Snake Venom is Key to New Heart Drugs

Research led by the Univ. of Bath has identified two possible new routes for developing novel drugs for high blood pressure and heart disease.
The research, published in the prestigious Nature journal Scientific Reports, was led by Prof. Ravi Acharya in collaboration with the Universities of Leeds and Cape Town.
The scientists created images of the 3D molecular structures of two peptides, including one from snake venom, that inhibit angiotensin-I converting enzyme (ACE), a key protein that regulates blood pressure.

Molecular structure of ACE (red) with Ang-II peptide bound (yellow) Image: Univ. of Bath
ACE inhibitors, such as the drug Captopril, are taken by millions of people in the UK to treat high blood pressure (hypertension) and heart disease. However the drugs cause side effects such as a persistent cough and angioedema (swelling of the face and throat).
In this Medical Research Council funded study, the team produced images of a snake venom peptide BPPb binding to ACE. Although this peptide has been identified previously as a possible template for drug design, it is the first time scientists have been able to see at the molecular level how the peptide binds to ACE and blocks its action.
Acharya says, “We found that the BPPb peptide binds to a major portion of the active site of the ACE molecule pushing out a zinc atom which is essential for its correct functioning. This is the first time we’ve observed zinc-independent inhibition of ACE, and so these findings highlight a very exciting opportunity to design new antihypertensive drugs based on this peptide.”
In addition, the researchers looked at the structure of angiotensin-II (Ang-II) bound to ACE. Ang-II is a hormone produced by ACE that also inhibits it, creating a feedback loop that stops levels of Ang-II getting too high.
Acharya comments, “We already knew that Ang-II blocks ACE, but not how it does this at the molecular level. This study has shown for the first time how ACE self-regulates by producing a molecule that obstructs its active site when the concentration reaches a certain level.”
The next step is to use this structural knowledge as a basis for accelerating the on-going work carried out by Acharya and his collaborators on the development of next generation ACE inhibitors that have improved efficacy and fewer side effects.
The scientists will first use computers to predict the action of different drug designs, then take the best drug candidates and test them in vitro, followed by tests in animal models for hypertension.

Researchers Pinpoint Where Julius Caesar was Stabbed

A concrete structure three meters wide and over two meters high, placed by order of Augustus (adoptive son and successor of Julius Caesar) to condemn the assassination of his father, has given key to scientists. This finding confirms that the General was stabbed right at the bottom of the Curia of Pompey while he was presiding, sitting on a chair, over a meeting of the Senate. Currently, the remains of this building are located in the archaeological area of Torre Argentina, right in the historic center of the Roman capital.

This is the monumental complex in Torre Argentina (Rome), where Julius Caesar was stabbed.

 

Antonio Monterroso, Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) researcher from the Institute of History of the Center for Humanities and Social Sciences (CCHS-CSIC), states, "We always knew that Julius Caesar was killed in the Curia of Pompey on March 15th 44 BC because the classical texts pass on so, but so far no material evidence of this fact, so often depicted in historicist painting and cinema, had been recovered."
Classical sources refer to the closure (years after the murder) of the Curia, a place that would become a chapel-memory. The CSIC researcher explains, "We know for sure that the place where Julius Caesar presided over that session of the Senate, and where he fell stabbed, was closed with a rectangular structure organized under four walls delimiting a Roman concrete filling. However, we don't know if this closure also involved that the building ceased to be totally accessible."
Spaces of the assassination of Caesar
In Torre Argentina, in addition to the Curia of Pompey, researchers have started to study the remains of the Portico of the Hundred Columns (Hecatostylon). The aim is to identify what connecting links can be established between archaeology, art history and cinema in these spaces of the death of Julius Caesar. Monterroso adds, "We also aim to better understand that sense of closure and dismal place described in classical texts."
The two buildings are part of the monumental complex (about 54.000 square meters) that Pompey the Great, one of the greatest military leaders in the history of Rome, built in the capital to commemorate his military successes in the East around the year 55 BC.
Monterroso also states, "It is very attractive, in a civic and citizen sense, that thousands of people today take the bus and the tram right next to the place where Julius Caesar was stabbed 2056 years ago or even that they go to a theater, since the main theater of the capital is the Teatro Argentina, which is equally close."

Researchers Take Einstein’s Theory Beyond Light Speed

Univ. of Adelaide applied mathematicians have extended Einstein's theory of special relativity to work beyond the speed of light.

Einstein's theory holds that nothing could move faster than the speed of light, but Prof. Jim Hill and Barry Cox in the university's School of Mathematical Sciences have developed new formulas that allow for travel beyond this limit.
Einstein's theory of special relativity was published in 1905 and explains how motion and speed is always relative to the observer's frame of reference. The theory connects measurements of the same physical incident viewed from these different points in a way that depends on the relative velocity of the two observers.
"Since the introduction of special relativity there has been much speculation as to whether or not it might be possible to travel faster than the speed of light, noting that there is no substantial evidence to suggest that this is presently feasible with any existing transportation mechanisms," says Hill.
Hill goes on to say, "About this time last year, experiments at CERN, the European center for particle physics in Switzerland, suggested that perhaps neutrinos could be accelerated just a very small amount faster than the speed of light; at this point we started to think about how to deal with the issues from both a mathematical and physical perspective. Questions have since been raised over the experimental results but we were already well on our way to successfully formulating a theory of special relativity, applicable to relative velocities in excess of the speed of light. Our approach is a natural and logical extension of the Einstein Theory of Special Relativity, and produces anticipated formulae without the need for imaginary numbers or complicated physics."
The research has been published in the prestigious Proceedings of the Royal Society A. Their formulas extend special relativity to a situation where the relative velocity can be infinite, and can be used to describe motion at speeds faster than light.
"We are mathematicians, not physicists, so we've approached this problem from a theoretical mathematical perspective," says Cox. "Should it, however, be proven that motion faster than light is possible, then that would be game changing. Our paper doesn't try and explain how this could be achieved, just how equations of motion might operate in such regimes."

Eye Proteins Inspire New Antimicrobial Drugs

When it comes to germ-busting power, the eyes have it, according to a discovery by UC Berkeley researchers that could lead to new, inexpensive antimicrobial drugs.

A team of UC Berkeley vision scientists has found that small fragments of keratin protein in the eye play a key role in warding off pathogens. The researchers also put synthetic versions of these keratin fragments to the test against an array of nasty pathogens. These synthetic molecules effectively zapped bacteria that can lead to flesh-eating disease and strep throat (Streptococcus pyogenes), diarrhea (Escherichia coli), staph infections (Staphylococcus aureus) and cystic fibrosis lung infections (Pseudomonas aeruginosa).

Proteins in the eye can help keep pathogens at bay

The findings, to be published in the October issue of the Journal of Clinical Investigation, could lead to a powerful new weapon in the battle against disease-causing invaders. These keratin fragments are relatively easy to manufacture, making them good candidates for low-cost therapeutics, the study authors say.
“What’s really exciting is that the keratins in our study are already in the body, so we know that they are not toxic, and that they are biocompatible,” says the study’s principal investigator, Suzanne Fleiszig, a professor at UC Berkeley’s School of Optometry who specializes in infectious diseases and microbiology. “The problem with small, naturally occurring, antimicrobial molecules identified in previous research is that they were either toxic or easily inactivated by concentrations of salt that are normally found in our bodies.”
These new small proteins in the study were derived from cytokeratin 6A, one of the filament proteins that connect to form a mesh throughout the cytoplasm of epithelial cells.
“We used to think that cytokeratins were primarily structural proteins, but our study shows that these fragments of keratin also have microbe-fighting capabilities,” says study lead author Connie Tam, an assistant research scientist in Fleiszig’s lab. “Cytokeratin 6A can be found in the epithelial cells of the human cornea as well as in skin, hair and nails. These are all areas of the body that are constantly exposed to microbes, so it makes sense that they would be part of the body’s defense.”
In a commentary published alongside the study, Michael Zasloff, professor of surgery and pediatrics at Georgetown Univ.’s School of Medicine, says these “keratin-derived antimicrobial peptides appear to be exciting new biocompatible candidates for development as human anti-infective therapeutics.”
The researchers in Fleiszig’s lab came upon cytokeratin 6A in their efforts to solve the mystery behind the eye’s remarkable resilience to infection. They noticed that the surface of the eye, unlike other surfaces of the body, did not have bacteria living on it, and that corneal tissue could handily wipe out a barrage of pathogens in lab culture experiments.
“It is very difficult to infect the cornea of a healthy eye,” says Fleiszig. “We’ve even used tissue paper to damage the eye’s surface cells and then plastered them with bacteria, and still had trouble getting bacteria to enter the cornea. So we proposed that maybe there were antimicrobial factors that are unique to the eye.”
In the hunt for this mystery compound, the researchers cultured human corneal epithelial cells and exposed them to the P. aeruginosa bacteria. They used mass spectrometry to sort out which peptides were most active in fighting off the bacteria. Cytokeratin 6A-derived peptides emerged the winners, and surprisingly, peptide fragments as short as 10 amino acids were effective.
To confirm that they got the right protein, the researchers used gene-silencing techniques to reduce the expression of cytokeratin 6A in the cornea of mice. With a key defense disabled, the amount of bacteria that adhered to the corneas increased fivefold.
Tests showed that cytokeratin 6A-derived fragments could quickly kill bacteria in water and in a saline solution, showing that the salt contained in human tears would not dilute the protein’s effectiveness. Other experiments indicated that cytokeratin 6A fragments prevented the bacteria from attacking epithelial cells, and that the proteins cause bacterial membranes to leak, killing the pathogen within minutes.
The researchers note that further research could reveal numerous different keratin fragments in the body’s innate defense system.
“Keratins may represent a novel class of antimicrobials with the potential to be designed to selectively kill specific pathogens,” says Tam.
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the National Institutes of Health provided support for this research.

Some Deadly Breast Cancers Resemble Ovarian Tumors

The most comprehensive analysis yet of breast cancer shows that one of the most deadly subtypes is genetically more similar to ovarian tumors than to other breast cancers.
The findings, published online in Nature, suggest that most basal-like breast tumors and ovarian tumors have similar genetic origins and potentially could be treated with the same drugs, says the study’s co-leader Matthew Ellis, from Washington Univ. School of Medicine in St. Louis. The other co-leader is Charles Perou, at the Univ. of North Carolina.

A comprehensive analysis of breast cancer shows that one of the most deadly subtypes is genetically more similar to ovarian tumors than to other breast cancers. The findings suggest that basal-like breast cancer (above) and ovarian tumors have similar genetic origins and potentially could be treated with the same drugs. Image: Matthew Ellis, Washington Univ. in St. Louis

Basal-like tumors account for about 10 percent of all breast cancers and disproportionately affect younger women and those who are African-American.
The new research is part of The Cancer Genome Atlas project, which brings together leading genetic sequencing centers, including The Genome Institute at Washington Univ., to identify and catalog mutations involved in many common cancers. The effort is funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
“With this study, we’re one giant step closer to understanding the genetic origins of the four major subtypes of breast cancer,” says Ellis. “Now, we can investigate which drugs work best for patients based on the genetic profiles of their tumors. For basal-like breast tumors, it’s clear they are genetically more similar to ovarian tumors than to other breast cancers. Whether they can be treated the same way is an intriguing possibility that needs to be explored.”
Currently, for example, basal-like breast tumors often are treated like many other breast cancers, using anthracycline-based chemotherapy. But another of Ellis's studies recently showed that women with basal-like tumors don't benefit from these drugs, which also have severe side effects. At the very least, he says, the new data indicates that clinical trials should be designed to avoid the use of these drugs in basal-like tumors.
As part of the new research, a nationwide consortium of researchers analyzed tumors from 825 women with breast cancer. The scientists used six different technologies to examine subsets of the tumors for defects in DNA, RNA (a close chemical cousin of DNA) and proteins. Nearly 350 tumors were analyzed using all six technologies.
“By tying together those different data sets, we can build a story around the biology of each breast cancer subtype that is dictated by the genome, interpreted by the RNA and played out by the proteins at work inside each tumor,” says co-author Elaine Mardis, co-director of The Genome Institute. “These data can serve as a backdrop for other questions about how particular mutations affect survival or response to certain drugs.”
The study confirmed the existence of four main subtypes of breast cancer: luminal A, luminal B, HER2 and basal-like. The latter includes most triple-negative breast tumors, so-named because they lack receptors for the hormones estrogen, progesterone or human epidermal growth factor 2 (HER2). These tumors often are aggressive and do not respond to therapies that target hormone receptors or to standard chemotherapies.
Across the four subtypes, mutations in only three genes – TP53, PIK3CA and GATA3 – occurred in more than 10 percent of patients’ tumors. But, the scientists found unique genetic and molecular signatures within each of the subtypes. Their findings add to the growing body of evidence suggesting that tumors should be cataloged and treated based on the genes that are disrupted rather than the location in the body.
In general, compared to the other subtypes, basal-like and HER2 tumors had the highest mutation rates but the shortest list of significantly mutated genes. These genes are thought to be major drivers of cancer progression. For example, 80 percent of basal-like tumors had mutations in the TP53 gene, which have been linked to poor outcomes. About 20 percent of the tumors also had inherited mutations in BRCA1 or BRCA2 genes, which are known to increase the risk of breast and ovarian cancer.
“This suggests that it only takes a few hits to key genes that drive cancer growth,” Mardis explains.
A high frequency of TP53 mutations also occurs in ovarian cancer, the researchers note. Overall, the genetic profiles of basal-like and ovarian tumors were strikingly similar, with widespread genomic instability and mutations occurring at similar frequencies and in similar genes.
Finding new drug targets for basal-like breast tumors is critical, and the research suggests that patients with mutations in the BRCA genes may benefit from PARP inhibitors or platinum-based chemotherapy, which are already used to treat ovarian cancer.
By comparison, luminal cancers (which include estrogen receptor-positive and progesterone-receptor positive tumors) had the lowest mutation frequencies and longer lists of significantly mutated genes. This suggests defects in multiple genetic pathways can lead to the development of luminal breast cancers.
Most patients with luminal A cancer have good outcomes, and the most common mutation in that subtype occurred in PIK3CA, which was present in 45 percent of tumors. TP53 mutations only occurred in 12 percent.
Some patients with luminal B tumors do well but many experience recurrence years after treatment. Interestingly, the most common mutations in these tumors occurred in TP53 (linked to poor outcomes) and PIK3CA (linked to good outcomes), which may explain the disparate results seen in patients with this subtype.
“Now, we’re much closer to understanding the true origins of the different types of breast cancer,” Ellis says. “With this information, physicians and scientists can look at their own samples to correlate patients’ tumor profiles with treatment response and overall outcomes. That’s the challenge for the future – translating a patient’s genetic profile into new treatment strategies.”

Substance Makes Cancer Commit Suicide

The p53 gene plays a key role in the prevention of cancer, by blocking cell growth and triggering programmed cell death or apoptosis. If, however, p53 mutates and becomes defective, the cancer cells can acquire the ability to evade apoptosis and become more resistant to therapy. Researchers at Karolinska Institutet and Karolinska Univ. Hospital have now obtained results from the first tests using a new substance that can restore the function of defective p53 and activate apoptosis in cancer cells. This work was published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology.
The substance is known as APR-246 and has now been tested on humans in a phase I/II study, which was conducted on 22 patients with advanced blood or prostate cancer. Some of the patients came from the Haematology Centre at the Karolinska Univ. Hospital in, Stockholm, where the study’s lead investigator, consultant Sören Lehmann is based. The remainder of the patients were from other clinics in Gothenburg, Lund, Uppsala and Örebro.
The patients received daily infusions of APR-246 for four days. When the researchers analyzed the cancer cells taken before and after treatment, they saw indications that the p53 gene had been activated to varying degrees, and that this had triggered the suicide program in the cancer cells. Ten patients could be evaluated as regards the development of their cancer, and in two of them there were signs of tumor regression.
However, the study was actually not designed to test the clinical effects but to ascertain how well the substance was tolerated by the body. With the main adverse reactions confined to temporary tiredness, nausea, headache and confusion, their results would suggest that the substance is well tolerated.
"The side-effects were totally different to those produced by conventional chemotherapy, which bodes well for designing combination therapies," says Lehmann. "And it's in precisely this kind of combination that we think the substance has the greatest potential. In previous laboratory studies we've seen that APR-246 has generated synergy gains when used with chemotherapy due to the mutually enhancing effects of both substances."
Defective p53 is considered one of the most common factors behind the development of cancer. In some cancers, such as ovarian cancer, the vast majority of tumors have defective p53. In total, the p53 tumor suppressor gene is mutated in at least half of all tumors.
"In theory, a drug that restores p53 function should be effective against many different kinds of cancer, provided that the individual tumor contains defective p53," says study team member Prof. Klas Wiman. "We should keep in mind, however, that tumors are very complex."
APR-246 was discovered by Klas Wiman and colleagues at Karolinska Institutet. The present study was led from Karolinska Univ. Hospital in association with Aprea AB. Aprea AB's principal shareholder is Karolinska Development, a company listed on the NASDAQ OMX Stockholm exchange. Wiman is co-founder and shareholder of Aprea, and a member of its board

FDA Urged to Set Arsenic Standards for Rice After New Report

Consumer groups are pressuring the Food and Drug Administrationto set federal guidance on allowable levels of arsenic in rice, prompting the agency to study the issue and consider possible new standards.
So far, FDA officials say they have found no evidence that suggests rice is unsafe to eat. The agency is in the middle of conducting a study of 1,200 samples of grocery-store rice products — short and long-grain rice, cereals, drinks and even rice cakes  — to measure arsenic levels.

Arsenic is thought to be found in rice in higher levels than most other foods because it is grown in water on the ground, optimal conditions for the contaminant to be absorbed in the rice. There are no federal standards for how much arsenic is allowed in food.
Arsenic is naturally present in water, air, food and soil in two forms, organic and inorganic. According to the FDA, organic arsenic passes through the body quickly and is essentially harmless. Inorganic arsenic — the type found in some pesticides and insecticides — can be toxic and may pose a cancer risk if consumed at high levels or over a long period.
How much organic and inorganic arsenic rice eaters are consuming, and whether those levels are dangerous, still remain to be seen.
FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg says consumers shouldn't stop eating rice, though she does encourage a diverse diet just in case.
"Our advice right now is that consumers should continue to eat a balanced diet that includes a wide variety of grains — not only for good nutrition but also to minimize any potential consequences from consuming any one particular food," she says.
The agency today released 200 of the expected 1,200 samples after the magazine Consumer Reports released its own study and called for federal standards for arsenic in rice. The FDA will not complete its study until the end of the year, Hamburg says, and cannot draw any conclusions from the results until then.
Both studies show relatively similar levels of arsenic in rice. The FDA's analysis showed average levels of 3.5 to 6.7 micrograms of inorganic arsenic per serving, while Consumer Reports found levels up to 8.7 micrograms. The FDA released 200 samples, while Consumer Reports tested 223.
It is almost impossible to say how dangerous these levels are without a benchmark from the federal government. Consumer Reports uses New Jersey's drinking water standard — a maximum of 5 micrograms in a liter of water — as comparison because it is one of the strictest in the country. But it is unclear how accurate it is to compare arsenic levels in water and arsenic levels in rice — most people consume more water than rice, so drinking water standards may need to be tougher.
It is because of this uncertainty that consumer groups have urged the FDA to set a standard.
Urvashi Rangan of Consumer Reports says the group is not trying to alarm rice eaters and parents feeding their children rice, but to educate them so they can diversify their diets. Consumers should be more protected since arsenic is a known carcinogen, she says.
"It doesn't make sense not to have standards for rice," she says.
The Consumer Reports study found higher levels of arsenic in brown rice than white rice, a result of how the two different types are processed. It also found higher levels in rice produced in Southern U.S. states than in rice from California or Asia.
Hamburg cautioned that neither the FDA nor Consumer Reports had tested enough samples to be certain of any trend.
"These are very few samples and there is great variability in the levels," she says.
Scientists have known for decades that arsenic is present in rice, but the issue has renewed interest as consumers are more interested than ever in what they eat and technology has advanced to the point that inorganic and organic arsenic can be measured separately.
The consumer group's push on arsenic in rice comes a year after it pressured the FDA to define standards for arsenic in apple juice. Michael Taylor, the FDA's deputy commissioner for foods, says that the agency had completed that assessment and would be making recommendations soon. The levels found in apple juice are low, he says.

Researchers Create GPS-Less Indoor Guidance System

Whether you’re walking, biking or driving, navigation systems can help you get from A to B – as long as you have a GPS signal. This positioning technology usually works fine in both urban and rural outdoor areas, but it is of limited use indoors. To find the way around large and complex buildings like hospitals or airports, people often need to rely on vague signs. Researchers at Technische Universität München (TUM) have come up with a new technology that does not depend on GPS. The NAVVIS system uses visual information and realistic 3D images to point users in the right direction.

For the mapping NAVVIS uses both vertical and horizontal laser scans.The environment is displayed as a three-dimensional point cloud

The NAVVIS positioning system is primarily based on visual information. The TUM researchers had to develop a special location recognition system for this project. They started by taking photos of a building, simultaneously mapping prominent features like stairs and signs. A smartphone app then lets users view the map images to find their current location. All they have to do is take a photo of their surroundings. The program then compares the photo with the images stored in its database and works out the user’s exact position (down to the nearest meter) and the direction in which they are facing. The app uses arrows to point the way in a 3D view. NAVVIS is currently being tested at TUM.
“With multiple floors and winding corridors, the main campus is something of a maze after several decades of expansion. This makes it an ideal testing ground for NAVVIS,” declares Georg Schroth, who is heading up the project at TUM’s Institute for Media Technology.
NAVVIS has other potential uses besides navigation, as his colleague Robert Huitl explains, “The software can also be used for augmented reality applications if you add on special programs. So for instance, visitors to the Louvre would not only be able to locate the Mona Lisa, but also view information about the painting or find directions to other works by da Vinci.” Another possibility would be virtual tours on a PC or smartphone.
NAVVIS is suitable for all places beyond the reach of satellite navigation. Wireless network signals can also be used for approximate positioning. When the application is started, the system loads the available visual data packets. The user takes a photo of their surroundings. The program then compares it with the database images in a fraction of a second and reveals the user’s exact position. There is a snag, however, in that buildings are constantly changing: signs are sometimes removed and large buildings will have construction work going on from time to time. Georg Schroth explains how NAVVIS stays up to date, “The system doesn’t just position the user, it also utilizes the user’s photos to record changes in the interior and overwrite obsolete data.”
The TUM researchers are using a mapping trolley to map buildings. The trolley includes two laser scanners, single lens reflex cameras and a 360 degree camera. When the trolley passes along a corridor, the two lasers scan the dimensions horizontally and vertically and create a virtual map using three-dimensional point clouds. Software is then used to lay the photos over the pixels. This produces a realistic three-dimensional view.
The German Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology has been funding the NAVVIS project since April 2011. TUM’s researchers will present the NAVVIS data and viewer at the International Conference on Image Processing (ICIP) which is set to take place from September 30 to October 3, 2012 in Orlando, Florida.

ATM Swaps Old Electronics for Cash

When new cell phones or tablets enter the marketplace, yesterday's hot technology can quickly become obsolete — for some consumers. For others, the device still has value as an affordable alternative, or even as spare parts.

With support from the National Science Foundation (NSF), ecoATM of San Diego, Calif., has developed a unique, automated system that lets consumers trade in those devices for reimbursement or recycling.

ecoATM has developed a kiosk that exchanges used electronics for cash or a donation.Using sophisticated artificial intelligence developed through two NSF Small Business Innovation Research grants, ecoATM kiosks can differentiate varied consumer electronics products and determine a market value. If the value is acceptable, users have the option of receiving cash or store credit for their trade — or donating all or part of the compensation to one of several charities.

ecoATM finds second homes for three-fourths of the phones it collects, sending the remaining ones to environmentally responsible recycling channels to reclaim any rare earth elements and keep toxic components from landfills. ecoATM is certified to the eWaste environmental standards of Responsible Recycling (R2) and ISO 14001.
"The basic technologies of machine vision, artificial intelligence and robotics that we use have existed for many years, but none have been applied to the particular problem of consumer recycling," says ecoATM co-founder and NSF principal investigator Mark Bowles. "But we've done much more than just apply existing technology to an old problem — we developed significant innovations for each of those basic elements to make the system commercially viable."
ecoATM received its first NSF support in 2010, then received follow-on funding from Coinstar, Claremont Creek Ventures and Silicon Valley Bank to launch the first kiosks in 2011. The company expanded to the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area and other areas along the East Coast this month and plans to have more than 300 kiosks deployed by the end of 2012 in shopping malls and large stores across the country.
The system began as a wooden-box prototype that required the presence of an ecoATM representative to ensure that users were being honest with their trades. While that setup proved consumers would be comfortable with the device-exchange concept, it was limited by the need for human intervention.
The first NSF Small Business Innovation Research grant allowed ecoATM to develop artificial intelligence and diagnostics that delivered 97.5 percent accuracy for device recognition, removing human oversight and making the system viable for broad use. A follow-on NSF SBIR grant is helping ecoATM close that final 2.5 percent accuracy gap.
According to Bowles, traditional machine vision generally relies on pattern matching, pairing a new image to a known one. Pattern matching is a binary approach that cannot handle the complexity of ecoATM's evaluation process, which includes eight separate grades based on a device's level of damage.
"We are now able to tell the difference between cracked glass on a phone, which is an inexpensive fix, versus a broken display or bleeding pixels, which is generally fatal for the device," says Bowles. "We were warned by leading machine-vision experts that solving the inspecting/grading problem-with an infinite variety of possible flaws-was an impossible problem to solve. Yet with our NSF support, we solved it through several years of research and development, trial and error, use of artificial intelligence and neural network techniques."
The company's databases are now trained with images of more than 4,000 devices, and when an identification mistake occurs, the system learns from that mistake.
When a user places their device into an ecoATM kiosk, the artificial intelligence system conducts a visual inspection, identifies the device model and then robotically provides one of 23 possible connector cables for linking it to the ecoATM network (the company warns consumers to erase all personal data before recycling).
Using proprietary algorithms, the system then determines a value for the device based on the company's real-time, worldwide, pre-auction system. Within that system, a broad network of buyers have already bid in advance on the 4,000 different models in eight possible grades, so the kiosk can immediately provide compensation.
A number of robotic elements enable the kiosk to safely collect, evaluate and then store each device in a process that only takes a few minutes.
"The ecoATM project is an extremely innovative way to motivate the public with an incentive to 'do the right thing' with discarded electronics, both socially and environmentally," says Glenn Larsen, the NSF SBIR program officer overseeing the ecoATM grants. "This may change behavior from simply dumping unwanted electronics to a focus on recycling, while helping put more hi-tech devices in the hands of others that might not otherwise be able to afford or acquire them."
The company is partnered with San Diego-based D&K Engineering to help design and build the kiosks domestically, and has expanded from an original workforce of less than 10 in 2010 to a team of more than 150 employees and contractors today.
Since its founding, ecoATM has filed over 20 patents, been awarded seven patents to date, and won numerous awards. The company is currently one of three finalists for a Consumer Electronics Association Inaugural Innovation Entrepreneur Award.
"ecoATM meets the required thresholds of both convenience and immediate financial incentive necessary to inspire mass consumer participation in electronics recycling," adds Bowles. "We believe we are the first system to achieve those thresholds."

Rare Disease Gene May Offer Diabetes Treatment Hope

The rare disorder Wolfram syndrome is caused by mutations in a single gene, but its effects on the body are far-reaching. The disease leads to diabetes, hearing and vision loss and nerve cell damage that causes motor difficulties and early death.

Now, researchers at Washington Univ. School of Medicine in St. Louis, the Joslin Diabetes Center in Boston and the Novartis Institutes for BioMedical Research report that they have identified a mechanism related to mutations in the WFS1 gene that affects insulin-secreting beta cells. The finding will aid in the understanding of Wolfram syndrome and also may be important in the treatment of milder forms of diabetes and other disorders.
The study is published online in the journal Nature Cell Biology.
“We found something we didn’t expect,” says researcher Fumihiko Urano, associate professor of medicine in Washington Univ.’s Division of Endocrinology, Metabolism and Lipid Research. “The study showed that the WFS1 gene is crucial to producing a key molecule involved in controlling the metabolic activities of individual cells.” That molecule is called cyclic AMP (cyclic adenosine monophosphate).

In insulin-secreting beta cells in the pancreas, for example, cyclic AMP rises in response to high blood sugar, causing those cells to produce and secrete insulin.
“I would compare cyclic AMP to money,” Urano says. “You can’t just take something you make to the store and use it to buy food. First, you have to convert it into money. Then, you use the money to buy food. In the body, external signals stimulate a cell to make cyclic AMP, and then the cyclic AMP, like money, can ‘buy’ insulin or whatever else may be needed.”
The reason patients with Wolfram syndrome experience so many problems, he says, is because mutations in the WFS1 gene interfere with cyclic AMP production in beta cells in the pancreas.
“In patients with Wolfram syndrome, there is no available WFS1 protein, and that protein is key in cyclic AMP production,” he explains. “Then, because levels of cyclic AMP are low in insulin-secreting beta cells, those cells produce and secrete less insulin. And in nerve cells, less cyclic AMP can lead to nerve cell dysfunction and death.”
By finding that cyclic AMP production is affected by mutations in the WFS1 gene, researchers now have a potential target for understanding and treating Wolfram syndrome.
“I don’t know whether we can find a way to control cyclic AMP production in specific tissues,” he says. “But if that’s possible, it could help a great deal.”
Meanwhile, although Wolfram syndrome is rare, affecting about 1 in 500,000 people, Urano says the findings also may be important to more common disorders.
“It’s likely this mechanism is related to diseases such as type 2 diabetes,” he says. “If a complete absence of the WFS1 protein causes Wolfram syndrome, perhaps a partial impairment leads to something milder, like diabetes.”

Opportunity Rover Reveals Mars Geological Mystery

NASA's long-lived rover Opportunity has returned an image of the Martian surface that is puzzling researchers.

Spherical objects concentrated at an outcrop Opportunity reached last week differ in several ways from iron-rich spherules nicknamed "blueberries" the rover found at its landing site in early 2004 and at many other locations to date.
Opportunity is investigating an outcrop called Kirkwood in the Cape York segment of the western rim of Endeavour Crater. The spheres measure as much as one-eighth of an inch (3 millimeters) in diameter. The analysis is still preliminary, but it indicates that these spheres do not have the high iron content of Martian blueberries.
"This is one of the most extraordinary pictures from the whole mission," says Opportunity's principal investigator, Steve Squyres of Cornell Univ. "Kirkwood is chock full of a dense accumulation of these small spherical objects. Of course, we immediately thought of the blueberries, but this is something different. We never have seen such a dense accumulation of spherules in a rock outcrop on Mars."
The Martian blueberries found elsewhere by Opportunity are concretions formed by action of mineral-laden water inside rocks, evidence of a wet environment on early Mars. Concretions result when minerals precipitate out of water to become hard masses inside sedimentary rocks. Many of the Kirkwood spheres are broken and eroded by the wind. Where wind has partially etched them away, a concentric structure is evident.
Opportunity used the microscopic imager on its arm to look closely at Kirkwood. Researchers checked the spheres' composition by using an instrument called the Alpha Particle X-Ray Spectrometer on Opportunity's arm.
"They seem to be crunchy on the outside, and softer in the middle," Squyres says. "They are different in concentration. They are different in structure. They are different in composition. They are different in distribution. So, we have a wonderful geological puzzle in front of us. We have multiple working hypotheses, and we have no favorite hypothesis at this time. It's going to take a while to work this out, so the thing to do now is keep an open mind and let the rocks do the talking."
Just past Kirkwood lies another science target area for Opportunity. The location is an extensive pale-toned outcrop in an area of Cape York where observations from orbit have detected signs of clay minerals. That may be the rover's next study site after Kirkwood. Four years ago, Opportunity departed Victoria Crater, which it had investigated for two years, to reach different types of geological evidence at the rim of the much larger Endeavour Crater.
The rover's energy levels are favorable for the investigations. Spring equinox comes this month to Mars' southern hemisphere, so the amount of sunshine for solar power will continue increasing for months.
"The rover is in very good health considering its 8½ years of hard work on the surface of Mars," says Mars Exploration Rover Project Manager John Callas of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "Energy production levels are comparable to what they were a full Martian year ago, and we are looking forward to productive spring and summer seasons of exploration."
NASA launched the Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity in the summer of 2003, and both completed their three-month prime missions in April 2004. They continued bonus, extended missions for years. Spirit finished communicating with Earth in March 2010. The rovers have made important discoveries about wet environments on ancient Mars that may have been favorable for supporting microbial life.
JPL manages the Mars Exploration Rover Project for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington.

Ancient diatoms could make biofuels and electronics

Diatoms, tiny marine life forms that have been around since the dinosaurs, could finally make biofuel production from algae truly cost effective—because they can simultaneously produce other valuable products such as semiconductors, biomedical products and even health foods.

Engineers at Oregon State University (OSU) concede that such technology is pushing the envelope a bit. But it’s not science fiction—many of the needed advances have already been made, and the National Science Foundation just provided a four-year, $2 million grant to help make it a working reality.
In theory, and possibly soon in practice, these amazing microscopic algae will be able to take some of the cheapest, most abundant materials on Earth—like silicon and nitrates—and add nothing much more than sunshine, almost any type of water, and carbon dioxide to produce a steady stream of affordable products.
The concept is called a "photosynthetic biorefinery." Sand, fertilizer, a little sun, and saltwater, in other words, might someday power the world’s automobiles and provide materials for electronics, with the help of a tiny, single-celled microstructure that already helps form the basis for much of the marine food chain and cycles carbon dioxide from the Earth's atmosphere.
"This NSF program is intended to support long-range concepts for a sustainable future, but in fact we're demonstrating much of the science behind these technologies right now," says Greg Rorrer, an OSU professor and head of the School of Chemical, Biological, and Environmental Engineering. Rorrer has studied the remarkable power of diatoms for more than a decade.
"We have shown how diatoms can be used to produce semiconductor materials, chitin fibers for biomedical applications, or the lipids needed to make biofuels," he says. "We believe that we can produce all of these products in one facility at the same time and move easily from one product to the other."
Biofuels can be made from algae, scientists have shown, but the fuels are a comparatively low-value product and existing technologies have so far been held back by cost. If this program can help produce products with much higher value at the same time—like glucosamine, a food product commonly sold as a health food supplement—then the entire process could make more economic sense.
Much of the cost in this approach, in fact, is not the raw materials involved but the facilities needed for production. As part of the work at OSU, researchers plan to develop mathematical models so that various options can be tested and computers used to perfect the technology before actually building it.
The key to all of this is the diatom itself, a natural nanotechnology factory that has been found in the fossil record for more than 100 million years. Diatoms evolved sometime around the Jurassic Period when dinosaurs flourished. A major component of phytoplankton, diatoms have rigid microscopic shell walls made out of silica, and the capability to biosynthesize various compounds of commercial value.
"Regular algae don't make everything that diatoms can make," Rorrer says. "This is the only organism we know of that can create organized structures at the nanolevel and naturally produce such high-value products. With the right components, they will make what you want them to make."
Source: Oregon State University

Record-Breaking 4.02 B Prescriptions Written Last Year

People in the U.S. took more prescription drugs than ever last year, with the number of prescriptions increasing from 3.99 billion (with a cost of $308.6 billion) in 2010 to 4.02 billion (with a cost of $319.9 billion) in 2011. Those numbers and others appear in an annual profile of top prescription medicines published in the journal ACS Chemical Neuroscience.
Journal Editor-in-Chief Craig Lindsley analyzed data on 2011 drugs with a focus on medications for central nervous system (CNS) disorders. So-called antipsychotic medicines — including those used to treat schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, Tourette syndrome and some forms of depression — ranked as the fifth most-prescribed class of drugs by sales. Antidepressants, for conditions that include depression and anxiety, ranked No. 7.
Xanax, Celexa and Zoloft were the most-prescribed psychiatric medicines, with other depression and anxiety medications rounding out the top 10. Two antipsychotics were among the 10 drugs that Americans spent the most on, with Abilify in fourth place. Lindsley explains that while antidepressants continued to be the most-prescribed class of CNS drugs in 2011, prescriptions for ADHD medicines increased by 17 percent and multiple sclerosis medications by 22.5 percent in sales from 2010. While expiring patents on major antipsychotics in the next few years will put pressure on drug makers to innovate, the industry should be heartened by the growth of the number of prescriptions and spending.

Smart House Produces as Much Energy as it Uses

A net-zero energy residential test facility produces as much energy as it uses. In a ribbon-cutting ceremony today, the U.S. Commerce Department’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) unveiled a new laboratory designed to demonstrate that a typical-looking suburban home for a family of four can generate as much energy as it uses in a year. Following an initial year-long experiment, the facility will be used to improve test methods for energy-efficient technologies and develop cost-effective design standards for energy-efficient homes that could reduce overall energy consumption and harmful pollution, and save families money on their monthly utility bills.
The unique facility looks and behaves like an actual house, and has been built to U.S. Green Building Council LEED Platinum standards—the highest standard for sustainable structures. The two-story, four-bedroom, three-bath Net-Zero Energy Residential Test Facility incorporates energy-efficient construction and appliances, as well as energy-generating technologies such as solar water heating and solar photovoltaic systems.
 “Results from this lab will show if net-zero home design and technologies are ready for a neighborhood near you,” says Under Secretary of Commerce for Standards and Technology and NIST Director Patrick Gallagher. “It will also allow development of new design standards and test methods for emerging energy-efficient technologies and, we hope, speed their adoption.”
Funded by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, which included green technologies among its priorities, the facility was built almost entirely with U.S.-made materials and equipment. Through its Building America effort, the Department of Energy (DOE) provided architectural design, training and management support for this project. Deputy Assistant Secretary for Energy Efficiency Kathleen Hogan represented DOE during the ribbon-cutting.
For the first year of its operation, the lab will be used to demonstrate net-zero energy usage. NIST researchers will use computer software and mechanical controls to simulate the activities of a family of four living in an energy-efficient home. No actual humans will be allowed to enter the house during this time so that researchers can monitor how the house performs, but lights will turn on and off at specified times, hot water and appliances will run—and small devices will emit heat and humidity just as people would.
A solar photovoltaic system will generate electricity to power lights and appliances when weather permits, and excess energy will be sent back to the local utility grid by means of a smart electric meter. The house will draw energy from the grid on days it cannot generate enough on its own, but over the course of a year it will produce enough to make up for that purchased energy, for a net-zero energy usage.
During the ceremony, Rick Fedrizzi, president, CEO and founding chairman of the U.S. Green Building Council, announced that the Net-Zero Energy Residential Test Facility has earned a LEED Platinum rating

Mad Cow Disease Blood Test a Step Closer

A simple blood test for Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease and Mad Cow disease is a step closer, following a breakthrough by medical researchers at the Univ. of Melbourne.
Using newly available genetic sequencing, scientists discovered cells infected with prions (the infectious agent responsible for these diseases) release particles that contain easily recognized “signature genes.”
Associate Prof. Andrew Hill, from the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the Bio21 Institute, says these particles travel in the blood stream, making a diagnostic blood test a possibility.
“This might provide a way to screen people who have spent time in the UK, who currently face restrictions on their ability to donate blood,” he says.
“With a simple blood test nurses could deem a prospective donor’s blood as healthy, with the potential to significantly boost critical blood stocks.”
Mad Cow disease was linked to the deaths of nearly 200 people in Great Britain who consumed meat from infected animals in the late 1980s.
Since 2000, the Australia Red Cross Blood Service has not accepted blood from anybody who lived in the UK for more than six months between 1980 and 1996, or who received a blood transfusion in the UK after 1980.
The research is published in this week’s Oxford Univ. Press Nucleic Acids Research journal.
Lead author Shayne Bellingham says the breakthrough might also help detect other human neurodegenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s.
“This is an exciting new field where we can test for conditions in the brain and throughout the body, without being invasive,” he says.
The researchers’ genetic testing focused on a form of cell discharge called exosomes.
If exosomes were infected with prions (the pathogen that causes Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease and Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy, commonly known as Mad Cow Disease) they were found to also carry a specific signature of small genes called microRNA’s.
The research was undertaken at the Univ. of Melbourne, with assistance from the Mental Health Research Institute of Victoria, the National Health and Medical Research Council and the Australian Research Council.

At Least 200,000 Tons of Oil and Gas from Deepwater Horizon Spill Consumed by Gulf Bacteria

Researchers from the University of Rochester and Texas A&M University have found that, over a period of five months following the disastrous 2010 Deepwater Horizon explosion and oil spill, naturally-occurring bacteria that exist in the Gulf of Mexico consumed and removed at least 200,000 tons of oil and natural gas that spewed into the deep Gulf from the ruptured well head.
The researchers analyzed an extensive data set to determine not only how much oil and gas was eaten by bacteria, but also how the characteristics of this feast changed with time.
"A significant amount of the oil and gas that was released was retained within the ocean water more than one-half mile below the sea surface. It appears that the hydrocarbon-eating bacteria did a good job of removing the majority of the material that was retained in these layers," said co-author John Kessler of the University of Rochester.

The results published this week in Environmental Science and Technology include the first measurements of how the rate at which the bacteria ate the oil and gas changed as this disaster progressed, information that is fundamental to understanding both this spill and predicting the behavior of future spills.
Kessler noted: "Interestingly, the oil and gas consumption rate was correlated with the addition of dispersants at the wellhead. While there is still much to learn about the appropriateness of using dispersants in a natural ecosystem, our results suggest it made the released hydrocarbons more available to the native Gulf of Mexico microorganisms."
Their measurements show that the consumption of the oil and gas by bacteria in the deep Gulf had stopped by September 2010, five months after the Deepwater Horizon explosion. "It is unclear if this indicates that this great feast was over by this time or if the microorganisms were simply taking a break before they start on dessert and coffee" said Kessler. "Our results suggest that some (about 40%) of the released hydrocarbons that once populated these layers still remained in the Gulf post September 2010, so food was available for the feast to continue at some later time. But the location of those substances and whether they were biochemically transformed is unknown."
Previous studies of the Deepwater Horizon spill had shown that the oil and gas were trapped in underwater layers, or "plumes", and that the bacteria had begun consuming the oil and gas. By using a more extensive data set, the researchers were able to measure just how many tons of hydrocarbons released from the spill had been removed in the deep Gulf waters. The team's research suggests that the majority of what once composed these large underwater plumes of oil and gas was eaten by the bacteria.
Professor John Kessler, recently appointed as Associate Professor in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences of the University of Rochester, worked with graduate research assistant Mengran Du at Texas A&M University to analyze over 1300 profiles of oxygen dissolved in the Gulf of Mexico water spanning a period of four months and covering nearly 30,000 square miles.
The researchers calculated how many tons of oil and gas had been consumed and at what rate by first measuring how much oxygen had been removed from the ocean. Mengran Du explained that "when bacteria consume oil and gas, they use up oxygen and release carbon dioxide, just as humans do when we breathe. When bacteria die and decompose, that uses up still more oxygen. Both these processes remove oxygen from the water." Du added that it is this lower oxygen level that the researchers could measure and use as an indicator of how much oil and gas had been removed by microorganisms and at what rate.
The work was supported by the National Science Foundation with additional contributions from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the Sloan Foundation, BP/the Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative, and the Chinese Scholarship Council.

Huge explosion spotted on Jupiter

An amateur astronomer in Dallas has filmed an enormous explosion on Jupiter which took place early on Sunday morning.

George Hall says the incident was first noted by Dan Peterson, prompting Hall to examine his footage and find he had recorded the event.
Petersen says the explosion occurred at 11:35:30 UT, just inside Jupiter's eastern limb, at about Longitude 1 = 335, and Latitude = + 12 degrees north. The flash appeared to be about 100 miles in diameter.
"All of a sudden, a brilliant pinpoint of blazing white light started to grow and brighten just inside Jupiter's morning limb, this was in stark contrast to the planets yellowish color, its shape was slightly elliptical in it's north/south axis and was about as bright in appearance as a fourth magnitude star," says Peterson.
"I couldn't help but smile when I saw what was happening, a one in a trillion sight I thought. Then, just as rapidly as it appeared it started to dim until another second had past and it was forever gone. I just sat there and remembered thinking how amazing and surreal this all seems and how fortunate I was to observe this celestial fireball."
The bright flash, which lasts less than two seconds, is believed to represent the impact of a comet or asteroid - a big one. So far, though, there have been no reports of an impact scar, such as the one created by the Shoemaker-Levy/9 impacts in 1994.
Peterson says he believes that the fireball was traveling at more than 20,000 feet per second when it entered Jupiter's atmosphere.
"Had such an object hit our Earth it would have been a bad hair day to say the least," he says.

http://www.tgdaily.com/space-features/66107-huge-explosion-spotted-on-jupiter

Climate Scientists Face Organized Harassment in America

'I feel for my American colleagues and what they've had to deal with,' one British climate scientist said.

By Katherine Bagley, InsideClimate News



Map of global temperature anomalies/Credit: NASA

 The harassment faced by U.S.-based climate scientists has been well documented in the media—but not the harassment of scientists in Europe, Canada or the rest of the world.
That's because there hasn't been much to report.
While outspoken scientists of human-caused climate change in the United States endure torrents of freedom of information requests, hate mail and even death threats from skeptics, their counterparts abroad have been free to do their work without fear.
Jochem Marotzke, managing director of the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology in Hamburg, said there is "no systematic attempt by a political camp" to target climate scientists in Germany. "I get the odd critical email from a skeptic, but would not classify anything as personally aggressive," said Marotzke. "Very different from the U.S. scene."

"I feel for my American colleagues and what they've had to deal with," said
Tim Lenton, an earth system scientist who specializes in climate tipping points at the University of Exeter in the UK. Lenton said he has never had to fend off skeptic attacks against his work or his integrity. "British scientists aren't immune to attacks, but it is a very different level than compared to what is happening in the U.S."
InsideClimate News contacted scientists working on climate change in Europe, Canada and Japan and learned that virtually everyone believes that the harassment is specific to the United States. They said that it could have long-term consequences for public understanding of global warming.
"The harassment has an intimidating effect—especially on young scientists," said Stefan Rahmstorf, head of earth system analysis at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany. Rahmstorf said that watching colleagues be harassed often deters them from speaking to media or the public about their research, which skews the debate.
Already, there is evidence of the U.S. public being swayed, said Tony Leiserowitz, director of the Yale Project on Climate Change Communication.
Climategate, for instance, the 2009 hacking of emails from the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit in the UK, "had a significant impact" on public opinion, he said. During that scandal, U.S. skeptics pounced mainly on emails written by Michael Mann, director of the Earth System Science Center at Penn State University, as evidence that he and others were overstating the human influence on global warming. In a yet-to-be-published Yale study, nearly 13 percent of on-the-fence Americans in 2010 said climategate reduced their trust in climate science and in scientists, Leiserowitz said.
Since then, Mann was cleared of any wrongdoing, and the scientific consensus has strengthened—virtually all working U.S. climate researchers believe human activity is causing the climate to warm.
But the polls have barely budged.
The most recent global poll from 2011 found that only 48 percent of Americans believe climate change is occurring from either human activity or a mix of human and natural causes, the lowest among developed countries. Eighty-three percent of people in Asia expressed this opinion, which was shared by 72 percent in Canada, 69 percent in Europe and 65 percent in Latin in America.
Why Harassment Here and Not There?

‘Brightest’ Thing in Nature Uses Reflection to Shine,"NOT FROM PIGMENT"

The “brightest” thing in nature, the Pollia condensata fruit, does not get its blue color from pigment but instead uses structural color – a method of reflecting light of particular wavelengths – new research reveals. The study was published in the journal PNAS.

Most colors around us are the result of pigments. However, a few examples in nature – including the peacock, the scarab beetle and now the Pollia condensata fruit – use structural color as well.
Fruits are made of cells, each of which is surrounded by a cell wall containing cellulose. However, the researchers found that in the Pollia condensata fruit the cellulose is laid down in layers, forming a chiral (asymmetrical) structure that is able to interact with light and provide selective reflection of only a specific color. As a result of this unique structure, it reflects predominately blue light.
The scientists also discovered that each individual cell generates color independently, producing a pixelated or pointillist effect (like those in the paintings of Seurat). This color is produced by the reflection of light of particular wavelengths from layers of cellulose in the cell wall. The thickness of the layers determines which wavelength of light is reflected. As a result, some cells have thinner layers and reflect blue; others have thicker layers and reflect green or red.
The researchers believe that the plants invest in the complicated coloring structure as a mechanism for seed dispersal. Although the Pollia fruit does not provide any nutritional value, birds are attracted to its bright coloring – possibly as a means of decorating their nests or impressing their mates.
Beverley Glover from the Univ. of Cambridge’s Department of Plant Sciences, who jointly led the research, says, “This obscure little plant has hit on a fantastic way of making an irresistible shiny, sparkly, multi-colored, iridescent signal to every bird in the vicinity, without wasting any of its precious photosynthetic reserves on bird food. Evolution is very smart!”
Because of how it is created, the color of the Pollia condensata fruit does not fade. The researchers found that samples of the fruit in herbarium collections dating back to the 19^th century were as colorful and shiny as ones grown today.
Silvia Vignolini, lead author on the paper from the Univ. of Cambridge’s Department of Physics, says, “By taking inspiration from nature, it is possible to obtain smart multifunctional materials using sustainable routes with abundant and cheap materials like cellulose. We believe that using cellulose to create colored materials can lead to many industrial applications. As an example, edible cellulose-based nanostructures with structural color can be used as substitutes for toxic dyes and colorants in food. Moreover, the fact that the processes involved in cellulose extraction and manipulation are already used in the paper industry facilitates the use of such materials for industrial applications such as security labeling or cosmetics.”
The research was supported by the Leverhulme Trust with some funding provided by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC)

Newly Found Living Mammoth Cells Raise Cloning Possibility

A Russian university says scientists have discovered frozen woolly mammoth fragments that may contain living cells deep in Siberia, bringing closer the possibility of cloning the extinct animal.
The North-East Federal Univ. says in a statement that an international team had discovered mammoth hair, soft tissues and bone marrow at a depth of 328 feet (100 meters) during a summer expedition.
Expedition chief Semyon Grigoryev says a group of Korean scientists with the team had set a goal of finding living cells in the hope of cloning a mammoth. Scientists have previously found bodies and fragments, but not living cells.
Grigoryev told online newspaper Vzglyad it would take months of lab research to determine whether they have indeed found the cells.
Wooly mammoths are thought to have died out 10,000 years ago

Forgotten Wasp Hunts Australia's Most Dangerous Spider

Univ. of Adelaide researchers say a small native wasp that scientists had forgotten about for more than 200 years is now making a name for itself — as a predator of Australia's most common dangerous spider, the redback.

The wasp (Agenioideus nigricornis) was first described scientifically in 1775 by Danish entomologist Johan Christian Fabricius, thanks to samples collected in Australia during Captain Cook's first great voyage (1768-1771).
"Since then, scientists have largely forgotten about the wasp," says Prof. Andy Austin from the Univ. of Adelaide's Australian Centre for Evolutionary Biology & Biodiversity. "It is widespread across Australia and can be found in a number of collections, but until now we haven't known the importance of this particular species."
The wasp is now being dubbed the "redback spider-hunting wasp" after a family in Beaconsfield, Western Australia, discovered one of them with a paralyzed redback spider in their back yard.
Florian Irwin, then aged 9, spotted the wasp dragging the spider several meters to its nest, and his father, Peter Irwin, photographed the event and kept the specimens. Peter, who is an associate professor at Murdoch Univ., contacted the Western Australian Museum about the discovery; the Museum alerted Austin and research fellow Lars Krogmann at the Univ. of Adelaide.
"The museum knew we were doing research into the Agenioideus, which belongs to the family Pompilidae, the spider-hunting wasps. Little is known about them, despite various species of Agenioideus being distributed throughout the world," Austin says. "We're very excited by this discovery, which has prompted us to study this species of wasp more closely. It's the first record of a wasp preying on redback spiders (Latrodectus hasselti) and it contributes greatly to our understanding of how these wasps behave in Australia."
With a body less than a centimeter in length, an adult redback spider-hunting wasp is no bigger than its prey. It stings and paralyses the redback spider and drags it back to its nest, where the wasp lays an egg on it. The spider remains alive but is paralyzed. Once the egg hatches, the larval wasp feeds on the spider.
"The redback spider is notorious in Australia, and it has spread to some other countries, notably Japan and New Zealand. Redbacks are one of the most dangerous species in Australia and they're mostly associated with human dwellings, which has been a problem for many years," Austin says.
"The redback spider-hunting wasp is doing its part to keep the population of redback spiders down, but it doesn't hunt all the time and is unlikely to completely eradicate the spiders."
Krogmann (who is now based at the Stuttgart State Museum of Natural History) and Austin have published a paper about the redback spider-hunting wasp in this month's issue of the Australian Journal of Entomology.

Restaurant Smoking Bans Lessen European Teen Smoking

Teenagers and young adults are less likely to smoke when faced with restaurant smoking bans and minimum tobacco-purchase ages in Europe, according to new research by a Purdue Univ. sociologist.
"Policies that restrict smoking directly affect young people's behavior, and that may be a key element to curb smoking rates because most adult smokers report starting when they were teenagers," says Mike Vuolo, an assistant professor of sociology who studies youth behavior. "In countries with restaurant smoking bans, young people were 35 percent less likely to smoke regularly."
Most studies look at individual factors, such as income and education levels and smoking rates, but this study also examined policies and other social influences, such as antismoking messages in mass media and cigarette taxes.
The article is published in Social Forces. The results are based on self-reported cigarette use of people ages 15-24 in the original 15 European Union countries, and the data is from Eurostat (the European Commission's statistics branch) and the World Health Organization. The survey information was collected in the spring of 2002, and there were 7,532 respondents with an average of 450 respondents per country.
In 2002, seven of the 15 European countries had restaurant smoking bans.
"Enforcing a law certainly plays a role in influencing behavior," Vuolo says. "While the bans and policies create a physical obstacle to smoking, they also add a stigma that likely contributes to deterring young people from the habit."
The study also found that local taxes and anti-tobacco campaigns were less effective in reducing smoking than bans and age limits.
"Strategies that rely on a personal cost or a cry to change behavior, such as taxes or anti-smoking posters, weren't as likely to curb cigarette use as policies do," he says. "However, a long-term study that looks at the impact of each effort is needed to better understand how sociological factors contribute to individual behavior."
Because the 18-year-old minimum purchase age in the United States is universal, this finding is not as applicable as in Europe, when, at the time of the 2002 data collection, the restricted ages varied by regions. At that time, six countries had no minimum purchase age; three countries required consumers to be 18; and six countries required age 16.
In countries with no minimum purchase age, the probability of a young person smoking regularly was about 46 percent, compared to 30 percent in countries with age restrictions.
"Considering that most adult smokers start smoking when they are teenagers, these laws and bans can be a first step to discouraging young people from smoking," he says.
The research was completed during Vuolo's doctoral work at the Univ. of Minnesota.

Carefully Timed High-Fat Diet Aids Metabolism, Prevents Obesity

New research from the Hebrew Univ. of Jerusalem shows that a carefully scheduled high-fat diet can lead to a reduction in body weight and a unique metabolism in which ingested fats are not stored, but rather used for energy at times when no food is available.
The research was conducted by Prof. Oren Froy along with Prof. Zecharia Madar, research student Yoni Genzer and research fellow Hadas Sherman at the Institute of Biochemistry, Food Science and Nutrition, at the Hebrew Univ.’s Robert H. Smith Faculty of Agriculture, Food and Environment. The results were published in FASEB Journal.
Previous research has established that disrupting mammals’ daily rhythms, or feeding them a high-fat diet, disrupts metabolism and leads to obesity. The researchers wanted to determine the effect of combining a high-fat diet with long-term feeding on a fixed schedule. They hypothesized that careful scheduling of meals would regulate the biological clock and reduce the effects of a high-fat diet that, under normal circumstances, would lead to obesity.
For 18 weeks they fed a group of mice a high-fat diet on a fixed schedule (eating at the same time and for the same length of time every day). They compared these mice to three control groups: one that ate a low-fat diet on a fixed schedule, one that ate an unscheduled low-fat diet (in the quantity and frequency of its choosing) and one that ate an unscheduled high-fat diet.
All four groups of mice gained weight throughout the experiment, with a final body weight greater in the group that ate an unscheduled high-fat diet.
The mice on the scheduled high-fat diet had a lower final body weight than the mice eating an unscheduled high-fat diet. But surprisingly, the mice on the scheduled high-fat diet also had a lower final body weight than the mice that ate an unscheduled low-fat diet, even though both groups consumed the same amount of calories.
In addition, the mice on the scheduled high-fat diet exhibited a unique metabolic state in which the fats they ingested were not stored, but rather utilized for energy at times when no food was available, such as between meals.
According to Froy, “Our research shows that the timing of food consumption takes precedence over the amount of fat in the diet, leading to improved metabolism and helping to prevent obesity. Improving metabolism through the careful scheduling of meals, without limiting the content of the daily menu, could be used as a therapeutic tool to prevent obesity in humans.”

Eco-Friendly Light Causes Most Damage to Circadian Rhythms

An international conference at the Univ. of Haifa has called attention to the dangers of exposure to light at night (LAN).

“The most important thing for us is to raise awareness of the dangers of artificial light at night and we have already come a long way now that the American Medical Association (AMA) recently announced its new policy recognizing adverse health effects of exposure to light at night and encouraging further research into the matter,” says Prof. Abraham Haim, a leading authority on light pollution, who coordinated the 21^st International Congress of Zoology (ICZ), held at the Univ. of Haifa.
The panel of world experts discussed “Light Pollution and its Ecophysiological Consequences” and shed new light on the extent of the dangers and harm that night-time artificial lighting causes, emphasizing that it is the short wavelength illumination that we have come to know as “eco-friendly illumination” that is causing the most harm (primarily LED lighting).
The participants were in full agreement that exposure to light at night affects circadian rhythms in nature - humans, animals and plants - which when thrown off can result in various illnesses and adverse symptoms. Haim presented one of his studies showing the adverse effects of exposure to light at night — particularly short wavelength blue LED — in the blind mole rat and in seeing rats, both of which showed varying levels of damage to their metabolic rates, hormone production, body mass and oxygen consumption following exposure to LAN, as well as suppressed levels of melatonin production, which is responsible for tumor growth. “We expect to find similar results of damage from human exposure to LED lighting,” Abraham concludes, and points out that, “Western youngsters are typically surrounded by this sort of lighting in the confines of their own bedroom: from the smartphone, computer screen and television.”
“Street lights in populated areas are responsible for 60 percent of LAN pollution, which is intensified under cloudy conditions when the light is reflected back down to the ground,” says Franz Hölker of the Leibniz Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries, Germany, who chaired the panel with Noam Leader of the Israel Nature and Parks Authority. Others pointed out the excessive levels of light pollution found in industrial areas, greatly endangering surrounding wildlife.
The participants of the panel revealed the harm being done by LAN, to all types of plants and animals (mammals, birds, fishes, reptiles, amphibians and invertebrates), putting many at risk of extinction.

Orbiter Sees Carbon-Dioxide Snowfall on Mars

NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter data have given scientists the clearest evidence yet of carbon-dioxide snowfalls on Mars. This reveals the only known example of carbon-dioxide snow falling anywhere in our solar system.

Frozen carbon dioxide, better known as "dry ice," requires temperatures of about minus 193 F (minus 125 C), which is much colder than needed for freezing water. Carbon-dioxide snow reminds scientists that although some parts of Mars may look quite Earth-like, the Red Planet is very different. The report is being published in the Journal of Geophysical Research.
"These are the first definitive detections of carbon-dioxide snow clouds," says the report's lead author, Paul Hayne of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "We firmly establish the clouds are composed of carbon dioxide – flakes of Martian air – and they are thick enough to result in snowfall accumulation at the surface."
The snowfalls occurred from clouds around the Red Planet's south pole in winter. The presence of carbon-dioxide ice in Mars' seasonal and residual southern polar caps has been known for decades. Also, NASA's Phoenix Lander mission in 2008 observed falling water-ice snow on northern Mars.
Hayne and six co-authors analyzed data gained by looking at clouds straight overhead and sideways with the Mars Climate Sounder, one of six instruments on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. This instrument records brightness in nine wavebands of visible and infrared light as a way to examine particles and gases in the Martian atmosphere. The analysis was conducted while Hayne was a post-doctoral fellow at the California Institute of Technology.
The data provide information about temperatures, particle sizes and their concentrations. The new analysis is based on data from observations in the south polar region during southern Mars winter in 2006-2007, identifying a tall carbon-dioxide cloud about 300 miles (500 kilometers) in diameter persisting over the pole and smaller, shorter-lived, lower-altitude carbon dioxide ice clouds at latitudes from 70 to 80 degrees south.
"One line of evidence for snow is that the carbon-dioxide ice particles in the clouds are large enough to fall to the ground during the lifespan of the clouds," co-author David Kass of JPL says. "Another comes from observations when the instrument is pointed toward the horizon, instead of down at the surface. The infrared spectra signature of the clouds viewed from this angle is clearly carbon-dioxide ice particles and they extend to the surface. By observing this way, the Mars Climate Sounder is able to distinguish the particles in the atmosphere from the dry ice on the surface."
Mars' south polar residual ice cap is the only place on the Red Planet where frozen carbon dioxide persists on the surface year-round. Just how the carbon dioxide from Mars' atmosphere gets deposited has been in question. It is unclear whether it occurs as snow or by freezing out at ground level as frost. These results show snowfall is especially vigorous on top of the residual cap.
"The finding of snowfall could mean that the type of deposition – snow or frost – is somehow linked to the year-to-year preservation of the residual cap," Hayne says.