For many years, countless individuals in the US have had to watch with envy as dogs and horses with joint and bone injuries have been cured with stem cell procedures that the FDA has refused to approve for humans.
Now, in an exciting development, Regenerative Sciences Inc. in Colorado has found a way to skirt the FDA and provide these same stem cell treatments to humans. The results have been stunning, allowing many patients to walk or run who have not been able to do so for years.
There’s no surgery required, just a needle to extract and then re-inject the cells where they are needed. There has always been a lot of hype around stem cells, but this is the real deal. Real humans are getting real treatment that works, and we should all hope that more companies will begin offering this procedure in other states soon.
These techniques may offer hope to patients, and usher in a new wave of medical breakthroughs, redefinitions of disease states, and significant increases in longevity.
However, there are concerns about neoplastic growth from stem cells. As the process uses older cells to create “autologous” transplants (cell lines that start from the given subject and are re-injected back into that subject), if the cells are damaged, there could be uncontrolled growth and endanger the patients instead.
More safety testing is needed before stem cell technology can be implemented on a large scale.
Georgia Tech has produced new material for engineers to build all-optical data routers which will lead to transmission speeds as high as two terabits–or 2,000 gigabits–per second.
Whew, this technology breakthrough could allow us to download a typical 700MB movie in a matter of minutes. Currently, the fastest commercial routers switch data at 40 gigabits per second.
The limitation of fiber-optic networks is due to light (which carries data) being converted into electrical signals when it reaches an Internet router. This step lets the router determine the signal’s destination and forward the data accordingly.
The speed can be increased by switching optical signals through manipulating mirrors or bubbles to redirect the light beams.
Keeping data all-optical would significantly speed up transmission of large amounts of data, such as detailed medical images, telepresence applications, high-speed image recognition, and high-definition video.
[Technology Review]
Google announced that it has moved its automatic speech-recognition and closed-captioning technology out of beta and have now made it available to the YouTube community at large.
Most, if not all, YouTube videos now include a “CC” button that, if pressed, will automatically generate the closed-captioning technology.
The technology processes the audio feed, using the speech-recognition technology used in the core voice search feature that has also built into the Android voice search feature, the GOOG-411 phone search, and other products.
Twenty hours of videos are uploaded to YouTube every minute; Google could not provide a timetable on when all of the videos would be captioned, but it will be “very soon,” executives said.
Source: PC Mag
This is a Sponsored Post written by me on behalf of Popstation. All opinions are 100% mine.
Popstation, a cool site which provides online music & singing experience is now holding an exciting contest. For those who feel their voices are mesmerizing enough for a professional music career, then wait no more. Registration is free and there is an attractive prize - a VIP album recording experience!
Just warm up your voice, then log on to PopStation where you can enter various practice rooms to perfect your skills. Original Popstation songs are released Monday – Thursday (Mon – Hip Hop; R&B, Tue – Country, Wed – Pop, Thu – Rock) and will be available in the practice rooms for two weeks.
When you make the songs unique by singing in your style and adding emotions to the music, you stand a better chance of being voted by the Popstation audience. They may be a discerning lot but at least, there is no celebrity judges around, like Simon Cowell, to give you a dressing down.
Keep a tab on the competition and invite your friends to cheer you on to the ultimate dream. It can be fascinating to watch your music rise up in the charts. Before you know it, you are inches away from the big prize.
A #1 Artist will be selected selected every three months to win “The Big Deal” and “The Artist Formerly Known as You.” Winners will be allowed to bring along a guest to enjoy an all expenses paid, 3 night stay in NYC at a hip hotel.
A luxury car service will fetch you to a recording studio where you will spend two days recording your own album with the help of a professional production team. When your album is done with the final mixing, postproduction and design, it will be featured on the Artists page of Popstation for the world to see.
If learning the ropes in the music industry, gaining valuable insider knowledge about promoting yourself and your music, and living the the dream appeal to you, visit PopStation today to find out more.
Google is not content to rule the search engine industry. It is also positioning itself as the leader in a green energy revolution, encouraged by the Obama administration, with huge investment in solar power.
The search engine giant started investing in renewable energy back in 2007. Along with solar thermal tech, the company is also interested in gas turbines that could run on solar power rather than natural gas–a name change might be in order.
Google is set to unveil a prototype mirror technology that could halve the cost of building a solar thermal plant. This new technology may be ready for the mass market in 1-3 years time, said Bill Weihl, Google’s energy czar.
The mirror is the result of Google exploring the use of “unusual” materials for the reflective surface and substrate. Weihl said that there was a “decent chance” that the technology could help produce a two-fold cost savings for solar thermal.
Google has invested in two solar thermal firms, eSolar and BrightSource, and may test the technology with one or both of them.
In 2008, Google put $10 million each into the two companies, reports Fast Company. BrightSource just received $1.37 billion in loan guarantees from the federal government, reports Israel 21.
March 5th, 2010 in
Technology | tags:
Solar power,
Technology |
Comments Off
This is a Sponsored Post written by me on behalf of Jones Soda. All opinions are 100% mine.
I am a sports lover and virtually hog the television on Sundays watching football. There is nothing better than sipping a glass of cool lemonade or soda as I cheer my team on.
Speaking of soda, Jones Pure Cane Soda is my favorite. The soda is yummy and not too sweet as they don’t use high fructose corn syrup. There are other interesting flavors for you to choose from, like black cherry, pomegranate, vanilla bean, blue bubblegum, cream soda, grape and root beer.
My fascination with Jones Soda began at a birthday two weeks years ago when I saw customized design of the lovely host on the bottles. I didn’t realize back then that the company sell custom soda under their line myJones Soda.
When you visit the site, you will find navigation to be a breeze. Just pick a bottle label design and upload a photo of your kid, spouse, company staff, etc. You can also write creative captions on the bottle too. The process will not take you more than 30 minutes, even for a new user.
Once you finish the customization, you can place orders for a 6-pack or 12-pack as well as the flavor you desire. The drinks will be delivered to your house in about 10-14 days.
My Jones Soda make for unique gifts and keepsakes. Here are a few more ideas for using My Jones Soda: weddings, anniversaries, Valentine’s Day gifts, baby showers, birthdays, graduations, corporate promotions, fundraisers, etc.
If you are an avid football fan like me, you will be thinking of having your favorite team on the Jones Soda bottles too. It makes watching the sports program even more exciting and when your football buddies come around for some booze and soda, they will be wowed over.
For those who are interested in the Limited Edition Seattle Seahawks Jones Soda, visit the site to find out more.
Researchers at Germany’s Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) have developed a method for mobile phones to convert silent mouth movements into speech.
The technology is based on the principle of electromyography, that is the acquisition and recording of electrical potentials generated by muscle activity. This muscle activity is measured in the face and converted into speech.
We can now have secret conversations, for example conveying confidential information (like PIN numbers) in a crowded place. I figure adultery will be on the rise too, you can have all the phone sex or flirty conversations in your office or at home, without anyone noticing.
As the Institute is presenting its research at this year’s CeBIT show in Hanover, don’t expect to see this technology in a mobile phone any time soon. Meantime, businesses can come up with more creative uses for soundless calling, should it ever hit the mainstream.
[Cellular News]
A new technology for real-time license plate scanning is changing the car repossession business.
MVTRAC is one of several companies which tracks car license plates automatically, in order to populate private databases.
The new technology is used by car repo companies to help banks or other lenders repossess cars; by police to find stolen cars or to locate ticket scofflaws; or really for whatever application MVTRAC and its competitors feel like pursuing, as the new-found industry lacks any kind of government oversight.
This is bad news for those who are in default as auto lenders can now track your car down and repossess it. But for people who had their beloved luxury cars stolen, automated plate recognition will help them recover their assets and reduce future crimes.
[NY Times]
I have a healthy dose of skepticism on data and statistics from the government and private sector. Most of the time, they are fudged or outright fabrication.
Well, scientists have devised an online test that is being touted as the “financial turing test.” Anybody can sign up and take the test on their website.
“Various economists argue that the efficiency of a market ought to be clearly evident in the returns it produces. They say that the more efficient it is, the more random its returns will be and a perfect market should be completely random.
That would appear to give the lie to the widespread belief that humans are unable to tell the difference between financial market returns and, say, a sequence of coin tosses. However, there is good evidence that financial markets are not random (although they do not appear to be predictable either).”
I am not sure what kind of impact this Financial Turing Test will have on the economy or investment community.
If you pass the test, does that make you qualified to distinguish between real and randomly generated financial data? Can you tell that the market is functioning efficiently or approaching a bubble or crisis?
Perhaps what this financial turing test proves is only your pattern recognition ability…
[Technology Review]
1. Beware the Man in the Browser (MITB) attacks which can steal your banking data. The article explains how banking trojans like Zeus, URLZone bypass the user name, passwords and the recent multi-factor authentication introduced by banks.
2. Payment card skimmers scam getting more sophisticated and insidious. Criminals hid bank card-skimming devices inside gas pumps — in at least one case, even completely replacing the front panel of a pump — in a recent wave of attacks that demonstrate a more sophisticated, insidious method of stealing money from unsuspecting victims filling up their gas tanks.
3. Project Offset Creates Graphical Magic In Games. While movies like James Cameron’s Avatar or Peter Jackson‘s Lord of the Rings have graphical effects that appear real, games are still lacking that level of detail. However, Project Offset, a development team owned by Intel, is building a game engine which will create richness of reality in the virtual world.
4. Fuel Cell Marvel “Bloom Box” Gaining Momentum. The “Bloom Box” from Bloom Energy, promises a power-plant-in-a-box that you can literally put in your backyard, and has received backing from companies like eBay, Google, Staples, FedEx, and Walmart.
5. New Random Numbers Generator May Improve Internet Security. A German team has now developed a true random number generator that uses an extra layer of randomness by making a computer memory element, a flip-flop, twitch randomly between its two states 1 or 0.
