The company today rolled out the Microsoft Game Hub, which helps fans of casual games like Bejeweled play and interact socially across MSN Games, Bing Games and Windows Live Messenger
REDMOND, Wash. – Nov. 15, 2010 – Solitaire doesn’t have to be so solitary anymore. (more…)
*GPU processing is now less expensive and more accessible to a wide variety of graphics rendering and High Performance Computing (HPC) workloads*
SEATTLE, Nov 15, 2010 (BUSINESS WIRE) — Amazon Web Services LLC, an Amazon.com company, today 
announced Amazon Cluster GPU Instances, a new instance type designed to deliver the power of GPU processing in the cloud. GPUs are increasingly being used to accelerate the performance of many general purpose computing problems. However, for many organizations, GPU processing has been out of reach due to the unique infrastructural challenges and high cost of the technology. Amazon Cluster GPU Instances remove this barrier by providing developers and businesses immediate access to the highly tuned compute performance of GPUs with no upfront investment or long-term commitment. To get started using Amazon EC2 GPU Instances, visit: https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/hpc-applications/. (more…)
There are many pros and cons to the issue of the Internet’s influences on education, and experts have called it everything from the hemlock of higher education to an innovative boon. While it’s probably neither of these extremes, there are some high and low points of the Internet’s role in higher education that can be observed on their own. By enabling students to take advantage of the positive elements of the Internet for educational purposes and restricting the detrimental sides of the Web, academic success can become a more widespread reality. (more…)
*Study sheds light on what E. coli genes are doing inside the body during infection*
E. coli bacteria. Image credit: Amy Simms, Ph.D
ANN ARBOR, Mich. — Urinary tract infections are a painful, recurring problem for millions of women. They are also getting more dangerous as bacteria develop resistance to the most common treatments.
Scientists from the University of Michigan have moved one step closer to a vaccine that could prevent a majority of urinary tract infections, which are caused by E. coli bacteria. Using a genetic technique rarely used to look at infections in human hosts, the researchers studied how the E. coli bacteria operate and discovered key differences between how the bacteria’s genes behave in women and how they behave in mice used in experiments.
Their findings, published online Nov. 11 in PLoS Pathogens, could lead to developments that would save billions in health care costs and millions of doctors’ visits and hospitalizations from urinary tract infections each year. (more…)
Image credit: University of Toronto
U of T scientists have found that chemicals used to line junk food wrappers and microwave popcorn bags are migrating into food and being ingested by people where they are contributing to chemical contamination observed in blood.
Perfluorinated carboxylic acids or PFCAs are the breakdown products of chemicals used to make non-stick and water- and stain-repellant products ranging from kitchen pans to clothing to food packaging. PFCAs, the best known of which is perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA), are found in humans all around the world. (more…)
Mouse Stroke. An MRI of a mouse brain after stroke. The mouse section has been stained to show cell bodies. Image credit: University of California
A stroke wreaks havoc in the brain, destroying its cells and the connections between them. Depending on its severity and location, a stroke can impact someone’s life forever, affecting motor activity, speech, memories, and more.
The brain makes an attempt to rally by itself, sprouting a few new connections, called axons, that reconnect some areas of the brain. But the process is weak, and the older the brain, the poorer the repair. Still, understanding the cascade of molecular events that drive even this weak attempt could lead to developing drugs to boost and accelerate this healing process.
Now researchers at UCLA have achieved a promising first step. Reporting in the current online edition of the journal Nature Neuroscience, senior author Dr. S. Thomas Carmichael, a UCLA associate professor of neurology, and colleagues have, for the first time, identified in the mouse the molecular cascade that drives the process of reconnection or sprouting in the adult brain after stroke. (more…)
*Historical ecology of the Andes indicates desert-like setting on the horizon*
Catastrophic drought is on the near-term horizon for the capital city of Bolivia, according to new research into the historical ecology of the Andes.
If temperatures rise more than 1.5 to 2 degrees Celsius (3 to 5 degrees Fahrenheit) above those of modern times, parts of Peru and Bolivia will become a desert-like setting.
About the image: Lake Titicaca from space. Its outline may look very different in the future. Image credit: NASA (more…)
A University of Colorado at Boulder-led study shows that specific types of stem cells transplanted into the leg muscles of mice prevented the loss of muscle function and mass that normally occurs with aging, a finding with potential uses in treating humans with chronic, degenerative muscle diseases.
The experiments showed that when young host mice with limb muscle injuries were injected with muscle stem cells from young donor mice, the cells not only repaired the injury within days, they caused the treated muscle to double in mass and sustain itself through the lifetime of the transplanted mice. “This was a very exciting and unexpected result,” said Professor Bradley Olwin of CU-Boulder’s molecular, cellular and developmental biology department, the study’s corresponding author. (more…)
