Police use taser on Kent resident

Police used a Taser gun to restrain a resident outside of his home on Crain Avenue as it burned at about 4:30 a.m. Sunday.

The resident, Mike Bartlett, said he was returning from downtown for his cell phone when he noticed his sister’s room on fire. He ran in to make sure she was not there and continued to find his friends in the basement and alert them of the fire. He said his cousin’s girlfriend was sleeping upstairs so he went back in the house to retrieve her.

“As I was running downstairs, I could hear the window glass popping because of the heat,” Bartlett said.

When he went got outside, Bartlett said police officers were at the end of the driveway. He said he approached them for help, but they dismissed him. As he walked toward one of his friends, he said the officers tackled and restrained him with the Taser gun, giving them no reason for their force.

According to the Kent City Police levels of resistance report, Bartlett used psychological and physical active resistance to avoid arrest. The report stated he was both combative and intoxicated. No one from the Police Department was available for comment.

Bartlett said he was not offered medical attention by the officers. Instead, he was taken directly to the police station. Bartlett went to the hospital following his court appearance Sunday. He said he was treated for first- and second-degree burns.

Bartlett’s trial is set for December. The Red Cross helped the displaced family of four, which does not include any Kent State students. The cause of the fire is still being investigated.

Contact public affairs reporter Sarah Steimer at ssteimer@kent.edu.

via Police use taser on Kent resident – News.

Talk about a bad day…

Fish reveals ‘secret of regeneration’

Thanks to a tiny fish, scientists have moved a step closer to unlocking the secrets of body part regeneration, a power possessed by some animals and not humans.

For example, flatworm Planaria can be cut into as many as 32 pieces but each of which will grow into a whole new animal complete with eyes, mouth and organs. Researchers are aware regeneration involves mechanisms found in developing embryos, but are still not clear about what they are.

Now, an international team has carried out a study on zebrafish and identified a key cellular pathway which appears to trigger regeneration by switching on certain genes.

According to the scientists, the ability to grow back a perfectly formed duplicate organ or limb to replace one lost through injury or disease is the “Holy Grail” of regenerative medicine.

via Fish reveals ‘secret of regeneration’.

Officials: Swine flu confirmed in Iowa cat

The swine flu virus has been confirmed in a cat treated at the Iowa State University College of Veterinary Medicine.

Officials said Wednesday it’s the first known case of the virus to be diagnosed in a cat. Veterinarians say the virus has also been confirmed in two ferrets, one in Oregon and the other in Nebraska.

The 13-year-old cat was treated in Ames, Iowa, and is recovering.

The veterinarian who treated the cat, Dr. Brett Sponseller, says two of the three people in the same house had flu-like symptoms before the cat became ill.

The case was confirmed at both Iowa State and the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Sponseller says the flu is known to spread from humans to pets, but this is the first case of swine flu to spread to a cat.

via Officials: Swine flu confirmed in Iowa cat | jacksonsun.com | The Jackson Sun.

Man appears alive at own funeral in Brazil

A Brazilian bricklayer reportedly killed in a car crash shocked his mourning family by showing up alive at his funeral.

Relatives of Ademir Jorge Goncalves, 59, had identified him as the victim of a Sunday night car crash in Parana state in southern Brazil, police said.

As is customary in Brazil, the funeral was held the following day, which happened to be the holiday of Finados, when Brazilians visit cemeteries to honor the dead.

What family members didn’t know was that Goncalves had spent the night at a truck stop talking with friends over drinks of a sugarcane liquor known as cachaca, his niece Rosa Sampaio told the O Globo newspaper. He did not get word about his own funeral until it was already happening Monday morning.

A police spokesman in the town of Santo Antonio da Platina said Goncalves rushed to the funeral to let family members know he was not dead.

“The corpse was badly disfigured, but dressed in similar clothing,” said the police spokesman, who talked on condition of anonymity as he wasn’t authorized to discuss the case. “People are afraid to look for very long when they identify bodies, and I think that is what happened in this case.”

Sampaio told O Globo that some family members were not sure the body was Goncalves.

“My two uncles and I had doubts about the identification,” she told O Globo. “But an aunt and four of his friends identified the body, so what were we to do? We went ahead with the funeral.” …

via Man appears alive at own funeral in Brazil – Yahoo! News.

Rare whale gathering sighted

A large group of a rarely sighted, mysterious species of whale has been seen off the coast of Antarctica.Approximately 60 Arnoux’s beaked whales were seen and photographed frolicking on the surface in the Gerlache Strait.Few sightings of this enigmatic species are made in the wild, and even less in waters near to shore.The sighting, of the largest group ever recorded, is also the first time this species of whale has been seen socialising at the water surface.Marine biologists have published details of the sighting in the journal Marine Mammal Science.

“There was a fair bit of incredulity and excitement throughout the sighting,” says Dr Ari Friedlaender of Duke University’s Marine Laboratory, based in Beaufort, North Carolina, US.

As a group, beaked whales are among the least understood large animals on the planet.

Around 20 species belong to the family Ziphiidae, with several only having been discovered in the past couple of decades.

Typically, beaked whales are deep divers, and they are the only whales to have tusks, which are teeth that erupt from the lower jaws of the males.

Together with its close relative, the Baird’s beaked whale (Berardius bairdii), the Arnoux’s beaked whale (Berardius arnuxii) is among the two largest of all beaked whale species.

“Arnoux’s are quite cryptic, and like most other beaked whales, are thought to have oceanic distributions,” says Dr Friedlaender.

“Very little is known about their ecological requirements, or features around which their distribution is based.”

The whale is best known from occasional sightings made by survey boats cruising circumpolar waters around Antarctica.

On 5 May this year, a team of Duke University researchers including Dr Friedlaender sighted approximately 60 Arnoux’s beaked whales near the entrance to the Schollaert Channel between Brabant and Cuverville Islands, which lie in the Gerlache Strait, Antarctica.

“What made the sighting atypical and noteworthy was the size of the group of animals and their surface activity,” says Dr Friedlaender.

“There were over 60 animals spread out linearly and over a few kilometres.”

Each whale was dark-slate coloured, around 5-8m long with a small dorsal fin back toward the tail.

“The animals remained at the surface socialising in ways more befitting of dolphins.”

“The whales were very tactile with each other, slapping the water with their tails, surfacing rapidly.” …

via BBC – Earth News – Rare whale gathering sighted.

Making plans to leave the planet.

American Friends of Tel Aviv University: Applause for the SmartHand

In one sense, our hands define our humanity. Our opposable thumbs and our hands’ unique structure allow us to write, paint, and play the piano. Those who lose their hands as a result of accident, conflict or disease often feel they’ve lost more than mere utility.

A new invention from Tel Aviv University researchers may change that. Prof. Yosi Shacham-Diamand of TAU’s Department of Engineering, working with a team of European Union scientists, has successfully wired a state-of-the-art artificial hand to existing nerve endings in the stump of a severed arm. The device, called “SmartHand,” resembles — in function, sensitivity and appearance — a real hand.

Robin af Ekenstam of Sweden, the project’s first human subject, has not only been able to complete extremely complicated tasks like eating and writing, he reports he is also able to “feel” his fingers once again.

In short, Prof. Shacham-Diamand and his team have seamlessly rewired Ekenstam’s mind to his SmartHand.

Linking mind and machine

Prof. Shacham-Diamand’s contribution to the project, on which TAU collaborated with Sweden’s Lund University, is the interface between the body’s nerves and the device’s electronics. “Perfectly good nerve endings remain at the stem of a severed limb,” the researcher says. “Our team is building the interface between the device and the nerves in the arm, connecting cognitive neuroscience with state-of-the-art information technologies.”

Prof. Shacham-Diamand runs one of the top labs in the world for nano-bio-interfacing science: the Department of Electrical Engineering — Physical Electronics Lab under the Bernard L. Schwartz Chair for Nano-scale Information Technologies. “Our challenge,” remarks Prof. Shacham-Diamand, “was to make an electrode that was not only flexible, but could be implanted in the human body and function properly for at least 20 years.”

The artificial SmartHand, built by a team of top European Union scientists, will belong to Ekenstam, the test subject, as long as he wishes. “After only a few training sessions, he is operating the artificial hand as though it’s his own,” says Prof. Shacham-Diamand. “We’ve built in tactile sensors too, so the information transfer goes two ways. These allow Ekenstam to do difficult tasks like eating and writing.”

Complexity of a challenging magnitude

Ekenstam told a television interviewer, “I am using muscles which I haven’t used for years. I grab something hard, and then I can feel it in the fingertips, which is strange, as I don’t have them anymore. It’s amazing.”

This particular multi-million dollar project focused on hands, but the TAU/EU team could also have built bionic legs to be wired to the brain. The team first chose to build a hand, however, because of its unique challenges. “The fingers in the hand are the most complex appendages we have,” Prof. Shacham-Diamand observes. “The brain needs to synchronise the movement of each digit in a very complicated way.”

With the help of the TAU team, the SmartHand project was able to integrate recent advances in today’s “intelligent” prosthetic hands with all the basic features of a flesh-and-blood hand. Four electric motors and 40 sensors are activated when the SmartHand touches an object, not only replicating the movement of a human hand, but also providing the wearer with a sensation of feeling and touch.

While the prototype looks very “bionic” now, in the future SmartHand scientists plan to equip it with artificial skin that will give the brain even more tactile feedback. The researchers will also study amputees equipped with the SmartHand to understand how to improve the device over time.

via American Friends of Tel Aviv University: Applause for the SmartHand.

Carbon atmosphere discovered on neutron star

Evidence for a thin carbon atmosphere on a neutron star at the center of Cas A has been found. The properties of the carbon atmosphere are remarkable. It is only about four inches thick, has a density similar to diamond and a pressure more than ten times that found at the center of the Earth. As with the Earth’s atmosphere, the extent of an atmosphere on a neutron star is proportional to the atmospheric temperature and inversely proportional to the surface gravity. The temperature is estimated to be almost two million degrees, much hotter than the Earth’s atmosphere. However, the surface gravity on Cas A is 100 billion times stronger than on Earth, resulting in an incredibly thin atmosphere.

Evidence for a thin veil of carbon has been found on the neutron star in the Cassiopeia A supernova remnant. This discovery, made with NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory, resolves a ten-year mystery surrounding this object.

“The compact star at the center of this famous supernova remnant has been an enigma since its discovery,” said Wynn Ho of the University of Southampton and lead author of a paper that appears in the latest issue of Nature. “Now we finally understand that it can be produced by a hot neutron star with a carbon atmosphere.”

By analyzing Chandra’s X-ray spectrum – akin to a fingerprint of energy – and applying it to theoretical models, Ho and his colleague Craig Heinke, from the University of Alberta, determined that the neutron star in Cassiopeia A, or Cas A for short, has an ultra-thin coating of carbon. This is the first time the composition of an atmosphere of an isolated neutron star has been confirmed.

The Chandra “First Light” image of Cas A in 1999 revealed a previously undetected point-like source of X-rays at the center. This object was presumed to be a neutron star, the typical remnant of an exploded star, but researchers were unable to understand its properties. Defying astronomers’ expectations, this object did not show any X-ray or radio pulsations or any signs of radio pulsar activity.

By applying a model of a neutron star with a carbon atmosphere to this object, Ho and Heinke found that the region emitting X-rays would uniformly cover a typical neutron star. This would explain the lack of X-ray pulsations because — like a lightbulb that shines consistently in all directions — this neutron star would be unlikely to display any changes in its intensity as it rotates.

Scientists previously have used a neutron star model with a hydrogen atmosphere giving a much smaller emission area, corresponding to a hot spot on a typical neutron star, which should produce X-ray pulsations as it rotates. Interpreting the hydrogen atmosphere model without pulsations would require a tiny size, consistent only with exotic stars made of strange quark matter.

“Our carbon veil solves one of the big questions about the neutron star in Cas A,” said Craig Heinke. “People have been willing to consider some weird explanations, so it’s a relief to discover a less peculiar solution.”

via Carbon atmosphere discovered on neutron star.

Does green tea prevent cancer? Evidence brewing

Although scientists are reluctant to officially endorse green tea as a cancer prevention method, evidence continues to grow about its protective effects, including results of a new study published in Cancer Prevention Research, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research, which suggests some reduction in oral cancer. Vassiliki Papadimitrakopoulo, M.D., professor of medicine in the Department of Thoracic/Head and Neck Medical Oncology at the University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center, and colleagues tested green tea extract taken orally for three months at three doses among 41 patients: 500 mg/m2, 750 mg/m2 or 1,000 mg/m2. The researchers assessed clinical response in oral pre-malignant lesions and found 58.8 percent of patients at the highest doses displayed clinical response, compared with 18.2 percent among those taking placebo. They also observed a trend toward improved histology, and a trend towards improvement in a handful of biomarkers that may be important in predicting cancer development. Patients were followed for 27.5 months and at the end of the study period, 15 developed oral cancer. Although there was no difference in oral cancer development overall between those who took green tea and those who did not, patients who presented with mild to moderate dysplasia had a longer time to develop oral cancer if they took green tea extract. Although encouraged by the results, Papadimitrakopoulo cautioned against any recommendations that green tea could definitely prevent cancer. This is a phase II study with a very limited number of patients who took what would be the equivalent of drinking eight to 10 cups of green tea every single day, said Papadimitrakopoulo. We cannot with certainty claim prevention benefits from a trial this size. Dong Shin, M.D., professor of hematology and medical oncology and Blomeyer Endowed Chair in Cancer Research at Emory School of Medicine, agreed, but said this trial is certainly a step in the right direction. A clinical trial with a natural compound is no easy task, and these researchers have accomplished that, said Shin, an editorial board member of Cancer Prevention Research. The lack of toxicity is also important because often when you give supplements at higher doses than what would occur naturally, you induce nausea and vomiting. That did not happen in this trial. Neither researchers had a reason why patients concerned about cancer should not drink green tea, but they cautioned against relying on the beverage to definitively reduce their risk of cancer. The goal of this kind of research is to determine whether or not these supplements have long-term prevention effects. More research including studies in which individuals at high risk are exposed to these supplements for longer time period is still needed to answer that sort of question, said Papadimitrakopoulou.

via Does green tea prevent cancer? Evidence continues to brew, but questions remain.

Acetaminophen may be linked to asthma in children and adults

New research shows that the widely used pain reliever acetaminophen may be associated with an increased risk of asthma and wheezing in both children and adults exposed to the drug. Researchers from the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada, conducted a systematic review and metaanalysis of 19 clinical studies (total subjects=425,140) that compared the risk of asthma or wheezing with acetaminophen exposure.

The analysis showed that the pooled odds ratio (odds ratio for all studies combined) for asthma among users of acetaminophen was 1.63. The risk of asthma in children who used acetaminophen in the year prior to asthma diagnosis or in the first year of life was elevated to 1.60 and 1.47, respectively.

Furthermore, results showed a slight increase in the risk of asthma and wheezing with prenatal use of acetaminophen by mothers. Researchers speculate that acetaminophen’s lack of inhibition of cyclooxygenase, the key enzyme involved in the inflammatory response of asthma, may be one explanation for the potential link between acetaminophen use and asthma.

via Acetaminophen may be linked to asthma in children and adults.