Middleware maker Havok believes physics in the next generation will be about destructible environments.
Speaking to GamesIndustry, Havok’s Andrew Bowell said the firm sees destruction as one of the main drivers for its products with the next generation systems in mind. “The way that ragdolls became the last generation thing and everything had to be ragdolls, we reckon next generation, everything’s going to have to be destructible,” said Bowell.

“It will be no longer acceptable to walk into a room where you can’t punch a hole in the wall or break a table and see it splinter.”Ragdoll was popular almost to the point of becoming a marketing bullet point towards the end of the PS2 and Xbox era. Bowell said that the attraction to destruction technology will help create interest in Havok products, but also competitors’ own offerings.

Source: develop-online

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"Json, should I take H2 or H1 Chemistry?" "Do I really need to take H2 chemistry since I want to study Accountancy?" These are the very common questions that I face every year, when our proud graduates leave us to embark in their new lives in the junior colleges.

The PCME combination
I will write in the context of the experience I had with my past students and the advice I dished out for them. I wish to highlight the popular PCME combination, which simply means Physics, Chemistry, Mathematics and Economics combination. Seems like most of my students love this combination and I always ask them do they really want to read this potentially Science heavy combination. This combination is natural choice for the potential Ernest Rutherfords or Isaac Newtons but is it necessary for future Li Ka-Shing wannabes?

But is science the necessary route for everyone? As cliché as it may sound, I have always advised my students to follow their heart. Science is great but it is not for everyone. Students should always choose subjects that are close to their hearts and that will ultimately produce the inevitable good results for them. What does your heart say? Do you want to be a future cardiologist or a banker? Do I need a science-based combination or a humanities-combination for my course in the university? Is there a specific subject that I need to meet certain requirement for courses in the university? For my post today, I will focus on courses that require Chemistry at H2 level and you can have a better gauge for yourself if it is really that necessary to load yourself with Chemistry at this elevated level. The following information is based on my knowledge at the point of research while every attempt is made to provide the most accurate data, it should be only seen as a guide. Hey you have the university prospectus right?

Source: domainofexperts

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Position Description: The Department of Neurobiology, care sciences and society comprises 12 divisions and has at about 400 employees. The NVS-department is located at KI Campus-Huddinge.  The Department is responsible for education at basic and advanced levels, research education and clinical and experimental research within the different areas represented by the divisions.Karolinska Institutet Alzheimer Disease Research Center (KI-ADRC) investigates Alzheimer disease and related disorders from different perspectives, emphasizing the integration of basic neuroscience, clinical research, molecular genetics and epidemiology.

Responsibilities:
Our research group is interested in identifying novel targets and biomarkers that may lead to improved therapeutic approaches to Alzheimer Disease and other dementias. We are looking for a highly motivated person that is well acquainted with basic biochemical and cell biological techniques. Previous experience from neuroscience, membrane proteins, protein labeling, protein interactions, mass spectrometry, glycobiology, assay development, confocal microscopy and cell culturing is meritorious.

Requirements:
Scholarships to pursue postdoctoral studies may be awarded to individuals who come from other countries with the intention of remaining in Sweden only while obtaining all or part of their education. The head of the department determines whether their previous training and scholarly qualifications correspond to a Swedish PhD or higher. Having received a salary or other remuneration from Karolinska Institutet during the past two years may be disqualifying. One requirement for receiving a scholarship for postdoctoral studies is central registration as a postdoc.

We offer:
Karolinska Institutet awards scholarships to pursue postdoctoral studies. This educational scholarship, which is paid for a maximum of two years within seven years after the receipt of a PhD or the equivalent, is tax-exempt. The amount is set for a maximum of six months at a time and is paid out on a monthly basis.

How to Apply:
An application must contain the following documents in English:
Curriculum vitae and qualifications, presented in accordance with Karolinska Institutet’s qualifications portfolio
A complete list of publications
A summary of current work (no more than one page)
Verifications for crediting of illness, military service, work for labour unions or student organisations, parental leave or similar circumstances
Verification from the thesis defence committee or the equivalent (only if the thesis defence is scheduled within three months after the application deadline)
The application is to be submitted on the NetRecruiter system.

Source: youngbrigades

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Students may not appreciate their math education, but systems involving the subject are everywhere. William Sherman, a mathematics graduate student, notices that security systems, including entering a PIN at an ATM, are based off prime numbers, which can only be divided by one and itself.

“The only people who can decompose (the systems) are the ones who created them, like the banks,” he said. By understanding this, it can allow people to feel safer about entering a PIN at the bank, Sherman said. Being a math major has also affected the way the graduate student views issues on a daily basis, particularly when it comes to solving problems.

“The way I approach problems (is mathematical). The key is you try something, then you try something else, and you keep throwing something at the problem and something will eventually work,” Sherman said.  “Another problem comes along and I don’t get overwhelmed. I take an analytical approach: take a step back, look at the problem, establish the situation and then decide what I can change to make things easier,” he said.

In addition to being a graduate student, Sherman is a teacher’s aid in a class called mathematical ideas, where students learn philosophies in math. “It’s hopefully linking ideas in mathematics to different majors,” he said. “There are certain ideas that math teaches that every student should know, such as analytical thinking and comprehension.”

Sherman is also trying to teach his students and the biology department that math matters. He is conducting his own research with mathematics professor Ramin Vakilian to explain how cells work with equations. They take biological (cells) and model them mathematically, and are currently looking for someone in the biology department who can help them test out their models.

“A lot of people focus on mathematics in business, or economics (and take that to) the stock market. Then a lot of people go into mathematics and engineering or physics. Those go hand in hand,” he said. “But the problem is there are not a lot of departments in the U.S. that even offer a major in mathematical biology.” He has been told that he is attempting to do the impossible because cell systems are too complex to use simple math.

“There is a prevailing perception in the biology department that this can’t be done, but the problem is they don’t know the type of math that we are doing and we don’t know all the biology that they are doing, so there has to be a collaboration,” Sherman said.

The graduate student’s main passion is research, and he said he spends much time searching for research relevant to his theories. He also has four other projects he has been working on intermittently for the last two years. “At least one point during the day, I think about something mathematical. There is always some kind of problem that I am trying to figure out,” Sherman said. “Usually I will be in a mood to do my research and I’ll spend four hours doing it.”

When he is not researching and doing course work, he likes to watch television and movies, but he will never be found reading a book. “I don’t read books. I do research on articles and do solutions in the back of old math textbooks, but to me, that’s not reading,” Sherman said.

Source: sundial.csun

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Immunotherapy has emerged as a promising way to tackle cancer over the last few years, and researchers at this month’s AACR meeting in Washington, DC, reported on several areas of progress in the field. In a plenary lecture on Sunday (April 7), Suzanne Topalian of Johns Hopkins University argued that despite the current dogma that cancer is a genetic disease, it can also be viewed as “an immunologic disorder.” Indeed, she said, “in many ways the adaptive immune system is an ideal anti-cancer therapy,” if it can be trained to recognize and attack tumor cells that it would otherwise tolerate. Topalian described efforts to “release the brakes” acting on the immune system by targeting inhibitory receptors on T cells that tumor cells bind in order to evade attack. She presented evidence showing that plugging the programmed death 1 (PD-1) receptor on T cells with an anti-PD-1 antibody called nivolumab results in tumor shrinkage in patients with non-small cell lung cancer, melanoma, and renal-cell cancer, an improvement that in some cases was maintained long after treatment ended. The immune system’s capacity for memory makes it a “living therapy,” she said. Nivolumab, made by Bristol-Myers Squibb, is currently in Phase 3 clinical trials for these three cancers.

At an earlier AACR session, several pioneers in the field discussed a different approach to retraining the immune system to attack cancer cells. Renier Brentjens of the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York reported on early-stage clinical successes in acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) with the use of chimeric antigen receptor T (CAR T) cells—an approach in which T cells are extracted from patients and genetically modified to express to CARs, which enables the recognition of particular antigens on certain cancerous B cells that the T cells would otherwise view as harmless. In a press conference, also at AACR, other researchers reported similarly encouraging results with CAR T-cell therapy used to treated children with relapsed ALL.  

Brentjens pointed out that CAR T cells can be further modified to express cytokines that overcome inhibitory factors around the tumor. He described these as “armored" CAR T cells that can not only kill, but also “insert a factory into the tumor” to produce molecules that protect the immune cells from a hostile microenvironment.  

Closing out the session, Carl June of the Abramson Cancer Center at the University of Pennsylvania, said that researchers are now working out which extra genes they can insert into T cells to further promote target specificity, potency, and persistence. He also cautioned that CAR T cell therapy requires researchers to tailor genetically modified cells to individuals patients, so it’s not currently practical for large-scale application.

CAR T cells are already potent and durable enough to be effective, he said, but to make them “for the masses,” researchers must create automated culturing systems. “We need to get robots to make them,” said June. “We need mass manufacture.”

Source: the-scientist

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Biological cells found in all multi-cellular organisms, that can divide (through mitosis), differentiate into diverse specialized cell types and can self-renew to produce more biological cells are called Stem Cell. In mammals, there are two broad types of cells: embryonic cells, which are isolated from the inner cell mass of blasto-cysts, and adult cells, which are found in various tissues.

Introduction
In year 1908: The term Stem cell was proposed for scientific use by the Russian histologist Alexander Maksimov (1874–1928) at congress of hematologic society in Berlin. It postulated existence of hematopoietic cells.

Difference between adult cell and embryonic cell
One major difference between adult and embryonic cells is their different abilities in the number and type of differentiated cell types they can become. Embryonic cells can become all cell types of the body because they are pluri-potent. Adult cells are thought to be limited. Embryonic cell and adult cells both have advantages and disadvantages regarding potential use for cell-based regenerative therapies.

Important sources
There are three sources of adult cells: 1) Bone marrow, which requires extraction by harvesting, that is, drilling into bone, 2) Adipose tissue (lipid cells), which requires extraction by liposuction, and 3) Blood, which requires extraction through pheresis, wherein blood is drawn from the donor, (similar to a blood donation) passed through a machine that extracts the cells and returns other portions of the blood to the donor. While embryonic stem cell lines are cultures of cells derived from the epiblast tissue of the inner cell mass of either blasto-cyst or of earlier morula stage in embryos.

Treatment
In the future, medical researchers anticipate being able to use technologies derived from stem cells research to treat a wider variety of diseases including cancer, Parkinson's disease, spinal cord injuries, Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, multiple sclerosis, and muscle damage, amongst a number of other impairments and conditions, bone marrow transplantations that is used to treat leukemia can be an example.

Achievement and scope
The procedure was performed by associate professors of neurosurgery Kee Kim and Rudolph Schrot. It used bone marrow-derived adult cells to promote the growth of the bone tissue essential for spinal fusion following surgery, as part of a nationwide, multicenter clinical trial of the therapy. The researchers are also working on precursor cells, a layer of fat in the scalp that shrinks when the hairs die and when a new hair begins to grow, that same layer of fat expands in a process called adiposeness. The stems cells that control that process are called precursor cells that can triggers and restore hair growth in bald men.

Source: articlesbase

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Researchers at Stanford University have developed a basic computer using genetic material, according to a report in the journal Science. The team said that the tiny biological transistors they have developed could potentially revolutionize medicine in the future.

“We’re going to be able to put computers into any living cell you want,” lead author Drew Endy explained to the San Jose Mercury News. “We’re not going to replace the silicon computers. We’re not going to replace your phone or your laptop. But we’re going to get computing working in places where silicon would never work.”

Endy, who came to Stanford from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, co-founded the BioBricks Foundation, which supports free-to-use standards and technologies for engineering biology. “Any place you want a little bit of logic, a little bit of computation, a little bit of memory — we’re going to be able to do that,” said Endy.

For example, gene-based biological computers could determine if a certain toxin is present inside a cell or react to treatment within an individual cell. Traditional transistors that are found in conventional computers control the flow of electrons in the form of the zeros and ones of binary code, the most basic machine language. Arranging multiple transistors together forms something called a “logic gate,” which serves as the basic building block of all computations performed by computers around the world.

The Stanford genetic transistors, which they’ve dubbed “transcriptors,” use enzymes to manage the flow of RNA proteins along a strand of DNA, similar to the way a computer would use silicon transistors. Using about 150 letters of genetic code, the transcriptors could make a yes-or-no decision, such as determining if mercury is present within the cell.

“The first things that can be done are more precise biosensing. You could see if a cell has been exposed to different combinations of chemicals, and have a specific signal only when a certain pattern of interest shows up, say glucose and caffeine,” co-author Jerome Bonnet told The Guardian. “In the longer term we hope biocomputers can be used to study and reprogram living systems and improve cellular therapeutics.”

Cellular therapeutics is a field of medicine that uses genomics and cell biology to regenerate and replace damaged tissues and organs. Transcriptors are the third and final component in a 10-year drive to the biological computer. Last year, the team developed the other two core components of a computer: a method to store rewriteable data within DNA and a mechanism for sending genetic data from cell to cell.

Timothy Lu, a researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is also working on genome-based computers. He said the technology holds great potential for the future. He sees the ability to program cells to automatically scan for chemical signals of cancer.

“These cells could light up, and you could easily see whether the cell has computed [if] you may have early signs of cancer or not,” he told NPR. He adds that these cells might be able to produce a drug, or target the cancer directly.

Source: redorbit

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Scientists have used biological tissue to recreate one of the main components of a modern computer inside living cells. The biological device behaves like a transistor, one of the tiny switches that are etched on to microchips in the billions to perform computer calculations.

The researchers demonstrated the device inside E coli bacteria, one of the most common bugs used in genetic engineering. The work marks one of the latest advances in the growing field of synthetic biology, which recasts biology as a toolset for engineers.

Writing in the journal Science, researchers at Stanford University explain how their biological transistors could be connected together inside living cells to perform computing jobs such as controlling how genes are expressed in an organism.

Led by Drew Endy, a pioneer in the field, the team showed that different arrangements of biological transistors worked like logic gates, which take input signals and process them into different outputs. In keeping with their heritage, Endy calls these arrangements Boolean Integrase Logic (BIL) gates.

Normal transistors control the flow of electrons along metal wires. In the biological device, dubbed a "transcriptor", the wire is a strand of DNA and the electrons are replaced by an enzyme. A modern computer chip holds several billion transistors that are wired together to carry out calculations. The same can be achieved with transcriptors, each of which is built from about 150 letters of the genetic code.

Scientists hope to build computers within living cells that perform useful jobs. "The first things that can be done are more precise biosensing. You could see if a cell has been exposed to different combinations of chemicals, and have a specific signal only when a certain pattern of interest shows up, say glucose and caffeine," said Jerome Bonnet, the first author on the paper.

"In the longer term we hope biocomputers can be used to study and reprogram living systems and improve cellular therapeutics," he said. Cellular therapeutics is a field of medicine that draws on genetics and cell biology to regenerate and replace dead or diseased tissues and organs.

As part of an ongoing effort among synthetic biologists to build up a stock of components, the Stanford team has made the designs for the transcriptor and BIL gates public and free to use. "Most of biotechnology has not yet been imagined, let alone made true. By freely sharing important basic tools, everyone can work better together," Bonnet said.

Last year the UK government invested more than £100m in technology designed in part to help Britain compete in a market for synthetic biology potentially worth $100bn. The Pentagon has invested heavily too and asked scientists to pitch for funds to back projects that range from chemical sensing to new ways to detect enemy troops.

Source: guardian

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The research world’s most famous human cell has had its genome decoded, and it’s a mess. German researchers this week report the genome sequence of the HeLa cell line, which originates from a deadly cervical tumour taken from a patient named Henrietta Lacks.

Established after Lacks died in 1951, HeLa cells were the first human cells to grow well in the laboratory. The cells have contributed to more than 60,000 research papers, the development of a polio vaccine in the 1950s and, most recently, an international effort to characterize the genome, known as ENCODE.

Previous work showed that HeLa cells, like many tumours, have bizarre, error-filled genomes, with one or more extra copies of many chromosomes. To get a closer look at these alterations, a team led by Lars Steinmetz, a geneticist at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory in Heidelberg, Germany, sequenced the popular 'Kyoto' version of the cell line and compared the sequence with that of a reference human genome. The team's results are published in G31.

Steinmetz’s team confirmed that HeLa cells contain one extra version of most chromosomes, with up to five copies of some. Many genes were duplicated even more extensively, with four, five or six copies sometimes present, instead of the usual two.  Furthermore, large segments of chromosome 11 and several other chromosomes were reshuffled like a deck of cards, drastically altering the arrangement of the genes.

Without the genome sequence of Lacks’ healthy cells or that of her original tumour, it is difficult to trace the origin of these alterations. Steinmetz points out that other cervical tumours have massive rearrangements on chromosome 11, so the changes in the HeLa cell may have contributed to Lacks’ tumour.

Potential uses
Having been replicating in labs around the world for six decades, HeLa cells have also accrued errors not present in the original tumour DNA. Moreover, not all HeLa cells are identical, and Steinmetz says that it would be interesting to chart the cell’s evolution.

Whatever their origin, the genetic changes raise questions over the widespread use of HeLa cells as models for human cell biology, Steinmetz says. For instance, his team found that around 2000 genes are expressed at levels higher than those of normal human tissues because of the duplications. Alternative cell lines, such as induced pluripotent stem cells generated from patient skin cells, offer a more accurate window on human biology, he says.

Mathew Garnett, a cancer biologist at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute near Cambridge, UK, says that HeLa cells could prove useful for studying aspects of the biology of cervical tumours, such as their response to cancer drugs. In recent years, the genomes of many cervical tumours have been sequenced, and so it should be possible to see how these compare with the HeLa genome.

Steinmetz also points out that thousands of research papers based on HeLa cells, along with HeLa resources such as genetically manipulated lines and now a genome, means that labs will continue to stock the cells, even if they are not a perfect model of human biology. “These are not going to go out of fashion over the next 10 years,” he says. "I’m not sure where we’re going to be 20 years from now."

Source: nature

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It may sound like something from a science fiction film, but scientists say they have created 'zombie cells' - that continue to work after they are dead. But unlike the walking dead of Hollywood, these cells actually perform some functions better than when they were alive. Scientists say by coating organic cells in silicic acid they are able to withstand far greater temperatures and pressures than flesh.

The technique means scientists can preserve valuable biological material by 'converting it into a fossil.'The process was developed by researchers from Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque and the University of New Mexico. Scientists used silicic acid to 'embalm' the mammalian cells and create a near-perfect replica of its structure.

They believe the zombie cells could be used in commercial manufacturing, including fuel cells or sensor technology and may be the future of nanotechnology.  'It's very challenging for researchers to build structures at a nanometer scale. We can make particles and wires, but 3-D arbitrary structures haven't been achieved yet,' lead researcher Bryan Kaehr was quoted as saying in The Huffington Post.  He added: 'With this technique, we don't need to build those structures - nature does it for us.'

Silica has been known for its hard properties since ancient times and is found in sand and quartz. The living cells are painted with the acid in a petri dish and the silica solution then forms a replica down to the most minute detail.

By being able to survive extreme pressures and temperatures, the zombie cells can 'perform some functions better than when they were alive', says Michael Hess at the American Office of Public Affairs.

He said by heating the silica to 400C, the organic part of the cell is evaporated and the solution is kept as a 'three-dimensional Madame Tussauds wax replica of a formerly living being.'Mr Kaehr said the process means the cells can carry on 'working' even after they are dead.

He said: 'King Tut was mummified to approximately resemble his living self, but the process took place without mineralisation [a process of fossilisation]. 'Our zombie cells bridge chemistry and biology to create forms that not only near-perfectly resemble their past selves, but can do future work.'

Source: dailymail

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