Technology

Is an End to AIDS-related Deaths Possible?

U of T assistant professor of nursing LaRon Nelson weighs in

World AIDS Day is held on Dec. 1 each year. It’s an opportunity for people worldwide to unite in the fight against HIV, show their support for people living with HIV, commemorate people who have died and celebrate victories such as increased access to treatment and prevention services. World AIDS Day was the first ever global health day. Held for the first time in 1988, it’s become one of the most recognized international health holidays. The day is also a chance for public and private partners to spread awareness about the status of the pandemic and encourage progress in HIV/AIDS prevention, treatment and care in high prevalence countries and around the world. (more…)

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Watching the Nervous System Being Wired in Real Time

Thanks to a new imaging technology developed at Yale, the National Institutes of Health and Sloan-Kettering, scientists can now see for the first time the development of a living organism at the level of a single cell.

One of the developers, Yale cell biologist Daniel Colon-Ramos, illustrates the power of the new technology in this video that shows the migration of cells that will form the nervous system in a developing worm. (more…)

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UCLA Scientists Engineer Blood Stem Cells to Fight Melanoma

Researchers from UCLA’s cancer and stem cell centers have demonstrated for the first time that blood stem cells can be engineered to create cancer-killing T-cells that seek out and attack a human melanoma. The researchers believe the approach could be useful in about 40 percent of Caucasians with this malignancy.

Done in mouse models, the study serves as the first proof-of-principle that blood stem cells, which make every type of cell found in the blood, can be genetically altered in a living organism to create an army of melanoma-fighting T-cells, said Jerome Zack, the study’s senior author and a scientist with UCLA’s Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center and the Eli and Edythe Broad Center of Regenerative Medicine and Stem Cell Research at UCLA. (more…)

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Hold the Supplements

*Dietary supplements fail to prove of any benefit*

If sales figures are any guide, Americans love to take vitamins, minerals, and other dietary supplements. (more…)

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Yahoo!’s 10th Annual Year in Review Spotlights 2011’s Passing Obsessions and Perplexing Newsmakers

*iPhone takes the top spot in 2011; Casey Anthony pled her way onto the list; Kim Kardashian joins the list again; and Osama bin Laden’s death captivated the world*

SUNNYVALE, Calif.–(BUSINESS WIRE)— Today Yahoo! Inc., the premier digital media company, announced the 10th anniversary edition of its Year in Review (yearinreview.yahoo.com), the highly-anticipated annual look-back that identifies the top stories and trends of the year based on nearly 700 million monthly unique visitorsi activity on the network and billions of consumer searches. The annual look-back of aggregated visitor activity is a gauge for worldwide interests. The 2011 Year in Review is available in 17 versions including Argentina, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Italy, Korea, Mexico, Philippines, Spain, Taiwan, United Kingdom, and United Statesii.

The top search term of 2011 didn’t go to a person or a news event, but to a technological marvel. The iPhone led the 2011 search queries, bypassing a reality TV star’s marriage and pending divorce, a notorious criminal defendant, and America’s most wanted terrorist. (more…)

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Smartphone Adoption Reaches 40 Percent in Canada

RIM Continues to Lead Smartphone Market, with Apple a Close Second

Google Android Doubles its Smartphone Market Share in Past Six Months to 25 Percent

TORONTO, CA, November 30, 2011 – comScore, Inc., a leader in measuring the digital world, today released data from the comScore MobiLens service, reporting key trends in the Canada mobile phone industry for September 2011. The report ranked the leading mobile original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) and smartphone operating system (OS) platforms in Canada according to their share of current mobile subscribers ages 13 and older, and reviewed the most popular activities and content accessed via the subscriber’s primary mobile phone. The September report found Samsung to be the top handset manufacturer overall with 25.2 percent market share, while RIM led among smartphone platforms with 35.8 percent share of that market segment. (more…)

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Physicists Set Strongest Limit on Mass of Dark Matter

Brown University physicists have set the strongest limit for the mass of dark matter, the mysterious particles believed to make up nearly a quarter of the universe. The researchers report in Physical Review Letters that dark matter must have a mass greater than 40 giga-electron volts. The distinction is important because it casts doubt on recent results from underground experiments that have reported detecting dark matter

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — If dark matter exists in the universe, scientists now have set the strongest limit to date on its mass. (more…)

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A Smarter Way to Make Ultraviolet Light Beams

ANN ARBOR, Mich.— Existing coherent ultraviolet light sources are power hungry, bulky and expensive. University of Michigan researchers have found a better way to build compact ultraviolet sources with low power consumption that could improve information storage, microscopy and chemical analysis.

A paper on the research is newly published in Optics Express. The research was led by Mona Jarrahi and Tal Carmon, assistant professors in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. The experiment was performed by Jeremy Moore and Matthew Tomes, both graduate students in the same department. (more…)

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