Researchers writing in the open access journal BMC Genetics found that physical barriers, such as areas lacking bamboo plants and other forest foliage, can separate giant pandas into isolated genetic groups.

Fuwen Wei, from the Chinese Academy of Sciences, worked with a team of researchers to study giant pandas in the Xiaoxiangling and Daxiangling mountains. He said, “These results suggest that gene flow will be enhanced if the connectivity between the currently fragmented bamboo forests is increased. This may be of importance to conservation efforts as gene flow is one of the most important factors for maintaining genetic diversity within a species and counteracting the negative effects of habitat fragmentation.”

The giant panda is one of the most endangered mammals in the world. This is the first study to demonstrate that there is a relationship between landscape features and gene flow within their population. Wei and his colleagues recovered 192 fecal samples, which were found to come from 53 unique genotypes. These ‘genetic signatures’ demonstrated signs of fragmentation within the panda population.

The researchers said, “It is vital to reconnect the fragmented habitats and increase the connectivity of bamboo resources within a habitat to restore population viability of the giant panda in these regions.”

Scientists from the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Physiology in Dortmund have now discovered how Legionella reprogrammes the cells to ensure its own survival and to propagate. They examined a protein used by the pathogen to divert the material transport within the cells for its own purposes.

The research was published in the journal Science.

During a Legionella infection, the bacteria are engulfed by immune cells and bound by a membrane in the cell interior. Legionella protects itself against destruction by releasing proteins that reprogramme the human cell and exploit it for its own purposes. One of these proteins is DrrA. Previous studies succeeded in demonstrating that DrrA diverts the material transport in human cells in the direction of the pathogen, using what are known as Rab proteins for this purpose.

Rab proteins are switch molecules that coordinate transport vesicles within cells. In this capacity, they ensure that these membrane-bound vesicles reach the correct destination at the right time. Of the total of 60 different Rab proteins, DrrA specifically uses the Rab1 molecule for its own purposes: it deposits Rab1 on the membrane enclosing the bacteria and activates it. As a result, part of the material transport of the human cell is diverted to the vesicle containing the bacterium.

The structural and biochemical analysis of DrrA led the Dortmund-based scientists to make an astonishing discovery: DrrA is not only capable of activating Rab1, it also appears to be able to extend its activated state. To this end, DrrA blocks the switching-off of Rab1 and the necessary recognition site for regulatory proteins by attaching an AMP molecule to Rab1. “The permanent activation of Rab1 by DrrA could ensure increased material transport in the direction of the Legionella containing compartment and hence support its survival,” concludes Aymelt Itzen from the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Physiology.

“These results represent an example of how the molecular analysis of bacterial diseases can help us not only to understand the cellular mechanisms involved in an infection, but also the functioning of healthy cells,” explains Roger Goody from the Dortmund Institute. In the case of Legionnaire’s disease, the study of the bacterial protein DrrA reveals how a human regulatory protein (Rab1) is activated in a targeted way and maintained in an active state. This raises the question as to whether Legionella devised this kind of regulation or whether healthy cells can also control material transport in a similar but hitherto unknown way.

Touch screens such as those found on the iPhone or iPad are the latest form of technology allowing interaction with smart phones, computers and other devices. However, scientists at Fraunhofer FIT has developed the next generation non-contact gesture and finger recognition system. The novel system detects hand and finger positions in real-time and translates these into appropriate interaction commands. Furthermore, the system does not require special gloves or markers and is capable of supporting multiple users.

With touch screens becoming increasingly popular, classic interaction techniques such as a mouse and keyboard are becoming less frequently used. One example of a breakthrough is the Apple iPhone which was released in summer 2007. Since then many other devices featuring touch screens and similar characteristics have been successfully launched — with more advanced devices even supporting multiple users simultaneously, e.g. the Microsoft Surface table becoming available. This is an entire surface which can be used for input. However, this form of interaction is specifically designed for two-dimensional surfaces.

Fraunhofer FIT has developed the next generation of multi-touch environment, one that requires no physical contact and is entirely gesture-based. This system detects multiple fingers and hands at the same time and allows the user to interact with objects on a display. The users move their hands and fingers in the air and the system automatically recognizes and interprets the gestures accordingly.

Cinemagoers will remember the science-fiction thriller Minority Report from 2002 which starred Tom Cruise. In this film Tom Cruise is in a 3-D software arena and is able to interact with numerous programs at unimaginable speed, however the system used special gloves and only three fingers from each hand.

The FIT prototype provides the next generation of gesture-based interaction far in advance of the Minority Report system. The FIT prototype tracks the user’s hand in front of a 3-D camera. The 3-D camera uses the time of flight principle, in this approach each pixel is tracked and the length of time it takes light to be filmed travelling to and from the tracked object is determined. This allows for the calculation of the distance between the camera and the tracked object.

“A special image analysis algorithm was developed which filters out the positions of the hands and fingers. This is achieved in real-time through the use of intelligent filtering of the incoming data. The raw data can be viewed as a kind of 3-D mountain landscape, with the peak regions representing the hands or fingers.” said Georg Hackenberg, who developed the system as part of his Master’s thesis. In addition plausibility criteria are used, these are based around: the size of a hand, finger length and the potential coordinates.

A user study was conducted and found that the system both easy to use and fun. However, work remains to be done on removing elements which confuses the system, for example reflections caused by wristwatches and palms which are positioned orthogonal to the camera.

“With Microsoft announcing Project Natal, it is likely that similar techniques will very soon become standard across the gaming industry. This technology also opens up the potential for new solutions in the range of other application domains, such as the exploration of complex simulation data and for new forms of learning,” predicts Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Broll of the Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Information Technology FIT.

Revzin’s team collaborated with UCLA electrical engineer Prof. Aydogan Ozcan to integrate an antibody microarray with a lensfree holographic imaging device that takes only seconds to count the number of captured cells and amount of secreted cytokine molecules. The test returns results six to twelve times faster than traditional approaches and tests six parameters simultaneously, based on a small blood sample. The Revzin team published the results of their experiments in the May 2010 issue of Analytical Chemistry.

With further refinements, the test will have wide potential use for multi-parametric blood analysis performed at the point of care in the developing world and resource-poor areas. Its affordability will also make it an attractive option in wealthier areas. Revzin has filed for a patent and is looking for ways to bring his test into clinical use.

“In addition to HIV testing and monitoring, this device will be useful for blood transfusions, where the safety of blood is frequently in question,” Revzin says.

The most accurate and effective way to diagnose and monitor HIV infection involves counting two types of T-cells, calculating the ratio between the two types of T-cells, and measuring cytokines. Scientists do this using a method called flow cytometry that requires an expensive machine and several highly trained specialists. Healthcare workers and AIDS activists in the developing world have called for less expensive, more easily performed tests.

“While the point of care field focuses on detection of single parameter (e.g. CD4 counts), we believe that the simplicity of the test need not compromise information content. So, we set out to develop a test that could be simple and inexpensive but would provide several parameters based on a single injection of a small blood volume,” explains Revzin.

The HIV test addresses two distinct challenges of blood analysis: 1) capturing the desired cell type from blood, which contains multiple cell types, and 2) connecting the desired blood cell type with secreted cytokines. The test consists of polymer film imprinted with an array of miniature spots. Each spot contains antibodies specific to the two kinds of T-cells (CD4 and CD8) and three types of cytokines printed in the same array. When the blood flowed across the antibody spots, T cells stopped and stuck on the spots.

Each T-cell type was captured next to antibody spots specific for the cytokines they might produce. When antibodies activated the cells, spots adjacent to the cells captured the cytokines they secreted. This connected a specific T-cell subset to its secreted cytokines. The visible color intensity of antibody spots revealed differences in cytokine production by T-cells. Prof. Ozcan’s lensfree on-chip imaging allowed the scientists to rapidly image and count T-cell arrays without the use of any lenses or mechanical scanning. Analysis of CD4 and CD8 T-cell numbers, the CD4/CD8 ratio and three secreted cytokines took only seconds.

In the future, Prof. Revzin envisions adding microarrays to the test that can detect proteins from the HIV and hepatitis C viruses.

MIT researchers have demonstrated a new control system that allows a foam glider with only a single motor on its tail to land on a perch, just like a pet parakeet. The work could have important implications for the design of robotic planes, greatly improving their maneuverability and potentially allowing them to recharge their batteries simply by alighting on power lines.

Birds can land so precisely because they take advantage of a complicated physical phenomenon called “stall.” Even when a commercial airplane is changing altitude or banking, its wings are never more than a few degrees away from level. Within that narrow range of angles, the airflow over the plane’s wings is smooth and regular, like the flow of water around a small, smooth stone in a creek bed.

A bird approaching its perch, however, will tilt its wings back at a much sharper angle. The airflow over the wings becomes turbulent, and large vortices — whirlwinds — form behind the wings. The effects of the vortices are hard to predict: If a plane tilts its wings back too far, it can fall out of the sky. Hence the name “stall.”

The smooth airflow over the wings of a normally operating plane is well-understood mathematically; as a consequence, engineers are highly confident that a commercial airliner will respond to the pilot’s commands as intended. But stall is a much more complicated phenomenon: Even the best descriptions of it are time-consuming to compute.

Reap the whirlwind

To design their control system, MIT Associate Professor Russ Tedrake, a member of the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, and Rick Cory, a PhD student in Tedrake’s lab who defended his dissertation this spring, first developed their own mathematical model of a glider in stall. For a range of launch conditions, they used the model to calculate sequences of instructions intended to guide the glider to its perch. “It gets this nominal trajectory,” Cory explains. “It says, ‘If this is a perfect model, this is how it should fly.’” But, he adds, “because the model is not perfect, if you play out that same solution, it completely misses.”

So Cory and Tedrake also developed a set of error-correction controls that could nudge the glider back onto its trajectory when location sensors determined that it had deviated from it. By using innovative techniques developed at MIT’s Laboratory for Information and Decision Systems, they were able to precisely calculate the degree of deviation that the controls could compensate for. The addition of the error-correction controls makes a trajectory look like a tube snaking through space: The center of the tube is the trajectory calculated using Cory and Tedrake’s model; the radius of the tube describes the tolerance of the error-correction controls.

The control system ends up being, effectively, a bunch of tubes pressed together like a fistful of straws. If the glider goes so far off course that it leaves one tube, it will still find itself in another. Once the glider is launched, it just keeps checking its position and executing the command that corresponds to the tube in which it finds itself. The design of the system earned Cory Boeing’s 2010 Engineering Student of the Year Award.

The measure of air resistance against a body in flight is known as the “drag coefficient.” A cruising plane tries to minimize its drag coefficient, but when it’s trying to slow down, it tilts its wings back in order to increase drag. Ordinarily, it can’t tilt back too far, for fear of stall. But because Cory and Tedrake’s control system takes advantage of stall, the glider, when it’s landing, has a drag coefficient that’s four to five times that of other aerial vehicles.

From spy planes to fairies

For some time, the U.S. Air Force has been interested in the possibility of unmanned aerial vehicles that could land in confined spaces and has been funding and monitoring research in the area. “What Russ and Rick and their team is doing is unique,” says Gregory Reich of the Air Force Research Laboratory. “I don’t think anyone else is addressing the flight control problem in nearly as much detail.” Reich points out, however, that in their experiments, Cory and Tedrake used data from wall-mounted cameras to gauge the glider’s position, and the control algorithms ran on a computer on the ground, which transmitted instructions to the glider. “The computational power that you may have on board a vehicle of this size is really, really limited,” Reich says. Even though the MIT researchers’ course correction algorithms are simple, they may not be simple enough.

Tedrake believes, however, that computer processors powerful enough to handle his and Cory’s control algorithms are only a few years off. In the meantime, his lab has already begun to address the problem of moving the glider’s location sensors onboard, and although Cory will be moving to California to take a job researching advanced robotics techniques for Disney, he hopes to continue collaborating with Tedrake. “I visited the air force, and I visited Disney, and they actually have a lot in common,” Cory says. “The air force wants an airplane that can land on a power line, and Disney wants a flying Tinker Bell that can land on a lantern. But the technology’s similar.”

The map was constructed using nearly 21,000 images from the Thermal Emission Imaging System, or THEMIS, a multi-band infrared camera on Odyssey. Researchers at Arizona State University’s Mars Space Flight Facility in Tempe, in collaboration with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., have been compiling the map since THEMIS observations began eight years ago.

The pictures have been smoothed, matched, blended and cartographically controlled to make a giant mosaic. Users can pan around images and zoom into them. At full zoom, the smallest surface details are 100 meters (330 feet) wide. While portions of Mars have been mapped at higher resolution, this map provides the most accurate view so far of the entire planet.

The new map is available at: http://www.mars.asu.edu/maps/?layer=thm_dayir_100m_v11 .

Advanced users with large bandwidth, powerful computers and software capable of handling images in the gigabyte range can download the full-resolution map in sections at: http://www.mars.asu.edu/data/thm_dir_100m .

“We’ve tied the images to the cartographic control grid provided by the U.S. Geological Survey, which also modeled the THEMIS camera’s optics,” said Philip Christensen, principal investigator for THEMIS and director of the Mars Space Flight Facility. “This approach lets us remove all instrument distortion, so features on the ground are correctly located to within a few pixels and provide the best global map of Mars to date.”

Working with THEMIS images from the new map, the public can contribute to Mars exploration by aligning the images to within a pixel’s accuracy at NASA’s “Be a Martian” website, which was developed in cooperation with Microsoft Corp. Users can visit the site at: http://beamartian.jpl.nasa.gov/maproom#/MapMars .

“The Mars Odyssey THEMIS team has assembled a spectacular product that will be the base map for Mars researchers for many years to come,” said Jeffrey Plaut, Odyssey project scientist at JPL. “The map lays the framework for global studies of properties such as the mineral composition and physical nature of the surface materials.”

Other sites build upon the base map. At Mars Image Explorer, which includes images from every Mars orbital mission since the mid-1970s, users can search for images using a map of Mars at: http://themis.asu.edu/maps .

“The broad purpose underlying all these sites is to make Mars exploration easy and engaging for everyone,” Christensen said. “We are trying to create a user-friendly interface between the public and NASA’s Planetary Data System, which does a terrific job of collecting, validating and archiving data.”

Mars Odyssey was launched in April 2001 and reached the Red Planet in October 2001. Science operations began in February 2002. The mission is managed by JPL for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington. Lockheed Martin Space Systems in Denver is the prime contractor for the project and built the spacecraft. NASA’s Planetary Data System, sponsored by the Science Mission Directorate, archives and distributes scientific data from the agency’s planetary missions, astronomical observations, and laboratory measurements.

Published in the journal Pediatrics, the investigation found a connection between exposure pesticides and the presence of symptoms of ADHD. The study focused on 1,139 children from the general U.S. population and measured pesticide levels in their urine.

The authors conclude that exposure to organophosphate pesticides, at levels common among U.S. children, may contribute to a diagnosis of ADHD.

“Previous studies have shown that exposure to some organophosphate compounds cause hyperactivity and cognitive deficits in animals,” says lead author Maryse F. Bouchard of the University of Montreal Department of Environmental and Occupational Health and the Sainte-Justine Hospital Research Center. “Our study found that exposure to organophosphates in developing children might have effects on neural systems and could contribute to ADHD behaviors, such as inattention, hyperactivity, and impulsivity.”

This study was supported by the Canadian Institutes for Health Research and the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences.

The study was authored by Maryse F. Bouchard of the University of Montreal and Harvard University, David C. Bellinger, Robert O. Wright, and Marc G. Weisskopf of Harvard University.

Dark energy is the label scientists have given to what is causing the Universe to expand at an accelerating rate. While the acceleration was discovered in 1998, its cause remains unknown. Physicists have advanced competing theories to explain the acceleration, and believe the best way to test those theories is to precisely measure large-scale cosmic structures.

Sound waves in the matter-energy soup of the extremely early Universe are thought to have left detectable imprints on the large-scale distribution of galaxies in the Universe. The researchers developed a way to measure such imprints by observing the radio emission of hydrogen gas. Their technique, called intensity mapping, when applied to greater areas of the Universe, could reveal how such large-scale structure has changed over the last few billion years, giving insight into which theory of dark energy is the most accurate.

“Our project mapped hydrogen gas to greater cosmic distances than ever before, and shows that the techniques we developed can be used to map huge volumes of the Universe in three dimensions and to test the competing theories of dark energy,” said Tzu-Ching Chang, of the Academia Sinica in Taiwan and the University of Toronto.

To get their results, the researchers used the GBT to study a region of sky that previously had been surveyed in detail in visible light by the Keck II telescope in Hawaii. This optical survey used spectroscopy to map the locations of thousands of galaxies in three dimensions. With the GBT, instead of looking for hydrogen gas in these individual, distant galaxies — a daunting challenge beyond the technical capabilities of current instruments — the team used their intensity-mapping technique to accumulate the radio waves emitted by the hydrogen gas in large volumes of space including many galaxies.

“Since the early part of the 20th Century, astronomers have traced the expansion of the Universe by observing galaxies. Our new technique allows us to skip the galaxy-detection step and gather radio emissions from a thousand galaxies at a time, as well as all the dimly-glowing material between them,” said Jeffrey Peterson, of Carnegie Mellon University.

The astronomers also developed new techniques that removed both man-made radio interference and radio emission caused by more-nearby astronomical sources, leaving only the extremely faint radio waves coming from the very distant hydrogen gas. The result was a map of part of the “cosmic web” that correlated neatly with the structure shown by the earlier optical study. The team first proposed their intensity-mapping technique in 2008, and their GBT observations were the first test of the idea.

“These observations detected more hydrogen gas than all the previously-detected hydrogen in the Universe, and at distances ten times farther than any radio wave-emitting hydrogen seen before,” said Ue-Li Pen of the University of Toronto.

“This is a demonstration of an important technique that has great promise for future studies of the evolution of large-scale structure in the Universe,” said National Radio Astronomy Observatory Chief Scientist Chris Carilli, who was not part of the research team.

In addition to Chang, Peterson, and Pen, the research team included Kevin Bandura of Carnegie Mellon University. The scientists reported their work in the July 22 issue of the scientific journal Nature.

The National Radio Astronomy Observatory is a facility of the National Science Foundation, operated under cooperative agreement by Associated Universities, Inc.

Together, smoking, wood smoke exposure and these epigenetic changes can increase an individual’s risk of COPD fourfold.

“When cigarette smokers are exposed to wood smoke their risk of having reduced lung function increases,” explained lead author Yohannes Tesfaigzi, Ph.D. senior scientist and director of COPD Program at the Lovelace Respiratory Research Institute, where the research was completed. “Cigarette smokers who have both changes in sputum DNA and are exposed to wood smoke have a synergistically increased risk of having reduced lung function and other indicators of COPD such as chronic mucous hypersecretion. ”

The research was published online ahead of the print edition of the American Thoracic Society’s American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine.

Dr. Tesfaigzi and colleagues administered questionnaires to more than 1800 current and former smokers between 40 and 75 years old, and obtained demographic and smoke exposure information, as well as sputum samples which were analyzed for epigenetic changes to eight genes known to be associated with lung cancer.

They found that wood smoke exposure was significantly and independently associated with an increased risk of respiratory disease, especially among current smokers, non-Hispanic whites and men. Furthermore, wood smoke exposure was associated with specific COPD outcomes in people who had aberrantly methylated p16 or GATA4 genes, and both factors together increased the risk more than the additive of the two risk factors together. They also found that people with more than two of the eight genes analyzed showing methylation were also significantly more likely to have a lower than predicted FEV1 than those with fewer than two methylated genes.

“Because exposure to wood smoke appears to increase the risk of reducing lung function, cigarette smokers should try to avoid heating their homes or cooking with wood stoves and try to avoid environments where wood smoke is likely (for example, neighborhoods where wood smoke is common),” said Dr. Tesfaigzi. “Because the same gene changes were associated with increased risk for lung cancer one would assume that wood smoke exposure also increases the risk of developing lung cancer. Future studies may show that it would be appropriate to screen patients for lung cancer if these exposures were present for prolonged periods.”

Based on these findings, Dr. Tesfaigzi and colleagues established an animal model that will be able to further test whether both wood and tobacco smoke exposure cause more damage to the lung than either one of the exposures alone. “We observed increased inflammatory response in mice that were exposed to both cigarette smoke and low concentrations of wood smoke compared to those exposed to cigarette smoke only. We would like to use this animal model to determine the mechanisms underlying this exacerbation,” said Dr. Tesfaigzi.

Because wood smoke exposure was documented by self-report and was not quantified in this study, in the future Dr. Tesfaigzi also intends to characterize the type and amount of wood smoke the participants were exposed to. Such studies will help to further refine the analysis and provide intervention strategies.

Managed by ONR’s Naval Air Warfare and Weapons Department as a Future Naval Capability (FNC), LCITS equips the unguided Hydra-70 rocket with a low-cost imaging infrared guidance solution to more accurately strike an intended target.

The seeker is composed of three main subsystems: a targeting integration system aboard the helicopter, a digital smart launcher and the guided imaging rocket. The helicopter uses its targeting system to lock onto and track the target’s position and velocity, and transfers the information to the rocket launcher prior to weapon release. Once locked onto the target, the weapon follows the LCITS commands to the target.

From a pilot’s perspective, the entire process can be handled in a matter of seconds, increasing the number of targets that can be engaged in a short amount of time. LCITS can also engage targets in a 120-degree cone centered off the nose of the helicopter at ranges up to 7 kilometers.

Howard McCauley, LCITS principal investigator in the China Lake Naval Air Warfare Center’s Emergent Weapons Division, touts the speed by which the system operates.

“The key to survivability while effectively engaging and defeating the fast inshore attack craft threat is the target engagement timeline,” McCauley said. “You must be able to very rapidly engage and defeat each target. The technology we’ve developed will provide this increased capability.”

In a demonstration earlier this year, an LCITS-equipped AH-1 Cobra helicopter targeted and fired a rocket against a maneuvering unmanned small boat at a test range off the coast of California. The pivotal test firing highlighted not only LCITS’ ability to strike high-speed mobile surface targets, but marked the successful conclusion of the program, opening the door for its transition to the fleet.

The Republic of Korea teamed with the United States in this co-development between the two countries, helping to improve the aerodynamic performance of the rocket system and lower the overall design cost. Dr. Seung-Ki Ahn, project manager at the Agency for Defense Development for the Republic of Korea cites multinational collaboration for the success of the test launch.

“This was a great moment to exhibit how the potential of a true team effort between the Republic of Korea and the U.S. can very effectively expedite the fielding of a low-cost precision guided weapon,” Ahn said.

The seeker now moves forward to the Medusa Joint Capability Technology Demonstration phase. Started in 2009, the Medusa ensures that a military utility assessment will be completed on the LCITS, which will lead the way to a naval acquisition program.