Robocalls fight nuisance signs

A sign offering help in foreclosure cases stands by a street in Pembroke Pines, Fla. The eyesores have vexed Hollywood, Fla., Mayor Peter Bober, who uses a program that makes robocalls to the businesses to discourage posting the signs.

HOLLYWOOD, Fla. — The cheap signs smashed into lawns and along the corners of busy intersections are hard to miss. “We Buy Junk Cars!” “Cash for Your House!” “Computer Repair.”

The eyesores have vexed Hollywood Mayor Peter Bober for two years as he wastes valuable resources plucking up the signs only to watch them pop up in ever greater numbers.

While stopped at a red light a few months ago, Bober studied the unsightly signs and came to a realization that would help him fight their proliferation: The criminals had left their calling cards in the form of business phone numbers.

“These people want us to call them, so let’s call them so much their head spins,” said Bober, who bought a $300 software program in March that makes robocalls to the businesses. The volume of calls has reached as high as 20 calls each to 90 businesses in a day.

The signs are eye-catching and cheaper than a billboard, and businesses place them mostly along the sidewalks and medians of high-traffic intersections where there are no homeowners to complain. Companies can blanket an area with signs for a few hundred dollars and have been emboldened to continue because there have been virtually no consequences.

To city officials, the signs are costly litter that city workers must pick up. Posting them is also a crime, a relatively minor offense that carries fines of up to $250 in Hollywood.

Bober and the company that sold Hollywood its software say they’ve gotten calls from other communities asking about using the software to fight the signs. A county in north Florida also uses the software to fight signs along picturesque beachfront roads.

The robocalls, which leave prerecorded messages, have been so successful that city officials say they’ve seen a 90 percent reduction of signs in some areas.

“This is a message from the City of Hollywood Police Department,” the message says, going on to say signs were placed illegally and alerting companies they will receive these phone calls until the signs are removed and the owners address the code violation.

The company that makes the calling software, Voicent, says New York City uses it to send emergency transit alerts and that the Federal Emergency Management has incorporated the robocalls in its Gulf Coast hurricane-warning system. Churches and political campaigns also use the software.

Jerry Scharf, marketing director of the California based software company Voicent, said Wednesday that 1,000 communities in the United States and Canada have downloaded the program. It couldn’t immediately be verified how many are using it to fight the nuisance signs.

The company expects sales to grow in China where the signs are especially problematic. In Hangzhou, China, the software is referred to by a name that translates as “Call You to Death,” Scharf said.

via Robocalls fight nuisance signs | Mayor bombards phone numbers left on cheap advertising with calls.

No, no, I’m sure Voicent won’t be putting up any of those signs.

 

Is aging a disease?

It’s clear that the simple fact of growing older — chronological aging — is relentless and unstoppable. But experts studying the science of aging say it’s time for a fresh look at the biological process — one which recognizes it as a condition that can be manipulated, treated and delayed.

Taking this new approach would turn the search for drugs to fight age-related diseases on its head, they say, and could speed the path to market of drugs that treat multiple illnesses like diabetes, heart disease and Alzheimer’s at the same time.

“If aging is seen as a disease, it changes how we respond to it. For example, it becomes the duty of doctors to treat it,” said David Gems, a biogerontologist who spoke at a conference on aging in London last week called “Turning Back the Clock.”

At the moment, drug companies and scientists keen to develop their research on aging into tangible results are hampered by regulators in the United States and Europe who will license medicines only for specific diseases, not for something as general as aging.

“Because aging is not viewed as a disease, the whole process of bringing drugs to market can’t be applied to drugs that treat aging. This creates a disincentive to pharmaceutical companies to develop drugs to treat it,” said Gems.

The ability of humans to live longer and longer lives is being demonstrated in abundance across the world.

Average life expectancies extended by as much as 30 years in developed countries during the 20th century and experts expect the same or more to happen again in this century.

A study published last year by Danish researchers estimated that more than half of all babies born in wealthy nations since the year 2000 will live to see their 100th birthdays. …

via Is aging a disease? | Reuters.

Methylating Your Muscle DNA

There’s more to your DNA than your DNA. We are now becoming aware of the epigenome. While DNA controls you, your epigenome may help control your DNA, or rather, it can have an extensive impact on how your DNA is expressed. The epigenome consists of changes in the structure of your DNA, how it is packaged, what parts of it are available for expression into RNA and proteins. For example, adding methyls to DNA tends to decrease the gene expression of that DNA segment, while taking away methyl groups increases it. The cool thing about epigenetics is that the methylation can vary from tissue to tissue, controlling how different genes are expressed in say, liver vs spleen. …

One of the most interesting things about the epigenome is that you can pass it along in the germline. To your kids. So in theory, if you had methylation in certain parts of your genome, your kids could as well. But we’re starting to realize that epigenetics is more malleable than that.

Take muscle tissue for instance. Gene expression in muscle tissue can change the efficiency of glucose metabolism by muscle. And glucose metabolism has a very large effect on many bodily processes, include weight gain and problems like cardiovascular disease and type II diabetes. Muscle itself is very plastic, and responds quickly to changes in the environment (which for a muscle, means increases and decreases in exercise or how many calories are getting in). We know that exercise can change gene expression in muscle, but can it also change the epigenome? While immediate changes in gene expression can be very short, changes to the epigenome indicate much longer-term changes. Could bouts of exercise influence the methylation of muscle, and thus have long-term effects?

Barres et al. “Acute Exercise Remodels Promoter Methylation in Human Skeletal Muscle” Cell Metabolism, 2012. …

via Methylating Your Muscle DNA | The Scicurious Brain, Scientific American Blog Network.

Easter island heads have bodies!??

“Excavations of the bodies have been going on for many years, you can find out more from the Easter Island Statue Project. It’s generally accepted that the statues were made sometime between 1250 and 1500 AD. There is controversy surrounding why the bodies are buried. Was it time and erosion, or were they buried on purpose? Aliens? The soil surrounding the bodies for so long has preserved interesting carvings (petroglyphs, or rock markings)..”

via Easter island heads have bodies!?? | Thinkbox.

Snopes says this one is true:

The 887 monolithic human figures carved from rock on Easter Island (known as moai) are familiar to many people through iconic images that show the statues to be either just heads or a combination of heads and shoulders only. That conception of the Easter Island statues as nothing more than giant heads is reinforced by the fact that the heads on the statues are disproportionately large in comparison to their bodies and the circumstance that the bottoms of some of the statues are set deep into the ground. Although many viewers are surprised to learn the moai actually do have bodies, that information is not a recent discovery: many of the moai are situated fully above ground and are therefore displayed in their entirety, and some of them even sport arms and red hats.  In recent years the Easter Island Statue Project (EISP) has undertaken efforts to excavate and study some of the moai, thereby revealing previously hidden portions of the statues. Last updated:   14 May 2012

See my previous article on Easter Island.

 

Resveratrol is a dirty, dirty molecule

The debate over the workings of an anti-ageing chemical in red wine called resveratrol resembles a rally between Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic. The latest scud comes today, from a scientist who has shown the benefits of resveratrol in lab organisms and who started a drug company to exploit them in humans.

Resveratrol, which is abundant in the skins of grapes, spares mice from the harmful effects of a fatty diet, and work in yeast, fruitflies and roundworms has suggested that the chemical lengthens the lives of these organisms by activating proteins called sirtuins.

Competing work has challenged the assertion that resveratrol directly activates sirtuins (see ‘Health benefits of red wine chemical unclear‘) and raised the possibility that the chemical’s anti-ageing effects rely on other proteins (see ‘Questions hang over red wine chemical‘). Meanwhile, recent research now questions whether activating sirtuins makes worms and flies live longer (see ‘Longevity genes challenged)’.

My colleague Heidi Ledford’s fantastic 2010 feature ‘Much ado about ageing‘ offers a fuller run-down of the debate.

David Sinclair, a molecular biologist at Harvard Medical School in Boston, and his team have struck back in a paper published online today in Cell Metabolism showing that mice that lack a pivotal sirtuin gene, SIRT1, do not enjoy many of the metabolic benefits of resveratrol.

Sinclair co-founded Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Sirtris Pharmaceuticals, which the drug giant GlaxoSmithKline bought for US$720 million in 2008. The company stopped developing resveratrol as a drug, but molecules believed to activate SIRT1 are being tested in humans against diabetes and other ageing-related diseases.

Sinclair’s latest experiment is an obvious one. If resveratrol needs SIRT1 to improve health, then animals lacking the gene should not get any benefits from the chemical. His lab published that experiment in yeast in 2003. But mice lacking SIRT1 die in the womb, or they are born with developmental defects such as blindness. To get around that problem, Sinclair’s team engineered “conditional knockout” mice whereby SIRT1 can be inactivated in adulthood. “It took us two weeks to do the experiment in yeast, and five years in mouse, but finally we’re there,” he says.

Work with the mice would seem to confirm a role for SIRT1 in resveratrol’s benefits. In normal mice, resveratrol combated the effects of a high-fat diet by boosting the efficiency of energy-generating organelles called mitochondria in skeletal muscle tissue. This effect vanished in adult mice without a working version of SIRT1.

Yet SIRT1 wasn’t responsible for all the beneficial effects of resveratrol in Sinclair’s study. Resveratrol stabilized the blood glucose levels of both normal and SIRT1-lacking mice on fatty diets. The chemical also improved liver health in mice without SIRT1.

Sinclair also contends that a lot the confusion over how resveratrol works comes down to dosage. At very high doses it binds other proteins besides SIRT1, he says. “Resveratrol is a dirty, dirty molecule, very non-specific.” For instance, a signalling protein called AMPK is also important to resveratrol’s beneficial effects on metabolism. Sinclair found that low doses of resveratrol boosted AMPK levels in various cells that expressed SIRT1, but not cells without the sirtuin. Much higher doses of resveratrol, however, activated AMPK irrespective of whether the cells expressed SIRT1.

Jay Chung, an endocrinologist at the National Heart Lung and Blood Institute in Bethesda, Maryland, who earlier this year proposed that resveratrol works by blocking proteins called phospho-diesterases, questions Sinclair’s interpretation. SIRT1 and AMPK both rise in response to resveratrol treatment, so ”you don’t know what’s the chicken and what’s the egg,” Chung says. ”This question may never get answered to everyone’s full satisfaction. ”

via Nature News Blog: Row over resveratrol rumbles on : Nature News Blog.

Newly discovered bacterium forms intracellular minerals

A new species of photosynthetic bacterium has come to light: it is able to control the formation of minerals (calcium, magnesium, barium and strontium carbonates) within its own organism. Published in Science on April 27, 2012, a study by French researchers[1] reveals the existence of this new type of biomineralization, whose mechanism is still unknown. This finding has important implications for the interpretation of the ancient fossil record.

Cyanobacteria have long attracted scientists’ attention. Capable of photosynthesis,[2] these microorganisms have played a major role in Earth’s history, in particular by contributing to the oxygenation of the atmosphere. Some cyanobacteria are able to form calcium carbonate[3] outside their cell, especially those associated with stromatolites, carbonate rocks that date back some 3.5 billion years and are among the earliest traces of life on Earth. Fossil cyanobacteria should therefore be present within this type of formation. However, the first fossil cyanobacteria go back a mere 700 million years, well after oxygen levels in Earth’s atmosphere started to rise some 2.3 billion years ago.

A French team[1] may have found the reason for this long time lapse. In stromatolites collected in a crater lake in Mexico and cultured in the laboratory, the scientists discovered a new species of cyanobacterium, called Candidatus Gloeomargarita lithophora. This microorganism descends from a lineage that diverged early on in cyanobacteria. Thanks to an as yet unknown biomineralization mechanism, this cyanobacterium forms intracellular calcium carbonate nanoparticles of around 270 nanometers (270 billionths of a meter). While some cyanobacteria were known to form extracellular calcium carbonate within stromatolites, their formation within the cell had never been observed. Another distinctive feature of the new species is that it accumulates strontium and barium and incorporates them into the carbonate.

This finding is significant for the interpretation of the ancient fossil record. If the cyanobacteria associated with stromatolites formed carbonates inside their cells rather than outside, they would not have been preserved in the fossil record. This would explain the time lapse between their earliest appearance (at least 2.3 billion years ago) and the oldest fossils discovered (700 million years ago). The next step is to find out why and how this cyanobacterium produces the calcium carbonate. …

via Newly discovered bacterium forms intracellular minerals.

Optoelectronics: Graphene shows its colours

GRAPHENE, a form of carbon that comes in sheets a single atom thick, has gained a reputation as a wonder material. It is the best conductor yet discovered of heat at room temperature and is 40 times stronger than steel. It is also a semiconductor whose electrical conductivity is 1,000 times better than silicon’s. This means it could be used to make devices far more sensitive than is possible now, leading some to predict that it will one day become the material of choice for computer chips. There was little surprise, therefore, when Andre Geim (pictured above) and Konstantin Novoselov, two physicists who were investigating graphene’s structure, won the 2010 Nobel prize for their work.Actually converting the wonders of graphene into products has been tough. But Frank Koppens and his colleagues at the Institute of Photonic Sciences in Barcelona think they have found a way to do so. As they describe in Nature Nanotechnology, they believe graphene can be used to make ultra-sensitive, low-cost photodetectors.

Photodetectors are devices which convert light into electricity. They are used in digital cameras, night-vision gear, biomedical imagers, pollution sensors and telecommunications. A typical photodetector is made of a silicon chip a few millimetres across onto which light is focused by a small lens. Light striking the chip knocks electrons free from some of the silicon atoms, producing a signal that the chip’s electronics convert into a picture or other useful information.

Silicon photodetectors suffer, though, from a handicap: they are inflexible. Nor are they particularly cheap. And they are not that sensitive. They absorb only 10-20% of the light that falls on to them. For years, therefore, engineers have been on the lookout for a cheap, bendable, sensitive photodetector. Such a device could have many novel applications—wearable electronics, for example. With a little clever engineering, graphene seems to fit the bill.

By itself, graphene is worse than silicon at absorbing light. According to Dr Koppens only 2.7% of the photons falling on it are captured. But he and his colleague Gerasimos Konstantatos have managed to increase this to more than 50% by spraying tiny crystals of lead sulphide onto the surface of the material.

These crystals are so small (three to ten nanometres across, a nanometre being a billionth of a metre) that they are known as quantum dots, because at dimensions measured in nanometres the weird effects of quantum mechanics start to manifest themselves. One such is that the size of a quantum dot affects the colour of the light it best absorbs. The larger the dot, the redder that light; the smaller, conversely, the bluer. This allows Dr Koppens and Dr Konstantatos to span all wavelengths from ultraviolet to infra-red, greatly increasing the utility of any photodetector that might emerge. Infra-red, for example, is important in telecoms and night-vision applications. Visible wavelengths, by contrast, are needed for cameras and solar cells.

According to Dr Koppens, the interaction between the dots and the graphene works because graphene has so many mobile electrons in its structure. (This is the reason it is such a good conductor of both heat and electricity.) This abundance of free electrons makes it particularly sensitive to the changes induced in a quantum dot when it absorbs a photon of light: each incident photon mobilises about 100m electrons. In the jargon of electronic engineering, therefore, the quantum dot-graphene hybrid has enormously high “gain”. And that means the material might have even wider applications than snazzy cameras and smart clothing. For what Dr Koppens and Dr Konstantatos have actually done is to create the guts of a transistor that is regulated by light. …

via Optoelectronics: Graphene shows its colours | The Economist.

New Planet Found in Our Solar System?

An as yet undiscovered planet might be orbiting at the dark fringes of the solar system, according to new research. Too far out to be easily spotted by telescopes, the potential unseen planet appears to be making its presence felt by disturbing the orbits of so-called Kuiper belt objects, said Rodney Gomes, an astronomer at the National Observatory of Brazil in Rio de Janeiro. Kuiper belt objects are small icy bodies—including some dwarf planets—that lie beyond the orbit of Neptune.

Once considered the ninth planet in our system, the dwarf planet Pluto, for example, is one of the largest Kuiper belt objects, at about 1,400 miles 2,300 kilometers wide. Dozens of the other objects are hundreds of miles across, and more are being discovered every year.

What s intriguing, Gomes said, is that, according to his new calculations, about a half dozen Kuiper belt objects—including the remote body known as Sedna—are in strange orbits compared to where they should be, based on existing solar system models.

The objects unexpected orbits have a few possible explanations, said Gomes, who presented his findings Tuesday at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Timberline Lodge, Oregon. But I think the easiest one is a planetary-mass solar companion —a planet that orbits very far out from the sun but that s massive enough to be having gravitational effects on Kuiper belt objects. Mystery Planet a Captured Rogue?

For the new work, Gomes analyzed the orbits of 92 Kuiper belt objects, then compared his results to computer models of how the bodies should be distributed, with and without an additional planet. If there s no distant world, Gomes concludes, the models don t produce the highly elongated orbits we see for six of the objects. How big exactly the planetary body might be isn t clear, but there are a lot of possibilities, Gomes added. Based on his calculations, Gomes thinks a Neptune-size world, about four times bigger than Earth, orbiting 140 billion miles 225 billion kilometers away from the sun—about 1,500 times farther than Earth—would do the trick. But so would a Mars-size object—roughly half Earth s size—in a highly elongated orbit that would occasionally bring the body sweeping to within 5 billion miles 8 billion kilometers of the sun. Gomes speculates that the mystery object could be a rogue planet that was kicked out of its own star system and later captured by the sun s gravity.

. Or the putative planet could have formed closer to our sun, only to be cast outward by gravitational encounters with other planets. However, actually finding such a world would be a challenge. To begin with, the planet might be pretty dim. Also, Gomes s simulations don t give astronomers any clue as to where to point their telescopes— it can be anywhere, he said.

via New Planet Found in Our Solar System?.

Brain oscillations reveal that our senses do not experience the world continuously

It has long been suspected that humans do not experience the world continuously, but rather in rapid snapshots.

Now, researchers at the University of Glasgow have demonstrated this is indeed the case. Just as the body goes through a 24-hour sleep-wake cycle controlled by a circadian clock, brain function undergoes such cyclic activity – albeit at a much faster rate.

Professor Gregor Thut of the Institute of Neuroscience and Psychology, said: “Rhythms are intrinsic to biological systems. The circadian rhythm, with its very slow periodicity of sleep and wake cycles every 24 hours has an obvious, periodic effect on bodily functions.

“Brain oscillations – the recurrent neural activity that we see in the brain – also show periodicity but cycle at much faster speeds. What we wanted to know was whether brain function was affected in a cyclic manner by these rapid oscillations.”

The researchers studied a prominent brain rhythm associated with visual cortex functioning that cycles at a rate of 10 times per second (10Hz).

They used a ‘simple trick’ to affect the oscillations of this rhythm which involved presenting a brief sound to ‘reset’ the oscillation.

Testing subsequent visual perception, by using transcranial magnetic stimulation of the visual cortex, revealed a cyclic pattern at the very rapid rate of brain oscillations, in time with the underlying brainwaves.

Prof Thut said: “Rhythmicity therefore is indeed omnipresent not only in brain activity but also brain function. For perception, this means that despite experiencing the world as a continuum, we do not sample our world continuously but in discrete snapshots determined by the cycles of brain rhythms.”

The research, ‘Sounds reset rhythms of visual cortex and corresponding human visual perception’ is published in the journal Current Biology.

via Brain oscillations reveal that our senses do not experience the world continuously.

Spinning magnet repells sharks

Eric Stroud and colleague demonstrate the effect of magnetised rare-earth metals on a lemon shark. Video courtesy of PRI’s The World

An American chemist says he’s found a substance – several, in fact – that can repel some of the most fearsome predators in the ocean. He wants to use his discovery to protect them, and us.

Eric Stroud stands on a pier on the island of North Bimini in the Bahamas. He looks down into the turquoise water.

A couple of eagle rays and barracudas swim by.

“The current is ripping through here right now,” he says. “The tide is going out. So any scent that’s put here goes right to the outside of the channel, and that’s where the big sharks are right now.”

Stroud is setting up an experiment. He unwraps 20lbs (9kgs) of frozen sardines, drops them into a mesh bag tied to the pier, and tosses the bag into the water. He’s hoping to attract a large bull shark.

“It’s a fairly dangerous shark,” he explains. “It can be aggressive, especially when provoked or cornered.”

If a bull shark does turn up, he’ll throw a large baited hook into the water. But it’s not your typical fishhook. In fact, if all goes well, this hook won’t catch any sharks.

For more than a decade, Stroud has been working to develop shark repellents.

He used to work as a chemist in the pharmaceutical industry. Then, in the summer of 2001, he and his wife went on a cruise to Bermuda.

“We hit bad weather, and we were trapped in a cabin, and on the news was shark bite after shark bite,” he says. “It seemed like everyone that stepped in the ocean in Florida was getting attacked by a shark that summer.”

That’s when his wife suggested he turn his talents to developing shark repellents. When they got home to New Jersey, he set up several small pools in his basement, and filled them with small sharks.

He watched how the sharks fed, swam, and behaved. Then, one day, he accidentally dropped a large magnet from his workbench. He noticed some small nurse sharks dart away.

“That night, we put magnets into the water and couldn’t believe the nurse sharks were extremely distressed and stayed away from them,” he says.

Stroud thinks that was the moment he discovered that magnets repel sharks.

He demonstrates the effect at the Bimini Biological Field Station in the Bahamas. He stands waist-deep in water, just offshore, in a fenced-in pen in the sea. Several young Lemon sharks glide around the perimeter. One of Stroud’s assistants captures one of them and slowly rotates it onto its back underwater. This puts the shark into a sleep-like state.

Then Stroud takes a magnet and spins it as he moves it towards the shark. The shark darts away suddenly. “There you go,” he says. “Look at that beautiful bend away from the magnet like he’s repelled by it”.

Sharks possess electrical sensors, called the ampullae of Lorenzini, that look like tiny freckles on their snouts. Biologists believe sharks use these sensors to detect the heartbeats of their prey and to navigate using the Earth’s magnetic field.

Stroud suspects the spinning magnet overwhelms these electrical sensors.

“It’s probably something like a bright flashlight across your eyes,” he says. “It’s just temporarily blinding, and you’re startled. And it’s not pleasant.” …

via BBC News – Shark attacks: A magnetic solution?.