FDA Approves First-Of-Its-Kind Kidney Disease Test That Can Identify The Cause Of MGN Through A Blood Sample

                               The FDA has approved a new test for a chronic kidney disease
                             . Photo courtesy of Shutterstock

The Food and Drug Administration on Thursday approved the first non-invasive test to determine the cause of a life-threatening kidney disease. The test will be used alongside other diagnosis tests to help ensure early diagnosis and to aid with early treatment of membranous glomerulonephritis (MGN).

MGN is a chronic kidney disease that can often lead to kidney failure and eventual need for a transplant. Around 85 percent of MGN cases are caused by a autoimmune response where the patient’s immune system mistakenly attacks their healthy kidneys. When this occurs, the condition is diagnosed as pMGN. Infection is another cause for MGN. The new test, called a EUROIMMUN Anti-PLA2R IFA blood test, would detect the presence of a certain pMGN-specific antibody in the patient’s body, according to a recent FDA press release. This would help doctors identify the cause of a patient’s MGN.

In clinical trials, the blood test was able to detect pMGN in 77 percent of the 275 blood samples. A false positive result only occurred in less than one percent of the non-diseased samples. The test was significantly successful in telling apart pMGN from sMGN in the majority of the patients. “Treatment of MGN depends on the underlying cause of the disease,” Alberto Gutierrez, director of the Office of In Vitro Diagnostics and Radiological Health in the Center for Devices and Radiological Health at the FDA, explained in the press release.

The EUROIMMUN Anti-PLA2R IFA blood test is only meant to help with the diagnosis of kidney disease. Additional laboratory tests and the patient’s medical history should be used alongside the EUROIMMUN Anti-PLA2R IFA blood test in order to make a completely accurate diagnosis.  A definite diagnosis of pMGN can only be made with a kidney biopsy.

The kidneys are two bean-shaped organs that filter blood and expel wastes and extra fluid in the form of urine. They play an important role in keeping the composition of the blood stable. Our kidneys prevent the build-up of waste in our bodies and keep our levels of electrolytes stable. They also produce hormones that regulate blood pressure, make red blood cells, and help keep bones strong. MGN causes damage to the glomeruli in the kidneys. The glomeruli help with filtration by letting fluid and waste pass through them but prevent the passage of blood cells and proteins. Instead, it sends these back into the bloodstream.

MGN is the most common cause of nephrotic syndrome in Caucasian adults. Nephrotic syndrome is a kidney disorder that causes the body to excrete too much protein in urine. The condition can lead to complications such as blood clots, kidney failure, and high blood pressure.

In many MGN cases, the individual will have kidney damage within 10 to 20 years and require a kidney transplant. According to the National Kidney Foundation, as of May 21 2014, there are 100,602 individuals in the U.S. awaiting a kidney transplant. Nearly 2,500 new patients are added to the waiting list each year. 

Source:  http://www.medicaldaily.com/fda-approves-first-its-kind-kidney-disease-test-can-identify-cause-mgn-through-blood-sample-285436

Weird Urine Color? Strange Urine Odor? 6 Medical Conditions That Can Be Detected In Your Pee

                        There are several medical conditions that give tell-tale signs through your urine.

                         Photo courtesy of  Shutterstock

How many times did you urinate today? Most of us can’t answer this question or know the number of times is probably too few. You may be surprised to learn, however, that urine has valuable information about your health. It’s worth a gander in the porcelain throne before we flush it away forever. Here are six conditions that can be detected in our urine:

You May Be Dehydrated

Healthy urine is light in color and can even become almost clear as the day progresses. Urine that is darker yellow, even sometimes an amber coloring, can be a sign that you are dehydrated. When a person doesn’t drink enough water, their urine becomes over-concentrated with waste. This is what gives it the darker coloring. Dehydration occurs when the body does not have enough water to function normally. This condition is usually easily reversed.

You May Have Breast Cancer

Pteridines are metabolites that all humans excrete in their urine. It has been observed that cancer patients will excrete more than what would be defined as "normal." Researchers at the Missouri University of Science and Technology have developed a new screening method to diagnosis and determine the severity of breast cancer, using this technique. Determining the amount of pteridines in an individual’s urine would help to detect cancer before a mammogram. In future trials, researchers hope to see how effective this test is at detecting other types of cancer.

You May Have Testicular Cancer

You may have heard the popular urban legend that a home pregnancy test can detect testicular cancer in men. According to CNN, there is some truth in this. Home pregnancy tests work by detecting the hormone Beta-HCG, which is produced in a woman’s placenta when she becomes pregnant. Interestingly enough, this hormone is also excreted by some tumors, including some, but not all, testicular cancers, CNN reported. However, a home pregnancy test should not be used as a self-diagnosis test for this deadly cancer. "Current evidence does not indicate that screening the general population of men with a urine test for HCG (or with urine or blood tests for any other tumor marker) can find testicular cancer early enough to reduce testicular cancer death rates," Dr. Ted Gansler explained in an email to CNN.

You May Have Diabetes

In individuals with diabetes, sugar builds up in the blood. The large amount of blood sugar is difficult for your kidneys to filter out. The excess sugar will then be excreted in urination. Mayo Clinic lists excessive thirst and increased urination as classic diabetes symptoms as a results of this. Excess sugar can cause your urine to have a sweet smell. Pregnancy also alters the way kidneys filter your blood. Healthy Living MSN advises that this sweet smell could also be an indication that you are with child. Regardless, this symptom should not be overlooked and you should seek medical attention to determine the cause of your sweet-smelling urine.

You May Have A Urinary Tract Infection

A urinary tract infection (UTI) is an infection that occurs somewhere in your urinary system, whether it be in your kidneys, ureters, bladder, or urethra. Symptoms of a UTI include a frequent urge to urinate, pain when urinating, cloudy, or even pink/red-colored urine, and strong-smelling urine. This is a fairly common condition and can be diagnosed with a simple urine sample. Antibiotics are the most common treatment, and usually symptoms will clear up in a few days.

You May Have A Blood Clot

Scientists are currently working on a product that is able to detect blood clots with a simple urine test. Similar to a home pregnancy test, this strip would test for biomarks inside the urine to indicate troubles inside the body, New Scientist reported. So far, in animal trials, the strips have proven effective in their urine diagnoses. Although still being worked on, the product’s developers hope that one day the tool with be able to supply life-saving tests to those who may not have had access to such before. "Diagnostics are really a great way to help a lot of people as quickly as possible," led researcher of the product told New Scientist. 

Source:  http://www.medicaldaily.com/weird-urine-color-strange-urine-odor-6-medical-conditions-can-be-detected-your-pee-285126

Quit Smoking And Reclaim Your Life: Risks Of Lung Cancer, Other Diseases Decline Significantly

                      When you quit smoking, your body immediately begins repairing itself. cancer.org

It’s hard to stop smoking. Understanding what immediately happens to your body when you stop smoking, however, will help you kick that habit to the curb for good.

The moment you put down your cigarette, your body is already going through positive changes. Just 20 minutes after you quit, your heart rate will return to normal. After two hours, both your heart rate and blood pressure levels will return to normal — and this is when the nicotine begins to fade out of your system.

Your withdrawal symptoms typically begin between two and 12 hours after your last cigarette, and this is, admittedly, the hard part. Nicotine withdrawal will usually reach its peak about three days after you quit, meaning you’ll experience headaches or nausea, as well as crabbiness. However, at this point the carbon monoxide levels in your blood will have dropped back to normal.

After that, if you can defeat the cravings, you have only good things to look forward to: one to nine weeks after quitting, your coughs, shortness of breath, or burning lungs during physical activity will begin to decrease. Years later, your risk of heart disease as well as your risk of various cancers (including lung cancer) will be half that of a smoker’s risk.

Fifteen years after stopping your smokes, your risk of heart disease is equivalent to that of non-smokers. And if you stop smoking before the age of 30, you’re very likely to live the life of someone who has never smoked before — unless you’ve smoked extensively and done irreparable damage to your lungs that can lead to chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD).

                                  Quitting smoking has an immediate impact on your body.

Putting down the cigarette affects each of your individual body parts, too.

Your Brain

Cigarettes release “feel-good” chemicals in your brain, having an effect on you that is similar to addictive drugs like heroin. The increased release of these opioids is what makes it so difficult to quit. “It appears that smokers have an altered opioid flow all the time, when compared with non-smokers, and that smoking a cigarette further alters that flow by 20 to 30 percent in regions of the brain important to emotions and craving,” David J. Scott, an author of the study examining smoking’s effect on the brain, said in a news release. Removing nicotine from the bloodflow — which typically occurs several days after you stop smoking — will ultimately alter the opioid flow in your brain, and gradually your brain’s chemicals will return to normal. Once you get past the hurdle of initial cravings and withdrawal, your brain won’t be reliant on those chemicals to feel good.

Your Lungs

Lungs have this amazing tendency to regenerate rather quickly. Right after you quit, your airways begin to see a decrease in inflammation, and the cilia — little hair-like things that line them — begin to work again after a smoke-induced paralysis. Cilia, which act as the lungs’ cleaning system, begin repairing themselves just days after you stop smoking and can return to their normal function in a few months’ time.

“Paradoxically, people find that they cough a little more right after they stop smoking, but that’s natural,” Laura Blue wrote in Time magazine. “That’s the lungs cleaning themselves out.”

Your Heart

Quitting smoking is a more effective way to lower your risk for heart disease than common medications like aspirin, beta-blockers, statins, and ACE inhibitors, according to the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute at the NIH. The moment you quit smoking, your heart and blood vessels begin to improve, lowering your chance for heart attacks.

Your Teeth

Nicotine stains your teeth, so when you stop smoking, you have a chance to improve their whiteness and strength. Your bad breath, stinking of smoke, will also repair itself into something a bit more neutral. Because tar coating your teeth creates a “film” of sorts, bacteria are more likely to settle there and cause tooth decay. Once you stop smoking, you may need to go through an oral hygiene routine to begin scraping away some of the tar on your teeth. Brush and floss twice a day, and drink plenty of water.

Your Skin

“Your skin reflects your lifestyle and what you eat and drink,” Dr. Andrew Carmichael told Net Doctor. Indeed, smoking has an effect on your skin — increasing your risk for eczema, and speeding up the aging process. The harmful toxins that enter your body through cigarettes include carbon monoxide, tar, formaldehyde, hydrogen cyanide, ammonia, mercury, lead, and cadmium — and these all restrict blood flow to the skin and even break down elasticity structures in the skin, like collagen and elastin. This is how smokers’ skin wrinkles so easily.

Though some of the skin damage is permanent, stopping smoking will immediately improve the blood flow and hydration to your skin, making it more full and youthful looking. Drinking plenty of water after smoking cessation will help to get your skin back on track. The processes that lead to extra wrinkles will slow down or stop once the toxins are out of your body. Likewise, if you have bags under your eyes from lack of sleep, removing the smoke from your routine could improve your sleep cycles, according to a Johns Hopkins study.

So don’t give up just yet. You have better looks and fuller health to look forward to.

Source:  http://www.medicaldaily.com/quit-smoking-and-reclaim-your-life-risks-lung-cancer-other-diseases-decline-significantly-278322

Google unveils driverless vehicle prototypes

The company plans to have 100 to 200 test vehicles that are fully autonomous with extra safety features, says co- founder Sergey Brin

The vehicles will initially have a top speed of 25 miles per hour and won’t have a steering wheel, accelerator pedal or brake pedal. Photo: AP

San Francisco: Google Inc has designed its own self-driving vehicles that transport passengers at the push of a button as it aims to spread the new automotive technology, co- founder Sergey Brin said.

Working with automotive partners, the company plans to have 100 to 200 test vehicles that are fully autonomous with extra safety features, Brin said during a conference on Tuesday hosted by technology blog Re/code in Rancho Palos Verdes, California. Google, which until now had added its technology to other vehicles, plans to start testing the prototypes with drivers this year, he said.

Brin’s announcement comes amid a push to encourage the adoption of driverless cars, which aim to make roads safer with the company’s hardware and software. The two-seat prototypes, which have safety items such as additional foam at the bumper and a plastic-like windshield, are part of the company’s research laboratory called Google X, which is led by Brin.

We took a look from the ground up as to what it would be like if we had self-driving cars in the world, Brin said. We’ve worked with partners in the Detroit area, Germany and California, he said without giving specifics.

The prototypes let users ask for a destination address and then drives them to it, Brin said.

The vehicles will initially have a top speed of 25 miles per hour and won’t have a steering wheel, accelerator pedal or brake pedal, the Mountain View, California-based company said in a blog post.

Fewer accidents

Work on autonomous vehicles has gathered speed as carmakers build smarter cars that will help reduce accidents, and make driving easier and safer.

In 2012, there were 1.3 million people killed in road traffic accidents, making it the ninth leading cause of death globally, according to World Health Organization (WHO) data. It is the leading cause of death for people aged 15 to 29.

Google has been testing driverless cars — including modified Prius and Lexus models from Toyota Motor Corp — mounted with cameras, radar sensors and lasers on US roads. General Motors Co, Volvo Cars NV, Nissan Motor Co. and others are jockeying against Google to roll out hands-free cars.

Over the next two decades, self-driving cars are going to get a bigger share of the market. Such vehicles will reach 11.8 million in 2035, according to Egil Juliussen, an analyst at IHS Automotive. And by 2050, he expects almost all cars to become self-driving. They are estimated to fetch premiums that will start at $7,000 to $10,000 in 2025, he said.

Brin said the Google vehicle is still being worked on at this point.

It’s still early he said. We’re still doing lots of development with the software, the hardware and the experience.

On another Google project, Glass, Brin said he hopes to have it commercially available by the end of the year, while adding he isn’t sure at this point. The devices bring digital content and features such as photo-taking and checking messages to computerized eyewear.

Source: http://www.livemint.com/Consumer/zEaA42rYdPfWqDr2lsdyZK/Google-unveils-driverless-vehicle-prototypes.html

10 ways your mobile phone is ruining your health

If you’re among those millions of smart phone users who keep fidgeting with it even when it’s not ringing or vibrating, you’re most likely to suffer from this new disease.

According to a report published in the medical journal The Lancet, a 34-year-old female patient in Spain was diagnosed with what they called ‘WhatsAppitis,’ bilateral wrist pain caused by excessive use of the messaging service WhatsApp. The doctor who diagnosed the disease reported that the woman used her mobile to text her family members and friends for a continuous stretch of 6 hours. The next day she got up with severe wrist pain.

This is not the first disease or harmful effect of using mobile phones that has been reported. We all are probably so addicted to our phones that we are unknowingly destroying our health. Here are some health risks of cell phones you should be aware of:

1. Cancer: As reported by the World Health Organisation (WHO), mobile phones emit radiofrequency (RF) fields a 1000 times greater than what is emitted from base stations. It’s obvious that this increased emission is likely to have some adverse effect on health of users. Although there is no clear evidence suggesting that exposure to RF fields increases the risk of cancer, but the International Agency for Research on Cancer has classified RF as a possible carcinogen in humans. 

2. Sleep disorders: Somehow night-time has always been favourite among regular chatting and gossiping freaks. But do you know that’s the main reason why you are sleep deprived? Several studies have concluded this. One of them is a cohort study by Sara Thomée et al[2]which found that high mobile phone use was associated with sleep disorders. Major contributing factors to interrupted sleep pattern are getting awakened in the middle of the night due to mobile rings and vibration and increased use of mobiles post-evening until midnight.

 3. Increased accident-risk: Whether you’re an iPhone, flip phone or a Blackberry user, the chances that you check your phone aggressively while travelling is undoubtedly higher. Be it while driving or while crossing the road, mobile phone can be a potential distraction. According to the WHO, we now have a lot of research showing an increased risk of traffic accidents with mobile usage (3-4 times greater). 

4. Heart problems: Radiation from cell phones is not only associated with cancer but also with chronic diseases like heart problems. A study published in European Journal of Oncology, radiations emitted by cordless phones, including mobiles, contribute to abnormalities in heart function. Results reported that radiation causes the red blood cells (RBCs) to seep hemoglobin and lead to heart complications. 

5. Infertility: Beware men! Your phone can even make you infertile. As of now there’s enough evidence to show that mobile phone radiation decreases sperm count in male rats. To identify whether the same holds true in humans, Wdowiak A and colleagues carried out a research which revealed that the group of men who used mobile phones had a decreased sperm cell count in their semen, leading to infertility.[4]

6. Hearing impairment: Today, every alternate person on the street has earphones plugged in. But that’s not the only reason why hearing loss is increasing in youth and adults. Your mobile radiation is an additional factor that’s making you deaf. Studies report that long-term exposure to electromagnetic (EM) field from cell phones contributes to reducing hearing function. A study by Oktay MF and Dasdag S showed that people who attended phone calls for approximately 2 hours every day were at a higher risk of impaired hearing compared to those who moderate users (10-20 mins) [5].

7. Eye problems: A lot of people use their mobiles to read e-books, do web surfing, etc apart from texting. When you do so, the glaring screen and small font size put a lot of strain on your eyes, especially if you’re reading in the dark. Mobile devices have a smaller screens so you tend squint or open up your eyes wide open and blink lesser number of times. This can cause dry eyes, irritation and reddening.

8. Skin allergies: Most mobile phones have a typical metallic sheen to make them look more attractive. Such phones contain potential skin allergens like nickel, chromium and cobalt which cause cell phone dermatitis. A study by Marcella Aquino and colleagues tested 72 cell phones for the presence of nickel and cobalt. According to the results, about 29.4 per cent of Blackberry models were tested positive for nickel, 90.5 per cent of flip phones were positive for nickel and about 52 per cent of flip phones had cobalt.

9. Infections: How many of you use your phones in the restroom? Here’s a good reason why you shouldn’t. Cell phones not only serve as a home for your valuable data but also carry millions of infectious organisms. A study found that mobile devices are highly contaminated with organisms from fecal origin. They are a niche for several germs likeE.coli (known to cause vomiting and diarrhea) and Staphyloccocus aureus (known to cause skin infections).

 10. Stress: The general desperate nature of people to be available 24/7 on their mobiles is responsible to their exponentially increasing stress levels.

So, the next time you use your mobile phone incessantly, think again!

Source: http://www.thehealthsite.com/diseases-conditions/10-ways-your-mobile-phone-is-ruining-your-health/ 

New technology to take cloud computing to next level

By PTI | 29 May, 2014, 06.13PM IST

LONDON: The ever-increasing demand for information and data storage will be the focus of a new centre for training researchers and seeking to develop innovative laser technology to take cloud computing to the next level. 

The University of Glasgow and Queen's University of Belfast, along with 12 industry partners, are creating a centre to train an initial 50 PhD students in integrative photonics and its applicability to data storage and information processing. 

The Centre for Doctoral Training (CDT) in Photonic Integration for Advanced Data Storage will receive funding worth 8.1 million pounds, including 3 million pounds from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council. The remaining funds will come from the two institutions, industry partners and the Department for Employment and Learning in Northern Ireland. 

The centre being created to address skill shortage in nanofabrication and photonic integration, will also focus on developing highly-manufacturable photonic integration technologies related to the magnetic storage of digital information. 

However, development of these technologies will prove relevant to a wide spectrum of end-users -- from telecommunications to biophotonics, in which optical technology is applied to living organisms and in health care. 

"The biggest growth sector is in what is called 'cloud' computing, where data is stored remotely," Professor John Marsh, Head of the School of Engineering at the University of Glasgow. 

"To address the capacity issues, new technology will be required - and that is likely to be heat-assisted magnetic recording (HAMR), which uses electromagnetic energy to locally heat the disk to ease the process of writing data on to it," he said. 

Therefore, the key challenge for researchers will be to make HAMR deployable as a low-cost manufacturable technology. "In 2010, the 'cloud' accounted for 25 per cent of storage use and by 2020 it will account for more than 60 per cent," he sai .. 

Source:http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/tech/software/new-technology-to-take-cloud-computing-to-next-level/articleshow/35731014.cms

In Britain, a battle to spin great science into gold

By Ben Hirschler and Kate Kelland

MANCHESTER/CAMBRIDGE England (Reuters) - It's mega strong, ultra light and super stretchy, and if things work out, a wonder material discovered in Britain could change many aspects of human existence - starting with peoples' sex lives.

Safer and sensually superior condoms may not have been the first thing on the minds of the Nobel-winning team at the University of Manchester that isolated graphene a decade ago, but they may be an early eye-catching use of the new one-atom-thick material.

Billed as potentially the most important discovery of this century, graphene - the thinnest material on earth and 200 times stronger than steel - is also exciting researchers around the world exploring its use in everything from electronics to nanotech drug delivery.

For British science, among the biggest questions is whether graphene's home nation can spin its breakthrough into real monetary gain, or whether - as a Thomson Reuters patent analysis suggests - global big hitters will nip in and grab the market.

The question could not be more timely, as a potential $100 billion bid by U.S. drugs giant Pfizer for its smaller British rival AstraZeneca threatens to upend another long-standing area of British scientific expertise - pharmaceuticals.

A new government-backed $100 million National Graphene Institute opens next year in Manchester aimed at putting Britain at the heart of a much hoped-for graphene revolution.

GRAPHENE CITY

Its business director James Baker has a vision for Manchester to become "graphene city" - a Silicon Valley-style hub that will become the place to be for everyone and anyone working in the wonder stuff.

"If you get this right, the ecosystem of graphene city could inspire a whole industry, with start-ups clustering around the supply chain and knowledge base," he said in an interview.

"Manchester is not unique in terms of graphene research, but if we start to create this cluster, it could become unique."

Yet a Thomson Reuters analysis of worldwide patent filings shows graphene's birthplace is already falling behind, with China and the United States leading the pack when it comes to finding ways to exploit this previously unknown form of carbon.

The organization with the most patent filings is South Korean consumer electronics giant Samsung Electronics, eyeing graphene's potential in flexible touchscreen displays and other areas.

The story shows the problems facing a mid-sized economy like Britain, with a limited industrial base, striving to monetize its science in an increasingly globalized world.

Britain's $2.5 trillion economy may still retain a leading position in certain high-tech fields like aerospace and pharmaceuticals but the competition is intense and cross-border corporate deals can change the landscape overnight.

Pfizer's plans to swallow AstraZeneca have sent shockwaves through the life sciences sector, which with GlaxoSmithKline at its helm has been a rare success story for the British manufacturing industry.

For a graphic on graphene patents: http://reut.rs/1mWfRdI

PHARMA SHOCKWAVES

Melanie Lee, a former drug industry research head who now leads the Think10 consultancy, said the damaging R&D cutbacks from such a deal would be a "nail in the coffin" for a sector that is vital for nurturing young biotechnology firms.

The vulnerability of even an established industry like pharmaceuticals highlights the challenges facing Baker's dreamed-of graphene city.

"I'm confident because I'm a 'glass half full' person, but it's not an easy sell," he told Reuters. "We need some big British companies to be prepared to back the vision with some serious engagement, resources and funding."

Britain has been here before. Forty years ago, two researchers at the Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, England, discovered a way to produce highly specific antibodies - the foot soldiers of the immune system - in a test tube.

Cesar Milstein and Georges Koehler thought their process might one day have a commercial application but the government department backing them did not seek a patent when their work on monoclonal antibodies was published in 1975.

Today, the world is awash with monoclonal antibody patents and six of the 10 top-selling medicines in the world are made from them - but none are sold by British firms.

British scientists also did much of the work that led to liquid crystal displays, used in flat-screen computers and televisions, as well as studying the potential of carbon fiber. In these cases, too, it was foreign companies that profited.

And with penicillin, one of the greatest medical discoveries of the last century - by Alexander Fleming in Britain in 1928 - it was scientists working for Pfizer who developed a deep-tank fermentation method that enabled mass production of the drug for use in World War Two.

"Time after time, Britain has led the way in scientific research – only to see the commercial benefits accrue overseas," finance minister George Osborne told a gathering of scientists in Cambridge last week.

"For decades we have done too little to turn British ingenuity into commercial success."

MANUFACTURING BASE?

Like a modern-day alchemist, seeking to turn basic science into commercial gold, he is convinced things can be made to work better in future, given guaranteed state science funding and fresh incentives for entrepreneurs and venture capital.

And independent experts believe things are improving, with more universities now actively promoting technology start-ups and science hubs emerging around world-class academic centers in London, Oxford, Cambridge and Manchester.

"The culture here used to be that universities produced pure knowledge and then simply threw it out of the window for the rest of world to do whatever it liked with," said Erkko Autio, professor of technology venturing and entrepreneurship at Imperial College London Business School.

"The UK is improving but to be successful in translating scientific advances into businesses you need to have a compatible industrial base and over the past few decades we have seen the erosion of that manufacturing base.”

Certainly, the country has a scientific record to be proud of, with three of the world's top universities in Oxford, Cambridge and Imperial College London, as well as a run rate of at least one Nobel prize a year since 2009.

Yet the country files fewer patents each year than the United States, Japan, Germany, France, China and South Korea, and even in its chosen field of graphene it comes in seventh place.

In the labs at the University of Manchester, Aravind Vijayaraghavan, who leads graphene research here, says his team is bent on making the kind of fundamental breakthroughs that will convince big British business to back the wonder material.

Graphene could be used for everything from flexible foldable mobile phones and tablet computers, to ultra-light aircraft wings, to life-saving water filtration systems, to targeted cancer therapies.

When it comes to the condom, he explains, the market would be relatively small, but it could be a great showcase for some of graphene's best qualities.

The idea is that the next-generation contraceptive would be made from a composite material "tailored to enhance the natural sensation during intercourse", he said, combining the strength of graphene with the elasticity of latex.

"We want to produce a new material which can be thinner, stronger, more stretchy, safer and - perhaps most importantly - more pleasurable."

Source http://www.urduwire.com/en/news/in-britain-a-battle-to-spin-great-science-into-gold_nid1159602.aspx

Google wants to show ads through your thermostat and car

By New York Times | 22 May, 2014, 01.08PM IST

Our home appliances are becoming intelligent, drones are flying through the skies and cars are starting to drive 

By Nick Bilton 

Science fiction got a few things right. 

Our home appliances are becoming intelligent, drones are flying through the skies and cars are starting to drive themselves. But they can't fly - yet. 

But it seems science fiction thinkers may have missed one big and possibly frightening (or annoying) prediction: that these devices would be another place for advertising. 

 According to a December letter sent to the Securities and Exchange Commission, which became public on Tuesday, Google hopes to put ads "on refrigerators, car dashboards, thermostats, glasses, and watches, to name just a few possibilities." 

How would this work? Imagine that it's a cold winter day. The snow starts floating down, a wind kicks up and you go to your thermostat to kick up the heat. In Google's world, that action could be met with an advertisement on your thermostat for a new wool sweater. 

Google said in its SEC filing that this plan to advertise in places beyond the desktop and cellphones came about partly because the company expects people to be using several different kinds of Google services and products in the near future. If that is the case, which it probably is, the company said its advertising would be able to follow customers between those experiences. 

Google hopes to offer advertisers a new feature called "Enhanced Campaigns," which are advertisements that can be aimed at people across several kinds of devices or experiences, including cellphones, cars or thermostats. 

"Enhanced Campaigns allows our advertisers to write one ad campaign, which we serve dynamically to the right user at the right time on whatever device makes the most sense," Google wrote in the filing. "Because users will increasingly view ads and make purchase decisions on and across multiple devices, our view of revenue is similarly device-agnostic." 

But Tony Fadell, the founder of Nest, the thermostat company that was acquired by Google, cited a Google statement on Twitter noting that new advertisements would not be included in the specific Nest thermostat. Nest, he wrote, does not have an ads-based model and has never had any such plans. 

"We've contacted the SEC to clarify our 2013 filing, it does not reflect Google's product roadmap," he wrote. 

While this might sound like dollar signs for Google, it could be a bit frustrating to the company's users. As much as I want my car to drive me to work in the morning, I don't want it trying to sell me everything we see along the route. "Hey, Nick, should we stop for an Egg McMuffin?" 

But that (driverless) ship may already have sailed. 

In its letter to the SEC, Google said it was disclosing this information because the company expected that multidevice advertising campaigns could deliver meaningful levels of new revenue in the future

Source: http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/tech/software/google-wants-to-show-ads-through-your-thermostat-and-car/articleshow/35472374.cms

NASA to monitor your garden from space

Last Updated: Tuesday, May 27, 2014, 11:09

Washington:  You may find managing your garden from space a bit sci-fi but this is what NASA is planning to do to protect our earth. 

The US space agency is planning to launch the Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 satellite next month that will keep a tab on your lawns and gardens to create a global map of carbon sources and carbon sinks.

The job of the satellite is to provide the most detailed map of photosynthetic fluorescence ever created. 

Using this data, scientists should be able to estimate how quickly the world’s plants are absorbing carbon from the atmosphere, NASA said in a statement. 

During photosynthesis, a plant absorbs light, then re-emits it at a different wavelength. This is known as fluorescence.

A satellite could detect the light emitted by the world’s plants to estimate how much carbon the plants are absorbing. 

A detailed map of photosynthetic activity and carbon absorption will better inform conservation efforts, the report added.

Source:  http://zeenews.india.com/news/space/nasa-to-monitor-your-garden-from-space_935188.html

Google Plans The Future Of Wireless Internet One Small Business At A Time

Google Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) is planning on leasing high-powered Wi-FI equipment to small businesses to promote wireless Internet in public spaces. Google Maps

Cable companies have already begun offering Wi-Fi hotspots across the U.S. to encourage usage among customers leery of using up their monthly data allowances, but now they have some powerful competition: The king of search is wading into the wireless war.

Google Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) said it plans to lease commercial-grade Wi-Fi equipment at a discount to small- and medium-sized businesses like gyms, restaurants and doctor's offices, tech website The Information reported on Wednesday. The Mountain View, California, company plans to offer the Wi-Fi hotspots, which will use businesses' existing Internet connections, as early as this summer in the U.S. and abroad.

Google also plans to offer Wi-Fi hotspots in areas where Google Fiber is available as it rolls out its own Internet and television service. Google’s Access team will implement the new Wi-Fi leasing plan. The team is responsible for developing “technologies and business models to expand Internet access in a financially sustainable and scalable way to impact hundreds of millions of people.”

The shift is supported by the Wi-Fi Alliance, a group that advocates greater use of the technology in public spaces. It supports the adoption of Hotspot 2.0, which will allow consumers to seamlessly shift connections between wireless carriers and public Wi-Fi hotspots.

Craig Labovitz, co-founder and CEO of DeepField in Ann Arbor, Michigan, which analyzes big data from the cloud to help content providers and carriers make strategic business decisions, said that Google’s move shows the Internet is “a very dynamic market.”

“This is true particularly in the major metropolitan areas,” Labovitz told the International Business Times. “As mobile devices own more and more of the market ... you’re seeing a lot of activity in Wi-Fi offloading.”

Labovitz said the move also signals a larger shift in wireless Internet, toward lower prices and greater availability, which is good for consumers.

“It’s very different from five years ago, when I struggled to find cell service or Wi-Fi in the airport. Now, I’ve got Internet, it’s free. I don’t even know who’s sponsoring it, but it’s great,” he said. “This is Google’s business model.”

The free Internet access that airports offer is sometimes sponsored by Google, which enjoys being the default search engine on flights, Benjamin G. Edelman, an associate professor at Harvard Business School who researches Internet architecture and online advertising, said.

“All of these things advance Google’s commercial interest," Edelman, who also owns an eponymous consulting company, said. "It’s easy to feel grateful to Google; they’re giving me free Internet.

“But they are grateful for the chance to offer Internet Explorer users the chance to use their Chrome browser. If they can get one in 20 users to switch, they’re coming out strongly ahead.”

Google often offers its Web services such as Search, Maps and Android for free to consumers and companies, which helps it to maintain a dominant position online but users should be wary of the practice.

“As a consumer, you should be worried about Google becoming so dominant that they don't have to compete, that they don't have to offer competitive terms,” Edelman said. “Look at the ads in Google search results these days: there’s four at the top, 11 on the side and three at the bottom. I remember when Google launched with zero ads.”

Now, Google is so big that it can get away with more advertising without losing users. “When you see extreme dominance like Google has, consumers are the ones getting caught in the crossfire,” he said.

As Google cuts in between service providers and consumers -- like redirecting a mistyped Web address -- advertisers may have to pay Google “more and more” for things they used to get for free.

“I just spoke with a hotel chain that spends more on Google advertising [than] they spend on natural gas and electricity put together,” Edelman said. “They are looking for ways to bring their advertising dollars elsewhere, because [Google’s] prices are so high."

When asked to elaborate, Edelman said, "I can’t give a source for that, because they’re afraid of reprisal, they’re afraid of Google. And that's another example of the search giant's dominance." 

Source: http://www.ibtimes.com/google-plans-future-wireless-internet-one-small-business-time-1588958

California approves test of self-driving cars on public roads

Regulations take effect mid-September; rules for the public may come this December.

On Tuesday, the California Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) officially approved rules to allow the testing of autonomous vehicles on public roads. The rules will take effect September 16, 2014.

The move has been a long time coming, with the DMV promising back in December 2013 that it would post regulations for public use of self-driving cars and then holding a public hearing in January to address concerns about them. These new rules will set a statewide standard for all manufacturers. (Although Google has been running pilot programs in Mountain View and elsewhere, it's not the only company pursuing an automated vehicle—Nvidia told Ars last week that Audi has plans to incorporate a “cruise control for stop-and-go traffic” feature in one of its cars come 2015.)

Bryant Walker Smith, a fellow at the Center for Automotive Research at Stanford (CARS), told Ars that the new rules could change how manufacturers proceed with their testing. “The DMV has a really, really difficult task, and I was impressed with the thoughtfulness of their approach,” he said. “I would say that anyone who is reading these documents will have to read very closely.”

According to the adopted regulatory text that the California DMV posted on Tuesday, a manufacturer which wants to test autonomous vehicles has to apply for a testing permit, certify its drivers to test the cars, and secure a $5 million insurance or safety bond. The testing permit must be renewed after one year or else it expires.

During the tests, an operator must remain in the driver's seat at all times and must obtain an “Autonomous Vehicle Testing (AVT) Program Test Vehicle Operator Permit” from the DMV. To obtain such a permit, the operator must go through a training program put together by the manufacturer and approved by the DMV, which includes “defensive driver training, including practical experience in recovering from hazardous driving scenarios” as well as “instruction that matches the level of the autonomous test vehicle driver’s experience operating the specific type of automated driving system technology with the level of technical maturity of the automated system.”

Although it may sound counter-intuitive that the operator of an autonomous vehicle has to undergo more training than a normal driver in order to hop in the driver's seat, Smith told Ars that that's reflective of “the paradox of automation.”

“As automated systems get more complex, human understanding also gets more complex,” Smith said. “For a vehicle to suddenly swerve to the right, a human would have to grab [the steering wheel]... training becomes even more important, and it would also be important for general users.” The DMV's rules are a response to the fact that the slightest potential for failure in an automated system could have drastic effects if the driver does not know how to react manually.

The new rules state that if the autonomous car is involved in an accident in any way, the incident must be reported within 10 days to the DMV. Also, if the operator of the autonomous vehicle has to disengage the car's autonomous system for any safety-related reason, that must be reported to the DMV, too.

Do the rules put forth today give any glimpse into how conservative the DMV will be in laying out its rules for public operation of self-driving cars in the near future? Smith seemed to think that today's announcement was a step forward toward a future of robo-cars. “You can see that the DMV is willing to push back against a range of commenters, from Google to traditional car manufacturers, and that the DMV is thinking on its own,” he said. “For better or worse this is an agency that's going to act independently.”

Source: http://arstechnica.com/cars-2/2014/05/california-approves-rules-for-testing-self-driving-cars-in-california/

Women's lung cancer death rate almost the same as men's

U.S. women who smoke today have a much greater risk of dying from lung cancer than they did decades ago, partly because they are starting younger and smoking more - that is, they are lighting up like men, new research shows.

Men who smoke have long had higher lung cancer death rates, but now women have caught up in their risk of dying from smoking-related illnesses. Lung cancer risk leveled off in the 1980s for men but is still rising for women, the study found.

"It's a massive failure in prevention," said one study leader, Dr. Michael Thun of the American Cancer Society. And it's likely to repeat itself in places like China and Indonesia where smoking is growing, he said. About 1.3 billion people worldwide smoke.

The research is in Thursday's New England Journal of Medicine. It is one of the most comprehensive looks ever at long-term trends in the effects of smoking and includes the first generation of U.S. women who started early in life and continued for decades, long enough for health effects to show up.

The U.S. has more than 35 million smokers - about 20 percent of men and 18 percent of women. The percentage of people who smoke is far lower than it used to be; rates peaked around 1960 in men and two decades later in women.

In 2009, 205,974 people in the United States were diagnosed with lung cancer, including 110,190 men and 95,784 women, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That same year, 87,694 men and 70,387 women passed away from the disease.

• Cancer death rates drop 20 percent in 2 decades
• Older heavy smokers should get scanned for lung cancer, says American Cancer Society
• Smoking may take years off lives of HIV patients, study shows

Researchers wanted to know if smoking is still as deadly as it was in the 1980s, given that cigarettes have changed (less tar), many smokers have quit, and treatments for many smoking-related diseases have improved.

They also wanted to know more about smoking and women. The famous surgeon general's report in 1964 said smoking could cause lung cancer in men, but evidence was lacking in women at the time since relatively few of them had smoked long enough.

One study, led by Dr. Prabhat Jha of the Center for Global Health Research in Toronto, looked at about 217,000 Americans in federal health surveys between 1997 and 2004.

A second study, led by Thun, tracked smoking-related deaths through three periods - 1959-65, 1982-88 and 2000-10 - using seven large population health surveys covering more than 2.2 million people.

Among the findings:

- The risk of dying of lung cancer was more than 25 times higher for female smokers in recent years than for women who never smoked. In the 1960s, it was only three times higher. One reason: After World War II, women started taking up the habit at a younger age and began smoking more.

-A person who never smoked was about twice as likely as a current smoker to live to age 80. For women, the chances of surviving that long were 70 percent for those who never smoked and 38 percent for smokers. In men, the numbers were 61 percent and 26 percent.

-Smokers in the U.S. are three times more likely to die between ages 25 and 79 than non-smokers are. About 60 percent of those deaths are attributable to smoking.

-Women are far less likely to quit smoking than men are. Among people 65 to 69, the ratio of former to current smokers is 4-to-1 for men and 2-to-1 for women.

-Smoking shaves more than 10 years off the average life span, but quitting at any age buys time. Quitting by age 40 avoids nearly all the excess risk of death from smoking. Men and women who quit when they were 25 to 34 years old gained 10 years; stopping at ages 35 to 44 gained 9 years; at ages 45 to 54, six years; at ages 55 to 64, four years.

-The risk of dying from other lung diseases such as emphysema and chronic bronchitis is rising in men and women, and the rise in men is a surprise because their lung cancer risk leveled off in 1980s.

Changes in cigarettes since the 1960s are a "plausible explanation" for the rise in non-cancer lung deaths, researchers write. Most smokers switched to cigarettes that were lower in tar and nicotine as measured by tests with machines, "but smokers inhaled more deeply to get the nicotine they were used to," Thun said. Deeper inhalation is consistent with the kind of lung damage seen in the illnesses that are rising, he said.

Scientists have made scant progress against lung cancer compared with other forms of the disease, and it remains the leading cause of cancer deaths worldwide. More than 160,000 people die of it in the U.S. each year.

The federal government, the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the cancer society and several universities paid for the new studies. Thun testified against tobacco companies in class-action lawsuits challenging the supposed benefits of cigarettes with reduced tar and nicotine, but he donated his payment to the cancer society.

Smoking needs more attention as a health hazard, Dr. Steven A. Schroeder of the University of California, San Francisco, wrote in a commentary in the journal.

"More women die of lung cancer than of breast cancer. But there is no `race for the cure' for lung cancer, no brown ribbon" or high-profile advocacy groups for lung cancer, he wrote.

Kathy DeJoseph, 62, of suburban Atlanta, finally quit smoking after 40 years - to qualify for lung cancer surgery last year.

"I tried everything that came along, I just never could do it," even while having chemotherapy, she said.

It's a powerful addiction, she said: "I still every day have to resist wanting to go buy a pack."

Source:  http://www.cbsnews.com/news/womens-lung-cancer-death-rate-almost-the-same-as-mens/

Nasa releases 'global selfie'

IANS | May 23, 2014, 02.58 PM IST

WASHINGTON: NASA has released a new view of our home planet — created from 36,000 selfies that people shared on social networking sites. 

For Earth Day this year (April 22), NASA invited people around the world to step outside to take a "selfie" and share it with the world on social media. 

"With the global selfie, NASA used crowd-sourced digital imagery to illustrate a different aspect of earth than has been measured from satellites for decades: A mosaic of faces from around the globe," said Peg Luce, deputy director of the earth science division in the science mission directorate at NASA. 

Users can zoom the 3.2-gigapixel image to look at individual photos. 

The "global selfie" mosaic was built using more than 36,000 individual photographs drawn from the more than 50,000 images tagged #GlobalSelfie and posted on or around Earth Day, April 22, on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Google+ and Flickr. 

Selfies were posted by people on every continent and 113 countries and regions, from Antarctica to Yemen, Greenland to Guatemala, and Pakistan to Peru. 

The 'global selfie' was assembled after several weeks of collecting and curating the submitted images, NASA reported.

Source:  http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/tech/tech-news/Nasa-releases-global-selfie/articleshow/35514588.cms

Coming soon: a brain implant to restore memory

Washington (AFP) - In the next few months, highly secretive US military researchers say they will unveil new advances toward developing a brain implant that could one day restore a wounded soldier's memory.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is forging ahead with a four-year plan to build a sophisticated memory stimulator, as part of President Barack Obama's $100 million initiative to better understand the human brain.

The science has never been done before, and raises ethical questions about whether the human mind should be manipulated in the name of staving off war injuries or managing the aging brain.

Some say those who could benefit include the five million Americans with Alzheimer's disease and the nearly 300,000 US military men and women who have sustained traumatic brain injuries in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"If you have been injured in the line of duty and you can't remember your family, we want to be able to restore those kinds of functions," DARPA program manager Justin Sanchez said this week at a conference in the US capital convened by the Center for Brain Health at the University of Texas at Dallas.

"We think that we can develop neuroprosthetic devices that can directly interface with the hippocampus, and can restore the first type of memories we are looking at, the declarative memories," he said.

Declarative memories are recollections of people, events, facts and figures, and no research has ever shown they can be put back once they are lost.

- Early days -

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Fact file on Alzheimer's disease (AFP Photo/)

What researchers have been able to do so far is help reduce tremors in people with Parkinson's disease, cut back on seizures among epileptics and even boost memory in some Alzheimer's patients through a process called deep brain stimulation.

Those devices were inspired by cardiac pacemakers, and pulse electricity into the brain much like a steady drum beat, but they don't work for everyone.

Experts say a much more nuanced approach is needed when it comes to restoring memory.

"Memory is patterns and connections," explained Robert Hampson, an associate professor at Wake Forest University.

"For us to come up with a memory prosthetic, we would actually have to have something that delivers specific patterns," said Hampson, adding that he could not comment specifically on DARPA's plans.

Hampson's research on rodents and monkeys has shown that neurons in the hippocampus -- the part of the brain that processes memory -- fire differently when they see red or blue, or a picture of a face versus a type of food.

Equipped with this knowledge, Hampson and colleagues have been able to extend the animals' short-term, working memory using brain prosthetics to stimulate the hippocampus.

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In the next few months, highly secretive US military researchers say they will unveil new advances t …

They could coax a drugged monkey into performing closer to normal at a memory task, and confuse it by manipulating the signal so that it would choose the opposite image of what it remembered.

According to Hampson, to restore a human's specific memory, scientists would have to know the precise pattern for that memory.

Instead, scientists in the field think they could improve a person's memory by simply helping the brain work more like it used to before the injury.

"The idea is to restore a function back to normal or near normal of the memory processing areas of the brain so that the person can access their formed memories, and so that they can form new memories as needed," Hampson said.

- Ethical concerns -

It's easy to see how manipulating memories in people could open up an ethical minefield, said Arthur Caplan, a medical ethicist at New York University's Langone Medical Center.

"When you fool around with the brain you are fooling around with personal identity," said Caplan, who advises DARPA on matters of synthetic biology but not neuroscience.

"The cost of altering the mind is you risk losing sense of self, and that is a new kind of risk we never faced."

When it comes to soldiers, the potential for erasing memories or inserting new ones could interfere with combat techniques, make warriors more violent and less conscientious, or even thwart investigations into war crimes, he said.

"If I could take a pill or put a helmet on and have some memories wiped out, maybe I don't have to live with the consequences of what I do," Caplan said.

DARPA's website says that because its "programs push the leading edge of science," the agency "periodically convenes scholars with expertise in these issues to discuss relevant ethical, legal, and social issues."

Just who might be first in line for the experiments is another of the many unknowns.

Sanchez said the path forward will be formally announced in the next few months.

"We have got some of the most talented scientists in our country that will be working on this project. So stay tuned. Lots of exciting things will be coming in the very near future."

Source:  http://news.yahoo.com/coming-soon-brain-implant-restore-memory-024453903.html