What is a black hole’s surface?

Written By: Chuck Bednar
Emily Bills

Chuck Bednar for redOrbit.com – @BednarChuck

If the Earth came into contact with a black hole, would it be instantly incinerated or would we barely even notice being captured by the region of deformed space-time? It is that debate that is at the heart of new research by a physics professor at Ohio State University.

In a new paper posted online to the arXiv preprint server, OSU professor Samir Mathur explains that there’s a loophole with a recently proposed idea suggesting that there is a “firewall” of sorts that surrounds a black hole, destroying anything that comes into contact with it.

More than a decade ago, it was demonstrated that black holes are actually tangled balls of cosmic yarn through the principles of string theory. This so-called “fuzzball theory” helped resolve some of the contractions of how physicists view black holes, but experts attempting to build on his study instead concluded that the surface of this so-called fuzzball was a deadly firewall.

Mathur and his colleagues also have been working on expanding the fuzzball theory, but they have come to a drastically different conclusion. Instead of seeing black holes as a deadly killing machine, destroying all things that come into contact with them, the OSU team concluded that they are more like copy machines that create a hologram of the object they touch. Wait, what?

The core tenets of string theory are at stake

According to their new study, when material touches the surface of a black hole, it becomes a near-perfect copy of itself that continues to exist as if nothing had happened. The copy is not an exact replica, however, even though the hypothesis of complementarity requires that holograms created by black holes be a perfect copy of the original.

Both Mathur’s team and the proponents of the firewall theory have concluded, mathematically speaking, that strict complementarity is not possible and that a perfect hologram cannot form on the surface of a black hole. However, the OSU professor and his colleagues have come up with a modified model of complementarity that assumes an imperfect hologram forms.

The firewall theory claims that without strict complementarity, no hologram can be produced and the object that comes into contact with the black hole will meet a fiery end. However, Mathur’s latest study purportedly provides mathematical proof that modified complementarity is possible by assuming that black holes themselves are imperfect.

“There’s no such thing as a perfect black hole, because every black hole is different,” Mathur explained, referring to the resolution of the long-running debate over the so-called information paradox, in which physicists have admitted that material consumed by a black hole does not get destroyed, but instead becomes a part of the black hole itself.

This permanently alters the black hole, similar to splicing a new gene sequence into a person’s DNA, making each black hole a unique product of the material that happens comes into it. At the core of the debate is one of the tenets of string theory – whether our existence could be a hologram on a surface that exists in several other dimensions. The firewall theory states that this is impossible, while the fuzzball theory suggests otherwise.

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No tropical dinosaurs? Blame the climate

Written By: Chuck Bednar
Christopher Pilny

Chuck Bednar for redOrbit.com – @BednarChuck

Wild swings in climate that featured droughts, intense heat, and wildfires were the reasons behind plant-eating dinosaurs’ scarcity around the equator, new research published in the latest Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences revealed.

Only a handful of carnivorous dinosaurs lived in the tropics–in large part due to the lack of herbivores. Why this was, though, is a question that’s plagued paleontologists for decades–until recently, after an international team of scientists created a model of the climate and ecology from more than 200 million years ago.

“Our data suggest it was not a fun place,” co-author Randall Irmis, the paleontology curator at the Natural History Museum of Utah and an assistant professor at the University of Utah, said in a statement. “It was a time of climate extremes that went back and forth unpredictably and large, warm-blooded dinosaurian herbivores weren’t able to exist nearer to the equator.”

The study, which the researchers claim is the first to examine a detailed analysis of the climate and ecology during the emergence of the dinosaurs, determined that there was not enough plant life in the tropics to serve as food for the hungry herbivores.

Conditions were similar to the western US today

As part of their research, Irmis, lead investigator Jessica Whiteside from the UK’s University of Southampton and their fellow researchers studied Chinle Formation rocks, which were deposited by streams and rivers between 205 and 215 million years ago, at Ghost Ranch in New Mexico.

The Ghost Ranch site is home to many fossils from the Late Triassic Period, and at that time, the area would have been part of the Pangea and located close to the equator at latitudes close to that of current-day southern India. They analyzed fossils, charcoal remnants from ancient wildfires, and stable isotopes from organic matter and carbonate nodules that formed in ancient soil.

Based on the fossil evidence, the authors found that dinosaurs accounted for less than 15 percent of vertebrate animal remains, and were outnumbered by the predecessors of modern crocodiles and alligators. The dinosaurs that they did find were primarily small, carnivorous theropods, and the fossil record shows no evidence of sauropodomorphs, the dominant plant-eaters of the era, at the study site or elsewhere in low-latitude Triassic Pangaea, they explained.

Based on their research, they were able to discern that the climate shifts that affected the region included periods of extended drought that hampered plant productivity, a drastic variation in the burn temperatures of wildfires, and drastic changes in precipitation levels that would have caused plants to die off, thus fuelling hotter fires and further damaging the ecosystem.

“The conditions would have been something similar to the arid western United States today, although there would have been trees and smaller plants near streams and rivers and forests during humid times,” Whiteside explained. “The fluctuating and harsh climate with widespread wild fires meant that only small two-legged carnivorous dinosaurs… could survive.”

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MIT chills particles to coldest temps ever

Written By: Chuck Bednar
Christopher Pilny

Chuck Bednar for redOrbit.com – @BednarChuck

A team of MIT-led scientists has successfully superchilled molecules to record cold conditions, reaching temperatures colder than the period following the Big Bang and just slightly higher than absolute zero, according to research published in the journal Physical Review Letters.

The superchilled atoms created through their efforts are the coldest molecules ever created, and it could shed new light on the unorthodox physics believed to take place at these astonishingly cold conditions, LiveScience reported on Friday. While molecules travel at superfast speeds at normal temperatures, physicists believe that they stop acting individually when superchilled.

During their research, MIT physicist Martin Zwierlein and his colleagues cooled a gas comprised of sodium potassium using lasers in order to dissipate the energy of the individual molecules. They chilled the gas molecules to temperatures as cold as 500 nanokelvins, or just a fraction of a degree above absolute zero and even colder than outer space.

Zwierlein’s team discovered that the molecules tended to be stable and not interact with any of the molecules around them. Furthermore, they reportedly established that the molecules showed strong dipole movements, which helps determine if molecules attract or repel one another.

Creating a supercooled sodium-potassium molecule

Using evaporation, lasers, and magnetic fields, they were able to take sodium and potassium, two elements which typically repel each other, and combine them to form unusual sodium-potassium molecules, LiveScience said. Next, the researchers used another set of lasers to cool one of these molecules, resulting in an extremely low-energy state and an exceptionally cold molecule.

The molecule they created only lasted 2 1/2 seconds before it broke up, and while that is not as long as regular chemicals, that is a lengthy amount of time in these conditions. Furthermore, it brings researchers one step closer to cooling molecules even further, in the hopes that they will be able to observe some of the quantum mechanical effects predicted by various theories.

“We have created an ultracold gas of chemically stable molecules,” Zwierlein told redOrbit via email. “These molecules can possibly serve in the future as robust quanten-bits (qubits) in a quantum computer, where ‘0’ and ‘1’ are robustly encoded in the rotation of the molecules.”

“Also, at ultralow temperatures, molecular gases are predicted to form new states of matter with exotic properties, thanks to their strong interactions, not unlike the interaction between bar magnets,” he added. “For example, they might form crystals that support frictionless flow. We are close to the temperature regime where such new states should emerge.”

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Assisted reproduction doesn’t affect kids’ smarts

Written By: Chuck Bednar
Emily Bills

Chuck Bednar for redOrbit.com – @BednarChuck

Children who are conceived through by assisted reproduction techniques do not experience any decline in academic performance during adolescence in comparison to babies born through traditional means, researchers from Denmark reported in a new study.

Speaking Monday at the annual meeting of the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology, Anne Lærke Spangmose Pedersen, a student in the fertility clinic of Copenhagen University Hospital Hvidovre, explained that ninth graders conceived by ART (Assisted Reproductive Technology) are no better or worse off scholastically than spontaneously-conceived pupils of the same age.

Similarly, she found that single children and twins conceived through ART have comparable test scores, suggesting that the “higher obstetric risk” identified in these types of pregnancies “is not associated with poorer academic performance in adolescence,” ESHRE said in a statement.

The authors called the results of the study “very important for infertile patients.”

Results: ART is a “safe” method

As part of her research, Pedersen conducted a national study involving every child conceived by ART in Denmark from 1995 through 2000. This group of more than 8,200 kids (which included nearly 5,200 single children and more than 3,200 twins) was then compared to a pair of control groups, one comprised solely of twins and the other of single children.

The academic performance of each group was compared to a general test given to all ninth grade students in Denmark. The test is graded on a scale of -3 to +12, with an average score of 7. While initial results indicated some discrepancies between the different groups, they disappeared after statistical adjustments were made, including those involving birth weight, maternal age, gestational age, and social status.

“We were pleased to see the results,” Pedersen explained. “The higher rate of twins and preterm birth in ART singletons might have given rise to lower academic test scores. But our results now confirm smaller studies, which have shown no difference in IQ between ART and non-ART children. All our four study groups had test scores very close to the average.”

Furthermore, she said that the results were “reassuring” and that they showed “the high validity of the study.” Pedersen added that the results of the study “might finally persuade politicians and society as a whole that there is no reason for caution in future ART generations. Thus, we can continue to perform ART as a safe and sound method from the long-term child perspective.”

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FDA approves brain implant to treat Parkinson’s disease

Written By: Chuck Bednar
Emily Bills

Chuck Bednar for redOrbit.com – @BednarChuck

The US Food and Drug Administration has approved a brain implant designed to reduce the symptoms of patients with Parkinson’s disease and essential tremor, a neurological condition which causes a rhythmic shaking, the agency announced on Friday.

The device is known as the Brio Neurostimulation System, and according to Reuters, the unit is a small generator that delivers low intensity electrical pulses to specific parts of the brain. It can be used when medication alone is unable to provide sufficient relief of symptoms such as walking difficulties, balance issues, and tremors associated with both conditions.

The Brio Neurostimulation System is produced by St. Jude Medical Inc. in St. Paul, Minnesota, and is the second implant approved for treatment of Parkinson’s, a disease that affects about 50,000 people in the US each year. The other treatment, the Medtronic PLC’s Activa Deep Brain Stimulation Therapy System, was approved by the FDA back in 1997.

Implant use led to “statistically significant improvement”

According to the Wall Street Journal, this new device is a battery-powered, rechargeable pulse generator that is implanted under the skin of the upper chest, and it contains wire leads that are attached to electrodes placed within the brain. Adverse side effects reported by the FDA include intracranial bleeding, which could lead to stroke, paralysis, or death.

“There are no cures for Parkinson’s disease or essential tremor, but finding better ways to manage symptoms is essential for patients,” Dr. William Maisel, acting director of the Office of Device Evaluation at the FDA’s Center for Devices and Radiological Health, said in a statement. “This new device adds to the array of treatment options to help people living with Parkinson’s and essential tremor enjoy better, more productive lives.”

The safety and effectiveness of the device was established using a pair of clinical studies, the agency said. The first featured 136 patients with Parkinson’s disease, while the other included 127 patients with essential tremor. In both trials, the FDA said, patients had tremors and other symptoms that were not being adequately controlled through drug therapy alone.

The system was used along with medications in Parkinson’s patients, while the majority of the essential tremor patients using the device able to control their symptoms without the need for any drug treatments, the FDA added. Both groups showed “statistically significant improvement” in symptoms when using the device during the either three-to-six month long trials.

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Study sets new limits on the size of ‘quantum foam’

Written By: Chuck Bednar
Emily Bills

Chuck Bednar for redOrbit.com – @BednarChuck

Using NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and other space-and ground-based telescopes, a team of researchers has conducted observations of some of the most distant known galaxies in the universe to better understand the very nature of space and time.

As part of their research, they focused on a tiny and extremely unusual theoretical feature of the universe – one that is too small to be seen directly, according to Space.com. Known as “quantum foam,” this phenomenon is believed to cause rough patches along the route by which light travels to the Earth from distant galaxies.

Some models have suggested that the effects of this foam could be witnessed in a large group of photons that travel extremely long distances, so to better understand it, a team of scientists led by Eric Perlman of the Florida Institute of Technology studied some of the brightest galaxies in the known universe and managed to set new limits on the quantum nature of space-time.

Perlman’s team used Chandra, the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope and VERITAS (the Very Energetic Radiation Imaging Telescope Array), and while they were unable to find any evidence of the foam itself, they were able to eliminate two theories pertaining to its behavior.

Eliminating all but one model of space-time foam

According to the researchers, whose findings have been published in The Astrophysical Journal, the predicted scale of quantum foam is roughly ten times one-billionth of one-trillionth of the diameter of the nucleus of a hydrogen atom, which explains why it cannot be detected directly.

If space-time does have a foam-like structure, however, it would limit the accuracy with which distances could be measured due to fluctuations that occur when light travels through quantum bubbles. Based on the space-time model that is used, these uncertainties should accumulate at different rates as light travels over vast stretches of the cosmos.

They used observations of X-rays and gamma rays from very distant quasars to test out various models of space-time foam, predicting that the accumulation of uncertainties would cause image quality to degrade to the point that objects would be undetectable. The wavelength at which the image vanished should depend on the model of space-time foam used, they added.

Based on their research, they were able to rule out a model, claiming that photons diffused randomly through space-time foam much like light diffuses through fog, as well as a second one known as the holographic model. They concluded that space-time is less foamy than predicted by some models, and is smooth to distances 1000 times smaller than a hydrogen atom nucleus.

That leaves one model of quantum foam still in play, according to Space.com – a model that predicts that distortion effects are not be amplified over long distances. This model suggests that evidence of quantum foam will not be found by observing distant quasars.

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New York man wins 2015 Nintendo World Championships

Written By: Chuck Bednar
Emily Bills

Chuck Bednar for redOrbit.com – @BednarChuck

The house of Mario kicked off E3 in a big way, hosting the finals of its first Nintendo World Championships in 25 years, and announcing a handful of new games during the course of the event. The event was held Sunday night in Los Angeles, California.

Sixteen semi-finalists (eight who had been selected by Nintendo and eight others who qualified during regional competitions held on May 30) battled it out in such titles as Super Metroid, The Legend of Zelda, Splatoon, Mario Kart 8, and Super Smash Bros for Wii U. They also went head-to-head in Blast Ball, a new 3DS game unveiled during the tournament.

In the end, Queens, New York native John “John Numbers” Goldberg defeated Cosmo Wright in the final round, which saw both players compete in stages made with the soon-to-be-released Wii U title Super Mario Maker. Goldberg received a large, gold-plated Mario trophy for his efforts, but he and Wright also took home New 3DS handhelds signed by Mario-creator Shigeru Miyamoto.

New games announced, other events planned

The Nintendo World Championships wasn’t all about fun and games, however. As mentioned above, the company used the tournament as a creative way to announce Blast Ball, a six-player Nintendo 3D game that the company dubbed a “sci-fi sports experience” and which IGN.com referred to as a “Metroid-esque multiplayer shooter.”

In addition, during a live segment aired before the tournament, Nintendo announced that it would be releasing a localized version of the NES game EarthBound Beginnings in the Wii U Nintendo eShop for $6.99. The game is the first title in the ‘Mother’ series and the prequel to the Super NES game released in the US as EarthBound.

Also during the event, Nintendo president Reggie Fils-Aime took on a well-known gamer by the name of Hungrybox in Super Smash Bros. in what Polygon said was “a funny, lively competitive match.” Of course, Fils-Aime was “absolutely destroyed in a way that made it look like he’s never even touched one of his company’s most popular games,” the website added, but that just helped make the event feel like “a celebration of the culture around Nintendo.”

Nintendo’s presence at E3 continues Tuesday at 9am Pacific Time, when the company will run a live event featuring game demos and special guests from the show floor. They also revealed that gamers in the US and Canada who aren’t fortunate enough to be at E3 this week can head to their local Best Buy stores on June 17 and 20 to try out Super Mario Maker for themselves.

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Sugarcane-based jet fuel could drastically reduce emission levels

Written By: Chuck Bednar
Christopher Pilny

Chuck Bednar for redOrbit.com – @BednarChuck

Switching to fuel created using sugarcane biomass could drastically reduce the carbon emissions produced by jet aircraft, researchers from the University of California-Berkeley report in a study published recently in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

According to Discovery News, nearly two percent of human-generated carbon emissions come from aircraft, but the authors of the new study claim that sugarcane-based biofuel could reduce those emissions by as much as 80 percent. This feat would be accomplished using a new method featuring a complex series of chemical reactions involving sugar and cane waste products.

Unlike other sources of biofuel, sugarcane can be grown on land that is unsuitable for other crops and would not require the use of land that could be used to grow edible crops and thus potentially threatening global food security. The researchers also told BBC News that it was vital to develop new types of renewable liquid fuels to reduce the planet’s reliance on petroleum.

New substance meets strict standards for aviation fuel

“We’ve identified a new route of chemistry with its source from sugars in sugarcane plus some of the so-called waste material called bagasse,” study co-author Alexis Bell of the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering and the Energy Biosciences Institute, told BBC News. “We show… how we can put these components together to make jet diesel and lubricants.”

Aviation fuel must meet a series of strict requirements, Bell said. It cannot have any oxygen content, it must have the right boiling point distribution, it must not cause excessive wear to the turbine components and it must have a low pour point, meaning that it cannot become gelatinous in colder temperatures. His team’s new fuel “meets all of those criteria,” he claimed.

The research, which was funded by petroleum company BP, could also be used to develop new, cleaner lubricants for use in automobiles, as well as a cleaner diesel fuel, Discovery News said. At the company’s urging, Bell said that his team filed for a patent for the new technology.

“Where they see the likely commercial interest for themselves and others is that the lubricants would be first as the profit margins are largest,” Bell, who is the Dow Professor of Sustainable Chemistry at the university, explained to BBC News. “Next would be aviation fuel because of the growing US and European regulations requiring a ‘green’ component of aviation fuel.”

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Scientists emerge from simulated Mars environment

Written By: Chuck Bednar
Christopher Pilny

Chuck Bednar for redOrbit.com – @BednarChuck

Six scientists who spent eight months living in a dome near the dormant Mauna Loa volcano in Hawaii in order to simulate life on Mars “returned to Earth” over the weekend.

The crew members, who according to the Associated Press were taking part in a NASA-funded human performance study, had been monitored by surveillance cameras, movement trackers, and electronic surveys and had not been allowed to leave the dome without wearing a spacesuit.

Their home for the last eight months was located 8,000 feet up the slope of the volcano, and both the environment and the simulated airlock seal on their dome were meant to replicate the kind of conditions that real-life travelers to the Red Planet would experience.

Known as the Hawaii Space Exploration Analog and Simulation (HI-SEAS) project, the goal of the mission was to monitor the social interaction and emotional wellbeing of three men and three women as they deal with simulated life on Mars, the AP and PBS Newshour explained.

More about the comforts and challenges of the project

According to the Daily Mail, the six-person team of scientists was participating in the third of four planned missions that comprise the overall HI-SEAS project. A fourth mission is scheduled to begin in August and is slated to last a full year. Like its predecessors, it will challenge the participants to deal with issues such as blackouts and food and water shortages.

As mentioned earlier, the participants must spend the majority of their trip inside the dome – a two-floored facility with a large ceiling that is split into six different living quarters, each with a mattress, desk, and stool. The whole thing is run on solar power, with a hydrogen fuel cells serving as a back-up, and the crew is able to exercise regularly.

Despite the accommodations, completing the mission is no easy task. Upon leaving the dome, 27-year-old crew member and Purdue University doctoral student Jocelyn Dunn explained that she enjoyed feeling the sensation of wind on her skin after only being able to head outside while wearing a space suit for so long, but also admitted that doing so was a little scary.

“We’ve been pretending for so long,” she told the AP, noting that the hardest part was being away from friends and family, and missing important events such as her sister’s wedding. “When you’re having a good day it’s fine, it’s fun. You have friends around to share in the enjoyment of a good day. But if you have a bad day, it’s really tough to be in a confined environment.”

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Humans are not only self-aware animals, study finds

Written By: Chuck Bednar
Christopher Pilny

Chuck Bednar for redOrbit.com – @BednarChuck

Long thought to be one of the distinguishing characteristics of humans, self-awareness has now been found to exist in other creatures, researchers from the UK’s University of Warwick claim in a new study published in the latest edition of the journal Current Zoology.

In their paper, co-author Professor Thomas Hills and colleagues from the Warwick Departments of Psychology and Philosophy explained that people and other animals that are mentally capable of simulating environments must possess at least a primitive sense of self-awareness.

Their study “strongly suggests” that sense of self is not unique to mankind, and is likely common amongst different animals, the university explained in a statement. The authors’ conclusions are based on thought experiments designed to discover which capabilities animals have to possess in order to mentally simulate their environment.

Distinguishing between real and imagined actions

Drawing inspiration from work conducted on maze navigation in rats conducted more than a half century ago, in which the rodents were observed stopping when faced with a decision, apparently deliberating which path to take, Hills and his fellow investigators came up with several different descriptive models to explain the process behind the rats’ apparent deliberation.

In one model, called the Naive Model, the researchers assumed that animals inhibit action during a simulation. However, they found that this model created false memories, because the creatures would not be able to tell the difference between a real action and an imaged one. The second one, the Self-actuating Model, solved this issue by “tagging” real versus imagined experiences.

This tagging, according to Hills and co-author Professor Stephen Butterfill from the Warwick Department of Philosophy, have dubbed this tagging “the primal self.” Their work, they wrote in their paper, demonstrates that cognitive systems which use embodied prospective foraging which require limited self-awareness must be able to distinguish actual from simulated action.

“The study’s key insight is that those animals capable of simulating their future actions must be able to distinguish between their imagined actions and those that are actually experienced,” said Hills, noting that the study “answers a very old question: do animals have a sense of self?”

“Our first aim was to understand the recent neural evidence that animals can project themselves into the future,” the professor added. “What we wound up understanding is that, in order to do so, they must have a primal sense of self. As such, humans must not be the only animal capable of self-awareness… anything, even robots, that can adaptively imagine themselves doing what they have not yet done, must be able to separate the knower from the known.”

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Scientists discover gene that determines egg or sperm

Written By: Chuck Bednar
Christopher Pilny

Chuck Bednar for redOrbit.com – @BednarChuck

A team of Japanese scientists have discovered the genetic switch that determines whether the reproductive precursor cells known as germ cells go on to develop into sperm or eggs, according to new research published last week in the journal Science.

As part of their study, Dr. Toshiya Nishimura and Minoru Tanaka from the National Institute for Basic Biology’s Laboratory of Molecular Genetics for Reproduction and their colleagues studied a small fish known as the medaka or Japanese rice fish, the Press Trust of India (PTI) said.

They discovered that the gene known as foxl3 is responsible for determining the type of reproductive cell a germ cell will become in females, Reuters added. When a female fish does not have functional foxl3 genes, its body appearance will remain completely female, but it will produce higher quantities of sperm cells and fewer eggs in the ovaries.

A similar mechanism may also be present in humans

The foxl3 gene is primarily active in a female’s germ cells to prevent them from becoming sperm cells instead of egg cells in the ovaries, the study authors explained. When they inactivated the gene in female fish, it caused germ cells to become sperm cells instead of egg cells.

Those sperm cells functioned normally, they added, successfully fertilizing eggs and producing healthy offspring. While the research team noted that people do not possess this particular gene, they believe it is likely that a similar genetic switch mechanism also exists in humans.

“Our result indicates that once the decision is made, the germ cells have the ability to go all the way to the end. I believe it is of very large significance that this mechanism has been found,” Tanaka told PTI. “While germ cells can become either sperm or eggs, nobody knew that in vertebrates the germ cells have a switch mechanism to decide their own sperm or egg fate.”

“In spite of the environment surrounding the germ cells being female, the fact that functional sperm has been made surprised me greatly,” added Dr. Nishimura, a reproductive biologist at the National Institute for Basic Biology. “That this sexual switch present in the germ cells is independent of the body’s sex is an entirely new finding.”

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Cubesats to accompany InSight lander to Mars

Written By: Chuck Bednar
Christopher Pilny

Chuck Bednar for redOrbit.com – @BednarChuck

When NASA’s InSight lander departs for Mars next year, it won’t be traveling alone, as a pair of CubeSats will also make the journey. This will make them the first mini-probes to make the journey to deep space, officials from the US space agency announced on Friday.

The companion satellites are known as Mars Cube One (MarCO), and according to Engadget, they are briefcase-sized probes that measure 14.4 x 9.5 x 4.6 inches and are made up of six four-inch square cube satellites. InSight and MarCO will operate independently from one another, but will be carried into space together onboard an Atlas V rocket in September 2016.

The MarCO satellites are communication relays, the website added, and are programmed to fly over Mars while the lander is descending to the planet’s surface. They will serve as InSight’s link to the ground team, allowing it to transmit messages back to Earth directly rather than having to radio information to the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) first.

CubeSat use on future Mars missions

In a statement, Jim Green, the director of planetary science division at the NASA headquarters in Washington, said that the CubeSats are “an experimental capability” that had been “added to the InSight mission,” but that it will not play an essential role in the mission’s success or failure.

During InSight’s landing, it will transmit information in the UHF radio band to MRO, and the orbiter will forward EDL data to Earth using an X-band radio frequency. However, it is unable to send and receive data at the same time, meaning that it would take more than an hour to transmit confirmation back to ground control.

MarcCO, however, has a softball-sized radio that provides both both UHF (receive only) and X-band (receive and transmit) functions, the agency said. The CubeSats, which are equipped with a high-gain flat-panel antenna that directs radio waves similar to a parabolic dish antenna, are able to immediately relay the data they receive over UHF back to Earth.

If the CubeSats are successful, it could open the door for similar tag-along communication relay devices for use on future Mars missions, NASA said. Also, if this project can verify that this type of miniature probe can be used on interplanetary missions, it could open the door for their use in other ways to help explore parts of the solar system.

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Dogs won’t accept treats from rude people

Written By: Chuck Bednar
Emily Bills

Chuck Bednar for redOrbit.com – @BednarChuck

Dogs love food, but apparently they love their humans more. They will refuse to accept treats from somebody who have snubbed their masters, a team of Japanese scientists report in a research that will be published later this month in the journal Animal Behaviour.

In the study, Kyoto University comparative cognition professor Kazuo Fujita and his colleagues tested three groups of 18 dogs in situations where their owners needed to open a box. In each of the three groups, the owner was accompanied by two people unfamiliar to the canine.

According to the Daily Mail, in the first group the owner asked for assistance from one of the two people, but that individual actively refused to help. In the second, the owner again asked for help, but this time the individual agreed to do so. The third group was a control in which neither person interacted with the dog’s owner.

The third member of each of the first two groups was not asked for assistance, and thus did not either agree or refuse to help out the dog’s owner, remaining neutral throughout the trial. At the conclusion of the box-opening event, the dogs were offered food by the two unfamiliar people and the researchers monitored their reactions.

Shaft my owner? I’ll shaft you

Those dogs who witnessed their humans’ call for help being refused were more likely to choose to take food from the neutral third-party, ignoring the person who ignored their masters. On the other hand, dogs whose owners were helped and dogs whose owners did not interact with either observer showed no preference when it came to food acceptance.

“We discovered for the first time that dogs make social and emotional evaluations of people regardless of their direct interest,” Fujita told AFP, noting that if the creatures were acting exclusively in their own interest, there would be no differences among the groups and roughly the same number of canines would have accepted food from each person.

“This ability is one of key factors in building a highly collaborative society, and this study shows that dogs share that ability with humans,” the professor added. Not all animals demonstrate this ability, he said. While one study suggests that tufted capuchins do, “there is no evidence that chimpanzees demonstrate a preference unless there is a direct benefit to them.”

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Fibromyalgia

Reiki Therapy for Fibromyalgia

Written By: admin
admin

 

reiki

Alternative therapies, like meditation and flower essences, are becoming more popular, especially with people who have tried everything for their chronic pain and illness to no avail. One type of therapy that many people are turning toward is known as Reiki Therapy.

This type of therapy is quite old, but people keep bringing it to the forefront again and again because of the benefits that it provides to those who are suffering from chronic illness and fatigue. Let’s take a closer look at this unique and natural form of alternative therapy for pain relief.

What is Reiki?

Meaning “life” or “energy of life” in Japanese, Reiki is a holistic form of treatment. That means that it focuses on the wholeness of the entire person – instead of just focusing on problem areas, this form of treatment is more focused on helping the entire person to be healthy and whole. It involves moving the hands against the person’s body. Basically, the fingers are skimmed over certain areas of the body, and that touch is meant to help heal those certain areas. It’s kind of a gentle massage. If you’re uncomfortable with touch at all, there are alternatives – you can have the hands hovering over your body instead.

It’s about the energy that comes from the person doing the healing, and that energy is supposed to help relax the body and get rid of the pain that is going on in certain areas of the body. It takes anywhere from a half an hour to ninety minutes for an entire Reiki session to be performed, depending on the patient and the therapist.

That being said, it’s a bit more spiritual than other forms of alternative therapy that you may have been exposed to. There is a lot of talk about the connection with the universe, which in some cases, may make people feel a little uncomfortable.

That being said, it’s very safe and you aren’t in any danger – it’s a well respected practice and there is a lot of research behind it from the past few decades since it really started being utilized as a part of other types of therapeutic practice.

If you feel uncomfortable with that end of it, you will want to talk to the therapist that you are working with in order to get a better idea of what is going on. They can answer whatever questions that you may have and give you assurance if you feel unsure at all.

Can it help fibromyalgia?

So, where is Reiki massaged used with fibromyalgia, and what can it do in order to help relieve the symptoms that you are dealing with? Here’s a quick overview of where it has been shown to help some fibro patients.

Alleviation of anxiety and relaxation issues. The sensations and the breathing exercises that are done during the therapy session help the mind and body to relax. When this happens, you will be less likely to have panic attacks and you will feel more comfortable interacting with the world around you.

Reduction of pain and muscle tension. Pain is at the core of everything that fibromyalgia patients have to worry about, and because of that, we want to find things that help reduce the pain and muscle tension. Relief is at the core, and Reiki has helped to provide that for some people. Because it is so focused, the therapist can focus on certain areas of the body in order to help reduce or eliminate the tension and pain in those regions.

Ease in sleeping and reduction in fatigue. You’re often exhausted as a part of fibromyalgia. Reiki, because it helps you to relax and it reduces the pain that you feel, helps you to sleep better and it helps to reduce the amount of fatigue that you are dealing with during the daytime hours.

There may be other benefits as well, but these are the ones that are seen the most often by those who have been receiving therapy from a qualified therapist – someone who as undergone Reiki training – in their area.

Has Reiki Therapy Been Proven to Actually Work?

This is always the big question with alternative therapies, isn’t it? We want to know if the therapies that we are going to try are actually going to work and if they will make a difference with the symptoms and the stress that we are experiencing.

And, as with many types of treatment that are out there, it’s important to say that it definitely does work for some people, but it doesn’t work for everyone. Everyone’s a little different, so some things will work and other things will just fly by without any real difference happening in the person going through the therapy.

It is, however, important to note that Reiki (nor any other type of therapy that is out there) is not an instant cure for anything that is going on in your life. There is no “cure” for fibromyalgia. Can it help alleviate the symptoms that you are dealing with?

Absolutely, but it won’t make them go away forever. If you’re going to try it, just make sure that you go into it with an open mind and that you will be alright if it doesn’t seem to work for you.

Reiki therapy is definitely unique, and it’s definitely worth looking into if you are having a hard time fending off the symptoms of your fibromyalgia. Before you make any treatment changes or add any exercise or therapy to your treatment plan, make sure to have a conversation with your specialist. They can give you advice and guidance that will ensure that you are able to get the help and relief that you are looking for from your treatment plan.

Have you tried Reiki Massage? Let us know how it worked for you in the comments!

 

Chimps, rats among other animals that laugh

Written By: Chuck Bednar
Christopher Pilny

Chuck Bednar for redOrbit.com – @BednarChuck

Humans aren’t the only members of the animal kingdom that enjoy having their funny bones tickled, as studies have shown that both rodents and primates are known to get the giggles, and that chimpanzees produce “laughing faces” even when they are silent.

The topic of animal laughter came up over the weekend as the result of a question submitted by a reader to National Geographic, which simply wondered whether or not animals laughed. As it turns out, scientists have long been investigating the same thing, as research into expressions of humor date back at least to a study involving rats that was published in 2000.

In that paper, Washington State University psychologist and neuroscientist Jaak Panskepp found that rodents who were tickled made a happy, chirping-like noise similar to those they emit during play. The noise is inaudible to the human ear, but apparently some of the creatures enjoyed being tickled so much that they would actually follow the researchers’ hand around.

In the years that followed, Panskepp and colleagues went on to identify brain circuits involved in laughter in rats that can be used to study human emotion, the website added. His work has helped in the development of an antidepressant for humans that is currently in clinical trials.

Like humans, chimps can laugh and convey emotions silently

Six years ago, University of Portsmouth psychologist Marina Davila Ross conducted a series of experiments in which she tickled infant and juvenile orangutans, gorillas, and chimps and found that primates responded with “tickle-induced vocalizations” similar to laughter, Nat Geo said. That research was published in the journal Current Biology.

Now, Ross has published a new paper in the journal PLOS One which demonstrates that chimps have a special “laugh face” in which they smile with their teeth bares, whether they are laughing at the time or not. This discovery, she explained, reveals that the creatures can communicate in a variety of explicit, versatile ways and can convey emotion silently, similar to humans.

“Chimpanzees, like humans, can produce their facial expressions free from their vocalizations,” she told Discovery News. “This ability is important for humans. For instance, it allows us to add a smile while talking or laughing, and we can also produce smiles silently. Until now, we did not know that non-human primates also have this ability.”

As for laughter, Ross noted that while the sounds produced by chimps are not identical to those produced by humans, they are largely unmistakable. Her findings, the website added, appear to indicate that the ability to laugh and the related facial expressions may have originally emerged in the last common ancestor of humans and chimps.

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Study links gene and aggressive brain cancer

Written By: Chuck Bednar
Brian Galloway

Chuck Bednar for redOrbit.com – @BednarChuck

Scientists from the UK’s Institute of Cancer Research and colleagues from France and Canada have identified a genetic mutation linked to the development of anaplastic oligodendroglioma, an aggressive form of brain cancer that affects the cerebral hemisphere of the brain.

According to the researchers, who published their findings in a recent edition of the journal Nature Communications, their work represents the largest-ever study of this type of brain cancer—which is fast growing, accounts for between five to ten percent of central nervous system tumors, and usually leads to a grim prognosis.

The study provides new insight into the causes of oligodendroglioma, as well as potential treatments, they study authors added. Learning more about the genetic causes responsible for the development of these tumors will allow scientists and doctors to come up with new personalized treatments that can target a vast array of mutations driving the condition.

Fast and aggressive

The study, which was funded by Investissements d’avenir and Génome Québec and supported by Cancer Research UK, compared the genetic sequences of 134 oligodendrogliomas with the DNA of healthy brain cells. They found mutations in the TCF12 gene in 7.5 percent of the tumors, and those tumors grew more rapidly and were more aggressive than those lacking the variant.

TCF12, the authors explained, is the genetic code for a protein which binds to DNA and controls the activity of other genes. They found that the mutations in this gene hampered protein’s ability to find to DNA, which resulted in reduced activity in other key genes, including one (CHD1) that had already been associated with the spread of cancer in previous research.

“Our in-depth study,” Professor Richard Houlston, an instructor of molecular and population genetics at the Institute of Cancer Research in London, said in a statement Friday, “has set out many of the genetic defects that cause this rare but highly aggressive form of brain cancer – including identifying a gene mutation that appears in particularly fast-growing forms.”

“Anaplastic oligodendrogliomas are difficult to remove by surgery and don’t respond well to other forms of treatment,” he added. “We hope this new information might be used to discover new targeted therapies, offering patients a better chance at survival from this aggressive cancer.”

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ISS astronauts complete one last experiment on earth

Written By: Chuck Bednar
Brian Galloway

Chuck Bednar for redOrbit.com – @BednarChuck

After spending nearly 200 days in space, one might think that returning International Space Station (ISS) crewmembers had earned a little R&R, but as NASA explained on Wednesday, they actually have one final experiment to complete upon their return to Earth.

Yes, once they stepped foot back on good old terra firma, Terry Virts of the US space agency, Samantha Cristoforetti of the European Space Agency (ESA), and Anton Shkaplerov from the Russian Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos) went through a battery of tests on Thursday.

The tests, which were conducted in a medical tent in the field, measured their balance as well as their ability to step over obstacles and navigate an environment on Earth. The tests were designed to learn about how the human body re-adapts to gravity after spending a prolonged amount of time in space.

The agency claims the tests are also an essential part of NASA’s preparation for an upcoming manned mission to Mars. The post-spaceflight examinations join several other research projects, including those searching for ways to overcome body mass loss resulting from microgravity, as well as the reason behind changes in the astronaut’s vision.

Tracking the impact of space travel on the human body

Thursday’s examinations were part of what is officially known as the Recovery of Functional Sensorimotor Performance Following Long Duration Space Flight, or Field Test, an initiative designed to study the physical changes that occur in people who return to Earth after spending six months to one year in space.

NASA explained that prolonged exposure to microgravity environments cause astronauts to “experience physical changes that have noticeable effects once they return to Earth’s gravity, including changes to vision, balance, coordination, blood pressure, and the ability to walk, which impact their ability to perform basic tasks.”

While ISS crew members who return to Earth have “immediate access to medical assistance and rehabilitation facilities,” the agency notes that those travelling to Mars will not be so lucky. The Field Test was designed to study “the complexity, severity, and duration of these changes” in order to improve recovery time and devise injury prevention methods.

The program, which officially launched in March, was developed by researchers at the NASA Johnson Space Center Human Research Program and the Institute of Biomedical Problems at the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow. In all, a total of 30 subjects will be studied as part of the ongoing initiative, according to NASA.

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Study finds older brains don’t lose cell density

Written By: Susanna Pilny
Christopher Pilny

@PlinyTheShorter

A new study has found that brain cell density does not actually change with age, as was previously thought.

It is well-established that the brain shrinks as we grow older, but it was never entirely clear why—a loss of brain cells was usually seen as the source, but previous findings found specific regions did not lose brain cells at all.

Shrinkage comes from other sources

Thanks to a new ultra-high field MRI, a team from the University of Illinois at Chicago has found that in cognitively normal adults, brain cell density is preserved with age.

“The information provided by these 9.4-Tesla scans may be very useful in helping us to detect tiny losses of brain cells and the reduction in cell density that characterizes the early stages of neurodegenerative diseases that can take decades to develop before symptoms appear, like Alzheimer’s disease,” said Dr. Keith Thulborn, the director of MRI research in the UIC College of Medicine and the lead author of the report.

In Alzheimer’s, symptoms generally only arise after one has had the disease for many years. This is because the brain itself is remarkable; when parts of it are damaged, through Alzheimer’s or with a stroke, it can often compensate by having another portion of the brain take over the responsibilities of the damaged region. However, it can only compensate for a certain amount before it has reached its limits, and that is when symptoms appear—after years of damage.

“If we can identify when Alzheimer’s pathology starts, the efficacy of new drugs or other interventions to slow or prevent Alzheimer’s disease can be tested and monitored when the disease starts, instead of after it’s developed for 20 or 30 years and becomes clinically apparent,” Thulborn said

There are many other implications of this new technology as well. “We can use the 9.4 T to look at brain cell loss in real time in patients experiencing stroke, or to see whether chemotherapy for brain tumors is working in higher resolution that is just not available using the current 3 T clinical scanners,” said Thulborn.

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Lab-grown ‘mini breasts’ may advance cancer research

Written By: Chuck Bednar
Christopher Pilny

Chuck Bednar for redOrbit.com – @BednarChuck

In a breakthrough that could greatly benefit breast cancer research, experts from the Helmholtz Center for Health and Environmental Research in Munich and a team of their German colleagues created miniature breasts in the laboratory.

As part of the work, which is detailed in the Friday edition of the journal Development, scientists led by Dr. Christina Scheel of the Nymphenburg Clinic for Plastic and Aesthetic Surgery created 3D organoid-structures which mimic the growth and development of actual human breasts.

Dr. Scheel’s team explained that they developed an assay through which cultured epithelial cells taken from a single patient’s breast were rebuilt into the architecture of the mammary gland. They used a transparent gel in which cells could divide and spread similarly to the way that breasts develop during puberty.

Due to their high cellular turnover, breasts contain stem cells which possess regenerative properties. However, breast cancer cells can adopt properties of stem cells in order to acquire aggressive traits. The newly-developed mini-breast models will help scientists learn how these aggressive traits arise by providing insight into the function of stem cells in a normal breast.

Searching for breast cancer treatments at the molecular level

By using their organoid assay, Dr. Scheel’s team observed that the physical properties of their environment play a key role in determining how cells with regenerative capacity behave. They found that as the gel became more rigid, it caused the cellular spread to increase, leading to what first author Jelena Linnemann referred to as “invasive growth.”

“Similar behavior was already observed in breast cancer cells,” she said in a statement. “Our results suggest that invasive growth in response to physical rigidity represents a normal process during mammary gland development that is exploited during tumor progression.”

The authors believe that by using their assay, they will be able to discern how these processes are controlled at the molecular level. In turn, this will allow them to use this information to help find a way to inhibit these processes in breast cancer patients. Furthermore, the team added that lab-grown mini-mammary gland will be a valuable tool because the cells come directly from patient tissue.

“This technological break-through provides the basis for many research projects, both those aimed to understand how breast cancer cells acquire aggressive traits, as well as to elucidate how adult stem cells function in normal regeneration,” concluded Dr. Scheel, who is also affiliated with the Institute of Stem Cell Research at the Helmholtz Center in Munich.

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UK teenager discovers new planet

Written By: Chuck Bednar
Brian Galloway

Chuck Bednar for redOrbit.com – @BednarChuck

While most students spent time playing Xbox or partying with their friends, 15-year-old student Tom Wagg was busy discovering a new planet during a work-study program at Keele University in the UK.

According to the university, Wagg made the discovery while reviewing data collected by the Wide Angle Search for Planets (WASP) project, which tracks millions of stars in search of the telltale signs of planets passing in front of their host stars.

Wagg spotted a planetary star transit in the southern constellation of Hydra, and after two years of additional work, the now 17-year-old’s discovery was verified as a new planet. It was the 142nd new world discovered by the WASP collaboration, and while it has no official name as of yet, it has been given the catalogue number WASP-142b.

“I’m hugely excited to have a found a new planet and I’m very impressed that we can find them so far away,” Wagg said Wednesday in a statement. “The WASP software was impressive, enabling me to search through hundreds of different stars, looking for ones that have a planet.”

“Hot Jupiter” might not be alone in its solar system

WASP-142b is roughly the same size as Jupiter, and takes just two days to orbit around its host star, the university explained. With such a short orbital period, transits happen more frequently, which make planets like this easier to find – even if it is too far away to see directly.

The hemisphere facing the star is hot, due to exposure to the star’s rays, while the opposite side is far cooler, they added. This so-called “hot Jupiter” may not be the only planet in orbit around its host star either, as the university noted that this particular class of planet is believed to have migrated inwards through interactions with another world.

Following the initial discovery, WASP-142b was studied by astronomers from the University of Geneva and the University of Liege, who established that it had the correct size and mass to quality as an official planet. A paper reporting on the discovery is being prepared, and the planet will be named as part of a contest sponsored by the International Astronomical Union.

Wagg, who may be the youngest person ever to discover an extra-solar planet, is a pupil at Newcastle-under-Lyme School, located near Keele University in Staffordshire. He plans to study physics at a university, and was described by WASP project leader Professor Coel Hellier as someone who is “keen to learn about science” and who was “easy to train.”

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Bringing in the golden age of animal tracking

Written By: Chuck Bednar
Brian Galloway

Chuck Bednar for redOrbit.com – @BednarChuck

Thanks to technological improvements that have come in recent years, the “golden age of animal tracking science” is upon us, claim researchers from the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in new research published in the June 12 edition of the journal Science.

Among these improvements, the authors write, are the development of smaller tracking devices that are capable of returning millions of movement steps for increasingly small animals. Furthermore, a new tool that allows for the collection and transmission of detailed, high-resolution animal movement data – data that has implications for animal ecology, behavior and biodiversity.

The new technology stemmed from consumer demand and it replaces radio-tracking systems with smaller GPS tags allowing for the more accurate tracking of a larger number of animals. Creatures are fitted with multiple sensors to monitor their health, brain waves and energy use, and they’re tracked by satellites as they travel around the globe.

The information collected using these tracking tags can be combined with weather data and other remotely-collected information about the environment, and can be used to help scientists monitor how entire groups of animals interact with each other, the authors explained in a statement. “The upcoming years will be a time of unprecedented, exciting discoveries,” they added.

Bringing animal tracking into the realm of big data

STRI research associates Roland Kays, Margaret Crofoot, and Martin Wikelski initially worked together on developing what they refer to as an Automated Radio Telemetry System (ARTS) at the Smithsonian’s Barro Colorado Island Research Station in Panama back in 2002, as part of a joint project with Princeton University and the New York State Museum.

Their ARTS system used towers with radio receivers to track animals as they moved through the dense tropical lowland forest. By the time the project ended in 2010, their technology could provide around-the-clock tracking of up to 200 animals at the same time. It also allowed them to visualize the movements of these creatures on the internet.

“Improved technology has brought animal tracking into the realm of big data, not only through high-resolution movement trajectories, but also through the addition of other on-animal sensors and the integration of remote sensing data about the environment through which these animals are moving,” the authors wrote, noting that solar power has made it possible for some species to be tracked throughout their entire lifetimes.

“Technology continues to improve our ability to track animals, with the promise of smaller tags collecting more data, less invasively, on a greater variety of animals,” they added. “We expect that the field will soon reach a transformational point where these studies do more than inform us about particular species of animals, but allow the animals to teach us about the world.”

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Healthy weight during pregnancy benefits mother, child

Written By: Chuck Bednar
Emily Bills

Chuck Bednar for redOrbit.com – @BednarChuck
When pregnant women are said to be “eating for two,” they’re usually trying to ensure that they consume enough vitamins and nutrients to provide adequate sustenance to their unborn child, but new research indicates that this may not be such a great idea after all.
In fact, as Benja Muktabhant, an associate professor in the Department of Nutrition at Thailand’s Khon Kaen University, and her colleagues report in the latest edition of The Cochrane Library, a pregnant woman can actually improve her overall health and reduce the risk of childbirth-related complications by maintaining a healthy weight through diet and exercise.
Previous studies have shown that putting on too much weight during pregnancy can up the risk of gestational diabetes, high blood pressure, larger babies, and the need to deliver via caesarean section, the researchers explained in a statement. Furthermore, newborns that have higher birth weights are more at risk for childhood obesity.
However, Muktabhant’s team conducted a systematic review that found that diet and/or exercise interventions could prevent excessive weight gain during pregnancy. A previous version of their work published three years ago was inconclusive; however, the updated version included newer research and definitively concluded that dietary and fitness programs were beneficial.
 Findings may help shape new WHO prenatal care guidelines
The updated study is based on data pertaining to nearly 11,500 women, and found that while 45 percent of women who were members of a control group put on an excessive amount of weight during their pregnancies, only 36 percent of those who participated in some form of intervention program (low sugar diet, exercise, or some combination of both) did so.
In addition, women who received the interventions were less likely to have high blood pressure. The evidence also seemed to indicate that such programs could lead to a slight reduction in caesarean deliveries (from 29 percent to 27 percent) and a reduced chance of having a baby with a high birthweight (more than 4kg or 8.8 pounds).
“The review’s findings will be important for informing antenatal care guidelines. However, we need more studies on the effectiveness of these interventions in low-income countries and in women with non-Western lifestyles,” Muktabhant said in a statement, noting that new World Health Organization (WHO) guidelines on prenatal care currently in development is expected to include recommendations based on this research.
“Pregnancy is a time when women have a lot of contact with healthcare providers, therefore there is no better time to engage and support women to make healthy lifestyle choices,” added study co-author Tess Lawrie. “We hope that these findings will encourage women not to overeat and to exercise regularly with the knowledge that their efforts will be rewarded with lower pregnancy weight gain and better health outcomes for themselves and their baby.”
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Eating brains may have protected tribe from dementia

Written By: Chuck Bednar
Emily Bills

Chuck Bednar for redOrbit.com – @BednarChuck

Could eating the brain of a deceased person protect your own mind from the effects of dementia, Alzheimer’s disease, or other neurological conditions? While doctors would almost certainly not recommend it, doing so may have helped one tribe develop a protective mutation.

In new research published Wednesday in the journal Nature, researchers at the UCL Institute of Neurology’s MRC Prion Unit and their colleagues studied the Fore people, a previously isolated tribe in Papua New Guinea that had a long tradition of eating their dead at funerals.

These mortuary feasts, The Washington Post explained, “wreaked havoc” on the survivors as the brains they consumed contained a deadly molecule that caused an incurable neurodegenerative disorder known as kuru. At one point, kuru killed two percent of the population each year, and it wasn’t until mortuary feasts were banned in the 1950s that the epidemic started to recede.

Mortuary feats apparently gave rise to a genetic variant

However, the Fore people went on to develop a genetic resistance to prions, the molecules responsible for fatal brain diseases like kuru and some types of dementia if and when they become deformed. The authors of the new study have identified this gene, and their research may shed new light on these diseases, as well as conditions like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s.

According to Nature, lead investigator John Collinge, a prion researcher from University College London, and his colleagues, discovered that an amino-acid change can occur in a nucleotide sequence in one part of the prion protein (a region called codon 127). This created a new genetic variant that conveyed complete resistance to kuru and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in mice.

The mutation, the authors explained, appears to provide protection by preventing prion proteins from becoming deformed. They reportedly discovered it by examining the DNA of Fore families who were exposed to kuru several times during mortuary feasts, but did not contract the disease. Now, Collinge and his colleagues are trying to learn more about this phenomenon with the hopes that they can learn more about how misshapen proteins can adversely impact the brain.

“This is a striking example of Darwinian evolution in humans, the epidemic of prion disease selecting a single genetic change that provided complete protection against an invariably fatal dementia,” Collinge told Reuters on Wednesday. He added that this genetic mutation had not been seen “anywhere else in the world,” according to The Washington Post.

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NASA releases new Ceres images, video flyover

Written By: Chuck Bednar
Christopher Pilny

Chuck Bednar for redOrbit.com – @BednarChuck

Newly-released images produced by the Dawn spacecraft show what the Ceres looks like from a distance of just 2,700 miles from its surface, and a new NASA-developed video animation shows what it would be like to complete a flyover of the dwarf planet.

According to NASA, the one-minute video was created using images collected by Dawn during its first mapping orbit of Ceres (the largest asteroid between Mars and Jupiter), which took place at an altitude of 8,400 miles, and navigational images taken from 3,200 miles away.

Using those images, the US space agency was able to render a three-dimensional terrain model of the dwarf planet, allowing the video to provide “dramatic flyover views” of the “mysterious” and “heavily cratered” world. NASA added that the vertical dimension has been exaggerated by a factor of two, and that a star field was added to the background, as well.

Ceres may have underground water, a weak atmosphere

The Dawn spacecraft, which is part of an ongoing NASA mission led by UCLA professor of space physics and planetary science Christopher Russell, arrived at Ceres back in March after studying the “minor planet” Vesta from July 2011 to September 2012. The probe is currently scheduled to spend more than a year studying the dwarf planet.

While scientists have learned a great deal about the conditions that existed at the very start of the solar system by studying meteorites that had fallen to Earth and had originated from Vesta, Ceres has produced no such meteorites, Russell explained. This suggests that the two objects may be vastly different from one another, and while there was little evidence indicating that water could be found on Vesta, Ceres may have substantial quantities of H2O beneath its crust.

“Everything we learn from Ceres will be absolutely new. We approach it in awe and almost total ignorance,” he said in a statement, adding that the presence of ice or liquid water could “affect the time for relaxation of craters and mountains on Ceres and reduce the height of the topography compared to Vesta, and will affect minerals on the surface.”

Russell, who leads the team that oversees Dawn’s scientific research, analyzing and interpreting data from the spacecraft, also suggested that Ceres (unlike Vesta) could have a weak atmosphere and may even be home to biological life. He and his colleagues expect that the mission will help them learn more about Ceres’ size, shape, composition and internal structure, as well as greater insight into the conditions under which both it and Vesta originally formed.

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Engineers create bacteria-powered origami battery

Written By: Chuck Bednar
Emily Bills

Chuck Bednar for redOrbit.com – @BednarChuck

While origami, the Japanese art of paper folding, can be used to create amazing structures, it seems like an unlikely source of inspiration for a new battery – yet that’s exactly what helped Binghamton University researchers come up the idea for their new power source.

By applying the concepts of origami to their research, Binghamton engineer Seokheun “Sean” Choi and his colleagues invented an inexpensive, bacteria-powered battery constructed out of paper, they wrote in the July edition of the journal Nano Energy. The battery generates power from microbial respiration and is capable of powering paper-based biosensors using only a lone drop of liquid that contains bacteria.

“Dirty water has a lot of organic matter. Any type of organic material can be the source of bacteria for the bacterial metabolism,” said Choi, adding that the technique should benefit those who have to work in remote parts of the world where access to resources is limited.

Working to develop a fully integrated, self-powered system

Since paper in inexpensive, readily available, and biodegradable, the researchers believe that it will help those creating diagnostic tools for disease control and prevention in developing nations. Also, since paper used capillary force to soak up a solution, external pumps and syringes are not required to use the battery, which can be folded into a matchbook-sized square.

Choi explained that he hopes to develop a self-powered system in which the paper-based battery could create sufficient energy to power a paper-based biosensor. He has been given a three-year, $300,000 grant from the National Science Foundation to work on developing such a system.

Currently, his battery functions using an air-breathing cathode created by spraying nickel onto one side of a regular piece of office paper. The anode is then screen-printed with carbon paint, creating what the researchers call a hydrophilic zone with wax boundaries. Among the benefits of this method is the cost, as the estimated expense of creating this battery is just five cents.

Choi, who has been working at Binghamton for less than three years, said that he was working on an earlier type of paper-based battery when he had a “lightbulb moment” that led him to come up with this new technique. He connected four of his devices in a series, and that by doing so, he managed to light-up a small LED. “At that moment, I knew I had done it,” he said.

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Engineers build first-ever water-based computer

Written By: Chuck Bednar
Emily Bills

Chuck Bednar for redOrbit.com – @BednarChuck

Bioengineers at the University of Stanford have developed what is being hailed as the first-ever water-based computer– a synchronous machine nearly 10 years in the making, operating using the unique physics of moving H2O droplets.

The computer, detailed in research published Monday in the journal Nature Physics, is the brainchild of assistant professor Manu Prakash, who said that he came up with the idea when working as a graduate student. In their paper, he and his colleagues demonstrate “a synchronous, universal droplet logic and control,” the professor explained in a statement.

While in graduate school, Prakash said that he was pondering whether or not droplets could be used as bits of information, and if their precise movements could be utilized to process physical materials and data at the same time. He eventually came up with the idea for a rotating magnetic field that could act as a clock capable of synchronizing all of the droplets.

The initial concept had promise, so he recruited a graduate student, Georgios “Yorgos” Katsikis, to assist him on the project. Since clocks are so essential to computers (and most other technologies) as they ensure that operation begin and end at the correct times, it seemed like an ideal launching point.

A whole new kind of computer

However, the researchers admit that some creative brainstorming was required to develop a clock for a fluid-based computer, since it needed to be easy to manipulate, let them manipulate several droplets at a time, and be scalable so that large numbers of droplets could communicate with each other without causing a delay. They opted to use a rotating magnetic field.

First, they constructed a maze-like array of small iron bars on glass sides, then covered it with a blank glass slide and placed a layer of oil in between them. Next, individual water droplets that had been infused with magnetic nanoparticles were carefully injected into the mixture, and they activated the magnetic field.

Each time the field flips, they explained, the bars reverse polarity and attract the magnetized H2O droplets in a specific direction. Every rotation of the field is considered to be one clock cycle, and with each cycle, each droplet moves one step forward. The interactions between the droplets are recorded in real time using cameras, and the presence or absence of water drops is representative of the 1s and 0s of binary code. Sounds easy enough. (We’re joking. It sounds very hard.)

Since the clock ensures that all the droplets move in perfect synchrony, the computing system can theoretically operate indefinitely without experiencing any errors. Also, because of the universal nature of the system, the Prakash and his colleagues believe that it can perform any operation that a conventional electronic computer can, just not as quickly. However, they have a specific purpose in mind for their device.

“We already have digital computers to process information. Our goal is not to compete with electronic computers or to operate word processors on this,” Prakash said in a statement. “Our goal is to build a completely new class of computers that can precisely control and manipulate physical matter. Imagine if when you run a set of computations that not only information is processed but physical matter is algorithmically manipulated as well. We have just made this possible at the mesoscale.”

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Red blood cell remnants discovered in dinosaur fossils

Written By: Chuck Bednar
Christopher Pilny

Chuck Bednar for redOrbit.com – @BednarChuck

In a discovery that could provide new insight into dinosaur physiology, and may determine if certain species were warm-blooded or cold-blooded, a team of UK researchers has discovered the remnants of red blood cells and connective tissue in ancient fossils.

According to BBC News, the blood cells were found in 75-million-year-old dinosaur remains, and chemical analysis revealed that they were similar to those found in modern-day emu. The research is detailed in a paper published Tuesday in the journal Nature Communications.

During the course of their work, experts from Imperial College London discovered tiny ovoid structures that had a denser inner-core, much like red blood cells, the British news outlet said. It also reported that the scientists found fibers with a banded structure, not unlike that in modern-day collagen in the ligaments and tendons of animals.

Soft tissues discovered in poorly-preserved fossils

While this not the first time that these types of soft tissues have been detected in dinosaur fossils, the previous reports came from unusually well-preserved specimen that suggested that they may have been contaminated in some way, study co-author Dr. Susannah Maidment told BBC News. In contrast, this study found soft tissues in poorly-preserved fossils.

In fact, Dr. Maidment said that these fossils had been lying around in the London Natural History Museum collections for more than a century, and described them as “scrappy, individual broken bones” from an unknown type of dinosaur. “If you’re finding soft tissues in these kinds of fossils, maybe this kind of preservation might be more common than we realized.”

Reports indicate that the structures appear to be genuine soft-tissue remains that have not been fossilized, and that chemical analysis of the suspected collagen protein and red blood cells was carried out with a mass spectrometer. That analysis revealed fragments of what appear to be the building blocks of proteins known as amino acids, and the chemical profile of the cells looked similar to those of an emu, a direct descendent of dinosaurs, the authors explained.

Analysis may determine which dinosaurs are related, warm-blooded

In vertebrates, creatures with smaller red blood cells have faster metabolic rates and tend to be warm blooded, and creatures with larger ones have slower metabolic rates and are typically cold blooded, Dr. Maidment told BBC News. While experts are not certain if this is true in dinosaurs, they may be able to find out if they can start finding red blood cells of various species.

Similarly, by studying the apparent collagen fibers, the research team may be able to learn more about the relationships between different dinosaur species. Using a technique known as collagen fingerprinting, which is based on the notion that the structure of an animal’s collage molecule is unique to that creature, they could determine which dinosaurs are related to each other.

“We still need to do more research to confirm what it is that we are imaging in these dinosaur bone fragments,” co-author Dr. Sergio Bertazzo added, “[but] if we can confirm that our initial observations are correct, then this could yield fresh insights into how these creatures once lived and evolved.”

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Heartburn meds may increase heart attack risk

Written By: Chuck Bednar
Emily Bills

Chuck Bednar for redOrbit.com – @BednarChuck

Using a popular type of medication to treat heartburn or acid reflux disease could increase your risk of having a heart attack, researchers from the Stanford University School of Medicine have discovered in a new, large-scale, data-mining study.

Published in the June 10 edition of the journal PLOS One, lead author Dr. Nigam Shah, assistant professor of biomedical informatics, and his colleagues used a novel new technique for mining clinical data to investigate the link between proton pump inhibitors (PPIs) and adverse clinical outcomes in users of the blood thinner clopidogrel.

PPIs, which include omeprazole (Prilosec) had previously been associated with patients who take blood thinners like Plavix, but after reviewing the electronic health records of just under three million patients, Dr. Shah’s team found that PPI use was associated with a 20 percent increase in heart attack risk in adults, even if they did not use clopidogrel.

While Dr. Shah, who also serves as the assistant director of the Stanford Center for Biomedical Informatics Research, said that the link between PPIs and the increased chance of a subsequent heart attack is not necessarily causal. He claims the concerns should be taken seriously, as PPIs are very frequently prescribed by doctors and are available over the counter.

Benefits of medical data-mining techniques

Using the same data-mining techniques, the Stanford-led team also looked at another commonly prescribed class of heartburn drugs, known as H2 blockers, and found no association with elevated heart-attack risk. In an email, Dr. Shah told redOrbit that anyone who has been using PPIs “for a long duration” and “without a prescription” should “have a conversation with [their] doctor” and to “ask abound alternatives” to PPIs, such as the H2 blockers.

However, he added that the discovery of the link between PPIs and increased risk of heart attack, while obviously significant, was not the most important accomplishment of the research. Instead, he told redOrbit, “the key message for me is that data mining applied to electronic health records (EHRs) can provide insights into questions we haven’t yet tested in a clinical trial.”

Shah is a pioneer in the field of using data-mining techniques to find elusive but medically relevant trends. He had developed methods to search through large quantities of EHRs (not just the structured portions, but also free-form notes added by doctors as well) in search of unexpected health outcomes associated with medications or drug combinations.

“Most of the media buzz is going to latch on to the ‘heartburn drug might not be safe’ meme. However, that is an example of an insight obtained via data-mining. I’d encourage people to look beyond the immediate hype, and see the value of making such data mining routine,” he told redOrbit. “Imagine, if for whatever clinical situation you are in, your doctor could interrogate EMR data to figure out what happened to people like you, who got treated the way you are being treated. Wouldn’t it be awesome to know that? Wouldn’t be good to know what drug combinations (i.e. pairs or triplets of drugs) might be safe or unsafe?” Yes, yes it would.

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Detailed, monstrous galaxy imaged with gravitational lensing

Written By: Chuck Bednar
Emily Bills

Chuck Bednar for redOrbit.com – @BednarChuck

Using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) and the natural phenomenon known as gravitational lensing for enhanced magnification, a team of researchers has observed a monstrous galaxy located near the edge of the known universe in unprecedented detail.

While conducting high-resolution test observations last October, ALMA imaged a galaxy called SDP.81, which is located 11.7 billion light years from Earth in the constellation Hydra. Its image was magnified with a gravitational lens created using a massive foreground galaxy located about 3.4 billion light years from Earth.

The lensing effects made the galaxy look brighter, but it also caused it to be smeared into a ring shape. In the new study, however, Yoichi Tamura and Masamune Oguri, assistant professors at the University of Tokyo managed to correct the lensing effects to get a better picture of the galaxy.

They found that SDP.81 is home to a massive amount of star formations, with new stars being born at rates up to thousands of times faster than in the Milky Way. They also found that the center of the foreground galaxy is home to a supermassive black hole. A paper detailing their work appears in the Publications of the Astronomical Society of Japan.

Enhancing ALMA to get a closer look inside SDP.81

The authors explained that the discovery is an important step forward in improving our understanding of how starburst galaxies evolve, as well as the characteristics of supermassive black holes in galaxies. They also noted that this would not have been possible without the use of gravitational lensing to enhance ALMA’s already high sensitivity and resolution.

The study authors explained that, according to Einstein’s theory of General Relativity, massive objects bend space and time, and the light travelling through this space-time curvature tends to follow the curve, functioning like a massive lens. This phenomenon makes distant objects look far larger and brighter, making them easier for astronomers to study.

When a foreground galaxy lines up perfectly in between a distant one and the Earth, the image forms a circle of light called an Einstein ring. SDP.81 is a perfect example of this, and the natural enhancements allowed ALMA to detect radio waves with a one-millimeter wavelength that had been emitted by cold molecular dust and gas.

These particles, which are part of forming stars, were captured in a higher resolution than is even possible with the Hubble telescope (23 milliarcseconds). This allowed Tamura, Oguri, and their fellow researchers to locate found bends, branches, and tiny grain-like structures within the ring. To understand the causes of those structures, they made a detailed model of the gravitational lens that allowed them to precisely adjust it to correct for various distortions.

Molecular clouds, supermassive black hole discovered

Using their model, the astronomers found that the fine structures in the ring reflect SDP.81’s inner structure and revealed the presence of what they believe are areas of new star and planet formations called giant molecular clouds. These clouds are similar in size to those found in the Milky Way, and this discovery marks the first time that scientists have been able to uncover the inner workings of a galaxy so far away from the Earth.

In addition, the image helped the researchers conclude that the foreground galaxy used in the gravitational lensing process is home to a black hole more than 300 million times more massive than the sun. They came to this conclusion due to the fact that the mass of the galaxy’s black hole causes the more distant galaxy to appear far fainter in the image, and since SDP.81 is not very bright in the image, they determined that this must be the reason why.

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Are bees getting dementia?

Written By: Chuck Bednar
Emily Bills

Chuck Bednar for redOrbit.com – @BednarChuck

Scientists have proposed a variety of possible explanations for the recent and worrisome decline in bee populations in recent years, but a new study suggests that the pollinating insects could be dying off due to what has long been considered a primarily human problem: dementia.

Writing in a recent edition of the journal PLOS One, researchers from Keele University and the University of Sussex explained that they had discovered bee pupae contaminated with aluminum, and that the toxin may cause them to experience debilitating cognitive issues.

According to CNN.com, aluminum is considered a neurotoxin, and at one point, the substance had been linked to Alzheimer’s disease in humans. It can also be found in nectar, and bees don’t really try to avoid it. Since bees have relatively complex brains, and there has been evidence to suggest that they possess memory, but high levels of aluminum could be adversely affecting their cognitive function and contributing to their demise.

High levels of aluminum contamination found in pupae

To investigate the possible link, Professor Chris Exley of Keele University and Professor Dave Goulson of the University of Sussex collected pupae from naturally-foraging bumblebee colonies and analyzed them to determine their aluminum content, according to a statement.

The bees were found to have aluminum contamination levels ranging from 13 to nearly 200 ppm, with significantly higher levels found in the smaller pupae. To put that into context, aluminum levels of just 3 ppm would be sufficient to cause harm in human brain tissue. While the findings are only preliminary, they reveal significant accumulation of this toxin in at least one stage of the bees’ life cycle and indicate that it could be playing a role in the insect’s demise.

“It is widely accepted that a number of interacting factors are likely to be involved in the decline of bees and other pollinators – lack of flowers, attacks by parasites, and exposure to pesticide cocktails, for example,” Exley explained in a statement. “Aluminum is a known neurotoxin affecting behavior in animal models of aluminum intoxication.”

“Bees, of course, rely heavily on cognitive function in their everyday behavior and these data raise the intriguing specter that aluminum-induced cognitive dysfunction may play a role in their population decline,” he added. “Are we looking at bees with Alzheimer’s disease?”

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NASA’s planning multiple missions to Europa

Written By: Chuck Bednar
Emily Bills

Chuck Bednar for redOrbit.com – @BednarChuck

The highly anticipated expedition to the Jovian moon Europa announced by NASA earlier this year may not be a one-off trip, and the US space agency could be planning follow-up missions as part of a full-scale campaign that could send a lander to its ice-covered surface.

According to Space.com, NASA administrator Charles Bolden said that people who have been exercising frustration with the limited scope of the currently planned Europa mission should be patient, because the agency has bigger plans for the moon than they have made public.

“My friends in the science community – they don’t have a lot of faith, either in us at NASA or in Congress, to fund another Europa mission, so they’d like to get everything on this first mission,” Bolden reportedly said at the Aerojet Rocketdyne facility in Los Angeles on May 26. “That is a sure recipe for disaster, when you try to do all things with one vehicle.”

“We need to do incremental approaches to studying Europa,” he added during a media event at the facility. “We’re going to fly a Europa mission in the 2020s sometime, and hopefully, what we find will whet our appetite and there will be follow-on Europa missions.”

First mission may be scouting for a future Europa lander

During the first planned mission to the 1,900 mile (3,100 km) wide moon, NASA will send a spacecraft outfitted with a suite of nine instruments, including high-resolution cameras and ice-penetrating radar, to examine Europa’s ocean and its rocky mantle.

If the water and the mantle come in contact with one another, it could mean that a variety of complex chemical reactions are taking place on the Jovian moon, and that Europa may even be capable of supporting life. (Yay!) Astrobiologists have long dreamed of studying the moon, and in about a decade, they will finally have their chance to do so.

Bolden’s comments indicate that it may not be their only chance, however. The administrator said that if the first mission is successful, “then we’re going to go to Europa again,” and that any future missions could include a probe to land on the surface and search for signs of life.

The initial Europa spacecraft will complete 45 flybys of the moon, and in addition to collecting science data, it will be serving as a scout for possible future journeys there. A future lander mission could also go beneath the surface and come into contact with water, and NASA scientists are said to be working on ways to penetrate Europa’s icy shell.

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Are creativity and mental illnesses linked?

Written By: Chuck Bednar
Emily Bills

Chuck Bednar for redOrbit.com – @BednarChuck

Artists, writers, and other creative individuals may be more genetically predisposed to bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, and other mental illnesses, according to new research published in the Monday edition of the journal Nature Neuroscience.

In the study, scientists with the genetics company deCODE and a team of colleagues from the US, the UK, Sweden, Iceland, and the Netherlands reported that the genetic factors associated with an increased risk of those conditions are 25 percent more likely to be found in people who work in creative processions, including painters, musicians, and dancers.

The study, which used the genetic and medical data of over 85,000 residents of Iceland, looked for the DNA variants that doubled a person’s risk of schizophrenia and increased the odds that they will develop bipolar disorder by more than one-third. People belonging to various national arts societies were 17 percent more likely than non-members to possess those variants.

Scientific evidence supporting the notion of the “mad genius”

They also examined medical databases from the Netherlands and Sweden, and their analysis of the records of 35,000 men and women found that those who were deemed to be creative either by their job or through a questionnaire were nearly 25-percent more likely to carry variants linked to mental illness than their non-creative counterparts, according to The Guardian.

“To be creative, you have to think differently, and when we are different, we have a tendency to be labeled strange, crazy, and even insane,” said deCODE founder and CEO Dr. Kari Stefansson. “Often, when people are creating something new, they end up straddling between sanity and insanity. I think these results support the old concept of the mad genius.”

“Creativity is a quality that has given us Mozart, Bach, Van Gogh. It’s a quality that is very important for our society. But it comes at a risk to the individual,” Dr. Stefansson added, “and one percent of the population pays the price for it.” That one percent, he said, can develop mental illness based on their genetic factors, life experiences, and environmental influences.

The authors note that their link between these genetic variants for mental illness and creativity is a weak one, The Guardian reported, and that the factors that increase the risk of mental problems explained only about one-fourth of one percent of the variations in individual artistic ability.

Even so, Dr. Stefansson said that the fact that the genetic causes of mental illness and creativity overlap even slightly is fascinating, and that “it means that a lot of the good things we get in life, through creativity, come at a price. It tells me that when it comes to our biology, we have to understand that everything is in some way good and in some way bad.”

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Longest tiger shark tracking reveals bird-like migration

Written By: Brett Smith
Emily Bills

Brett Smith for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online

Using the first-ever continuous, multiple year satellite tagging program, marine biologists have found that tiger sharks routinely perform a bird-like seasonal migration – from the tropical waters of the Caribbean all the way up to the more temperate waters of the mid-North Atlantic.

A new study on the research, published in the journal Scientific Reports, could have major implications for the conservation of tiger sharks.

“As apex predators, the presence of tiger sharks — and other large sharks — is vital to maintain the proper health and balance of our oceans,” Mahmood Shivji, a shark expert at Florida’s Nova Southeastern University and study author, said in a press release. “That’s why it’s so important to conserve them, and understanding their migratory behavior is essential to achieving this goal.”

Due to insufficient tagging technology and logistical concerns, researchers haven’t been able to effectively track tiger sharks for long periods in the past. The new research project saw researchers tracking the animals for three years or more in some cases. One particular shark, called Harry Lindo, was followed for more than 27,000 miles – which could be the longest distant a shark has ever been tracked, the researchers said.

The scientists were able to reveal that adult male tiger sharks in the Atlantic consistently spend their winters in Caribbean island locations. During the summers, the tiger sharks travel far into the North Atlantic, occasionally as far north as Connecticut. East Coast swimmers needn’t worry though, as the sharks stay well offshore.

“These repeated journeys were very unexpected,” said study author James Lea, a marine biologist from The Marine Biological Association in the United Kingdom. “The tiger shark has traditionally been considered a coastal species, and it is rare among sharks to so easily and habitually switch between the two vastly different environments.”

Sharks vacay in the same place each year

The researchers also noted that the sharks were remarkable adept at finding the same wintering area each year.

“Even though they’ve got a whole range of islands to choose from, it seems like each animal has its favorite winter spot,” Shivji said.

The research said they suspect the shark go down to the Caribbean to breed in the winter, then head out to sea in the summer in search of migrating loggerhead turtles, a favorite prey.

Study author Guy Harvey, a lead marine researcher at NSU, said the research project is particularly important because it could inform future conservation strategies.

“Protecting migratory species is a great challenge because they can be found in such a wide area,” he said. “Protecting the areas where animals, such as tiger sharks, spend the most time is a tractable goal once those areas have been identified.”

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Eco-friendly technique converts paper waste into chemicals

Written By: Chuck Bednar
Emily Bills

Chuck Bednar for redOrbit.com – @BednarChuck

Lignin, a wood polymer that is a common paper industry waste product, can be converted into chemical building blocks usable in paint, insulation foam, and other products through a new, eco-friendly process discovered by researchers at the University in Leuven in Belgium.

In a study published in the journal Energy & Environmental Science, Professor Bert Sels at the university’s Centre for Surface Chemistry and Catalysis and his colleagues explained how they were able to use their new techniques to create lignin that does not have to be burned (as usually happens in the paper industry) and can instead be processed and reused.

Lignin is a substance found in the cell walls of plants and strengthens their structures. When wood is processed into paper pulp, lignin is removed using heavy chemistry and becomes a waste product due to side effects of this technique. Ultimately, it winds up being burned, even though it is a low-grade fuel.

A new focus for bio-refining techniques

However, the authors said that they have come up with an alternative way of converting wood into usable paper pulp while also creating high-grade lignin that is still usable. In their process, the wood is placed into a small chemical reactor, Professor Sels said in a statement.

Then, both a catalyst and a solvent are added, and at the right temperature and pressure, the lignin can be separated from the pulp and disassembled into smaller components. By doing so, they are able to produce lignin oil that can be converted into chemical building blocks more easily to be used in plastic, medicines, colorings, ink, paint, and more.

The discovery comes on the heels of recent research from the Centre for Surface Chemistry and Catalysis, in which scientists developed a new method to convert the cellulose found in wood into chains of hydrocarbons. These hydrocarbons could then be used as a gasoline additive or as a component in plastics, the university explained.

“Bio-refining techniques typically only target polysaccharides such as cellulose,” Professor Sels said. “Our study about turning sawdust into gasoline is a case in point. This new study, however, rethinks the concept of bio-refining: for the first time we focus on lignin – and not cellulose – as the starting point to make chemical building blocks from wood.”

“Ours is a sustainable method to turn lignin – once a waste product – into useful chemicals for industrial purposes while keeping the paper pulp available for further processing,” he added. “This brings added value to the paper industry, which is a great bonus in the current economic context.”

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South Korea wins DARPA’s Robotics Challenge

Written By: Chuck Bednar
Emily Bills

Chuck Bednar for redOrbit.com – @BednarChuck

A South Korean-developed humanoid robot that can both walk like a biped and zip around on wheels built into its knees has been named the winner of the 2015 Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Robotics Challenge.

According to VentureBeat and Ars Technica, the 5-foot, 9-inch tall, 176-pound robot named HUBO was developed by engineers at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST). HUBO completed the challenge in a time of 44 minutes and 28 seconds.

The KAIST team was awarded $2 million for their victory in the competition. IHMC Robotics used the Boston Dynamics-developed Atlas robot, taking second place and winning $1 million. The Tartan Rescue team from Carnegie Mellon University, who according to The Verge had the top score at the end of the competition’s first day, wound up finishing in third place.

Competition inspired by the 2011 Fukushima accident

The DARPA Robotics Challenge was initially launched in response to the 2011 accident at the Fukushima nuclear power plant in Japan, which caused damage to several reactors at the facility and required repairs to prevent the spread of radiation. The program was designed to accelerate the development of robots that could respond to similar disasters in unsafe conditions.

At the time of the incident, officials had pondered the idea of using robots to complete repairs at the power plant, but Ars Technica explained that none were capable of navigating the terrain and performing the required tasks. Thus, DARPA decided to launch a competition in which teams of engineers would develop machines that could perform several of these required tasks.

Some of the tasks that the robots were asked to perform as part of the challenge included driving a vehicle, dismounting and opening a door, using power tools to cut a hole through a wall, trip a circuit breaker, and operating a fire hose by connecting it to a port and turning it on using a valve. They had to complete a total of eight different tasks in less than one hour.

Nearly two-dozen teams, including 12 from the US and others hailing from Japan, Italy, Hong Kong, and Germany, took part in the two-day finals in Pomona, California. Team KAST completed the obstacle course in less than 45 minutes, while the IHMC Robotics team finished in slightly less than 50 minutes, and the CMU squad put up a time of 55:15.

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Scientists swab beach bums’ bums for superbugs

Written By: Emily Bills
Emily Bills

Shayne Jacopian for redOrbit.com – @ShayneJacopian
British scientists are asking beach bums to allow their bums to be swabbed—for science!
Researchers from the University of Exeter Medical School are studying the effects of antibiotic resistant bacteria present in ocean water on those who swallow a lot of it. Surfers fit that bill, and the scientists are looking for 300 surfer rectums to swab for bacteria.
“We know that surfers regularly swallow lots more seawater than other beach users—around 170 ml per session, which is more than ten times that of sea swimmers,” lead researcher Anne Leonard from the European Centre for Environment and Human Health at Exeter University told BBC News.
“We’ve already shown that this water may contain antibiotic-resistant bacteria but we have no idea how this might affect the microbes that live in our guts, or how it could impact upon health.”
By studying the guts of surfers, the researchers hope to gain a better understanding of how superbugs present in the environment can affect humans’ digestive tracts and, in turn, immune systems.
The project, perfectly named “Beach Bums” (yes!), is a collaboration between the University of Exeter Medical School and the environmental charity Surfers Against Sewage.
“Whilst water quality has improved dramatically in the last 20 years, coastal waters can still be contaminated by sewage from both animals and humans, introducing billions of potentially harmful bacteria into the ocean environment,” Andy Cummins from Surfers Against Sewage told BBC.
“We will give this data to the scientists to find out if there is elevated risk of being exposed to antibiotic-resistant microbes for water users. This can give us a more informed approach.”
If you’re British, surf or body board at least three times a month, and are really “anal” about water quality, you can take part by emailing [email protected] to get a Beach Bum kit, collecting a sample, and completing a short questionnaire.
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How do people learn the fastest?

Written By: John Hopton
Emily Bills

John Hopton for redOrbit.com – @Johnfinitum

For all that the human race has learned, the science of learning itself remains under-investigated. Educational psychology and neuroscience have discovered many of the factors that influence how humans retain information, yet we still don’t really know how best to combine these factors in order to maximize the effectiveness of memorization. So, scientists looked to the people for answers.

The Memrise Prize was a contest that asked people around the world to conduct experiments to find the easiest and most effective way to memorize new information. The hope is that the new winning methodology will lead to a revolution in methods of studying for exams, learning new languages, and more, as well as enabling us to better understand the human mind.

The finalist methodologies were recently chosen by researchers from University College London, a cognitive scientist from University of Massachusetts Lowell, and Memrise founder Ed Cooke, who told us more about the project.

“There is no real consensus, and it’s not even really a popular scientific question, how people actually learn fastest,” Cooke says. “Scientific studies usually focus on one aspect as a time, but nobody really asks what the best combination of all these effects is – do they amplify and complement each other?”

“We put together a contest with all the merits of scientific enquiry; namely properly controlled empirical studies, to come up with the best possible methodology for learning. We chose 80 foreign words to learn in an hour which learners would then be tested on in one week’s time.”

Impressive results

“We put it out there to the scientific community, and twenty cognitive science and psychology labs did experiments and pooled their knowledge. We had submissions from some of the top psychology labs in the world. The results were quite impressive, sometimes doubling the number of words a person can recall a week later.”

“The final stage is to build these methodologies and run a massive experiment on Memrise with tens of thousands and users trying out these different experiments. We’ll hopefully reveal some spectacularly important things about the way people learn. It will all be open-source, so it will benefit ed-tech start-ups, schools, and university systems. It will provide a clear body of shared knowledge.”

The methodologies build on and combine existing mnemonic techniques such as story-telling (relating the things to be remembered to a story), the memory palace method in which learners imagine the words and their meanings within an imagined room or other location which they can mentally “walk through,” and the “buffet technique,” in which learners choose which words to focus on when, and in what order.

Ed Cooke concluded that: “What excites me most about it is that there are a hundred practitioners and psychologists who have views on what the best way of learning is, but this is the first time different philosophies get to go head to head in truly empirical fashion with many thousands of people doing the experiment – so you get really high quality data.”

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Researchers witness new evidence for chiral magnetic wave

Written By: Chuck Bednar
Christopher Pilny

Chuck Bednar for redOrbit.com – @BednarChuck

Ongoing experiments at a particle accelerator at the US Department of Energy’s Brookhaven National Laboratory have produced new evidence for the existence of a phenomenon called a “chiral magnetic wave” travelling through a state of matter created by the collider.

The wave was found “rippling through the soup of quark-gluon plasma” created by a series of “energetic particle smashups” at the facility’s Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider, the Brookhaven team explained in a statement. Its presence was one of the consequences they expected to find in this quark-gluon plasma, which is a state of matter that existed during the early universe.

In quark-gluon plasma, these two the building blocks of protons and neutrons were free prior to becoming inextricably bound within those larger particles, the scientists explained. If confirmed, this discovery would serve as evidence that ongoing collisions of energetic gold ions at the RHIC recreate nucleus-size blobs of the fiery plasma thousands of times each second.

Furthermore, it would serve as circumstantial evidence supporting a separate and long-disputed quantum phenomenon required for the wave’s existence, they added. A new paper detailing the team’s findings can now be viewed online and will be featured in Physical Review Letters.

Explaining chirality and differently-charged particle flow

Hongwei Ke, a postdoctoral fellow at Brookhaven and a member of the STAR collaboration that was responsible for the discovery, explained the researcher team measures the tendency of negatively-charged particles to emerge from collisions around the equator of the plasma involved in the collision, while positively-charged ones are forced to one of the two poles.

 

This separation occurs due to the influence of magnetic fields found deep within the plasma that alter how differently-charged particles flow. When the gold ions collide, electrons in those atoms are stripped, leaving positively-charged protons in a naked nucleus, Ke explained.

Once the ions collide, the charged matter begins to swirl, generating a powerful magnetic field perpendicular to the circulating mass of matter. Contained within that mass are a vast number of subatomic particles, including early-stage gluons and quarks, that spin while moving through the magnetic field. The direction of their spin relative to their direction of motion is a property called chirality, identified as right-handed for clockwise and left-handed for counterclockwise.

If the numbers of particles and antiparticles differ, the magnetic field will have a different impact on those right- and left-handed particles differently, the study authors noted. This causes them to separate along the field’s axis based on their “chiral charge,” causing a separation that grows and continues building on one another similar to a wave. Ultimately, the phenomenon causes more of the negative particles into the equator and the positively-charged ones to the poles.

Evidence that the chiral magnetic wave exists

In order to detect this phenomenon, the research team measured the collective motion of specific charged particles produced during collisions in the RHIC. They found that the collective flow of the negatively-charged particles outward from the equator was enhanced, while the flow of positive ones was suppressed, causing a higher abundance of these particles at the poles.

The differences in the flow between positive and negative particles increased with the net charge produced in RHIC collisions, which is precisely what the authors expected to find in calculations using the theory that predicted the existence of the chiral magnetic wave. Also, the results were consistent throughout the entire range of energies at which a quark-gluon plasma is believed to be created at RHIC, and this cannot be explained using any other model.

“Seeing evidence for the chiral magnetic wave means the elements required to create the wave must also exist in the quark-gluon plasma,” Aihong Tang, a STAR physicist from Brookhaven Lab, explained in a statement. “One of these is the chiral magnetic effect – the quantum physics phenomenon that causes the electric charge separation along the axis of the magnetic field.”

This phenomenon “has been a hotly debated topic in physics,” Tang continued, adding that the evidence that this wave exists is also evidence that the chiral magnetic effect does as well. This chiral magnetic effect is also related to another intriguing observation is also evidence of a more-localized charge separation within the quark-gluon plasma within the collider.

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Cosmo Hotel Hong Kong Launches One-hour Response Guranteed As Part of Its Beyond Thoughtful Service Initiatives

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Experience A Seamless Green Stay with 24-hour Beyond Thoughtful Services At COSMO Hotel Hong Kong With Newly Introduced One-hour Response Guaranteed; 100% Indoor Smoke-free Policy, Eco-friendly Guest Rooms

(PRWEB) June 05, 2015

“Going green” has transcended the usual short-livedness of popular culture and has become a lifelong healthy habit adopted by many. Being the Hong Kong’s first 100% indoor smoke-free 4-star boutique hotel, Cosmo Hotel Hong Kong, is beefing up its green initiatives and investing in the use of technology to let travellers experience a seamless green stay, unmatched in value, quality and ambiance, at its property conveniently located between the Wan Chai and Causeway Bay districts.

The One-and-Only Hong Kong 4-star Hotel Combining Green Concept with Mobile Technology

Cosmo Hotel has always been the preferred hotel among the younger generation of travellers who are drawn towards its stylish boutique design and colour-coded rooms and suites. Offering much more than just trendy accommodations, when it comes to green traveling, Cosmo Hotel has also introduced a 100% indoor smoke-free policy in 2010 and implemented green initiatives in the entire property ever since, allowing Cosmo Hotel to stand out from other 4-star hotels. While travellers are breathing cleaner and fresher air indoors, they can also be assured that all 142 rooms and suites in the hotel are using energy-efficient LEDs, including all public areas.

The hotel also offers a free daily eco-friendly shuttle bus that runs to and from multiple tourist hotspots and commercial destinations, including Times Square mega shopping mall and IFC office towers and shopping complex, Hong Kong Station (Airport Express Line) and Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre, etc. Not only does this complimentary service offer greater convenience to guests, it also helps to reduce greenhouse gas emission and cause a less harmful impact on the environment.

A more significant measure recently undertaken by the hotel is the installation of complimentary smartphones in every guest room. This smartphone has replaced the large amount of printed maps given out to guests every day with preloaded digital city guides and GPS navigation. Other value-added features that come with the phone include unlimited 3G internet which one can share internet connection with their own mobile phones, tablets and notebooks, and free local and long distance calls to 9 countries, namely Australia, Canada, China, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Singapore, UK and US. This mobile phone can be used both inside and outside of the hotel.

One-Hour Response Guaranteed – Provides Instant Assistance To In-house Guests

Thanks to the advancement of mobile technology, communications have never been smoother. Whether the in-house guest is inside or miles away from the hotel, they can be assured of enjoying seamless service as if distance never existed. With the smartphone in hand, it only requires a few taps on the mobile screen and all comments or messages from the guests will be sent to the 24-hour on duty Guest Services Manager, who will swiftly attend to the needs of the guests in less than one hour, ensuring each and every guest to enjoy a hassle-free and memorable stay.

As part of the hotel’s Beyond Thoughtful promise, this One-Hour Response Guaranteed program sets a new standard in the hotel industry and will continue to put Cosmo Hotel, one of the best hotels in Wan Chai Hong Kong, at the forefront of discerning and tech-savvy travellers.    

Enjoy a Relaxing and Welcoming Stay at Cosmo’s Eco-friendly Guest Room

Being a certified green hotel in Hong Kong and an EarthCheck Bronze Benchmarked hotel for two consecutive years, Cosmo Hotel is committed to minimising its negative environmental impact to the planet. The introduction of the Eco-Friendly Guest Rooms is an unprecedented green initiative aimed at promoting a greener stay while not compromising on comfort.

Eco-friendly guest rooms at Cosmo Hotel are well stocked with a fine range of high quality and all-natural amenities, such as Tarocco skin care and hair care products – a range of natural products rich in Vitamin C and antioxidants, Jurlique aromatherapy essential oil with four types of fragrances to choose from, each with a specific function to help balance, calm or uplift the mind, body and spirit. For extra comfort, guests can choose from more than 11 types of pillows featuring natural buckwheat, wheat fiber, lavender scented and more to enjoy a good night’s sleep.

“While a green stay is generally perceived as staying in a secluded hotel in a rural area where comfort is compromised, it is quite the opposite experience at Cosmo Hotel. Its chic design and location being right in the middle of the hustle-bustle of Hong Kong makes the whole experience more memorable. Whether you are an eco-conscious traveller or not, we have all the feel-good factors to lure you in for a stay,” said Ms Anita Chan, the General Manager of Cosmo Hotel Hong Kong.

For the original version on PRWeb visit: http://www.prweb.com/releases/2015/06/prweb12767649.htm

Health

IMS Health AppScript now offers Beneufit’s Parkinson’s disease app pdFIT™ for Prescribing to Patients

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Beneufit, Inc. today announced the immediate availability of pdFIT™, a next-generation health and wellness app on IMS Health’s AppScript™ platform. As part of the trusted library of AppScript apps, healthcare professionals can now add pdFIT™ to their customized formularies and prescribe it to patients.

SAN FRANCISCO, CA (PRWEB) June 05, 2015

Beneufit’s pdFIT™ is a disease management solution for Parkinson’s patients. The goal of the program is to reduce symptoms, delay disease progression and improve quality of life by leveraging exercise. This is accomplished by prescribing specific exercise protocols designed for Parkinson’s disease patients and continuously monitoring patient health through a series of tests provided through the pdFIT™ app.

Jeff Broderick, Beneufit’s CEO said “pdFIT™ is an important tool for Parkinson’s disease patients who are fighting to remain independent and delay disease progression. We’ve seen significant improvement in fitness capacity and motor control for those engaged in our program. Now that we’re included in the AppScript™ platform we’ll be able to connect with patients and physicians in a novel and thoughtful manner.”

AppScript is a mobile health discovery and distribution platform that helps physicians and other healthcare professionals easily evaluate, select and prescribe the right mobile health applications, connected devices, and educational content for use by patients and caregivers.

About AppScript

AppScript™ is the leading discovery and distribution platform for mobile health technologies. The AppScript team has curated and characterized thousands of mobile healthcare apps, hundreds of connected devices, and millions of pieces of educational content by condition and stage of the patient journey. Each mobile health technology is assessed using the company’s proprietary IMS Health AppScript Score, which ranks apps and devices based on six primary metrics: functionality, professional reviews, patient reviews, endorsements, developer trust ratings and clinical ratings. AppScript enables any healthcare professional to securely prescribe, track and reconcile mobile health content prescribed to patients and caregivers. Learn more at http://www.appscript.net.

About IMS Health

IMS Health is a leading global information and technology services company providing clients in the healthcare industry with comprehensive solutions to measure and improve their performance. End-to-end proprietary applications and configurable solutions connect 10+ petabytes of complex healthcare data through the IMS One™ cloud platform, providing comprehensive insights into diseases, treatments, costs and outcomes. The company’s 15,000 employees blend global consistency and local market knowledge across 100 countries to help clients run their operations more efficiently. Customers include pharmaceutical, consumer health and medical device manufacturers and distributors, providers, payers, government agencies, policymakers, researchers and the financial community.

As a global leader in protecting individual patient privacy, IMS Health uses anonymous healthcare data to deliver critical, real-world disease and treatment insights. These insights help biotech and pharmaceutical companies, medical researchers, government agencies, payers and other healthcare stakeholders to identify unmet treatment needs and understand the effectiveness and value of pharmaceutical products in improving overall health outcomes. Additional information is available at http://www.imshealth.com.

About Beneufit, Inc.

Beneufit is a personalized, outcome-based disease management platform powered by mobile devices and wireless sensors, enabling people to manage chronic disease through exercise. Through disease-specific exercise protocols combined with medication adherence and real-time clinical outcome measurements, patients are able to not only manage, but improve their condition. More information is available at http://www.beneufit.com.

For the original version on PRWeb visit: http://www.prweb.com/releases/2015/06/prweb12769566.htm

Health

Dr. John Chao To Show Pinhole Treatment For Receding Gums On We Are Austin June 8

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Chao Pinhole Gum Rejuvenation™ the quick and easy treatment for receding gums with no cutting and no stitches will be featured Monday June 8 on “We Are Austin”, KEYE TV. Joining dentist and inventor Dr. John Chao will be Austin dentist Dr. Corinne Scalzitti.

Austin, TX (PRWEB) June 05, 2015

Chao Pinhole Rejuvenation is a breakthrough minimally invasive treatment to correct receding gums with no cutting, no sutures and minimal downtime. This innovative alternative to gum grafting will be featured on KEYE TV’s “We Are Austin” on Monday June 8 with dentist and inventor Dr. John Chao and Austin dentist Dr. Corinne Scalzitti, who has been trained by Dr. Chao in the technique also known as the Chao Pinhole Surgical Technique®.

Chao Pinhole Gum Rejuvenation™ is performed without the more invasive gum surgery and recovery time required with conventional gum grafting. Instead, the entire procedure is done through one or more small pinholes made in the gums. Using specially designed dental instruments patented by Dr. Chao the doctor frees the gum tissue and guides the gums down to achieve root coverage. The pinhole quickly disappears and most patients report little or no pain and experience virtually no downtime.

Dr. Chao is appearing in a series of TV interviews across the country with doctors he has trained at the bimonthly Chao Pinhole Academy™ seminars in Alhambra, CA. To date over 900 doctors from around the world have attended the courses and are now offering Chao Pinhole Gum Rejuvenation™ in their practices.

The “We Are Austin” segment will feature Dr. Chao describing how he was inspired to invent Chao Pinhole Gum Rejuvenation™ as an easier, less painful way to correct gum recession. Dr. Chao will narrate an animation showing how receding gums are corrected in minutes with the technique and Dr. Scalzitti will describe the results she is seeing in her practice and how patients react when they learn they can now have their gum recession reversed quickly and easily.

For more information on Chao Pinhole Gum Rejuvenation™ and training seminars for doctors visit http://www.pinholesurgicaltechnique.com or call (888) 603-2953 to find a local provider.

For more information on Dr. Corinne Scalzitti in Austin visit http://www.beecavedental.com Dr. Scalzitti has been named a Super Dentist in Texas Monthly since 2007. She is a graduate of the leading post graduate training program in cosmetic and neuromuscular dentistry, the Las Vegas Institute for Advanced Dental Studies.

For the original version on PRWeb visit: http://www.prweb.com/releases/2015/06/prweb12770475.htm

Pick ‘N Save Introduces Exotic Fruits Through Frieda’s Produce University® Program

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Select Pick ’n Save Stores Educate and Sample Tropical Fruits to Shoppers

(PRWEB) June 05, 2015

What: Pick ’n Save stores are promoting Tropical Fruits through Frieda’s Produce University® program. The program is a way to introduce shoppers to new and exciting produce such as Young Coconut, Rambutan, Kiwano®, Feijoa, and many more.

Why: This weekend-long promotion and sampling on Saturday enable shoppers to taste and learn about new and exotic fruits.

When: Friday, June 12th – Sunday, June 14th with an in-store sampling on Saturday, June 13th – 11:00 a.m. to 3 p.m.

Where: Select Pick ’n Save stores in Kenosha, Oak Creek, Wauwatosa, and Grafton. See below for more details on select locations.

Brookfield

  •     12735 W Capitol Drive

Grafton

  •     301 Falls Road

Kenosha

  •     Uptown Brass – 1901 63rd St.
  •     North – 2811 18th St.
  •     South –5710 75th St.

Oak Creek

  •     Tri City – 6462 S 27th St.
  •     Ryan Rd. – 2310 W Ryan Rd.
  •     Mega Mall – 8770 S Howell Ave.

South Milwaukee

  •     2931 S Chicago Street

Wauwatosa

  •     1717 North Mayfair Road

Media Contact: For more information, please contact Carly Haslee at Cramer-Krasselt on behalf of Roundy’s at (414) 227-3525, CHaslee(at)C-K(dot)com

About Roundy’s

Roundy’s is a leading grocer in the Midwest with nearly $4.0 billion in sales and more than 20,000 employees. Founded in Milwaukee in 1872, Roundy’s operates 161 retail grocery stores and 100 pharmacies under the Pick ’n Save, Rainbow, Copps, Metro Market and Mariano’s retail banners in Wisconsin, Minnesota and Illinois. Roundy’s is committed to helping the communities its stores serve through the Roundy’s Foundation. Chartered in 2003, the Roundy’s Foundation mission is to support organizations working to relieve hunger and helping families in crisis due to domestic abuse, neglect and other at-risk situations.

For the original version on PRWeb visit: http://www.prweb.com/releases/2015/06/prweb12770149.htm

Health

Bay Area Plastic Surgeon Says Gummy Bear Breast Implants Are Enhanced with New Fat Transfer Technique

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Dr. Kamakshi Zeidler says an advanced fat transfer can further refine breast contours when performing breast augmentation using the popular cohesive silicone gel implants known as "Gummy Bears."

Los Gatos, CA (PRWEB) June 05, 2015

"The so-called 'Gummy Bear' breast implants which have become popular can provide a natural look and feel, and now with recent advances in fat transfer to the breasts women can achieve even better results with more pleasing contours," says Bay Area plastic surgeon Dr. Kamakshi Zeidler, who appeared in a story on ABC News San Francisco showing how Gummy Bear implants are used. Link to the story: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FsW3K9NSMfU&feature=youtu.be

“The demand for 'Gummy Bears' has increased since these implants made of a cohesive silicone gel became available in the US a few years ago," says Dr. Zeidler. "Fat grafting to the breasts combined with these implants can be the ‘icing on the cake’. We can take unwanted fat from another area of the body, such as the waist or abdomen and transfer the patients' fat to her breasts to further refine her breast contours when performing breast augmentation. The fat is carefully injected with a technique designed to encourage long-term retention for a very attractive look.”

"To 'harvest' fat for the procedure, we remove unwanted fat using liposuction," says Dr. Zeidler. "The harvested fat is then prepared and injected into specific areas of the breast to enhance contours. The method uses fat injected in small amounts which allows the transferred fat cells to develop a blood supply and stay viable for long-lasting results."

“Gummy Bear implants provide a very nice option for women who want fullness without a rounded top of the breast which can result in a 'fake' or obviously augmented look,” says Dr. Zeidler. “Gummy Bear implants also shape the breast and provide a very stable, long lasting appearance. I like the predictable results they create, and when combined with fat grafting women can have beautiful, full breasts that keep people guessing.”

For more information on breast augmentation with Gummy Bear Implants and the latest techniques in fat transfer call the office of Dr. Kamakshi Zeidler at 408-559-7177 and visit http://www.ZeidlerPlasticSurgery.com

For the original version on PRWeb visit: http://www.prweb.com/releases/2015/06/prweb12767234.htm

Jayanth V. Kumar, DDS, MPH, Named California State Dental Director

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Former N.Y. state dental director to assume role in California

Sacramento, Calif. (PRWEB) June 05, 2015

Gov. Jerry Brown today announced that Jayanth V. Kumar, DDS, MPH, will serve as California’s new state dental director. For years, the California Dental Association has advocated for a state dental director — the establishment of this position is a major achievement for the state’s oral health program and access to care planning goals.

“CDA applauds Gov. Brown’s appointment and is looking forward to collaborating with Dr. Kumar, who will bring together an advisory group of stakeholders to help develop plans for improving oral health in California,” said CDA President Walt Weber, DDS. “Under Dr. Kumar’s leadership, New York’s oral health program experienced significant success and is recognized as one of the finest in the nation. We are excited to have his leadership and experience here in California. His excellent grasp of the serious challenges our state faces in reducing barriers to dental care, and his knowledge of effective disease prevention programs and federal funding opportunities, will be a tremendous asset to California.”

Kumar comes to the California Department of Public Health (CDPH) with more than 25 years of experience in the New York State Bureau of Dental Health, where he served as director of oral health surveillance and research and as director of the New York State Dental Public Health Residency. He has held the positions of state dental director and acting director since 2009 and is responsible for developing the first comprehensive state oral health plan for New York.

“CDA made the establishment of a state dental director a top priority of its access to care plan, Phased Strategies for Reducing the Barriers to Dental Care in California,” said Weber. CDA developed the report in 2011 as a comprehensive strategic approach to reducing barriers to oral health care for vulnerable Californians.

According to the CDPH, Kumar will direct and manage the oral health program in the CDPH and, in collaboration with the Department of Health Care Services provide leadership in developing and implementing innovative strategies and policies to reduce oral health disparities in California. In addition to a state oral health plan, Kumar will also be responsible for establishing prevention and oral health education projects and working to secure funding for prevention-focused oral health programs, particularly for children.

Dental disease is the most common chronic childhood disease, more common than both asthma and obesity, affecting nearly two-thirds of California’s children by the time they reach third grade. It is one of the top reasons children are absent from school.

Kumar has experience obtaining competitive grants from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Health Resources and Services Administration. He directed oral disease prevention and control activities, including New York’s statewide fluoridation program serving more than 12.9 million residents.

About the California Dental Association

The California Dental Association is the non-profit organization representing organized dentistry in California. Founded in 1870, CDA is committed to the success of our members in service to their patients and the public. CDA also contributes to the oral health of Californians through various comprehensive programs and advocacy. CDA’s membership consists of more than 26,000 dentists, making it the largest constituent of the American Dental Association. For more information, visit cda.org.

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For the original version on PRWeb visit: http://www.prweb.com/releases/2015/06/prweb12772437.htm

Health

Lola Getts Online Sale Via GMA Deals and Steals

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Traffic from Good Morning America

LOS ANGELES, June 5, 2015 /PRNewswire/ — Lola Getts, a plus size activewear brand, yesterday announced that it was selected to be featured on Good Morning America on June 4, 2015. Product is now available on its official online sale at http://gma.yahoo.com/deals. To handle the real time marketing, a custom website was built and is now getting up to 20,000 visitors per hour.

Logo – http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20150604/220986LOGO
Photo – http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20150604/220987

“We partnered with the SociableGroup to build us a website to withstand the large amount of traffic coming from Yahoo and Good Morning America,” said Laurie Champagne, CMO of Lola Getts. “The technical aspect of building a site to withstand the insane levels of traffic required a robust checklist and innovative technology.”

Ms. Champagne also revealed: “We added a container tag to drop our third party tracking pixels allowing us to have a fast and reliable website without worrying about it not being available to our customers. Each of our founders has a large social media following, along with the followings from our official site so we took strategic steps to ensure all aspects of the website were protected.” From the Lola Getts war room we monitor in real time the analytics from our social channels, website real time traffic as it moves across the country for each segment of Good Morning America.

“Most brands do not understand how to build a high volume website and our real time monitoring is showing customers who try to go to other brands websites are frustrated and are unable to participate in today’s sale, yet they have no problems accessing our deal and checking out,” said Richie Hannah the CIO of Lola Getts.

The cool innovative line of merchandise from Lola Getts is set to give fans of athleisure products from the bestselling black leggings, easy tank and comfortable sweatshirts. The pants contain our exclusive “Active wear Compression Technology” which Lola Getts fans have raved that they feel like an instant tummy tuck and hold you in all the right places, enhancing your curves, not hiding them.

About LolaGetts.com
Lola Getts, a Los Angeles, CA company, is designed for curvy women who want to look good and feel good by providing luxurious contemporary active wear that goes from “Cardio to Cocktails.” Lola Getts will use its unique designs to fuse technology, fashion and community together to create the ultimate lifestyle brand designed by industry experts. Worn by celebrities such as Ashley Graham and Loni Love, Lola Getts is a fan favorite. Additional information on Lola Getts is available at http://www.lolagetts.com.

About SociableGroup

Infused Industries, Inc. (SociableGroup) – a Raleigh, NC company – has been providing industry-leading transaction tools for the online social landscape. Every SociableGroup solution is built to deeply integrate with existing and emerging online social technologies to create a more seamless convergence of human social behaviors and spending decisions. SociableGroup products are delivered as a highly intuitive hosted software solutions and have been tailored for a number of market segments, including non-profits, retailers, individual causes and politicians.

Media Contact:

Stacey Goldstein
216-533-8445
Email

To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/lola-getts-online-sale-via-gma-deals-and-steals-300094653.html

SOURCE Lola Getts Active

Health

Sun Health Senior Living Wins Five LeadingAge Arizona Awards

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Accolades Include Prestigious ‘Award of Honor’ for Grandview Terrace’s Bhakti Gosalia

SURPRISE, ARIZ. (PRWEB) June 04, 2015

Sun Health Senior Living (SHSL) garnered five of the top 11 awards for people, programs and services at the 2015 LeadingAge Arizona annual conference, held this week in Fort McDowell, Ariz.

“Receiving recognition for a job well done is always a great thing to celebrate, but winning five awards from our industry peers at LeadingAge Arizona is very special,” said Sharon Grambow, chief operating officer of Sun Health Senior Living. “I’m grateful every day for people like Leticia, Kari and Bhakti, as well as all of our Sun Health Senior Living staff who make our three communities the best they can be for our residents.”

Part of nonprofit Sun Health, SHSL consists of three active, independent living Life Care communities: Grandview Terrace in Sun City West, La Loma Village in Litchfield Park and The Colonnade in Sun City Grand/Surprise.

The awardees are:

  •     Grandview Terrace Executive Director Bhakti Gosalia received the “Award of Honor,” recognizing the achievements of an individual who has exhibited an exemplary career of outstanding service in the field of aging. Gosalia’s career with Sun Health spans 27-plus years. In nominating Gosalia, executive assistant Julie Bressler praised her boss for excellent leadership and people skills. “Bhakti knows the face and name of almost everyone on the campus, from the newest employee to the newest resident,” Bressler wrote.

  •     Leticia Moore, a certified nursing assistant, at Grandview Terrace Health and Rehabilitation received one of three “Excellence in Service” awards recognizing individuals in non-management positions who enhance the lives of residents or staff. “Leticia’s kindness and compassion do not go unnoticed,” Gosalia wrote in the nomination form. “It’s not unusual for residents to mention her by name in our satisfaction surveys as someone who made them feel special during their stay at Grandview.”
  •     Grandview Terrace Health and Rehabilitation’s Memory Support Services won the award for “Innovation in Environmental Design,” recognizing innovation in the areas of building design, construction, energy conservation and sustainable green design. One of the award criteria was use of best practices in the design. Gosalia wrote: “We wanted to build the right thing for the right reasons. So, even though the market would support building bigger (than 16-beds); a smaller, more intimate community was the right thing to do for our residents.”

  •     La Loma Village Life Enrichment Manager and Assisted Living (AL) Manager Kari Curry took home the “Emerging Leader of the Year” award, recognizing leaders who have succeeded in implementing best practices, achieving positive outcomes and inspiring staff and residents. Jennifer L. Howse, daughter of a La Loma Village Health and Rehabilitation resident, nominated Curry: “The quality, training and values of the AL staff all reflect Kari’s leadership style,” Howse wrote. “Kari leads by example, showing caring and a sense of responsibility for each of the residents.”
  •     La Loma Village Health and Rehabilitation’s “It’s Never 2 Late” (IN2L) computer system won the “Innovations in Technology” award recognizing innovative use of technology to enhance the lives of residents. The IN2L computer system was primarily designed for older adults, especially those with physical or cognitive challenges. Curry wrote: “The system is located in a community area, is available all hours of the day, and everyone is encouraged to utilize it. It’s portable so it can be taken from room to room, thus providing even more opportunities for all to enjoy. This accessibility is so beneficial to residents who otherwise might not be able to participate in activities.”

About LeadingAge Arizona

LeadingAge Arizona’s annual awards dinner recognizes innovations in technology, health and wellness programs and environmental design; as well as best practices, leaders and emerging leaders, volunteers, excellence in service, and outstanding business members. LeadingAge Arizona is the local affiliate of the national partner, LeadingAge, an association of 6,000 not-for-profit organizations dedicated to expanding the world of possibilities for aging.

About Sun Health

A long-standing community partner championing healthy living, nonprofit Sun Health is a community-based health care organization providing pathways to population health through philanthropy, senior living, community programs and superior health care. Learn more at http://www.SunHealth.org and http://www.sunhealthseniorliving.org.

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For the original version on PRWeb visit: http://www.prweb.com/releases/2015/06/prweb12767317.htm

Real Time Pain Relief Debuts its First Vegan Pain Relief Product Made with Raspberry Oil

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Real Time Pain Relief SELECT is the company’s first vegan roll-on product made from raspberry oil and other natural, plant-based ingredients which provide relief in minutes. The new topical pain relief roll-on product also is free of gluten, paraben, sodium lauryl sulfate and GMOs.

Edmond, OK (PRWEB) June 04, 2015

Consumers seeking a 100% vegan roll-on pain relief product have a new option with Real Time Pain Relief SELECT – the latest product from Real Time Pain Relief, makers of the popular rub-on pain relief lotion and products since 1998. The new pain relief topical product is gluten-free, paraben-free and does not contain sodium lauryl sulfate or genetically modified organisms (GMOs). Raspberry oil is nutrient dense and well-known for its benefits and transdermal properties which deliver relief. The benefits of raspberry oil, combined with the other plant-based ingredients in Real Time Pain Relief products, provide natural pain relief in minutes. Consumers also enjoy the non-greasy application. SELECT is an FDA registered OTC product available in a convenient 3 ounce roll-on size and is priced at $20.

“Many Real Time Pain Relief customers have asked us for a vegan product over the past five years,” said Real Time Pain Relief Co-Founder Ron Snodgrass. “After several years, our research and development team was able to create a vegan pain relief formula that we are proud to put our name on. We’re sure consumers will be thrilled with Real Time Pain Relief SELECT – it’s amazing and a perfect addition to our high quality topical pain relief products,” concluded Snodgrass.

“Real Time Pain Relief SELECT was worth the wait,” said Real Time Pain Relief Founder Tim Flatt. “SELECT is going to be a huge success – and not just in the vegan market. It works great for everyone and the roll-on application is very convenient,” stated Flatt.

SELECT is made with the highest quality ingredients on the market to ensure the same safe, effective and fast-acting pain relief you expect from Real Time Pain Relief products. For almost two decades consumers have enjoyed using Real Time Pain Relief products, noting their pleasant smell and non-greasy application. Real Time Pain Relief products contain a proprietary blend of 19 natural and herbal ingredients, such as Aloe Vera, Arnica, Capsicum, Chondroitin, Emu Oil, Glucosamine, Menthol and MSM. The original Real Time Pain Relief lotion uses a low level of Menthol – only 1.25% – to avoid buildup of Substance P in joints and throughout the body.

Visit http://www.rtpr.com for more information or to buy the new Real Time Pain Relief SELECT.

About Real Time Pain Relief (RTPR)

Founded in 1998, Real Time Pain Relief (RTPR) is a family-owned and operated American company with all products made in the USA. The company’s topical pain relief lotion, known for being the best-smelling rub-on, provides natural pain relief to people with arthritis, back pain and muscle strains. Over the past 17 years, RTPR has introduced several new products to market based on the specific needs of their customers, including Real Time Active, Real Time Skin Rescue, Real Time Foot Cream, Real Time Hand Cream, convenient travel packs, and most recently a 100% vegan product – Real Time Pain Relief SELECT. Real Time Pain Relief is an FDA registered OTC, pain relief product. Visit http://www.rtpr.com for more information about Real Time Pain Relief.

For the original version on PRWeb visit: http://www.prweb.com/releases/new_vegan/pain_relief/prweb12764799.htm

ICD-10 Specialty-Specific Training for Your Entire Staff

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AudioEducator is providing specialty-specific ICD-10 training through industry veterans to prepare providers, billers and coders to meet rigorous ICD-10 requirements.

Durham, NC (PRWEB) June 04, 2015

With a manifold increase in procedure codes with ICD-10, coder productivity is bound to take a plunge, with some experts predicting a 50-70 percent dip initially. ICD-10 has been already implemented in many countries. The UK switched in 1995, France in 1996, and Australia in 1998. One could use the experiences of these countries to make the transition smoother.

It is the right time for healthcare service providers and facilities to analyze inefficiencies that thwart current performance levels – and strengthen the billing and reimbursement process chain. The providers need to get a reality check done to assess the efficiency of their organization and make sure they don’t get caught off guard with the implementation process. To facilitate a successful transition, AudioEducator is providing specialty-specific ICD-10 training for practice’s to prepare for and meet complex and rigorous ICD-10 requirements.

AudioEducator’s ICD-10 training session is conducted by nationally renowned speakers. They are the names healthcare professionals look up to for expert advice, training and strategies. A few industry veterans who feature in AudioEducator’s speaker panel are Terry Fletcher, Duane Abbey, Melanie Witt, Barbara Cobuzzi, Jill Young, Michael Ferragamo and Kim Huey.

ICD-10 will see a fourfold increase in specificity in documentation. AudioEducator’s specialty-specific training will physicians learn about complex changes happening in ICD-10 specific to specialty— anatomic specific coding, laterality coding, inpatient hospital specific coding, and more. Additionally, one can learn while sitting at home/office/conference room. No need to travel to distant locations. They can listen to the experts live and participate in Q&A sessions to clear up any confusion or doubts related to ICD-10, at the end of the each session.

At AudioEducator, ICD-10 training is available in following specialties:

E/M

Modifiers

Cardiology

Dermatology

Orthopedic

Ob/Gyn

Hematology/ Oncology

Otolaryngology

Family Practice

Ophthalmology

Podiatry

Injury Coding

Urology

Musculoskeletal Conditions

Radiology

Gastroenterology

Pulmonary Conditions

Home Health

Pediatrics

Anesthesia

Internal Medicine

Mental and Behavioral

As the time is running out, the practices need to take stock of the situation. Brush up on loose ends with AudioEducator’s ICD-10 training programs.

For more information, http://www.audioeducator.com/medical-coding-billing/icd-10.html

About AudioEducator

AudioEducator, the country’s leading source of business-enhancing information, has been providing knowledge and training to healthcare professionals on trending industry topics for more than a decade. With an esteemed panel of industry experts, it helps professionals get information directly from the veterans and get their queries answered directly. AudioEducator specializes in audio conferences, training webinars, transcripts, DVDs on a wide array of healthcare topics like medical coding, billing, HIPAA compliance, food safety, rehab, pharma & biotech, and more.

For more information, check http://www.audioeducator.com

We have enabled a special discount of 10%. Use coupon code SAVE10 to get your discount, Applicable on all purchases. For further query you can call our customer support as mention below.

For the original version on PRWeb visit: http://www.prweb.com/releases/2015/06/prweb12767632.htm

Health

beYogi Launches Yoga Insurance: Be a Warrior, Not a Worrier

Written By: admin

With the launch of beYogi Insurance Plus, yoga instructors may now obtain the affordable, flexible liability coverage they need at the click of a button.

Ponte Vedra Beach, FL (PRWEB) June 04, 2015

beYogi.com, the premier online yoga resource, has teamed up with Insurance Plus to offer yoga teachers and teacher trainees access to all-inclusive, affordable liability protection. For $159 annually, instructors receive the premium liability insurance required by most studios and gain access to exclusive teacher resources: http://beyogi.com/insurance-plus/.

Earlier this year, beYogi was launched to support members of the yoga community at every step of their journey to learn, teach, and live yoga. The site offers inspiration for yoga sequences, themes, and playlists in addition to information on anatomy, marketing, and business management. In April, beYogi added an online yoga pose library to its repertoire of resources, and now it has expanded yet again to offer yoga liability insurance for teachers.

Tailored for yogis on the go, beYogi’s flexible insurance plan follows instructors everywhere, whether they are teaching inside a studio, outside in a park, or even at a festival. In addition to complete liability protection, the innovative program includes a multitude of benefits to support working yoga professionals—a free website, product discounts, yoga giveaways, and more.

Featured benefits of the beYogi Insurance Plus program include:

  • One low rate whether the teacher is full time or part time; teaching in a studio, at home, or on the go; independent or an employee
  • Coverage for 350 styles of yoga, massage therapy, Pilates, reiki, and more
  • Instant coverage and proof of insurance at checkout
  • Bonus coverage for identity protection and stolen equipment
  • Free business resources, including a professional website and product discounts

Citing the National Electronic Injury Surveillance System (NEISS), beYogi reports the estimated number of yoga-related injuries treated in hospital emergency rooms has nearly doubled in four years—rising from about 2,500 injuries in 2009 to nearly 5,000 injuries in 2012.

“Even the most experienced instructors can encounter an incident outside of their control,” says Heather Alves, director of beYogi Insurance Plus. “Yoga’s popularity continues to increase across the U.S., and with that comes a rise in the need for liability insurance. Professionals need peace of mind knowing they are covered as their business grows.”

beYogi’s high-coverage limits include professional and general liability insurance ($2 million per occurrence, $3 million individual annual aggregate); product coverage ($2 million per occurrence and individual annual aggregate); $100,000 rental damage insurance; an identity protection plan; and $1,000 stolen equipment insurance. These are individual limits reserved for policyholders during their coverage term, not shared across all members.

Yoga teachers, trainers, and therapists can enroll in beYogi Insurance Plus and receive the above benefits by visiting http://beyogi.com/professional-insurance/.

Insurance options are also available to students enrolled in yoga teacher training, and range from six months of coverage for $10 to 12 months of coverage for $25. Details regarding the student programs may be obtained at http://beyogi.com/student-insurance/.

About beYogi.com

beYogi.com offers guidance and professional resources to support you at every step of your journey to beYogi—from student to studio owner and everyone in between. While the site covers everything from the basics of yoga to advanced yogic philosophy, beYogi primarily targets aspiring and working yoga teachers, as denoted by its mission statement: “Awakening the great teacher in you.” To accomplish this, the digital publication offers valuable yoga teaching techniques, class planning and sequencing recommendations, yoga anatomy resources, business tips, and more.

Find out more about the latest online magazine for yogis at http://www.beyogi.com/.

For the original version on PRWeb visit: http://www.prweb.com/releases/2015/06/prweb12765122.htm

Health

Nebraska, W. Iowa VA to Host Women Veterans Open House

Written By: admin

An event to celebrate women veterans and to share information about Veterans Affairs services and benefits is slated for June 9.

OMAHA, Neb. (PRWEB) June 04, 2015

VA Nebraska-Western Iowa Health Care System will host an “Honoring the Service of Women Veterans Open House” June 9, 5 to 7:30 p.m. in the Education Conference Room at the VA Medical Center, 4101 Woolworth Ave, Omaha, Neb.

The event features many activities to educate women veterans about what services are available for them through the VA health care system and the benefits office.

Fun activities will also include demonstrations about self-defense, healthy cooking and yoga and relaxation.

Representatives from the following VA agencies will be present: VA Regional Office-Lincoln, Vet Center, and many VA health care programs to include benefits and enrollment, nutrition and dietician services, mental health, the women’s health program, and the patient advocate.

For more information, contact Donna Higgins at donna.higgins(at)va(dot)gov or 402-995-4906.

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About VA Nebraska-Western Iowa Health Care System

The VA NWIHCS is a Joint Commission-accredited, level-1c facility, which consists of a tertiary medical center in Omaha, Neb., and two larger clinics in Lincoln and Grand Island – which includes a community living center – five community-based outpatient clinics (CBOC) and one contract clinic. VA NWIHCS is part of the VA Midwest Health Care Network (VISN 23), which serves an estimated veteran population of 161,000 in 101 counties in Nebraska, western Iowa, Kansas and Missouri with an estimated 593,000 annual outpatient visits, and an operating budget of $334 million as of October 2014.

For more information or media interviews, contact:

Office of Public Affairs    

Media Relations

4101 Woolworth Ave

Omaha, NE, 68105

Contact:            

Will Ackerman    

Public Affairs Director

Office: (402) 995-4719

Cell: (402) 332-6780    

Email: William.Ackerman(at)va(dot)gov

http://www.nebraska.va.gov

For the original version on PRWeb visit: http://www.prweb.com/releases/2015/06/prweb12768873.htm