The New York Times?published an article?on?its website?Wednesday evening alleging that "Chinese hackers have persistently attacked The New York Times" over the past four months.
The decision by the paper to publish a story exposing the fact that Times employees and computer security experts have been "surreptitiously tracking the intruders" in order to figure out the best way to stop their activities, and have now "expelled the attackers and kept them from breaking back in," is a bold and intriguing move by?the Times.
The article?states that security experts determined that the hacking attacks "coincided" with Times Shanghai bureau chief David Barboza's work on an in-depth investigation into Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jibao that exposed that some of his relatives had earned billions of dollars through various business deals.
Shortly after the piece -- which was called "Billions in Hidden Riches for Family of Chinese Leader" and cast Wen and his associates in a negative light -- was published online on Oct. 25, Chinese authorities blocked the New York Times website throughout the country, in a move that was almost definitely timed to help soften the blow of the Wen story,?according to the Washington Post.
And the new revelations by the Times expose another level of the Chinese government's willingness to take major steps against foreign publications critical of the powers that be there.
The Times report states that the Chinese hackers broke into Barboza and former Beijing bureau chief Jim Yardley's email accounts during the hacking attacks.
The Times' executive editor, Jill Abramson, discussed the breach of email accounts in the Wednesday article:
?Computer security experts found no evidence that sensitive e-mails or files from the reporting of our articles about the Wen family were accessed, downloaded or copied,? Abramson said.
And security experts told the Times that they found evidence that every Times employee's corporate password was stolen, and they were used to access 53 employees' personal computers, many of which were located outside of the paper's newsrooms. But it appears that the target of all the hacking was only data on the blockbuster story by Barboza, and that no other data was targeted, the Times wrote.
The Times article points out that this is not the first such example of Chinese espionage against American media companies.?Bloomberg News?was?hit by Chinese hackers?in 2012, after?an article that revealed the wealth?of family members of the country's then-vice-president, Xi Jinping, who is about to become supreme leader, was published by the outlet.
Baltimore Ravens head coach John Harbaugh speaks at an NFL Super Bowl XLVII football news conference on Wednesday, Jan. 30, 2013, in New Orleans. The Ravens face the San Francisco 49ers in Super Bowl XLVII on Sunday, Feb. 3. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky)
Baltimore Ravens head coach John Harbaugh speaks at an NFL Super Bowl XLVII football news conference on Wednesday, Jan. 30, 2013, in New Orleans. The Ravens face the San Francisco 49ers in Super Bowl XLVII on Sunday, Feb. 3. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky)
Baltimore Ravens head coach John Harbaugh walks off stage after speaking at an NFL Super Bowl XLVII football news conference on Wednesday, Jan. 30, 2013, in New Orleans. The Ravens face the San Francisco 49ers in Super Bowl XLVII on Sunday, Feb. 3. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky)
NEW ORLEANS (AP) ? Ravens coach John Harbaugh says star linebacker Ray Lewis assured him "there's nothing to" a magazine report linking him to a company that makes deer-antler spray containing a banned performance enhancer.
Harbaugh said Wednesday morning he spoke with Lewis. The coach said Lewis "knows there is nothing to it. He understands it's something he's never been involved in."
On Tuesday, Sports Illustrated reported that Lewis sought help from a company that makes the unorthodox product to speed his recovery from a torn right triceps. Lewis missed 10 games with the injury.
"He laughed about it," Harbaugh said, referring to Lewis. "He told me there's nothing to it. He's told us in the past and now that he has never taken any of it."
Baltimore plays the San Francisco 49ers in the Super Bowl on Sunday in the final game of Lewis' career.
Source: www.ibtimes.com --- Wednesday, January 30, 2013 Samsung Galaxy S Advance I9070 running on Android 4.1.2 XXLPZ can be rooted using the root file released by XDA developer. ...
NEW YORK (AP) ? A special fund set up by Congress to compensate people who got sick after being exposed to toxic World Trade Center dust following Sept. 11 is making its first round of payments, with the initial payouts going to a group of 15 first responders with respiratory problems.
The administrator who oversees the 9/11 Victim Compensation Fund, Sheila Birnbaum, announced Tuesday that the fund was finally poised to process payouts, after a deliberate start in which officials figured out how the program would work and lawyers pieced together documentation for at least 16,000 applications.
The first round of payments, most of which have been offered to firefighters, range from $10,000 to a high of $1.5 million.
Birnbaum declined to identify the recipients by name or say much about their illnesses, citing privacy concerns. She said their health problems range from "serious" to "not so serious," and that the people getting the larger awards tended to be younger, and to have suffered more severe economic losses.
The people offered lower amounts include some who have already received other compensation for their illnesses, including shares of a civil settlement for thousands of firefighters, police officers and construction workers who had sued over the lack of protective equipment at ground zero.
None of the people in the initial group had cancer, and all are still living, Birnbaum said.
"We think we are off to a good start, and with the help of the lawyers and the claimants, we will be able to come up with a lot more awards in the coming months," she said.
It will be years, though, before any applicants see the bulk of their money, or even know for certain how much they will get.
Officials don't yet know how many people will apply for aid from the $2.78 billion fund, or how ill they will be. That means they can't yet calculate each person's share. So for now, applicants are getting only 10 percent of their award. The remainder won't be paid until after the fund closes to new applicants in 2016.
Some advocates for the sick have worried that the $2.78 billion appropriated by Congress will be far less than the actual losses suffered by the sick ? a possibility that Birnbaum acknowledged in drafting the formula she is using to decide how much money claimants will get in the first round.
Planning for a worst-case scenario, fund officials estimated that as many as 26,475 people would be eligible for more than $8.5 billion in compensation.
If that happens, the firefighter awarded $1.5 million this week would, in the end, actually get a prorated share of only around $488,000.
"I think without question, there is not going to be enough," said Noah Kushlefsky, a lawyer who, along with partners, is representing about 4,700 claimants. He said that he believed Congress would ultimately be asked to put more money into the fund. "There is no doubt, based on the severity of some of the injuries."
As for the slow pace of awards so far, Kushlefsky said Birnbaum and her staff are not to blame.
He said the process of assembling the evidence showing that his clients were actually at ground zero, or were exposed to toxins, has been challenging and time-consuming. But he said the process is hitting a stage when applications should be moving much more quickly.
"I think that things are going to start taking off in the very near future," he said, noting that some of his clients have grumbled about the slowness of the process. "All these guys have waited 11 years now, and none of them are warm and fuzzy about it."
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Tomorrow's life-saving medications may currently be living at the bottom of the sea Public release date: 29-Jan-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Jim Newman newmanj@ohsu.edu 503-494-8231 Oregon Health & Science University
PORTLAND, Ore. OHSU researchers, in partnership with scientists from several other institutions, have published two new research papers that signal how the next class of powerful medications may currently reside at the bottom of the ocean. In both cases, the researchers were focused on ocean-based mollusks a category of animal that includes snails, clams and squid and their bacterial companions.
Sea life studies aid researchers in several ways, including the development of new medications and biofuels. Because many of these ocean animal species have existed in harmony with their bacteria for millions of years, these benign bacteria have devised molecules that can affect body function without side effects and therefore better fight disease.
To generate these discoveries, a research partnership called the Philippine Mollusk Symbiont International Cooperative Biodiversity Group was formed. As the name suggests, the group specifically focuses on mollusks, a large phylum of invertebrate animals, many of which live under the sea. Margo Haygood, Ph.D., an OHSU marine microbiologist, leads the group, with partners at the University of the Philippines, the University of Utah, The Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia and Ocean Genome Legacy. Both of these newly published papers are the result of the efforts of this research group.
Here are brief summaries of the two studies:
Shipworms: The source of a new antibiotic
Published in the current edition of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
The paper focuses on a unique animal called a shipworm, which despite its name is not a worm. Shipworms are mollusks and are clam-like creatures that use their shells as drills and feed on wood by burrowing into the wood fibers. They are best known for affixing themselves to the sides of wooden ships. Over time, their wood feeding causes serious damage to the hull of those ships.
The research team initially focused on shipworms because the animals' creative use of bacteria to convert wood a poor food source lacking proteins or nitrogen into a suitable food source where the animal can both live and feed.
This research revealed that one form of bacteria utilized by shipworms secretes a powerful antibiotic, which may hold promise for combatting human diseases.
"The reason why this line of research is so critical is because antibiotic resistance is a serious threat to human health," said Margo Haygood, Ph.D., a member of the OHSU Institute of Environmental Health and a professor of science and engineering in the OHSU School of Medicine.
"Antibiotics have helped humans battle infectious diseases for over 70 years. However, the dangerous organisms these medications were designed to protect us against have adapted due to widespread use. Without a new class of improved antibiotics, older medications are becoming less and less effective and we need to locate new antibiotics to keep these diseases at bay. Bacteria that live in harmony with animals are a promising source. "
Cone snails: Another possible yet surprising source for new medicines
Published in the current edition of the journal Chemistry and Biology
A team led by researchers from the University of Utah, and including OHSU and the University of the Philippines researchers, took part in a separate study of cone snails collected in the Philippines. Cone snails are also mollusks. There have been few previous studies to determine if bacteria associated with these snails might assist in drug development. This is because the snails have thick shells and they can also defend themselves through the use of toxic venoms. Because of the existence of these significant defensive measures, it was assumed that the bacteria they carry do not have to produce additional chemical defenses that might also translate into human medications. The latest research shows that this previous assumption is incorrect.
The research demonstrated how bacteria carried by cone snails produce a chemical that is neuroactive, meaning that it impacts the function of nerve cells, called neurons, in the brain. Such chemicals have promise for treatment of pain.
"Mollusks with external shells, like the cone snail, were previously overlooked in the search for new antibiotics and other medications," said, Eric Schmidt, Ph.D., a biochemist at the university of Utah and lead author of the article.
"This discovery tells us that these animals also produce compounds worth studying. It's hoped that these studies may also provide us with valuable knowledge that will help us combat disease."
###
About the Philippine Mollusk Symbiont International Cooperative Biodiversity Group
The Philippine Mollusk Symbiont International Cooperative Biodiversity Group links a biodiversity survey of marine mollusks with enzyme and drug discovery aimed at bacterial symbionts of mollusks. Mollusks constitute the most diverse marine life groups, occupying virtually every possible ecological niche. The diversity of microbes associated with mollusks is equally vast.
The group focuses on training, conservation, and the development of drug discovery and biofuels programs within the Philippines. The project is led by Margo Haygood, marine microbiologist, Oregon Heath & Science University, in association with Gisela Concepcion, marine natural products chemist, Marine Science Institute, University of the Philippines; Baldomero Olivera, biochemist, and Eric Schmidt, natural products chemist and biochemist, both at the University of Utah; Gary Rosenberg, evolutionary biologist, Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia; and Daniel Distel, marine microbiologist, Ocean Genome Legacy.
About OHSU
Oregon Health & Science University is a nationally prominent research university and Oregon's only public academic health center. It serves patients throughout the region with a Level 1 trauma center and nationally recognized Doernbecher Children's Hospital. OHSU operates dental, medical, nursing and pharmacy schools that rank high both in research funding and in meeting the university's social mission. OHSU's Knight Cancer Institute helped pioneer personalized medicine through a discovery that identified how to shut down cells that enable cancer to grow without harming healthy ones. OHSU Brain Institute scientists are nationally recognized for discoveries that have led to a better understanding of Alzheimer's disease and new treatments for Parkinson's disease, multiple sclerosis and stroke. OHSU's Casey Eye Institute is a global leader in ophthalmic imaging, and in clinical trials related to eye disease.
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AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Tomorrow's life-saving medications may currently be living at the bottom of the sea Public release date: 29-Jan-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Jim Newman newmanj@ohsu.edu 503-494-8231 Oregon Health & Science University
PORTLAND, Ore. OHSU researchers, in partnership with scientists from several other institutions, have published two new research papers that signal how the next class of powerful medications may currently reside at the bottom of the ocean. In both cases, the researchers were focused on ocean-based mollusks a category of animal that includes snails, clams and squid and their bacterial companions.
Sea life studies aid researchers in several ways, including the development of new medications and biofuels. Because many of these ocean animal species have existed in harmony with their bacteria for millions of years, these benign bacteria have devised molecules that can affect body function without side effects and therefore better fight disease.
To generate these discoveries, a research partnership called the Philippine Mollusk Symbiont International Cooperative Biodiversity Group was formed. As the name suggests, the group specifically focuses on mollusks, a large phylum of invertebrate animals, many of which live under the sea. Margo Haygood, Ph.D., an OHSU marine microbiologist, leads the group, with partners at the University of the Philippines, the University of Utah, The Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia and Ocean Genome Legacy. Both of these newly published papers are the result of the efforts of this research group.
Here are brief summaries of the two studies:
Shipworms: The source of a new antibiotic
Published in the current edition of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
The paper focuses on a unique animal called a shipworm, which despite its name is not a worm. Shipworms are mollusks and are clam-like creatures that use their shells as drills and feed on wood by burrowing into the wood fibers. They are best known for affixing themselves to the sides of wooden ships. Over time, their wood feeding causes serious damage to the hull of those ships.
The research team initially focused on shipworms because the animals' creative use of bacteria to convert wood a poor food source lacking proteins or nitrogen into a suitable food source where the animal can both live and feed.
This research revealed that one form of bacteria utilized by shipworms secretes a powerful antibiotic, which may hold promise for combatting human diseases.
"The reason why this line of research is so critical is because antibiotic resistance is a serious threat to human health," said Margo Haygood, Ph.D., a member of the OHSU Institute of Environmental Health and a professor of science and engineering in the OHSU School of Medicine.
"Antibiotics have helped humans battle infectious diseases for over 70 years. However, the dangerous organisms these medications were designed to protect us against have adapted due to widespread use. Without a new class of improved antibiotics, older medications are becoming less and less effective and we need to locate new antibiotics to keep these diseases at bay. Bacteria that live in harmony with animals are a promising source. "
Cone snails: Another possible yet surprising source for new medicines
Published in the current edition of the journal Chemistry and Biology
A team led by researchers from the University of Utah, and including OHSU and the University of the Philippines researchers, took part in a separate study of cone snails collected in the Philippines. Cone snails are also mollusks. There have been few previous studies to determine if bacteria associated with these snails might assist in drug development. This is because the snails have thick shells and they can also defend themselves through the use of toxic venoms. Because of the existence of these significant defensive measures, it was assumed that the bacteria they carry do not have to produce additional chemical defenses that might also translate into human medications. The latest research shows that this previous assumption is incorrect.
The research demonstrated how bacteria carried by cone snails produce a chemical that is neuroactive, meaning that it impacts the function of nerve cells, called neurons, in the brain. Such chemicals have promise for treatment of pain.
"Mollusks with external shells, like the cone snail, were previously overlooked in the search for new antibiotics and other medications," said, Eric Schmidt, Ph.D., a biochemist at the university of Utah and lead author of the article.
"This discovery tells us that these animals also produce compounds worth studying. It's hoped that these studies may also provide us with valuable knowledge that will help us combat disease."
###
About the Philippine Mollusk Symbiont International Cooperative Biodiversity Group
The Philippine Mollusk Symbiont International Cooperative Biodiversity Group links a biodiversity survey of marine mollusks with enzyme and drug discovery aimed at bacterial symbionts of mollusks. Mollusks constitute the most diverse marine life groups, occupying virtually every possible ecological niche. The diversity of microbes associated with mollusks is equally vast.
The group focuses on training, conservation, and the development of drug discovery and biofuels programs within the Philippines. The project is led by Margo Haygood, marine microbiologist, Oregon Heath & Science University, in association with Gisela Concepcion, marine natural products chemist, Marine Science Institute, University of the Philippines; Baldomero Olivera, biochemist, and Eric Schmidt, natural products chemist and biochemist, both at the University of Utah; Gary Rosenberg, evolutionary biologist, Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia; and Daniel Distel, marine microbiologist, Ocean Genome Legacy.
About OHSU
Oregon Health & Science University is a nationally prominent research university and Oregon's only public academic health center. It serves patients throughout the region with a Level 1 trauma center and nationally recognized Doernbecher Children's Hospital. OHSU operates dental, medical, nursing and pharmacy schools that rank high both in research funding and in meeting the university's social mission. OHSU's Knight Cancer Institute helped pioneer personalized medicine through a discovery that identified how to shut down cells that enable cancer to grow without harming healthy ones. OHSU Brain Institute scientists are nationally recognized for discoveries that have led to a better understanding of Alzheimer's disease and new treatments for Parkinson's disease, multiple sclerosis and stroke. OHSU's Casey Eye Institute is a global leader in ophthalmic imaging, and in clinical trials related to eye disease.
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
NEW YORK (AP) ? Hostess has picked the maker of Little Debbie as the lead bidder for its Drake's cakes.
According to a filing in U.S. bankruptcy court, McKee Foods has offered $27.5 million in cash for the cake brands, which include Devil Dogs, Funny Bones and Yodels. The fate of Twinkies and other Hostess cakes are still being negotiated with other bidders.
Hostess also said United States Bakery agreed to pay $28.9 million for its remained bread brands, which include Sweetheart, Eddy's, Standish Farms and Grandma Emilie's. That offer includes four bakeries, 14 depots and equipment. Earlier this month, Hostess picked Flowers Foods, which makes Tastykake and Nature's Own and Bunny bread, as the lead bidder for six of its major bread brands, including Wonder.
The "stalking horse" bid by McKee Foods would set the floor for an auction process that lets competitors make better offers. A judge would have to approve the final sale, which Hostess said is scheduled to close no later than May 30.
McKee's bid includes some equipment but not the Drake's bakery in Wayne, N.J. A spokesman for Hostess, Tom Becker, said the company continues "to market all remaining assets."
McKee Foods, based in Collegedale, Tenn., makes a variety of snack cakes under the Little Debbie banner that compete with Hostess cakes at a lower price. For example, its Cloud Cakes resemble Twinkies and its Devil Cremes resemble Devil Dogs. A representative for McKee Foods, Mike Gloekler, said the company didn't plan to scrap any brands as a result of the deal.
"Our intent is to produce like products as they are since they have different packaging and formulae," Gloekler said in a statement. He said McKee hoped to make Drake's products at its plant in Stuarts Draft, Va. since Drake's cakes are best known in the northeast region.
Hostess has said in court previously that it needed to move quickly in selling off its brands to capitalize on the outpouring of nostalgia and media coverage prompted by its demise. The company repeated the sentiment in its court filing Monday, noting that there is no advertising or marketing for Drake's brands, which also include Ring Dings, Sunny Doodles and Yankee Doodles.
"The longer Drake's products stay off the shelves, the more likely it is that consumers will begin to use competitors' products," the filing said.
McKee generates about $1.1 billion in sales a year, with its Little Debbie cake division accounting for $800 million of that, according to the company. In recent years, McKee has seen its sales remain flat or fall as eating habits have changed.
Hostess Brands Inc., based in Irving, Texas, has been plagued by even greater problems. The company announced in November that it was shutting down its business and selling its breads and snack cakes. Its demise came after years of management turmoil and turnover, with workers saying the company failed to invest its brands. Hostess filed for its second Chapter 11 bankruptcy in less than a decade this January, citing costs associated with its unionized workforce.
After declaring that it was going out of business, Hostess had solicited bids for its brands by a Dec. 10 deadline. The company said in its filing Monday that it had received one bid for "substantially all" of its assets. But Hostess said the bid was not as valuable as the combined total for of the bids it received for individual brands. In addition, Hostess said the bidder that made the offer for conducted "very limited diligence."
___
Follow Candice Choi at www.twitter.com/candicechoi
Since Vine, Twitter's video-sharing service, launched on Thursday, it's been plagued by all sorts of woes. We noticed that it lacks privacy settings and?abuse prevention measures, Facebook prevented it from finding any friends through the social network, and now ... well, now pornographic?content has slipped?into Vine's?"Editor's Picks" section.
Vine's a rather neat service, in theory. If you've got an iOS device, you can create and share Vine videos. All you have to do is point your iPhone (or iPod Touch) at something and press your finger to the screen to record a clip up to six seconds in length (both sound and motion are captured, of course). Once done, you can share it to Vine, Twitter and Facebook. You can also use the app to browse through popular videos and those featured as "Editor's Picks."
And that's where Vine's latest troubles appear. On Monday morning, a video shared by "nsfwvine" ??an account created for the sole purpose of posting pornographic videos to Vine (hence the "Not Safe For Work" part of the name)???received the service's "Editor's Pick" badge of honor.
While the video did lose the "Editor's Pick" badge later in the morning, it was not removed from the service. Instead, it now carries a warning message declaring that the video?"may contain sensitive content" and requires a tap to be viewed. (From what we can tell, this warning message is automatically added to videos which are reported as inappropriate by Vine users.)
We have reached out to Twitter for more information regarding how the video in question?? which shows a young woman and a?sex toy?? was chosen as an "Editor's Pick." We wondered if some sort of automated process may be involved in the selection. A Twitter spokesperson explained that an actual person was actually to blame. "A human error resulted in a video with adult content becoming one of the videos in Editor's Picks," she wrote in an email to NBC News. "[U]pon realizing this mistake we removed the video immediately. We apologize to our users for the error."
We have also contacted Apple, as we suspect the Cupertino-based company is probably not all too happy about pornographic content being?prominently?featured in an iOS app. (It has banned apps for far less racy issues in the past.)
In the meantime, obscene material continues to flood into Vine. Several accounts ? including "nsfwvine" ? have been posting pornographic clips since Vine launched last week. Not all of porn clips?carry the "sensitive content" warning yet and it's not clear if any have been removed so far.
"Wow. How did this happen, Vine?" a user asked?on one of the videos, while another wondered "[c]an I flag this as inappropriate more than once?"
Want more tech news?or interesting?links? You'll get plenty of both if you keep up with Rosa Golijan, the writer of this post, by following her on?Twitter, subscribing to her?Facebook?posts,?or circling her?on?Google+.
PARIS (Reuters) - PSA Peugeot Citroen will continue negotiating 8,000 job cuts with unions despite a court ruling that may delay their implementation, the struggling French carmaker said on Tuesday.
"The negotiations are not suspended and will continue to make progress," a company spokesman said.
In a court ruling on Monday, the Paris Appeal Court ordered a temporary suspension of the restructuring until the group completes worker consultations at two sites belonging to parts division Faurecia.
But the court rejected an application by the CGT union to halt the entire plan and consultations that are required by law before its implementation.
Peugeot shares were down 1.6 percent in midday trading, wiping out a gain of about 1 percent prior to the ruling being made public.
Peugeot is still in formal talks over its decision announced last July to close the Aulnay plant near Paris and cut 8,000 jobs in addition to hundreds of positions eliminated under an earlier plan.
The CGT union had challenged the plan in court by arguing that it had failed to consult workers at two Faurecia sites that would be directly affected by the Aulnay closure and other cutbacks at the parent company.
The French automaker, which is struggling to return to profit by 2015, will begin consultations at Faurecia without delay, in compliance with the ruling, the spokesman said.
Under its terms, the Faurecia talks will have to be completed before Peugeot can carry out the broader restructuring program it had hoped to finalize by February or March.
Ongoing negotiations with the main Peugeot workforce will continue as planned on February 5 and 12, the spokesman added, without giving a new time frame for completion.
(Reporting by Laurence Frost; Editing by Christian Plumb)
The Cougar Town actress (and mom-to-be!) glowed in a custom Gabriela Cadena navy column gown paired with Brian Atwood black satin sandals, a Judith Leiber clutch and Irene Neuwirth statement jewelry.
Jan. 27, 2013 ? The connection between poor sleep, memory loss and brain deterioration as we grow older has been elusive. But for the first time, scientists at the University of California, Berkeley, have found a link between these hallmark maladies of old age. Their discovery opens the door to boosting the quality of sleep in elderly people to improve memory.
Postdoctoral fellow, Bryce Mander, demonstrates how the sleep study was conducted.
UC Berkeley neuroscientists have found that the slow brain waves generated during the deep, restorative sleep we typically experience in youth play a key role in transporting memories from the hippocampus -- which provides short-term storage for memories -- to the prefrontal cortex's longer term "hard drive."
However, in older adults, memories may be getting stuck in the hippocampus due to the poor quality of deep 'slow wave' sleep, and are then overwritten by new memories, the findings suggest.
"What we have discovered is a dysfunctional pathway that helps explain the relationship between brain deterioration, sleep disruption and memory loss as we get older -- and with that, a potentially new treatment avenue," said UC Berkeley sleep researcher Matthew Walker, an associate professor of psychology and neuroscience at UC Berkeley and senior author of the study to be published Jan. 27, in the journal Nature Neuroscience.
The findings shed new light on some of the forgetfulness common to the elderly that includes difficulty remembering people's names.
"When we are young, we have deep sleep that helps the brain store and retain new facts and information," Walker said. "But as we get older, the quality of our sleep deteriorates and prevents those memories from being saved by the brain at night."
Healthy adults typically spend one-quarter of the night in deep, non-rapid-eye-movement (REM) sleep. Slow waves are generated by the brain's middle frontal lobe. Deterioration of this frontal region of the brain in elderly people is linked to their failure to generate deep sleep, the study found.
The discovery that slow waves in the frontal brain help strengthen memories paves the way for therapeutic treatments for memory loss in the elderly, such as transcranial direct current stimulation or pharmaceutical remedies. For example, in an earlier study, neuroscientists in Germany successfully used electrical stimulation of the brain in young adults to enhance deep sleep and doubled their overnight memory.
UC Berkeley researchers will be conducting a similar sleep-enhancing study in older adults to see if it will improve their overnight memory. "Can you jumpstart slow wave sleep and help people remember their lives and memories better? It's an exciting possibility," said Bryce Mander, a postdoctoral fellow in psychology at UC Berkeley and lead author of this latest study.
For the UC Berkeley study, Mander and fellow researchers tested the memory of 18 healthy young adults (mostly in their 20s) and 15 healthy older adults (mostly in their 70s) after a full night's sleep. Before going to bed, participants learned and were tested on 120 word sets that taxed their memories.
As they slept, an electroencephalographic (EEG) machine measured their brain wave activity. The next morning, they were tested again on the word pairs, but this time while undergoing functional and structural Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) scans.
In older adults, the results showed a clear link between the degree of brain deterioration in the middle frontal lobe and the severity of impaired "slow wave activity" during sleep. On average, the quality of their deep sleep was 75 percent lower than that of the younger participants, and their memory of the word pairs the next day was 55 percent worse.
Meanwhile, in younger adults, brain scans showed that deep sleep had efficiently helped to shift their memories from the short-term storage of the hippocampus to the long-term storage of the prefrontal cortex.
Co-authors of the study are William Jagust, Vikram Rao, Jared Saletin and John Lindquist of UC Berkeley; Brandon Lu of the California Pacific Medical Center and Sonia Ancoli-Israel of UC San Diego.
The research was funded by the National Institute of Aging of the National Institutes of Health.
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Story Source:
The above story is reprinted from materials provided by University of California - Berkeley. The original article was written by Yasmin Anwar.
Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.
Journal Reference:
Bryce A Mander, Vikram Rao, Brandon Lu, Jared M Saletin, John R Lindquist, Sonia Ancoli-Israel, William Jagust, Matthew P Walker. Prefrontal atrophy, disrupted NREM slow waves and impaired hippocampal-dependent memory in aging. Nature Neuroscience, 2013; DOI: 10.1038/nn.3324
Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.
Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.
NEW YORK (AP) ? Relatives of a missing New York City woman who disappeared during a vacation to Turkey, her first trip outside the U.S., are heading to Istanbul to look for her, her brother said Sunday.
Sarai Sierra's family was last in touch with her on Monday, the day she was supposed to start her journey home. The 33-year-old mother of two had been in Turkey on her own since Jan. 7.
Her brother David Jimenez told The Associated Press that he and Sierra's husband, Steven, were planning to leave for Turkey on Sunday night. He said he had no return date planned.
"I don't want to come home without my sister," he said.
Sierra planned to head to the Galata Bridge, a well-known tourist destination that spans the Golden Horn waterway, to take some photographs, said her mother, Betzaida Jimenez. Her daughter then supposed to begin traveling home and was scheduled to arrive in New York City on Tuesday afternoon.
Sierra's father went to pick her up at the airport and "waited there for hours" with no sign of his daughter, Jimenez said.
Sierra had planned to go on the trip with a friend but ended up going by herself when the friend couldn't make it. She was looking forward to exploring her hobby of photography, her family said.
"I was nervous. I didn't want my daughter to go," Jimenez said, but the trip had passed smoothly with Sierra in regular contact with her family and friends through text messaging and phone calls.
"She would always call and let us know, 'This is what I did today,'" Jimenez said.
When she didn't show up in New York City, her husband called the place where she had been staying, David Jimenez said. The owner of the hostel checked her room and saw that her passport, equipment chargers and other items were still there.
"It looked like she was just stepping out," he said.
The family has been in touch with authorities in their efforts to find her. No one was available to comment after hours Sunday at Istanbul police headquarters. Crime in Turkey is generally low and Istanbul is a relatively safe city for travelers, though there are areas where women would be advised to avoid going alone at night. The Galata and the nearby Galata Bridge areas have been gentrified and are home to fish restaurants, cafes and boutiques.
Sierra's children, ages 11 and 9, do not know their mother is missing, her brother said. Betzaida Jimenez said the situation has "been a nightmare."
"I'm forcing myself to get up because I have to get up," she said.
But she said the tight-knit family was holding onto their faith.
"We're praying and trusting God that she's safe somewhere and we're going to find her," she said.
___
Associated Press writer Suzan Fraser in Ankara, Turkey, contributed to this report. Follow Deepti Hajela at www.twitter.com/dhajela
A couple of weeks ago CNET was put into an absurd situation – they could not favorably cover a technology product because the company behind that product was in litigation with CNET’s parent company, CBS. I wasn’t all that interested in the story at the time. Reporters and bloggers are constantly pressured to write or not write about things by parent companies and even business executives in their own companies. CBS telling CNET what it could and could not write about wasn’t anything I haven’t seen before. I understand why CBS was trying to control messaging about a company that they were suing, although they certainly weren’t very smart about how they handled it. The Streisand Effect kicked in and not only did the product end up getting tons of extra positive press, but both CBS and CNET looked like idiots. Still, big companies do stupid things all the time. It’s a big part of why small startups are often so successful at disrupting them. What I don’t get is why CNET staffers have stuck around. They’re the ones who are supposed to be journalists and all that entails. They’re the ones I blame right now. I blame them because they’re the only reason CBS is able to get away with this. Every single journalist at CNET should have resigned by now. More than once at TechCrunch we made AOL extremely uncomfortable with things that we wrote. But they never ordered us to write or not write about something because they understood that not only would we not comply, we’d write a post about how the whole thing. Our independence from AOL was so important to me that I negotiated an extremely odd provision in our purchase agreement that allowed me to disclose confidential information about AOL. It was their job never to give me that information. It was not my job to protect it in any way. If AOL had ever ordered me to remove a piece of content from the site for any reason I would have immediately written about it and disclosed the situation to our readers. And if I had ever ordered a writer to remove content I would have expected that writer to have done the same to me. In fact, one of the things I am most proud about at TechCrunch is the culture of independence in its writers. Many times I have been
TOKYO???The Japanese government is set to launch the world's first 4K TV broadcast in July 2014, roughly two years ahead of schedule, to help stir demand for ultra high-definition televisions, the Asahi newspaper reported on Sunday without citing sources.
The service will begin from communications satellites, followed by satellite broadcasting and ground digital broadcasting, the report said.
The 4K TVs, which boast four times the resolution of current high-definition TVs, are now on sale by Japanese makers including Sony, Panasonic and Sharp. Other manufacturers include South Korea's LG Electronics.
Japan's Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications had aimed to kick-start the 4K TV service in 2016. That has been brought forward to July 2014, when the final match of the 2014 football World Cup is set to take place in Brazil, the Asahi report said.
In Japan, the development of super high-definition 8K TVs is in progress, and the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications plans to launch the test 8K TV broadcast in 2016, two years ahead of schedule, it said.
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MOSCOW (Reuters) - The United States has quit a U.S.-Russian forum intended to promote civil society in protest at Moscow's clampdown on civil rights and public activism, the State Department said on Friday.
The Civil Society Working Group was set up during a thaw in ties after Barack Obama became president, and the U.S. pullout reflects how strains have grown since Vladimir Putin started campaigning in 2011 to return to the Kremlin.
In the past year, Russia has restricted demonstrations after a wave of opposition protests that Putin accused Washington of encouraging, and has jailed or begun prosecuting several political activists.
Putin, who started a six-year term as president in May, signed a law last month that outlaws U.S.-funded organizations deemed to be involved in political activity, and Russia has ejected the U.S. Agency for International Development, which supported groups campaigning to improve civil institutions.
U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Thomas Melia said the restrictions on civil society "called into serious question whether maintaining that mechanism (the working group) was either useful or appropriate".
He said Washington's "commitment to engage Russian civil society in support of its objectives ... remains unwavering".
Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov responded mildly, saying: "Russia sincerely wants good relations with the United States and it causes regret when we lose any format for dialogue without replacing it with another."
MAGNITSKY
Efforts to reinvigorate relations after Obama's re-election have been poisoned by the fallout from the death of Sergei Magnitsky, a lawyer who had accused police investigators of stealing huge sums from the state through fraudulent tax refunds, in pre-trial detention in 2009. The Kremlin's own human rights council said he was probably beaten to death.
Last year's U.S. Magnitsky Act bars Russians accused of involvement in Magnitsky's death or of other human rights violations from entering the United States, and freezes any assets they have there.
Russia responded with a law that imposes similar measures on Americans accused of violating the rights of Russians, outlaws U.S.-funded civil society groups deemed to be involved in politics, and prohibits adoptions by the thousands of Americans who came to Russia each year seeking to take in Russian orphans.
Russia has also accused Washington of meddling for criticizing the Kremlin's moves to quash political dissent.
The working group was one of about 20 in a U.S.-Russia commission announced in 2009 by Obama and Russia's then-president, Dmitry Medvedev, as ties were warming.
Melia said some issues that had been addressed by the group, such as those involving children, corruption, human trafficking and prisons, might be discussed through other channels.
(Writing by Steve Gutterman; Editing by Kevin Liffey)
Michael Oreskes, Vice-President and Senior Managing Editor at the Associated Press (AP) moderates the session 'Creating Economic Dynamism' at the 43rd Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum, WEF, in Davos, Switzerland, Friday, Jan. 25, 2013. (AP Photo/Anja Niedringhaus)
Michael Oreskes, Vice-President and Senior Managing Editor at the Associated Press (AP) moderates the session 'Creating Economic Dynamism' at the 43rd Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum, WEF, in Davos, Switzerland, Friday, Jan. 25, 2013. (AP Photo/Anja Niedringhaus)
Chinese Min Zhu, Deputy Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund, U.S. professor Joseph E. Stiglitz and Vittorio Grilli, Italian Minister for Economy and Finance, from left to right, attend the Associated Press session 'Creating Economic Dynamism' during the 43rd Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum, WEF, in Davos, Switzerland, Friday, Jan. 25, 2013. (AP Photo/Anja Niedringhaus)
U.S congressman Eric Cantor speaks in the Associated Press session 'Creating Economic Dynamism' during the 43rd Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum, WEF, in Davos, Switzerland, Friday, Jan. 25, 2013. (AP Photo/Anja Niedringhaus)
Ali Babacan, right, Turkey's Deputy Prime Minister speaks as U.S congressman Eric Cantor looks on during the Associated Press session 'Creating Economic Dynamism' at the 43rd Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum, WEF, in Davos, Switzerland, Friday, Jan. 25, 2013. (AP Photo/Anja Niedringhaus)
Michael Oreskes, left, Vice-President and Senior Managing Editor at the Associated Press (AP) talks to Chinese Min Zhu, Deputy Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund during the session 'Creating Economic Dynamism' at the 43rd Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum, WEF, in Davos, Switzerland, Friday, Jan. 25, 2013. (AP Photo/Anja Niedringhaus)
DAVOS, Switzerland (AP) ? Training the youth for the challenges of a fast-changing world has to be central to any strategy to rebuild the job market following a financial crisis that's wiped out millions of middle-class jobs over the past five years.
That was the central conclusion that emerged from the annual Associated Press debate at the World Economic Forum in the Swiss village of Davos, which focused on the need to build up skills for a changing economy.
"We need a young labor force," IMF Deputy Managing Director Min Zhu said. "Government doesn't pay enough attention to training and retraining."
Amid concerns that the rich world is faced with a lost generation of young people with dismal job prospects, panelists suggested other ideas in the debate that was moderated by the AP's senior managing editor for U.S. news, Michael Oreskes. Proposals included the creation of "green" jobs to save the planet from climate catastrophe and lowering the costs of hiring first-time workers.
The International Labor Organization estimates that young people are three times more likely to be unemployed than adults, and that worldwide around 75 million youths aged between 15 and 24 are looking for work. This youth employment crisis, it says, threatens to scar "the very fabric of our societies."
Eric Cantor, a Republican Congressman from Virginia, said training is needed to give workers the tools they need for the "new labor force."
"America is a huge catalyst for growth," he said. "Workers need to be trained to get into those jobs."
He warned, however, against piling more government money on schools without coming up with a "better way" to create new skills.
An Associated Press analysis of employment data from 20 countries found that millions of mid-skill, mid-pay jobs have already disappeared over the past five years ? jobs that form the backbone of the middle class in developed countries.
That experience has left a growing number of technology experts and economists pondering whether middle-class jobs will return when the global economy recovers, or whether they have been lost forever.
Italian Finance Minister Vittorio Grilli, also at the debate, argued that technology doesn't have to be the enemy, and "will provide a second wind to advanced economies."
Young people in the job market don't all feel they're getting education that fits today's demand.
"The quality of courses is not up to standard at all," said Lucy Nicholls, a 22-year-old fashion graduate in London. She was speaking Friday in a Google hangout video chat as part of AP's Class of 2012, an exploration of Europe's financial crisis through the eyes of young graduates facing the worst downturn the continent has seen since the end of World War II.
Emerging markets may offer some ideas to the developed world in its new jobs conundrum.
Turkish Deputy Prime Minister Ali Babacan, whose country has generated 4.6 million jobs over the past five years, credited the performance on a host of innovative policies, such as paying the wages of some young people when they first enter the workforce.
"The biggest problem is the cost of entry to the job market," he said. "If an employer thinks it is less expensive to hire, then employment becomes easier."
Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz suggested focusing on "green, renewable jobs" to help solve the youth unemployment crisis as well as the planet.
In Europe, where youth unemployment is a huge issue, particularly in Greece and Spain where the rate stands at over 50 percent, the job market overhaul will not be easy and certainly won't be fast.
"It's a slow process and unfortunately it's going to be a painful one," Italy's Grilli said. "It involves people changing their lives."
Multi-tasking micro-lights could spark a communications revolution Public release date: 25-Jan-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: EPSRC Press Office pressoffice@epsrc.ac.uk 01-793-444-404 Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council
Tiny LED lights now being developed could deliver Wi-Fi-like internet communications, while simultaneously displaying information, and providing illumination for homes, offices and a whole host of other locations.
Over the next four years, with Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) funding, a consortium of UK universities led by the University of Strathclyde will be developing this innovative technology to help unleash the full potential of 'Li-Fi' the transmission of internet communications using visible light rather than the radio waves and microwaves currently in use.
Although the potential possibilities offered by Li-Fi are already being explored all over the world, this EPSRC-funded consortium is pursuing a radical, distinctive vision that could deliver enormous benefits.
Underpinning Li-Fi is the use of light emitting diodes (LEDs), a rapidly spreading lighting technology which is expected to become dominant over the next 20 years. Imperceptibly, LEDs flicker on and off thousands of times a second. By altering the length of the flickers, it is possible to send digital information to specially adapted PCs and other electronic devices making Li-Fi the digital equivalent of Morse Code. This would make the visible part of the electromagnetic spectrum available for internet communications, easing pressure on the increasingly crowded parts now used.
But rather than developing Li-Fi LEDs around 1mm2 in size, which other researchers around the world are concentrating on, the EPSRC-funded team is developing tiny, micron-sized LEDs which potentially offers a number of major advantages:
Firstly, the tiny LEDs are able to flicker on and off 1,000 times quicker than the larger LEDs this also means they can transmit data more quickly. Secondly, 1,000 micron-sized LEDs would fit into the space occupied by a single larger 1mm2 LED, with each of these tiny LEDs acting as a separate communication channel. A 1mm2 sized array of micron-sized LEDs could therefore communicate 1,000 x 1,000 (-i.e. a million) times as much information as one 1mm2 LED.
Moreover, each micron-sized LED would act as a tiny pixel. So one large LED array display (e.g. used to light a living room, a meeting room or the interior of an aircraft), could also be used as a screen displaying information at exactly the same time as providing internet communications and the overall room lighting.
Professor Martin Dawson of the University of Strathclyde, who is leading the initiative, says: "Imagine an LED array beside a motorway helping to light the road, displaying the latest traffic updates and transmitting internet information wirelessly to passengers' laptops, netbooks and smartphones. This is the kind of extraordinary, energy-saving parallelism that we believe our pioneering technology could deliver."
Eventually, it could even be possible for the LEDs to incorporate sensing capabilities too. For example, your mobile phone could be equipped with a flash that you point at a shop display where everything has been given an electronic price tag, and the price of all the items and other information about them would show up on your phone's display.
You can find out more about the research in an audio slide show on the EPSRC YouTube channel. (NB the full link address is http://www.youtube.com/user/EPSRCvideo?feature=mhum) (NB this will be live from 00.01hrs, Friday 25th January 2012). The title of the audio slide show is 'Li-Fi Multi-tasking micro-lights could spark a communications revolution'.
To enable the remarkable potential to be realised, the consortium has drawn together a unique breadth and depth of expertise unmatched by any other Li-Fi research team anywhere in the world.
Professor Dawson says: "The Universities of Cambridge, Edinburgh, Oxford and St Andrews are all working with us, bringing specific expertise in complementary areas that will equip the consortium to tackle the many formidable challenges involved in electronics, computing and materials, for instance in making this vision a reality. This is technology that could start to touch every aspect of human life within a decade."
###
Notes for Editors
The term Li-Fi was coined by one of the partners in the project, Professor Harald Haas from the University of Edinburgh in a TED talk in July 2011. For more information see: http://bit.ly/tedvlc
Emerging spin-out companies that are related to this research are: mLED see www.mled-ltd.com/ and pureVLC see www.purevlc.com
The research team will harness LEDs made from gallium nitride, a material whose properties are ideal for high-power, high-frequency applications.
The visible part of the electromagnetic spectrum is 10,000 times bigger than the microwave part of the spectrum. Li-Fi could therefore make a huge contribution to enabling growing demand for internet communications to be met in future.
Li-Fi cannot be achieved using standard incandescent or fluorescent light bulbs.
One micron is one millionth of a metre.
The Engineering and Physical Sciences research Council (EPSRC) is the UK's main agency for funding research in engineering and physical sciences. EPSRC invests around 800m a year in research and postgraduate training, to help the nation handle the next generation of technological change. The areas covered range from information technology to structural engineering, and mathematics to materials science. This research forms the basis for future economic development in the UK and improvements for everyone's health, lifestyle and culture. EPSRC works alongside other Research Councils with responsibility for other areas of research. The Research Councils work collectively on issues of common concern via research Councils UK.
The University of Strathclyde is one of Europe's leading centres in research on the materials and device underpinnings of 'Solid-State Lighting', the transformative replacement of traditional incandescent and fluorescent lamps by energy-efficient, long-lasting and environmentally-friendly, semiconductor based, light-emitting diode (LED) technology. The University's research in this area over the past decade has been funded by EPSRC, TSB, EU and RCUK programmes totalling more than 15 million.
With the express target of drawing academic and industrial expertise together to address the solid-state lighting/electronics interface and its implications for custom-controlled lighting systems, the University of Strathclyde is establishing a new research centre, the Intelligent Lighting Centre (ILC), based on its leading R&D capability and housed in its innovative Technology and Innovation Centre (TIC) a 103 million research and innovation hub currently under construction. The University of Strathclyde is also leading a new 4.6 million Programme Grant 'Ultra-parallel visible light communications: UP-VLC', funded by EPSRC from September 2012 to August 2016, which seeks to investigate the profound implications of solid-state lighting for next-generation optical communications. This programme, involving collaborations with the Universities of St. Andrews, Oxford, Cambridge and Edinburgh, aims to pioneer the creation of an entirely new data communications infrastructure based on solid-state lighting, where lighting components provide both illumination and an ultra-high-bandwidth 'Light Fidelity (Li-Fi)' technology complimentary to traditional Wi-Fi.
For more information on the University of Strathclyde visit: http://www.strath.ac.uk/
For more information, contact:
Professor Harald Haas, University of Edinburgh, tel: 0131 650 5591, e-mail: h.haas@ed.ac.uk (available from 11 am on Thursday 24th January 2012 for interviews)
Professor Martin Dawson, University of Strathclyde, tel: 0141 548 4663, e-mail: m.dawson@strath.ac.uk (Professor Dawson will be available from 9am on Friday 25th January, 2013)
Images are available from the EPSRC Press Office. Contact tel: 01793 444404, e-mail: pressoffice@epsrc.ac.uk
Image captions:
ProfDawson.jpg: Professor Martin Dawson from the University of Strathclyde who is leading this research.
ProfHaas.jpg: Professor Harald Haas, from the University of Edinburgh (who originally coined the term Li-Fi), is a partner in this research project.
Ledlight.jpg: In the long-term larger LED lights like this could be replaced by arrays of micron-sized LEDS which will enable many different tasks to be carried simultaneously such as powering a laptop, providing illumination and displaying information.
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AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Multi-tasking micro-lights could spark a communications revolution Public release date: 25-Jan-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: EPSRC Press Office pressoffice@epsrc.ac.uk 01-793-444-404 Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council
Tiny LED lights now being developed could deliver Wi-Fi-like internet communications, while simultaneously displaying information, and providing illumination for homes, offices and a whole host of other locations.
Over the next four years, with Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) funding, a consortium of UK universities led by the University of Strathclyde will be developing this innovative technology to help unleash the full potential of 'Li-Fi' the transmission of internet communications using visible light rather than the radio waves and microwaves currently in use.
Although the potential possibilities offered by Li-Fi are already being explored all over the world, this EPSRC-funded consortium is pursuing a radical, distinctive vision that could deliver enormous benefits.
Underpinning Li-Fi is the use of light emitting diodes (LEDs), a rapidly spreading lighting technology which is expected to become dominant over the next 20 years. Imperceptibly, LEDs flicker on and off thousands of times a second. By altering the length of the flickers, it is possible to send digital information to specially adapted PCs and other electronic devices making Li-Fi the digital equivalent of Morse Code. This would make the visible part of the electromagnetic spectrum available for internet communications, easing pressure on the increasingly crowded parts now used.
But rather than developing Li-Fi LEDs around 1mm2 in size, which other researchers around the world are concentrating on, the EPSRC-funded team is developing tiny, micron-sized LEDs which potentially offers a number of major advantages:
Firstly, the tiny LEDs are able to flicker on and off 1,000 times quicker than the larger LEDs this also means they can transmit data more quickly. Secondly, 1,000 micron-sized LEDs would fit into the space occupied by a single larger 1mm2 LED, with each of these tiny LEDs acting as a separate communication channel. A 1mm2 sized array of micron-sized LEDs could therefore communicate 1,000 x 1,000 (-i.e. a million) times as much information as one 1mm2 LED.
Moreover, each micron-sized LED would act as a tiny pixel. So one large LED array display (e.g. used to light a living room, a meeting room or the interior of an aircraft), could also be used as a screen displaying information at exactly the same time as providing internet communications and the overall room lighting.
Professor Martin Dawson of the University of Strathclyde, who is leading the initiative, says: "Imagine an LED array beside a motorway helping to light the road, displaying the latest traffic updates and transmitting internet information wirelessly to passengers' laptops, netbooks and smartphones. This is the kind of extraordinary, energy-saving parallelism that we believe our pioneering technology could deliver."
Eventually, it could even be possible for the LEDs to incorporate sensing capabilities too. For example, your mobile phone could be equipped with a flash that you point at a shop display where everything has been given an electronic price tag, and the price of all the items and other information about them would show up on your phone's display.
You can find out more about the research in an audio slide show on the EPSRC YouTube channel. (NB the full link address is http://www.youtube.com/user/EPSRCvideo?feature=mhum) (NB this will be live from 00.01hrs, Friday 25th January 2012). The title of the audio slide show is 'Li-Fi Multi-tasking micro-lights could spark a communications revolution'.
To enable the remarkable potential to be realised, the consortium has drawn together a unique breadth and depth of expertise unmatched by any other Li-Fi research team anywhere in the world.
Professor Dawson says: "The Universities of Cambridge, Edinburgh, Oxford and St Andrews are all working with us, bringing specific expertise in complementary areas that will equip the consortium to tackle the many formidable challenges involved in electronics, computing and materials, for instance in making this vision a reality. This is technology that could start to touch every aspect of human life within a decade."
###
Notes for Editors
The term Li-Fi was coined by one of the partners in the project, Professor Harald Haas from the University of Edinburgh in a TED talk in July 2011. For more information see: http://bit.ly/tedvlc
Emerging spin-out companies that are related to this research are: mLED see www.mled-ltd.com/ and pureVLC see www.purevlc.com
The research team will harness LEDs made from gallium nitride, a material whose properties are ideal for high-power, high-frequency applications.
The visible part of the electromagnetic spectrum is 10,000 times bigger than the microwave part of the spectrum. Li-Fi could therefore make a huge contribution to enabling growing demand for internet communications to be met in future.
Li-Fi cannot be achieved using standard incandescent or fluorescent light bulbs.
One micron is one millionth of a metre.
The Engineering and Physical Sciences research Council (EPSRC) is the UK's main agency for funding research in engineering and physical sciences. EPSRC invests around 800m a year in research and postgraduate training, to help the nation handle the next generation of technological change. The areas covered range from information technology to structural engineering, and mathematics to materials science. This research forms the basis for future economic development in the UK and improvements for everyone's health, lifestyle and culture. EPSRC works alongside other Research Councils with responsibility for other areas of research. The Research Councils work collectively on issues of common concern via research Councils UK.
The University of Strathclyde is one of Europe's leading centres in research on the materials and device underpinnings of 'Solid-State Lighting', the transformative replacement of traditional incandescent and fluorescent lamps by energy-efficient, long-lasting and environmentally-friendly, semiconductor based, light-emitting diode (LED) technology. The University's research in this area over the past decade has been funded by EPSRC, TSB, EU and RCUK programmes totalling more than 15 million.
With the express target of drawing academic and industrial expertise together to address the solid-state lighting/electronics interface and its implications for custom-controlled lighting systems, the University of Strathclyde is establishing a new research centre, the Intelligent Lighting Centre (ILC), based on its leading R&D capability and housed in its innovative Technology and Innovation Centre (TIC) a 103 million research and innovation hub currently under construction. The University of Strathclyde is also leading a new 4.6 million Programme Grant 'Ultra-parallel visible light communications: UP-VLC', funded by EPSRC from September 2012 to August 2016, which seeks to investigate the profound implications of solid-state lighting for next-generation optical communications. This programme, involving collaborations with the Universities of St. Andrews, Oxford, Cambridge and Edinburgh, aims to pioneer the creation of an entirely new data communications infrastructure based on solid-state lighting, where lighting components provide both illumination and an ultra-high-bandwidth 'Light Fidelity (Li-Fi)' technology complimentary to traditional Wi-Fi.
For more information on the University of Strathclyde visit: http://www.strath.ac.uk/
For more information, contact:
Professor Harald Haas, University of Edinburgh, tel: 0131 650 5591, e-mail: h.haas@ed.ac.uk (available from 11 am on Thursday 24th January 2012 for interviews)
Professor Martin Dawson, University of Strathclyde, tel: 0141 548 4663, e-mail: m.dawson@strath.ac.uk (Professor Dawson will be available from 9am on Friday 25th January, 2013)
Images are available from the EPSRC Press Office. Contact tel: 01793 444404, e-mail: pressoffice@epsrc.ac.uk
Image captions:
ProfDawson.jpg: Professor Martin Dawson from the University of Strathclyde who is leading this research.
ProfHaas.jpg: Professor Harald Haas, from the University of Edinburgh (who originally coined the term Li-Fi), is a partner in this research project.
Ledlight.jpg: In the long-term larger LED lights like this could be replaced by arrays of micron-sized LEDS which will enable many different tasks to be carried simultaneously such as powering a laptop, providing illumination and displaying information.
[ | E-mail | Share ]
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AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
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