News: Safari Books Online launches iPad application

Safari Books Online has launched a free iPad application, Safari to Go that allows subscribers to access and read books from its online library. Safari Books Online is a subscription-based on-demand digital library that delivers expert content from leading publishers in technology and business such as O’Reilly Media, Peachpit Press, John Wiley & Sons and many others. The Safari to Go application allows users to access books from the company’s.

Google Cloud Connect for Microsoft Office now available to early testers

Users of Office 2003, 2007 and 2010 can sync their Office documents to the Google cloud, without ever leaving Office. Once synced, documents are backed-up, given a unique URL, and can be accessed from anywhere (including mobile devices) at any time through Google Docs. And because the files are stored in the cloud, people always have access to the current version.

Once in the Google cloud, documents can be easily shared and even simultaneously edited by multiple people, from right within Office. A full revision history is kept as the files are edited, and users can revert to earlier versions in one click. These are all features that Google Docs users already enjoy today, and now bringing 

them to microsoft office.All you need is a Google account, and you’re ready to go. That’s it!..

Interested in joining in the preview program, please sign up here.

Paving Machine

Tiger-Stone is a Dutch made paving machine that uses gravity and an electric motor to print stone and brick roads. It’s a six meter wide machine that is capable of laying 300 square meters of road a day. The printing width is adjustable from the width of a road to as narrow as a bike lane or walkway. There are no moving parts within the machine, it simply uses a shelf that is fed bricks and they are automatically sorted and packed together by gravity, each stone will associate with the link previously made. There is a quiet electric motor that moves the machine along a bed of sand creating consistent results with a simply operated paver.

Web Designer VS Web Developers

How the browser works?

If anybody ask,how the browser works?. Show this tech pic. 

Mount Everest now 'wired' for Internet, ready for Starbucks

TeliaSonera subsidiary Ncell has just completed installation of a 3G base station at 5,200 meters (17,000 feet) that will reach the 8,848-meter peak of Mount Everest. Mind you, we've already seen a cellphone call made from the world's highest peak using a temporary base station in a Motorola publicity stunt. This time, however, it's permanent and faster allowing climbers to surf the internet or make 3G video calls.

Hi-Tech Cycling

Engineers Create A Strong But Lightweight Isotruss Bike Using Carbon Fibers

Engineers used elements of architecture and geometry to create a strong but lightweight triangle-based isotruss bicycle frame. To make a road bike or mountain bike, the isotruss is first wound with carbon fiber using a sheet that holds the tension constant. The engineers then hand-wind Kevlar strands over the isotruss. The process creates a bike with a large strength-to-weight ratio.

Karl Vizmeg has ridden his Delta 7 Arantix bike 1,700 miles. He has raced dozens of bikes, but says a new see-through model is the strongest and lightest.Almost every kid has at one time or another asked for one for Christmas. Now, engineers have developed what may be the most technologically advanced bike to hit the road yet. It took ten years to develop a new incredibly light and strong model that will take cyclists into the future.

"This is phenomenal," said Vizmeg. "I've had so much fun this year, particularly with the 'wow' factor, but [also] because it's such a great racing bike."

Vizmeg's $8,500 bike was handmade in Utah using geometry and architecture. To make bikes like his, workers first make an isotruss, a form made from isosceles triangles. Then, they wind carbon fiber around the form -- creating a great strength-to-weight ratio.

"We go back afterwards and hand-wind all the little Kevlar strands, inch-by-inch, over each isotruss," said Tyler Evans, program manager at Delta 7 Sports in Payson, Utah.

They then bake the bike to bond the materials. The mountain bike frame weighs 2.6 pounds. The new Ascend road bike weighs 1.8.

"This bike rides like bikes that are much heavier and stronger and built like a tank, but it's still in the featherweight category," Evans said.

You might think the open-lattice design wouldn't be aerodynamic, but Delta 7 says wind-tunnel tests prove the bikes are as aerodynamic as traditional ones. The Ascend bike has another advantage.

"You definitely feel like a rock star, like you're famous, like you belong in the Tour de France or some high-end race," cyclist Dan Weller told Ivanhoe.

Right now, that feeling requires patience. It takes about 100 hours to build each IsoTruss bike. Delta 7 produced only 200 IsoTruss models in 2008, but is working on ways to mass-produce them in the near future. To get one right now, you have to add yourself to the waiting list and put down a $1,000 deposit.

A SEE-THROUGH BIKE FRAME? The Arantix mountain bicycle and Ascend road bicycle have frames made from carbon fiber, shaped into a form called IsoTruss. The lattice structure is woven by hand into the form of pyramid-like shapes made of isosceles triangles (the kind with two sides of equal length). The design is specially designed to make the bicycle resistant to bending and twisting, with a greater ratio of strength to weight than metal frames. This technology is currently promoted as an alternative to heavier, weaker materials in everything from automobiles to building materials and utility poles.

HOW TO WEAVE A BICYCLE: To construct the bike, the artisans take a single strand of carbon fiber and wind it back and forth (by hand) over a cylindrical mandrill until it is the right size, then wrap Kevlar around the fibers to bundle it. Then they bake it in an oven, which bonds all the carbon together.

The Materials Research Society, the American Mathematical Society and the Mathematical Association of America contributed to the information contained in the TV portion of this report. This report has also been produced thanks to a generous grant from the Camille and Henry Dreyfus Foundation, Inc.

Note: This story and accompanying video were originally produced for the American Institute of Physics seriesDiscoveries and Breakthroughs in Science by Ivanhoe Broadcast News and are protected by copyright law. All rights reserved.

Space Tornado

Physicists Spot Interstellar Shock Wave Using Spitzer Telescope

The spirals of a "space tornado" may be the first step in the formation of a new star. The structure, observed with NASA's Spitzer infrared telescope, is a shock wave created by a jet of material slamming on a cloud of interstellar gas and dust at more than 100 miles per second, heating the cloud and causing it to glow. Physicists say the jet may have been generated by magnetic fields.

CAMBRIDGE, Mass.--They can be destructive and deadly, and they're not just something that happens here on earth! Tornadoes are the most erratic, unpredictable and violent of storms, and now scientists are finding out they happen in the most unusual places!

Physicist Giovanni Fazio has spotted tornadoes in space. With the help of his infrared camera on board NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, astronomers discovered what looked like a tornado in space.

"I was responsible for building one of the cameras on board there that took this picture of the tornado," Fazio, of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Mass., tells DBIS. "We were quite surprised when I saw it. I never saw anything like this before in my life."

The surprise turned out to be a shock-wave created by a jet of material flowing through a vast cloud of interstellar gas and dust. The jet slammed into neighboring dust clouds at more than 100 miles per second, heating the dust and causing it to glow.

"When stars form, they form from the collapse of a cloud of gas and dust. And in the process of the gas and dust falling in, it doesn't fall directly in -- it sort of spirals in slowly," Fazio says.

He adds understanding a star's formation may someday help astronomers understand the formation of our galaxy. "How did we get here, and where are we going? That's what we are trying to understand."

So while tornados on earth can be destructive, tornadoes in space could reveal the mysteries of the universe.

Astronomers say they can only speculate about the source of the spiraling jet. One explanation? Magnetic fields throughout the region might have shaped the tornado-like object.

BACKGROUND: Using NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, astronomers have discovered a cosmic jet that looks like a giant tornado whirling in space. The "tornado" is actually a shock wave created by a jet of material flowing through a vast cloud of interstellar gas and dust. The jet slams into neighboring dust clouds at a speed of more than 100 miles per second, heating the dust so that it glows with infrared light. The Spitzer telescope detects that light.

WHAT ARE COSMIC JETS: Astronomers believe that cosmic jets form when a massive object, such as a neutron star or black hole, draws in matter, which forms a whirling "accretion disk" around the object. Friction within the disk can heat it to very high temperatures, so that excess energy is vented by ejecting subatomic particles from the poles of the disk at speeds approaching that of light. Scientists believe the jets start out fairly broad and then narrow into a funnel because of the strong magnetic field lines, which rotate and accelerate the jet of particles.

ABOUT THE SPITZER TELESCOPE: The Spitzer Space Telescope was launched on 25 August 2003. Spitzer detects the infrared energy radiated by objects in space. Most of this infrared radiation is blocked by the Earth's atmosphere and cannot be observed from the ground. Spitzer allows us to peer into regions of space that are hidden from optical telescopes. Many areas of space are filled with vast, dense clouds of gas and dust that block our view. Infrared light, however can penetrate these clouds, allowing us to peer into regions of star formation, the centers of galaxies, and into newly forming planetary systems. Infrared also brings us information about the cooler objects in space, such as smaller stars which are too dim to be detected by their visible light, extrasolar planets, and giant molecular clouds. Also, many molecules in space, including organic molecules, have their unique signatures in the infrared.

The American Astronomical Society contributed to the information contained in the TV portion of this report.

Note: This story and accompanying video were originally produced for the American Institute of Physics seriesDiscoveries and Breakthroughs in Science by Ivanhoe Broadcast News and are protected by copyright law. All rights reserved.

Miniature Human Livers Created in the Lab

Researchers at the Institute for Regenerative Medicine at Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center have reached an early, but important, milestone in the quest to grow replacement livers in the lab. They are the first to use human liver cells to successfully engineer miniature livers that function -- at least in a laboratory setting -- like human livers. The next step is to see if the livers will continue to function after transplantation in an animal model.

The ultimate goal of the research, which will be presented on October 31 at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases in Boston, is to provide a solution to the shortage of donor livers available for patients who need transplants. Laboratory-engineered livers could also be used to test the safety of new drugs.

"We are excited about the possibilities this research represents, but must stress that we're at an early stage and many technical hurdles must be overcome before it could benefit patients," said Shay Soker, Ph.D., professor of regenerative medicine and project director. "Not only must we learn how to grow billions of liver cells at one time in order to engineer livers large enough for patients, but we must determine whether these organs are safe to use in patients."

Pedro Baptista, PharmD, Ph.D., lead author on the study, said the project is the first time that human liver cells have been used to engineer livers in the lab. "Our hope is that once these organs are transplanted, they will maintain and gain function as they continue to develop," he said.

To engineer the organs, the scientists used animal livers that were treated with a mild detergent to remove all cells (a process called decellularization), leaving only the collagen "skeleton" or support structure. They then replaced the original cells with two types of human cells: immature liver cells known as progenitors, and endothelial cells that line blood vessels.

An early milestone in the quest to grow replacement livers in the lab has been achieved. Researchers have used human liver cells to successfully engineer miniature livers that function -- at least in a laboratory setting -- like human livers. (Credit: iStockphoto/Sebastian Kaulitzki)

The cells were introduced into the liver skeleton through a large vessel that feeds a system of smaller vessels in the liver. This network of vessels remains intact after the decellularization process. The liver was next placed in a bioreactor, special equipment that provides a constant flow of nutrients and oxygen throughout the organ.

After a week in the bioreactor system, the scientists documented the progressive formation of human liver tissue, as well as liver-associated function. They observed widespread cell growth inside the bioengineered organ.

The ability to engineer a liver with animal cells had been demonstrated previously. However, the possibility of generating a functional human liver was still in question.

The researchers said the current study suggests a new approach to whole-organ bioengineering that might prove to be critical not only for treating liver disease, but for growing organs such as the kidney and pancreas. Scientists at the Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine are working on these projects, as well as many other tissues and organs, and also working to develop cell therapies to restore organ function.

Bioengineered livers could also be useful for evaluating the safety of new drugs. "This would more closely mimic drug metabolism in the human liver, something that can be difficult to reproduce in animal models," said Baptista.

Co-researchers were Dipfen Vyas, B.Sc., Zhan Wang, M.D., and Anthony Atala, M.D., director of the institute.

The abstract, "The Use of Whole Organ Decellularization for the Bioengineering of a Human Vascularized Liver," will be presented on Oct. 31.

Editor's Note: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment.

Scientists 'Watch' Formation of Cells' Protein Factories, Ribosomes, for First Time

A team from The Scripps Research Institute has revealed the first-ever pictures of the formation of cells' "protein factories." In addition to being a major technical feat on its own, the work could open new pathways for development of antibiotics and treatments for diseases tied to errors in ribosome formation. In addition, the techniques developed in the study can now be applied to other complex challenges in the understanding of cellular processes.

Identifying and observing the molecules that form ribosomes -- the cellular factories that build the proteins essential for life -- has for decades been a key goal for biologists but one that had seemed nearly unattainable. But the new Scripps Research study, which appears in the October 29, 2010 issue of the journal Science, yielded pictures of the chemical intermediate steps in ribosome creation.

"For me it was a dream experiment," said project leader James Williamson, Ph.D., professor, member of the Skaggs Institute for Chemical Biology, and dean of graduate and postgraduate studies at Scripps Research, who credits collaborators at the Scripps Research National Resource for Automated Molecular Microscopy (NRAMM) facility for making it possible. "We have great colleagues at Scripps to collaborate with who are willing to try some crazy experiments, and when they work it's just beautiful."

A team from The Scripps Research Institute has revealed the first-ever pictures of the formation of cells’ “protein factories.” (Credit: Gabe Lander)

Past studies of the intermediate molecules that combine to form ribosomes and other cellular components have been severely limited by imaging technologies. Electron microscopy has for many years made it possible to create pictures of such tiny molecules, but this typically requires purification of the molecules. To purify, you must first identify, meaning researchers had to infer what the intermediates were ahead of time rather than being able to watch the real process.

"My lab has been working on ribosome assembly intensively for about 15 years," said Williamson. "The basic steps were mapped out 30 years ago. What nobody really understood was how it happens inside cells."

Creating a New View

The NRAMM group, led by Scripps Research Associate Professors Clinton Potter and Bridget Carragher and working with Scripps Research Kellogg School of Science and Technology graduate students Anke Mulder and Craig Yoshioka, developed a new technique, described in the Science paper and dubbed discovery single-particle profiling, which dodges the purification problem by allowing successful imaging of unpurified samples. An automated data capture and processing system of the team's design enables them to decipher an otherwise impossibly complex hodgepodge of data that results.

For this project, second author Andrea Beck, a research assistant in the Williamson laboratory, purified ribosome components from cells of the common research bacterium Escherichia Coli. She then chemically broke these apart to create a solution of the components that form ribosomes. The components were mixed together and then were rapidly stained and imaged using electron microscopy. "We went in with 'dirty' samples that contained horribly complex mixtures of all different particles," said Williamson.

Mulder, who is first author on the paper, collected and analyzed the particles that were formed during the ribosome assembly reaction. Using the team's advanced algorithms, they were able to process more than a million data points from the electron microscope to ultimately produce molecular pictures.

The Pieces Fit

The team produced images that the scientists were able to match like puzzle pieces to parts of ribosomes, offering strong confirmation that they had indeed imaged and identified actual chemical intermediates in the path to ribosome production. "We always saw the same thing no matter how we processed the data, and this led us to believe this was real," said Williamson.

Further confirmation came as the researchers imaged components from different timeframes. After breaking down ribosome components, the scientists prepared samples at various stages allowing enough time for the molecular mix to begin combining as they do during ribosome creation in cells.

Imaging this time series, the team was able to show higher concentrations of larger, more complex molecules and fewer smaller molecules as time elapsed. These results fit with the limited information that was already available about the timing of formation steps, providing further confirmation of the team's success.

Interestingly, this work also confirmed that there are more than one possible paths in ribosome formation, a phenomenon known as parallel assembly that been suggested by prior research but never definitively confirmed.

Long-Term Potential

Williamson says that with the information now at hand, they will be able to move forward with studies of which additional molecules might be present in cells and essential for ribosome formation. Such data could offer exciting medical potential.

All bacteria contain and are dependent on ribosomes. Identification of molecules required for ribosome assembly could offer new targets for antibiotic drugs aimed at killing bacteria. "If we can figure out how to inhibit assembly, that would be a very important therapeutic avenue," said Williamson.

There are also indications that some diseases such as Diamond Blackfan Anemia might be caused, at least in some cases, by errors in ribosome production. Better understanding of that production could also reveal ways such errors might be repaired to cure or prevent disease.

At the more basic level, this successful project has also proven techniques that Scripps Research scientists and other researchers can apply to allow similar imaging and understanding of other complex but critical cellular processes.

In addition to Williamson, Mulder, Beck, Yoshioka, Potter, and Carragher, authors of the paper, entitled "Visualizing Ribosome Biogenesis: Parallel Assembly Pathways for the 30S Subunit," were Anne Bunner and Ronald Milligan from Scripps Research.

This research was supported by the National Institutes of Health and a fellowship from the National Science Foundation.