Tag Archives: science & technology

You owe your intelligence to your parents

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A new kind of brain-imaging scanner has shown that intelligence is strongly influenced by the quality of the brain’s axons, or wiring that sends signals throughout the brain.

The faster the signalling, the faster the brain processes information. And since the integrity of the brain’s wiring is influenced by genes, the genes we inherit play a far greater role in intelligence than was previously thought.

Genes appear to influence intelligence by determining how well nerve axons are encased in myelin the fatty sheath of ‘insulation’ that coats our axons and allows for fast signalling bursts in our brains.

The thicker the myelin, the faster the nerve impulses. University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) neurology professor Paul Thompson and colleagues scanned the brains of 23 sets of identical twins and 23 sets of fraternal twins.

Since identical twins share the same genes while fraternal twins share about half their genes, the researchers were able to compare each group to show that myelin integrity was determined genetically in many parts of the brain that are key for intelligence.

These include the parietal lobes, which are responsible for spatial reasoning, visual processing and logic, and the corpus callosum, which pulls together information from both sides of the body.

The researchers used a faster version of a type of scanner called a HARDI (high-angular resolution diffusion imaging) that takes scans of the brain at a much higher resolution than a standard MRI.

While an MRI scan shows the volume of different tissues in the brain by measuring the amount of water present, HARDI tracks how water diffuses through the brain’s white matter – a way to measure the quality of its myelin.

‘HARDI measures water diffusion,’ said Thompson, who is also a member of the UCLA Laboratory of Neuro-Imaging. ‘If the water diffuses rapidly in a specific direction, it tells us that the brain has very fast connections. If it diffuses more broadly, that’s an indication of slower signalling, and lower intelligence.’

‘So it gives us a picture of one’s mental speed,’ he said. ‘The whole point of this research,’ Thompson said, ‘is to give us insight into brain diseases.’

And could this someday lead to a therapy that could make us smarter, enhancing our intelligence? ‘It’s a long way off but within the realm of the possible,’ Thompson said, according to an UCLA release.

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Fashion robot to hit Japan catwalk

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Japanese researchers on Monday showed off a robot that will soon strut her stuff down a Tokyo catwalk.

The girlie-faced humanoid with slightly oversized eyes, a tiny nose and a shoulder length hair-do boasts 42 motion motors programmed to mimic the movements of flesh-and-blood fashion models.

“Hello everybody, I am cybernetic human HRP-4C,” said the futuristic fashionista, opening her media premiere at the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology outside Tokyo.

The fashion-bot is 158 centimetres (five foot two inches) tall, the average height of Japanese women aged 19 to 29, but weighs in at a waif-like 43 kilograms (95 pounds) — including batteries.

She has a manga-inspired human face but a silver metallic body.

“If we had made the robot too similar to a real human, it would have been uncanny,” said one of the inventors, humanoid research leader Shuji Kajita.

“We have deliberately leaned toward an anime style.”

The institute said the robot “has been developed mainly for use in the entertainment industry” but is not for sale at the moment.

Hamming it up before photographers and television crews, the seductive cyborg struck poses, flashed bright smiles and pouted sulkily according to commands transmitted wirelessly from journalists via bluetooth devices.

The performance fell short of flawless when she occasionally mixed up her facial expressions — a mistake the inventors put down to a case of the nerves as a hail of camera shutters confused her sound recognition sensors.

The preview was a warm-up for her appearance at a Tokyo fashion show on March 23.

Like her real-life counterparts, robot model HRP-5C commands a hefty price — the institute said developing her cost more than 200 million yen (two million dollars).

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Bigger waist, greater tax on lungs

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There’s more bad news for people who carry oodles of fat around their waists. Not only is it associated with diabetes, hypertension, and cardiovascular disease and but also with decreased lung function.

The study analysed around 120,000 people from the Paris Investigations Preventives et Cliniques Center, and assessed demographic background, smoking history, alcohol consumption, as well as lung function, including FEV1 (forced expiratory volume in one second) and FVC (forced vital capacity, or the total expiratory volume) with respect to BMI, waistline and other measures of metabolic health.

“After adjustment for age, sex, BMI, smoking status, alcohol consumption, leisure time physical activity and cardiovascular history, metabolic syndrome remained independently associated with lung function impairment,” wrote co-author Natalie Leone, of the French National Institute for Health and Medical Research (FNIHMR).

“We found a positive independent relationship between lung function impairment and metabolic syndrome due mainly to abdominal obesity,” she said. Abdominal obesity was defined as having a waist circumference of greater than 35 inches for women and 40 inches for men, said an FNIHMR release.

“Prospective studies are needed to determine the temporal relationship between lung function impairment and metabolic syndrome, including abdominal adiposity in particular. Mechanistic studies are also required to clarify the underlying physiopathological pathways,” concluded Leone. The results were published in the second issue for March of the American Thoracic Society’s American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine.

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US launches telescope to look for Earth-like planets

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The United States late Friday launched a space telescope whose three-year mission is to find Earth-like planets in the Milky Way galaxy.

The Kepler telescope blasted off from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida, atop a Delta II rocket 10:49 pm (0349 GMT Saturday), according to the US space agency Nasa.

“This mission attempts to answer a question that is as old as time itself — are other planets like ours out there?” said Ed Weiler, associate administrator for Nasa ‘s Science Mission Directorate.

“It’s not just a science mission, it’s an historical mission.”

Kepler will stare at the same spot in space for three and a half years, taking in about 100,000 stars around the Cygnus and Lyra constellations of the Milky Way.

At a cost of nearly 600 million dollars, it will be the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s first mission in search of Earth-like planets orbiting suns similar to ours, at just the right distance and temperature for life-sustaining water to exist.

The telescope will be hunting for relatively small planets that are neither too hot nor too cold, are rocky and have liquid water — essential life-sustaining conditions — explained William Borucki, Kepler’s principal investigator based at Nasa ‘s Ames Research Center in California.

“If we find that many, it certainly will mean that life may well be common throughout our galaxy, that there is an opportunity for life to have a place to evolve,” Borucki said.

Equipped with the largest camera ever launched into space — a 95-megapixel array of charge-coupled devices (CCDs) — the Kepler telescope is able to detect the faint, periodic dimming of stars that planets cause as they pass by.

“If Kepler were to look down at a small town on Earth at night from space, it would be able to detect the dimming of a porch light as somebody passed in front,” according to Kepler project manager James Fanson.

This is no small feat.

“Trying to detect Jupiter-size planets crossing in front of their stars is like trying to measure the effect of a mosquito flying by a car’s headlight,” Fanson said.

“Finding Earth-sized planets is like trying to detect a very tiny flea in that same headlight.”

Kepler’s discoveries “may fundamentally alter humanity’s view of itself,” Jon Morse, astrophysics division director at the Nasa ‘s Washington headquarters, told a press conference last month.

“The planetary census Kepler takes will be very important for understanding the frequency of Earth-size planets in our galaxy and planning future missions that directly detect and characterize such worlds around nearby stars.”

Ever since astronomers first turned their telescopes to the sky, humans have been searching for other planets. But the small size of planets compared to stars has complicated the task. Only eight planets have been found in our solar system — Pluto is now considered a mere planetoid.

Since 1995, some 337 planets have been found orbiting around stars outside our solar system, but they are all bigger than Earth and do not have Earth-like conditions that make life possible.

The French-led COROT satellite, which has been in orbit since 2006, has already discovered the smallest extraterrestrial planet so far. At a little over twice the Earth’s diameter, the planet is very close to its star and very hot, astronomers reported earlier this month.

Astronomer Debra Fischer at San Francisco State University said that Nasa’s mission is a cornerstone in understanding what types of planets are formed around other stars.

Information that Kepler will help compile, she said, “will help us chart a course toward one day imaging a pale blue dot like our planet, orbiting another star in our galaxy.”

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Tokyo Electric to build solar plant in California

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Tokyo Electric Power Co. will build a solar power plant in the US state of California through its subsidiary Eurus Energy Holdings Corp., according to a report.

It plans to begin operations at the 1000 kilowatt plant by 2010 on a site yet to be selected, the Nikkei business daily reported.

Eurus, already engaged in wind power generation in the United States, wants to take advantage of incentives expected to be provided by the new US government to boost solar power generation nationwide, Nikkei said.

Tokyo Electric is one of four Japanese corporate giants moving into the US renewable energy market with solar and wind power technologies, the daily said.

Petroleum wholesaler Showa Shell Sekiyu KK will start selling solar cells in the United States in June at the earliest after establishing a sales network there, the report said.

The unit of Anglo-Dutch giant Royal Dutch Shell will ship cells from a plant now under construction in Miyazaki prefecture, southern Japan.

Sanyo Electric Co. is set to expand the solar cell production capacity of its Mexican plant, which assembles products for the North American market, by 150 percent to 50,000 kilowatts, the daily said.

In anticipation of growing US demand, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd. will raise its domestic production capacity for wind turbines by about 30 percent to 1.6 million kilowatts possibly by March 2010, Nikkei said.

The 787-billion-dollar US economic stimulus package, which was passed on Tuesday, earmarks 38 billion dollars for investments in the environmental and energy sectors.

It also provides 20 billion dollars in tax incentives to spur private-sector investment in this area.

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Scientists close in on ‘universal’ vaccine for flu: study

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Scientists on Sunday unveiled lab-made human antibodies that can disable several types of influenza, including highly-lethal H5N1 bird flu and the “Spanish Flu” strain that killed tens of millions in 1918.

Tested in mice, the antibodies work by binding to a previously obscure structure in the flu virus which, when blocked, sabotages the pathogen’s ability to enter the cell it is trying to infect, according to the study.

Because this structure – described by one scientist as a “viral Achilles’ heel” – is genetically stable and has resisted mutation over time, the antibodies are effective against many different strains.

The breakthrough “holds considerable promise for further development into a medical tool to treat and prevent seasonal as well as pandemic influenza,” said Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, which helped fund the study.

Clinical trials on humans could begin within a couple of years, the researchers said. Seasonal flu kills more than 250,000 people every year, and pandemic flu, which occurs with the emergence of deadly viral y, remains an ever-present threat.

Vaccines have long been the first line of defence against flu, but even seasonal viruses evolve so rapidly that the vaccines need to be updated every year. Even then, they are not always effective.

A team led by Wayne Marasco, a professor at Harvard Medical School, began the study by scanning tens of billions of so-called monoclonal antibodies in the laboratory.

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Wheat gene found to overcome fungal disease

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An international research team has discovered a gene to make wheat resistance to a fungal disease responsible for millions of (acres) hectares of lost crops worldwide, according to a study published Thursday.

“This is the first step to achieving more durable resistance to a devastating disease in wheat,” said Cristobal Uauy, co-author of the report, which was lead by researchers in Great Britain, United States and Israel.

Researchers had previously engineered wheat strains to be resistant against “stripe rust” disease, but it has enjoyed limited durability in practice because the fungus Puccinia striiformis had always “mutated to overcome them,” according to the study authors.

But the new gene found in wild wheat overcomes this problem, said researchers, whose work is published in the US journal Science.

“This gene makes wheat more resistant to all stripe rust fungus races tested so far,” said Uauy, who works at the John Innes Centre in Norwich, England.

Common wheat provides some 20 percent of the calories eaten by all of humanity, said the study authors.

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Mobile phones aim to be a ‘doctor in your pocket’

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Not content with offering calls, texts and Internet access, the mobile phone industry is convinced it can help save lives and offer health services to millions worldwide.

The idea of a phone serving as a “doctor in your pocket” has gained traction at the industry’s biggest trade show, the Mobile World Congress, in Barcelona.

Among a slew of possible applications in poor countries, insiders stressed the potential for the mobile phone to remind people to get vaccinations, take medicine, or undergo HIV tests.

Doctors and nurses working at distance from hospitals or clinics can also use mobile connections to relay information on local patients or report disease outbreaks.

“When you consider that there are 2.2 billion mobile phones in the developing world, 305 million computers but only 11 million hospital beds you can instantly see how mobiles can creat effective solutions to address healthcare challenges,” said Terry Kramer, strategy director at British operator Vodafone.

The Rockefeller Foundation, the UN Foundation and The Vodafone Foundation announced the Mobile Health (mHealth) Alliance this week, a partnership to advance the use of mobile technology in healthcare.

The UN and Vodafone also released a study, “mHealth for Development: The Opportunity of Mobile Technology for Healthcare in the Developing World,” detailing 51 programmes in 26 countries.

The biggest adopters are India with 11 projects and South Africa and Uganda with six each.

“Innovative technology could reduce the pressure on public healthcare systems,” Daniel Carucci, vice-president of health at the UN Foundation, told delagates here.

In Uganda, for example, a multiple choice quiz about HIV/AIDS was sent to 15,000 subscribers on the Celtel network in a rural region, inviting them to answer questions and seek tests.

Users who completed the quiz were given free airtime and each time they answered a question wrong they received a message informing them of the correct response.

At the end of the quiz, a final SMS was sent to motivate participants to go for voluntary testing and counseling at a local health centre.

Slightly less than one in five responded and the number of people who went for testing at the centre increased from 1,000 to 1,400 during a six-week period, the report said.

In another example given in the report, health workers in the Amazonas state of Brazil began filling in surveys last October on their mobile phones on incidences of the mosquito-borne dengue fever.

“The devices are providing us with precision (and) the information we need to develop (effective responses) in the areas where the infection levels are high,” Luzia de Melo Mustafa, an Amazonas health agent is quoted as saying.

In Mexico, a medical hotline called MedicallHome was launched in 1998 to provide for people without access to a doctor. They can ring or send an SMS to ask for advice.

“Sixty percent of the time, you can replace the doctor,” Pedro Yrigoyen, co-founder of MedicallHome told delegates here, highlighting the fact that mobile phones outnumber fixed lines in Mexico by five-to-one.

“Public healthcare is overwhelmed… people wait for hours just to see the doctor.”

Elizabeth Boehm, an analyst at research group Forrester, sees the potential

for mobile phones to help in public health information campaigns, but also points out limitations.

“One of the main challenges, in mobile health, is that people who are most in need of healthcare are usually more aged, so they don’t use the mobile or they’re not comfortable with it,” she told AFP.

In the developed world, researchers are also looking for ways to harness mobile technology.

In several countries, diabetes sufferers can measure their blood sugar level with a device connected to a mobile phone which sends the data to doctors to verify.

Other applications are seen for monitoring people with heart problems or Alzheimer’s disease.

In the United States, a service called “Foodphone” enables a user to take a photo of his or her food before a meal and send it to an expert who replies with information about the nutritional value.

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Gum disease feared to trigger full-blown AIDS: Japan study

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An acid produced in the mouth due to gum disease invigorates the virus that can lead to full-blown AIDS, a Japanese researcher said Thursday, billing the finding as a world first.

A group of bacteria causes periodontal disease — a chronic inflammation that erodes bony structure in the gum — posing a threat to the teeth and the entire body, the researcher said.

“They produce a large amount of butyric acid, which smells like socks you wore for a long time,” said Kuniyasu Ochiai, professor who chairs the Microbiology Department at Tokyo-based Nihon University.

The acid, which can also exist in rancid butter, hinders a kind of enzyme called HDAC that blocks HIV from proliferating, Ochiai told AFP.

In-vitro experiments have shown that the virus in two kinds of cells related to the immune system rapidly proliferates after given culture fluid containing the gum disease-causing bacteria and butyric acid they produced, he said.

“Serious periodontal disease could lead to the development (of AIDS) among HIV-positive people… although the probability largely depends on individual physical strength,” Ochiai said.

“There are fears that even those whose were unaware that they had contracted HIV could develop the epidemic once they have periodontal disease,” he said, underscoring the importance of oral health care.

Previous research has shown that gum disease is linked to diabetes and heart disease but it is the world’s first finding that it activates HIV, Ochiai said.

The study will be published in the March issue of the US monthly Journal of Immunology, he said.

The research team also plans to confirm the finding in tests on animals, he said.

The study has been led by Ochiai as well as Takashi Okamoto, molecular biology professor at Nagoya City University in central Japan and research assistant Kenichi Imai there.

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