Science & TechnologyS


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Neurons Developed from Stem Cells Successfully Wired With Other Brain Regions in Animals


ScienceDaily
Sun, 24 Jan 2010 00:00 UTC
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© Weimann et al./The Journal of Neuroscience 2010This is a single stem cell-derived neuron that has migrated away from the transplantation site in the cortex and grown into a mature neuron. The blue stain shows the nuclei of the endogenous neural cells in this part of the brain.
Transplanted neurons grown from embryonic stem cells can fully integrate into the brains of young animals, according to new research in the Jan. 20 issue of The Journal of Neuroscience.

Healthy brains have stable and precise connections between cells that are necessary for normal behavior. This new finding is the first to show that stem cells can be directed not only to become specific brain cells, but to link correctly.

In this study, a team of neuroscientists led by James Weimann, PhD, of Stanford Medical School focused on cells that transmit information from the brain's cortex, some of which are responsible for muscle control. It is these neurons that are lost or damaged in spinal cord injuries and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). "These stem cell-derived neurons can grow nerve fibers between the brain's cerebral cortex and the spinal cord, so this study confirms the use of stem cells for therapeutic goals," Weimann said.
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Bulb

Inflammation 'on switch' also serves as 'off switch': Study reveals unexpected function for seemingly redundant protein


North Carolina State University
Sun, 24 Jan 2010 02:40 UTC
In a surprising finding, researchers at North Carolina State University have discovered the critical importance of a protein previously believed to be a redundant "on switch" for certain immune-system responses.

Scientists previously understood that the protein called TAB2 activates inflammation, an important biological process that stimulates wound-healing and prevents invasion of harmful organisms. But scientists considered TAB2 nonessential to the process due to the redundant function of a cousin protein, called TAB3, which has no trouble serving as an "on switch" to activate the inflammation process in TAB2's absence.
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Laptop

The Less-Connected Kids Are Alright - Says Study

Ed Oswald
PC World
Sat, 23 Jan 2010 21:23 UTC
A Kaiser Family Foundation study indicates that kids are spending more time than ever using some form of technology - and those who spend less time using technology get better grades.

Parents these days seem to complain more and more about their kids being online too much, and a recent study by by the Kaiser Family Foundation indicates that they may spend nearly a third of their day - which in many cases is probably half their waking hours - using some form of technology. Among those between the ages of 8 to 18, 7.5 hours is spend feeding their electronic habits.
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Bad Guys

Best of the Web: Climategate Junk Scientist Michael Mann Awarded Half a Million in Stimulus Cash


National Center for Public Policy Research
Thu, 14 Jan 2010 14:11 UTC
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© Unknown
Funds Should be Returned to U.S. Treasury, Says National Center for Public Policy Research

Washington, DC - In the face of rising unemployment and record-breaking deficits, policy experts at the National Center for Public Policy Research are criticizing the Obama Administration for awarding a half million dollar grant from the economic stimulus package to Penn State Professor Michael Mann, a key figure in the Climategate controversy.

"It's outrageous that economic stimulus money is being used to support research conducted by Michael Mann at the very time he's under investigation by Penn State and is one of the key figures in the international Climategate scandal. Penn State should immediately return these funds to the U.S. Treasury," said Tom Borelli, Ph.D., director of the National Center's Free Enterprise Project.

Professor Mann is currently under investigation by Penn State University because of activities related to a closed circle of climate scientists who appear to have been engaged in agenda-driven science. Emails and documents mysteriously released from the previously-prestigious Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia in the United Kingdom revealed discussions of manipulation and destruction of research data, as well as efforts to interfere with the peer review process to stifle opposing views. The motivation underlying these efforts appears to be a coordinated strategy to support the belief that mankind's activities are causing global warming.
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Arrow Up

Opera and Firefox downloads soar after IE alerts

Cade Metz
The Register
Sat, 23 Jan 2010 14:08 UTC
After Microsoft confirmed that a hole in its Internet Explorer browser was used in the December cyber attacks on Google and at least 33 other outfits, a trio of security-conscious nations - Germany, France, and Australia - went so far as to warn their citizens against the use of IE. And that led to a very good week for the likes of Opera and Mozilla.

Following an IE warning from the German government, Opera saw German downloads of its desktop browser more than double. And in Australia, where a similar warning was issued, its downloads leaped 37 per cent.

Meanwhile, Mozilla saw a "statistically significant rise" in the number of downloads originating from both Germany and France, the third nation to warn against the use of IE. In the chart below - supplied by Mozilla - the orange area shows an estimated 300,000 extra downloads in Germany over the past four days:
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Control Panel

The Internet: New shot in the arm for US hegemony


China Daily
Fri, 22 Jan 2010 10:20 UTC
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© Unknown
The Internet originated on American soil. In 1969, the Advanced Research Projects Agency of the US Defense Department established the world's first testing packet-switched network (PSN) to connect four universities on US soil. The world saw a remarkable expansion of the scale and number of Internet users from the late 1970s to the early 1980s. In September 1989, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) was founded with a grant from the US Department of Commence to administer the Internet terminal server. Over the past 40 years, the US has been dominating the world Internet as the core technique holder with an inherent advantage of being the cradle of the Internet.

There are 13 terminal servers in the world to keep the Internet running, with a master server and nine of the 12 secondary servers stationed in the US. In terms of technique, the network of a country will disappear from the world Internet if its domain name registry is blocked or deleted from the terminal server. This kind of conduct is not legally binding with the law of any country except ICANN. In April 2004, Libya was unseen on the Internet for three days after the collapse of the domain name registry of the country "LY" caused by a domain administration dispute.
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Meteor

Asteroid Detection, Deflection Needs More Money, Report Says

Nancy Atkinson
Universe Today
Fri, 22 Jan 2010 16:27 UTC
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© Unknown
Are we ready to act if an asteroid or comet were to pose a threat to our planet? No, says a new report from the National Research Council. Plus, we don't have the resources in place to detect all the possible dangerous objects out there. The report lays out options NASA could follow to detect more near-Earth objects (NEOs) that could potentially cross Earth's orbit, and says the $4 million the U.S. spends annually to search for NEOs is insufficient to meet a congressionally mandated requirement to detect NEOs that could threaten Earth. "To do what Congress mandated NASA to do is going to take new technology, bigger telescopes with wider fields," said Don Yeomans, Manager of NASA's Near Earth Object Program Office, speaking at the American Geophysical Union conference last month.

However, Yeomans said work is being done to improve the quality and quantity of the search for potentially dangerous asteroids and comets. "We have a long term goal to have three more 1.8 meter telescopes," he said, "and the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope with an 8.4 meter aperture in 2016. Once these new facilities are in place, the data input will be like drinking from a fire hose, and the rate of warnings will go up by a factor of 40."
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Bad Guys

United States doing little about asteroids -report


Reuters
Fri, 22 Jan 2010 18:25 UTC
Washington - The United States is doing little to defend the planet against potentially devastating asteroids and is not doing the basic searches that Congress has ordered, according to a report released on Friday.

While most of the really big and obvious threats are being found, almost nothing is being done to find the smaller objects that are arguably a more likely threat, the strongly worded report from the National Academy of Sciences said.

"It means we are not looking for the small ones which can cause huge damage on earth," astronomer Mike A'Hearn of the University of Maryland, who helped chair the committee that wrote the report, said in a telephone interview.

"Why has nothing been done? I don't know," added A'Hearn, who was principal investigator of NASA'S 2005 Deep Impact mission to knock open the comet 9P/Tempel.
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Meteor

Hidden asteroids are stalking the Earth

David Shiga
New Scientist
Thu, 21 Jan 2010 07:25 UTC
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© Joe Tucciarone/SPLWhere did that spring from?
A tiny asteroid that buzzed Earth last week highlighted our planet's vulnerability to objects whose peculiar orbits put them in a game of hide-and-seek with us.

An Earth-based telescope spotted the 10-metre space rock hurtling our way just three days before a near miss on 13 January, when it flew by at just one-third of the distance to the moon (see Object headed towards Earth an asteroid, not junk). The asteroid is never expected to hit Earth and would burn up before hitting the ground in any case. But its unusual orbit (see diagram) seems ingeniously designed to evade our surveys. It is likely that a handful of objects large enough to cause harm are hiding under similar circumstances.
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Sherlock

Howard Carter "Stole from Tomb of Tutankhamen"

David Crossland
The National
Thu, 21 Jan 2010 20:30 UTC
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© Getty ImagesHoward Carter
Howard Carter, the British archaeologist who discovered the tomb of the Egyptian king Tutankhamen in 1922, cheated the Egyptian authorities in an attempt to get a share of the fabulous treasure, German Egyptologists claim.

Carter, whose sensational discovery in the Valley of the Kings near Luxor is widely regarded as the greatest archaeological find of all time, broke laws by smuggling objects from the tomb out of the country and entering and disturbing the burial chamber without the presence of Egyptian officials, experts in Germany are saying.

They say Carter's claim that the 3,200-year-old grave had already been robbed in ancient times was probably a lie designed to circumvent a law that stated that any treasure found intact had to remain in Egypt, but that the contents of a disturbed tomb could be divided up between Egypt and the finders.
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