NASA Seeking Crowd-source Help to Save Earth from Asteroids

Posted on by

With nothing less at stake than the future of planet Earth, NASA has decided to crowd-source ideas to detect and track asteroids that have the potential to wipe out life as we know it.

After a previously undetected, 65-foot asteroid exploded over Russia in February 2013, unleashing the force of 500,000 tons of TNT, NASA launched a series of contests for smart folks around the globe to come up with ways to keep an eye on asteroids that could threaten earth.

Currently, NASA estimates that only 1 percent of the millions of asteroids hurtling around our solar system have been found.

So NASA calls the series of contests that make up the Asteroid Grand Challenge "a broad call to action" to defend Earth against any number of asteroids that could be bearing down on us right this instant.

"Good ideas can come from anywhere," said Ben Burress, staff astronomer at Oakland's Chabot Space & Science Center, which is not affiliated with NASA's Asteroid Grand Challenge. "There are millions of asteroids we don't know about, so the idea of more information really is better. Are we going to be hit? Yes. The question is, when and by how big of an asteroid?"

In a video announcing the series of contests, a NASA narrator says, "Asteroid hunting is an activity everyone can get involved with, whether it's writing computer code, building hardware, making observations through a telescope. Survival is its own reward. It's up to each of us to protect our planet from asteroids."

And in a throw down to all citizens of Earth, the narrator says, "The dinosaurs would have cared if they knew about this problem."

With NASA out of the business of launching humans into space -- and asteroid killer and action star Bruce Willis on the bench --"Earth's defense," as NASA calls it, is left in the hands of mere mortals.

NASA first invited what it calls "citizen scientists" to join the search for killer asteroids in March at the South by Southwest Festival in Austin, Texas during a session entitled, "Are We Smarter than the Dinosaurs?"

On Friday, NASA ended the third contest of its competition to create an algorithm to detect hidden asteroids. No fewer than 422 people from 63 countries -- from Argentina to Zimbabwe -- submitted algorithmic solutions.

Continued here:

NASA Seeking Crowd-source Help to Save Earth from Asteroids

"Happy Dance" NICU at Golisano Children’s Hospital – UR Medicine – Video

Posted on by


"Happy Dance" NICU at Golisano Children #39;s Hospital - UR Medicine
All donations welcome. Let #39;s make our babies happy! Please go to our donation web page. Thank you! http://www.helpmakemiracles.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=donorDrive.search filter=team searchTerm=Ni...

By: xtina771

See more here:

"Happy Dance" NICU at Golisano Children's Hospital - UR Medicine - Video

New traditional medicine 'park" in China to raise standards

Posted on by

Li Xueying

The Straits Times

Publication Date : 05-05-2014

Bank manager Xie Qing, 49, is a great believer in the cures of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM), be it wolfberries to strengthen her vision or lingzhi mushrooms to fight against viral infections.

But the Shenzhen resident is wary of the quality of the herbs sold in stores and prescribed by clinics. Expensive herbs like cordyceps should be quite rare but you can buy them everywhere now, she says. I do not know which to choose given the scandals about low-quality TCM.

It is such headaches that an upcoming TCM park in Hengqin, Guangdong province, hopes to treat, by setting higher standards for Chinese herbs and minerals.

A collaboration between the Macau and Guangdong governments, the 500,000 sq m park is envisaged to establish stricter quality controls and an incubation centre for research and development into new products. Building according to a 10 billion yuan (US$1.6 billion) masterplan by Singapores Ascendas is under way and it aims to open in 2020 with 300 firms.

Says Albert Chui, its business development manager: The problem with TCM products from China is the trust issue. We hope to help address that.

TCM, which claims a lineage of 5,000 years, remains popular in China including special administrative regions Hong Kong and Macau, and other Chinese-majority societies like Singapore and Taiwan, even as it gains a following in other parts of the world.

Continue reading here:

New traditional medicine 'park" in China to raise standards

Study unveils new approach to treating brittle bone disease

Posted on by

PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:

4-May-2014

Contact: Glenna Picton picton@bcm.edu 713-798-4710 Baylor College of Medicine

HOUSTON (May 4, 2014) Researchers at Baylor College of Medicine have identified a new approach to treating brittle bone disease, a congenital disorder that results in fragile bones that break easily.

The study, published in the current issue of the journal Nature Medicine, showed that excessive activity of an important signaling protein in the matrix of the bone called transforming growth factor beta is associated with the cause of the disease.

"There are many genetic causes of brittle bone disease in children and adults," said Dr. Brendan Lee, professor of molecular and human genetics at Baylor and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator. "We have discovered many of them but clinicians still cannot easily distinguish the different forms."

Lee said the new study suggested that there may be common mechanisms that cause the decreased quality and quantity of bone in these different forms.

"This identified an important concept in bone disease that while many different genetic mutations can affect the proteins in the bone matrix (like collagen) they act in a common pathway to cause the bone disease that is they affect how signaling proteins called transforming growth factor beta (TGF) are delivered to cells in the bone," said Lee. "We now have a deeper understanding for how genetic mutations that affect collagen and collagen processing enzymes cause weak bones."

Collagen is the most common protein in the human body, and the four most common types are found in different types of tissues including bone, cartilage, blood vessels, and kidney.

In animal studies, Lee and his colleagues showed that blockade of the TGF proteins using an antibody could restore the quantity of bone in mice with different forms of brittle bone disease.

Read the original:

Study unveils new approach to treating brittle bone disease

Pre-war hostel has been restored and is now a medical school campus

Posted on by

Once home to medical students and nurses, the former Straits Settlements Mandalay Road Hostel has been given a new lease of life.

Nestled between Tan Tock Seng Hospital and the Communicable Disease Centre, the three-storey building off Moulmein Road, which was gazetted for conservation last year, has been restored after 15 months.

Now known as the Lee Kong Chian School of Medicine Headquarters, it is one of the two campuses that the new medical school uses.

The school, which welcomed its pioneer batch of 54 students last year, is a partnership between Nanyang Technological University (NTU) and Imperial College London. Students shuttle between NTU's campus in Boon Lay and the Mandalay Road site for lessons.

Mr Chan Wei Chuen, senior director of corporate services for the school, says of the 90-year-old building: "Its history has always been medical-related. The building looks old from the outside, but there are amenities put in so new batches of students can enjoy the premises."

Built in 1924, the pre-war building was home to senior medical students. When the Japanese invaded Singapore in 1942, the medical school was closed for the duration of the war and the hostel was used for nursing staff from Tan Tock Seng Hospital.

Two years after the war ended in 1945, the building was used again by local medical students as a hostel, after the school reopened. But as the hospital grew in capacity, the hostel was converted into nurses' quarters in 1955.

The building, which was surrounded by green, open spaces and a multi- functional single-storey annexe, was used for staff recreational activities for the next 30 years. As Tan Tock Seng Hospital underwent restructuring in 1992, the nurses' hostel was closed and converted into an interim nursing administration and human resource office from 1995.

From 1999, it stood unoccupied until conservation work started 12 years later to restore it for the new medical school.

Mr Chan says: "It was in a dilapidated state when we got it. Some parts of the ceiling were gone and the roof was leaking. It wasn't a building that you would want to step into and have lessons."

Original post:

Pre-war hostel has been restored and is now a medical school campus

Medical schools committed to social accountability

Posted on by

MONTREAL The increasing diversity of McGill Universitys medical class may have some worried, but it reflects a trend across North America, and a concerted effort on the part of medical school administrators to ensure students of all ethnic, socioeconomic and linguistic backgrounds have the opportunity to become doctors.

One of our biggest roles is determining who will enter our profession and serve our Canadian population, said Genevive Moineau, president and CEO of the Association of Faculties of Medicine of Canada (AFMC). And our faculties of medicine are very committed to social accountability. Some schools are uniquely focused on marks, but we want people who can serve some underserved populations.

In fact, the AFMCs conference last weekend was focused on admissions best practices and how to foster diversity, particularly in view of the fact Canada will be establishing its own accreditation standards for medical schools. That should be approved this summer and would mean universities would have to uphold the new standards by spring 2016.

Until now, accreditation was set by U.S. standards, but Moineau said the idea of having a uniquely Canadian set of standards has been percolating for a long time.

Canada wants to determine for itself what it deems important, she said in an interview. For example, in the U.S., diversity is often related to ethnicity, but in Canada there are other aspects that are important as well. But fostering diversity is one of the AFMCs priorities, Moineau said.

No one is advocating using quotas, she said, and surveys about applicant demographics are completely anonymous.

But we need to understand who is applying and see where were going wrong from a diversity point of view, she said.

Jesse Kancir, president of the Canadian Federation of Medical Students, said students are on board with increasing diversity, particularly socioeconomic diversity.

As long as were ensuring that by the time people get into the pool theyre competent, then I think the onus is on medical schools to be training physicians to serve the population, he said in an interview. Perhaps you cant put in filters when trying to select candidates, but you have to ensure that pool of candidates is wide enough to begin with.

He said with only about eight per cent of applicants getting into medical school, its not a question of lowering standards to increase diversity.

Read this article:

Medical schools committed to social accountability