Science & Tech News
Microsoft developing tablet PC: Report
Updated on Wednesday, September 23, 2009, 20:08 IST Tags:Microsoft, Apple, PC
New York: Microsoft is developing a tablet personal computer Courier, a move that could put the software major in competition with the planned tablet from Apple.
A tablet personal computer generally refers to a laptop which has a touch screen for operating the device, in place of a keyboard or mouse.
"It feels like the whole world is holding its breath for the Apple tablet. But may be we've all been dreaming about the wrong device. This is Courier, Microsoft's astonishing take on the tablet," technology blog Gizmodo said on Tuesday.
According to the report, the device is in the "late prototype" stage of development.
"The dual 7-inch (or so) screens are multi touch, and designed for writing, flicking and drawing with a stylus, in addition to fingers. They're connected by a hinge that holds a single iPhone-esque home button," the report noted.
Gizmodo said that until recently, the project was only known to the few engineers and executives working on it -- Microsoft's brightest, like Entertainment & Devices tech chief and user-experience wizard J Allard, who is spearheading the project.
"Currently, Courier appears to be at a stage where Microsoft is developing the user experience and showing design concepts to outside agencies," the report added.
Why pruning encourages plants to thrive
London, September 23: In a new research, a team of scientists have made a significant discovery that helps explain why pruning encourages plants to thrive.
The research was carried out by collaborating teams from the University of York in the UK and the University of Calgary in Canada.
"It is well known that the main growing shoot of a plant can inhibit the growth of the shoots below. That's why we prune to encourage growth of branches. What we are interested in is exactly how the main shoot can exert this effect," said Professor Ottoline Leyser of the University of York's Department of Biology.
"It has been known since the 1930s that the plant hormone auxin is released by the plant's actively growing tip and is transported down the main stem where it has an indirect effect on buds to inhibit branching. There are a number of ways in which the hormone exerts this effect and we have discovered a new path by which it works," he added.
The research suggests that for a shoot tip to be active, it must be able to export auxin into the main stem.
But if substantial amounts of auxin already exist in the main stem, export from an additional shoot tip cannot be established.
According to Professor Leyser, "Using this mechanism, all the shoot tips on a plant compete with each other, so that tips both above and below can influence each other's growth. This allows the strongest branches to grow the most vigorously, wherever they may be on the plant. The main shoot dominates mostly because it was there first, rather than because of its position at the apex of the plant."
The teams went on to show that the recently discovered plant hormone, strigolactone, works at least in part by making it harder to establish new auxin transport pathways from shoot tips, strengthening the competition between auxin sources and reducing branching. (ANI)
Dabbling in surrealism can boost your brain power
Washington, Sept 23: Being exposed to surrealism can improve learning by compelling the brain to seek out structure, says a study.
Psychologists at UC Santa Barbara and the University of British Columbia revealed that exposure to the surrealism in, say, Franz Kafka''s "The Country Doctor" or director David Lynch''s "Blue Velvet" enhances the cognitive mechanisms that oversee implicit learning functions.
"The idea is that when you're exposed to a meaning threat -- something that fundamentally does not make sense -- your brain is going to respond by looking for some other kind of structure within your environment," said Travis Proulx, a postdoctoral researcher at UCSB and co-author of the article.
"And, it turns out, that structure can be completely unrelated to the meaning threat," Proulx added.
During the study, Proulx and Steven J. Heine, a professor of psychology at the University of British Columbia asked that participants to read an abridged and slightly edited version of Kafka''s "The Country Doctor," which involves a nonsensical -- and in some ways disturbing -- series of events.
And second group read a different version of the same short story, one that had been rewritten so that the plot and literary elements made sense.
The subjects were then put through an artificial-grammar learning task in which they were exposed to hidden patterns in letter strings.
They were asked to copy the individual letter strings and then to put a mark next to those that followed a similar pattern.
"People who read the nonsensical story checked off more letter strings -- clearly they were motivated to find structure," said Proulx.
"But what''s more important is that they were actually more accurate than those who read the more normal version of the story. They really did learn the pattern better than the other participants did.
"People feel uncomfortable when their expected associations are violated, and that creates an unconscious desire to make sense of their surroundings.
"That feeling of discomfort may come from a surreal story, or from contemplating their own contradictory behaviors, but either way, people want to get rid of it. So they're motivated to learn new patterns," the expert added.
The findings appear in journal Psychological Science. (ANI)
Stem cell studies pave way for novel bone repair pastes
Washington, Sep 23: Researchers at the University of Maryland Dental School have conducted new stem cell studies that may pave the way for the use of strong, mouldable, and injectable pastes to regenerate needed bone tissue to repair broken bones, fractures, genetic defects, even combat bone wounds.
Dr. Huakun Xu, Dr. Michael Weir and Ryan Zhao at the Dental School showed that human stem cells seeded in a tissue engineering scaffolding exhibited "excellent attachment and osteogenic differentiation," which is the process of laying down new bone material.
The researchers said that the new findings have triggered hopes that an injectable paste of stem cells will be available one day to fill any shape of cavity from bone defects, breaks or wounds by regenerating needed bone tissue.
In test tube studies, stem cells from bone marrow, when placed into an injectable scaffold of calcium phosphate and chitosan, started growing and forming minerals needed for new bone tissue.
So far, the researchers have tested four scaffolding materials for gripping and holding the stem cells.
"Which of the materials will be used in a commercial product really depends on where you want to place the material, whether in the jaw bone, the cranium or other bones," said Weir.
He added: "Ultimately we want this to be an injectable paste so we can put it into voids that are not square, rectangular or circular, that they are irregular shapes that need to be filled. The paste will include the cells."
Xu said that such a product could also be used in periodontal bone repair, mandibular and maxillary ridge augmentation, reconstruction of frontal sinus and craniofacial skeletal defects, and other stress-bearing orthopedic applications.
He said that after a tumour removal or traffic accident, there might be a need to repair the damage or void left. Thus, it will be beneficial to have a paste that can be shaped easily to achieve a high degree of aesthetics.
After shaping, the paste hardens to form a solid scaffold full of pores and channels and still containing stem cells throughout, still living and growing to form new bone.
Eventually the scaffold material degrades and is replaced entirely by new bone tissue grown from the stem cells.
The researchers found that a significant number of the cells were alive after a few weeks in the scaffolding material.
They then discovered that the cells were differentiating into osteoblasts, essentially turning into bone cells.
Weir said that after staining the scaffold, the researchers found that the osteoblasts were forming "a lot" of the mineral, which then forms the bone after only 21 days.
In a subsequent experiment, the cells survived even better when mixed in a gel of the scaffolding material.
The researchers have recorded similar success with umbilical cord-derived stem cells, which "appear to be more potent in terms of growth and transforming into osteoblasts on the scaffold than the cells from bone marrow," said Xu.
The researchers presented their findings at the World Stem Cell Summit at the Baltimore Convention Center. (ANI)
Microsoft's free anti-virus software soon
23 Sep, 2009, NEW DELHI: Microsoft's free anti-virus software is finally ready for launch. Last week, the company told beta testers of its free antivirus softwa
re that it will release the final version to the public soon.
In an e-mail reportedly sent on Sunday, the company thanked beta testers for their help and said that the polished edition of Microsoft Security Essentials would ship "in the coming weeks." Microsoft also asked beta testers to upgrade to the newest version of the test software to make the transition to the final as smooth as possible.
In June, Microsoft issued the beta of Security Essentials to about 75,000 users, but quickly shut down the offering when that target was reached.
Microsoft has said that Morro will offer basic features for fighting a wide range of viruses, which would likely make it comparable to low-end consumer products from Symantec and McAfee that cost about $40 per year. The company said that it will provide protection from several types of malicious software including viruses, spyware, rootkits and trojans.
The software code-named Morro after Brazil's Morro de Sao Paolo beach, is expected to hurt the sales of products from Symantec and McAfee, which generate billions of dollars of revenue a year protecting Windows PCs from attacks by hackers. Their top-selling products are security suites that come with features including encryption, firewalls, password protection, parental controls and data backup.
Three years ago, Microsoft entered that market with Live OneCare, which turned out to be a commercial flop. It announced plans in November to kill that product suite, saying it would launch the free Morro service by the end of 2009.
Security Essentials will run on Windows XP SP2 or later versions, Windows Vista and Windows 7. The antivirus programme can be downloaded from Microsoft's site once goes live.
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