claimed that the golden ratio has divine, mystical, or highly aesthetic properties.

The company says that the ratio was used to design details such as the curve of the front pocket, the proportions of the rear pocket, and the ratio of the hip stitching to the inseam of the jeans. "This ratio is found throughout nature and has been recognized as a fundamental component of all things that man has found aesthetically pleasing," says a ProportionofBlu press release.

 

 

The ProportionofBlu company says that its blue jeans are designed using the golden ratio. M.J. Philippe

 

The blue jeans may be attractive, but the golden ratio probably doesn't have much to do with that. There is little evidence to suggest that the golden ratio has any special aesthetic appeal.

Those who believe that it does usually cite an experiment from the 1860s showing that when asked which rectangle is the "most pleasing," people most often choose the "golden rectangle" whose sides represent the golden ratio. More recent and rigorous versions of the experiment have debunked that finding. In a 1966 experiment by H.R. Schiffman of Rutgers University, for example, participants said that the most pleasing rectangles were those with a length to width ratio of about 1.9, on average, rather than 1.618. And the relationship between a pleasing rectangle and a pleasing pair of jeans is less than obvious anyway.

 

 

Test yourself: Which of these rectangles is the most pleasing? (See note at bottom of article to find out which is the golden rectangle.) J. Rehmeyer

 

The company press release goes on to say, "Recognizing the inherently pleasing nature of things 'in the ratio,' man has employed the Golden Ratio throughout time in some of the most remarkable and inspiring achievements. These include the Parthenon in Greece, the ancient Pyramids in Egypt, da Vinci's Mona Lisa and Stradivarius' Violins."

When a myth is repeated over and over, it can begin to sound like the truth.

Most of these examples are inaccurate. The actual ratio of the width to the height of the Greek temple called the Parthenon is about 2.25:1, not 1.618:1. The Great Pyramid of Khufu has proportions nowhere near that of the golden ratio, despite claims to the contrary that seem to be based on a wildly inaccurate 1859 translation of the Greek historian Herodotus. And a golden rectangle drawn over the Mona Lisa does not frame her face.

 

 

Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa with a golden rectangle added. Queen's University

 

One of the four examples is accurate, however. Original drawings show that Antonio Stradivari placed the eyes of the f-holes of his violins at positions determined by the golden ratio. However, experts don't believe that this placement contributes to the high quality of the instruments (See SN: 6/30/07, p. 414).

I, too, was fooled by the myths, and to my regret had a hand in further perpetuating them. In the recent MathTrek article, "The Mathematical Lives of Plants", I repeated the often-stated claims that the ancient Greeks believed that the golden ratio has divine and mystical properties and that Leonardo da Vinci believed that the human form displays the golden ratio. Neither assertion is proven, and I have since corrected the error.

The ancient Greeks studied the golden ratio extensively, but there is no evidence that they considered it to have divine or mystical properties. Euclid's book, The Elements of Geometry, describes the golden ratio (which he called "division in extreme and mean ratio") in great detail, but Euclid focused only on its mathematical properties. He was interested in it primarily because the golden ratio is essential for constructing a pentagon using a straightedge and compass. Euclid uses the pentagon to construct the dodecahedron and the icosahedron.

 

 

In a five-pointed star, the lines divide one another in the golden ratio. In this drawing, the red line has the golden ratio to the yellow line, and the blue line has the golden ratio to the green one. Euclid used this fact to construct a pentagon using straightedge and compass. J. Rehmeyer

 

The claims about Leonardo da Vinci seem to stem primarily from his work illustrating The Divine Proportion, a 1509 book by his friend Luca Pacioli which contains the earliest known claims that the golden ratio has divine properties. However, while the book extols the golden ratio and advocates a careful study of proportion in the arts, it recommends that buildings and paintings be planned using a system of simple, rational ratios, not the golden ratio.

 

 

Leonardo da Vinci's Vitruvian Man illustrates the Roman architect Marcus Vitruvius Pollio's theory that proportions of the human body follow simple, rational ratios, not the golden ratio.

 

Myths about the golden ratio seem to endure largely because the idea of a mathematical object with aesthetic powers is too alluring to resist. Whether it has the power to sell blue jeans has yet to be seen.

Some people abhor broccoli, complaining about its intensely bitter taste. Others (myself included) find broccoli's flavor interesting and pleasing—decidedly, not bitter. What leads to our differing culinary opinions is the possession of, or lack of, (in my case, evidently) genes conferring a super sensitivity to bitter taste. Science has recognized such genetic differences for at least a decade.

SOUR CHOICES. Cucumbers aren't the only foods that can be preserved with salty brine or sour vinegars. It now appears that how sour we like our pickled fare may be reflected in our genes, while how salty we like these foods may reflect instead the environment in which we were raised. iStockphoto

A new study conducted with twins now demonstrates that people can similarly inherit a high or low sensitivity to sour tastes. However, the data also show that the same doesn't hold for sensing saltiness. Although people have a broad range of salt sensitivity, much of the difference between individuals traces not to genetics but to environmental influences—both to whether mom ate a lot of salt during pregnancy and to what cuisine a person was subsequently raised on (see Born to Love Salt).

More than a century ago, scientists identified taste buds as the centers of cellular-scale taste reception, but there's "still a tremendous amount to learn about taste," notes Paul A.S. Breslin of the Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia. In particular, he notes, there are huge gaps in scientists' understanding of how cells in taste buds distinguish flavors: sweet, salty, bitter, sour, and savory (also known as umami). Among these sensations, "the two we know the least about are sourness and saltiness," Breslin says.

To probe potential genetic influences on individuals' thresholds for detecting sourness and saltiness, Breslin's team recruited 109 pairs of twins attending either the 2003 or 2004 Twins Days Festival in Twinsburg, Ohio. Each pair—including 74 sets of identical twins—had grown up together.

Because the twins shared the same home environments, the researchers could largely rule out differences in influences before birth, childhood diets, and culture. Identical twins also share almost the same genetic inheritance. Fraternal, or nonidentical, twins have only about a 50 percent overlap in genes, the researchers note. Indeed, Paul M. Wise, who led the study, points out that fraternal twins are no more genetically similar than any other pair of siblings.

Consequently, if similar taste thresholds showed up dramatically more often in identical twins than in fraternal twins, a person's perception of that flavor could probably be traced to genetics. However, if similar thresholds were just as likely to occur in identical- and fraternal-twin pairs, the effect more likely could be laid to the pair's common environmental influences.

In a report published online for an upcoming issue of Chemical Senses, the Monell scientists describe examples of each situation. In general, Wise's group reports, identical twins were far more likely to share a threshold for sour sensitivity than were fraternal twins. Both groups, however, proved about equally likely to share a similar taste threshold-sensitivity for salt.

I have come across Mundu IM, a browser-based web application for the iPhone. It has been developed by Geodesic Information Systems.

It enables users to chat with their IM contacts on multiple IM clients including Google Talk, MSN, AIM and Yahoo.

The unique feature of Mundu IM iPhone is that it allows simultaneous logins and brings a number of popular IM services for the users, where as other Mobile IM products support only one service.

With Mundu, you can also lead voice conferencing with your contacts across IM services in a single chat session and manage your online presence.

As of now, the IM application supports a number of Mobile devices based on Palm OS 5.2 and Windows Mobile 5.0 for Smartphones.

In the coming days, Mundu will have supports for Windows Mobile for Pocket PC and Symbian Series 60 devices based on Symbian 7.x, 8.x and 9.x. One more thing, the Mundu IM iPhone Edition is free.

After thousands-of-years of using natural fiber-made paper, a new type of paper has been discovered to let us enter the new “technology-era”. An ‘assemblies of nanowires’ has been created that is highly effective and efficient in application in the armor, flame-retardant fabric, bacteria filters, oil cracking, controlled drug release, decomposition of pollutants and chemical warfare agents. Thanks to the University of Arkansas researchers for the creation.

Amazingly, the paper, which is two-dimensional, can be given a shape of a three-dimensional device! With high malleability, the nanowire-paper can easily be folded, and bent and cut. It can also be used as a filter, as it is not only chemically inert, but also remains robust and can be heated up to 700 degrees Celsius without damage!

Can you believe you being operated in an ‘Operation Theater’ with no doctors around to do your surgery! Rather, it is a robot doing al the jobs of a ‘human’ doctor with all the tools. Yes, very soon the OTs will be dominated by unmanned surgical robot.

Hats off to a team of U.S. Army’s Telemedicine and Advanced Technology Research Center and the University of Washington in Seattle experts. It is making all efforts to make remote surgery, or telesurgery, a reality. It is using an unmanned aircraft and sophisticated communication tools to replace surgeons with robots.

A prototype communications platform for mobile telesurgery (high-altitude platforms for mobile robotic telesurgery) HAPsMRT uses an ‘unmanned airborne vehicle’, which connects the communication between a surgeon in one part of the country and a patient hundreds of kilometers away. Isn’t it amazing?

It is between June 5 and 9, two-phase telesurgery experiment are carried out in a desolate and arid area between the western state of California and the state of Washington in the Pacific Northwest — surrounded by hills and plains.

It crawls through the human gut. No, it is not an undersea worm, but a robot that also crawls through the gut mimicking the wriggling motion of the worm. The amazing robot is developed by European scientists. Doctors one day can use this robot to diagnose disease, as the robot can carry tiny cameras through the body of a patient.

The robot is modelled on polychaetes (paddle worms), that uses tiny paddles installed on their body segments and help it to push through sand, mud or water. Scientists from Italy, Germany, Greece and the UK contributed in building this robot.

Arianna Menciassi, a roboticist from the Sant’Anna School of Advanced Studies in Pisa, Italy said,

We turned to biological inspiration because, in the peculiar environment of the gut, traditional forms of robotic locomotion don’t work.

By Roger Highfield, Science Editor

Drinking two large glasses of wine a day increases the risk of getting bowel cancer by a quarter, medical experts said yesterday.   Every year 35,000 people are diagnosed with bowel cancer and 16,100 die Even drinking one large glass can increase the risk of getting the disease by 10 per cent, according to the study by Cancer Research UK. The warnings will come as a huge worry to millions of middle class Britons who enjoy a glass or two of wine each night believing that they are not harming their health. Many even think they are doing themselves good after doctors extolled the benefits of a glass of red wine at night, claiming that it could protect them against heart disease. But the research has shown that even drinking within the Government's health guidelines of two units a day for women - one large glass of wine, or a pint of normal strength beer - or three units for men could prove to be dangerous. The study of almost 500,000 Europeans found the more people drink, the greater their risk of bowel cancer.

Those who drank three to four units daily, around two pints of normal strength beer or two large glasses of wine, increased their risk by a quarter.

The study published in the International Journal of Cancer adds to evidence that drinking alcohol is linked to cancers. Almost 480,000 people in 10 European countries were asked questions about how much alcohol they drank and were followed up for six years. In that period 1,833 people developed bowel cancer.

Prof Tim Key, Cancer Research UK epidemiologist and deputy director of the cancer epidemiology unit in Oxford, said: "The research shows quite clearly that the more alcohol you drink the greater your risk of bowel cancer.

"The increase in risk is not large but it is important that people understand they can reduce their risk of a number of different cancers - including bowel cancer - by cutting down on alcohol."

Every year 35,000 people are diagnosed with bowel cancer and 16,100 die. It is the third most common cancer after lung and breast.

The scientists have already offered several climate models that define the ancient weather on earth. But, now they have perhaps come up with a new source of climate patters that existed 8 millions years ago — this may very soon be revealed by a group of newly discovered fossilized swamp cypress trees.

A team of Hungarian scientists have recently unearthed some fossilized swamp cypress trees that stood on the earth swaying 8 million years ago – i.e. the late Miocene geological period when the Carpathian basin, presently Hungary, was a swamps-surrounded freshwater lake.

To add to the team’s achievement, the wood of 16 Taxodium trees was preserved in an open-cast coal mine instead of getting petrified, i.e. turning to stone. This allows the geologists study samples of the ancient trees as if they were sections cut from a piece of living wood!

Excited about the rare state of the find, Alfred Dulai, geologist at the Hungarian Natural History Museum said,

The importance of the findings is that so many trees got preserved in their original position in one place. But the real rarity about these trees is that ... their original wood got preserved ... they did not turn into stone.

Data that can be collected from these fossil trees can definitely throw light on the climatic patters of the pre-historic times.

This would help analyze the changing trend of the earth’s climatic conditions from 300 million years ago till date, through what it was like 8 million years back.

A natural component of human blood has been found to block the HIV virus from infecting cells. It may lead to the development of another class of antiretroviral drugs to fight HIV/AIDS.

The newly identified compound prevents the virus from attaching a molecular anchor to the cell it is invading. No existing drugs affect this stage of infection, so the German team hopes the compound could be modified to form a new class of similar drugs.

Nearly 40 million people living with HIV worldwide and 3m deaths last year, new approaches are urgently needed.

The scientists discovered the compound called Virus-Inhibitory Peptide or VIRIP by screening hundreds of proteins from human blood. A number of studies have suggested that VIRIP in the human blood are able to inhibit HIV-1 and control it.

The researchers also found that VIRIP and its derivatives were effective against drug-resistant strains of HIV.

There are at present around 20 different HIV drugs categorized into four different classes; a number of HIV strains are now becoming drug resistant, and HIV resistance to one drug can lead to resistance to other drugs in the same class.

Prof Kirchoff said:

You want a lot of drug classes, because multi-drug resistant viruses are starting to show up more and more. In at least some industrialized countries, it is already a severe problem.

The team at Ulm University Hospital in Germany published their findings in the US journal Cell.

HIV infection theory, which claims that HIV is a retrovirus that paves way for such a deformation in our physical system that our immune system begins to crumble down, is full of flaws, scientists say.

According to this long lasting theory, infected cells produce more HIV particles; as a result, body activates more T cells that are infected, thus perish soon. On the contrary, buttressing the view that stands opposite to the previously propounded theory, scientists assert that had this long-lasting theory been true, cells would die out in months not years.

Scientists’ this new belief is the result of a study in which they used a mathematical model of the process by which T cells are produced and eliminated. Using this method, they successfully managed to prove that old propounded theory of HIV infection is not as precise as it is considered to be.

It is worth mentioning that old propounded theory of HIV infection was already carrying some drawbacks, which failed experts repeatedly in explaining that why HIV virus destroys the body’s supply of these cells so slowly. As in the words of researcher professor Jaroslav Stark:

Scientists have never had a full understanding of the processes; therefore, they’ve been unable to fully explain why HIV destroys the body’s supply of these cells at such a slow rate.

Facts, rolling out of this new study have clouded the well-propounded theory of HIV infection, stirring up the need to go for further research into this matter, for only this way would enable us understanding the mechanism behind HIV’s distinctive slow process of cellular destruction more precisely.

However, scientist who come out refuting the previously accepted theory of HIV infection believe that one possible explanation could be that the virus slowly adapts itself over the course of the infection but to say that they are very sure about their findings would be somewhat wrong. Therefore, need for further study becomes more pertinent in order to explore the jumbled conglomeration of HIV virus. Well, Roger Pebody, a treatment advisor at HIV charity Terrence Hggins Trust is right

When it comes to sex, 25% of the virgins keep aside contraceptives, throwing cold water on the efforts being made to bring down the rate of STDs’ spread.

This claims the 2007 Durex Global Sexual Wellbeing Survey, which was conducted in 26 countries around the world last summer under the aegis ‘The Face of Global Sex 2007′.

According to this survey:-

• 26.2 percent of the Britons don’t use contraception while doing sex for the first time.

• Around 13.9% of the Britons admitted to have sex while they were under the influence of either drugs or alcohol.

• 17.8% claimed to have lost virginity, as they felt under pressure.

• 42% of the women feel regretted after indulging in sexual intercourse for the first time.

These figures point to a bleak future, especially when the facts come to fore - revealing that deadly diseases like HIV/AIDS have devoured more 25 million people - including men, women and children wherein 2.9 million people in 2006 only.Expressing somewhat similar concern over this situation Durex Network vice president Peter Roach remarked:

With 52 million unplanned pregnancies, 40 million HIV-positive people worldwide and 345 million new cases of STIs diagnosed each year globally, it is clear that we need to build on the fact three quarters of 16 to 19-year-olds are using condoms for first sex and encourage their continued use, as they grow older.

Well, there are some good facts too, which have tumbled out from this survey. According to those good facts, Greece outstripped all other nation in “safe sex” with 88 per cent of virgins using contraception, while indulging in sexual intercourse. However, percentage leaves UK far behind, startlingly where contraception use among virgins was reported just 73.8%.

After going these facts, it could be said that there lies grim need of awareness among the masses, for this is the only weapon that has the capability to curb the swelling tide of STDs and even deadly diseases like HIV/AIDS.

Japanese are a serious rage in the tech and environmental world, they hardly let a day pass before they are up with something novel again in either sphere – Texas Instruments was probably the first ever to build Solar cells – that plays a brainwave for Japans Clean Venture 21, which takes the solar notion to a new height, developing Spherical Silicon Solar Array.

Unlike the conventional and contemporary – where the efficiency rate with the Texas’ innovation was just 10% and cost enormous – the Clean Venture enhancement is 5 times cheaper and uses 5 times less material, consuming half the energy to reproduce.

With good optical properties and made into 1mm by dripping (rather than cutting) these silicon cells are put into little reactors, measuring 2.2 to 2.7mm in width, the sunlight is absorbed from all possible angles for generating power with better efficiency and flexibility. Spherical shaped cells also utilize the retro type flat arrays.

Pentagon to implant microchips in soldiers' brains

Submitted by Adam Thomas on Mon, 2007-07-30 19:49.
Sponsor: X-Treme Geek: USB Missile Launcher

The Department of Defense is planning to implant microchips in soldiers' brains for monitoring their health information, and has already awarded a $1.6 million contract to the Center for Bioelectronics, Biosensors and Biochips (C3B) at Clemson University for the development of an implantable "biochip".

Soldiers fear that the biochip, about the size of a grain of rice, which measures and relays information on soldiers vital signs 24 hours a day, can be used to put them under surveillance even when they are off duty.

But Anthony Guiseppi-Elie, C3B director and Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering and Bioengineering claims the that the invivo biosensors will save lives as first responders to the trauma scene could inject the biochip into the wounded victim and gather data almost immediately.

He believes that the device has other long-term potential applications, such as monitoring astronauts’ vital signs during long-duration space flights and reading blood-sugar levels for diabetics.

“We now lose a large percentage of patients to bleeding, and getting vital information such as how much oxygen is in the tissue back to ER physicians and medical personnel can often mean the difference between life and death,” said Guiseppi-Elie. “Our goal is to improve the quality and expediency of care for fallen soldiers and civilian trauma victims.” The biochip also may be injected as a precaution to future traumas."

Clemson scientists have formulated a gel that mimics human tissue and reduces the chances of the body rejecting the biochip, which has been a problem in the past.

The researcher predicts the biochip is five years away from human trials, and the DoD could start implanting microchips in soldiers bodies soon after.

Cancer cure patented

Submitted by Vidura Panditaratne on Thu, 2007-01-04 04:16.
Sponsor: X-Treme Geek: USB Missile Launcher

[img_assist|nid=115|title=Breast Cancer cell|desc=|link=popup|align=left|width=100|height=96]

A group of researchers claim that they are patenting a possible cure for cancer involving nothing more than sugar and short-chain fatty acid combination. [ Chemistry & Biology]

The Johns Hopkins researchers cautioned that their double-punch molecule, described in the December issue of the journal Chemistry & Biology, has not yet been tested on animals or humans.

Nevertheless, they believe it represents a promising new strategy for fighting the deadly disease, and have already filed an application for a U.S. patent covering this class of compounds.

"For a long time, cancer researchers did not pay much attention to the use of sugars in fighting cancer," Department of Biomedical Engineering postdoctoral fellow said. "But we found that when the right sugar is matched with the right chemical partner, it can deliver a powerful double-whammy against cancer cells."

Sampathkumar and his colleagues built upon 20-year-old findings that a short-chain fatty acid called butyrate can slow the spread of cancer cells. In the 1980s, researchers discovered that butyrate, which is formed naturally at high levels in the digestive system by symbiotic bacteria that feed on fibre, can restore healthy cell functioning.

Efforts to use butyrate as a general drug for tumours elsewhere in the body have been hindered by the high doses of the compound needed to effectively eradicate cancer leading scientists to try and make butyrate more potent by modifying it or joining it to other compounds.

The results have been disappointing because the molecular partner added to butyrate to improve delivery to the cancer cells often produced unsafe side effects.

In some of the less successful experiments, designed to avoid toxic side effects, researchers used innocuous sugar molecules such as glucose to carry butyrate into the cells.

"We didn't think they chose the right partner molecule," said Kevin J. Yarema, an assistant professor of biomedical engineering who supervised the project. "Our insight was to select the sugar partner to serve not just as a passive carrier but as additional ammunition in the fight against cancer."

The researchers focused on a sugar called N-acetyl-D-mannosamine, or ManNAc, for short, and created a hybrid molecule by linking ManNAc with butyrate.

The hybrid easily penetrates a cell's surface, then is split apart by enzymes inside the cell.

Once inside the cell, ManNAc is processed into another sugar known as sialic acid that plays key roles in cancer biology, while butyrate orchestrates the expression of genes responsible for halting the uncontrolled growth of cancer cells.

Although the study of the exact molecular mechanism is in its early stages, the researchers believe the separate chemical components work together to bolster the cancer-fighting power of butyrate.

The double attack triggers cellular suicide, also called apoptosis, in the cancer cells.

To find out whether this butyrate-ManNAc hybrid alone would produce the positive results, the researchers tested three other sugar-butyrate combinations and a butyrate salt compound with no sugar attached.

The four other formulas and the butyrate-ManNAc hybrid were each added to lab dishes containing cancer cells.

After three to five days, cancer growth had slowed in all of the dishes.

After 15 days, cancer growth had resumed in dishes treated with four of the compounds, but in samples treated with the butyrate-ManNAc hybrid, all of the cancer cells had died.

The researchers also wanted to find out whether administering the two parts of the hybrid independently would achieve the same result, but in these experiments, the cancer cells did not self-destruct.

The researchers suspect this is because the hybrid molecules more easily penetrate the surface of the cell than the individual chemicals.

Once the components are inside, the researchers believe the partners help enzymes to resume the normal assembly of sugar molecules and correct aberrant gene expression patterns, two processes that go awry when cancer occurs.

100-year, Zero-maintenance Rocking-Chair: Made from Reclaimed Plastic Milk Containers!

Intel has been accused of abusing its power to erode the rival chipmaker AMD. Till the end of the second quarter, AMD had 11.4% of market share against Intel, which dominates the rest of the share.

It is not for the first time that EU Commission has charged Intel with such charges. For the past six years, AMD has been pleading time to time for European Union to take action against rival Intel for alleged abuse of its market dominance.

Finally yesterday, the EU Commission, accepting the complain, filed a case against Intel, in which the AMD complained that their rival has offended market laws and practiced illegal business practices.

Statement containing o

bjections reveals the abuse of power in three ways, according to Commission: offering rebates to the PC manufacturers, by making payments to some manufacturers to delay or cancel products using AMD processors and selling processors below cost to erode down the rival.

Intel has 10 weeks to present their evidences against the allegations framed and can request an oral hearing. If charges are found justified, a fine up to 10 percent of the annual turnover can be charged.

However, in a response, that seems cool, Intel general council said, “We are confident that the microprocessor market segment is functioning normally and that Intel’s conduct has been lawful, pro-competitive, and beneficial to consumers, Bruce Sewell said in a statement.”

Intel officials further assured the EU Commission that discounts are meant to help the customers so they could access their product easily and has nothing to do with their rival AMD. Swell stressed that these charges are just based on complain filed by their direct rival and so far there is no complaint from the consumers or PC users.

EU Commission spokesperson, Ton Van Lieron, confirmed the delivery of statement of allegations and emphasized the need of action against such violation of antitrust regulations, which are necessary to create a fair completion in the market.

In a similar case, EU had asked Microsoft to deposit a huge fine of $683 million in 2004, for abusing its dominant position in PC operating system, which was challenged by the company in the court.

However, it is sure that customers may feel some comfort at lowered prices but such steps can wash a competitor completely, leaving no choice for customers other than using just one kind of product.

EU commission seeks it necessary to look into the matter as it has been a matter of conflict for the last six years starting with similar complain filed by AMD in 2001.

Tumor Painting Ready to Uncover Cancer Cells

Researchers at Seattle children’s Hospital Research Institute and Fred Hutchison Cancer Research Centre have taken one more step in their fight against cancer by developing a paint that can illuminate cancer cells to help surgeons locate even a single tumor cell.

The paint is a scorpion-derived peptide called chlorotoxin that is linked to the molecular beacon Cy5.5.

Researchers detected a chemical found in large Israeli scorpion venom which is capable of getting attached to cancer cells.

Cy5.5 is a fluorescent molecular beacon that emits photon in the near infrared spectrum. This gives surgeons a much better opportunity to locate and remove all the cancer cells without injuring the surrounding healthy tissues.

This has resolved a major problem regarding the brain tumor where approximately 80% of the malignant cancer recur at the edges of the surgical sites and has a great chance to reappear in the same intensity as before.

Brain is the most complex organ in human body. It has an intercellular filtration system, which allows very few materials to enter into the cells, thus making it difficult for drugs and indicators to enter into the neuron with a rare chance of cure.Cy5.5 can filter through this system easily and illuminates the starting and ending of a tumor.

This technology has resolved the problems and imperfections of methods currently used by surgeons. Cy5.5 is 500 times sensitive than currently used MRI (magnetic reasoning imaging) as it can detect as few as 200 cancer cells which is possible in MRI only if there are more than 1 million cells and still more, it starts adhering to cancer cells within one minute and remains effective for 14 days.

Tumor painting has been successfully tested on mice and has cleared pilot safety test. But this technology still needs to be examined about its toxic effects before seeking approval from food and drugs administration to begin clinical trials.

Scientists Successfully Visualize Human Memory for the First Time

Neuroscience, from the past many years, had tried to understand the complexities of human brain and its working. They are often entangled in challenges posed by mood disorders, learning problems, insomnia, obesity and many more sufferings caused by brain dysfunctions.

In this very quest, Scientists at UC Irvine, led by Gary Lynch, professor of psychiatry and human behavior, have taken a major step - for the first time in the history of neurosciences in successfully visualizing the memory in its physical substrate.

Working with advanced microscopic techniques called restorative deconvolution microscopy, the team studied the changes associated with synapses in the hippocampus and appearance of LTP-related markers.

Long –term potentiation (LTP) is a physiological phenomenon closely related to memory storage. The UC Irvine team found that LTP marker appears during learning and there is change in synaptic structure.

UC Irvine team found that synaptic junctions in rats changed their shape on exposure to complex environment and learning to find a path. When these changes blocked by injecting drugs, rats found it difficult to learn.

This study and outcomes will pave a way for one of the great objective of life sciences: mapping the distribution of memory across the brain. Until today, researchers were facing obstacles in locating memory trances or “engrams” because there was no technique to tag the synapses and the changes related to their shape.

Now, the contents inside your brain and experiences of your daily life can be encoded in terms of synaptic connections as their physical substrate.

Massive Dust Storm Haunts NASA’s Twin Mars Rovers

Opportunity and Spirit, have been gathering data since 2004 and
did a splendid job in exploring the Red Planet. However, a series of Martian dust storms, which have lasted for almost a month, are making their survival difficult.

Heart Diseases from Diabetes Drug Tripled: Report

While on one hand the medical fraternity is up with arms to fight diabetes, on the other, the blockbuster drug, for the disease, Avandia is whirling out complaints for its reported side-effects of increasing heart risks!

The heart risks from the drug has been reported to have tripled.This find is a serious issue as more than 6 million people worldwide take Avandia to control their blood sugar – i.e. Type 2 diabetes, which is linked to obesity! Already at higher risk for heart attacks, these people are put to greater risk, i.e by 43 percent more –this thought is particular is disturbing.

But, why the increase?

It is that the doctors and the researchers are left unaware of this serious side-effect, or that not many cases of the heart diseased diabetics are reported?

The question arises on why the potential problem from the drug went undetected before it has been on the market shelves eight years ago?

It eventually shows carelessness and flaws on the ‘safety tracking system’s’ part.

Whatever be it, when the link is discovered, an immediate action is needed to be taken, both heart disease as well as diabetes being growing serious problems across the world.

Passing of Stem Cell Bill Raises Several Questions!

After all, bill aiming at overturning ban on therapeutic cloning has come out victorious after passing though several impediments. Breaking of these shackles would now enable researchers to carry on their therapeutic cloning research.

However, different kind of views has come out reacting about this cancellation of ban on therapeutic cloning. During the parliament procedure, where a big percent of MPs were in favor of this move; at the same time there was no scarcity of such MPs too who were strongly opposing this move.

However, overturning of this ban might lead to both positive and negative repercussions, because where sane use of this therapeutic cloning would carve out a way for new possibilities, it is also possible that its wrong use may also prove a noxious weapon in the hands of some nefarious researchers.