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March 7: 1876 : Alexander Graham Bell patents the telephone

On this day in 1876, 29-year-old Alexander Graham Bell receives a patent for his revolutionary new invention–the telephone.

The Scottish-born Bell worked in London with his father, Melville Bell, who developed Visible Speech, a written system used to teach speaking to the deaf. In the 1870s, the Bells moved to Boston, Massachusetts, where the younger Bell found work as a teacher at the Pemberton Avenue School for the Deaf. He later married one of his students, Mabel Hubbard.

While in Boston, Bell became very interested in the possibility of transmitting speech over wires. Samuel F.B. Morse’s invention of the telegraph in 1843 had made nearly instantaneous communication possible between two distant points. The drawback of the telegraph, however, was that it still required hand-delivery of messages between telegraph stations and recipients, and only one message could be transmitted at a time. Bell wanted to improve on this by creating a “harmonic telegraph,” a device that combined aspects of the telegraph and record player to allow individuals to speak to each other from a distance.

With the help of Thomas A. Watson, a Boston machine shop employee, Bell developed a prototype. In this first telephone, sound waves caused an electric current to vary in intensity and frequency, causing a thin, soft iron plate–called the diaphragm–to vibrate. These vibrations were transferred magnetically to another wire connected to a diaphragm in another, distant instrument. When that diaphragm vibrated, the original sound would be replicated in the ear of the receiving instrument. Three days after filing the patent, the telephone carried its first intelligible message–the famous “Mr. Watson, come here, I need you”–from Bell to his assistant.

Bell’s patent filing beat a similar claim by Elisha Gray by only two hours. Not wanting to be shut out of the communications market, Western Union Telegraph Company employed Gray and fellow inventor Thomas A. Edison to develop their own telephone technology. Bell sued, and the case went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, which upheld Bell’s patent rights. In the years to come, the Bell Company withstood repeated legal challenges to emerge as the massive American Telephone and Telegraph (AT&T) and form the foundation of the modern telecommunications industry.

Sourced and published by Henry Sapiecha 11th March 2010

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TATTOO YOUR CELL PHONE ONTO YOUR SKIN

Sourced and published by Henry Sapiecha 8th Sept 2009

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[VLSI] ‘Digital Rosetta Stone’

Passes Down Cultural Heritage to

Future Generations

Japanese researchers prototyped a memory system that can store large volumes of data for more than a thousand years.

The system, “Digital Rosetta Stone (DRS),” was announced June 16, 2009, by Keio University, Sharp Corp and Kyoto University at the 2009 Symposium on VLSI Circuits, which is taking place in Kyoto, Japan (lecture number: C3-3). They stacked wafers mounted with mask ROM and packaged it with SiO₂. Power supply and signal communication are conducted by wireless.

To store various cultural heritage that has so far been created by mankind as digital information and hand it down to posterity, it is necessary to develop a memory system that can store data for more than a thousand years and has a capacity of 1 Tbit or more and a data access speed of 100Mbps or more, according to the researchers.

In the case of HDDs, data could be lost in four to 40 years due to the influence of magnetic field. And data stored in an optical disc could be lost in 30 to 100 years when affected by oxygen or moisture. On the other hand, semiconductor devices can keep data intact for a thousand years or more if the humidity around the chip is kept at 2% or less.

Thus, the researchers proposed the idea of saving data on the mask ROM with electron-beam direct-writing technology, stocking the wafers and packaging them with SiO₂ to form a “slate.” When a wafer (reader) for reading data is attached to the slate, it becomes possible to supply power and communicate signals by wireless.

If four 15-inch wafers made by using 45nm CMOS technology are stacked, the memory capacity will be 2.5 Tbits.

This time, the researchers utilized 0.18?m CMOS technology and prototyped test chips corresponding to the slate and the reader. The size of the test chips is 5 x 5mm. The diameter of the inductor is 2mm for power supply and 0.4mm for data communication. And the capacity of the mask ROM is 1 Mbit.

They succeeded in providing 56mW power to the slate by four-channel wireless transmission when the distance between the slate and the reader is 0.2mm. By this method, a data transmission speed of 150Mbps can be realized.

• [VLSI] Univ of Tokyo Doubles SSD Random Write Speed
• [VLSI] NEC Develops Technology to Slash Write Current of Embedded MRAM

Sourced and published by Henry Sapiecha 1st July 2009

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GENETICALLY ENGINEERED MONKEY

GLOWS IN THE DARK??

Oregon researchers have created the first genetically modified monkey. ANDi, a playful, coffee-colored rhesus monkey born on October 2nd 2000, has been engineered to carry a gene from another species. The work demonstrates that a foreign gene can be delivered and inserted into a primate chromosome. The researchers anticipate that gene insertions in the monkey will lead to primate models of human diseases—like Alzheimer’s, diabetes, heart disease and obesity—that will offer a more robust testing ground for new drugs, gene therapy and modified stem cells. ANDi (DNA inserted spelled backward) is the first transgenic monkey. “Our ultimate goal is to produce human disease models. Primates show human pathology better than mice, which, in many cases, are the only systems we have for modeling human diseases,” says Anthony Chan, of the Oregon Regional Primate Research Center, in Beaverton. The report is published in this week’s issue of Science. Chan’s goal was to show that a foreign gene can be inserted into a monkey’s chromosome and produce a functional protein. The GFP gene was chosen because the protein it produces emits a fluorescent green glow that can easily be seen through a microscope. Eventually scientists want to insert human disease genes and study disease progression in monkeys, says Chan. Tissue samples taken from ANDi’s cheek, hair, umbilical cord and placenta confirm that the cells contain the GFP gene and corresponding mRNA; the molecule that bridges the gap between DNA and protein. However, when the tissue was examined under the microscope, no green protein could be seen. “Maybe the quantity of protein is too small to be seen or maybe the mRNA is not being translated,” says Chan. The team will continue to monitor ANDi for GFP; Some transgenic animals do not produce any foreign protein until after the first year. (LEFT)Virus particles carrying the GFP gene are injected into the unfertilized egg. The gene (white) is released from the virus and incorporated into the chromosome. (RIGHT)About 6 hours after introducing the virus scientists artificially fertilize the egg by injecting a sperm from a male rhesus. The fertilized egg then begins to grow and divide. Two to three days later when the egg has divided twice and become a four-celled embryo it is implanted into a surrogate mother. Courtesy Oregon Regional Primate Research Cente VIEW THE LINK BELOW FOR MORE

• Introducing ANDi: The first genetically modified monkey
  Oregon researchers have created the first genetically modified monkey. ANDi, a playful, coffee-colored rhesus monkey born on October 2nd 2000, …
  www.genomenewsnetwork.org/articles/01_01/ANDi.shtml
• 
  
• Sourced and published by Henry Sapiecha 29th May 2009
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Scientists create liquid lens on a chip

STATE COLLEGE, Pa. (UPI) — U.S. scientists say they’ve created tunable fluidic micro lenses that can focus light at will while remaining stationary and can be fabricated on a chip.

The Pennsylvania State University research engineers said such fluidic lenses can be used for many applications, such as counting cells, evaluating molecules or creating on-chip optical tweezers. The lenses might also provide imaging in medical devices, eliminating the necessity of moving the tip of a probe, they added.

The researchers, led by Assistant Professor Tony Jun Huang, said conventional, fixed focal length lenses can focus light at only one distance and the entire lens must move to focus on an object or to change the direction of the light. Fluidic lenses, however, can change focal length or direction in less than a second while remaining in the same place.

“We use water and a calcium chloride solution because they are readily available and safe and their optical properties have been well characterized,” said Huang.

The research that included graduate students Sz-Chin Lin, Michael Lapsley, Jinjie Shi, Bala Juluri and Xiaole Mao was reported in a recent issue of the journal Lab on a Chip.

Copyright 2009 by United Press International

Sourced and published by Henry Sapiecha 18th May 2009

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Flesh eating robot on wheels

Chew Chew the gastrobot (Pic: New Scientist)

Related Stories

• Evolution of the shape-shifters,
• Microrobots swim with the tide,

At last, a robot that is powered by food – but watch out, this gastrobot’s ideal food is flesh!

According to this week’s New Scientist, a researcher at the University of South Florida has developed a 12-wheeled monster called Chew Chew, with a microbial fuel cell stomach that uses E. coli bacteria to break down food and convert chemical energy into electricity.

“Turning food into electricity isn’t unique,” says Wilkinson. “What I’ve done is make it small enough to fit into a robot”.

The microbes produce enzymes that break down carbohydrates, releasing electrons which are harnessed to charge a battery by a reduction and oxidation reaction.

Wilkinson says this is analogous to blood supply and respiration in a mammal – but delivering electrons instead of oxygen.

Gastrobot consists of three 1-metre long wheeled wagons complete with pumps for redox solution, battery bank, oesophagus, ultrasonic eyes, mouth, DC motor and E.coli powered stomach.

Unfortunately, the microbial fuel cell doesn’t produce enough power to actually move Chew Chew. Instead, the electricity is used to charge the batteries and only when these are fully charged does can the robot move. When the batteries are drained, the cycle must then be repeated.

According to New Scientist, early applications for gastrobots are likely to include mowing lawns – grazing on grass clippings for fuel.

The ideal fuel in terms of energy gain is meat, says inventor Stuart Wilkinson, but at the moment Chew Chew lives on sugar cubes.

Catching meat would require the robot to produce more energy and besides Wilkinson isn’t so sure it’s good to give gastrobots a taste for meat.

Conversion to eat carion flesh or decaying corpses is another option.

“Otherwise they’ll notice there’s an awful lot of humans running around and try to eat them,” he warns.

Tags: science-and-technology

Sourced and published by Henry Sapiecha 13th May 2009

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Radio waves pick up explosives

New techology is being used to detect explosives, like those in landmines. So fields like this one in the Golan Heights region of Israel may be easier to clear (Image: Reuters/Yonathan Weitzman)

Scientists in Japan are using radio waves rather than x-rays to detect explosives such as TNT in landmines or luggage.

They say their new technique is better than conventional methods of detection and can identify different types of white powder, from flour and salt to drugs and explosives.

The technique can also identify landmines, an improvement from traditional metal detectors that cannot tell bits of metal in the ground from an actual mine.

“Until now it has been very difficult to detect specific explosives such as TNT because they contain atoms of nitrogen that vibrate at very low frequencies,” says Professor Hideo Itozaki at Osaka University, one of the authors of the paper published in the latest issue of the journal Superconductor Science and Technology.

He says the lower this resonant frequency, the harder it is to detect which atoms are present in a molecule. This, in turn, makes it harder to define what the molecule or substance is.

To overcome this, the scientists turned to a technique called nitrogen quadrupole resonance, which uses radio waves to detect atoms of nitrogen in different positions in a molecule.

For example, a nitrogen atom attached to a carbon atom will have a different resonance to one attached to an atom of oxygen.

Because the molecular structure of each explosive is different, the resonant frequency will be different.

The scientists then developed a device to detect these subtle differences in vibrations, a superconducting quantum interference device, or SQUID.

The device, which is only about 1 centimetre across, operates at -196°C, so needs liquid nitrogen to cool it.

“This will not hinder the equipment from being used in places such as airports as liquid nitrogen is becoming much easier to deal with and is already routinely used in hospitals and laboratories,” says Itozaki.

One hitch for now, though, is that the screening time takes “several minutes”, something the team is working to improve.

Sourced and published by Henry Sapiecha 13th May 2009

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Protecting wood without solvent emissions

NEW TREATMENT FOR LOGS A new process to treat timber so that it lasts longer has been developed. Unlike the current Light Organic Solvent Preservative (LOSP) process, the new process doesn’t release organic solvents into the atmosphere. This new process is an alternative to the current LOSP process widely used in Australia to reduce rot and breakdown in timber. Read more on timber protectant technology. Sourced and published by Henry Sapiecha 9th May 2009 New life for African mahogany African mahogany is a high-value hardwood timber species with great potential for forest plantations in northern Australia. A genetic program is underway to provide quality control in the growth of this species. This will result in fast growing trees with good form for logging and ultimately high value use. More information on African mahogany hybrids. Sourced and published by Henry Sapiecha 9th May 2009

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Glaxo’s cervical cancer vaccine

faces US battle

New studies show the vaccine Cervarix blocks the virus that causes cervical cancer, but if it wins approval for U.S. sales, it will face an uphill battle against Gardasil, which has owned the market  for three years.

Cervarix, Glaxo’s vaccine against human papilloma virus or HPV, already is approved in more than 90 other countries, but has been held up by delays in the United States. Several years ago, the British drugmaker was in a neck-and-neck race with rival Merck & Co., Gardasil’s maker, to be first on the U.S. market, but it lost when Gardasil got approved in June 2006.

Late in 2007, U.S. regulators said they wouldn’t approve Cervarix without additional data. from n extensive  study still in progress at the time.

Final results from that 18,000-women study and two others are being presented this weekend at a conference in Sweden on papillomavirus. The data was submitted to the Food and Drug Administration on March 30, and FDA is expected to decide whether to approve Cervarix within several months.

If it does, analyst Erik Gordon, a professor at the University of Michigan‘s Ross School of Business, said doctors who have prescribed Gardasil for a few years may see no reason to switch – unless GlaxoSmithKline convinces them its product is much more effective or has fewer side effects.

Both vaccines target the two types of HPV that cause about 70 percent of cervical cancers, types 16 and 18, and data indicate both are about 98 percent effective. But Merck also has data showing Gardasil blocks two other HPV types that cause most cases of genital warts that Cervarix does not target.

That will be a key factor for doctors, experts said.

“All else being equal, it’s a no-brainer for the doctor, (who) wants to give the most efficacious treatment,” Gordon said.

Despite Merck owning the U.S. market, Gardasil racked up only $262 million in global sales in the most recent quarter, versus $320 million for Cervarix, which has won more contracts from government health programs in other countries.

Partial results of the new Cervarix studies released to The Associated Press indicate it also offers good protection against 12 other HPV types.

One of the studies, which looked at looked at levels of antibodies to some HPV types after study participants were vaccinated with Cervarix or Gardasil, found higher antibody levels induced by Cervarix. But Dr. Gary Dubin, head of one of Glaxo’s clinical development centers, said that doesn’t prove Cervarix is more effective.

New data will be presented at the same conference on Gardasil, indicating it blocks HPV 16 for at least 9 1/2 years, according to Merck. Glaxo has followed women for up to 7 1/2 years and continues to test some to see if they develop cervical lesions or cancer.

Dr. Cynthia Rand, a researcher, pediatrician and associate professor at the University of Rochester Medical School, said Cervarix appears to be effective. But she said the higher antibody levels triggered by Cervarix, compared with Gardasil, might be meaningless. She said doctors don’t know if they will have to give booster shots years from now for either vaccine.

“It won’t change my practice” of giving Gardasil and likely won’t do so for other doctors, said Rand, whose university has patent claims and receives some royalties related to both vaccines. “Pediatricians prefer in general to also protect against genital warts.“

Associated Press

Sourced and published by Henry Sapiecha 9th May 2009

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