How Brain Imaging Could Help Predict Alzheimer's

Developing drugs that effectively slow the course of Alzheimer's disease has been notoriously difficult. Scientists and drug developers believe that a large part of the problem is that they are testing these drugs too late in the progression of the disease, when significant damage to the brain makes intervention much more difficult.

"Drugs like Lilly's gamma secretase inhibitor failed because they were tested in the wrong group of patients," says Sangram Sisodia, director of the Center for Molecular Neurobiology at the University of Chicago. People in the mid or late stages of the disease "are too far gone, there is nothing you can do."

New brain imaging research may help solve that problem. Two studies presented at the Society for Neuroscience conference in San Diego this week identified changes in the brains of people who would go on to develop the disease. Researchers ultimately hope to use these changes to select patients for clinical tests of new drugs before they have developed signs of dementia.

"Brain changes that predict progression will hopefully allow us to detect the disease early, before it has caused irreversible damage," said Sarah Madsen, a graduate student at the University of California, Los Angeles, at a press briefing at the conference.

Recent research has focused on people with a condition known as mild cognitive impairment, which involves memory loss and other cognitive problems and can be a precursor to Alzheimer's. However, not everyone with this disorder will go on to develop the disease. A reliable method of predicting who will develop Alzheimer's would enable drug developers to focus their clinical testing. By testing drugs only in this carefully selected group, drug makers could more easily see the potential benefit of an experimental drug. It would also help them to avoid unnecessarily subjecting people to health risks.

Sarah George, a graduate student at Rush University Medical Center, in Chicago, analyzed brain scans of 47 people with mild cognitive impairment, 22 of whom went on to develop Alzheimer's over the next six years. She focused on a part of the brain called the substantia innominata, which is known to be severely affected in Alzheimer's. Existing drugs for treating the disorder target a chemical messenger, acetylcholine, made by neurons in this part of the brain.

While George didn't find differences in the volume of the substantia innominata between the two groups, she did find differences in the parts of the brain that those neurons connect to. People who went on to develop the disease had significant thinning in three connected areas of the cortex involved in memory, attention, and integration of sensor and motor information.

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Google experimenting with new Maps features [TNW Google]

This morning, our TNW friend Jake Rieskamp tipped us off to a new look in Google Maps. We noticed that the icons on the right side used to be simple text buttons, but now they are small icons.

We finally got the official word from Google:

As part of our ongoing effort to help users quickly and easily find the information they?re looking for, we?re currently running an experiment in which some people see a different layout for the accessing layers in Google Maps. The feature is currently limited to a small number of users.

Do you have access to new Google Maps? If so, what do you think?

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Source: http://thenextweb.com/google/2010/11/19/google-experimenting-with-new-maps-features/

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Video: Awesome iPhone Virtual Treasure Hunt For A Mini Car [TNW Mobile]

I love looking around the world for inspirational campaigns and I loved this one the second I saw it. Treasure hunts are common online (and we have even done a couple ourselves) but this one takes things a step further using an iPhone app, location based services, the chance to win a mini and a battle with your friends all across a Stockholm. Although the technology behind this is pretty impressive it?s the simplicity of the concept and the viral nature of this that gets me excited. Who wouldn?t want to battle their friends around the city for a brand new car? I would very rarely get involved in campaigns or competitions to try them myself but I think if this was happening in Dublin I?d actually go out there and try and see if I could win it! Brilliant concept, check it out?

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Source: http://thenextweb.com/mobile/2010/11/19/video-awesome-iphone-virtual-treasure-hunt-for-a-mini-car/

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Murkowski Wins Alaska Senate Race

By Wednesday afternoon, 15 days after the midterm elections, it was clear from a count of write-in ballots in Juneau, the state capital, that Ms. Murkowski had enough of a lead over her opponent, Joe Miller, that Mr. Miller would not be able to catch up. The Democrat, Scott T. McAdams, trailed far behind.

Ms. Murkowski flew to Alaska from Washington to declare victory, taking the stage at a union hall here to chants of ?We made history! We made history!?

?We did,? she said. ?We made history. And doesn?t it just feel, wow, still a little bit mind-boggling??

Mr. Miller, a Tea Party favorite, was backed by former Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska, former Gov. Mike Huckabee of Arkansas, and, after Mr. Miller upset Ms. Murkowski in the Republican primary, the national Republican establishment. His support for states? rights and tax and spending cuts resonated in this conservative state, but he committed a series of mistakes during the general election campaign.

At the same time, Ms. Murkowski showed new vigor after she announced her return to the race as a write-in on Sept. 17. She also showed a sharp sense of the state?s distinct relationship with the federal government. About a third of the Alaska economy depends on federal spending.

?Alaskans have chosen the path of unity, the deliberative path, the common-sense path,? Ms. Murkowski told her supporters on Wednesday.

She invited Lily Stevens, daughter of her mentor, the late Senator Ted Stevens, to come onto the stage. ?His motto was: ?To hell with politics. Let?s just do what?s right for Alaska,? ? Ms. Murkowski said. ?And that?s what we did.?

Mr. Miller did not immediately concede. In an interview with Fox News, he said he was feeling less optimistic than he had been, but also declared, ?It?s never over until the count is done.?

His campaign suggested this week it would pursue a recount of all the ballots cast.

But on Wednesday, Randy Ruedrich, the chairman of the Alaska Republican Party, which had been supporting Mr. Miller, called on him to concede. ?This was a free and fair election,? Mr. Ruedrich said in a statement. ?It is now time to look forward.?

Ms. Murkowski is the first write-in candidate elected to the Senate since Strom Thurmond of South Carolina in 1954.

Election workers counted more than 100,000 write-in votes in Juneau over the last week, and it became clear early that Ms. Murkowski was likely to win. More than 97 percent of the votes were for her, officials said. On Wednesday, she led Mr. Miller by more than 10,000 votes with less than a thousand ballots left to count.

Throughout the write-in count, the Miller campaign aggressively challenged ballots, questioning any that seemed to have a misspelling, a smudge or extra words written on them. The campaign filed a federal lawsuit arguing that write-in votes that are not spelled correctly should be excluded; that case is pending.

So far, only 8,153 ballots have been challenged, meaning Ms. Murkowski would still lead by more than 2,000 votes even in the unlikely event that all the challenged ballots were set aside by the courts.

The Miller campaign had said it would not contest the results if there were not enough challenged ballots to change the outcome, but it has continued to raise money for a legal fund. Ms. Palin, a longtime rival of Ms. Murkowski, contributed to the fund through her political action committee; so has Senator Jim DeMint, Republican of South Carolina.

A memento of Ms. Murkowski?s bid for re-election ? which depended on her ability to cultivate support among groups that included labor unions and libertarians, and on a novel voter education campaign about how to fill in a write-in ballot and how to spell her name ? remains in the freshly repaired sidewalks outside her town house in Washington. Before the concrete set, someone etched into it her write-in campaign slogan: ?Fill it in. Write it in. Lisa Murkowski.?

Juliet Macur contributed reporting from Washington.

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Blog - Absorbing Hydrogen Turns Palladium Into A Quasi Liquid

Here's a curious experiment involving palladium, the rare silvery metal well known for its ability to absorb hydrogen. When it is saturated, the ratio of hydrogen to palladium can be as high 0.6, which is why the metal is used to filter and even store hydrogen.

It's easy to imagine that the movement of hydrogen atoms in and out of the metallic lattice has little effect on the material. But that turns out to be wrong, as Akio Kawasaki at the University of Tokyo and friends discovered when they decided to test the idea.

Materials scientists have known for some time that palladium expands when it absorbs hydrogen and shrinks during desorption. What they hadn't known until now is the toll that this process takes on the metal.

Kawasaki and co attached a rectangular plate of palladium about the size of of stick of gum to the side of a chamber so that it stuck out horizontally. They then heated it to 150 degrees C and hung the weight of an apple on the end of plate. Finally, they pumped hydrogen into the chamber and waited while the metal absorbed it.

To their surprise, the palladium immediately drooped under the weight and continued to droop as the hydrogen was pumped out of the chamber and the gas was desorbed. (In contrast, when they hung the plate vertically with the weight hanging beneath, there was almost no stretching at all.)

There's no escaping the conclusion that hydrogen somehow robs palladium of its strength but in a very specific way.

That's a somewhat unexpected result but one that Kawasaki and co think they can explain.

In its pure state, the palladium lattice has a face centre cubic structure but this has to change to allow so much hydrogen on board. Materials scientists know that when this a happens, it can adopt two other structures known as alpha and beta phases as well as a mixture of these phases.

Kawasaki's conclusion is that during this change, the metal atoms are neither held in a rigid solid structure nor able to move in an entirely random way either. This makes it a little like a liquid. In fact, physicists call this type of material a quasi-liquid.

So what they have is a material that they can change into a quasi-liquid at will. That should peak the interest of materials scientists. The next stage will be to study the change using various techniques such as x-ray diffraction and perhaps NMR which should reveal what happens to a substance as it morphs from a solid to a quasi-liquid.

As for applications, just where such a quasi-liquid could be put to good use isn't clear. Suggestions in the comments sections please.

Ref: arxiv.org/abs/1011.2776: Anomalous Deformation Of Palladium Plates By A Small Gravitational Force During Hydrogen Absorption And Desorption

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Apple investigating teenager who sold white iPhone 4 kits

17 year-old Fei Lam is now in Apple's crosshairs for his WhiteiPhone4Now.com website, where he sold white iPhone 4 kits. A private investigator by the name of Jimmy Robbins was looking into Fei and his business, which generated about $139,500 in the last three months. We speculated that this investigator was probably hired by Apple, and it turns out this was correct.

Lam's attorney, Andrew Jaffe, told the The New York Observer that Robbins was indeed working for Apple. We say "was" because Robbins informed Jaffe that he was off the case and that Apple was handling it personally. "Now we're just waiting to hear from them officially," said Jaffe.

The New Yorker ordered white iPhone 4 parts directly from a contact at Foxconn, a factory complex in China responsible for building Apple products among other things, put his own conversion kits together, and sold them for $279 each. Lam has had a surge in traffic since his story got out around the world earlier this week and we wouldn't be surprised if he's unable to keep up with the demand. On the other hand, if Apple manages to get Lam convicted, he could end up with fines and possibly even jail-time.

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Source: http://www.techspot.com/news/41211-apple-investigating-teenager-who-sold-white-iphone-4-kits.html

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Robot uses Kinect to see the world, obey your commands

Apple investigating teenager who sold white iPhone 4 kits

17 year-old Fei Lam is now in Apple's crosshairs for his WhiteiPhone4Now.com website, where he sold white iPhone 4 kits. A private investigator by the name of Jimmy Robbins was looking into Fei and his business, which generated about $139,500 in the last three months. We speculated that this investigator was probably hired by Apple, and it turns out this was correct.

Lam's attorney, Andrew Jaffe, told the The New York Observer that Robbins was indeed working for Apple. We say "was" because Robbins informed Jaffe that he was off the case and that Apple was handling it personally. "Now we're just waiting to hear from them officially," said Jaffe.

The New Yorker ordered white iPhone 4 parts directly from a contact at Foxconn, a factory complex in China responsible for building Apple products among other things, put his own conversion kits together, and sold them for $279 each. Lam has had a surge in traffic since his story got out around the world earlier this week and we wouldn't be surprised if he's unable to keep up with the demand. On the other hand, if Apple manages to get Lam convicted, he could end up with fines and possibly even jail-time.

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Source: http://www.techspot.com/news/41211-apple-investigating-teenager-who-sold-white-iphone-4-kits.html

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Silicon's Long Good-bye

Sometime in the coming decades, chipmakers will no longer be able to make silicon chips faster by packing smaller transistors onto a chip. That's because silicon transistors will simply be too leaky and expensive to make any smaller.

People working on materials that could succeed silicon have to overcome many challenges. Now researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, have found a way past one such hurdle: they've developed a reliable way to make fast, low-power, nanoscopic transistors out of a compound semiconductor material. Their method is simpler, and promises to be less expensive, than existing ones.

Compound semiconductors have better electrical properties than silicon, which means that transistors made from them require less power to operate at faster speeds. These materials are already in some expensive niche applications such as military telecommunications equipment, which gives them a leg up over more exotic potential silicon replacements like graphene and carbon nanotubes.

But wafers of compound semiconductor materials are also very fragile and expensive, "which is only okay where cost doesn't matter," says Ali Javey, associate professor of electrical engineering and computer sciences at the University of California, Berkeley. Compound semiconductors are on the market in expensive communications chips for the military, for example.

Researchers believe they can overcome this fragility and expense by growing compound-semiconductor transistors on top of a supportive silicon wafer?a trick that should be compatible with existing manufacturing infrastructure.

However, compound semiconductors cannot be grown on silicon?there's a mismatch between the crystalline structures of the two materials that makes this difficult to do well. The Berkeley group has now shown that transistors made from compound semiconductors can be grown on another surface and then transferred to a silicon wafer. "That's a plausible path for dealing with the fact that compound semiconductors are difficult to grow," says Jesús del Alamo, professor of electrical engineering and computer science at MIT who was not involved with Javey's work.

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Reid to Push to Allow End of ?Don?t Ask, Don?t Tell?

Senator John McCain of Arizona, the senior Republican on the Armed Services Committee, led his colleagues in blocking consideration of the bill in September in part because it allowed the repeal of the ?don?t ask, don?t tell? policy. Mr. McCain has not changed his position, and Democrats had been considering stripping the provision to advance the legislation.

But the White House on Wednesday repeated President Obama?s commitment to repealing the ban. In a statement later in the day, Mr. Reid said he would bring the bill to the floor, with the repeal language in place. ?We need to repeal this discriminatory policy so that any American who wants to defend our country can do so,? Mr. Reid said.

Senate Democratic aides said Mr. Reid would try to take up the bill sometime in December, meaning after the Pentagon is due to release a report on how it would carry out a repeal. The report includes a survey of active-duty forces and their families, which shows that a majority do not care if gay men and women serve openly.

That report is due on Dec. 1.

Senator Carl Levin, Democrat of Michigan and chairman of the Armed Services Committee, applauded Mr. Reid?s decision and said he would fight for approval of the bill.

In a statement, Mr. Levin said that he would hold hearings on the Pentagon report as soon as it was released and that he had asked Mr. Reid to wait until they were completed before trying to begin debate.

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates has said he would like to see the ?don?t ask, don?t tell? policy repealed before the end of the year, but some senior military commanders and some lawmakers in Congress have expressed opposition to ending the policy.

Senator McCain?s wife, Cindy, called last week for ending the policy, appearing in a video for an advertising campaign aimed at preventing the bullying of gay teenagers. But then she abruptly reversed herself and said she agreed with her husband.

The House has already approved legislation authorizing repeal, and Mr. Reid?s decision indicated that Democrats, despite heavy losses in the midterm elections, were not backing down from some top legislative priorities, important to the party?s base.

On Wednesday Mr. Reid announced that he would also push to bring up a bill that would create a path to citizenship for certain illegal immigrants who were brought to the United States as small children.

Mr. Reid tried to attach the legislation as an amendment to the military policy bill before the midterm elections, but Republicans blocked the bill, in part because they said that he was using it as a political prop to appeal to Hispanic and gay voters in his re-election campaign in Nevada.

In his race, Mr. Reid promised he would try again to pass the immigration measure, known as the Dream Act. And in a statement on Wednesday he said he would try to do so as a stand-alone bill.

The House speaker, Nancy Pelosi of California, has been discussing the immigration measure with Democratic colleagues but has not scheduled a vote on it, a spokesman said.

The legislation would give legal residency to immigrants who arrived in the United States before age 16 and lived here for at least five years, graduated from high school and completed two years of college or military service. They would be subject to background checks, could not have criminal records, and even if successful would still not be eligible for financial aid like Pell grants.

In a statement, Mr. Reid said: ?If there is a bipartisan bill that makes sense for our country economically, from a national security perspective and one that reflects American values, it is the Dream Act. This bill will give children brought illegally to this country at no fault of their own the chance to earn legal status.?

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