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Blog – Page 11552

Interesting read and one that many have learned over the years; however, the rules are always changing though.

Illustration: Peter C. Espina /GT

The story of China’s rapid modernization through the use of Western technology took an unusual twist last week when a US firm aiming to build America’s first high-speed rail line abruptly cut its ties with a Chinese partner over technology transfer issues. XpressWest, the US builder of the line connecting Los Angeles and Las Vegas, was quite frank, blaming its decision on Washington’s requirement that rail cars for the project be locally manufactured.

While XpressWest wasn’t more specific, its brief announcement strongly implied that its Chinese partner, China Railway International (CRI), was unwilling to make the necessary technology transfers for the project to go ahead.

Continue reading “China must learn that tech transfer two-process deal” | >

Could there be a sweet revenge iin store for a particular large tech co. n the end?

HELSINKI: Nokia has signed a USD 1.53 billion frame agreement with China Mobile to create a “cloud network” for the Chinese operator, the Finnish telecom equipment giant said today.

The deal would entail “seamless connectivity that will more efficiently meet the ever-growing data demands of its subscriber base,” Nokia said in a statement.

Nokia is to deliver a new type of base station which allows the use of multiple radio technologies simultaneously and is scalable to support all connection speeds from the oldest to the upcoming, ultra-fast 5G networks and connected objects.

Continue reading “Nokia to build China Mobile’s cloud network” | >

Another article on Quantum Security; this time from Sydney (generating single photons to make communications and information secured).

With enough computing effort most contemporary security systems will be broken. But a research team at the University of Sydney has made a major breakthrough in generating single photons (light particles), as carriers of quantum information in security systems.

The collaboration involving physicists at the Centre for Ultrahigh bandwidth Devices for Optical Systems (CUDOS), an ARC Centre of Excellence headquartered in the School of Physics, and electrical engineers from the School of Electrical and Information Engineering, has been published in Nature Communications.

The team’s work resolved a key issue holding back the development of password exchange which can only be broken by violating the laws of physics. Photons are generated in a pair, and detecting one indicates the existence of the other. This allows scientists to manage the timing of photon events so that they always arrive at the time they are expected.

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Nice.

A gene called Prkci can point cells in the right direction, according to a new study in Developmental Biology.

In the study, USC Stem Cell researcher In Kyoung Mah from the laboratory of Francesca Mariani and colleagues demonstrated Prkci’s role in organizing cells into balls and tubes during early embryo and organ formation.

In their experiments, the researchers used mouse stem cells to form what are known as embryoid bodies, or clusters of cells that mimic the early development of embryos and organs in a Petri dish.

Continue reading “Gene called Prkci helps organize organisms and their organs” | >

Very insightful for my deep mind/ neuro mapping friends.

If you have trouble learning a new language as an adult, maybe you can blame your genes and brain structure, a U.S. study suggested Monday.

The study by researchers at the University of Washington showed that genetic variations of the so-called COMT gene and a measure of the strength of the brain’s communications network — known as “white matter”— jointly accounted for 46 percent of the reason for why some college students performed better than others in the second language class.

“We are interested in understanding why individuals learn differently, including those who perform well and those who perform poorly,” said lead author Ping Mamiya, a research scientist at the UW’s Institute for Learning & Brain Sciences (I-LABS).

Continue reading “Genes, brain structure influence second language learning: study” | >

Diabetes 2 tie to Vitamin D issues.

First study of Emiratis’ genes highlights the links between type 2 diabetes and a deficiency in vitamin D. Soon doctors may be able to prioritise care for those who are most at risk.

ABU DHABI // The first study to examine Emirati genes and the links between type 2 diabetes and vitamin D deficiency uncovered a genetic code that identifies those susceptible to the deficiency.

While studies internationally have found links between the two conditions, it is the first time the Emirati population has been looked at specifically.

Continue reading “Emirati gene study shows diabetes and vitamin D deficiency risks” | >

Jumping genes — not jumping beans.

“Jumping genes” are ubiquitous. Every domain of life hosts these sequences of DNA that can “jump” from one position to another along a chromosome; in fact, nearly half the human genome is made up of jumping genes. Depending on their specific excision and insertion points, jumping genes can interrupt or trigger gene expression, driving genetic mutation and contributing to cell diversification. Since their discovery in the 1940s, researchers have been able to study the behavior of these jumping genes, generally known as transposons or transposable elements (TE), primarily through indirect methods that infer individual activity from bulk results. However, such techniques are not sensitive enough to determine precisely how or why the transposons jump, and what factors trigger their activity.

Reporting in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, scientists at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have observed jumping gene activity in real time within living . The study is the collaborative effort of physics professors Thomas Kuhlman and Nigel Goldenfeld, at the Center for the Physics of Living Cells, a National Science Foundation Physics Frontiers Center.

“In this study, we were able to see that there is actually more of this jumping gene action going on than might have been expected from previous studies,” said Kuhlman, whose team performed the in vivo experiments. “What’s more, we learned that the rates at which these genes jump depend sensitively on how the cells are growing—if there is food available for the cells to grow, for example. In other words, jumping gene activation isn’t entirely random, it’s dependent on environmental feedback.”

Continue reading “Watching ‘jumping genes’ in action” | >

Visual information from near and far space are processed with differing degrees of acuity.

Neuroscientists from Tübingen have discovered how our brain processes visual stimuli above and below the horizon differently. The researchers led by Dr. Ziad Hafed of the Werner Reichardt Centre for Integrative Neuroscience (CIN) at the University of Tübingen investigated non-human primates, ascertaining that different parts of the visual field are represented asymmetrically in the superior colliculus, a brain structure central to visual perception and behavior. More neural tissue is assigned to the upper visual field than to the lower. As a result, visual stimuli above the horizon are processed sharper, stronger, and faster: our brain is wearing bifocals, so to speak.

Seeing — arguably our most important way of perceiving the world — mostly happens without conscious intent. We see much better in the center of our visual field (along the visual axis) than in the periphery. So when our brain detects an object of interest in the periphery of our visual field, it immediately initiates an eye movement so our visual axis intersects with those objects. Once an object is in our direct line of sight, we can perceive it in far more depth and detail.

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