Spending alone time by doing yoga or through thoughtful meditation can help strengthen the body and reduce health care costs, according to a recent study. scientists say that stress affects both the mind and the body, and that by focusing to manage stress, an overall healthy well-being can be maintained.
Relaxation-response techniques, such as meditation, yoga, and prayer, could reduce the need for health care services by 43 percent, according to a study at Harvard-affiliated Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) that looked at participants in a relaxation-response-focused training program.
Previous studies have shown that eliciting the relaxation response — a physiologic state of deep rest — not only relieves stress and anxiety, but also affects physiologic factors such as blood pressure, heart rate, and oxygen consumption.
The paper’s authors noted that stress-related illnesses, such as anxiety and depression, are the third-highest causes of health expenditures in the United States after heart disease and cancer (which also are affected by stress).
The study, based at MGH’s Institute for Technology Assessment and the Benson-Henry Institute (BHI) for Mind Body Medicine, found that individuals in the relaxation-response program used fewer health care services in the year after their participation than in the preceding year.
“Our study’s primary finding is that programs that train patients to elicit the relaxation response — specifically those taught at the BHI — can also dramatically reduce health care utilization,” said James E. Stahl of the MGH Institute for Technology Assessment, who led the study. “These programs promote wellness and, in our environment of constrained health care resources, could potentially ease the burden on our health delivery systems at minimal cost and at no real risk.” Previously affiliated with the Benson-Henry Institute, Stahl is now based at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center.
The relaxation response was first described more than 40 years ago by Harvard Medical School Professor Herbert Benson, founder and director emeritus of the BHI and a co-author of the current study. The physiologic opposite of the well-documented fight-or-flight response, the relaxation response is elicited by practices including meditation, deep breathing, and prayer, and has been shown to be helpful in the treatment of stress-related disorders ranging from anxiety to hypertension.
To analyze the potential impact of mind-body interventions like the relaxation response on use of health care services, the researchers examined information available through the Research Patient Data Registry (RPDR) of Partners HealthCare. The research team gathered data on individuals participating in the BHI Relaxation Response Resiliency Program (3RP) from 2006 to 2014. The program combined elicitation of the relaxation response with social support, cognitive-skills training, and positive psychology designed to build resiliency.
Data regarding more than 4,400 3RP participants’ use of Partners system services in the years before and after their participation was compared with information from a demographically matched control group of almost 13,150 Partners patients over a similar two-year period. To address the possibility that 3RP participants had been more frequent users of health services in the year before their participation, the researchers also compared a subgroup of almost 1,200 3RP participants that excluded those with the highest pre-participation utilization levels with a subgroup of 222 controls whose initial healthcare utilization exactly matched those of the 3RP participants in the first of the two studied years.
Based on the number of health care encounters in the studied period, which included interactions in any setting — imaging studies, lab tests, and procedures — the 3RP participants had an average reduction of 43 percent in their use of health care services in the year after their participation.
The control group had an overall, but not statistically significant, increase in service utilization in the second year. The utilization-matched 3RP subgroup had a reduction of around 25 percent across all clinical services. Clinical areas in which 3RP participation was associated with the greatest reduction in service utilization were neurologic, cardiovascular, musculoskeletal, and gastrointestinal. The investigators estimate that the price of participating in programs like 3RP would be made up in costs savings in four to six months or less.
Stahl noted that the results of this investigation need to be validated by a prospective study that would also explore where and when best to use mind-body interventions like the Benson-Henry Relaxation Response Resiliency Program.
“I think of it this way: There are many gates to wellness, but not everyone is ready to walk through a particular gate at a given time. From a public health perspective, it is better to be prepared to offer these tools to people in their customary settings than to wait for them to seek out these interventions. For that reason, we feel that mind-body interventions — which are both low-cost and essentially risk-free — should perhaps be incorporated into regular preventive care.”
Benson added, “From the outset, our primary goal has been to enhance the health and well-being of people by counteracting the harmful effects of stress and alleviating the many diseases that are caused or exacerbated by stress. The challenge now is to disseminate these findings, which we feel will be of great interest to health care payors [such as insurance companies] and policy makers.”

Practising yoga, meditation can result in fewer doctor visits: new study says

Engines, laptops and power plants generate waste heat. Thermoelectric materials, which convert temperature gradients to electricity and vice versa, can recover some of that heat and improve energy efficiency.

A team of scientists at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory explored the fundamental physics of the world’s best thermoelectric material–tin selenide–using neutron scattering and computer simulations. Their new understanding of the origin of atomic dynamics in this material, published in Nature Physics, may aid research in energy sustainability and enable the design of materials that efficiently convert heat into electricity.

“We performed the first comprehensive measurements of atomic vibrations in this important new thermoelectric material,” said senior author Olivier Delaire in ORNL’s Materials Science and Technology Division. “We discovered the origin of its very low thermal conductivity, which leads to its high efficiency.” It turns out unusual atomic vibrations help prevent “heat leaks,” maximizing the conversion into electricity.

DOE’s Office of Science, which advances materials for energy technologies, sponsored the study, which was led by an MIT-led Energy Frontier Research Center. The researchers used three DOE Office of Science User Facilities at ORNL–the Spallation Neutron Source, High Flux Isotope Reactor and Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility.

Through the Seebeck effect, thermoelectric devices produce a voltage and generate electric current when a temperature differential is maintained. Or, when powered with an external electricity source, the devices can actively pump the heat out for refrigeration applications.

To preserve a usable temperature gradient, thermoelectric materials need to be good conductors of electricity but bad conductors of heat. In 2014 researchers at Northwestern University discovered that tin selenide, which is inexpensive, could be the world’s most efficient thermoelectric material.

The ORNL researchers observed atomic vibrations that underpin heat flow–called phonons–and tried to understand their origins in terms of electronic structure and chemistry.

“What we found is that this particular phonon mode is the one that’s unstable, that ‘freezes,'” Delaire said. “If you cool down the material, it goes from undistorted to distorted, and when you heat it up the distortion goes away. That is the atomic mechanism behind the freezing in of this particular phonon mode.”

Knowledge the team gained may aid efforts to control thermal transport in a wide range of energy-related technologies, including thermal barrier coatings, nuclear fuels and high-power electronics.

The key to tin selenide’s high efficiency was revealed through exploring the dynamics of atoms in the crystal lattice. In a harmonic system, waves of atomic vibrations can propagate freely. Many waves, carrying a lot of heat, can travel through the material without sensing each other.

In an anharmonic system, in contrast, atomic vibration waves feel a viscous friction against each other. The friction creates a sort of slush that prevents heat propagation, much like the vibration dampers in a vehicle’s shock absorbers. Tin selenide at the temperatures tested was strongly anharmonic: The phonon waves were strongly damped and the heat was well contained, so the temperature gradient could be preserved.

Co-lead author Jiawang Hong, a postdoctoral fellow working with Delaire, ran quantum dynamics simulations at the OLCF using Eos, a Cray XC30 supercomputer. The simulations of phonon dispersions, when plugged into software developed by the team, showed good agreement with the neutron scattering measurements taken at the SNS and HFIR by co-lead author Chen Li, also a postdoctoral fellow on Delaire’s team.

The paper’s other authors were Andrew May and Dipanshu Bansal of ORNL’s Materials Science and Technology Division and Songxue Chi, Tao Hong and Georg Ehlers of ORNL’s Quantum Condensed Matter Division.

“With simulations we showed the strong underlying anharmonicity stems from a bonding instability,” Delaire said. Below a phase transition of 810 kelvin (about 540 degrees C or 1000 degrees F), electronic orbitals spontaneously reorganize and the lattice assumes an accordion structure. Phonons feel this instability, which damps the oscillations–making tin selenide an outstanding thermoelectric material.

Fuller understanding of the fundamental principles that underpin useful properties could enable “materials by design.” “Out of all the energy that goes into the U.S. economy every year, 60 percent is lost in the form of waste heat,” Delaire said. “If you can recapture even a small fraction, you can have a big impact.”

Improving energy sustainability
Thermoelectric materials can support sustainable energy. The MIT-led EFRC, with Oak Ridge and Brookhaven National Laboratories, Boston College and the University of Houston, has demonstrated that thermoelectric materials can be placed under solar panels, where a temperature difference can generate electricity cheaply.

Photovoltaic panels can be expensive, and many are needed to generate useful amounts of electricity. “With thermoelectric materials, once you have the temperature differential, you only need a comparatively small amount of material to produce the electricity,” Delaire said. “In thermoelectric devices, energy conversion is really a direct link because the material does all the work. There are no moving parts. It generates the voltage from a temperature gradient. So understanding and optimizing the materials is key.”

Thermoelectric materials still need to reach higher efficiencies for widespread application, but recent discoveries like understanding the dynamics of tin selenide have achieved big steps in that direction. They have already been big successes in niches including very long-lasting space batteries developed by NASA and DOE.

“This technology is very reliable,” Delaire said. “That’s why thermoelectric materials still power NASA’s Voyager spacecraft 30 years after its launch.”

http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/Molecular_accordion_drives_thermoelectric_behavior_in_promising_material_999.html

Gizmodo reports on the breakthrough, detailed in the Journal of Molecular Cell Biology. The super-dogs have two possible uses — to mimic how degenerative diseases affect the human body and, of course, as pets.
The breakthrough came thanks to clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR), a gene-editing tool. To create these strong dogs, researchers attempted to eliminate the myostatin gene — responsible for regulating muscle mass — in 65 beagle embryos. From there, 27 beagles were born but only two showed signs of disruption in the gene.
Researchers named the female beagle Tiangou (a “heaven dog” from Chinese myth) while the male was named Hercules. Tiangou showed a complete disruption of the myostatin gene, while Hercules showed an incomplete disruption, meaning the cell was still producing some myostatin. The dogs’ increased muscle mass is easily noticeable in the size of their thigh muscles.
These dogs could have a number of real-world uses besides pets; they could be used by military or police forces, or as hunting dogs. But researchers ultimately want to use CRISPR to mutate dog DNA in other ways and mimic diseases like Parkinson’s or muscular dystrophy, which could in turn benefit biomedical research.
“Dogs are very close to humans in terms of metabolic, physiological, and anatomical characteristics,” said Liangxue Lai, the study co-author and a researcher at the Key Laboratory of Regenerative Biology at the Guangzhou Institutes of Biomedicine and Health.
This isn’t the first time CRISPR has produced novel animal variants. Just a few weeks ago, Chinese researchers were able to create gene-edited micropigs, which will eventually be sold as pets.

Read more: http://www.digitaljournal.com/science/researchers-create-dogs-with-double-muscle-mass/article/447108#ixzz3p9oOX3xb

RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK, N.C. & ARLINGTON, Va.–(Business Wire)–A report that resulted from a workshop funded by Semiconductor Research Corporation (SRC) and National Science Foundation (NSF) outlines key factors limiting progress in computing—particularly related to energy consumption—and novel device and architecture research that can overcome these barriers.
The findings and recommendations in the report are in alignment with the nanotechnology-inspired Grand Challenge for Future Computing announced on October 20 by the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. The Grand Challenge calls for new approaches to computing that will operate with the efficiency of the human brain. It also aligns with the National Strategic Computing Initiative (NSCI) announced by an Executive Order signed by the President on July 29.

Energy efficiency is vital to improving performance at all levels. This includes from devices and transistors to large IT systems, as well from small sensors at the edge of the Internet of Things (IoT) to large data centers in cloud and supercomputing systems.

“Fundamental research on hardware performance, complex system architectures, and new memory/storage technologies can help to discover new ways to achieve energy-efficient computing,” said Jim Kurose, the Assistant Director of the National Science Foundation (NSF) for Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE). “Partnerships with industry, including SRC and its member companies, are an important way to speed the adoption of these research findings.”

Performance improvements today are limited by energy inefficiencies that result in overheating and thermal management issues. The electronic circuits in computer chips still operate far from any fundamental limits to energy efficiency, and much of the energy used by today’s computers is expended moving data between memory and the central processor.

At the same time as increases in performance slow, the amount of data being produced is exploding. By 2020, an estimated 44 zettabytes of data (1 zettabyte equals 1 trillion gigabytes) will be created on an annual basis.

“New devices, and new architectures based on those devices, could take computing far beyond the limits of today’s technology. The benefits to society would be enormous,” said Tom Theis, Nanoelectronics Research Initiative (NRI) Executive Director at SRC, the world’s leading university-research consortium for semiconductor technologies.

In order to realize these benefits, a new paradigm for computing is necessary. A workshop held April 14-15, 2015 in Arlington, Va., and funded by SRC and NSF convened experts from industry, academia and government to identify key factors limiting progress and promising new concepts that should be explored. The report being announced today resulted from the workshop discussions and provides a guide to future basic research investments in energy-efficient computing.

The report builds upon an earlier report funded by the Semiconductor Industry Association, SRC and NSF on Rebooting the IT Revolution.

To achieve the Nanotechnology Grand Challenge and the goals of the NSCI, multi-disciplinary fundamental research on materials, devices and architecture is needed. NSF and SRC, both individually and together, have a long history of supporting long-term research in these areas to address such fundamental, high-impact science and engineering challenges.

About SRC

Celebrating more than 30 years of collaborative research for the semiconductor industry, SRC defines industry needs, invests in and manages the research that gives its members a competitive advantage in the dynamic global marketplace. Awarded the National Medal of Technology, America’s highest recognition for contributions to technology, SRC expands the industry knowledge base and attracts premier students to help innovate and transfer semiconductor technology to the commercial industry. For more information, visit https://www.src.org/.

About NSF

The National Science Foundation (NSF) is an independent federal agency that supports fundamental research and education across all fields of science and engineering. In fiscal year (FY) 2015, its budget is $7.3 billion. NSF funds reach all 50 states through grants to nearly 2,000 colleges, universities and other institutions. Each year, NSF receives about 48,000 competitive proposals for funding, and makes about 11,000 new funding awards. NSF also awards about $626 million in professional and service contracts yearly.

Read more: http://www.digitaljournal.com/pr/2713606#ixzz3p9n006oG

CAMBRIDGE, England–(Business Wire)–ARM has released a new highly-efficient graphics processing unit (GPU) to enable smartphone-quality visuals on wearable and Internet of Things (IoT) devices. The ARM® Mali™-470 GPU delivers an enhanced user interface for power-constrained products, including smart watches, home gateways and appliances, industrial control panels and healthcare monitors. It is available for immediate licensing, with the first Mali-470 enabled devices expected in late 2016.
“ARM scrutinizes every milliwatt across the entire SoC to enable OEMs to optimize energy-efficiency and open up new opportunities,” said Mark Dickinson, vice president and general manager, multimedia processing group, ARM. “Tuning efficiency is particularly relevant for devices requiring sophisticated graphics on a low power budget such as wearables, entry-level smartphones and IoT devices. Mali-470 has been designed to meet this demand by enabling a highly capable user interface while being extremely energy efficient.”

Mali is the number one licensable GPU IP in the mobile market with Mali-400 powering more than a billion devices. Building on the success of Mali-400, Mali-470 delivers the same rich performance while halving the power consumption at the same process geometry. This will provide ARM’s silicon partners with scalable SoC options to enable them to create embedded graphics subsystems that meet the needs of new low-power devices.

Extending the Smartphone Experience to Other Devices

User interfaces and displays across mobile and IoT platforms are increasingly interactive and immersive but silicon design teams face challenges associated with shrinking power and space constraints. Mali-470 helps SoC designers meet these challenges by delivering:

Half the power consumption and 2x the energy efficiency of Mali-400
Optimal energy efficiency for screen resolutions up to 640×640 in single-core configurations and higher resolutions for multi-core configurations
Increased frame rates and improved overall responsiveness
Reduced silicon cost and die areas that are 10 percent smaller than Mali-400
The ability to build an optimized SoC for power-constrained devices when paired with the low-power ARM Cortex®-A7 or Cortex-A53 processors.
Ease of Integration and Application Development

The majority of Android™, Android Wear and other emerging operating systems use the OpenGL ES 2.0 API and driver stack. For modern user interfaces, OpenGL ES 2.0 offers the ideal balance between pixel control and energy-efficiency. Mali-470 uses the same industry-standard OpenGL® ES 2.0 driver stack as Mali-400 so there is no need to re-optimize existing applications and developers receive the added benefit of long-term support.

Expanded Experiences

Manufacturers are focused on creating products with unique functionality to meet the constant demand for more immersive experiences with mobile and IoT devices. For example, sports and smart watchmakers compete on the quality of information their products offer to athletes to give them better insight into their performance. Richer graphics also open the door for real-time performance and health data to be evaluated and displayed in rich new ways. For IoT device-makers, energy efficiency is fundamental in this rich graphics equation. This is where Mali-470 is positioned, as it enables makers to build in stronger display capabilities and touch interfaces into highly power-constrained devices that historically relied on push buttons or limited displays.

“Along with connectivity, the IoT era is ushering in richer graphics experiences in almost every application and every aspect of our lives, ” said Jim McGregor principal analyst, TIRIAS Research. “Even wearables are going to require an immersive experience. With greater power efficiency and support for OpenGL ES 2.0, Mali-470 will enable these ultra-low power solutions to provide that experience. With Mali-470, future wearables and other low-power embedded applications can offer the vibrant displays and touch interfaces users have become accustomed to on smartphones.”

“The Mali-400 GPU is already an integral component in many of MediaTek’s current SoC designs and it has enhanced our ability to deliver chips that propel excellent user experiences,” said Jeffrey Ju, senior vice president, MediaTek. “The Mali-470 GPU, with its lower power profile, opens up new opportunities for even more power-constrained devices without compromising the user’s visual experience.”

Ends

About ARM

ARM is at the heart of the world’s most advanced digital products. Our technology enables the development of new markets and transformation of industries and society, invisibly creating opportunity for a globally connected population. We design scalable, energy-efficient processors and related technologies to deliver intelligence wherever computing happens, ranging from sensors to servers, including smartphones, tablets, digital TVs, enterprise infrastructure and the Internet of Things.

Our innovative technology is licensed by ARM Partners who have shipped more than 65 billion System on Chip (SoCs) containing our intellectual property. Together with our Connected Community, we are breaking down barriers to innovation for developers, designers and engineers, ensuring a fast, reliable route to market for leading electronics companies. Learn more and join the conversation at http://community.arm.com.

ARM and Cortex are registered trademarks of ARM Limited (or its subsidiaries) in the EU and/or elsewhere. Mali is a trademark of ARM Limited (or its subsidiaries) in the EU and/or elsewere.All rights reserved. All other brands or product names are the property of their respective holders. “ARM” refers to ARM Holdings plc (LSE: ARM and NASDAQ: ARMH) and members of its corporate group as constituted from time to time.

None of the information contained in this document may be adapted, republished, or reproduced in any form except with the prior written permission of the copyright holder, but links may be posted directly to this document from other websites, and the whole of the document correctly attributed and unmodified may be shared freely, unless the copyright holder at any time withdraws these permissions. This document is intended only to provide information to the reader about the relevant product(s) described or mentioned. All information is provided “as is” and without warranty. ARM makes no representation as to the product(s), and ARM shall not be liable for any loss or damage arising from the use of any information in this document or any error or omission in such information.

Read more: http://www.digitaljournal.com/pr/2713286#ixzz3p9kQN1oc

D-Wave Systems bills itself as the world’s first quantum computing company, with a line of computers that promise to run hundreds or thousands of times faster than conventional computers.

Google and NASA think D-Wave is on to something. They bought a new one a few weeks ago for the Quantum Artificial Intelligence Lab they run with the Universities Space Research Association.

The Burnaby-based high-tech firm has also made a customer of defence contractor Lockheed Martin. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and In-Q-Tel — the tech hothouse for the Central Intelligence Agency — are investors to the tune of $100 million combined.

The newest version of the company’s flagship model is the D-Wave 2X, which employs a superconducting processor cooled to a temperature far lower than the coldest corner of the universe, about -273 C. While D-Wave does not disclose what its customers pay, their machines have reportedly carried a price tag up to $15 million.

Quantum computers exploit the mysterious properties of subatomic particles to solve problems of unimaginable complexity in seconds, problems that would take years to calculate with today’s conventional machines.

The heart of this revolutionary new computer is the qubit, the quantum equivalent of a bit, the basic unit of information in conventional computers. Bits hold a single value, either 1 or 0. However, qubits can be simultaneously 1 and 0, a state called superposition. Plus they can exhibit mysterious and difficult-to-explain states of wavelike “coherence,” exchange information with other qubits and “entangle” with one another, a special connection in which they can influence each other ’s values even when they are not in contact.

The D-Wave 2X processor has 10300 possible states — that’s a one with 300 zeros after it — a number that dwarfs the number of particles in the visible universe and potentially unlocks unprecedented computing power.

Problematically, you can’t measure or detect subatomic states without stripping the qubits of the information they hold in the process, which makes it very tricky to learn the result of a computation and pretty much impossible to know exactly what is happening on the chip during a computation.

D-Wave has used quantum simulations to determine that what is going in inside their “black box” is not conventional computing.

If this all sounds impossibly complex, that’s because it is. It’s also the reason much of the academic community harbours doubts that D-Wave’s chips are truly exploiting quantum effects.

Quantum machines rely on principles of particle physics that are utterly foreign to our experience of the physical world, leading Albert Einstein to dismiss entanglement as “spooky action at a distance.” The renowned physicist just couldn’t wrap his head around how differently things work at the quantum level, so don’t feel bad if you aren’t clueing in immediately.

“If anyone tells you they understand quantum physics, they don’t understand quantum physics,” laughed Jeremy Hilton, D-Wave’s vice-president of processor development.

D-Wave’s approach to quantum computing is a kind of quantum-lite, based on ideas introduced by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, according to Hilton.

“We were at a cusp as a company in 2004,” said Hilton. “We had been surveying all these approaches to quantum computing and developed some ideas, but at that point we needed to pick something and go big, start to build a real technology.”

D-Wave founder Georgie Rose chose to focus on a processor that would employ a limited roster of quantum tools, essentially leaving out the ones that scientists are not yet able to manage reliably.

“Instead of waiting 20 or 30 years, we wanted to created a technology that could solve meaningful problems as soon as possible,” said Hilton.

Rather than shoot for a Holy Grail universal quantum processor in which difficult effects such as coherence and entanglement are controlled, they have opted to create a simplified version using superposition, the easiest quantum effect to control.

“If you can start to access the more robust quantum mechanical effects like superposition, you can start to build something that is applying quantum mechanics to a computation and gaining some advantage over the classical approach,” said Hilton. “This is a way to transition into this technology … while we learn how to push further along that spectrum so that ultimately we will have a full-scale quantum computer with all those delicate effects.”

The processor — housed in a big super-cooled fridge — employs superposition in a quantum state to run thousands of calculations simultaneously and then it reveals its results by “tuning” the qubits back to a classical state, so they can be read.

It’s a quantum breakthrough, even if it isn’t a fully realized quantum computer, according to Hilton.

Even D-Wave is struggling to figure out exactly what is happening on their chip, but after some computer modelling experiments they are sure it is not conventional and possibly much more.

“What has surprised us is that our own research shows that entanglement and quantum tunnelling are available and participating in the computation,” said Hilton.

Researchers in the field are justifiably suspicious when a private enterprise appears to leapfrog the best results achieved by university-based programs. However, D-Wave’s published results have sparked renewed interest and investment in their model, which is known in the field as adiabatic computing.

In addition to new funds flowing into D-Wave, the founders of BlackBerry established a $100-million investment fund for quantum computing research, and researchers at the University of Montreal recently won a substantial grant to pursue adiabatic computing.

Hilton reckons D-Wave’s quantum computer works more like a human brain than classical computers and sees a bright future for the technology in artificial intelligence and machine learning, in which computers must tackle pattern recognition problems that humans perform with relative ease.

The D-Wave 2X shines particularly in the field of optimization problems, again because like human thought processes, getting a mostly right answer quickly is far more useful that the exact right answer next year.

“For the majority of optimization problems you aren’t looking for one right answer, you want a good-enough answer,” said Hilton. “This is often the case with very complex questions.”

In the case of optimizing thousands of delivery routes for a global delivery service or financial portfolios with millions of combinations of assets, getting back the 10 “probably” best scenarios is just as useful as a single right answer, and in many cases, more useful.

“You are looking for a set of good answers with different cost thresholds to choose from,” he said. “If you can find a solution that is close to the best solution 101000 times faster — in seconds rather than years — that’s good enough.”

rshore@vancouversun.com

@theGreenManblog

http://www.vancouversun.com/wave+quantum+leap+computing/11453861/story.html?__lsa=3e3f-36e6

October 20, 2015

Stigma still surrounds mental illness across the globe, says UBC professor Peter Klein in an article in the Globe and Mail.

Klein added that a project of the UBC International Reporting Program found that in many countries, mental illness is often regarded with fear and superstition, due mostly to lack of knowledge about what mental illness means.

“Ignorance is the cause. Science and education are the cure,” Klein said.

http://news.ubc.ca/2015/10/20/ignorance-drives-the-global-stigma-of-mental-illness/

Scientists from the University of Colorado are developing a new type of “rectenna” to efficiently “harvest” thermal emissions (waste heat) radiated from devices (a rectenna converts electromagnetic radiation to DC current).

Currently rectennas work best at low frequencies, but most heat is at higher radiation frequencies — up to the 100 THz (100 trillion cycles per second) range. So Won Park and his colleagues found a way to enhance thermal emission of hot bodies at the lower end of the spectrum (around 1 THz): by manipulating the surface of the object.

A metamaterial for engineering thermal emission

Park’s team uses software to analyze how the nanoscale topology of a surface — its bumps, holes or grooves — changes the way that electromagnetic radiation interacts with the surface. In some instances the geometry supports the formation of a wave of rippling electronic charges, called a plasmon, that hugs the surface.

“We design the surface to support a surface wave, because the presence of the wave offers a new avenue for engineering thermal emission,” Park said. For the case of optimizing thermal energy harvesting, the researchers found they could “spectrally tune” a surface to emit more radiation at 1 THz frequency.

The researchers first optimized the design, which consists of a copper plate with a regular array of tiny holes, using simulations. They then built the design in the lab and confirmed that the plate did indeed produce the type of surface waves predicted by the simulations.

The researchers also used computer modeling to design a bowtie-shaped antenna that would effectively capture the enhanced thermal emission. Simulations predict that an antenna placed near the holey surface could capture 10,000 to 100,000 times more thermal energy than an antenna in open space.

The team is in the process of experimentally testing this prediction and hopes to have new results to report soon. The results will also help the team calculate how rectenna thermal energy harvesting might compare to other ways of harvesting waste heat, such as thermoelectric materials.

The researchers described the system at the AVS 62nd International Symposium and Exhibition in San Jose, Calif. today (Monday, Oct. 19). The research is funded in part by a grant from Redwave Energy Inc.

Abstract of Metamaterial Enhanced Rectenna for Efficient Energy Harvesting

Rectenna solar cell offers an important alternative to the conventional semiconductor solar cell technology. Direct rectification of electromagnetic radiation faces many challenges one of which is the high frequency of operation. Thermal emission from hot bodies peaks at 10 ~ 100 THz while solar radiation has its maximum at around 600 THz. One may circumvent this difficulty if sufficiently strong thermal radiation is available at lower frequencies. In general, thermal emission is described well by the theory of blackbody radiation while the property of the non-black surface is characterized by its emissivity. When the surface supports surface waves, however, the properties of thermal emission can deviate substantially from the blackbody radiation, offering a new avenue for engineering thermal emission. For example, spatially coherent and spectrally selective thermal emission may be achieved. The presence of surface waves also means enhanced local density of states near the surface, which consequently leads to strongly modified thermal emission intensity and spectrum in the near field. In this paper, we report a metamaterial design to achieve enhanced thermal emission at 1 THz.

Two types of metamaterial designs were investigated: a 1D array of parallel trenches and a 2D array of holes etched on copper. The metamaterial surface was designed to support surface waves resembling the surface plasmon on metal surface. Numerical simulations by the finite element method confirmed the presence of surface waves and strong electric field near the surface at 1 THz. The strongly enhanced electric field is the direct consequence of enhanced local density of states. To further confirm the surface modes can be excited by thermal emission, we also conducted finite-difference time-domain simulations in which thermal emission was calculated by using the fluctuation dissipation theorem. Once the enhanced thermal emission is confirmed, a bowtie antenna was placed close to the metamaterial surface to capture the enhanced thermal emission in the near field. The antenna was optimized to maximize the electromagnetic energy delivered to the antenna gap. Since the antenna should couple efficiently with the surface modes, the optimal antenna design became quite different from the free space bowtie antenna operating at the same frequency. The optimized metamaterial and antenna design resulted in an antenna voltage of 10 mV at 1 THz, three orders of magnitude larger than the free space antenna. Such a large enhancement makes the metamaterial approach a highly promising route to efficient energy harvesting with rectenna.

references:
Dawei Lu, Won Park, Pat Brady. Metamaterial Enhanced Rectenna for Efficient Energy Harvesting. Proceedings of the AVS 62nd International Symposium and Exhibition, Oct. 19, 2015; EM+AS+SS-MoM-6

http://www.kurzweilai.net/a-metamaterial-that-enhances-thermal-energy-harvesting

London : A new study has claimed that people suffering from cold sores are more likely to get Alzheimer’s, says ANI.

A graphic created by the ‘Information is Beautiful’ team also states that male individuals who are prone to baldness might be at a greater risk of coronary heart disease and heart attacks, while blue eyed individuals may also be more likely to have anaemia, The Independent reports.

It states that people with fat thighs were statistically less likely to contract cardiovascular disease and having allergies may lower the probability you get cancer. Researchers at ‘Information is Beautiful’ have warned that the validity of these studies might vary.
/http://www.freepressjournal.in/cold-sores-linked-to-alzheimers

Apple is partnering with three universities to expand the use of its ResearchKit program.

ResearchKit is a platform that lets administrators leverage the data collected via Apple devices for serious academic and medical research. The built-in sensors of the iPhone and the Apple Watch can help to track biometric data such as heart rate, while peripheral add-ons can be used to get even more advanced data related to glucose levels, blood pressure, and so on. ResearchKit helps to organize that data for wide-ranging studies.

Apple’s newest partners to take advantage of ResearchKit are Duke University, Johns Hopkins, and Oregon Health & Science University. Duke and OHSU both aim to take advantage of the iPhone’s imaging capabilities, with OHSU using still images to map out the spread of moles and melanoma, and Duke using the front-facing camera to apply facial scanning software to iPhone video footage in a study aimed at detecting autism in children. The Johns Hopkins study, meanwhile, is aiming to use the Apple Watch‘s accelerometers to study seizures.

As TechCrunch notes, there are already 100,000 people enrolled in studies using ResearchKit, and as that number continues to expand, it will offer an increasingly important contribution to the field of medical research. And with mobile devices’ biometric capabilities continuing to advance, future devices could lead to even more impactful research. ResearchKit is becoming perhaps one of the most important indicators of how mobile biometrics can be used to benefit society.

http://mobileidworld.com/major-studies-apple-researchkit-10191/