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quarta-feira, 30 de maio de 2012

"It is often thought women are much bigger online gamers than men".

At http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/social-media/9295533/Women-more-dependent-on-social-media-than-men.html

Women more dependent on social media than men'

A new study into the internet usage of Britons has revealed that women are twice as dependent on social media than men.

Joining an online self-improvement site could give you a new way of approaching problems - Can my computer point me to a better future?
Women would miss social media more than men. Photo: PHOTODISC

By

7:00AM BST 29 May 2012

More than 2,000 British people were questioned as part of a survey commissioned by BT which examined the habits of internet users and the differences between how men and women use the web.

The study found that over half of female internet users used social networking websites such as Twitter and Facebook, whilst only 34 per cent of men surveyed admitted to doing so. Similarly, out of those surveyed, 18 per cent of women believed that, if the internet no longer existed, they would miss social media websites the most. This compares to just seven per cent of men, most of whom said they would miss most the ease of administration online, such as web banking.

Interestingly the survey also quashed some of the popularly held stereotypes regarding the way the two sexes use the internet. For example, the study showed that nine percent of women play online games compared to only eight per cent of men, whilst 13 per cent of men use content sharing websites, such as Flickr, YouTube and Vimeo, compared to only six per cent of women. It is often thought women are much bigger online gamers than men.

The statistics show that while more women use the internet for research purposes... ( more at http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/social-media/9295533/Women-more-dependent-on-social-media-than-men.html )

Women ‘Depend’ on Social Media While Men Use the Internet to Get Smarter and Richer

At http://jezebel.com/5913883/women-depend-on-social-media-while-men-use-the-internet-to-get-smarter-and-richer

Women 'Depend' on Social Media While Men Use the Internet to Get Smarter and Richer

Women can't imagine living without Facebook and Twitter while stoic men would totally be able to do without, since they only use the internet for, like, banking and "supplementing their learning," bro.

This dubious information comes care of a new study by British telecommunications company BT, which says it polled more than 2,000 Brits before determining that women are "more dependent" on social media. We're curious who they spoke with, exactly, since the rest of the results seem kind of...weird? According to the Daily Telegraph, over half of the women surveyed said they used social networking websites like Twitter and Facebook, while only 34 percent of men "admitted" to doing so. Only 34 percent, eh? That's odd, since a September 2011 poll with a slightly larger survey set that included the rest of the UK found that a whopping 72 percent of men (and 80 percent of women) used Facebook. Another recent survey by the Office of National Statistics found that a more modest but still significantly higher 54 percent of men used social networks.

So who the hell are these people BT found? Well, let's see what else we know about them: Only seven percent of men, as opposed to 18 percent of women, would miss social media websites the most if the internet "no longer existed." What kind of websites would these men miss, pray tell? Those that aid "the ease of administration," like web banking. Look, I enjoy using my Bank of America mobile app as much as the next person (when it's not asking me like 5 different security questions every time I sign in from a new computer) but really? I'm not sure if these people understand the true meaning of the phrase "if the internet no longer existed." That means no more GIFs!

BT also found that nine percent of women play online games, as opposed to eight percent of men, and only three percent of men use content sharing websites, such as Flickr, YouTube and Vimeo, compared to six per cent of women. Huh. Whaaaat are these people doing... ( more at http://jezebel.com/5913883/women-depend-on-social-media-while-men-use-the-internet-to-get-smarter-and-richer )

Women Would Miss Social Media More Than Men

At http://www.webpronews.com/women-would-miss-social-media-more-than-men-2012-05

Women Would Miss Social Media More Than Men

But that's probably because they use social media more.

By ·

By now it's no secret that, despite having virtually no presence among the leaders of tech companies, it's the womenfolk who make up the majority of internet users these days. BT, a UK-based provider of IT services, took a survey of British internet users to see what the behavioral differences are among men and women who use social media. Unsurprisingly, the percentage of women dwarfs the percentage of men using social networks like Facebook or Twitter.

While women use social media more and would actually miss it more than men, men are more than twice as likely to share photos or videos of themselves on social media. In other words, while women might be getting comfortable with social media and find it as a great way to communicate with people, it seems like many of them, if not most of them, acutely remember how quickly their culture will objectify them or degrade them based solely on their appearance. In all, though, relatively few men and women said they regularly use photo and video sharing sites, 13% to 6%, respectively, suggesting that people in general are a little wary to share too much visual information with the pickled-brains and the bucketheads lurking around out there on the internet.

Women are also more patient shoppers than men when it comes to online commerce. 19% of women said they use the internet to find the best deals for an item, whereas 15% of men admitted to doing this. Honestly, I don't see why these numbers aren't higher for both sexes. I was at a discount bookstore yesterday and couldn't so much as bring myself to purchase a $6 paperback book without first sitting down and checking two different sites to see how much I could get it online. Social media and the web in general have fundamentally altered the way shopping is done in this world so it's hard to really imagine that there is still a vast amount of people who don't bargain shop with every purchase.

See more marvels and wonders in the infographic below... ( more at http://www.webpronews.com/women-would-miss-social-media-more-than-men-2012-05 )

How to break the rules to work better



Hacking work: How to break the rules to work better
 
Hacker

Buck the system: Hacking work - finding ways round restrictive systems in the workplace - has risks but could benefit your whole company, says Josh Klein

"Hacking" means to reassemble a system to produce a different or superior result.


"Work" has long meant a series of highly structured, heavily bureaucratic processes through which financial value is derived from human labour.

The former is more popular than ever before in human history due to widespread access to information, expertise and instruction via the internet - and the latter? Well, the latter is on the way out.

Call it "agile" or "iterative," "innovating" or "pivoting", call it "freelancing" or "outsourced."

It's the ugly truth that globalisation and technology are creating a workforce that can move faster, think quicker, and produce newer/better than the large corporations which purport to retain them.

The result of this upsurge of independents, when combined with all this freely available computational capability and information access that now resides in the cloud, is the complete reworking of "work."

Employment is being hacked, and increasingly, it's being hacked in the interest of the smaller/faster upstarts whose insight large companies so require. So what's to be done?

Join them.

If your company is suffering from inefficiencies, lack of insight, stagnation, or outmoding of any kind, the answer lies right in front of you in the form of those iconoclasts who are so busily rewriting the rules of your formerly staid marketplaces.

As an exercise, try some of these:

  • Find one hated piece of software you're "required" to use and Google a workaround; use Google Docs instead of Excel, Drop Box instead of Sharepoint, or whatever it is you're saddled with. Try it for a week or two. See how much more efficient you are.
  • Write a list of the most obviously bad policies in your company and identify what easy, free, or cheap solutions exist that might address them. Put a monetary value on how much the company would save if you used one or more of those solutions. Pitch it to your boss.
  • Ask your 10-year-old nephew or 15-year-old niece what they think is wrong with your recent ad campaign or car design or performance evaluation. Take their answer seriously and consider how you could implement their solutions. 
  • Set up a wiki (a web page anyone can edit) that allows for anonymous contributions. Encourage your co-workers to participate in problem solving on the wiki and see where it gets you.
  • Poke around online for ways to hack the one piece of hardware that pains you the most. Jailbreak your phone so you can put better software on it. Flash the firmware on your wi-fi router so you can ensure your team gets good bandwidth. Put a piece of tape over the webcam your boss uses to surreptitiously spy on you and your peers.

What's the common thread here? Hacking.

It's breaking the rules, typically in small ways, to net you greater efficiency from the working systems you're stuck... ( more at )

segunda-feira, 28 de maio de 2012

Most Gamers Cool with Same-Sex Themes

At http://www.ign.com/articles/2012/05/15/most-gamers-cool-with-same-sex-themes?utm_source=Thursday+newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=5.18+Dynamic+Newsletter_4259_191815_191860&utm_content=15913340

Most Gamers Cool with Same-Sex Themes

Seven in ten gamers are happy to see same-sex issues and themes in games, according to a new survey.

sexta-feira, 25 de maio de 2012

Virtual patient under the knife on hi-tech operating table

At http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-18088337

Virtual patient under the knife on hi-tech operating table



WATCH: Surgeon Aimee Di Marco shows how to cut up a digital cadaver



At St Mary's Hospital in London, surgeon Aimee Di Marco is about to cut up a body.

There will be no blood, no need for a scalpel or other medical instruments, and afterwards she will be able to place the organs back in the body, reattach the bones and blood vessels, and put the skin back on.

The body in question is a virtual one, appearing on a touchscreen "operating table". It could represent the future for both teaching would-be doctors about anatomy and preparing for real-life operations.

Imperial College, the partner to St Mary's Hospital, purchased the table at a cost of £60,000 nine months ago. It is the first of its kind in Europe.

Anatomy study

The same length and size as a normal operating table, the "cadaver" on the screen, nicknamed Melanie, is a virtual body created using a mix of graphics and real CT scans of the body.

Students and surgeons can interact with it either via touch or with a traditional mouse. The body can be stripped back to expose internal organs, areas can be enlarged for more detailed study and the software can work with real patient data.

Melanie, inside the virtual cadaver's body Melanie can be studied in great detail

Dr Philip Pratt, research fellow at Imperial College, describes the table as a "giant iPad".

As with a normal computer, USB sticks and other devices can be attached to the table and data added. The table can hold up to one terabyte, which is equivalent to about 1,000 patient cases.

It has already proved very useful in real-life surgery.

"We had a patient with kidney cancer and we took the software to theatre. Previously the urologist would have just had the standard pre-operative 2D image but this showed them the whole kidney," explained Ms Di Marco.

One of the biggest issues for surgeons attempting such an operation is to be able to accurately locate arteries and veins, as these vary from person to person.

"If you can only see data a slice at a time it is more challenging and you have to create a 3D image in your mind. With this software it creates a 3D picture so when you go in you know what to expect."

Revision aid

The other big area where the table is proving its worth is in the study of anatomy.

The heart as seen via the operating table The software gives up-close views of the body's organs

"This isn't to replace traditional cadaveric studies but to supplement them," said Dr Pratt.

The benefits as a teaching aid are... ( more at http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-18088337 )


Robotic future

The table has been designed by US firm Anatomage. In February, its chief executive Jack Choi took the table to the TED (Technology, Entertainment and Design) conference in Los Angeles.

An Egyptian mummy Ancient meets modern: Mummy patient

Since the TED video went online, the firm has had interest from 10 other teaching hospitals.

Mr Choi sees a bright future for the table.

"We want to develop it so that it can help with specialist training and we also see a future for it to be integrated with robotic surgery," he told the BBC.

The firm is also moving into digital forensics and the latest "patient" on the table is an Egyptian mummy.

Experts are hopeful that the "virtual mummy" with offer up some vital clues about Egyptian life as ancient meets... ( more at http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-18088337 )

quinta-feira, 24 de maio de 2012

Robotic fish to patrol for pollution in harbours

Robotic fish to patrol for pollution in harbours



Dr Luke Speller from the Shoal Consortium explains how robo-fish works

In the shallow waters of Gijon harbour, in northern Spain, a large, yellow fish cuts through the waves.

But this swimmer stands apart from the marine life that usually inhabits this port: there's no flesh and blood here, just carbon fibre and metal.

This is robo-fish - scientists' latest weapon in the war against pollution.

This sea-faring machine works autonomously to hunt down contamination in the water, feeding this information back to the shore.

Here in Spain, several are undergoing their first trials to see if they make the grade as future marine police.

Gijon harbour
The port at Gijon, in northern Spain, is being used as a testing environment

"The idea is that we want to have real-time monitoring of pollution, so that if someone is dumping chemicals or something is leaking, we can get to it straight away, find out what is causing the problem and put a stop to it," explains Luke Speller, a senior scientist at the research division of BMT Group, a technology consultancy.

The company is part of the Shoal consortium, a European Commission-funded group from academia and business that has developed these underwater robots.

"At the moment, in harbours, they take samples about once a month," says Mr Speller.

"And in that time, a ship could come into the harbour, leak some chemicals somewhere, then it's gone, all the way up the coastline.

"The idea is that we will use robot fish, which are in the harbour all of the time, and constantly checking for pollution."

Inspired by nature

The fish, which measure about 1.5m-long, may be a little larger than their real-life counterparts, but their movements closely mimic them.

"Start Quote

We can work in environments that are very weedy, and would usually snag up propellers"

Dr Ian Dukes University of Essex

Ian Dukes from the University of Essex - another partner in the consortium - says that nature was an obvious inspiration for their robot.

He explains: "Over millions of years, fish have evolved the ultimate hydrodynamic shape, and we have tried to mimic that in the robot.

"They swim just like fish; they are really quite agile and can change direction quickly, even in shallow water."

But the researchers say there are other advantages to a fishy design compared with some other autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs).

"Traditional robots use propellers or thrusters for propulsion," says Dr Dukes.

"What we're trying to do is use the fin of a fish to propel ourselves through the water.

Robo fish and scientists Can robo-fish serve the public trust? Tests like this should give some idea

"The fin does lend itself for a really useful tool in shallow waters especially where there is a lot of debris. We can work in environments that are very weedy, and would usually snag up propellers."

The fish use micro-electrode arrays to sense contaminants. In their current form they can detect phenols and heavy metals such as copper and lead, as well as monitor oxygen levels and salinity.

But the team has tried to build in flexibility.

Dr Speller explains: "We have designed it so you can pull out the chemical sensor unit, and put in different ones for something else, such as sulphates or phosphates, depending on the environment that you are monitoring," he... ( more a )

sexta-feira, 18 de maio de 2012

Nine Dangerous Things You Were Taught In School

At http://www.forbes.com/sites/jessicahagy/2012/05/02/nine-dangerous-things-you-were-taught-in-school/

Nine Dangerous Things You Were Taught In School


Tech 5/02/2012 @ 3:14PM |522,491 views

Jessica Hagy

Jessica Hagy, Contributor

Using visuals to tell stories, jokes, and truths.


Be aware of the insidious and unspoken lessons you learned as a child. To thrive in the world outside the classroom, you're going to have to unlearn them.

Dangerous things you were taught in school:

1. The people in charge have all the answers.
That's why they are so wealthy and happy and healthy and powerful—ask any teacher.

 

 2. Learning ends when you leave the classroom.
Your fort building, trail forging, frog catching, friend making, game playing, and drawing won't earn you any extra credit. Just watch TV.

 

3. The best and brightest follow the rules.
You will be rewarded for your subordination, just not as much as your superiors, who, of course, have their own rules.

 

4. What the books say is always true.
Now go read your creationism chapter. There will be a test.

 

 

5. There is a very clear, single path to success.
It's called college. Everyone can join the top 1% if they do well enough in school and ignore the basic math problem inherent in that... ( more at http://www.forbes.com/sites/jessicahagy/2012/05/02/nine-dangerous-things-you-were-taught-in-school/ )

How to Structure Writing in Paragraphs

At http://freelance-writing-articles.knoji.com/how-to-structure-writing-in-paragraphs/

How to Structure Writing in Paragraphs


Elizabeth Flynn

A guide for writers on when to start a new paragraph and why they need to start a new paragraph.

Many people find it difficult to understand when it is appropriate to start a new paragraph or why they even need to structure a piece of written work in this way. Here are some guidelines on why you should structure writing in this way and when it is appropriate to start a new paragraph.

Why Use Paragraphs?

There are a number of reasons why it is important to use paragraphs in your work. First of all, it helps to organise your work into paragraphs so that all the points that you are making are written in a coherent fashion. It also helps the reader to understand the different points that are being made or to make sense of a fictional piece of writing. Another benefit to the reader is that they can read different sections of an article that are relevant to the information that they are looking for without having to trawl through a full piece of text. In terms of fictional writing, it can help to make sense of a story in terms of the different characters, the narrative of the story, different time frames and varied plot lines.

When to Start a New Paragraph

There are some basic guidelines that can be followed when deciding whether it is necessary to start a new paragraph. If there is a change in time, place, topic or person, then you need to start a new paragraph. If writing an academic article that is comparing opposing arguments to a theory, then for each argument you should also start a different paragraph.

More about Time, Place, Person, and Topic a
t http://freelance-writing-articles.knoji.com/how-to-structure-writing-in-paragraphs/

Viruses May Someday Power Your Cellphone

At http://www.livescience.com/20299-viruses-harnessed-create-energy.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Livesciencecom+%28LiveScience.com+Science+Headline+Feed%29&utm_content=Google+Reader

Viruses May Someday Power Your Cellphone

Date: 14 May 2012 Time: 04:00 PM ET




The virus-based generator works by tapping a finger on a postage stamp-sized electrode coated with specially engineered viruses. The viruses convert the force of the tap into an electric charge.
CREDIT: Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

Scientists have just put pesky viruses to work, for us, using the teensy particles to generate electricity.

So far, they have produced enough energy with these harmless viruses to power a small liquid-crystal display.

The researchers think their findings could lead to a "personal power generator in the near future," study researcher Seung-Wuk Lee of the University of California, Berkeley, told LiveScience. "Therefore, by walking around, we can charge our cellular phone." The device could also replace batteries as a self-sustaining power source for environmental sensors.

And being that the device would be biocompatiable, Lee foresees its use in biomedical devices, powering pacemakers and hearing aids, for instance.

Lee, also a scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and colleagues focused their research on a virus called M13 bacteriaphage that attacks bacteria but is benign to people. Particularly they were looking for a strong piezoelectric material, or one that generates electricity due to mechanical stress.

To see if the virus was piezoelectric, the researchers applied an electric field to a film of M13 viruses. They found that proteins coating the viruses began to twist and turn, a telltale sign of the piezoelectric effect at work, they noted.

But how much voltage could these viruses produce? The researchers genetically tweaked the viruses to boost the negative charge of one end of the proteins coating the viruses; this increased the charge difference between the positive and negative ends of the proteins. The resulting viruses had higher voltage.

Next, they stacked films of the virus 20 layers high, a design that proved optimal for a strong piezoelectric effect, meaning more electrical output.

In their test, the researchers created conditions under which the viruses would organize on their own into a multilayered film measuring about 0.16 inches (1 square centimeter). They sandwiched this tiny, paper-thin device between two electrodes that were connected to... ( more at http://www.livescience.com/20299-viruses-harnessed-create-energy.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Livesciencecom+%28LiveScience.com+Science+Headline+Feed%29&utm_content=Google+Reader )

Life is like Lego - only better.

At http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/roger-highfield/9019760/Life-is-like-Lego-only-better.html

Life is like Lego - only better

The natural world is constructed of blocks, and, like the building kit, relies on a small variety of pieces to make complex objects. Roger Highfield explains.

Lego Death Star. Life is like Lego - only better
Coming together: traditional Lego has become more elaborate yet stacks up badly compared with nature


By

8:52AM GMT 17 Jan 2012


I'm a big Lego fan. I've visited the original theme park in Denmark. There's even a Lego Star Wars Stormtrooper key-ring lurking in my coat pocket. Appropriately enough, it's missing a leg. Leg-go.

But there's something that has troubled me over the years: why has Lego moved away from the idea of a universal construction set based on simple plastic bricks? Purists like me hark back to the old days when a Lego set consisted of basic units, from cuboids to sheets. And it seems we may have a point: with Lego, less is not necessarily more, but more is also not necessarily better.

Today, the company makes hundreds of sets – kits, really – on a variety of themes, from city to space to robots. And it makes hundreds of elaborate bricks in all shapes and sizes. Yet with enough imagination, even the simplest building blocks can be used to make structures of amazing complexity. And what is true of Lego is also true of the natural world.

Our world is a gigantic construction set – which, like old-fashioned Lego, relies on a surprisingly small variety of building blocks out of which the most amazingly complex structures can be made. In the past few days I have seen one scientist talk about proteins with a Lego-like, modular quality that are ideal for gene therapy, and another about polymer rings created with molecular Lego blocks.

So does the more complex modern Lego mean that you can build even more complex models? It turns out that the answer is: "A bit, but not as much as you'd think."

In a paper with the arcane title: Scaling of Differentiation in Networks: Nervous Systems, Organisms, Ant Colonies, Ecosystems, Businesses, Universities, Cities, Electronic Circuits, and Legos, Mark Changizi and colleagues at Duke University, North Carolina, looked at networks under economic or natural selective pressure, such as electronic circuits (networks of electronic components), Lego ("networks" of pieces), businesses (networks of employees), universities (networks of academics), organisms (networks of cells), ant colonies (networks of ants), and nervous systems (networks of neurons).

They found that for these other networks, as you might expect, there was an increase in the number of types of components - or in the case of animate systems, the division of labour - as the total number of pieces increases. And because the components are used combinatorially, as sets becomes larger, they use progressively fewer additional piece types. "But in the new Lego world, the number of piece types in a Lego-set grows nearly as fast as the size/complexity of the set, which means they're barely using their pieces combinatorially any longer," says Changizi who, now puts his Lego theory into practice with his own... ( more at http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/roger-highfield/9019760/Life-is-like-Lego-only-better.html )

Roger Highfield is director of external affairs at the National Museum of Science and Industry

quinta-feira, 17 de maio de 2012

Wrinkled doughnut solves geometrical mystery.

At http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn21760-wrinkled-doughnut-solves-geometrical-mystery.html


Wrinkled doughnut solves geometrical mystery

This may be the weirdest doughnut you have ever seen, but it solves a long-standing geometrical puzzle that evaded mathematicians including Nobel laureate John Nash, who inspired the film A Beautiful Mind.

Topology is the branch of mathematics concerned with the geometric deformations of objects. According to its rules, a certain type of flat square - in which opposite edges have been mathematically linked - is equivalent to a holed-doughnut, or torus, because one can easily be turned into the other. First, form a cylinder by joining the top edge of the square to the bottom edge, then bend that cylinder into a circle and join its two open ends.

There is just one problem: for the two ends to meet, the torus must be stretched in a way that distorts the original shape of the square. Any horizontal lines on the original square will be stretched on the torus, while vertical lines will remain the same. (Cartographers encounter a similar problem when unwrapping a globe of the Earth to create flat maps. They are forced then to make compromises such as inflating the size of Greenland, which can appear similar in size to Africa on standard maps but is actually one-fourteenth as big.)

Molecular doughnut

But could there be an alternative torus that leaves both horizontal and vertical line lengths unchanged? In the 1950s, game theorist and economist John Nash, together with mathematician Nicolaas Kuiper, proved that such a torus could exist.

However, their methods only worked at a tiny scale, making it too difficult to actually visualise the shape. As a result, no one knew what it would look like. "It's like describing a cooking recipe at the molecular level," says Francis Lazarus at the University of Grenoble in France.

Now, Lazarus and a team of mathematicians from Grenoble and the University of Lyon have managed to visualise the shape of this torus. Starting with a shrunken version of the regular, smooth torus, they wrinkle the surface in the horizontal direction, increasing the length of just the vertical lines.

3D printout

They then apply further wrinkles in other directions until the lengths of both vertical and horizontal lines are equal to the lengths of these lines on the square. The result is the bizarre-looking torus that is... ( more at http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn21760-wrinkled-doughnut-solves-geometrical-mystery.html )

Strokes: Drawing test 'may predict risks in older men'

At http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-18004050

Strokes: Drawing test 'may predict risks in older men'


A simple drawing test may help predict the risk of older men dying after a first stroke, a study in the journal BMJ Open suggests.

Taken while healthy, the test involves drawing lines between numbers in ascending order as fast as possible.

Men who scored in the bottom third were about three times as likely to die after a stroke compared with those who were in the highest third.

The study looked at 1,000 men between the ages of 67 and 75 over 14 years.

Of the 155 men who had a stroke, 22 died within a month and more than half within an average of two- and-a-half years.

The researchers think that tests are able to pick up hidden damage to brain blood vessels when there are no other obvious signs or... (more at http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-18004050 )

sexta-feira, 11 de maio de 2012

Bacterial builders on site for computer construction

At http://www.leeds.ac.uk/news/article/3181/bacterial_builders_on_site_for_computer_construction

Bacterial builders on site for computer construction


Published Friday 4th May 12



Forget computer viruses - magnet-making bacteria could be used to build tomorrow's computers with larger hard drives and speedier connections.

Researchers at the University of Leeds have used a type of bacterium which 'eats' iron to create a surface of magnets, similar to those found in traditional hard drives, and wiring. As the bacterium ingests the iron it creates tiny magnets within itself.

The team has also begun to understand how the proteins inside these bacteria collect, shape and position these "nanomagnets" inside their cells and can now replicate this behaviour outside the bacteria.

Led by Dr Sarah Staniland from the University's School of Physics and Astronomy, in a longstanding collaboration with the Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology, the team hope to develop a 'bottom-up' approach for creating cheaper, more environmentally-friendly electronics of the future.

Dr Staniland said: "We are quickly reaching the limits of traditional electronic manufacturing as computer components get smaller. The machines we've traditionally used to build them are clumsy at such small scales. Nature has provided us with the perfect tool to circumvent this problem."

The magnetic array was created by Leeds PhD student Johanna Galloway using a protein which creates perfect nanocrystals of magnetite inside the bacterium Magnetospirilllum magneticum. In a process akin to potato-printing on a much smaller scale, this protein is attached to a gold surface in a checkerboard pattern and placed in a solution containing iron.

At a temperature of 80°C, similarly-sized crystals of magnetite form on the sections of the surface covered by the protein. The team are now working to reduce the size of these islands of magnets, in order to make arrays of single nanomagnets. They also plan to vary the magnetic materials that this protein can control. These next steps would allow each of these nanomagnets to hold one bit of information allowing the construction of better hard drives.

"Using today's 'top-down' method - essentially sculpting tiny magnets out of a big magnet - it is increasingly difficult to produce the small magnets of the same size and shape which are needed to store data," said Johanna Galloway. "Using the method developed here at Leeds, the proteins do all the hard work; they gather the iron, create the most magnetic compound, and arrange it into regularly-sized cubes."

A different protein has been used to create tiny electrical wires by Dr Masayoshi Tanaka, during a secondment to Leeds from Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology. These 'nanowires' are made of 'quantum dots' - particles of copper indium sulphide and zinc sulphide which glow and conduct electricity - and are encased by fat molecules, or... ( more at http://www.leeds.ac.uk/news/article/3181/bacterial_builders_on_site_for_computer_construction )

Brain Represses Bad Words for Bilingual Readers

At http://www.livescience.com/20172-brain-represses-negative-emotions.html

Brain Represses Bad Words for Bilingual Readers


Reading a nasty word in a second language may not pack the punch it would in your native tongue, thanks to an unconscious brain quirk that tamps down potentially disturbing emotions, a new study finds.

When reading negative words such as "failure" in their non-native language, bilingual Chinese-English speakers did not show the same brain response as seen when they read neutral words such as "aim." The finding suggests that the brain can process the meaning of words in the unconscious, while "withholding" information from our conscious minds.

"We devised this experiment to unravel the unconscious interactions between the processing of emotional content and access to the native language system. We think we've identified, for the first time, the mechanism by which emotion controls fundamental thought processes outside consciousness," study researcher Yanjing Wu, a psychologist at Bangor University in the United Kingdom, said in a statement. "Perhaps this is a process that resembles the mental repression mechanism that people have theorized about but never previously located."

Translating negativity

Bilingual people typically respond less emotionally to words in their second language. For example, swear words in a foreign tongue don't usually feel as shocking; likewise, some research has found that people are more comfortable talking about embarrassing topics in a second language. [7 Thoughts That Are Bad For You]

To unravel the emotions of language, Wu and his colleague Guillaume Thierry, also of Bangor University, recruited 15 native English speakers, 15 native Chinese speakers, and 15 native Chinese speakers who were also fluent in English (all had first learned English around age 12). They set up an experiment in which these volunteers saw word pairs on a screen. One of the words was always neutral, while the other could be neutral, positive or negative. In addition, each word was two syllables in Chinese, with the first syllable of each word always sounding the same.

For example, the positive word "honesty" was paired with the neutral word "program." In Chinese, honesty translates to "chengshi" and program to "chengxu." Negative words included failure, war, discomfort and unfortunate.

The participants were asked to push a button if the words were linked in meaning. (In some pairs, they were.) Meanwhile, the scientists used electrodes on the scalp to measure the electrical response in the brain to reading these pairs of words.

Self-protection

The findings revealed that although they weren't aware of it, the bilingual participants' brains were translating the positive and neutral words into Chinese as they read them in English. But surprisingly, .. ( more at http://www.livescience.com/20172-brain-represses-negative-emotions.html )

Hearing Metaphors Activates Brain Regions Involved in Sensory Experience

At http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/02/120203182623.htm

Hearing Metaphors Activates Brain Regions Involved in Sensory Experience


ScienceDaily (Feb. 3, 2012) — When a friend tells you she had a rough day, do you feel sandpaper under your fingers? The brain may be replaying sensory experiences to help understand common metaphors, new research suggests.

Linguists and psychologists have debated how much the parts of the brain that mediate direct sensory experience are involved in understanding metaphors. George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, in their landmark work 'Metaphors we live by', pointed out that our daily language is full of metaphors, some of which are so familiar (like "rough day") that they may not seem especially novel or striking. They argued that metaphor comprehension is grounded in our sensory and motor experiences.

New brain imaging research reveals that a region of the brain important for sensing texture through touch, the parietal operculum, is also activated when someone listens to a sentence with a textural metaphor. The same region is not activated when a similar sentence expressing the meaning of the metaphor is heard.

The results were published online this week in the journal Brain & Language.

"We see that metaphors are engaging the areas of the cerebral cortex involved in sensory responses even though the metaphors are quite familiar," says senior author Krish Sathian, MD, PhD, professor of neurology, rehabilitation medicine, and psychology at Emory University. "This result illustrates how we draw upon sensory experiences to achieve understanding of metaphorical language."

Sathian is also medical director of the Center for Systems Imaging at Emory University School of Medicine and director of the Rehabilitation R&D Center of Excellence at the Atlanta Veterans Affairs Medical Center.

Seven college students who volunteered for the study were asked to listen to sentences containing textural metaphors as well as sentences that were matched for meaning and structure, and to press a button as soon as they understood each sentence. Blood flow in their brains was monitored by functional magnetic resonance imaging. On average, response to a sentence containing a metaphor took slightly longer (0.84 vs 0.63 seconds).

In a previous study, the researchers had already mapped out, for each of these individuals, which parts of the students' brains were involved in processing actual textures by touch and sight. This allowed them to establish with confidence the link within the brain between metaphors involving texture and the sensory experience of texture itself.

"Interestingly, visual cortical regions were not activated by textural metaphors, which fits with other evidence for the primacy of touch in texture perception," says research associate Simon Lacey, PhD, the first author of the paper.

The researchers did not find metaphor-specific differences in cortical regions well known to be involved in generating and processing language, such as... (more at http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/02/120203182623.htm )