Not too long from now, a sensuously curved sports car designed by a German and made with American parts will roll off an assembly line in Finland and quietly mark the first clear break from our century-old dependence on crude oil for transportation.
Many a dreamer has attempted to create a serious, reasonably priced automobile that sidesteps oil and gas as an energy source, but all have flopped and sent investors straight to the poorhouse. Yet this one really has a shot at success, not just as a science experiment but as a commercial endeavor that could provide the first independent rival to the big international automakers in decades.
The new vehicle, the Fisker Karma, is the result of a marriage of convenience between art and commerce -- the love child of idealistic former BMW designer Henrik Fisker and Silicon Valley venture capitalists eager to make a smart, early bet on alternative energy.
Friday, August 29, 2008
Tuesday, August 26, 2008
Sunday, August 17, 2008
new Alzheimer's drug
CHICAGO - For the first time, an experimental drug shows promise for halting the progression of Alzheimer’s disease by taking a new approach: breaking up the protein tangles that clog victims’ brains.
The encouraging results from the drug called Rember, reported Tuesday at a medical conference in Chicago, electrified a field battered by recent setbacks. The drug was developed by Singapore-based TauRx Therapeutics.
“These are the first very positive results I’ve seen” for stopping mental decline, said Marcelle Morrison-Bogorad, director of Alzheimer’s research at the National Institute on Aging. “It’s just fantastic.”
The federal agency funded early research into the tangles, which are made of a protein called tau and develop inside nerve cells.
For decades, scientists have focused on a different protein — beta-amyloid, which forms sticky clumps outside of the cells — but have yet to get a workable treatment.
TauRx’s chief is Claude Wischik, a biologist at the University of Aberdeen in Scotland who long has done key research on tau tangles and studies suggesting that Rember can dissolve them.
In the study, 321 patients were given one of three doses of Rember or dummy capsules three times a day. The capsules containing the highest dose had a flaw in formulation that kept them from working, and the lowest dose was too weak to keep the disease from worsening, Wischik said.
However, the middle dose helped, as measured by a widely used score of mental performance.
“The people on placebo lost an average of 7 percent of their brain function over six months whereas those on treatment didn’t decline at all,” he said.
After about a year, the placebo group had continued to decline but those on the mid-level dose of Rember had not. At 19 months, the treated group still had not declined as Alzheimer’s patients have been known to do.
The encouraging results from the drug called Rember, reported Tuesday at a medical conference in Chicago, electrified a field battered by recent setbacks. The drug was developed by Singapore-based TauRx Therapeutics.
“These are the first very positive results I’ve seen” for stopping mental decline, said Marcelle Morrison-Bogorad, director of Alzheimer’s research at the National Institute on Aging. “It’s just fantastic.”
The federal agency funded early research into the tangles, which are made of a protein called tau and develop inside nerve cells.
For decades, scientists have focused on a different protein — beta-amyloid, which forms sticky clumps outside of the cells — but have yet to get a workable treatment.
TauRx’s chief is Claude Wischik, a biologist at the University of Aberdeen in Scotland who long has done key research on tau tangles and studies suggesting that Rember can dissolve them.
In the study, 321 patients were given one of three doses of Rember or dummy capsules three times a day. The capsules containing the highest dose had a flaw in formulation that kept them from working, and the lowest dose was too weak to keep the disease from worsening, Wischik said.
However, the middle dose helped, as measured by a widely used score of mental performance.
“The people on placebo lost an average of 7 percent of their brain function over six months whereas those on treatment didn’t decline at all,” he said.
After about a year, the placebo group had continued to decline but those on the mid-level dose of Rember had not. At 19 months, the treated group still had not declined as Alzheimer’s patients have been known to do.
print to pdf
Quicken 2001 has a problem printing when installed on Vista (which is the combination that Lloyd wound up with when he bought a new laptop to replace his old one when the hard drive crashed).
One suggestion was to print to a pdf file then print the pdf file. So I tried a couple of pdf programs.
The first one was PDF Redirect which gives itself good reviews on its website. It worked on Vista (on Word for example) though the interface didn't seem too simple. But Quicken errored when trying to print.
From the PDF Redirect, I saw that CutePDF was one its competitors. It seemed simpler to use which is a plus in my book. It worked on Vista, but Quicken again errored when trying to print on it.
It seems that Scansoft PDF Create might work, but it ain't free. OK never mind. Lloyd must live with the problem (or go back to XP).
One suggestion was to print to a pdf file then print the pdf file. So I tried a couple of pdf programs.
The first one was PDF Redirect which gives itself good reviews on its website. It worked on Vista (on Word for example) though the interface didn't seem too simple. But Quicken errored when trying to print.
From the PDF Redirect, I saw that CutePDF was one its competitors. It seemed simpler to use which is a plus in my book. It worked on Vista, but Quicken again errored when trying to print on it.
It seems that Scansoft PDF Create might work, but it ain't free. OK never mind. Lloyd must live with the problem (or go back to XP).
Thursday, August 14, 2008
Biology-Physics Convergence fighting cancer
Aug. 7 (Bloomberg) -- Angela Belcher, a materials engineer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, didn't plan on joining the war on cancer. That is, until she was drafted to work alongside the school's biologists.
Belcher, 40, a 2004 winner of a MacArthur Foundation genius award, tailors viruses that build microscopic electronic parts such as transistors. She was recruited by MIT's cancer scientists to uncover new ways to detect tumors early and deliver drugs more safely.
Biologists at MIT, in Cambridge, helped discover the genes that have led to a new generation of so-called targeted cancer medicines. MIT -- like Stanford University in California and Emory University in Atlanta -- now is deploying engineers for the first time to build on those successes. The approach is spurring interest from biotechnology company backers, said Terry McGuire, co-founder of Polaris Venture Partners, an investment company in nearby Waltham, Massachusetts.
``Investors are realizing that a combination of engineering and biology is going to yield greater products,'' McGuire said a telephone interview on July 28.
McGuire is an adviser to MIT's David H. Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research, funded partly with $100 million from Koch, a 68-year-old billionaire who has been under treatment for prostate cancer for 16 years. The Koch Institute is constructing an over-$200 million building, with 25 laboratories, scheduled to open in December 2010.
Cancer Survivor
``One only has to experience cancer personally to become a crusader for curing the disease,'' Koch, from the founding family at Wichita, Kansas-based Koch Industries Inc., said in a telephone interview on July 22. The partnership between biologists and engineers, he said, ``is incredibly powerful.''
Each of the seven floors will have biologists and engineers, ``equal partners in the battle against this disease,'' MIT President Susan Hockfield, a 57-year-old neuroscientist, told a gathering at the school in June. ``The building is explicitly designed to help people bump into each other --intellectually, that is.''
Biologist-engineer collaborations against cancer have also been initiated at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, Washington University in St. Louis, the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena and the University of California, San Diego.
Billions for Research
The U.S. government will spend $4.8 billion on cancer studies in the year ending Sept. 30, almost twice the $2.5 billion a decade earlier, according to the National Cancer Institute in Bethesda, Maryland. About 75 percent of the Koch Institute's $50 million annual science budget comes from federal grants, said the center's director, Tyler Jacks, in a July 15 interview.
MIT biologists were involved in the original gene discoveries that led to the cancer drug Herceptin, made by South San Francisco-based Genentech Inc., and Gleevec, from Novartis AG in Basel, Switzerland. Herceptin, for breast cancer, generated $4.6 billion in revenue, according to Roche Holding AG, the Basel-based drugmaker that also markets the medicine.
The Koch Institute has an even split of biologists and engineers among the 24 faculty members. By comparison, no more than 5 percent of the 28,000 members of the American Association for Cancer Research, based in Philadelphia, specialize in the physical sciences, said Margaret A. Foti, the group's chief executive officer, in a telephone interview.
`Ahead of the Curve'
``We desperately need both physicists and engineers in the field of cancer research right now because of all the new delivery systems,'' Foti said. ``Centers like the one at MIT are really ahead of the curve.''
Belcher, a Texas native who won a grant from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation in Chicago, was recruited by MIT's Robert Langer, the drug-delivery pioneer who runs the world's largest academic biomedical-engineering lab.
``She's one of the most imaginative, creative researchers I've ever seen, and really one of the young superstars at MIT,'' said Langer, 59, who formerly headed the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's Science Board, in an interview on July 14.
Belcher's goal is to create viruses that when injected into the body can hone in on tumors, she said in a June 3 interview. The viruses can act like freight delivery agents, carrying chemicals that can make otherwise unseen tumors more visible to imaging scans, or conveying chemotherapy directly to malignant cells.
Earlier Detection
The idea is to create diagnostics that detect cancer early enough for treatment to be more effective, Belcher said. The viruses' drug-delivery would be more accurately targeted than standard chemotherapy, which releases toxins throughout the body, harming healthy tissue in addition to the tumor.
She is also investigating how fluorescent tags called quantum dots might piggyback on viruses, highlighting the size, shape and location of a malignancy. While quantum dots are currently made from cadmium, which is toxic to humans, Belcher is trying to make a safe version from gallium nitride.
Belcher, who earned a Ph.D. in chemistry at the University of California, Santa Barbara, has genetically engineered viruses that assemble microscopic electrode wires by combining molecules of cobalt oxide. The wires, which are one ten-thousandth the width of a human hair, could provide power for implantable medical devices or for tiny, unmanned flying vehicles that measure air quality, she said.
`Check Your Ego'
Now Belcher devotes about 20 percent of her time to the viruses' cancer-related applications, an area where she said she hadn't thought she had anything to contribute.
``Part of it was just out of ignorance -- not knowing the field, not knowing the people, and what was happening,'' she said. ``So I didn't run to it, I got pulled into it.''
The experience can be humbling.
``You have to check your ego at the door,'' she said. ``You have to walk in and say, `What does that mean? Back up.' I have no problem admitting that I don't know anything, and learning.''
[via chicago484@chucks_angels]
Belcher, 40, a 2004 winner of a MacArthur Foundation genius award, tailors viruses that build microscopic electronic parts such as transistors. She was recruited by MIT's cancer scientists to uncover new ways to detect tumors early and deliver drugs more safely.
Biologists at MIT, in Cambridge, helped discover the genes that have led to a new generation of so-called targeted cancer medicines. MIT -- like Stanford University in California and Emory University in Atlanta -- now is deploying engineers for the first time to build on those successes. The approach is spurring interest from biotechnology company backers, said Terry McGuire, co-founder of Polaris Venture Partners, an investment company in nearby Waltham, Massachusetts.
``Investors are realizing that a combination of engineering and biology is going to yield greater products,'' McGuire said a telephone interview on July 28.
McGuire is an adviser to MIT's David H. Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research, funded partly with $100 million from Koch, a 68-year-old billionaire who has been under treatment for prostate cancer for 16 years. The Koch Institute is constructing an over-$200 million building, with 25 laboratories, scheduled to open in December 2010.
Cancer Survivor
``One only has to experience cancer personally to become a crusader for curing the disease,'' Koch, from the founding family at Wichita, Kansas-based Koch Industries Inc., said in a telephone interview on July 22. The partnership between biologists and engineers, he said, ``is incredibly powerful.''
Each of the seven floors will have biologists and engineers, ``equal partners in the battle against this disease,'' MIT President Susan Hockfield, a 57-year-old neuroscientist, told a gathering at the school in June. ``The building is explicitly designed to help people bump into each other --intellectually, that is.''
Biologist-engineer collaborations against cancer have also been initiated at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, Washington University in St. Louis, the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena and the University of California, San Diego.
Billions for Research
The U.S. government will spend $4.8 billion on cancer studies in the year ending Sept. 30, almost twice the $2.5 billion a decade earlier, according to the National Cancer Institute in Bethesda, Maryland. About 75 percent of the Koch Institute's $50 million annual science budget comes from federal grants, said the center's director, Tyler Jacks, in a July 15 interview.
MIT biologists were involved in the original gene discoveries that led to the cancer drug Herceptin, made by South San Francisco-based Genentech Inc., and Gleevec, from Novartis AG in Basel, Switzerland. Herceptin, for breast cancer, generated $4.6 billion in revenue, according to Roche Holding AG, the Basel-based drugmaker that also markets the medicine.
The Koch Institute has an even split of biologists and engineers among the 24 faculty members. By comparison, no more than 5 percent of the 28,000 members of the American Association for Cancer Research, based in Philadelphia, specialize in the physical sciences, said Margaret A. Foti, the group's chief executive officer, in a telephone interview.
`Ahead of the Curve'
``We desperately need both physicists and engineers in the field of cancer research right now because of all the new delivery systems,'' Foti said. ``Centers like the one at MIT are really ahead of the curve.''
Belcher, a Texas native who won a grant from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation in Chicago, was recruited by MIT's Robert Langer, the drug-delivery pioneer who runs the world's largest academic biomedical-engineering lab.
``She's one of the most imaginative, creative researchers I've ever seen, and really one of the young superstars at MIT,'' said Langer, 59, who formerly headed the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's Science Board, in an interview on July 14.
Belcher's goal is to create viruses that when injected into the body can hone in on tumors, she said in a June 3 interview. The viruses can act like freight delivery agents, carrying chemicals that can make otherwise unseen tumors more visible to imaging scans, or conveying chemotherapy directly to malignant cells.
Earlier Detection
The idea is to create diagnostics that detect cancer early enough for treatment to be more effective, Belcher said. The viruses' drug-delivery would be more accurately targeted than standard chemotherapy, which releases toxins throughout the body, harming healthy tissue in addition to the tumor.
She is also investigating how fluorescent tags called quantum dots might piggyback on viruses, highlighting the size, shape and location of a malignancy. While quantum dots are currently made from cadmium, which is toxic to humans, Belcher is trying to make a safe version from gallium nitride.
Belcher, who earned a Ph.D. in chemistry at the University of California, Santa Barbara, has genetically engineered viruses that assemble microscopic electrode wires by combining molecules of cobalt oxide. The wires, which are one ten-thousandth the width of a human hair, could provide power for implantable medical devices or for tiny, unmanned flying vehicles that measure air quality, she said.
`Check Your Ego'
Now Belcher devotes about 20 percent of her time to the viruses' cancer-related applications, an area where she said she hadn't thought she had anything to contribute.
``Part of it was just out of ignorance -- not knowing the field, not knowing the people, and what was happening,'' she said. ``So I didn't run to it, I got pulled into it.''
The experience can be humbling.
``You have to check your ego at the door,'' she said. ``You have to walk in and say, `What does that mean? Back up.' I have no problem admitting that I don't know anything, and learning.''
[via chicago484@chucks_angels]
web hosting
000.webhost.com is "the first and only - user donations supported free web hosting service."
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[via frwr-news]
We provide you will the most reliable and feature-rich web hosting service without advertising. Lightning fast website loading speed, zero downtime, fanatic user support and instant activation - that is why you will love doing business with 000webhost.com - $0.00 webhost
250 MB Disk Space, 100 GB Data Transfer
We have enough room for your website, emails and databases. All our servers are also connected to dedicated 10mbps internet lines, so we can give you 100 GB data transfer absolutely free.
[via frwr-news]
Thursday, August 07, 2008
Recycle CFLs
You can purchase recycling kits called RECYCLEPAK®
containers online from www.prepaidrecycling.com. The
kits, which can recycle 6 to 20 CFLs depending on size,
are for residential use only. Each kit costs $20, which
includes shipping and recycling fees.
-- Consumer Lines, July 2008
***
[9/30/11] According to opala.org, you can recycle CFLs at the Home Depot return desk
containers online from www.prepaidrecycling.com. The
kits, which can recycle 6 to 20 CFLs depending on size,
are for residential use only. Each kit costs $20, which
includes shipping and recycling fees.
-- Consumer Lines, July 2008
***
[9/30/11] According to opala.org, you can recycle CFLs at the Home Depot return desk
Sunday, August 03, 2008
windshield of the future
General Motors Corp. researchers are working on a windshield that combines lasers, infrared sensors and a camera to take what's happening on the road and enhance it, so aging drivers with vision problems are able to see a little more clearly.
Though it's only in the research stage, the technology soon will be more useful than ever. The 65 and older population in the U.S. will nearly double in about 20 years, meaning more people will be struggling to see the road like they used to.
GM's new windshield won't improve their vision, but it will make objects stand out that could otherwise go unnoticed by an aged eye.
Though it's only in the research stage, the technology soon will be more useful than ever. The 65 and older population in the U.S. will nearly double in about 20 years, meaning more people will be struggling to see the road like they used to.
GM's new windshield won't improve their vision, but it will make objects stand out that could otherwise go unnoticed by an aged eye.
Saturday, August 02, 2008
Internet Explorer cannot open the internet site
If you're having problems when trying to access my blogs, it's because of sitemeter. You get the message box saying "Internet Explorer cannot open the Internet site [url]". Before you click OK, you can read this message, but when you click OK, you get the page cannot be displayed screen with the title (way at the top) Cannot find server. If you're not getting the error message, it's probably because you're using Firefox instead of Internet Explorer.
I deactivated sitemeter on one of my blogs and no longer get the error, but you should still get the error on this blog. We'll see how long it takes for the error to go away (or for me to deactivate sitemeter here too).
[sitemeter fixed it the next day]
I deactivated sitemeter on one of my blogs and no longer get the error, but you should still get the error on this blog. We'll see how long it takes for the error to go away (or for me to deactivate sitemeter here too).
[sitemeter fixed it the next day]
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