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A key to depression EurekAlert! PROZAC stimulates the birth of new brain cells in rats, say scientists from New Jersey. The finding gives clues to what causes depression in people, how drugs like Prozac relieve it and why the effect takes so long to kick in. Just over a year ago, researchers showed that people grow new neurons all the time. This overturned a long-held belief that brain cells, unlike cells in other parts of the body, are not replaced when they die. Barry Jacobs and Casimir Fornal at Princeton University put together findings from several different brain studies. http://www.eurekalert.org/releases/ns-akt110399.html Shedding light on the origin of primate color vision EurekAlert! Researchers at the University of Chicago have found evidence that trichromatic or full color vision originated in prosimians, a group of lemurs, Bush Babies and pottos rather than in higher primates, pushing the origin of primate color vision back roughly 20 million years. Previously it was thought that color vision first evolved in the common ancestor of higher primates about 35-40 million years ago. The new research pushes the origin of color vision in primates back to about 55 million years ago. http://www.eurekalert.org/releases/ucmc-slo110399.html Cerebral cortex cells may pulse electrical rhythm through the brain EurekAlert! Like the steady synchronized blink of a string of holiday lights, certain types of nerve cells in the cerebral cortex communicate with each other through electrical connections, forming a new type of brain circuitry described in the current Nature. Until now, scientists thought nerve cells in the cerebral cortex, the sinuous bumps on top of the brain, communicated only through chemical signals. The cerebral cortex contains two types of nerve cells excitatory or inhibitory. Each neuron a nerve cell in the brain communicates with other neurons through chemical connections that fire off a tiny bit of chemical that either inhibits or excites the next neuron. These connections between neurons are called synapses. While studying the chemical synaptic connections in the cerebral cortex of rats, Brown University researchers found that two separate types of inhibitory neurons were also using electrical synaptic connections to communicate, but only within their specific groups. http://www.eurekalert.org/releases/brwn-ccc110399.html Noveau neurons are better than no neurons at all EurekAlert! An artificial neuron built by researchers at U.C. San Diego may be the first step toward restoring brain function in patients suffering from stroke, Alzheimer's and other neurological dysfunction. The interdisciplinary team, led by Alan Selverston and Henry Abarbanel, successfully integrated their electronic neuron within a group of 14 biological neurons from the California spiny lobster. http://www.eurekalert.org/releases/onrm-nna110199.html Northwestern chemists plot the next step in nanotechnology EurekAlert! EVANSTON, Ill. --- In a paper to be published in the Oct. 15 issue of the journal Science, researchers at Northwestern University demonstrate a new technology that may be used to miniaturize electronic circuits, put thousands of different medical sensors on an area much tinier than the head of a pin and develop an understanding of the intrinsic behavior of ultrasmall structures -- ones comprised of a small collection of molecules patterned on a solid substrate. In their paper, the researchers detail how they have transformed their world's smallest pen (Science, Jan. 29, 1999) into the world's smallest plotter, a device capable of drawing multiple lines of molecules -- each line only 15 nanometers or 30 molecules wide -- with such precision that only five nanometers, or about 200 billionths of an inch, separate each line. By contrast, a human hair is about 10,000 nanometers wide. http://www.eurekalert.org/releases/nwun-ncp101299.html New mini microwave thruster is most powerful in its class EurekAlert! October 15, 1999, University Park, Pa. --- Penn State engineers have miniaturized a satellite propulsion system they originally built with parts from a microwave oven and produced a new thruster that draws only as much electricity as a light bulb, but puts out more thrust than any system in its class. Only 2 inches long and 1.25 inches in diameter, the new mini-thruster depends on a microwave generator used in weather radar, aircraft radios and other communications applications instead of the larger kitchen oven magnetron used in the earlier prototype. Performance tested under simulated space vacuum conditions using as little as 80 Watts of power, the new mini-thruster produced the highest thrust for a continuously-operating low power electrothermal thruster. http://www.eurekalert.org/releases/ps-nmm101599.html Scientists discover addition of new brain cells in highest brain area EurekAlert! PRINCETON, N.J. -- In a finding that eventually could lead to new methods for treating brain diseases and injuries, Princeton scientists have shown that new neurons are continually added to the cerebral cortex of adult monkeys. The discovery reverses a dogma nearly a century old and suggests entirely new ways of explaining how the mind accomplishes its basic functions, from problem solving to learning and memory. http://www.eurekalert.org/releases/prin-sda100899.html There's a new kind of computer in the air AlphaGalileo Common gases could be used to do the number crunching in computers based on individual molecules rather than transistors on a chip. The prospect of superfast molecular computers has become a step closer now that a chemist in Berlin has developed the first molecular switch based on common atmospheric gases. http://www.alphagalileo.org/fetchpn.asp?id=2399&accept_language=en We do 'feel with the mind's eye,' confirm Emory researchers in Nature EurekAlert! For the first time, researchers have verified that the part of the brain involved in processing the sense of sight is also necessary for the sense of touch. Results of an Emory University study confirming the role of visual cortex in tactile (touch) perception are reported in this week's issue of the journal Nature. http://www.eurekalert.org/releases/emry-wdf100499.html 'Rainbow metal,' similar to opal, suggests light-steering computer parts and catalysts EurekAlert! Porous, rainbow-colored metal--inspired by opal--may suggest new materials to steer light inside superfast computers, or to more efficiently catalyze chemical reactions, University of Delaware researchers report Oct. 7 in Nature. Because it's riddled with regularly spaced holes only slightly wider than the wavelength of light, the UD material acts like a prism, diffracting a spectrum of colors--from gold and blue to red, green and purple. http://www.eurekalert.org/releases/udel-rms100499.html DUKE FREE-ELECTRON LASER BREAKS 'PSYCHOLOGICAL' 2,000 ANGSTROM WAVELENGTH BARRIER Duke University DURHAM, N.C. - The OK-4, a Russian-built machine operating at Duke University, has become the first free-electron laser (FEL) to emit laser light at deep ultraviolet wavelengths shorter than 2,000 angstroms, a region some scientists call "vacuum" ultraviolet. One of two FELS at Duke's Free-Electron Laser Laboratory, the OK-4 successfully lazed at an extremely short 1,937-angstrom wavelength (one angstrom is about .0000000039 inches long) on Aug. 10, said Vladimir Litvinenko, the lab's associate director for light sources. "I call it our Y2K problem," Litvinenko said in an interview. "I think it was a psychological barrier for free-electron lasers to reach 2,000 angstroms before the year 2000." http://www.dukenews.duke.edu/Research/ok499.htm New NASA Track Races Toward Cheaper Trips to Space NASA Sports cars that speed from zero to 60 mph in four-and-a-half seconds have met their match: A new high-technology track at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., accelerates a model spacecraft from zero to 60 in less than a half-second — with the flip of an electric switch. This magnetic levitation — or maglev — track will demonstrate technologies that could dramatically reduce the cost of getting to space. The Marshall Center and industry partner PRT Advanced Maglev Systems Inc. of Park Forest, Ill., have just completed installation of a 50-foot track at Marshall. http://www1.msfc.nasa.gov/NEWSROOM/news/releases/1999/99-260.html IBM sets another disk-drive world record IBM On October 4, IBM announced that it has set a new computer data storage world-record of 35.3 billion data bits per square inch on a magnetic hard disk -- a 75 percent increase over the 20-billion-bit milestone the company achieved less than five months ago. This new record is expected to lead to disk drives that could store three times more information than those available today. The most significant feature in IBM's latest achievement is the new magnetic "media" -- the metal-alloy materials that coat the hard-disk platters and where the data is stored. Particularly important, this proprietary magnetic material exhibits product-quality stability, not the data-robbing fluctuations that had been feared to be present at such high densities. http://www.ibm.com/news/1999/10/041.phtml Researchers look to develop throwaway chips EE Times ITHACA, N.Y. — A multidisciplinary group at Cornell University is chasing a disposable chip technology that would layer plastic circuitry on top of thin, flexible silicon sheets to create throwaway information displays. This cheap technology could be built into consumer items such as milk cartons that scroll through pictures of missing children, or one-sheet newspapers with a button to toggle through the pages. The group aims to layer a thin film of polymer-based transistors and interconnections on top of amorphous-silicon sheets, the easy-to-produce, flexible alternative to the thick, crystalline-pure silicon that is used in today's advanced chip designs. http://www.eetimes.com/story/OEG19991005S0007 MCI WorldCom/Sprint Merger Confirmed NewsBytes Just two weeks after the Wall Street Journal broke the story, MCI WorldCom [NASDAQ:WCOM] has confirmed its $129 billion offer for Sprint [NYSE:FON] has been accepted. The move, which has been agreed as a merger by the boards of both companies, is the icing on the cake for the ambitious plans for the creation of a global telecommunications carrier that WorldCom outlined just two years ago. At the time, senior managers with the company were outlining the reasons for their MCI merger/acquisition. The sheer size of the deal means that, for the first time, AT&T's dominance of the US telecommunications market is now threatened - something which even the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) could not have foreseen when it drafted the Telecommunications Act in 1996. http://www.newsbytes.com/pubNews/99/137290.html Use Nukes To Battle Info Attack - Hart-Rudman NewsBytes While the high-tech industry celebrates an information economy heading ever more towards richer rewards, a congressionally mandated panel today told the House Armed Services Committee that rogue individuals and nation-states could use that technology to cause "carnage" on "American soil." The US Commission on National Security/21st century specifically advocated a "robust nuclear deterrent" to battle nuclear, chemical, biological, and information-based aggression in its report to the Committee. While not naming specific technologies, the report seemed to indicate a strong resistance to the mass-market availability of strong encryption products, something the Clinton administration now officially supports, though regulations have not yet been issued. http://www.newsbytes.com/pubNews/99/137313.html Synthetic enzyme shows promise as way to make hydrogen cheaply EurekAlert! CHAMPAIGN, Ill. -- A look-alike enzyme active site synthesized by scientists at the University of Illinois may move the world much closer to an energy-efficient, hydrogen-based economy. Amid growing concerns over pollution and energy shortages, an economy based on clean-burning hydrogen fuel could curb future energy crises and ease global warming. But scientists have been stymied in their attempts to develop a process for producing an inexpensive and abundant supply of this gas, even though it is the most common element in the universe. Current manufacturing methods -- such as electrolysis and the catalytic stripping of hydrogens from hydrocarbons, are both costly and inefficient. http://www.eurekalert.org/releases/uiuc-ses100599.html Scientists grow heart tissue in Bioreactor EurekAlert! Oct. 5, 1999: If you've ever seen a pile of ivy that has taken the shape of an old barn that it has overgrown, you've seen the principle that researchers are following in trying to grow replacement parts for bodies. In research partly sponsored by NASA, scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have reported advances in characterizing the structural and electrical properties of heart tissue, and they've defined key parameters for growing the tissues. http://www.eurekalert.org/releases/ssl-sgh100599.html BellSouth Bids $72B At 11th Hour For Sprint TechWeb BellSouth made a $72 billion cash and stock play for Sprint over the weekend, becoming the last regional local carrier to attempt to get on the merger bandwagon to establish an even larger presence. But the eleventh-hour bid by the southeastern Bell, though higher than an earlier offer by MCI WorldCom, may be rejected, according to a report in Monday's Wall Street Journal. Sprint directors are meeting Monday and are expected to approve MCI WorldCom's $65 billion all stock deal because it would create a company with more scale to compete, the report said. http://www.techweb.com/wire/story/TWB19991004S0008 AMD Launches 700-MHz Athlon TechWeb Pushing the microprocessor frequency envelope to the obvious interest of its customers, Advanced Micro Devices on Monday rolled out a 700-MHz Athlon chip that has caught the eye of at least two leading OEMs. The industry's fastest x86 architecture to date, the 700-MHz device is pitted against Intel's 600-MHz Pentium III, which AMD said is lesser equipped to handle functions such as digital content creation, 3-D graphics processing, commercial 3-D modeling, CAD/workstation, image compression, speed recognition, and a variety of mainstream applications. http://www.techweb.com/wire/story/TWB19991004S0010 FBI Says Y2K Software Has Been Tampered With TechWeb Malicious changes to computer code under the guise of year 2000 software fixes have begun to surface in some U.S. work undertaken by foreign contractors, the top U.S. cybercop said Thursday. "We have some indications that this is happening" in a possible foreshadowing of economic and security headaches stemming from Y2K fixes, the FBI's Michael Vatis told Reuters. http://www.techweb.com/wire/story/reuters/REU19991001S0001 Fujitsu In Pact To Promote Caldera Linux Globally Media Central OREM, Utah (Reuters) - Caldera Systems Inc., the Linux software distributor, said Wednesday that Fujitsu Ltd. would distribute Caldera Linux on many of its server computers. In a statement, Caldera, a company backed by former Novell CEO Ray Noorda, said Fujitsu of Japan had agreed to a strategic pact through which it would distribute OpenLinux 2.3, and future versions of the Caldera software. The Utah company said the deal represented Fujitsu's strongest commitment yet to the alternative software operating system favored by many Web site managers over Microsoft Corp.'s Windows NT or other versions of Unix software. http://www.mediacentral.com/channels//allnews/09_29_1999.rittz1716-story-bctechlinuxcaldera.html Survey shows web search engines not meeting user needs EurekAlert! University Park, Pa. --- A just-published survey of Web search engine users shows that many of us lack the motivation to use sophisticated search strategies, resist learning the complex systems and rules, and expect Web search engines to create effective searches automatically. As a result, we often conduct repetitive, fruitless searches on the same topic -- but, hey, it's not our fault. http://www.eurekalert.org/releases/psu-ssw100499.html News Archives |