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Wednesday, February 27, 2013

Now hear this: Researchers identify forerunners of inner-ear cells that enable hearing

Tuesday, February 26, 2013

Researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine have identified a group of progenitor cells in the inner ear that can become the sensory hair cells and adjacent supporting cells that enable hearing. Studying these progenitor cells could someday lead to discoveries that help millions of Americans suffering from hearing loss due to damaged or impaired sensory hair cells.

"It's well known that, in mammals, these specialized sensory cells don't regenerate after damage," said Alan Cheng, MD, assistant professor of otolaryngology. (In contrast, birds and fish are much better equipped: They can regain their sensory cells after trauma caused by noise or certain drugs.) "Identifying the progenitor cells, and the cues that trigger them to become sensory cells, will allow us to better understand not just how the inner ear develops, but also how to devise new ways to treat hearing loss and deafness."

The research will be published online Feb. 26 in Development. Cheng is the senior author. Former medical student Taha Jan, MD, and postdoctoral scholar Renjie Chai, PhD, share lead authorship of the study. Roel Nusse, PhD, a professor of developmental biology, is a co-senior author of the research.

The inner ear is a highly specialized structure for gathering and transmitting vibrations in the air. The auditory compartment, called the cochlea, is a snail-shaped cavity that houses specialized cells with hair-like projections that sense vibration, much like seaweed waving in the ocean current. These hair cells are responsible for both hearing and balance, and are surrounded by supporting cells that are also critical for hearing.

Twenty percent of all Americans, and up to 33 percent of those ages 65-74, suffer from hearing loss. Hearing aids and, in severe cases, cochlear implants can be helpful for many people, but neither address the underlying cause: the loss of hair cells in the inner ear. Cheng and his colleagues identified a class of cells called tympanic border cells that can give rise to hair cells and the cells that support them during a phase of cochlear maturation right after birth.

"Until now, these cells have had no clear function," said Cheng. "We used several techniques to define their behavior in cell culture dishes, as well as in mice. I hope these findings will lead to new areas of research to better understand how our ears develop and perhaps new ways to stimulate the regeneration of sensory cells in the cochlea."

Cheng recently received a grant from the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine to study the limited regeneration of the same sensory hair cells that occur in a different region of the inner ear called the vestibular system, which helps us balance. Lessons learned there may also translate into aid for patients with hearing loss.

Although regeneration of sensory hair cells does not happen naturally, recent research has suggested that the mammalian ear may harbor a sub-population of ? presumably inactive ? progenitor cells. The research team led by Cheng and Nusse used a strain of laboratory mice that allowed the scientists to track the activation of a cell-signaling pathway driven by a protein called Wnt. The Wnt pathway has previously been shown to be involved in many developmental functions, and it drives the renewal and proliferation of many types of stem cells.

"We wanted to investigate the Wnt pathway because of its tremendous influence in the development and regeneration of many other organs," said Cheng.

The researchers found that tympanic border cells, or TBCs, which form a thin layer under the sensory epithelium, are actively dividing in mice during the first three weeks after birth (the time corresponding to about the first trimester of human development, during which the ability to hear is established) and give rise to at least a subset of sensory and non-sensory cells in the ear. They also divided vigorously in isolated cochlea when the Wnt pathway was activated, and stopped when the pathway was inhibited. Finally, the researchers showed that purified TBCs were able to specialize into hair cells and support cells when cultured in a laboratory dish.

"It's surprising to think that these progenitor cells are among this largely underappreciated group of cells," said Cheng. "This study also highlights that, even in mice, there is a lot of maturation occurring after birth as hearing develops. There's clearly a lot more to be understood. Next we'd like to look at these cells in models of hearing loss. Do they have the ability to regenerate? If so, under what conditions?"

###

Paper: http://dev.biologists.org/lookup/doi/10.1242/dev.087528

Stanford University Medical Center: http://med-www.stanford.edu/MedCenter/MedSchool

Thanks to Stanford University Medical Center for this article.

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Source: http://www.labspaces.net/127023/Now_hear_this__Researchers_identify_forerunners_of_inner_ear_cells_that_enable_hearing_

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Lab instruments inside Curiosity eat Mars rock powder

Feb. 25, 2013 ? Two compact laboratories inside NASA's Mars rover Curiosity have ingested portions of the first sample of rock powder ever collected from the interior of a rock on Mars.

Curiosity science team members will use the laboratories to analyze the rock powder in the coming days and weeks.

The rover's Chemistry and Mineralogy (CheMin) and Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) instruments received portions of the sample on Friday and Saturday, Feb. 22 and 23, respectively, and began inspecting the powder.

"Data from the instruments have confirmed the deliveries," said Curiosity Mission Manager Jennifer Trosper of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

The powder comes from Curiosity drilling into rock target "John Klein" on Feb. 8. One or more additional portions from the same initial sample may be delivered to the instruments as analysis proceeds.

During a two-year prime mission, researchers are using Curiosity's 10 science instruments to assess whether the study area in Gale Crater on Mars ever has offered environmental conditions favorable for microbial life.

More information about Curiosity is online at: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/msl , http://www.nasa.gov/msl and http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/ .

You can follow the mission on Facebook at: http://www.facebook.com/marscuriosity and on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/marscuriosity .

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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by NASA/Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

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Disclaimer: Views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/space_time/nasa/~3/TFvKVl-JZCI/130225185603.htm

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Treat malware as biology to know it better - Miles Maddox 95's blog

Hal Hodson, technology reporter

Classifying different kinds of malware is notoriously hard, but crucial if computer defences are to keep up with the ever-evolving ecosystem of malicious programs. Treating computer viruses as biological puzzle could help computer scientists get a better handle on the wide world of malware.?

Ajit Narayanan and Yi Chen at the Auckland University of Technology, New Zealand, converted the signatures of 120 worms and viruses into an amino acid representation. The signatures are more usually presented in hexadecimals - a base-16 numbering system which uses the digits 0 to 9 as well as the letters a to f - but the amino acid "alphabet" is better suited to machine-learning techniques that can analyse a piece of code to figure out whether it matches a known malware signature.

Generally, malware experts identify and calculate the signatures of new malware, but it can be hard for them keep up. While machine learning can help, it is limited because the hexadecimal signatures can be different lengths: Narayanan's team found that using machine learning to help classify the hexadecimal malware signatures resulted in accuracy no better than flipping a coin.

But some techniques used in bioinformatics for comparing amino acid sequences take differing lengths into account. After applying these to malware, Narayanan's average accuracy for classifying the signatures automatically using machine learning rose to 85 per cent.

Biology might help in other ways too. Narayanan notes that if further study shows malware evolution follows some of the same rules as amino acids and proteins, our knowledge of biological systems could be used to help fight it.

Journal reference: arXiv:1302.3668

Source: http://feeds.newscientist.com/c/749/f/10897/s/28ee8ddf/l/0L0Snewscientist0N0Cblogs0Conepercent0C20A130C0A20Cmalware0Ebiology0Bhtml0Dcmpid0FRSS0QNSNS0Q20A120EGLOBAL0Qonline0Enews/story01.htm

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Source: http://milesmaddox.typepad.com/blog/2013/02/treat-malware-as-biology-to-know-it-better.html

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Uncertainty clouds future of Calif nuke plant

LOS ANGELES (AP) ? The mounting bill tied to the shuttered San Onofre nuclear power plant in California jumped to more than $400 million through December, as the company that runs it contends with costly repairs and a host of questions about its future, regulatory filings and officials said Tuesday.

The seaside plant between Los Angeles and San Diego was sidelined in January 2012 after a tiny radiation leak led to the discovery of unusual damage to hundreds of tubes that carry radioactive water inside its steam generators.

Edison International, the parent of operator Southern California Edison, said replacement power cost reached $300 million through Dec. 31, while repairs and inspections hit $102 million.

The figures come as SCE pushes the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for permission to restart one of the twin reactors, Unit 2, and run it at 70 percent power for five months in hopes of ending vibration and friction blamed for tube damage.

Meanwhile, state regulators are determining if ratepayers should be hit with costs tied to the shutdown, the NRC's investigative arm is looking into information Edison provided to the agency on the generators and environmental activists are pressing to have the plant shut down permanently.

"The scope of necessary repairs for the steam generators ... or the length of the units' outages could prove more extensive than is currently estimated," company documents said.

"The cost of such repairs or the substitute market power that must be purchased during the outage could exceed estimates and insurance coverage, or may not be recoverable through regulatory processes or otherwise," Edison added.

Regulatory filings also said SCE's insurance coverage for wildfires that could arise from its operations might not be sufficient.

In a conference call with Wall Street analysts, Edison Chairman Ted Craver said the company hoped the Unit 2 reactor could be online by summer but noted that preparations are being made if that doesn't occur.

"We are convinced it is safe to run the unit," he said.

The NRC Tuesday also released Edison's response to a thorny question on the plant's ability to run safely at full power.

Even though the restart calls for a trial run at reduced power, the NRC staff last year said that operating rules require San Onofre to ensure generator tubes don't break during "the full range of normal operating conditions," including at full power.

That appeared to raise an obstacle to the proposed restart. The NRC said it wanted the company to demonstrate that Unit 2 could meet that threshold, or explain how generator tubes would interact with each other if the plant is operating at maximum capacity.

In a response, the company argued, in essence, that 70 percent is full power for the five-month trial run.

Under its proposal, full power "is 70 percent for the proposed operating period" and meets the federal requirements, the company wrote.

The company said in a statement it will provide additional evaluations next month to demonstrate Unit 2 can run at 100 percent power, even though its restart plan, based on 70 percent power, will remain unchanged.

The NRC has not ruled on that issue.

Daniel Hirsch, a lecturer on nuclear policy at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and a critic of the nuclear power industry, said the response "raises serious questions about the credibility of Edison."

If company officials are preparing an analysis to run at full power "why have they said for months they need to restrict power to 70 percent?" Hirsch asked.

The problems at San Onofre center on steam generators that were installed during a $670 million overhaul in 2009 and 2010. After the plant was shut down, tests found some generator tubes were so badly eroded that they could fail and possibly release radiation, a stunning finding inside the nearly new equipment.

The ability of San Onofre to run safely at lower power ? and whether that limit would require an amendment to its operating license ? came up in December at a hearing of the Atomic Safety and Licensing Board, an arm of the NRC.

Administrative Judge Gary Arnold asked Edison attorney Steve Frantz if he was confident that the plant could operate at 99 percent power with its ailing generators.

"I do not say that," Franz responded. He argued that running at 70 percent power would fall within San Onofre's license and operating rules.

The generators, which resemble massive steel fire hydrants, control heat in the reactors and operate something like a car radiator. At San Onofre, each one stands 65 feet high, weighs 1.3 million pounds and has with 9,727 U-shaped tubes inside, each 0.75 inch in diameter. Hundreds of the tubes have been taken out of service because of damage or as a preventative step.

Craver also disclosed that Edison and the Japan-based company that built the generators, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, are squabbling over the amount of money that could be recovered under warranty.

___

Follow Michael R. Blood at http://twitter.com/MichaelRBloodAP .

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/386c25518f464186bf7a2ac026580ce7/Article_2013-02-26-Nuclear%20Plant%20Problems/id-75878e4c1fcd4251aa85c0911ce87293

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Green Blog: Nature, Re-engineered to Meet Energy Needs

Thousands of inventors, engineers and entrepreneurs gathered in a suburban Washington convention center on Monday for the annual three-day meeting of Arpa-E, the Advanced Research Projects Agency ? Energy. It wasn?t quite the Oscars. At the registration desk, attendees received a goody bag that included a report on clean energy from the Pew Charitable Trusts and a refrigerator magnet that showed the periodic table of the elements.

But the breakout sessions held true to Arpa-E?s tradition: there were lots of swing-for-the-fence ideas. These included finding a high-efficiency, low-cost way to turn surplus natural gas into liquid fuel for cars and trucks, and identifying something to burn other than hydrocarbons so that carbon dioxide is not one of the byproducts.

One researcher proposed burning aluminum instead. One challenge is that the ashes, or oxidized metal, would be hard to recycle back into aluminum without big releases of carbon dioxide.

Arpa-E is the Energy Department?s effort to imitate the better-known Pentagon arm known as the Defense Research Projects Agency, or Darpa. Darpa laid the groundwork for the Internet and still finances high-potential ideas in their early speculative stages in the expectation that a few will be major breakthroughs; Arpa-E tries to do the same in energy.

So far the agency has invested $770 million in 285 projects, ?and we?re proud of every single one of them,?? said Cheryl Martin, the agency?s deputy director, in opening remarks to several thousand attendees. Although most will never be commercialized, the strikeouts are not as important as the home runs.

One particularly ambitious idea presented on Monday was to re-engineer plants so that their leaves reflect rather than absorb more light. In an age of global climate change, with shifting rainfall patterns, changing reflectivity holds appeal. The technology would save water, which means saving energy because the water that the plants need often must be pumped. It could prove a way to help crops grow with less rainfall.

Some of those crops can be used to produce energy as well. And increasing the amount of light that bounces back into space would help to limit global warming.

The notion is that crops will absorb light in the visible spectrum yet reflect some of the infrared and ultraviolet light, which heats the leaves. ?Plants have a maximum efficiency of about 6 percent,?? said Robert Conrado, an agency scientist. And plants regulate their temperature much the way people do, by giving off water, which cools as it evaporates. ?All energy that is not able to be captured is dissipated as heat,?? he said. ?And that?s a lot of water.??

In a hot climate, a cornfield can give off the equivalent of eight inches of rainfall in a month, he said, and agricultural irrigation accounts for 81 percent of water use in this country. The proportion is even higher in poorer places, which have fewer dishwashers and washing machines.

And some of that energy would radiate back into space, reducing global warming, Dr. Conrado said.Whether butterfly wings or fruits, he said, ?nature has already evolved mechanisms for tailored light reflection.?

Source: http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/02/26/re-engineering-nature-to-meet-global-energy-needs/?partner=rss&emc=rss

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Christie signs NJ Internet gambling bill into law - NewsOn6.com ...

By WAYNE PARRY
Associated Press

TRENTON, N.J. (AP) - Get ready for betting in your jammies, at work, from the kitchen table, or at the beach: New Jerseyans - and possibly many others - will soon be able to gamble over the Internet.

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie signed a bill Tuesday legalizing Internet gambling, hours after the state legislature passed a revised bill that made the changes he wanted. They included setting a 10-year trial period for online betting, and raising the taxes on the Atlantic City casinos' online winnings from 10 to 15 percent.

New Jersey became the third state in the nation to legalize gambling over the Internet. The lawmakers' votes and Christie's signature marked the largest expansion of legalized gambling in New Jersey since the first casino began operating in Atlantic City in 1978.

Nevada and Delaware have passed laws legalizing Internet betting, which also is going on offshore, untaxed and unregulated.

"This was a critical decision, and one that I did not make lightly," Christie said. "But with the proper regulatory framework and safeguards that I insisted on including in the bill, I am confident that we are offering a responsible yet exciting option that will make Atlantic City more competitive while also bringing financial benefits to New Jersey as a whole."

The idea is to help the struggling casinos by attracting new gamblers who are not now visiting the casinos. The comps, like free hotel rooms, show tickets, meals or other freebies, would be accrued from online play, but would have to be redeemed in person at a casino, presumably enticing a player to spend more money while there.

Tony Rodio, president of the Casino Association of New Jersey, welcomed the new opportunities for his industry.

"The objectives for the continued stabilization, development and success of Atlantic City that Gov. Christie and our legislature has facilitated over the past couple of years have taken a significant step forward today with the passage of Internet gaming," he said.

The advent of Internet gambling is particularly good news for one of Atlantic City's most struggling casinos, The Atlantic Club Casino Hotel. It is in the process of being bought by the parent company of PokerStars, the world's largest poker web site.

"Our state leaders have stepped up, worked together and seized this moment," said Michael Frawley, the casino's chief operating officer. "New Jersey will be better for it as the benefits of I-gaming for our state are only beginning to be fully appreciated. We strongly believe that the economic development and reinvestment in Atlantic City, driven through I-gaming, will be remembered as a critical turning point for this proud town. We look forward to the renewed success this new law will surely bring."

The state is counting on that success, too. Budget figures released Tuesday by Christie envision contributions to the state's Casino Revenue Fund soaring from $235 million this year to $436 million next year, largely due to an influx of online gambling revenue.

But Donald Weinbaum, executive director of the Council on Compulsive Gambling of New Jersey, worried that expanding gambling options will increase the ranks of the estimated 350,000 New Jerseyans with a gambling problem. He also expressed concern about young, tech-savvy people developing gambling problems from playing online.

The bill will not take effect until the state Division of Gaming Enforcement sets a start date, sometime between three and nine months after the law is signed. Casino executives have estimated it could take six months to a year to get the system up and running.

It would allow the playing online, for money, of any game currently offered by Atlantic City's 12 casinos; online poker is expected to be a particularly popular option.

"I'm sure I'll experience it firsthand," said Jonathan Wanchalk, a Lancaster, Pa., business owner who said he frequently played poker online before a federal crackdown on offshore betting sites. "In college, I played poker a lot. It's basically where all my money came from. Especially with poker, when it was allowed and then it wasn't, I'm as curious as anyone else to see how it plays out."

Gamblers would have to set up online accounts with a particular casino, and could set daily limits on their play.

They also would be subject to the same per-hand limits as gamblers physically present in the casino. Casino executives say final rules have to be approved by the gambling enforcement division, but they expect the state to require gamblers to have to appear in person at a casino to open their accounts and verify their age, identity and other personal information. Payouts could be made remotely to a credit card account or bank account when a player cashes out, if the state approves such an arrangement, the executives said.

They conceivably could even gamble through social media sites, as long as the sites worked with casinos that have an online gambling license, according to state Sen. Raymond Lesniak.

Joe Brennan Jr., director of the Interactive Media Entertainment & Gaming Association, said a new industry is ready to take off.

"We were always confident this day would come, because even after he vetoed the original iGaming bill, Gov. Christie immediately came back to us, to try and find a way to make this happen," Brennan said. "It took a little longer than we expected, but in the end, it was done right, and now it's time for Atlantic City to take this and run with it."

And the Poker Players Alliance hailed the law's enactment.

"New Jersey has gone 'all in,' " said John Pappas, executive director of the group, which claims 1 million members, 20,000 of which live in New Jersey. "Residents now will have access to a safe and regulated online gaming market, and the state will have a new source for revenue and job creation - something the federal government has failed to do thus far."

The bill allows gamblers in other states to place bets in New Jersey as long as regulators determine such activity is not prohibited by federal or any state's law. It even has provisions for allowing people in other countries to play, although federal law would have to be changed before that could happen, Lesniak said.

___

Wayne Parry can be reached at http://twitter.com/WayneParryAC

Source: http://www.newson6.com/story/21390315/christie-signs-nj-internet-gambling-bill-into-law

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