New view : Earth's inner workings depicts the planet as a living organism

Deep Inside Planet Earth, Interplay Of Temperature, Pressure, Chemistry.

Seismologists in recent years have recast their understanding of the inner workings of Earth from a relatively benign homogeneous environment to one that is highly dynamic and chemically diverse. This new view of Earth's inner workings depicts the planet as a living organism where events that happen deep inside can affect what happens at its surface, like the rub and slip of tectonic plates and the rumble of the occasional volcano.

New research into these dynamic inner workings are now showing that Earth's upper mantle (an area that extends down to 660 km) exhibits how far more than just temperature and pressure play a role in the dynamics of the deep interior.

A study by Nicholas Schmerr, a doctoral student in Arizona State University's School of Earth and Space Exploration is shedding light on these processes and showing that they are not just temperature driven. His work helps assess the role chemistry plays in the structure of Earth's mantle.

The simplest model of the mantle -- the layer of the Earth's interior just beneath the crust -- is that of a convective heat engine. Like a pot of boiling water, the mantle has parts that are hot and welling up, as in the mid-Atlantic rift, and parts that are cooler and sinking, as in subduction zones. There, crust sinks into the Earth, mixing and transforming into different material "phases," like graphite turning into diamond.

"A great deal of past research on mantle structure has interpreted anomalous seismic observations as due to thermal variations within the mantle," Schmerr said. "We're trying to get people to think about how the interior of the Earth can be not just thermally different in different regions but also chemically different."

The research, which Schmerr conducted with Edward Garnero, a professor in ASU's School of Earth and Space Exploration, was published in the October 26 issue of the journal Science. Their article is titled "Upper Mantle Discontinuity Topography from Thermal and Chemical Heterogeneity."

Schmerr's work shows that Earth's interior is far from homogeneous, as represented in traditional views, but possesses an exotic brew of down and upwelling material that goes beyond simply hot and cold convection currents. His work demonstrates the need for a chemical component in the convection process.

At key depths within Earth, rock undergoes a compression to a denser material where its atoms rearrange due to the ever-increasing pressure. Earth scientists have long known that the dominant mineral olivine in Earth's outer shell, compresses into another mineral named wadsleyite at 410 km (255 mile) depth, which then changes into ringwoodite around 520 km (325 mile) depth and then again into perovskite + magnesiowüstite at 660 km (410 mile) depth.

These changes in crystal structure, called phase transitions, are sensitive to temperature and pressure, and the transition depth moves up and down in the mantle in response to relatively hot or cold material.

Beneath South America, Schmerr's research found the 410 km phase boundary bending the wrong way. The mantle beneath South America is predicted to be relatively cold due to cold and dense former oceanic crust and the underlying tectonic plate sinking into the planet from the subduction zone along the west coast. In such a region, the 410 km boundary would normally be upwarped, but using energy from far away earthquakes that reflect off the deep boundaries in this study area, Schmerr and Garnero found that the 410 km boundary significantly deepened.

"Our discovery of the 410 boundary deflecting downwards in this region is incompatible with previous assumptions of upper mantle phase boundaries being dominantly modulated by the cold temperature of the subducting crust and plate," Garnero said.

Geologists and geochemists have long suspected that subduction processes are driven by more than temperature alone. A sinking oceanic plate is compositionally distinct from the mantle, and brings with it minerals rich in elements that can alter the range of temperatures and pressures at which a phase change takes place.

"We're not the first to suggest chemical heterogeneities in the mantle, however, we are the first to suggest hydrogen or iron as an explanation for an observation at this level of detail and over a geographical region spanning several thousands of kilometers," Schmerr said.

Hydrogen from ocean water can be bonded to minerals within the crust and carried down as it is subducted into the mantle, Schmerr explained. When the plate reaches the 410 km phase boundary, the hydrogen affects the depth of the olivine to wadsleyite phase transition, reducing the density of the newly formed wadsleyite, and making it relatively more buoyant than its surrounding material. This hydrated wadsleyite then "pools" below the 410 km boundary, and the base of the wet zone reflects the seismic energy observed by Schmerr.

Alternatively, subduction can bring the iron-poor and magnesium-enriched residues of materials that melted near the surface to greater depths. Mantle mineral compositions enriched in magnesium are stable to greater depths than usual, resulting in a deeper phase transition.

"Either hypothesis explains our observation of a deep 410-km boundary beneath South American subduction, and both ideas invoke chemical heterogeneity," Schmerr said. "However, if we look deeper, at the 660-km phase transition, we find it at a depth consistent with the mantle being colder there. This tells us that the mantle beneath South America is both thermally cold and chemically different."

To make their observations, Schmerr and Garnero used data from the USArray, which is part of the National Science Foundation-funded EarthScope project.

"The USArray essentially is 500 seismometers that are deployed in a movable grid across the United States," Schmerr said. "It's an unheard of density of seismometers."

Schmerr and Garnero used seismic waves from earthquakes to measure where phase transitions occur in the interior of Earth by looking for where waves reflect off these boundaries. In particular, they used a set of seismic waves that reflect off the underside of phase transitions halfway between the earthquake and the seismometer. The density and other characteristics of the material they travel through affect how the waves move, and this gives geologists an idea of the structure of the inner Earth.

"Seismic discontinuities are abrupt changes in density and seismic wave speeds that usually occur where a mineral undergoes a phase change -- such as when olivine transitions to wadsleyite, or ringwoodite transforms into perovskite and magnesiowüstite. The transformed mineral is generally denser, and typically seismic waves travel faster through it as well. Discontinuities reflect seismic energy, which allows us to figure out how deep they are. They are found throughout the world at certain average depths -- in this case, at 410 and 660 km," Schmerr said. "Because these phase transitions are not always uniform, these layers are bumpy with ridges and troughs."

"Right now the big question that we have is about Earth's thermal state and its chemical state, and there are a lot of ways we can go about getting at that information," Schmerr said. "This study lets us look at one particular area in Earth and constrain the temperature and composition to a certain degree, imaging this structure inside the Earth and saying, These are not just thermal effects -- there's also some sort of chemical aspect to it as well."

Technorati : Earth's, New view :, depicts, inner, living, organism, planet, workings

Improving Password Protection

An inventive way of improving password security for handheld devices such as iPhones, Blackberry and Smartphone has been developed at Newcastle University. Those who took part in testing this system created passwords that were a thousand times more secure than ordinary textual passwords. Most testers also found them easy to remember.

Improving Password Protection With Easy To Remember Drawings

An inventive way of improving password security for handheld devices such as iPhones, Blackberry and Smartphone has been developed at Newcastle University.

The software, which uses pictures instead of letters and numbers, has been initially designed for handheld devices, but could soon be expanded to other areas.

Those who took part in testing this system created passwords that were a thousand times more secure than ordinary textual passwords. Most testers also found them easy to remember.

Researchers now want to examine the system's potential for helping people with language difficulties, such as dyslexia.

Today, the use of passwords is commonplace in everything from mobile phones to cash machines and computers. But in the wake of growing concerns about traditional 'weak' passwords created from words and numbers, Newcastle University computer scientists have been developing alternative software which lets the user draw a picture password, known as a 'graphical password'.

"Many people find it difficult to remember a password so choose words that are easy to remember and therefore more susceptible to hackers," explained computer scientist Jeff Yan, a lecturer at Newcastle University.

Along with his PhD student Paul Dunphy, Dr Yan has taken the emerging Draw a Secret (DAS) technology, a graphical password scheme where users draw their secret password as a free-form image on a grid, and taken this a step further.

In DAS, the user draws an image, which is then encoded as an ordered sequence of cells. The software recalls the strokes, along with the number of times the pen is lifted.

By superimposing a background over the blank DAS grid, the Newcastle University researchers have created a system called BDAS: Background Draw a Secret. This helps users remember where they began the drawing they are using as a password and also leads to graphical passwords that are less predictable, longer and more complex.

The BDAS software encouraged people to draw more complicated password images e.g. with a larger stroke count or length, that were less symmetrical and didn't start in the centre. This makes them much harder for people or automated hacker programs to guess. 'In essence, this is a very simple idea as it's intuitive," said Mr Yan. 'It may take longer to create the password initially but it's easier to remember and more secure as a result.'

For example, if a person chooses a flower background and then draws a butterfly as their secret password image onto it, they have to remember where they began on the grid and the order of their pen strokes. It is recognised as identical if the encoding is the same, not the drawing itself, which allows for some margin of error as the drawing does not have to be re-created exactly.

'Most of us have forgotten a pin number or a password at least once, which is why we tend to make them so easy to guess," said Mr Yan. "However, the human mind has a much greater capacity for remembering images, and it's certainly true that a picture is worth a thousand words in this instance.'

People who took part in the Newcastle University study, which compared DAS and BDAS use, had to choose their own background from a selection of five images - stars, map detail, playing card, crowd and flower.

After creating their secret password images on the grid, they were asked to repeat what they had initially drawn. One week later, they were asked to re-create the same image and 95% BDAS users were able to do so within three attempts.

'The recalled BDAS passwords were, on average, more complicated than their DAS counterparts by more than 10 bits,' said Dr Yan. 'This means that the memorable BDAS passwords improved security by a factor of more than 1024. They were also more secure than current textual passwords by an even larger factor.'

He added that, of those who attempted to draw something, the creations were very much dependent on the participants' artistic ability. 'Most people drew simple everyday objects such as cars, cups and houses, although one participant did write their name in Persian script,' said Mr Yan.

Mr Yan will be presenting these findings in the opening lecture at Association for Computing Machinery Conference (ACM)'s flagship conference on Computer and Communications Security in Washington next week. He received a £66,000 grant from Microsoft Research (MSR) to support his research into designing novel systems that are both secure and usable.

The MSR grant will also enable Mr Yan to carry out further research into how easily the BDAS system can be used by people who traditionally have difficulty with textual systems, such as those with dyslexia.

'The most exciting feature is that a simple enhancement simultaneously provides significantly enhanced usability and security,' concluded Mr Yan.

Technorati : Improving, Password, Protection

Improving Password Protection

An inventive way of improving password security for handheld devices such as iPhones, Blackberry and Smartphone has been developed at Newcastle University. Those who took part in testing this system created passwords that were a thousand times more secure than ordinary textual passwords. Most testers also found them easy to remember.

Improving Password Protection With Easy To Remember Drawings

An inventive way of improving password security for handheld devices such as iPhones, Blackberry and Smartphone has been developed at Newcastle University.

The software, which uses pictures instead of letters and numbers, has been initially designed for handheld devices, but could soon be expanded to other areas.

Those who took part in testing this system created passwords that were a thousand times more secure than ordinary textual passwords. Most testers also found them easy to remember.

Researchers now want to examine the system's potential for helping people with language difficulties, such as dyslexia.

Today, the use of passwords is commonplace in everything from mobile phones to cash machines and computers. But in the wake of growing concerns about traditional 'weak' passwords created from words and numbers, Newcastle University computer scientists have been developing alternative software which lets the user draw a picture password, known as a 'graphical password'.

"Many people find it difficult to remember a password so choose words that are easy to remember and therefore more susceptible to hackers," explained computer scientist Jeff Yan, a lecturer at Newcastle University.

Along with his PhD student Paul Dunphy, Dr Yan has taken the emerging Draw a Secret (DAS) technology, a graphical password scheme where users draw their secret password as a free-form image on a grid, and taken this a step further.

In DAS, the user draws an image, which is then encoded as an ordered sequence of cells. The software recalls the strokes, along with the number of times the pen is lifted.

By superimposing a background over the blank DAS grid, the Newcastle University researchers have created a system called BDAS: Background Draw a Secret. This helps users remember where they began the drawing they are using as a password and also leads to graphical passwords that are less predictable, longer and more complex.

The BDAS software encouraged people to draw more complicated password images e.g. with a larger stroke count or length, that were less symmetrical and didn't start in the centre. This makes them much harder for people or automated hacker programs to guess. 'In essence, this is a very simple idea as it's intuitive," said Mr Yan. 'It may take longer to create the password initially but it's easier to remember and more secure as a result.'

For example, if a person chooses a flower background and then draws a butterfly as their secret password image onto it, they have to remember where they began on the grid and the order of their pen strokes. It is recognised as identical if the encoding is the same, not the drawing itself, which allows for some margin of error as the drawing does not have to be re-created exactly.

'Most of us have forgotten a pin number or a password at least once, which is why we tend to make them so easy to guess," said Mr Yan. "However, the human mind has a much greater capacity for remembering images, and it's certainly true that a picture is worth a thousand words in this instance.'

People who took part in the Newcastle University study, which compared DAS and BDAS use, had to choose their own background from a selection of five images - stars, map detail, playing card, crowd and flower.

After creating their secret password images on the grid, they were asked to repeat what they had initially drawn. One week later, they were asked to re-create the same image and 95% BDAS users were able to do so within three attempts.

'The recalled BDAS passwords were, on average, more complicated than their DAS counterparts by more than 10 bits,' said Dr Yan. 'This means that the memorable BDAS passwords improved security by a factor of more than 1024. They were also more secure than current textual passwords by an even larger factor.'

He added that, of those who attempted to draw something, the creations were very much dependent on the participants' artistic ability. 'Most people drew simple everyday objects such as cars, cups and houses, although one participant did write their name in Persian script,' said Mr Yan.

Mr Yan will be presenting these findings in the opening lecture at Association for Computing Machinery Conference (ACM)'s flagship conference on Computer and Communications Security in Washington next week. He received a £66,000 grant from Microsoft Research (MSR) to support his research into designing novel systems that are both secure and usable.

The MSR grant will also enable Mr Yan to carry out further research into how easily the BDAS system can be used by people who traditionally have difficulty with textual systems, such as those with dyslexia.

'The most exciting feature is that a simple enhancement simultaneously provides significantly enhanced usability and security,' concluded Mr Yan.

Technorati : Improving, Password, Protection

First Fully-functional Radio From A Single Carbon Nanotube Created

Make way for the real nanopod and make room in the Guinness World Records. A team of researchers with the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and the University of California at Berkeley have created the first fully functional radio from a single carbon nanotube, which makes it by several orders of magnitude the smallest radio ever made.

Wielding a single carbon nanotube 10,000 times smaller than a human hair, this is definitely the smallest radio yet. The nanotube vibrates at radio frequencies to receive the signal, then acts as both amplifier and demodulator. With only a battery and sensitive earphones, it can pick up AM or FM. With such a small receiver or transmitter, you could put a tracking collar on a bacterium.

"A single carbon nanotube molecule serves simultaneously as all essential components of a radio - antenna, tunable band-pass filter, amplifier, and demodulator," said physicist Alex Zettl, who led the invention of the nanotube radio. "Using carrier waves in the commercially relevant 40-400 MHz range and both frequency and amplitude modulation (FM and AM), we were able to demonstrate successful music and voice reception."

Given that the nanotube radio essentially assembles itself and can be easily tuned to a desired frequency band after fabrication, Zettl believes that nanoradios will be relatively easy to mass-produce. Potential applications, in addition to incredibly tiny radio receivers, include a new generation of wireless communication devices and monitors. Nanotube radio technology could prove especially valuable for biological and medical applications.

"The entire radio would easily fit inside a living cell, and this small size allows it to safely interact with biological systems," Zettl said. "One can envision interfaces with brain or muscle functions, or radio-controlled devices moving through the bloodstream."

It is also possible that the nanotube radio could be implanted in the inner ear as an entirely new and discrete way of transmitting information, or as a radically new method of correcting impaired hearing.

Zettl holds joint appointments with Berkeley Lab's Materials Sciences Division (MSD) and the UC Berkeley Physics Department where he is the director of the Center of Integrated Nanomechanical Systems. In recent years, he and his research group have created an astonishing array of devices out of carbon nanotubes - hollow tubular macromolecules only a few nanometers (billionths of a meter) in diameter and typically less than a micron in length - including sensors, diodes and even a motor. The nanotube radio, however, is the first that - literally - rocks!

"When I was a young kid, I got a transistor radio as a gift and it was the greatest thing I could imagine - music coming from a box I could hold in my hand!" Zettl said. "When we first played our nanoradio, I was just as excited as I was when I first turned on that transistor radio as a kid."

The carbon nanotube radio consists of an individual carbon nanotube mounted to an electrode in close proximity to a counter-electrode, with a DC voltage source, such as from a battery or a solar cell array, connected to the electrodes for power. The applied DC bias creates a negative electrical charge on the tip of the nanotube, sensitizing it to oscillating electric fields. Both the electrodes and nanotube are contained in vacuum, in a geometrical configuration similar to that of a conventional vacuum tube.

Kenneth Jensen, a graduate student in Zettl's research group, did the actual design and construction of the radio.

"We started out by making an exceptionally sensitive force sensor," Jensen said."Nanotubes are like tiny cat whiskers.Small forces, on the order of attonewtons, cause them to deflect a significant amount.By detecting this deflection, you can infer what force was acting on the nanotube. This incredible sensitivity becomes even greater at the nanotube's flexural resonance frequency, which falls within the frequencies of radio broadcasts, cell phones and GPS broadcasting. Because of this high resonance frequency, Alex (Zettl) suggested that nanotubes could be used to make a radio."

Although it has the same essential components, the nanotube radio does not work like a conventional radio. Rather than the entirely electrical operation of a conventional radio, the nanotube radio is in part a mechanical operation, with the nanotube itself serving as both antenna and tuner.

Incoming radio waves interact with the nanotube's electrically charged tip, causing the nanotube to vibrate. These vibrations are only significant when the frequency of the incoming wave coincides with the nanotube's flexural resonance frequency, which, like a conventional radio, can be tuned during operation to receive only a pre-selected segment, or channel, of the electromagnetic spectrum.

Amplification and demodulation properties arise from the needle-point geometry of carbon nanotubes, which gives them unique field emission properties. By concentrating the electric field of the DC bias voltage applied across the electrodes, the nanotube radio produces a field-emission current that is sensitive to the nanotube's mechanical vibrations. Since the field-emission current is generated by the external power source, amplification of the radio signal is possible. Furthermore, since field emission is a non-linear process, it also acts to demodulate an AM or FM radio signal, just like the diode used in traditional radios.

"What we see then is that all four essential components of a radio receiver are compactly and efficiently implemented within the vibrating and field-emitting carbon nanotube," said Zettl. "This is a totally different approach to making a radio - the exploitation of electro-mechanical movement for multiple functions. In other words, our nanotube radio is a true NEMS (nano-electro-mechanical system) device."

Because carbon nanotubes are so much smaller than the wavelengths of visible light, they cannot be viewed with even the highest powered optical microscope. Therefore, to observe the critical mechanical motionof their nanotube radio, Zettl and his research team, which in addition to Jensen, also included post-doc Jeff Weldon and graduate student Henry Garcia, mounted their nanotube radio inside a high resolution transmission electron microscope (TEM). A sine-wave carrier radio signal was launched from a nearby transmitting antenna and when the frequencies of the transmitted carrier wave matched the nanotube resonance frequency, radio reception became possible.

"To correlate the mechanical motions of the nanotube to an actual radio receiver operation, we launched an FM radio transmission of the song Good Vibrations by the Beach Boys," said Zettl. "After being received, filtered, amplified, and demodulated all by the nanotube radio, the emerging signal was further amplified by a current preamplifier, sent to an audio loudspeaker and recorded. The nanotube radio faithfully reproduced the audio signal, and the song was easily recognizable by ear."

When the researchers deliberately detuned the nanotube radio from the carrier frequency, mechanical vibrations faded and radio reception was lost. A "lock" on a given radio transmission channel could be maintained for many minutes at a time, and it was not necessary to operate the nanotube radio inside a TEM. Using a slightly different configuration, the researchers successfully transmitted and received signals across a distance of several meters.

"The integration of all the electronic components of a radio happened naturally in the nanotube itself," said Jensen. "Within a few hours of figuring out that our force sensor was in fact a radio, we were playing music!"

Added Zettl, "Our nanotube radio is sophisticated and elegant in the physics of its operation, but sheer simplicity in technical design. Everything about it works perfectly, without additional patches or tricks."

Berkeley Lab's Technology Transfer Department is now seeking industrial partners to further develop and commercialize this technology.

A paper on this work is now on-line at the Nano Letters Website. It will also be published in the November 2007 print edition of Nano Letters. The paper is entitled "Nanotube Radio" and the co-authors are Zettl, Jensen, Weldon and Garcia. In that same print edition, there appears a paper by Peter Burke and Chris Rutherglen of UC Irvine, reporting on the use of a carbon nanotube as a demodulator.

The nanotube radio research was supported by the U.S. Department of Energy and by the National Science Foundation within the Center of Integrated Nanomechanical Systems.

Berkeley Lab is a U.S. Department of Energy national laboratory located in Berkeley, California. It conducts unclassified scientific research and is managed by the University of California.

Technorati : Carbon, Created, First, Nanotube, Radio, Single, functional

Research news : Sensing through non-sensory cells

Activity in non-sensory cells of the developing ear may help form neural pathways in hearing,

transient group of non-sensory cells in the developing cochlea, the hearing chamber of the inner ear, generates auditory activity in the absence of sound, according to a study published this week in Nature. This activity, present before the onset of hearing, may help form the auditory map in the brain, and may provide insights into hearing conditions such as tinnitus, the researchers say.

"Understanding the cochlea in development has been left out in the progress of neuroscience," said Timothy Jones of East Carolina University in North Carolina, who was not involved in the research. "This study will be kindling. This will trigger a great interest in pre-hearing."

During development, the ear gradually develops its ability to respond to auditory stimuli. Before the ear is capable of hearing, researchers have observed spontaneous activity in the auditory nerve that mimics the ear's response to sound but occurs without an external stimulus. But how this activity is initiated and what purpose it serves has remained unclear.

Using intracellular and extracellular imaging, the researchers traced this activity to a group of non-sensory supporting cells located in a part of an epithelial ridge known as Kölliker's organ, which disappears after the onset of hearing. The Kölliker cells surround the inner hair cells, the ear's sensory receptors.

"These [supporting cells] are cells that, until now, we thought weren't doing a hell of a lot," said Jonathan Gale, a coauthor of the study. "A lot of research was on the inner hair cells, the sensory cells themselves."

Using a combination of in vitro electrophysiology and imaging techniques, such as intrinsic optical imaging as well as calcium-imaging dyes, the researchers found that the Kölliker cells release ATP in spontaneous bursts, causing the inner hair cells to release glutamate, thus triggering action potentials in primary auditory neurons.

"What we were struck with was that ATP was doing the job that sound would eventually do in the developed cochlea," said Dwight Bergles of Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, corresponding author of the study. "Before the ear is mature enough to detect sound, hair cells respond to ATP."

Bergles explained that as the ear develops and the Kölliker's organ disappears, the synchronous bursts of activity decrease in frequency, which is desirable, since they would interfere with normal hearing.

The authors of the study make the analogy to the visual system: there is electrical activity in the eye before the animal opens its eyes and can see. This activity helps develop the visual topography of the brain. They suggest that the spontaneous activity in the inner ear may serve a similar developmental function, but further research must investigate this claim.

While Bergles noted that the researchers' results were preliminary, he said they may provide insights into the mechanisms of tinnitus (chronic ringing after auditory trauma) and deafness. Gale explained that studies have already shown how noise trauma causes the release of ATP. Thus, injury to the cochlea could induce the release of ATP and cause the ringing in one's ears.

Research on tinnitus and deafness has largely focused on the central nervous system and the brain, since, for example, soldiers who return from war still experience chronic ringing even after their auditory nerve is severed, Bergles explained. "It's pretty clear that after it becomes full-blown, it must be in the brain," he said, but peripheral cells such as those the study identified may play a greater role than previously supposed.

The study is "essentially opening up a new area, and actually underscoring the importance of cells we normally ignore," said Jones.

Technorati : sensation, sensor, sensory cells

Research : Elevated Nitric Oxide In Blood Is Key To High Altitude Function For Tibetans

Cynthia Beall studies adaptation to high altitudes. (Credit: Image courtesy of Case Western Reserve University)

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How can some people live at high altitudes and thrive while others struggle to obtain enough oxygen to function?

The answer for Tibetans who live at altitudes around 14,000 feet is increased nitric oxide (NO) levels. High levels of NO circulate in various forms in the blood and produce the physiological mechanisms that cause the increased blood flow that maintains oxygen delivery despite hypoxia--low levels of oxygen in the ambient air and the bloodstream.

Researchers from Case Western Reserve University and the Cleveland Clinic report that Tibetans have 10 times more NO and have more than double the forearm blood flow of low-altitude dwellers. The findings from a comparison of NO levels in the high and low altitude dwellers are reported in a recent article.*

The low barometric pressure of high altitudes generally causes low arterial oxygen content among Tibetans, yet the researchers have found that Tibetans consume oxygen at normal rates.

"We asked how that could be done," said Cynthia Beall, the S. Idell Pyle Professor of Anthropology at Case Western Reserve University. For two decades, Beall has been one of the world's leading researchers in the studies of high altitude adaptation in different populations in Ethiopia, South America and Tibet.

Beall collected blood samples and blood flow readings from the forearms of 88 Tibetans during a 2002 research trip that was funded by the National Science Foundation. The blood flow data and blood samples were brought back to the United States where Serpil Erzurum, chair of pathobiology, Cleveland Clinic, and the paper's lead author, analyzed the information. In Erzurum's lab, Allison Janocha, a Case Western Reserve graduate, performed many of the technically challenging analyses.

For comparison, the scientists collected the same information from 50 near sea-level dwellers from the United States who participated in the study at the General Clinical Research Center at the Cleveland Clinic.

The combined increase in NO and blood flow levels resulted in double the amount of oxygen delivered to the capillary beds in the Tibetans' arms.

The researchers hypothesize that Tibetans have a genetic mutation that allows high NO production. Genetic studies and comparable data on sea-level populations living at high altitude would be needed to test that hypothesis, said Beall.

During the study, the researchers also recognized another population difference: Tibetan women were found to have higher nitrite and lower nitrate levels than those of Tibetan men, whereas no gender differences were found in sea-level dwellers.

In this research, blood flow is determined by the length, number and width of the diameter of blood vessels. These numbers are determined partly by NO, which is a dilator of the vessels and prevents high blood pressure, which would result from increased blood flow in restricted blood vessels. NO also helps in the release of oxygen to tissues.

NO reacts in the blood to produce nitrite, nitrate, nitrosothiol proteins and á-nitrosyl hemoglobin, which can be used as indicators of NO production. To confirm the increases in NO, the researchers subjected the Tibetan samples to sensitive high performance liquid chromatography, where the results verified the 10-fold increase of NO in the blood.

This study continues to unravel the mysteries of high altitude adaption and follows Beall's 2001 study, published in Nature, on the NO levels in exhaled breath of Tibetans, which were found to be 25 percent greater than that of local Cleveland residents. There was also a related paper on NO and pulmonary blood flow in 2005 in the Journal of Applied Physiology. Brian Hoit of the department of medicine at the Case Western Reserve School of Medicine was the lead author on that paper.

*"The journal article is "Higher Blood Flow and Circulating NO Products Offset High-altitude Hypoxia among Tibetans," published in the current Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Researchers on the most recent study include Sudhakshina Ghosh, Allison Janocha, Weilin Xu, Dennis Stuehr, and Jesus Tejero from the CCF department of pathobiology; and Selena Bauer, Martin Feelisch, and Nathan Bryan from the Whitaker Cardiovascular Institute in Boston University School of Medicine; and Craig Hemann and Russ Hille from Ohio State University

Technorati : Nitric Oxide In Blood, research

Astronauts Conduct Risky Spacewalk to repair a torn solar array

View NASAtvAstronauts are conducting a risky spacewalk to repair a torn solar array on the International Space Station.

Dr. Scott E. Parazynski, riding on an extension of the station's robotic arm, said that his close-up view of the repair site revealed a "hairball" of wire with guide wire for the array caught up in the wire running through the connecting the panels.

Mission managers knew that wires had become snagged and had torn the array in its deployment, but did not know the nature of the snag and had hoped that it would be as simple as moving a wire off of a hinge. The description by Dr. Parazynski, an astronaut who has been an emergency room physician, confirmed a description from Pamela A. Melroy, the commander of the mission, who was watching from inside the station with binoculars at the beginning of the spacewalk. "It doesn't look like an easy, just rattle-it-and-shake-loose-the-grommet kind of situation," she said.

With the close-up view now available, she said, "Sounds like you have some surgery to do, Dr. Parazynski."

He replied, "I think so."

The spacewalk calls for clearing the snag and using five straps with ends like cufflinks to bind the damaged panels. Dr. Parazynski, a veteran spacewalker on his fifth NASA mission, is working to restore the structural integrity of the 110-foot-long solar "wing" so that it can continue to provide power to the orbital outpost. The first cufflink slid easily into place along the array shortly before 9 a.m.

"That was a beautiful thing to see that cufflink go through the hole," Ms. Melroy said.

"Yes, it was," Dr. Parazynski replied. That strap, 66 inches long, was intended to stabilize the array so that Dr. Parazynski could get down to the work of clearing up the problem with the wires.

With the sun at his back and his shadow stark against the brilliantly lit golden array, Dr. Parazynski began cutting wires after 9:50, cautiously planning each snip in consultation with Ms. Melroy and mission controllers on the ground and keeping clear of the swaying array.

By shortly after 10 a.m., Dr. Parazynski had cut the offending wires and moved on to attaching the remaining four cufflinks.

Mission managers said that while the set-up for the spacewalk was arduous, and involved higher risk and less planning and practice than normally go into such activities, the tasks themselves might be accomplished relatively simply.

"It's a snag clear; it's not rocket science," Dina Contella, the lead spacewalk officer for the mission, said in a briefing on Friday with reporters.

And though concern outside of NASA had run high over the possibility that Dr. Parazynski might suffer electric shocks, perhaps even a fatal one, from the solar array, the mission managers stressed at the Friday news conference that such an event was highly unlikely. Derek Hassmann, the lead flight director for the station, said that an astronaut would have to be touching the array with a metal part of his suit at a point in which the array's insulation had come off, and have another part of the suit touch a different part of the array "in order to complete the circuit," he said.

Still, the list of warnings read to Dr. Parazynski by Paolo Nespoli, who was choreographing the spacewalk from the station, was extensive, and included warnings about touching sharp edges from bolts, solar cells, hinges and other areas of the array. "I'm not sure there's much less to touch," Dr. Parazynski said.

"We're not even halfway through the warnings," Mr. Nespoli said, and went on to warn against touching areas with "pinch points" and high electrical current, which carry a risk of shock and "molten metal."

Col. Douglas H. Wheelock is also taking part in the spacewalk, positioned at the base of the array to provide visual cues to Dr. Parazynski.

If the procedure does not work, the array might have to be jettisoned, and future construction on the station might be constrained by its reduced ability to produce power, especially since the solar arrays on the right-hand side of the station are currently parked because of mechanical problems with the rotary joint that helps point them toward the sun.

Derek Hassmann, the lead flight director for the station, said, "We need to address one of these two problems before we proceed" with further construction missions.

The job puts Dr. Parazynski farther from the safety of the airlock than any astronaut has gone in the history of the space station program. If there are problems - for example, glove damage or a failure of the suit's oxygen supply - returning to safety could take somewhat longer than the 30 minutes that his backup oxygen supply would cover.

Mission managers say they are confident that despite the additional risk, Dr. Parazynski will be safe. Astronauts have covered exposed metal on his suit and tools with insulating tape to prevent arcing. Mr. Hassmann said that the likelihood of risk from shock was extremely small.

"We don't expect there to be any issue," he said.

Technorati : Spacewalk, repair

Analysis Of Solar Wind Helps Illuminate solar System Evolved

Analyzing the mix of hydrogen, oxygen and noble gases found in the sun can answer one of the biggest questions of the universe: How did our solar system evolve? (Credit: iStockphoto/Alexander Hafemann)

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As reservoirs of valuable information go, nothing beats the sun. This sphere of heat and energy holds 99.9 percent of the solar system, saved in all original proportions after planets and meteorites formed. Analyzing the mix of hydrogen, oxygen and noble gases found in the sun can answer one of the biggest questions of the universe: How did our solar system evolve?
Scientists at Washington University in St. Louis and a large team of colleagues marked the beginnings of that odyssey by examining samples of solar wind for neon and argon, two abundant noble gases.

These samples came from NASA's Genesis mission, which launched in 2001, and orbited the sun for more than two years, collecting samples of solar wind. In 2004, the soft landing planned for the craft went wrong and Genesis smashed into the Utah mud, splintering into more than 10,000 pieces. Fortunately, these fragments were large enough to yield highly precise data for neon and argon.

Alex Meshik, Ph.D., lead author and research professor of physics in Arts & Sciences at Washington University, credits mission planners for preparing for every outcome long before launch. At the time, decisions to craft solar wind collection arrays in different thickness in case they were broken on landing likely saved all data.

"The arrays are made of super-pure metals and diamonds deposited on sapphire," Meshik says. "There was no way to mark them otherwise. Now we can take a piece and know which array it came from."

Genesis collected samples by deploying different arrays during three types, or flow regimes, of solar wind: low-speed, high-speed and the spectacular coronal mass ejections. Because solar wind streams at different velocities in different regimes, on-board instruments move the arrays to collect separate data for the different regimes.

The abundances and isotopic composition of the noble gas from the regimes could in turn be used to understand how well the solar wind truly represents solar composition.

Data presented in the Science paper made one thing clear: The isotopic composition of neon and argon in all three regimes were the same. So measuring solar wind means that you are sampling the solar corona, the place at which ions stream out of the sun.

"This is good for future measurements of nitrogen and oxygen and other elements because if it's true for noble gases, it's true for other elements as well," says Meshik.

This work gives scientists who design models of how the solar system formed the actual ground truth, explains Charles Hohenberg, Ph.D., WUSTL professor of physics. Differences in isotopic composition between the planets and the sun tell us about their evolutions. Also, the team's ability to measure neon and argon with high precision helps other Genesis scientists calibrate their data.

Although Washington University scientists won't be measuring oxygen -- a critical element for planetary studies -- their Genesis findings will help scientists make their measurements more accurate.

"There are so many elements that other scientists would like to measure that are very, very difficult to measure because of their low abundance and high potential for contamination," says Hohenberg.

Refining the equipment

Even though WUSTL scientists were able to extract valuable data from Genesis' broken pieces, the work required the design of new equipment and refinement of existing measuring devices. Both Meshik and Hohenberg stressed the team aspect that made and continues to make this project possible.

Five of eight authors on the current Science paper come from Washington University. In addition to Meshik and Hohenberg, fourth-year graduate student Jennifer Mabry, whose Ph.D. research is based on this work; senior research scientist Olga Pravdivtseva, Ph.D.; and Yves Marrocchi, who is now at Nancy-Université in France, worked on all aspects of the project. Also among the co-authors is a former student of Hohenberg's, Chad Olinger, Ph.D., who is at Los Alamos.

Next, WUSTL scientists will measure heavy noble gases from the solar wind samples -- they've already redesigned two new mass spectrometers specially made for this effort. Unlike argon and neon, which are abundant enough for multiple measurements, the rarity of heavy nobles like xenon allow for perhaps only one or two attempts.

The Genesis mission was the first since the Apollo era to bring extraterrestrial material back to Earth, so the team wants the best measurement of the sun's xenon and krypton possible. Therefore, these measurements have been delayed while measurement techniques are optimized.

"If you look at meteorites, the argon that you measure is very close to what you see in the sun. That's not the case for xenon and krypton and that's not the case for the atmosphere. Understanding how those things all fit together is important. Nobody really knows yet," says Hohenberg.

Technorati : solar System, solar power

Sound Training Rewires Dyslexic Children's Brains

Sound Training Rewires Dyslexic Children's Brains For Reading

Some children with dyslexia struggle to read because their brains aren't properly wired to process fast-changing sounds, according to a brain-imaging study published in the journal Restorative Neurology and Neuroscience.. The study found that sound training via computer exercises can literally rewire children's brains, correcting the sound processing problem and improving reading.

According to the study's first author, Nadine Gaab, PhD, of the Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience at Children's Hospital Boston, the finding may someday help clinicians diagnose dyslexia even before reading begins, and suggests new ways of treating dyslexia, such as musical training.

Children with developmental dyslexia confuse letters and syllables when they read. The idea that they may have an underlying problem processing sound was introduced by Paula Tallal, PhD, of Rutgers University in the 1970s, but it has never been tested using brain imaging. Gaab used functional MRI imaging (fMRI) to examine how the brains of 9- to 12-year old children with developmental dyslexia, and normal readers, responded to sounds, both before and after using educational software called Fast ForWord Language, designed in part by Tallal, a co-author on the study.

Gaab first tested how the children's brains responded to two types of sounds: fast-changing and slow-changing. These sounds were not language, but resembled vocal patterns found in speech. As Gaab watched using brain fMRI, the children listened to the sounds through headphones. The fast-changing sounds changed in pitch or other acoustic qualities quickly--over tens of milliseconds--as in normal speech. By contrast, slow-changing sounds changed over only hundreds of milliseconds.

In typical readers, 11 brain areas became more active when the children listened to fast-changing, compared to slow-changing, sounds. Gaab set this as "normal." In dyslexic children, the fast-changing sounds didn't trigger this ramped-up brain activity. Instead, dyslexic children processed the fast-changing sounds as if they were slow-changing--using the same brain areas, at the same lower intensity. "This is obviously wrong," says Gaab.

Infants must correctly process fast-changing sounds, like those within the syllable "ba," in order to learn language and, later, to know what printed letters sound like. Infants use sound processing to grab from speech all the sounds of their native language, then stamp them into their brains, creating a sound map. If they can't analyze fast-changing sounds, their sound map may become confused.

"Children with developmental dyslexia may be living in a world with in-between sounds," says Gaab. "It could be that whenever I tell a dyslexic child 'ga,' they hear a mix of 'ga,' 'ka,' 'ba,' and 'wa'."

Reading trouble may develop when these children first see printed letters, Gaab and cognitive scientists believe, because at this stage, the children's brains wire their internal sound map to letters they see on the page. Linking normal letters to confused sounds may lead to syllable-confused reading.

But the brains of the children with dyslexia changed after completing exercises in a computer program known as Fast ForWord Language (Scientific Learning, Oakland, CA). The exercises involved no reading--only listening to sounds, starting with simple, changing noises, like chirps that swooped up in pitch. The children then had to respond--clicking to indicate, for instance, whether the chirp's pitch went up or down. The sounds played slowly at first--an easy task for the dyslexic children--but gradually sped up, becoming more challenging. The exercises then repeated with increasingly complex sounds: syllables, words, and finally, sentences.

The repetitive exercises appeared to rewire the dyslexic children's brains: after eight weeks of daily sessions--about 60 hours total--their brains responded more like typical readers' when processing fast-changing sounds, and their reading improved. It's unclear, though, whether the improvement lasts beyond a few weeks, since follow-up tests were not done.

Brain imaging study in preschoolers

Gaab has begun recruiting for a new study of preschoolers whose family members have dyslexia. By looking for sound-processing problems on brain fMRI, she hopes to catch dyslexia at an early stage, before the children begin learning to read--and then remediate it through sound training, sparing them from years of frustration and low self-esteem later in life.

She will also investigate what other types of sound training might help dyslexic children. Learning to sing or play an instrument, for example, involves gradual, repetitive, and intense listening and responding to fast-changing sounds.

"We've done a few studies showing that musicians are much better at processing rapidly changing sounds than people without musical training," says Gaab. "If musicians are so much better at these abilities, and you need these abilities to read, why not try musical training with dyslexic children and see if that improves their reading?"

Elise Temple, PhD, of Dartmouth College's Department of Education, was the senior author of the study, which was funded by the Haan Foundation and the M.I.T. Class of 1976 Funds for Dyslexia Research. Fast ForWord Language was developed by Tallal; Michael Merzenich, PhD, of the University of California, San Francisco; William Jenkins, PhD, senior vice president at the Scientific Learning Corporation, and Steve Miller, PhD, of Rutgers University.

Technorati : Brains, Children's, Dyslexic, Rewires, Sound, Training

Astronauts engage in risky spacewalk

Image shows a spacewalker at the end of a 50-foot (17-meter) boom that's attached to the international space station's robotic arm, in position for repairing a damaged solar array. Discovery astronaut Scott Parazynski is due to perform this operation for real on Saturday.

Crew members venture outside space station to attempt dangerous repairs

Hoping to save a ripped space station solar wing, astronauts ventured outside Saturday for one of the most difficult and dangerous spacewalking repairs ever attempted.

NASA officials and the astronauts in orbit worked day and night to plan every detail of the momentous repair mission. The snagged panel must be fixed before space station construction can continue.

"Go out there and fix that thing for us," station commander Peggy Whitson said just before spacewalkers Scott Parazynski and Douglas Wheelock floated out of the hatch.

"We will," Wheelock responded.

The plan calls for perching Parazynski at the end of a 90-foot (27-meter) robotic arm and boom extension for a 45-minute ride to the damage site.

There, he will tinker with what amounts to a damaged electrical generator. The solar panel will be teeming with more than 100 volts of electricity, possibly as much as 160 volts.

To save the solar wing, Parazynski needs to clear whatever snagged the panels and caused the wing to tear in two places while it was being unfurled Tuesday. He will not know what he's up against until he sees the damage up close.

"We've collected a lot of video, a lot of still photography.

But nothing's going to be like the moment when Scott Parazynski actually puts his eyes on this area of interest, on this potential guidewire snarl," flight director Derek Hassmann said Friday.

Structural hazard
As it is now, the wing poses a structural hazard for the international space station. The damage could worsen and the wing could become unstable, possibly forcing NASA to cut it loose and lose a vital power source for future laboratories.

Once Parazynski has cleared the snag -- possibly by moving the guidewire or cutting it and letting it wind up at the base of the tower -- he plans to install several homemade braces so astronauts can deploy the wing to its full 110 feet (33 meters). It is about 75 percent deployed now.

Astronauts made the braces from aluminum sheets and insulated tape aboard the linked shuttle-station complex.

Wheelock will be nearby to guide Parazynski and the astronauts operating the robotic arm. Italian astronaut Paolo Nespoli will choreograph the outing from inside the complex.

It will be Parazynski's fourth spacewalk this mission and the seventh of his 15-year astronaut career.

He and Wheelock will wear partial mittens over their gloves for extra protection. Wheelock pierced the outer layer of a glove near the end of Tuesday's spacewalk, the third time in less than a year that a spacewalker tore a glove on something sharp at the space station.

Technorati : Astronauts, engage, risky, spacewalk

Astronauts engage in risky spacewalk

Image shows a spacewalker at the end of a 50-foot (17-meter) boom that's attached to the international space station's robotic arm, in position for repairing a damaged solar array. Discovery astronaut Scott Parazynski is due to perform this operation for real on Saturday.

Crew members venture outside space station to attempt dangerous repairs

Hoping to save a ripped space station solar wing, astronauts ventured outside Saturday for one of the most difficult and dangerous spacewalking repairs ever attempted.

NASA officials and the astronauts in orbit worked day and night to plan every detail of the momentous repair mission. The snagged panel must be fixed before space station construction can continue.

"Go out there and fix that thing for us," station commander Peggy Whitson said just before spacewalkers Scott Parazynski and Douglas Wheelock floated out of the hatch.

"We will," Wheelock responded.

The plan calls for perching Parazynski at the end of a 90-foot (27-meter) robotic arm and boom extension for a 45-minute ride to the damage site.

There, he will tinker with what amounts to a damaged electrical generator. The solar panel will be teeming with more than 100 volts of electricity, possibly as much as 160 volts.

To save the solar wing, Parazynski needs to clear whatever snagged the panels and caused the wing to tear in two places while it was being unfurled Tuesday. He will not know what he's up against until he sees the damage up close.

"We've collected a lot of video, a lot of still photography.

But nothing's going to be like the moment when Scott Parazynski actually puts his eyes on this area of interest, on this potential guidewire snarl," flight director Derek Hassmann said Friday.

Structural hazard
As it is now, the wing poses a structural hazard for the international space station. The damage could worsen and the wing could become unstable, possibly forcing NASA to cut it loose and lose a vital power source for future laboratories.

Once Parazynski has cleared the snag -- possibly by moving the guidewire or cutting it and letting it wind up at the base of the tower -- he plans to install several homemade braces so astronauts can deploy the wing to its full 110 feet (33 meters). It is about 75 percent deployed now.

Astronauts made the braces from aluminum sheets and insulated tape aboard the linked shuttle-station complex.

Wheelock will be nearby to guide Parazynski and the astronauts operating the robotic arm. Italian astronaut Paolo Nespoli will choreograph the outing from inside the complex.

It will be Parazynski's fourth spacewalk this mission and the seventh of his 15-year astronaut career.

He and Wheelock will wear partial mittens over their gloves for extra protection. Wheelock pierced the outer layer of a glove near the end of Tuesday's spacewalk, the third time in less than a year that a spacewalker tore a glove on something sharp at the space station.

Technorati : Astronauts, engage, risky, spacewalk

Toyota looks to next-generation hybrids evolve, gains grow exclusive

Since he was a teenager, Takeshi Uchiyamada's dream was to make a car. But as he entered his 50s as a Toyota engineer, he had all but given up hope he would ever head a project to develop a model.

In 1994, he finally got his dream. Little did he know that the car he was about to design -- the Prius -- would revolutionize the global auto industry.

Uchiyamada, 61, now executive vice president, was tackling the first mass production gas-electric hybrid, which celebrates its 10th anniversary in December.

With other engineers, he trudged away at 16-hour work days, patiently testing hundreds of engines. Fistfights broke out over what option to take to overcome engineering obstacles.

The Prius was a big step forward for the future of green cars. Up next for Toyota and its rivals: Far more powerful batteries for next-generation hybrids, plug-in electric cars and eventually zero-emission fuel-cell vehicles powered by hydrogen, which combines with oxygen in the air to form water.

In an interview, Uchiyamada recalled the exhaustion, the loneliness and the gambles as his team debunked Toyota's image as a safe and boring imitator of rivals' successes.

Introduced in Japan in December 1997, and the following year in the U.S., the Prius, now in its second generation, gets about 46 miles per gallon switching between a gas engine and electric motor. It has been by far the most successful hybrid, selling a cumulative 829,000 vehicles -- making up for most of Toyota's nearly 1.2 million hybrid sales.

Toyota has gotten a kick from the Prius, an enhanced global image for technological innovation, social responsibility and fashionable glamour, analysts say.

The Prius is also one solid bright spot for Toyota, whose reputation for quality is starting to tarnish as it targets a record of selling 10.4 million vehicles globally in 2009. Meanwhile, its recalls are also ballooning.

But when it all began, Uchiyamada wasn't even thinking hybrids.

Orders from management -- then president Hiroshi Okuda and Shoichiro Toyoda, the company founder's son and chairman -- were ambiguous: Come up with the 21st century car, the vehicle that would hands-down beat the competition in mileage and environmental friendliness.

Uchiyamada initially proposed an advanced gasoline engine that was quickly rejected as lacking imagination. But advanced technologies like fuel cells and the electric vehicle were too expensive for a commercial product.

Creating a hybrid would demand excruciating labor, and management had moved up the deadline to 1997. The engineering obstacles were tremendous, especially the development of the hybrid battery, which must deliver power and recharge in spurts as the car is being driven.

Uchiyamada ditched the usual back-up plans and multiple scenarios, focusing his team on one plan at a time and moving on when each failed.

As Uchiyamada tells it, the Prius wasn't the kind of car Toyota would have ever approved as a project, if standard decision-making had been followed. It was sure to be a money loser for years.

Conventional wisdom was wrong; Toyota's once skeptical rivals are now all busy making hybrids.

The Frankfurt auto show in August had hybrids galore.

Porsche AG showed off a version of its Cayenne sport utility vehicle that is powered by hybrid technology developed with Volkswagen, and BMW pulled back the curtain on its X6, an SUV coupe crossover hybrid.

General Motors Corp., which makes the Saturn Vue, Saturn Aura and Chevrolet Malibu hybrids, is working on a more advanced lithium-ion battery to beat Toyota in the race to bring to market plug-in hybrids, which recharge from a regular home socket. GM has begun production of a two-mode gas-electric hybrid transmission system for the 2008 Chevrolet Tahoe Hybrid and GMC Yukon Hybrid SUVs which uses a computer to choose from thousands of combinations of two electric motors and the gasoline engine.

Ford Motor Co. already has its Escape Hybrid, introduced in 2004, but is working on improved versions. Earlier this year, Ford and Southern California Edison agreed to test rechargeable hybrid vehicles in an effort to speed up their mass production.

Chrysler LLC is debuting a new hybrid system next year on the Chrysler Aspen and Dodge Durango sport utility vehicles.

Hybrids will be among the experimental, or "concept," models from Toyota's rivals on display at the Tokyo Motor Show which opened last week.

Toyota showed a "concept" plug-in Prius made of carbon fiber reinforced plastic that's about a third of the weight of the current Prius and doubles mileage.

Nissan Motor Co. has fallen behind Toyota in hybrids, and is instead focusing on electric cars with plans to mass market them by 2012.

Toyota officials acknowledge Honda Motor Co. is their biggest threat in developing new hybrids. Honda, which already markets the Civic hybrid, is hot on Toyota's heels with a hybrid sports car, a fuel-cell vehicle and other ecological cars.

Automakers worldwide seem to be taking hybrids as a serious option and demand should grow, said Koji Endo, auto analyst with Credit Suisse Japan. He noted interest in hybrids is growing in other parts of the world, such as China, a burgeoning auto market.

Yasuaki Iwamoto, auto analyst with Okasan Securities Co. in Tokyo, says Toyota faces a tough challenge with the next Prius, expected in a few years, with other automakers all hot on its heels.

"The popularity of Toyota's hybrids has been limited so far to the Prius. That means Toyota still has a lot of work to do," he said. "If a car doesn't meet consumer expectations, it won't sell. That's the fate Prius must now shoulder: It can't disappoint fans."

Uchiyamada and Satoshi Ogiso, executive chief engineer working on the next Prius, confidently promise greater things.

The third-generation Prius could include a new lithium-ion battery more advanced than the current nickel-metal hydride battery, allowing more power to be packed into a smaller battery.

But engineers acknowledge that will require a breakthrough in battery technology.

Endo said Toyota must be careful in introducing the lithium-ion battery, which has been found recently to be prone to fires in laptops. Even a single hybrid battery fire could destroy an automaker's reputation, he said.

Uchiyamada denied media reports that problems in developing the lithium-ion battery would delay the new Prius.

Toyota has other options in the works to dramatically boost mileage and performance, so a battery upgrade isn't the only way to revamp the Prius, he said. Toyota recently has begun public road tests on a plug-in hybrid.

Uchiyamada -- who has spent 38 years as an engineer at Toyota -- admits much of Prius' success was sheer luck.

He still remembers the thrill he felt when he saw a Prius on the streets driven not by an engineer, but by a real customer.

Ogiso, 46, agrees. Toyota workers -- who haven't faced massive layoffs like their American counterparts -- are invested in the company's future.

Internet security company confirms finds a new trojan attacking Apple Mac computers with malware

Hackers have launched a rare and troubling attack on Apple Inc.'s computers.

Apple on Thursday confirmed reports of pornography Web sites where hidden software, once downloaded, could take control of an Apple computer. Apple did not immediately respond to claims that it is the first instance of a Trojan horse attack on Apple's Macintosh platform.

"We've been made aware that a small number of Web sites attempt to trick Mac OS X users to install malicious software on their Macs," said Apple spokeswoman Lynn Fox. "Apple has a great track record for keeping Mac OS X users secure, and as always, we encourage people to install software only from trusted sources."

The timing of the Trojan horse suggests there are more to come, say some computer and Internet security professionals. As Apple's popularity rises, "the bad guys are taking Macs seriously now," wrote Bojan Zdrnja, of the Internet Storm Center, which is led by the Escal Institute of Advanced Technologies.

After confirming the claims reported by computer-security firm Intego, Symantec engineer Joji Hamada wrote on Symantec's Web site of suspicions that a wave of attacks and viruses are due. "If we see a rise in Mac malware, then we will have to assume that there are profits to be made in malware for Macs as well," he wrote. "Stay tuned."

Mac is the primary target of a new Trojan malware attacking Apple computers. The fake codec trojan was identified by Intego, a maker of Internet security software for the Mac.

A fake codec pretends to be a free video codec, often posted on a pornography site to fool victims into installing it. It's not a video codec at all, but a piece of malware intended to compromise with the victim's machine. Although there are many Microsoft Windows-based fake-codec Trojans posted

on porn Web sites, Intego's find is genuinely believed to be the first Mac-based fake codec of its type.

Antispyware company Sunbelt Software claims that it is the first fake codec for the Apple Mac. They say that the author of the fake code used social-engineering tactics to get someone to download it. This one changes the desktop DNS to hijack it and redirect the user to various sites.

Trojans typically are harmless but there are ones out there that will hijack and corrupt data files. In some cases, the computer user will have to reinstall their operating system to eliminate the trojan.

Porn sites are notorious for malware campaigns by using trojans to get the pc user to buy something. Professional malware writers are actually paid by companies to create such practices

Technorati : new trojan attacking Apple Mac

Teneo Micro Instruments Launches Low Cost, Precision Microtools for Life Sciences and MEMs Applications

Teneo Micro Instruments LLC, an IP2Biz company, announced the launch of the Teneo TM70xx line of mechanically actuated microtools. The tool set, created by researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology, offers a diversity of tool materials, requires no electrical or thermal power to operate and seamlessly integrates and augments standard microprobe and micromanipulator stations.
Developed from technology licensed exclusively to IP2Biz LLC from the Georgia Tech Research Corporation (GTRC), Teneo's microtools have found immediate acceptance by researchers in life sciences providing acute cellular manipulations, micro-dissection, microscopy sample positioning, cell stimulation and measurement. Additional MEMs applications include micro-assembly, fiber optic positioning, stiction release and MEMs probing. Emerging applications are taking root in semi-conductor probing.

"In the course of our work, we found we needed new tools that didn't exist. So we created them," said Jim Ross, neuroscience / MEMs researcher and Teneo co-founder. "Researchers in MEMs and Life Sciences require tools with simple operation, increased functionality beyond mechanical manipulation, nano-scale resolution and reliability - all at a reasonable cost."

The elegant micro-cam driven design features a broad range of stock and custom tool styles -- straight, serrated, piercing and custom tips. Functional variations include micro-scissors, sensors and electrophysiology tools made of polymers and metals. Flexible in scale, tool sizes range from microns to millimeters and offer superior reliability.

"Teneo's microtools are invaluable providing reliable, hassle-free functionality to meet the diverse application needs in micro-scale development," commented Richard Dickson, President of Signatone Corporation, the worldwide distributor for Teneo Micro Instruments.

Technorati : microtools, nanotech

MIT ,Genetic design competition, nov 3-4

Genetic design competition, coming to MIT November 3 and 4. Over 600 undergraduate students and faculty from around the world are participating in this year's event. The students will be showcasing the final results of their summer research in the world of synthetic biology - cutting edge research that is producing real tools for scientists

for detail

Technorati : Genetic design compitition

Carbon Nanotubes May Lead to Ballistic Protection and Bullet Proof Vests That Bullet Bounce From Leaving No Damage

Most anti-ballistic materials, like bullet-proof jackets and explosion-proof blankets, are currently made of multiple layers of Kevlar, Twaron or Dyneema fibres which stop bullets from penetrating by spreading the bullet's force. Targets can still be left suffering blunt force trauma - perhaps severe bruising or, worse, damage to critical organs.

Bulletproof jackets do not turn security guards, police officers and armed forces into Robocops, repelling the force of bullets in their stride. New research in carbon nanotechnology however could give those in the line of fire materials which can bounce bullets without a trace of damage.
A research paper published in the Institute of Physics' Nanotechnology details how engineers from the Centre for Advanced Materials Technology at the University of Sydney have found a way to use the elasticity of carbon nanotubes to not only stop bullets penetrating material but actually rebound their force.

The elasticity of carbon nanotubes means that blunt force trauma may be avoided and that's why the engineers in Sydney have undertaken experiments to find the optimum point of elasticity for the most effective bullet-bouncing gear.

Prof Liangchi Zhang and Dr Kausala Mylvaganam from the Centre for Advanced Materials Technology in Sydney, said, "By investigating the force-repelling properties of carbon nanotubes and concluding on an optimum design, we may produce far more effective bulletproof materials.

"The dynamic properties of the materials we have found means that a bullet can be repelled with minimum or no damage to the wearer of a bullet proof vest."

Working at the scale of a nanometre (one billionth of a metre), condensed matter physicists engineer structures that manipulate individual atomic and molecular interactions. Working at this microscopic scale allows engineers to design fundamentally different and useful materials.

One of these materials is nanotubes, a one-atom thick sheet of graphite, rolled into a cylinder that is held together by a very strong chemical bond called orbital hybridisation.

Nanotubes bind together into a strong 'rope' because of the Van der Waals force they share. Van der Waals is the weak attraction that molecules have for one another when they are brought close together, used, for example, by geckos when they stick to a ceiling.

Technorati : defence, nanotechnology

Nanotechnology, The new light to Revolutionize Natural Gas Industry

Nanotechnology ,The new light of the various solution has began to shows for future natural gas industry

Researchers from the University of Wyoming in the U.S. say that nanotechnology could present several opportunities for the natural gas industry, but that its use is hindered by lack of innovation in the industry, a perception of high cost, and a lack of awareness about nanotechnology. The researchers say that carbon nanotubes and porous engineered nanomaterials could be used to improve the efficiency of extraction in gas fields and other sources of natural gas. Additionally, they say that other nanomaterials could potentially be used to improve purification and storage of hydrocarbons, as well as for environmental remediation of pollutants.

Nanotechnology could revolutionize the natural gas industry across the whole lifecycle from extraction to pollution reduction or be an enormous missed opportunity, claim two industry experts writing in Inderscience's International Journal of Nanotechnology. They suggest that nanotechnology could help us extract more fuel and feedstock hydrocarbons from dwindling resources. However, industry inertia and a lack of awareness of the benefits could mean a missed opportunity.
According to Saeid Mokhatab and Brian Towler of the Chemical and Petroleum Engineering Department, at the University of Wyoming, in Laramie, there are many opportunities for the industry to exploit nanotechnology. However, there is a traditional lack of innovation in the exploration and production sector, a perception of high costs, new risks, and a general lack of awareness of the benefits of nanotechnology.

The researchers have now described the potential benefits of nanotechnology, which could change that perception. Mokhatab and Towler point out that nanomaterials, such as nanotubes or engineered porous minerals, might be used in the gas field or other source to improve the efficiency of extraction of a wide variety of hydrocarbon fuel compounds and chemical feedstocks.

Similarly, related nanomaterials might be used to improve purification and storage of hydrocarbons, while yet other nanomaterials might be used in environmental remediation, allowing contaminated sites to be cleaned up of harmful pollutants. Nanomaterials might even be developed as corrosion inhibitors for equipment and at the same time, more sophisticated nanotechnology could be developed as solid-state gas sensors for air pollution monitoring.

"The past decade has seen explosive growth worldwide in the synthesis and study of a wide range of nanostructured materials, the building blocks of nanotechnology," the researchers explain, "Investigations of mechanical, chemical, electrical, magnetic, and optical behaviour of nanostructured materials have demonstrated the possibilities to engineer the properties of these new materials for a wide range of applications."

The researchers add that as readily accessible hydrocarbon reserves become depleted, the oil and gas exploration and production industry faces increasing technical challenges. These challenges boil down to increased costs and limitations on drilling and production technologies.

Technorati : Nanotechnology

WARNING : Feds List Chemicals That Can Be Misused

The average chicken farmer does not have enough chemicals to make his farm a terrorist target, but many fertilizer wholesalers and paper mills do - and they'll have to tell the government about it as part of new anti-terrorism measures.

On Friday, the Homeland Security Department plans to release a final list of chemicals that businesses must report to keep dangerous materials out of the hands of terrorists. It's part of new authority Congress gave the department to keep an eye on places where hazardous chemicals are kept.

An original list of 344 chemicals - some with specific weight thresholds - was proposed in April and caused an uproar among businesses that had assumed they would be exempt from such terror-related reporting laws. If a facility has a chemical on the department's list, it has to fill out an online form that the Homeland Security Department will use to decide whether the chemical poses enough of a terrorist risk that the facility's security measures should be regulated.

Many chicken farms, for example, keep more than 7,500 pounds of propane, the threshold on the original list. But a new reporting threshold of 60,000 pounds for propane exempts them.

Colleges and universities that keep chemicals in many of their laboratories were spun up over the proposed list as well. The final list will only affect universities that carry large amounts of a certain chemical and small amounts of chemicals that could be used as weapons.

However, just because a business is required to fill out the government's online questionnaire does not necessarily mean that they'll be regulated by the government, said a Homeland Security official who spoke on the condition of anonymity, because the final list had not yet been published.

"Once we assess that they have large amounts of chemicals of consequence, then what we will do is work with them on a plan so that they can secure a facility," the official said.

The potential to use certain chemicals as weapons is one of the reasons the government came up with the list. For example:

_Hydrogen peroxide, commonly used to bleach paper, can also be used in liquid explosives - the weapon of choice in at least two foiled terror plots. Those plots led to prominent airport security measures, including restrictions on how much liquid passengers can carry on planes and the screening of shoes.

_Ammonium nitrate, used in most fertilizers, has been a main ingredient in bombs used in attacks across the world. The 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, which killed 168 people, involved 2 tons of ammonium nitrate.

_Chlorine, which is generally used as a disinfectant, has been a popular explosive ingredient in attacks in Iraq.

As a result, businesses with more than 500 pounds of chlorine that could potentially be stolen, and businesses with 2,500 pounds of chlorine that could be hazardous if released, will be subject to reporting requirements.

Most businesses with these amounts of chlorine are water treatment facilities or specialty chemical manufacturers, said Scott Jensen, spokesman for the American Chemistry Council, which represents about 90 percent of the nation's chemical makers.

Facilities with at least 2,000 pounds of ammonium nitrate used in fertilizers that could be easily stolen and potentially used to make a bomb must also fill out the online forms. These include producers and wholesalers, according to the Fertilizer Institute, a Washington-based trade group.

And businesses that have hydrogen peroxide at a 35 percent concentration will also be subject to regulations. Many paper mills and water treatment facilities use this grade of hydrogen peroxide, Jensen said.

Dropped from the list entirely were acetone and urea. Acetone is commonly used in nail polish remover, and urea is used in fertilizer.

Technorati : Fertilizer, chemical