HIV STRUCTURE CRACKED USING GPU-BASED STIMULUS

This week, a new paper described
how researchers pieced together
the entire molecular structure of the
protein shell of the HIV virus using
GPU-based simulations. This
remarkable achievement not only
paves the way for new therapeutic
approaches to AIDs, but establishes
GPUs as franchise players in
molecular simulation.

In order to photograph really small
things, like viruses, they need to be
imaged with electrons rather than
light. Even electron microscopy (EM)
has its limits though, and to see the
structure of the proteins that make
up a virus, X-rays are the probe of
choice. While X-ray crystallography
allows researchers to understand
the configuration of an individual
protein, the way those proteins are
assembled to build the virus is still
largely invisible to us. The only way
to get a picture of what might be
going on in this gray area in the
middle is to feed massive computer
simulations with data from both
ends of the process.

To determine the structure of the
HIV protein coat (also know as the
capsid), the researchers ran
simulations at the petascale level
using the Blue Waters
supercomputer at the University of
Illinois. This machine has some 237
Cray XE6 cabinets, and 32 Cray XK7
cabinets utilizing Nvidia Tesla Kepler
GPU computing capability.
At a quadrillion operations per
second, 100 nanoseconds of detailed
molecular motion could be
performed on the 1300 identical
proteins that make up the capsid.
Data was used from an EM imaging
technique known as “cryoelectron
tomography” to determine the
structure of the HIV core. At eight
angstrom resolution, a rough layout
of the overlying capsid shell could
be obtained.

It was already known that the
capsid proteins tend to form
hexamers and pentamers (much like
exterior of a soccer ball or
buckyball). By contrast, the HIV
virion was known to have an
asymmetrical form, and it has also
been established that many viruses
have some variance in the stable
structures they can assume. The
researchers were able to simulate
64 million atoms and determine that
the capsid structure contains 216
hexamers and 12 pentamers.
Molecular dynamics simulations
apply the laws of motions to
individual atoms. They include the
attractive and repulsive
electromagnetic forces which act on
the particle to create their complex
motion. To run the model, space
and time are discretized — split up
into small digital intervals — and the
forces are recalculated each time
the simulation proceeds through the
next iteration.

The researchers adapted an open-
source dynamics package known as
NAMD (Not just Another Molecular
Dynamics program) to run on the
GPU cluster. The code was written
using the Charm++ parallel
programming language known for its
efficiency in simulating millions of
particles together.
The main job of the capsid coat is to
protect the virus when it is between
cell hosts. Once inside a cell, it
needs to be able to flex open to
release the genetic assault
machinery of the virus. Anti-capsid
drugs have been developed for
other viruses but as of yet, none
exist for HIV. Understanding how
the HIV capsid is assembled will
make it easier to develop new drugs
which cause premature opening of
the capsid, or perhaps block its
opening altogether.

RATS HAVE A DOUBLE VIEW OF THE WORLD

Scientists from the Max
Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics
in Tübingen, using miniaturised high-
speed cameras and high-speed
behavioural tracking, discovered that rats
move their eyes in opposite directions in
both the horizontal and the vertical plane
when running around. Each eye moves in
a different direction, depending on the
change in the animal's head position.

An
analysis of both eyes' field of view found
that the eye movements exclude the
possibility that rats fuse the visual
information into a single image like
humans do. Instead, the eyes move in
such a way that enables the space above
them to be permanently in view --
presumably an adaptation to help them
deal with the major threat from
predatory birds that rodents face in their
natural environment.

Like many mammals, rats have their eyes
on the sides of their heads. This gives
them a very wide visual field, useful for
detection of predators. However, three-
dimensional vision requires overlap of the
visual fields of the two eyes. Thus, the
visual system of these animals needs to
meet two conflicting demands at the
same time; on the one hand maximum
surveillance and on the other hand
detailed binocular vision.

The research team from the Max Planck
Institute for Biological Cybernetics have
now, for the first time, observed and
characterised the eye movements of
freely moving rats. They fitted minuscule
cameras weighing only about one gram to
the animals' heads, which could record
the lightning-fast eye movements with
great precision.

The scientists also used
another new method to measure the
position and direction of the head,
enabling them to reconstruct the rats'
exact line of view at any given time.

The Max Planck scientists' findings came
as a complete surprise. Although rats
process visual information from their eyes
through very similar brain pathways to
other mammals, their eyes evidently
move in a totally different way. "Humans
move their eyes in a very stereotypical
way for both counteracting head
movements and searching around. Both
our eyes move together and always
follow the same object. In rats, on the
other hand, the eyes generally move in
opposite directions," explains Jason Kerr
from the Max Planck Institute for
Biological Cybernetics.

In a series of behavioural experiments,
the neurobiologists also discovered that
the eye movements largely depend on
the position of the animal's head. "When
the head points downward, the eyes
move back, away from the tip of the
nose. When the rat lifts its head, the
eyes look forward: cross-eyed, so to
speak. If the animal puts its head on one
side, the eye on the lower side moves up
and the other eye moves down." says
Jason Kerr.

In humans, the direction in which the
eyes look must be precisely aligned,
otherwise an object cannot be fixated. A
deviation measuring less than a single
degree of the field of view is enough to
cause double vision. In rats, the opposing
eye movements between left and right
eye mean that the line of vision varies by
as much as 40 degrees in the horizontal
plane and up to 60 degrees in the vertical
plane. The consequence of these unusual
eye movements is that irrespective of
vigorous head movements in all planes,
the eyes movements always move in such
a way to ensure that the area above the
animal is always in view simultaneously
by both eyes -something that does not
occur in any other region of the rat's
visual field.

These unusual eye movements that rats
possess appear to be the visual system's
way of adapting to the animals' living
conditions, given that they are preyed
upon by numerous species of birds.
Although the observed eye movements
prevent the fusion of the two visual
fields, the scientists postulate that
permanent visibility in the direction of
potential airborne attackers dramatically
increases the animals' chances of survival.

COCKROACHES QUICKLY LOOSE SWEET TOOTH TO SURVIVE

How sweet it isn't: Some cockroaches
evolve to avoid poison in just 5
years

NEW YORK (AP) — People have been
getting rid of cockroaches for decades
by setting out bait mixed with poison.
But in the late 1980s, in an apartment
test kitchen in Florida, something went
very wrong.

A killer product stopped working.
Cockroach populations there kept
rising. Mystified researchers tested
and discarded theory after theory
until they finally hit on the
explanation: In a remarkably rapid
display of evolution at work, many of
the cockroaches had lost their sweet
tooth, rejecting the corn syrup meant
to attract them.

In as little as five years, the sugar-
rejecting trait had become so
widespread that the bait had been
rendered useless.

"Cockroaches are highly adaptive, and
they're doing pretty well in the arms
race with us," said North Carolina
State University entomologist Jules
Silverman, discoverer of the glucose
aversion in that Florida kitchen during
a bait test.
The findings illustrate the evolutionary
prowess that has helped make
cockroaches so hard to stamp out that
it is jokingly suggested they could
survive nuclear war.

In a study published Thursday in the
journal Science, Silverman and other
researchers explain the workings of
the genetic mutation that gave some
roaches a competitive advantage that
enabled them to survive and multiply.
The key is certain neurons that signal
the brain about foods.
In normal cockroaches, glucose excites
neurons that tell the brain "Sweet!" In
the mutant insects, glucose activates
neurons that say "Sweet!" and ones
that say "Yuck!" The "Yuck!" neurons
dampen the signal from the others, so
the brain gets the message the taste is
awful. This unusual nerve activity
appeared in glucose-hating
cockroaches collected from Puerto
Rico as well as descendants of the
Florida insects.

The research focused on the German
cockroach, a small kind that can hitch
a ride into your home in a grocery bag,
not that big lunk known as the
American cockroach. Such finicky
eating habits have also been seen in
these smaller roaches in Southern
California, Cincinnati, Indiana, South
Korea and Russia.

Scientists are now
looking to see if other kinds of
cockroaches show aversion to glucose.
The new work is nifty science. But does
it explain why you can't get rid of the
little buggers in your kitchen?
Probably not, said Coby Schal, another
study author at North Carolina State.

Tests show that the glucose-hating
cockroaches are happy to eat most
types of bait these days, suggesting
that manufacturers have removed the
glucose or masked it, he said. (Bait
ingredients are a trade secret.) What's
more, the researchers found glucose-
hating cockroaches in only seven of 19
populations they sampled from
various locations.
Frankly, if the bait you put out isn't
working, it's probably because you're
using it incorrectly, suggested Schal,
who said he consults to the pesticide
industry free of charge.
Still, he said, the new work has
potential to help many consumers. By
studying how cockroaches evolve to
evade our poisons, scientists may find
clues to designing bait that the pests
cannot resist.

It's not clear when the Florida
cockroaches first encountered bait
with glucose or how quickly they
ditched their taste for the sugar, he
said. But he said it's reasonable to
estimate that it took maybe only five
years for that glucose aversion to
spread to so many cockroaches that
the bait was no longer effective. That's
about 25 generations of German
cockroaches, which can reproduce
about one to three months after
they're born, Schal said.
The glucose aversion may have arisen
in an individual cockroach in response
to bait. Or it may have already been
present in just a few individuals when
the arrival of the bait suddenly gave
them an advantage for surviving and
reproducing. Their offspring would
inherit the trait and increasingly
replace other cockroaches.
Michael Scharf, an entomologist at
Purdue University who studies urban
pests but wasn't involved in the new
work, noted that since the 1950s,
cockroaches have shown they can also
evolve resistance to insecticides. He
agreed the latest results should help
scientists develop better products to
control roaches.

                                     Science Daily

BAYERN VICTORIOUS AT LAST

After so many trials without success, Bayern Munich finally got the golden crown of the UEFA Champions League yesterday, beating their Leagu rival Borrussia Dortmund. Thanks to the late minute goal by Robben

The Dutchman produced an assist and a
dramatic, late deciding goal as Bayern
defeated German rivals Borussia
Dortmund 2-1 at Wembley on Saturday
night.

And having missed a penalty in last
season's final defeat by Chelsea at
Bayern's own Allianz Arena after also
losing the 2010 final to Inter Milan, the
match-winning contribution was
redemption for Robben.
After an enthralling game, he told Sky
Sports: "There are so many emotions,
especially where we came from last year
and such a disappointment.
"The last four years, Bayern have been in
the final three times. It needed to
happen but you still have to do it."
He added: "It is a special feeling. You
cannot describe it. Everything is going
through your mind. It is hard to say but
you do not want to be a loser."

Bayern could now complete an
unprecedented Treble for a German club
if they win their domestic cup final next
weekend.
And Robben has been understandably
impressed by a season in which they blew
away Italian and Spanish champions
Juventus and Barcelona en route to
conquering Europe.

He said of the campaign: "It is already
going into the history books. But also
because of the way we did it. We beat
Juventus twice 2-0 and then Barcelona
4-0 and 3-0."

HARVARD CREATES BEAUTIFUL, SELF+ASSEMBLED MANOFLOWES TO BETTER UNDERSTAND NATURE

Harvard creates beautiful,

The beautiful flowers that you see
above, and dotted throughout the
rest of this story, are around 25
micrometers tall and 10
micrometers wide.  

A strand of
human hair, in comparison, is around
100 micrometers thick. Even more
impressively, these flowers self-
assembled from three normal
chemical compounds. Rather than
just an exercise in aesthetics,
though, scientists hope these
nanoflowers can improve our
scientific understanding of how
immensely complex structures in
nature, such as human embryos,
self-assemble.

To create the flowers, scientists at
Harvard start by dissolving barium
chloride and sodium silicate into a
beaker of water. At the bottom of
the beaker, there’s a glass slide or
metal blade. Then, without any kind
of input from the scientists, carbon
dioxide from the air starts to
dissolve in the clear solution,
starting a reaction that creates
white barium carbonate crystals. As
part of this chemical reaction, an
acid is released into the area
immediately surrounding the barium
carbonate, lowering the local pH and
preventing the creation of more
barium carbonate. The dissolved
sodium silicate, triggered by the
acidic environment, jumps into
action, coating the barium carbonate
with a layer of silica and using up
the acid. The process then starts
again from the beginning.
Now, what the scientists have
discovered, is that the self-assembly
process can be very finely controlled
by varying the concentration of
carbon dioxide, pH of the solution,
and temperature. Increasing the
amount of carbon dioxide, for
example, creates broad-leafed
structures.

By exactly controlling the
environment for a few hours, it’s
possible to build nanoflowers — or
indeed, probably many other shapes
as well. We should probably note at
this point that these pictures are
false-color scanning electron
microscope images; in reality, the
flowers are white. (Though,
considering they’re smaller than the
eye can see, the color probably
doesn’t matter.)

As for why these flowers are
actually an important scientific
breakthrough, you need only look at
nature, where self-assembly rules
supreme. It is due to local chemical
gradients — differences in pH, or
signaling molecules emitted from
living cells — that incredibly
complex structures arise. This
knowledge might allow us to meddle
with existing self-assembled
systems, to create weird and
wonderful Frankensteins, but the
more likely scenario is that we will
use it to inspire our own, human-
made, biomimetic self-assembled
materials. After all, when you’re
working on chips or materials that
have nanometer-scale features, self-
assembly is really the only viable
route towards commercial scale
production.

JUSTIN BIEBER BOOED AT AWARD NIGHT

Justin Bieber was booed at the
Billboard Music Awards, despite
winning two awards and performing
twice.

The "Beauty and the Beat" singer was
accepting the Milestone Award when
the crowd seemed to erupt in boos.
Looking a bit confused, Bieber went on
to assert that he thinks only the "craft"
and his music should be considered,
arguing that "none of the other bull"
mattered. While it's unclear what
Bieber was referencing, he has had a
number of bad public relations
moments as of late, having lost his
temper with the paparazzi in London
and being caught smoking marijuana.

"This is not a gimmick," Bieber said.
"I’m an artist and I should be taken
seriously.”
Bieber beat out a number of other
artists , including Bruno Mars and
Taylor Swift for the award. The
Milestone Award was actually Bieber’s
second trophy of the night. He also
took home “Top Male Artist.”
It's unfortunately not the first time
Bieber has been booed.

He's
previously encountered a similar
reaction at a Canadian Football Game,
a New York Knicks basketball game
and at one of his own concerts , where
he arrived hours late.

Other wild moments from the evening
included Miguel coming up short on a
jump move and landing on an
audience member's neck , Nicki Minaj
giving Lil Wayne a lapdance and
Prince closing out the show with a
killer performance.

             Culled from huffington post

IRON IN EARTH'S INNER CORE BECOMES WEAKER

Researchers have used a
diamond anvil cell to squeeze iron at
pressures as high as 3 million times that
felt at sea level to recreate conditions at
the center of Earth.

The findings could
refine theories of how the planet and its
core evolved.
Through laboratory experiments,
postdoctoral researcher Arianna Gleason,
left, and Wendy Mao, an assistant
professor of geological and environmental
sciences and of photon science,
determined that the iron in Earth's inner
core is about 40 percent as strong as
previously believed.
The massive ball of iron sitting at the
center of Earth is not quite as "rock-solid"
as has been thought, say two Stanford
mineral physicists. By conducting
experiments that simulate the immense
pressures deep in the planet's interior,
the researchers determined that iron in
Earth's inner core is only about 40
percent as strong as previous studies
estimated.

This is the first time scientists have been
able to experimentally measure the
effect of such intense pressure -- as high
as 3 million times the pressure Earth's
atmosphere exerts at sea level -- in a
laboratory. A paper presenting the
results of their study is available online in
Nature Geoscience.
"The strength of iron under these
extreme pressures is startlingly weak,"
said Arianna Gleason, a postdoctoral
researcher in the department of
Geological and Environmental Sciences,
and lead author of the paper. Wendy
Mao, an assistant professor in the
department, is the co-author.
"This strength measurement can help us
understand how the core deforms over
long time scales, which influences how we
think about Earth's evolution and
planetary evolution in general," Gleason
said.
Until now, almost all of what is known
about Earth's inner core came from
studies tracking seismic waves as they
travel from the surface of the planet
through the interior. Those studies have
shown that the travel time through the
inner core isn't the same in every
direction, indicating that the inner core
itself is not uniform. Over time and
subjected to great pressure, the core has
developed a sort of fabric as grains of iron
elongate and align lengthwise in parallel
formations.

The ease and speed with which iron grains
in the inner core can deform and align
would have influenced the evolution of
the early Earth and development of the
geomagnetic field. The field is generated
by the circulation of liquid iron in the
outer core around the solid inner core
and shields Earth from the full intensity of
solar radiation. Without the geomagnetic
field, life -- at least as we know it -- would
not be possible on Earth.
"The development of the inner core
would certainly have some effect on the
geomagnetic field, but just what effect
and the magnitude of the effect, we can't
say," said Mao. "That is very speculative."

Gleason and Mao conducted their
experiments using a diamond anvil cell --
a device that can exert immense pressure
on tiny samples clenched between two
diamonds. They subjected minute
amounts of pure iron to pressures
between 200 and 300 gigapascals
(equivalent to the pressure of 2 million to
3 million Earth atmospheres). Previous
experimental studies were conducted in
the range of only 10 gigapascals.
"We really pushed the limit here in terms
of experimental conditions," Gleason said.
"Pioneering advancements in pressure-
generation techniques and improvements
in detector sensitivity, for example, used
at large X-ray synchrotron facilities, such
as Argonne National Lab, have allowed us
to make these new measurements."
In addition to intense pressures, the
inner core also has extreme
temperatures. The boundary between the
inner and outer core has temperatures
comparable to the surface of the sun.

Simultaneously simulating both the
pressure and temperature at the inner
core isn't yet possible in the laboratory,
though Gleason and Mao are working on
that for future studies. (For this study,
Gleason mathematically extrapolated
from their pressure data to factor in the
effect of temperature.)
Gleason and Mao expect their findings
will help other researchers set more
realistic variables for conducting their own
experiments.
"People modeling the inner core haven't
had many experimental constraints,
because it's so difficult to make
measurements under those conditions,"
Mao said. "There really weren't
constraints on how strong the core was,
so this is really a fundamental new
constraint."

                        Source: Science daily

Women's immune systems remain younger for longer

Women's immune systems remain younger for longer

DIABETES IN MICE REVERSED IN 10 DAYS

Georgia Tech engineers and Emory
University clinicians have successfully
engrafted insulin-producing cells into a
diabetic mouse model, reversing diabetic
symptoms in the animal in as little as 10
days.

The research team engineered a
biomaterial to protect the cluster of
insulin-producing cells -- donor pancreatic
islets -- during injection. The material also
contains proteins to foster blood vessel
formation that allow the cells to
successfully graft, survive and function
within the body.
"It's very promising," said Andrés Garcia,
Georgia Tech professor of mechanical
engineering. "There is a lot of excitement
because not only can we get the islets to
survive and function, but we can also cure
diabetes with fewer islets than are
normally needed."

The research article -- a partnership with
Emory's Dr. Robert Taylor and Dr. Peter
Thule that was funded in part by the
JDRF, the leading global organization
funding Type 1 diabetes research -- will
be published in the June issue of the
journal Biomaterials.
Organizations such as JDRF are dedicated
to finding a cure for Type 1 diabetes, a
chronic disease that occurs when the
pancreas produces little or no insulin, a
hormone that allows the transport of
sugar and other nutrients into tissues
where they are converted to energy
needed for daily life.
Pancreatic islet transplantation re-
emerged as a promising therapy in the
late 1990s. Patients with diabetes
typically find it difficult to comply with
multiple daily insulin injections, which
only partially improve long-term
outcomes. Successful islet transplantation
would remove the need for patients to
administer insulin. While islet
transplantation trials have had some
success, and control of glucose levels is
often improved, diabetic symptoms have
returned in most patients and they have
had to revert to using some insulin.
Unsuccessful transplants can be attributed
to several factors, researchers say. The
current technique of injecting islets
directly into the blood vessels in the liver
causes approximately half of the cells to
die due to exposure to blood clotting
reactions. Also, the islets -- metabolically
active cells that require significant blood
flow -- have problems hooking up to blood
vessels once in the body and die off over
time.

Georgia Tech and Emory researchers
engineered a hydrogel, a material
compatible with biological tissues that is a
promising therapeutic delivery vehicle.
This water-swollen, cross-linked polymer
surrounds the insulin-producing cells and
protects them during injection. The
hydrogel containing the islets was
delivered to a new injection site on the
outside of the small intestine, thus
avoiding direct injection into the blood
stream.
Once in the body, the hydrogel degrades
in a controlled fashion to release a growth
factor protein that promotes blood vessel
formation and connection of the
transplanted islets to these new vessels.
In the study, the blood vessels effectively
grew into the biomaterial and successfully
connected to the insulin-producing cells.
Four weeks after the transplantation,
diabetic mice treated with the hydrogel
had normal glucose levels, and the
delivered islets were alive and
vascularized to the same extent as islets
in a healthy mouse pancreas. The
technique also required fewer islets than
previous transplantation attempts, which
may allow doctors to treat more patients
with limited donor samples.

Currently,
donor cells from two to three cadavers
are needed for one patient.
While the new biomaterial and injection
technique is promising, the study used
genetically identical mice and therefore
did not address immune rejection issues
common to human applications. The
research team has funding from JDRF to
study whether an immune barrier they
created will allow the cells to be accepted
in genetically different mice models. If
successful, the trials could move to larger
animals.
"We broke up our strategy into two
steps," said Garcia, a member of Georgia
Tech's Petit Institute for Bioengineering
and Bioscience. "We have shown that
when delivered in the material we
engineered, the islets will survive and
graft. Now we must address immune
acceptance issues."
Most people with Type 1 diabetes
currently manage their blood glucose
levels with multiple daily insulin injections
or by using an insulin pump. But insulin
therapy has limitations. It requires
careful measurement of blood glucose
levels, accurate dosage calculations and
regular compliance to be effective.

This work was also funded by the
Regenerative Engineering and Medicine
Center at Georgia Tech and Emory, and
the Atlanta Clinical and Translation
Science Institute under PHS grant UL
RR025008 from the Clinical and
Translational Science Award Program.
The Center for Pediatric Healthcare
Technology Innovation at Georgia Tech,
the Department of Veterans Affairs Merit
Review Program and the National
Institutes of Health's National Institute of
Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney
Diseases (Grant R01 DK076801-01)
helped fund the project as well.
For details, click here

WORLD'S FINEST BEARD

Contestants in this year's International
German Beard and Mustache
Championship make Bert Reynold's
iconic 'lip warmer' look like puberty
gone wrong.

On April 27, nearly 100 competitors
went chin-to-chin in the German town
of Pforzheim to showcase some of the
world's finest facial hair for their
annual beard and moustache contest.
The fur-ocious participants competed
in 18 categories, including "Dali-style,"
"Imperial" and "Freestyle." This year's
event marked the 26th year of
competition.
But this tiny German town isn't the
only hub for the hirsute-inclined. In
recent years the trend of 'bearding'
has caught on around the world with
pageant-like championships that
include the European Beard And
Mustache Championship and America's
own East Coast Beard and Mustache
Championship. Details here

WHY FEMALE FLIES EAT UP SPERM

In an odd twist on the dinner date,
some female flies eat sperm—and now
scientists know why.
Female Ulidiid flies (Euxesta bilimeki)
expel and eat ejaculate because it allows
them to decide who will be the best
father of their offspring, a new study says.

Just as lovers, partners, and spouses
frequently exchange gifts and share
meals during courtship and beyond, so do
many animal species.

Usually, the male builds a nest or
provides a food gift for the female, in
order to help convince her that his genes
are high quality and that he would make a
good father. In these cases, the female is
directly choosing her mate, and the
offspring benefit both from the good
genes of the parents and from the food or
housing provided by the male.
But for some species of mammals, birds,
and insects—in which fertilization is
internal—the effects of female choice are
less obvious to the male. In a process
called cryptic female choice, a female can
exert control over her baby daddy by
expelling a male’s sperm after copulation.
This method is especially effective in
species like E. bilimeki, in which the
female can store the male’s sperm before
using it to fertilize her eggs, according to
the study authors.
The Mating Game

Researchers knew that female E.
bilimeki would expel and eat sperm, but
didn’t know why.
To find out, Christian Luis Rodriguez-
Enriquez and colleagues at the Institute
for Ecology in Vera Cruz, Mexico, watched
74 pairs of E. bilimeki court and mate.
They found that all of the females
expelled and ate at least some of the
ejaculate that they’d stored in specialized
sperm-storage organs.

When the team looked closer, they found
that one-quarter of the females purged all
of the ejaculate from their bodies. This
meant that the males with whom they
recently mated would have no chance of
fathering their offspring, according to the
study, published recently in the journal
Behavioral Ecology and Sociology .
Since females mate multiple times, the
amount of ejaculate she expels can help
increase or decrease the likelihood that a
male will be the father of her offspring.
The more sperm she expels, the less
likely the male will pass on his genes.
So what makes an undesirable suitor? A
male fly that’s too aggressive, the study
found: The longer a male pursued a
female before mating made the female
more likely to expel and consume the
ejaculate.

Rodriguez-Enriquez and colleagues
hypothesize that this may be because the
female grows tired of evading the male
and copulates simply to avoid his
amorous pursuits. Expelling the sperm
means that she doesn’t have to worry
about making babies with males who
don’t know the meaning of “back off!”
Plus, she just might get some nutritious
liquid in exchange for her hassle.
Sperm: It’s Not What’s For Dinner

Ulidiid flies live in the deserts of Mexico
and the U.S. Southwest, where water and
food are scarce. That made researchers
initially suspect that the female flies
might be eating the ejaculate for
sustenance.

To test this theory, the team raised
females on one of several different diets:
a very high-quality diet containing
protein, sugar, and water; a high-quality
diet containing sugar and water; water
only; and neither water nor food.
The females that were given no food or
water for two days did live longer if they
consumed expelled sperm after mating,
but this consumption had no effect on the
survival or longevity of the well-fed flies.
But the starved and thirsty flies were no
more likely than the well-fed flies to
consume the ejaculate—showing that
they don’t eat it for food.
Although mysteries remain about the
sperm-eating flies, the results show that
females continue to play a crucial role in
selecting the father of their offspring—
even after mating.

THE FUTURE OF CARS IS AUTO PILOT, NOT SELF DRIVEN

Much ado has been made recently
about Google’s focus on developing
consumer-friendly self-driving cars in
the next five years. Now, Elon Musk
has confirmed that he is interested
in the potential of bringing this
same kind of technology to the
electric cars made by Tesla Motors.

The race is on to see who can bring
self-driving cars to market first.
In a report today from Bloomberg,
Musk says that he has been
discussing the self-driving car
technology with Google, but he has
different opinions about
implementation. Google’s system
relies on expensive LIDAR sensors
to help make steering and braking
decisions, but Musk contends that
using optical cameras is the best
way forward. Either way, it all comes
down to developing extremely
reliable software to parse the data
quickly, and keep the passengers
safe. If Musk and his team can
deliver the goods cheaper and faster
than Google, Tesla could ride this
technology into mainstream
acceptance.

It’s not just the sensors that Musk
doesn’t like; he doesn’t much care
for the phrase “ self-driving car”
either. Instead, he seems to prefer
“autopilot.” While it might seem like
trivial semantics, it does make it
clear that this technology is
intended as a tool for drivers — not
a replacement for drivers. For safety
and liability purposes, a human will
still need to be paying attention
when these cars hit the market.
Don’t expect to be able to play
Draw Something on your phone, or
take a nap on the way to work.
Governments all over the globe are
now tasked with figuring out how
this technology works logistically and
legally, and even big car companies
like Audi and Toyota are getting in
on the land rush .

As it stands now,
Google’s self-driving tests can only
be carried out in three US states,
and there are still mountains of red
tape that needs to be dealt with
before we see self-driving cars
available for the masses. As
enthusiastic as people like Elon
Musk and Google’s Sebastian Thrun
are, this tech is still years, maybe
even decades, away from taking off.
To be clear, Tesla hasn’t announced
anything official quite yet. After the
Bloomberg interview, Musk took to
Twitter to explain himself: “Am a
fan of Larry, Sergey & Google in
general, but self-driving cars
comments to Bloomberg were just
off-the-cuff. No big announcement
here.” Even so, it’s clear that a
company as progressive as Tesla will
want to be on the cutting edge with
self-driving cars. Since Google is
targeting five years, it wouldn’t be a
bit surprising if Tesla is internally
targeting four. That kind of chutzpah
is exactly what we’ve all come to
expect from Elon Musk in all of his
endeavors.

THE TSARNEVS PLANNED A SUICIDE BOMBING ON JULY 4TH.

The surviving brother of the Boston
bombing suspects told interrogators
that the pair considered suicide
attacks and an assault on July 4th , a
law enforcement official told The New
York Times.

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 19, who is
currently in custody and has been
interrogated by the FBI, reportedly
said he and his brother, 26-year-old
Tamerlan, opted for pressure cooker
bombs that they eventually used in the
twin Boston Marathon bombings on
April 15, the official said.
NBC News reports that the bombs
were built inside Tamerlan's house in
Cambridge, Mass., and that since they
were finished faster than anticipated,
the brothers decided to move up the
attack date.

Dzhokhar reportedly admitted to the
newly revealed plots on April 21, two
days after he was captured in
Watertown. He also told interrogators
that he and Tamerlan had watched
sermons of Anwar al-Awlaki online.
The Times reports that there's no
indication the two had been in contact
with Awlaki.
The body of Tamerlan, who was killed
several days after the bombing during
a shootout with police, was claimed by
his family on Thursday .

For details, click here

SCIENTISTS DEVELOP RAT WITH HUMAN BRAIN

To build or repair a car, you
generally need to know a fair bit
more than just how it works. Yet
today we seek to repair brains
ravaged by disease in the absence of any real knowledge about how they work, and only a sparse knowledge of how they are built.

Transplantation of stem cells or
tissues alone is not sufficient to
restore function in diseases or
injury. New neural components —
wetware or hardware — must be
integrated in a way that augments
existing function, and permits them
to successfully compete for resource and control.
What we do know is that the
population of the developing cortex
by its cellular inhabitants is a mass-
migratory event that proceeds with
the utmost of precision.

A recent publication in Cell uncovered a few of the molecular players in this game. The paper sought to reveal how developments ultimately shape
the unique structure of the cortex
through the manipulation of tractile
and tensile forces. In probing these
components, researchers stumbled
upon one that makes a mouse brain turn out decidedly more human in appearance.
Highly convoluted and richly
textured, the exterior surface of the
human brain is instantly
recognizable. Nothing says “what a
marvelous structure” like a deeply-
fissured glob of goo. There are
individual differences, but the basic plan reliably emerges in
development, day in and day out.
With the advent of MRI scanning, we have discovered that, occasionally, people are born with a smooth cortex as a result of certain genetic mutations. For them, severe neurological impairment and early
death are inevitable.

Back in 2003, it was discovered that
the normally smooth cortex of the
mouse could be made to develop
rudimentary folds reminiscent of the brains of larger mammals. These brains did not actually have the deep grooves (known as sulci and gyri) which would be representative of the true folds of a mammalian cortex. The gene that was manipulated to do this is one that regulates cell proliferation. By engineering changes in this gene in mice, the researchers were able to create a thinner cortex of greater surface area, which necessarily kinked throughout its upper surface within its bony confines.

The new research reported in Cell,
builds on the earlier thesis work of
Ron Stahl, who previously
demonstrated that the protein
product of a gene known as TRNP1
programs cells either for continued
multiplication, or to turn into a
mature cell which is done dividing.
Working together with Magdalena
Götz in Munich, they now show how
TRNP1 is involved in the
specification of radial and tangential
expansion of discrete regions of
growing cortex.
They also show that one of the main regulatory points is controlling the number of scaffold cells called radial glial cells. These cells are the among
the first to populate the cortex,
creating, in effect, a rough blueprint for the brain. These cells normally set up an elaborate trusswork upon which neural cells migrate, much like the support lattices frequently installed for growing tomato plants.

To demonstrate these effects, the
researchers used a process called
“electroporation” to introduce
specially-designed RNA into localized
areas of the developing mouse
cortex. Electroporation creates
transient pores into cell membranes
which allow small molecules to
enter. Once inside, the RNA probe
interferes with the production of the
TRNP1 protein. The end result of
this is an increase in the number of
radial glial cells. That leads to more
neuronal migration, and a thicker
cortex which necessarily bulges to
form gyri.
Intriguingly, another effect of the
TRNP1 manipulation was a clear
shift in the number of precursor
cells observed to divide with their
cleavage axis oriented horizontally
to the plane of the cortex. Control
of cleavage axis is a well established
mechanism for cortical specification
which gives the daughter cells a
head start not only in migration
direction, but in selective adherence
to the guiding scaffold.
The researchers also obtained
human tissue samples from
preserved brains dating to weeks
12, 18, and 21, the period of time
during pregnancy when the cells of
the cortex are rapidly dividing.
Consistent with the mouse
experiments, they found that TRNP1
was present at levels that correlated
locally with presence of folds. It is
worth reiterating that there are vast
differences in scale between human
and mouse brains.
Some features of the cortex, like
thickness, are roughly similar at
around 3mm, while others such as
surface area, differ a thousand-fold.

Indeed a single gyrus in a human
brain is comparable in size to the
entire cortex of a mouse. It is
therefore quite remarkable that
similar molecular mechanisms are at play in the development of both.
New functionality has apparently
been introduced to older pathways
that, at least in smooth brains,
formerly had nothing to do with
folding. Much of the phenomena involved in folding are physical. Axons, for example, tug more tightly on regions of the cortex that are the first to mature. The forces that lead to buckling of the cortex are set up by differentially-controlled proliferation and migration of cells which ultimately take orders from molecular cues.

Development in brains eventually
reaches a steady state as many of its programs wind down. Yet, when
viewed under a microscope, the
brain can still be observed to be in a state of constant flux which
recapitulates many of these
developmental processes. As
researchers continue to lay bear the elements that shape this growth, integration of new cells and tissues to augment the brain will proceed much more smoothly.

Developments like this one may
seem out there, and unrelated to
the some of the more practical goals we have for brain research today, but each marks a notable step in understanding how the mammalian brain develops and, ultimately, functions. More specifically, because
we are doing so many studies that
involve putting human cells into
mice for testing, it's important that
we know how the mouse brain
normally develops.

In addition to
shedding light on some new
mechanisms of brain development,
this research also demonstrates how old genes are involved in building new structure in more evolved mammalian brains.

www.extremetech.com

TWINS BORN 87 DAYS APART COULD BREAK GUINESS BOOK OF RECORDS

The story of a set of twins born 87 days apart may now be heading for the record books.

Today, Amy and Katie are adorable
and healthy babies living in Waterford, Ireland, with mother Maria Jones-Elliot, father Chris Elliot and siblings Olivia and Jack, according to the Daily Mirror.

But there was a period when Jones-
Elliot said she wasn't sure of either of her twin daughters would make it.
“The doctors told me there was very
little hope of them surviving as they
were so premature," she told the
Mirror, explaining that her water
broke a mere 23 weeks into her
pregnancy.

Dr. Eddie O'Donnell works at
Waterford Regional Hospital, where
the twins were born, and helped on
their delivery team. "Most people haven't heard of this," O'Donnell told the Belfast Telegraph.
"You can end up losing a twin, it could be stillborn," he said.
Despite the odds, Amy was born on
June 1, 2012. Four months premature, she weighed a little more than one pound.
"Amy was fighting for her life in an
incubator and Katie was struggling to survive in my womb," Jones Elliott told the Mirror. "After hours, Chris and I said, 'Enough is enough. Let nature take its course.' It was the hardest three months of our lives."
Doctors induced Jones-Elliot a second time on Aug. 27, during her 36th week of pregnancy, the Mirror reports.

After about an hour, Katie emerged. "For a baby delivered at 23 weeks to survive, is a huge achievement from everyone’s point of view," Dr. Sam Coulter Smith, chief of Dublin’s Rotunda Hospital and an expert in obstetrics and gynecology, told the Irish Times. "For a 23-week twin to survive is even bigger because twins
often behave more prematurely than singleton babies. That really is right at the absolute border of viability."
Smith added that the doctors who
worked with the family should be
commended for their critical thinking in an unfamiliar situation.

If their claim of 87 days between the birth of their twins is substantiated then they will break the Guinness World Record title for Longest interval between birth of twins. We currently await their evidence."

It would be recalled that the  current record holder is Peggy
Lynn of Huntingdon, Penn. Lynn gave birth to daughter
Hanna and son Eric 84 days apart
between 1995 and 1996.

SMARTPHONE FOR THE BLIND

AHMEDABAD: The world's first
smartphone for blind people is here. Soon, they will be able to read SMSes and emails on this phone, which converts all text into Braille patterns.

"We have created the world's first
Braille smartphone," says its innovator, Sumit Dagar, whose company is being incubated at the Centre for Innovation Incubation and Entrepreneurship , located in IIM Ahmedabad campus.

"This product is based on an
innovative 'touch screen' which is
capable of elevating and depressing the contents it receives to transform
them into 'touchable' patterns," he
says.

Dagar, who is a post-graduate from the
National Institute of Design (NID), says
he was motivated to develop the
device when he realised that so far,
technology was only serving the
mainstream and ignoring the
marginalised. He is collaborating with
IIT Delhi on making the prototype,
which is currently being tested at L V
Prasad Eye Institute in Hyderabad.
"The response during the test has been
immense. It comes out as a companion
more than a phone to the user. We
plan to do more advanced versions of
the phone in the future," Dagar adds.
Dagar started the project three years
ago while studying interaction
designing at NID. After working with a
couple of companies, he gave up his
job to concentrate on his technology,
formed a team of six people and
started his venture, Kriyate Design
Solutions. Currently, the venture is
being funded by Rolex Awards under
its Young Laureates Programme, in
which they select five people from
across the world every two years and fund their projects.

How it works
· The smartphone uses Shape
Memory Alloy technology, based on
the concept that metals remember
their original shapes, i.e. expand and
contract to its original shape after use.
B. The phone's 'screen' has a grid of
pins, which move up and down as per requirement. The grid has a Braille display, where pins come up to represent a character or letter.
C. This screen will be capable of
elevating and depressing the contents
to form patterns in Braille.
D. All other elements are like any other
smartphone.