Monthly Archives: January 2009

First Internet car radio a hit at consumer electronics show

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German audio equipment maker Blaupunkt and Australia’s miRoamer have teamed up to produce the first Internet car radio, giving drivers access to tens of thousands of Web radio stations.

George Parthimos, chief executive of miRoamer, said the Blaupunkt 600i is the first “purpose-built Internet car radio, where the Internet radio capabilities are an ingredient part of the actual unit itself.”

“It will have everything you’d expect to find in a medium- to high-end radio — AM/FM, CD, MP3 — with the added ingredient of Internet radio,” he said of the device, which was unveiled at the annual Consumer Electronics Show here.

A 3G mobile phone with a data plan is needed to connect the radio to the Internet, Parthimos said, and the company estimates the average user would consume around two gigabytes of data a month.

“It uses Bluetooth connectivity to connect to a cellphone and then the cellphone connects to a cellular network,” he said. “The mobile is purely used to connect to the Internet.

“The actual radio itself is where all your settings and all your user experience happens,” Parthimos said. “As soon as you jump in your car your mobile will automatically synch to the radio itself.”

Parthimos, whose Melbourne-based company is an online aggregator of radio content, said Blaupunkt expects to launch the radio in the second half of the year, initially in the United States and Europe.

“As for in-car installs, we’ve been inundated with a lot of companies who are interested in this,” he said, declining to name the interested automobile manufacturers. “I would imagine that that would probably happen in 2010.”

Parthimos said Blaupunkt expects the radio to cost around 399 dollars.

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New way to repair heart attack damage

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British scientists have developed a stem cell treatment that could dramatically boost the body’s ability to repair itself.

The treatment, which makes the bone marrow release a flood of stem cells into the bloodstream, could heal serious tissue damage caused by heart attacks and even repair broken bones.

Scientists already use stem cell therapy to treat leukemia patients, getting the marrow to release a type of stem cell that can only make fresh blood cells. British researchers said, “They have found a way to get the bone marrow to release two other types of stem cell that can repair bone, blood vessels and cartilage.”

“The bone marrow of treated mice released 100 times as many stem cells, which help to regenerate tissue”, said Sara Rankin who led the research team at Imperial College. “We hope that by releasing extra stem cells, as we were able to do in mice in our study, we could potentially call up extra numbers of whichever stem cells the body needs, in order to boost its ability to mend itself and accelerate the repair process,” she said.

The group hopes to begin trials later this year to investigate how effective it is at repairing tissue damage in rodents. “All the evidence suggests these cells will make a significant difference to the natural repair process,” Rankin said.

Peter Weissberg, medical director at the British Heart Foundation, which co-funded the research along with the Welcome Trust, said: “It now seems increasingly likely that the bone marrow also contains cells that have the capacity to repair damaged internal organs, such as the heart and blood vessels, but that too few of them are released to be effective.”

He further added, “This research has identified some important molecular pathways involved in mobilizing these cells. It may be possible to develop a drug that interacts with these pathways to encourage the right number and type of stem cells to enter the circulation and repair damage to the heart.”

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NVIDIA glasses make home computer screen 3D

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NVIDIA wants zombies to reach right out of videogames and virtually grab players by the throats.

The graphics chip specialty firm is at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas with an affordable way for just that to happen.

NVIDIA has created a kit that turns computer screen images 3D provided machines have GeForce graphics processors and one of the new-generation of high-resolution monitors launched at CES by Samsung, ViewSonic, or Mitsubishi.

“Imagine being home alone in a dark room playing; you turn a corner and zombie arms come out of the screen at you,” said NVIDIA GeForce vice president Ujesh Desai.

“I call that the true pee-your-pants-moment. In shooters you see bullets whizzing past you.”

Desai demonstrated the technology with a chilling bout of zombie hunting in popular videogame “Left 4 Dead.” Ravines looked bottomless. Bridges appeared treacherous and zombies swarmed.

3D Vision for GeForce kits selling for 199 dollars each contain glasses embedded with circuitry and an emitter that wirelessly sends signals from computers to wearers.

Because the technology works with monitors, 2D computer games can be replayed in three dimensions.

“We expect it to make retro-gaming popular again,” Desai said. “It will work with all your old games. Developers don’t have to do anything.”

The kit also makes it possible to see digital movies and pictures in 3D, according to NVIDIA.

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New games powered by brain waves

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:An elderly Chinese woman wearing a headset concentrates intensely on a small foam ball and it begins to rise slowly into the air.

It’s not magic, but rather the latest game from toy maker Mattel, which allows players to move a ball around an obstacle course by using just their powers of concentration.

Focusing on the ball causes a fan in the base of the game — called Mind Flex — to start up and lift the ball on a gentle stream of air. Break your concentration and the ball descends.

Once a player has the ball in the air they need to try to weave it through hoops, towers and other obstacles.

“It’s a mind-eye coordination game,” said Mattel’s Tim Sheridan. “As you relax you’ll find that the ball drops.”

Mind Flex relies on EEG technology to measure brain wave activity through a headset equipped with sensors for the forehead and earlobes.

The game, which will be available in September for 79.99 dollars, is being displayed by Mattel at the annual Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas.

But Mattel is not the only toy maker tapping into the power of the mind.

In a report this week USA Today newspaper said game maker Uncle Milton plans to release a similar game this year. Called “Force Trainer” it is named after “The Force” powers of Yoda and Luke Skywalker in the popular Star Wars films.

The game calls for players to lift a ball inside a transparent tube using their powers of concentration.

“It’s been a fantasy everyone has had, using The Force,” the daily quoted Howard Roffman, president of Lucas Licensing, as saying.

“Force Trainer” also uses electroencephalography, or EEG, to measure electrical activity in the brain recorded on a headset containing sensors.

A company called NeuroSky adapted the EEG technology for both games, according to USA Today.

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Naughtiness at school points to failure in life: study

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Children who badly misbehave in school are likelier to end up with a dud job, poor mental health, teen pregnancy or divorce, according to a British study published on Friday.

The paper, published online by the British Medical Journal (BMJ), provides statistical backing for teachers who sound warnings about anti-social behaviour, its authors say.

It draws on an exceptionally long-term investigation, launched among 3,652 Britons who were born in 1946. With their consent, these volunteers have been monitored at occasional intervals since their birth, filling in questionnaires about their health, family and professional life.

At the ages of 13 and 15, this group was assessed by their teachers, who were asked to grade their behaviour as having severe, mild or no conduct problems.

A total of 9.5 percent of the teenagers were identified as having severe problems; 28.8 percent had mild problems; and 61.7 percent no problems.

Forty years later, the followup inquiry found a clear link between misbehaviour at school and difficulties in adult life.

“Adolescent misconduct might adversely affect developing social behaviours and result in pervasive social and mental health difficulties throughout adult life,” the paper suggests.

Compared with those with no conduct problems at school, those who severely misbehaved were twice as likely to become a parent before the age of 20; likelier to get divorced or have relationship problems with spouses, children or friends; four times likelier to leave school with no qualifications, and twice as likely to be in a manual job or unemployed.

Problems in life also extended, but to a lesser degree, to those with milder forms of misbehaviour.

Males accounted for 62.6 percent of those with severe behavioural problems at school and 54.8 percent of those with mild problems. If the father had a manual job, this too was a major factor among teenagers in these categories.

The study is led by Ian Colman, an assistant professor of public health at the University of Alberta, Canada.

Colman says the study provides a useful guide for focussing resources to help teenagers whose behaviour could prove costly both to themselves in adulthood, and to society.

He admits that the study has some limitations — there are no data to explain why children misbehaved, for instance.

On the other hand, the teachers’ assessment was a good indicator of a child’s risk of delinquency, and a better guide than the parents’ own assessment, he argues.

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Sony making video bifocals and bendable televisions

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Sony chief executive Sir Howard Stringer on Thursday unveiled prototypes of video bifocals and bendable televisions as he kicked off a gadget-rich Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

Stringer, with help from film celebrity Tom Hanks, unveiled the future products after Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) chief Gary Shapiro called on president-elect Barack Obama to support the industry.

“Obama is the first digital president,” Shapiro said while outlining the association’s political agenda.

“We don’t seek a hand-out. We say embrace us. Let us innovate. Let us create. Our economy will flourish. Innovation is the best medicine to end economic stagnation.”

The CEA expects the market for televisions and gadgets to rebound in 2010 after a rocky 2009.

Obama should get more visas issued so US technology firms can import much-needed talent and champion free trade pacts to clear paths for exporting creations, according to Shapiro.

“The need to protect and promote innovation has never been greater,” he said. “In short, do the consumer electronics industry no harm.”

The CES opening presentation veered from political to comic as movie-star Hanks strode on stage and poked fun at Shapiro and Sony before introducing the main act — Stringer.

“Sir Howard Stringer is an old buddy,” Hanks said after joking that the only reason he was there is because Sony studios keeps mandating CES appearances in his movie contracts.

“If Blu-ray works out, he will be known as Lord Howard Stringer,” said Hanks.

Sony Blu-ray technology has been riding high after it won a format war with Toshiba-backed HD-DVD systems a year ago.

Stringer enlisted Hanks to demonstrate video bifocals being developed by Sony.

The glasses enable wearers to observe the world around them while video is streamed on mini-screens crafted into bottom corners of the lenses.

“When wearing these glasses you can actually watch a movie and watch Tom Hanks at the same time,” Stringer said while doing just that.

Hanks tried on a pair and remarked they would benefit from some fine tuning to prevent real-world scenes from blurring as one’s head moves.

“Generally thinking, a plus,” Stringer said after Hanks backed off stage firing quips as he went. “This is the third time I’ve done this, and it may be the last.”

Stringer showed off new Sony gadgets including a Cybershot camera with built-in wireless capabilities that let users upload images to the Internet using “hot spots.”

He also unveiled a picture-frame size “alarm clock” that wakes users with images, music or video of their choosing and then serves up news, weather, sports or other day-starting data from the Internet.

A video replica of London’s famed Big Ben clock tower chimed from the new generation digital alarm clock Stringer had on stage.

“Wouldn’t you like to wake up to Big Ben?” Stringer asked rhetorically before finishing with a quip. “The clock, I mean.”

He treated his audience to a peek at a Flex OLED television so thin and malleable that he was able to bend one while it played a video of singer Beyonce’ performing.

“How many people get the chance to squeeze Beyonce’?” Stringer queried playfully.

Stringer wrapped his presentation with a clip of a 3-D animated movie being made with new Sony cinematic equipment.

“I love this technology,” famed film producer John Lasseter of Pixar said in a cameo appearance on stage with Stringer. “The future of this technology is pretty amazing.

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Two drugs can help in fight against fat: study

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The hormone leptin, combined with one of two US-approved drugs, may suppress appetite in overweight people, making it a potentially powerful weapon in the fight against obesity, according to a study published on Tuesday.

Leptin tells the brain to stop eating once the stomach is full, but fails to work effectively in most obese people, according to the study by researchers at the Harvard Medical School.

The research found that the two drugs — Phenyl Butyric Acid (PBA) and Tauroursodeoxycholic acid (TUDCA) — appeared to act in mice as “leptin sensitizers,” combatting “leptin resistance” in the brain’s hypothalamus. The hypothalamus is the primary brain region that responds to leptin, sending a signal that curbs appetite.

“The results presented in this study provide evidence that chemical chaperones, particularly the PBA and TUDCA, can be used as leptin-sensitizing agents,” said Umut Ozcan, a physician and author of the Harvard study, which appears in the January 7 edition of the journal ‘Cell Metabolism.”

“Normal mice treated with the drugs dropped some weight,” he said. “Our study is the first success in sensitizing obese mice on a high-fat diet to leptin,” he said.

Scientists hope the drugs may enhance the hormone’s ability to trigger feelings of satiation that tell most healthy people when to put down their forks.

“Our results may define a novel treatment option for obesity.” Ozcan said, hailing the results as “very exciting.”

“If it works in humans, it could treat obesity,” he said, while touting the safety and effectiveness of the two drugs.

The two medications are normally used to treat maladies other than obesity, including neurological diseases like Alzheimer’s and Huntington’s.

PBA also often is prescribed to treat liver dysfunction and cystic fibrosis, while TUDCA has been used for centuries in Chinese medicine, and is used to treat liver ailments.

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Sunlight can help children avoid myopia: Aussie researchers

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Spending a couple of hours outdoors each day could help children avoid becoming short-sighted, Australian researchers said Tuesday.

Exposure to bright light for two to three hours daily helps regulate the eye’s growth, dramatically reducing the risk of myopia, an Australian Research Council study found.

Short-sightedness, traditionally a problem among the highly educated, has reached record levels in east Asia, lead researcher Professor Ian Morgan told AFP.

Growing numbers of children in Hong Kong, Taiwan, Japan, Korea and China are struggling with their vision, with up to 90 percent of Singaporeans wearing glasses by the time they leave school, he said.

“That would compare with about 20 percent of Australians. We were quite intrigued by this — that for a country that’s quite well educated we have a serious lack of myopia in Australia,” Morgan said.

A comparative study showed 30 percent of six and seven-year-old Singaporean children had already developed the condition, compared with just 1.3 percent of Australians of the same age.

The figures were similar when contrasting children of Chinese descent from both nations, allowing researchers to eliminate ethnicity as a factor.

The one significant difference between the populations was time spent outdoors — children from Singapore spent an average 30 minutes outside every day, compared with two hours for the average Australian.

Both groups spent about the same amount of time reading, watching television and playing computer games, debunking the theory that flickering screens were ruining children’s eyes, he said.

“There’s a driver for people to become myopic and that’s education,” Morgan said. “And there’s a brake on people becoming myopic and that’s people going outside.”

“What we would suggest is that what’s happened in east Asia is that they have got the balance totally out of kilter.”

The study is part of a long-term project on eyesight at the government-funded council.

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Diamond dust shows comets hit 12,900 years ago: study

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Soil rich in diamond dust discovered across North America reinforces a theory that falling meteors caused the extinction of mammoths and other animals, said a study in the journal Science.

“These discoveries provide strong evidence for a cosmic impact event at approximately 12,900 years ago that would have had enormous environmental consequences for plants, animals and humans across North America,” said Douglas Kennett of the University of Oregon, who led the research.

The findings appear to bolster the theory set out in 2007 that several comets hitting the Earth triggered a 1,300-year-long ice age, causing the extinction of several species of animals and fragmented the prehistoric human Clovis culture.

The Clovis people lived off of hunting and gathering in an area across what is now the United States, Mexico and Central America.

The peak of the Clovis era was from 13,200 to 12,900 years ago and scientists say the Clovis may have entered North America across a land bridge from Siberia.

One of the diamond-rich sediment layers found by the researchers is located directly above Clovis materials at a site in Murray Springs, Arizona, the researchers said.

The nanometer-sized diamonds are produced under high temperatures and high pressure from cosmic impacts that have been found in meteorites.

The sediments full of diamond dust were also found at digs at five other sites, in Bull Creek, Oklahoma; Gainey, Michigan; and Topper, South Carolina in the United States and Lake Hind, Manitoba; and Chobot, Alberta in Canada.

Nanodiamonds can be produced on Earth but only as a result of high-explosive detonations or chemical vaporization.

The study appears in the January 2 edition of the journal Science.

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High fibre diet helps in healthy weight loss

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Whole grains high in fibre help in weight loss and also provide some healthy nutrients to those who diet.

Researchers from Kingston conducted a six-month long study of 180 overweight adults and found that whole-grain cereals helped people lose weight while boosting their consumption of fibre, magnesium and vitamin B-6, Health News reported.

Their intake of these nutrients was higher than that of dieters who cut calories but did not eat whole-grain cereal. The implication is that fibre-rich cereals can help people cut calories while maintaining or improving the quality of their diet.

A problem with cutting out calories or certain foods to shed pounds is that nutrients can be lost from the diet. The current findings suggest that whole-grain cereals can help prevent some of these losses.

The researchers compared three weight-loss strategies: exercise only; exercise plus a reduced-calorie diet that emphasised whole-grain cereals; and exercise plus a low-cal diet that included no cereals.

They randomly assigned 180 overweight, sedentary men and women to one of the three groups. Those in the cereal group were given packets of whole-grain breakfast cereal and were told to eat a serving twice a day for the first half of the study, then once a day for the remaining time.

In the end, both diet groups lost more weight than the exercise-only group, with dieters in each dropping roughly 12 pounds, on average.

But the cereal group cut down on saturated fat to a greater extent and increased their fibre, magnesium and B-6 intake. On the other hand, all three groups were short on calcium and vitamin E.

Many study volunteers who were in the cereal group ate their cereals directly as snacks rather than with milk or yoghurt, because of which their calcium intakes did not increase as much as expected.

Besides having their cereal with milk, dieters can get calcium from foods like green vegetables, almonds and canned fish with bones.

Vitamin E sources include vegetable oils like canola and safflower, some fish, wheat germ, almonds, peanut butter, avocado and mango. Some of these foods, like nuts and oil, are high in calories, so people trying to lose weight will have to exercise portion control.

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