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I your average weird geeky British Nigerian. Lover of video games, fantasy stuff, deserts, cute things, fine boy no pimples, fashion, steampunk and many other ish to name a few. Now that you know me, you should follow me, or you could get to know me, Questions. Looking for something?
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By Kathryn Doyle
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Taking medications containing caffeine was tied to a doubled or even tripled risk of having a stroke in a new Korean study that might seem to contradict recent evidence suggesting coffee and tea exert protective effects.
But the results may in fact be in line with that research, according to the study authors, who point out that people who drank the least coffee were most at risk when taking caffeinated drugs.
The products included mostly over the counter pain relievers, cold medicines and alertness aids containing small amounts of caffeine.
"Caffeine is a vasoconstrictor, causing blood vessels to tighten and increasing the pressure of the blood flow," Nam-Kyong Choi of Seoul National University College of Medicine, who co-led the study, told Reuters Health in an email
That effect on blood pressure could explain the possible link to strokes, but the study didn't investigate the mechanism, Choi said.
The researchers selected 940 adult patients who had suffered a hemorrhagic stroke, wherein a blood vessel in the brain bursts and bleeds heavily.
They then compared those patients to a group of similar people who had not suffered a stroke but had been hospitalized, and to a third group who had neither suffered a stroke nor been hospitalized.
The team interviewed all the participants about all medications they had taken in the preceding two weeks.
They found that overall, those who had taken a medication containing caffeine were about two and a half times more likely to suffer a stroke, according to the results published in the journal Stroke.
Five percent of people who had had strokes had taken a caffeine medication, compared to 2.3 percent of the no-stroke groups.
But when the researchers factored in coffee consumption, the participants who took caffeine-containing medications but didn't drink coffee on a daily basis were closer to three times more likely to have strokes than people not taking the medications.
And those who drank plenty of coffee daily did not seem to be at any greater risk.
"Even though caffeine-containing medicines appear to increase the risk of hemorrhagic stroke, it doesn't appear to be the ?caffeine' dose," said Dr. Daniel Woo, associate professor of Neurology at the University of Cincinnati in Ohio, who was not involved in the study.
"Folks who drank 3 cups of coffee per day didn't seem to have a higher risk of hemorrhagic stroke," said Woo, who is also an associate editor of the Journal for Stroke Research and Treatment.
Since the risk of stroke didn't go up in parallel to caffeine consumption, there was no "dose response relationship" and it's unlikely that caffeine causes strokes, according to Dr. Susanna Larsson, a nutritional epidemiologist who studies caffeine at the National Institute of Environmental Medicine at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden.
"Moderate consumption of coffee (1-3 cups/day), which is the main source of caffeine in most populations, has been associated with lower risk of all types of stroke," Larsson told Reuters Health by email.
One cup of coffee contains about 130 milligrams of caffeine, much higher than the 35 milligrams per day the study subjects got, on average, from caffeine meds.
Total daily caffeine intake from coffee, teas and sodas in the U.S. averages 250 to 300 milligrams daily per person, so an additional 35 milligrams from medications would be unlikely to have any effect, Larsson said.
Choi believes caffeine sources like coffee, tea and chocolate may contain other beneficial compounds that mitigate the effects of caffeine.
The new results might differ from the norm for two important reasons, Woo said: one, there's an inherent bias when doing recall studies with stroke patients, in that the study could only include those patients who still had the mental capacity to consent and answer questions, so the study group didn't represent stroke patients as a whole.
Two, in Korea cold remedies and other medications may still contain phenylpropanolamine, a chemical removed from medications in the U.S. in the early 2000s when a study linked it with an increased risk of stroke.
The patients may have been taking medicines with phenylpropanolamine, or ephedrine, which is common in cold remedies and raises blood pressure, which might have caused the strokes, Woo said.
Choi agreed that medications containing phenylpropanolamine and caffeine deserve extra caution.
SOURCE: http://bit.ly/13TBYZ4 Stroke, online June 6, 2013.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/common-meds-caffeine-may-linked-stroke-131422954.html
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We got to see quite a bit of iOS 7 back at WWDC 2013, but we only saw it working on an iPhone. Well, we've got some good news for big screen Apple devs, as a new iOS 7 beta's been released OTA and it now works on the iPad. Of course, the new beta also brings the usual nebulous "bug fixes and improvements" for all devices, and among those improvements is the addition of the Voice Memos app and Siri's new voices in English as well. It's available now, so if you're in the beta, you best get to downloading!
Source: TUAW
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With Google Reader ready to tap out, it seems like everyone is keen to throw their hat into the feed reader ring. The latest offering is from AOL and it's simple, fast and lacking any unique features?though that's not necessarily a bad thing.
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The home-based business has become extremely popular within the past few years, it is the online business industry. There are a lot of internet businesses flourishing nowadays but here are 6 of the most in-demand:
1. Online Retail Stores
Popularized by auction sites Ebay, Craigslist and Amazon, online retail stores have become a hit most especially to the working class. Most people of today are so busy with school, work and various other activities that the once enjoyable weekly shopping sprees have become a hassling monthly activity. People simply don't have that much time anymore.
Fortunately, with the help of social networking sites, e-commerce has managed to leap on top. From clothes, gadgetries, to furniture pieces - all can be bought just with a few mouse clicks. People are simply drawn into the concept of shopping within the comforts of their home.
2. Translation Services
The demand for translation services is continuously growing over time as well. This can be accounted to the fact that a lot of countries are now employing a global approach for more opportunities. Businesses, most specifically, would want to expand in other countries, so they will need translators for their marketing materials or websites.
Relatively, ESL (English as a Second Language) lessons are being sought out by non-English speaking individuals. These are most popular among students who are looking into studying in other countries.
3. Blogging and SEO Writing
Bloggers typically make money by posting updates or writing on their websites or blogs. Topics may be as wide-range as product reviews, service advertisements and how-to's. Revenues will come through advertisements put on the site. Other bloggers make money through affiliate banners.
There also rests a lot of opportunities in SEO writing. With the growing popularity of the internet, businesses are starting to invest in online advertising, demanding short, content-light and keyword-rich articles that rank them high in search engines. SEO writing is perfect for beginning writers since speed, and not the skill, is considered of more essence.
4. Online Travel Agencies
Online travel agencies work differently than the traditional agencies operating in office settings. While traditional agencies rely on agents for great deals matching client requirements, online agencies count on automated searches for possible deals.
There are two advantages that set online agencies apart from the traditional types. One is efficiency. Clients are now able to book for trips without leaving their homes. The other is immediate access. Travelers need not wait too long for searches or hotel confirmations anymore. Booking trips has now been made easier, needing just several mouse clicks.
5. IT Security Consulting
The field of IT Security gets the most attention when huge companies such as The New York Times become victims of hacking. It's not easy becoming an IT security consultant since expert skills is required, but the work is guaranteed to be rewarding.
More opportunities are also at bay with the increased popularity of web businesses and need for consumer protection over the internet. The industry is currently growing by a margin of 10% annually and is projected to grow 8.8% in sales throughout 2013.
6. Social Network Game Development
A lot of young teens now spend most of their time on social media. With the rapid adaptation of devices like tablets and smartphones, it is expected that more will be increasing the hours they spend on the internet. Playing games sits on top of what these young consumers do on the internet.
Games such as the Simms, Farmville, Pet Society and Cityville are among the few most popular social media games. They are part of what brought the industry to an astonishing annual growth of 184% for the past 5 years. At this year's end, sales are projected to hit $6 billion, growing another 32%.
Whichever business opportunity you take on, it is not unlikely for you to get roped into something that leaves minimum profit but maximum hassle. Reality is, there are numerous shady characters lurking on the internet who don't want to help you succeed, but just want their money. So always be careful with the types of ventures you decide to take.
Businesses go to so much trouble when there is one sure-fire, simple, very inexpensive way to attract new clients to a business: Teach a free class. That is what article marketing is like. Your articles are just like free classes. You teach your target readers something helpful in your article. Your resource box then says, "If you enjoyed this article you can visit my website and apply what you have learned."
Being an entrepreneur and earning multiple streams of income is a dream that many have, but in reality it does take some initial hard work to achieve this. Earning multiple streams of income is the wave of the future, and here are some tips and advice for you when you are looking for ways in which to do this for yourself.
Starting a home based business to earn income online takes a significant amount of time and energy upfront to get things going. Not seeing results immediately can be discouraging and cause people to give up too early. In this article, we look at the process of starting a home based business and working through the frustrations to be there when the sales come flowing in.
Cyber marketing has now become an indispensable segment of e-commerce as well as the internet and World Wide Web related topics. Cyber marketing simply refers to a technique of attracting potential customers by advertising your products or services through such means as websites, emails, and banners.
When you look at an article, you may say, "That article looks great, but I have no idea how I would produce something that good." In this article I am going to help you break your article creation process down into "blocks"--smaller bits of information that when assembled together will form a top quality article submission.
Source: http://www.content4reprint.com/internet-marketing/6-most-in-demand-home-based-online-businesses.htm
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iPhone versus Android is a battle for the ages, and it'll never really be settled. But now you can see which camp is claiming what territory with this map the that shows the geographic use of both devices across the entire world. Oh and also there's Blackberry.
Now to be fair, this isn't a comprehensive map that indexes what kind of phone everybody uses for everything. Instead, Tom MacWright and data artist Eric Fischer used geotagged data from people posting to Twitter and threw it into MapBox for a visualization. The result is that you'll only see Twitter users, but it's still a pretty representative (and huge) sample. After de-duplicating some 2.8 billion overlapping data-points, they still had 280 million unique locations to work from.
You can take an in-depth tour on your own, but at a glance you'll notice that iPhone users generally have urban centers on lock?in the United States anyway. Meanwhile, Androids are more common in the suburbs. And every so often, you'll spot a pocket of wild Blackberries, like in midtown Manhattan, or Washington DC.
Outside the United States things get really interesting. For instance, in Spain there's hardly an iPhone at all, and Jakarta is Blackberry heaven. So poke around a little bit and see if there's any hidden curiosities you can find. Are you living in enemy territory? Better find out for sure. [MapBox via The Atlantic Cities]
Source: http://gizmodo.com/iphone-versus-android-mapped-across-the-entire-world-518546954
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Tiger Woods’ Former Mistress Rachel Uchitel & Matt Hahn Divorcing
Rachel Uchitel, the woman that was at the center of the Tiger Woods cheating scandal, has split from her husband of less than two years. Matt Hahn has cited “cruel and inhumane treatment” in the divorce papers he filed yesterday. Hahn also wants custody of their 1-year-old daughter along with child support and spousal support. ...
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Source: http://stupidcelebrities.net/2013/06/tiger-woods-former-mistress-rachel-uchitel-matt-hahn-divorcing/
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Archos' top of the line 10-inch tablet, the Titanium 97b, will be available in the U.K. starting today exclusively at Dixons for the great price of just £199.99. Announced back in January and launched in the U.S. in March, the Titanium 97b is your standard large form factor tablet with a 9.7-inch 2048x1536 IPS display, 1.6GHz dual-core (an unnamed A9) processor, 1GB of RAM, 8GB of storage with an SDXC expansion slot and USB OTG capabilities. The Titanium 97b has a sleek aluminum build, is just 10mm thick and weighs 650g.
On the software side Archos ships a pretty much unchanged build -- save for a few Archos media apps -- of Android 4.1 Jelly Bean, with access to the Play Store and Google apps. They aren't the highest specs in the world, but at £199.99 for a 10-inch tablet it's hard to find a better deal out there. The Titanium 97b will be available exclusively at Dixons stores in the U.K. or online (from Currys) at the source link below.
More: Currys
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Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/androidcentral/~3/WQM7QUycNzE/story01.htm
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In this Monday, May 7, 2012 photo, Kanye West arrives at the Metropolitan Museum of Art Costume Institute gala benefit, celebrating Elsa Schiaparelli and Miuccia Prada, in New York. West closed the three-day Governors Ball on New York?s Randall?s Island with a set that featured his familiar hits as well as a batch of new, darker tracks from his upcoming album. West kicked off his set Sunday night, June 9, 2013, with the song ?Black Skinhead,? with flashing visuals in the background, including the words ?not for sale.? He later performed ?New Slaves.? Both tracks will appear on ?Yeezus,? his sixth album out June 18. (AP Photo/Evan Agostini)
In this Monday, May 7, 2012 photo, Kanye West arrives at the Metropolitan Museum of Art Costume Institute gala benefit, celebrating Elsa Schiaparelli and Miuccia Prada, in New York. West closed the three-day Governors Ball on New York?s Randall?s Island with a set that featured his familiar hits as well as a batch of new, darker tracks from his upcoming album. West kicked off his set Sunday night, June 9, 2013, with the song ?Black Skinhead,? with flashing visuals in the background, including the words ?not for sale.? He later performed ?New Slaves.? Both tracks will appear on ?Yeezus,? his sixth album out June 18. (AP Photo/Evan Agostini)
NEW YORK (AP) ? Kanye West closed the three-day Governors Ball on Randall Island with a set that featured his familiar hits as well as a batch of new, darker tracks from his upcoming album.
West kicked off his set Sunday night with the song "Black Skinhead," with flashing visuals in the background, including the words "not for sale." He later performed "New Slaves" and the dark vibe of his songs was matched by his stage lighting and style.
Both tracks will appear on "Yeezus," his sixth album, which comes out June 18.
The crowd responded nicely to some of those songs, but it was lukewarm compared with West's performances of his well-known hits. There was a loud roar from the thousands in the crowd ? bunched up tightly and standing on the muddy ground ? when the beat of "Mercy" dropped. He followed that with "Cold" and earned more cheers.
West's set also included "Stronger," ''Good Life," ''Jesus Walks" and "All Falls Down." The rapper ? who turned 36 on Saturday ? also sprinkled new tracks in between those jams.
Guns N' Roses headlined the Governors Ball on Saturday. Kings of Leon was to headline Friday but pushed their performance to Saturday because of the bad weather.
The Lumineers, the xx, Gary Clark Jr. and the Avett Brothers also performed Sunday.
___
Online:
http://governorsballmusicfestival.com/
___
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DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) ? A massive search was underway Tuesday for a 15-year-old girl abducted near an Iowa bus stop, after authorities said a man who is suspected of taking her and another girl was found dead.
Dozens of federal, state and local law enforcement are searching by air, land and water for Kathlynn Shepard. She and a 12-year-old girl were taken near a Dayton bus stop Monday afternoon after accepting a ride from a stranger. The younger girl was able to escape.
The Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation said at a Tuesday news conference that the body of 42-year-old Michael Klunder was found Monday night with a red Toyota Tundra pickup at a rural property northeast of Dayton, about 60 miles north of Des Moines. His cause of death is under investigation.
Klunder is listed on the state's sex offender registry, and he spent several years in prison on kidnapping charges, prison records show. He was released from a work release program in February 2011.
Kathlynn's name and photo are being released in an effort to find the teenager alive, said Jessica Lown with the Iowa Department of Public Safety.
"They're continuing to search for the girl under the assumption that she is still alive because right at this point in time we don't have information indicating otherwise," Lown said. "That's the way these things work for all missing children and missing person cases. We search until we find them."
Klunder was suspected of abducting the girls on Monday. The 12-year-old girl, who has not been identified, told investigators she and Kathlynn had accepted a ride from a stranger who took them to an agricultural facility. She was able to escape and run to a nearby rural residence for help, DCI Director Chari Paulson said during the news conference.
The girl was taken to a Fort Dodge hospital and released. Authorities haven't said what relationship the girls have to one another.
Authorities said the abduction spanned several hours, with Klunder's body being discovered nearly four hours after the girls were taken.
Poor weather and darkness delayed an extensive search Monday night for Kathlynn that covers up to 100 square miles of mostly rural lands, according to Lown.
With the onset of daylight, authorities scoured fields and wooded areas with the help of K-9s and volunteers. Airplanes equipped with heat-activation technology have been deployed.
"The response by volunteers has been outstanding," Paulson said.
The abduction comes less than a year after the high-profile disappearance of two cousins in Evansdale, about 90 miles east of Dayton. Lyric Cook, 10, and 9-year-old Elizabeth Collins disappeared while riding their bikes last July. Hunters found their bodies in a remote, wooded area in December.
Kathlynn is described as being 5-feet-6-inches and 160 pounds. She has blond hair, blue eyes and braces. She was last seen wearing jeans, a gray hooded sweatshirt and a Minnesota Vikings baseball cap.
Klunder's convictions on kidnapping and assault charges include the 1991 abduction and assault of a Rudd woman and the kidnapping of two toddlers from an apartment complex in Charles City, according to the Mason City Globe Gazette. The girls, both 3, were found alive inside a dumpster.
Authorities are asking the public for information about any interactions with Klunder, as well of any sighting of his pickup between 3 p.m. and 8 p.m. Monday.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/massive-search-underway-abducted-teen-iowa-210027444.html
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Public release date: 21-May-2013
Share ] Contact: Robert Lanfear
rob.lanfear@anu.edu.au
National Evolutionary Synthesis Center (NESCent)
Durham, NC Biologists have known for a long time that some creatures evolve more quickly than others. Exactly why isn't well understood, particularly for plants. But it may be that height plays a role, says Robert Lanfear of Australian National University and the U. S. National Evolutionary Synthesis Center.
In a study to be published 21 May in the journal Nature Communications, Lanfear and colleagues report that shorter plants have faster-changing genomes.
Drawing from a database of global patterns in plant height for more than 20,000 species, the researchers estimated average maximum height for nearly 140 plant families worldwide ranging from a group of tropical plants called the Burmanniaceae, whose average height tops out at two inches (5 cm), to a family called the Tetramelaceae, which can tower above 140 feet (45 m).
For each family, the researchers also estimated how much their DNA sequences the strings of As, Cs, Ts and Gs that make up their genetic code changed over time.
When they plotted evolutionary rates against plant height, the researchers were surprised to find that shorter plants evolved as much as five times faster than taller ones.
The pattern held up for both the nuclear and the chloroplast genomes, even after the researchers accounted for factors shown in previous studies to correlate with evolutionary speed such as species richness, latitude, temperature, and levels of UV radiation. The results also held up when the researchers looked just within trees and shrubs, which are typically tall, or just herbs, which tend to be short.
What puts short plants in the evolutionary fast lane? The researchers suspect the difference may be driven by genetic changes that accumulate in the actively-dividing cells in the tip of the plant shoot as it grows. Cells don't copy their DNA perfectly each time they divide. In animals, most DNA copy mistakes that occur in the cells of the animal's body can't be inherited they're evolutionary dead ends. But this isn't the case for plants, where genetic changes in any part of the plant could potentially get passed on if those cells eventually form flowers or other reproductive organs
"Genetic changes that occur during cell division in plant shoots could potentially get passed on to future generations," Lanfear explained.
Importantly, growth slows as plants increase in size, he added. This means that over the long term, the rate of cell division and genome copying in taller plants eventually slows down, and changes in DNA the raw material for evolution accumulates less quickly.
"Our study also answers a question that was posed [in a paper] in Nature in 1986:" the researchers write. "Do plants evolve differently? The answer is 'yes.'"
###
The other authors of this study were Simon Ho of the University of Sydney, T. Jonathan Davies of McGill University, Angela Moles of the University of New South Wales, Lonnie Aarssen of Queen's University, Nathan Swenson of Michigan State University, Laura Warman of the USDA Forest Service, Amy Zanne of George Washington University and Andrew Allen of Macquarie University in Australia.
CITATION: Lanfear, R., et al. (2013). "Taller plants have lower rates of molecular evolution: the rate of mitosis hypothesis." Nature Communications.
All data, code and scripts used in this study are available in the Dryad Digital Repository at http://dx.doi.org/dryad.43mg3
The National Evolutionary Synthesis Center (NESCent) is a nonprofit science center dedicated to cross-disciplinary research in evolution. Funded by the National Science Foundation, NESCent is jointly operated by Duke University, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and North Carolina State University. For more information about research and training opportunities at NESCent, visit http://www.nescent.org.
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AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Public release date: 21-May-2013 Share ] Contact: Robert Lanfear
rob.lanfear@anu.edu.au
National Evolutionary Synthesis Center (NESCent)
Durham, NC Biologists have known for a long time that some creatures evolve more quickly than others. Exactly why isn't well understood, particularly for plants. But it may be that height plays a role, says Robert Lanfear of Australian National University and the U. S. National Evolutionary Synthesis Center.
In a study to be published 21 May in the journal Nature Communications, Lanfear and colleagues report that shorter plants have faster-changing genomes.
Drawing from a database of global patterns in plant height for more than 20,000 species, the researchers estimated average maximum height for nearly 140 plant families worldwide ranging from a group of tropical plants called the Burmanniaceae, whose average height tops out at two inches (5 cm), to a family called the Tetramelaceae, which can tower above 140 feet (45 m).
For each family, the researchers also estimated how much their DNA sequences the strings of As, Cs, Ts and Gs that make up their genetic code changed over time.
When they plotted evolutionary rates against plant height, the researchers were surprised to find that shorter plants evolved as much as five times faster than taller ones.
The pattern held up for both the nuclear and the chloroplast genomes, even after the researchers accounted for factors shown in previous studies to correlate with evolutionary speed such as species richness, latitude, temperature, and levels of UV radiation. The results also held up when the researchers looked just within trees and shrubs, which are typically tall, or just herbs, which tend to be short.
What puts short plants in the evolutionary fast lane? The researchers suspect the difference may be driven by genetic changes that accumulate in the actively-dividing cells in the tip of the plant shoot as it grows. Cells don't copy their DNA perfectly each time they divide. In animals, most DNA copy mistakes that occur in the cells of the animal's body can't be inherited they're evolutionary dead ends. But this isn't the case for plants, where genetic changes in any part of the plant could potentially get passed on if those cells eventually form flowers or other reproductive organs
"Genetic changes that occur during cell division in plant shoots could potentially get passed on to future generations," Lanfear explained.
Importantly, growth slows as plants increase in size, he added. This means that over the long term, the rate of cell division and genome copying in taller plants eventually slows down, and changes in DNA the raw material for evolution accumulates less quickly.
"Our study also answers a question that was posed [in a paper] in Nature in 1986:" the researchers write. "Do plants evolve differently? The answer is 'yes.'"
###
The other authors of this study were Simon Ho of the University of Sydney, T. Jonathan Davies of McGill University, Angela Moles of the University of New South Wales, Lonnie Aarssen of Queen's University, Nathan Swenson of Michigan State University, Laura Warman of the USDA Forest Service, Amy Zanne of George Washington University and Andrew Allen of Macquarie University in Australia.
CITATION: Lanfear, R., et al. (2013). "Taller plants have lower rates of molecular evolution: the rate of mitosis hypothesis." Nature Communications.
All data, code and scripts used in this study are available in the Dryad Digital Repository at http://dx.doi.org/dryad.43mg3
The National Evolutionary Synthesis Center (NESCent) is a nonprofit science center dedicated to cross-disciplinary research in evolution. Funded by the National Science Foundation, NESCent is jointly operated by Duke University, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and North Carolina State University. For more information about research and training opportunities at NESCent, visit http://www.nescent.org.
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AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Source: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2013-05/nesc-sbs051513.php
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Source: http://the-gadgeteer.com/2013/05/20/the-quickindicator-watch-has-the-worlds-quickest-minute-hand/
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TomTom is looking to beef up its location based services portal by joining forces with TrafficLand to bring real time traffic video to its developers. TomTom's LBS will now incorporate TrafficLand's network of over 13,000 roadside webcams, enabling developers to integrate live footage into their location-enabled apps via the Traffic Camera API. TrafficLand's real-time video will join the other cloud-based location services TomTom provides to devs, like map content, routing and geocoding. For right now, TrafficLand covers only the US, UK and Canada, and it's not clear if the company plans to expand beyond those three countries anytime soon. For more information, you can take a gander at TomTom's full press release, embedded after the break.
Filed under: GPS
Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/0KtG9Lz3bjU/
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One of the basic principles of nanotechnology is that when you make things extremely small?one nanometer is about five atoms wide, 100,000 times smaller than the diameter of a human hair?they are going to become more perfect.
"Perfect in the sense that their arrangement of atoms in the real world will become more like an idealized model," says University of Vermont engineer Frederic Sansoz, "with smaller crystals?in for example, gold or copper?it's easier to have fewer defects in them."
And eliminating the defects at the interface separating two crystals, or grains, has been shown by nanotechnology experts to be a powerful strategy for making materials stronger, more easily molded, and less electrically resistant?or a host of other qualities sought by designers and manufacturers.
Since 2004, when a seminal paper came out in Science, materials scientists have been excited about one special of arrangement of atoms in metals and other materials called a "coherent twin boundary" or CTB.
Based on theory and experiment, these coherent twin boundaries are often described as "perfect," appearing like a perfectly flat, one-atom-thick plane in computer models and electron microscope images.
Over the last decade, a body of literature has shown these coherent twin boundaries?found at the nanoscale within the crystalline structure of common metals like gold, silver and copper?are highly effective at making materials much stronger while maintaining their ability to undergo permanent change in shape without breaking and still allowing easy transmission of electrons?an important fact for computer manufacturing and other electronics applications.
But new research now shows that coherent twin boundaries are not so perfect after all.
A team of scientists, including Sansoz, a professor in UVM's College of Engineering and Mathematical Sciences, and colleagues from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and elsewhere, write in the May 19 edition of Nature Materials that coherent twin boundaries found in copper "are inherently defective."
With a high-resolution electron microscope, using a more powerful technique than has ever been used to examine these boundaries, they found tiny kink-like steps and curvatures in what had previously been observed as perfect.
Even more surprising, these kinks and other defects appear to be the cause of the coherent twin boundary's strength and other desirable qualities.
"Everything we have learned on these materials in the past 10 years will have to be revisited with this new information," Sansoz says
The experiment, led by Morris Wang at the Lawrence Livermore Lab, applied a newly developed mapping technique to study the crystal orientation of CTBs in so-called nanotwinned copper and "boom?it revealed these defects," says Sansoz.
This real-world discovery conformed to earlier intriguing theoretical findings that Sansoz had been making with "atomistic simulations" on a computer. The lab results sent Sansoz back to his computer models where he introduced the newly discovered "kink" defects into his calculations. Using UVM's Vermont Advanced Computing Center, he theoretically confirmed that the kink defects observed by the Livermore team lead to "rather rich deformation processes at the atomic scale," he says, that do not exist with perfect twin boundaries.
With the computer model, "we found a series of completely new mechanisms," he says, for explaining why coherent twin boundaries simultaneously add strength and yet also allow stretching (what scientists call "tensile ductility")? properties that are usually mutually exclusive in conventional materials.
"We had no idea such defects existed," says Sansoz. "So much for the perfect twin boundary. We now call them defective twin boundaries."
For several decades, scientists have looked for ways to shrink the size of individual crystalline grains within metals and other materials. Like a series of dykes or walls within the larger structure, the boundaries between grains can slow internal slip and help resist failure. Generally, the more of these boundaries?the stronger the material.
Originally, scientists believed that coherent twin boundaries in materials were much more reliable and stable than conventional grain boundaries, which are incoherently full of defects. But the new research shows they could both contain similar types of defects despite very different boundary energies.
"Understanding these defective structures is the first step to take full use of these CTBs for strengthening and maintaining the ductility and electrical conductivity of many materials," Morris Wang said. "To understand the behavior and mechanisms of these defects will help our engineering design of these materials for high-strength applications."
For Sansoz, this discovery underlines a deep principle, "There are all manner of defects in nature," he says, "with nanotech, you are trying to control the way they are formed and dispersed in matter, and to understand their impact on properties. The point of this paper is that some defects make a material stronger."
###
University of Vermont: http://www.uvm.edu
Thanks to University of Vermont for this article.
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Source: http://www.labspaces.net/128310/Kinks_and_curves_at_the_nanoscale
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After the stir several weeks ago, buzz surrounding Defense Distributed's 3D-printed gun has begun to (somewhat) die down. This is probably due in part to Kim Dotcom's removal
While Defense Distributed's heavy-handidly named Liberator was good for about one (highly expensive) shot before becoming effectively useless, its successor only costs about $25, can be printed on a consumer-grade printer, and is good for, as the video shows, at least nine rounds?with the potential for many more.
Designed by a Wisconsin engineer who identifies himself anonymously as "Joe" and his creation troublingly as the "Lulz Liberator," the gun is made out of generic Polylac PA-747 ABS, otherwise known as the type of plastic most commonly used in consumer-grade 3D printers. According to Joe, this cheaper material is actually stronger than the ABS plastic used in the much more expensive, Stratasys pro printer that Defense Distributed used. Apparently attempts to use the Stratasys resulted in the gun's barrel exploding, something that is, generally, not ideal.
Contributing to its sturdier status, the Lulz Liberator also holds a bit more metal hardware than its predecessor: traditional hardware store screws replaced the flimsy plastic printed pins. Then, to make everything good and (arguably) legal, the same piece of non-functional steel placed in the Liberator exists in the Lulz variety, allowing it to set off metal detectors and comply with the Undetectable Firearms Act.
Of course, like you'd expect with any plastic gun, it still doesn't work perfectly. Some of the screws as well as the firing pin had to be replaced over the course of the video, and after every shot, while the ammo cartridge didn't explode, it did expand enough to require some hammer pounding before it was ready to go again. But even with its flaws, the message is clear: much more threatening printed guns are possible?and they have the potential to be dirt cheap.
Unlike Defense Distributed's big coming out, though, Joe still hasn't put the plans for his Lulz Liberator online. And his hesitance thus far isn't surprising given the fact that the State Department forced Defense Distributed to remove their plans
Joe doesn't claim anarchist roots like Cody Wilson, Defense Distributed's founder. But he does believe him and Wilson are after the same ultimate goal. According to Joe, "I agree with Cody's idea that this is a perfect fusion of the first and second amendments."
The word "perfect," apparently, being a highly subjective term. [Forbes]
Source: http://gizmodo.com/the-newest-3d-printed-gun-is-far-more-dangerous-for-muc-508921619
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May 20, 2013 ? The University of Chicago has launched the first secure cloud-based computing system that enables researchers to access and analyze human genomic cancer information without the costly and cumbersome infrastructure normally needed to download and store massive amounts of data.
The Bionimbus Protected Data Cloud, as it is called, enables researchers who are authorized by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to access and analyze data in The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) without having to set up secure, compliant computing environments capable of managing and analyzing terabytes of data, download the data -- which can take weeks -- and then install the appropriate tools needed to perform the desired analyses.
Using technology that was developed in part by the Open Science Data Cloud, a National Science Foundation-supported project that is developing cloud infrastructure for large scientific datasets, the Bionimbus Protected Data Cloud provides researchers with a more cost- and time-effective mechanism to extract knowledge from massive amounts of data. Drawing insights from big data is imperative for addressing some of today's most vexing environmental, health and safety challenges.
"The open source technology underlying the Open Science Data Cloud enables researchers to manage and analyze the large data sets that are essential to tackling some of today's greatest challenges: from environmental monitoring to cancer genomics," said Robert L. Grossman, the director of the Open Science Data Cloud Project and a professor at the University of Chicago.
Today, as the only NIH-approved cloud-based system for TCGA data, the Bionimbus Protected Data Cloud allows researchers to focus on the analysis of large-scale cancer genome sequencing, which experts believe can unlock paths to early detection, appropriate treatment and prevention of cancer.
"We are excited that the Bionimbus Protected Data Cloud is now used for cancer genomics data so that researchers can more easily work with large datasets to understand genomic variations that seem to be one of the keys to the precise diagnosis and treatment of cancer," continued Grossman.
"With funding provided by NSF's Partnerships for International Research and Education [PIRE] program, NSF has sought to narrow the gap between the capability of modern scientific instruments to produce data and the ability of researchers to access, manage, analyze and share those data in a reliable and timely manner," said NSF Program Director Harold Stolberg.
"By embracing cloud computing as a global issue, this PIRE project brings together the expertise of many researchers, not only in the United States, but worldwide. Its success in helping researchers to access and analyze important human genomic cancer information is an exciting indicator of future developments with these technologies," he said.
Megan McNerney, an instructor of pathology at the University of Chicago, used Bionimbus to analyze data that led to her discovery that gene CUX1, which acts as a tumor suppressor, is frequently inactivated in acute myeloid leukemia.
"Bionimbus was critical for my work, as it was used for all aspects of the project, including secure storage of protected data, quality control of next-generation sequencing results, alignments, expression analysis, and algorithm development," she said. "The strength of Bionimbus, however, is the support that is provided for end users, which enabled both expert and non-expert team members to use the cloud."
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RIYADH, Saudi Arabia (AP) ? A Saudi newspaper says a vegetable seller who set himself on fire in Riyadh after police confiscated his goods for standing in an unauthorized area has died.
The website for newspaper Sada reported that the man, identified only by the family name of Sureihi, died in hospital late on Friday.
The self-immolation emulated that of a street vendor in Tunisia, whose 2011 death sparked the Arab Spring uprisings.
Family members were seen outside the hospital Saturday demanding answers about why police confiscated the man's goods. Witnesses say the family wants to know what led him to douse himself in gasoline and set himself ablaze on Thursday.
Saudi officials refused to comment. They did not disclose the man's name or age.
Despite Saudi Arabia's oil wealth, many of its people live in poor conditions. Protests in the conservative kingdom are rare.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/saudi-vegetable-seller-dies-self-immolation-115226090.html
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In the opening scene of the movie ?Robot & Frank,? which takes place in the near future, Frank, an elderly man who lives alone, is arguing with his son about going to a medical center for Alzheimer?s treatment when the son interrupts him. ?I brought you something,? he says to Frank. Then the son pulls a large, white humanoid robot from the trunk of his car.
Frank watches in disbelief. ?You have got to be kidding me,? he says as a robot helper, called the VGC-60L, stands in front of him. ?I?m not this pathetic!?
But as Frank soon learns, he doesn?t have much of a choice. His new robot helper is there to cook, clean, garden and keep him company. His son, mired in family and work life, is too busy to care for his ailing father.
Just like Frank, as the baby boomer generation grows old and if the number of elderly care workers fails to grow with it, many people might end up being cared for by robots. According to the Health and Human Services Department, there will be 72.1 million Americans over the age of 65 by 2030, which is nearly double the number today. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the country will need 70 percent more home aide jobs by 2020, long before that bubble of retirees. But filling those jobs is proving to be difficult because the salaries are low. In many states, in-home aides make an average of $20,820 annually.
?There are two trends that are going in opposite directions. One is the increasing number of elderly people, and the other is the decline in the number of people to take care of them,? said Jim Osborn, a roboticist and executive director of the Robotics Institute?s Quality of Life Technology Center at Carnegie Mellon University. ?Part of the view we?ve already espoused is that robots will start to fill in those gaps.?
Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology have developed Cody, a robotic nurse the university says is ?gentle enough to bathe elderly patients.? There is also HERB, which is short for Home Exploring Robot Butler. Made by researchers at Carnegie Mellon, it is designed to fetch household objects like cups and can even clean a kitchen. Hector, a robot that is being developed by the University of Reading in England, can remind patients to take their medicine, keep track of their eyeglasses and assist in the event of a fall.
The technology is nearly there. But some researchers worry that we are not asking a fundamental question: Should we entrust the care of people in their 70s and older to artificial assistants rather than doing it ourselves?
Sherry Turkle, a professor of science, technology and society at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and author of the book ?Alone Together: Why We Expect More From Technology and Less From Each Other,? did a series of studies with Paro, a therapeutic robot that looks like a baby harp seal and is meant to have a calming effect on patients with dementia, Alzheimer?s and in health care facilities. The professor said she was troubled when she saw a 76-year-old woman share stories about her life with the robot.
?I felt like this isn?t amazing; this is sad. We have been reduced to spectators of a conversation that has no meaning,? she said. ?Giving old people robots to talk to is a dystopian view that is being classified as utopian.? Professor Turkle said robots did not have a capacity to listen or understand something personal, and tricking patients to think they can is unethical.
That?s the catch. Leaving the questions of ethics aside for a moment, building robots is not simply about creating smart machines; it is about making something that is not human still appear, somehow, trustworthy.
A recent Georgia Tech study found that older people were intrigued by the idea of robotic assistants in the home, but a robot?s appearance played a large role in what they will trust the machines to do. Older people want robots that look human for tasks that involve intelligence, like recommending which medicine they need to take. But they want a more sterile-looking machine for manual labor tasks, like cleaning and cooking, so they do not feel guilty bossing it about.
Wendy A. Rogers, a professor at Georgia Tech and director of the university?s Human Factors and Aging Laboratory, said concerns about older people developing relationships with their in-home helper robots were no different than the bond we develop with other inanimate objects.
Dr. Rogers has been experimenting with a large robot called the PR2, made by Willow Garage, a robotics company in Palo Alto, Calif., which can fetch and administer medicine, a seemingly simple act that demands a great deal of trust between man and machine.
?We are social beings, and we do develop social types of relationships with lots of things,? she said. ?Think about the GPS in your car, you talk to it and it talks to you.? Dr. Rogers noted that people developed connections with their Roomba, the vacuum robot, by giving the machines names and buying costumes for them. ?This isn?t a bad thing, it?s just what we do,? she said.
In fact, Mr. Osborn?s laboratory at Carnegie Mellon has designed a robot to work with therapists and people with autism. The machine can develop a personality and blinks and giggles as people interact with it. ?Those we tested it with love it and hugged it,? he said. ?You begin to think of it as something that is more than a machine with a computer.?
In the movie ?Robot & Frank,? technologists have raced ahead of society?s collective conscience with their robot caregivers. But the movie still leaves its audience with a question: Will it one day be morally acceptable to unload your parents? care to a machine?
As the actor Frank Langella, who plays Frank in the movie, told NPR last year: ?Every one of us is going to go through aging and all sorts of processes, many people suffering from dementia,? he said. ?And if you put a machine in there to help, the notion of making it about love and buddy-ness and warmth is kind of scary in a way, because that?s what you should be doing with other human beings.?
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2 hours ago
Ben Affleck joined the five-timers club as host, but departing castmember Bill Hader stole the show on "Saturday Night Live?s" season 38 finale.
Hader gave a cinematic sendoff to Stefon, that perennially irritating scenester kid. During Weekend Update, he faced his usual dressing down from Seth Meyers. Stefon had finally had enough, and announced he?d met someone else and was leaving Meyers. Meyers -- who was joined at the Update desk by former co-anchor Amy Poehler -- ran after Stefon and found him in a church. What came next was a fantastic (and surprisingly emotional) Graduate-themed segment featuring surprise guest Anderson Cooper as Stefon?s fiancee.
VIDEO: "Saturday Night Live": Watch Bill Hader's finest sketches
In the show?s final sketch, Hader, Fred Armisen, Jason Sudeikis and Taran Killam played a British rock band saying goodbyes on the last night of a tour.
?It?s the last night here,? Armisen said.
?But we?re going to keep playing together,? Hader said.
The band began playing a song, and were eventually joined on stage by Armisen?s Portlandia costar Carrie Brownstein, Sonic Youth?s Kim Gordon, the Sex Pistols? Steve Jones, singer-songwriter Aimee Mann, and Dinosaur Jr.?s J Mascis.
Earlier in the week, a report emerged that Armisen and Sudeikis would be leaving the show, and while NBC has not commented on the report, it's worth nothing that Armisen played the leader of the band. The focus was actually more on Armisen than Hader. Based solely on the sketch, signs point to an Armisen exit in addition to Hader's.
But lest we forget the host, it's time to circle back to Affleck. During his opening monologue, the actor-director addressed his odd "Argo" Oscars speech, in which he thanked wife Jennifer Garner but went on to talk about how marriage takes a lot of work. On "SNL," Affleck brought Garner out to discuss what he really meant. What followed was a marital game of ping-pong, with Garner saying she would have described their marriage as ?a gift,? not work, and Affleck fumbling for a better explanation.
PHOTOS: From live TV to the big screen: 12 "SNL" sketches made into movies
Affleck finally found his footing:
"I want to tell you how I wish I had ended that speech: I couldn?t do any of the things I do without you, without your support. You?re my angel, my wife, my world.?
The moment was shattered when Garner pointed out that he was reading the speech off of a cue card.
"SNL" moved on to imagine what would happen if Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (Armisen) were to make a movie about Affleck directing "Argo." The result was spectacular. "Bengo F--- Yourself" saw Ahmadinejad wearing a Red Sox cap, doing a Boston accent and pitching his idea for a totally false CIA story. Affleck himself had a role in the movie as a sound technician.
?Why would I appear in this movie? Well, to be honest I?ve long been looking to appear in a movie worse than 'Gigli,'? Affleck said.
VIDEO: "SNL" recap: Zach Galifianakis plays "Game of Game of Thrones"
Affleck sported a mustache and a paunch to play a member of a family of emotionally repressed police officers attempting to toast the engagement of a young female relative. In a less-than-successful sketch, he portrayed a counselor at a camp designed to turn gay kids straight.
"SNL" was on a gay sketch kick, apparently, with a prerecorded segment advertising anti-anxiety medication for people feeling worried about attending perfect gay weddings over the summer. One man (Hader) feared that he was an inadequate dancer at gay weddings, where he said guests knew choreographed Beyonce dances. Another (Moynihan) never had clothes that were good enough, and a third noted that President Barack Obama had called to congratulate his gay friends at their wedding, while at his wedding, his grandmother had called Obama the N-word. Not quite as classy of an event.
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WASHINGTON (AP) ? The president and CEO of The Associated Press says the government's seizure of AP journalists' phone records was "unconstitutional" and already has had a chilling effect on newsgathering.
Gary Pruitt says the Justice Department's secret subpoena of reporters' phone records has made sources less willing to talk to AP journalists.
The Justice Department disclosed the seizure of two months of phone records in a letter the AP received May 10. The letter did not state a reason, but prosecutors had said they were conducting a leaks investigation into how the AP learned about an al-Qaida bomb plot in Yemen before it was made public last year. Pruitt said the AP story contradicted the government's claim at the time there was no terrorist plot.
Pruitt spoke on CBS' "Face the Nation."
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