Looking to capture panoramic photos on an Android handset? Well, you've certainly gotplentyof options -- including, as of today, Occipital's 360 Panorama, which just hit the Android Market. Compatible with devices running Android 2.3 or above (with the exception of Honeycomb), the app offers much of the same functionality you'll find on the previously released iOS version. Just tap a button, pan your handset across any given area and watch your photo come to fruition before your very eyes. The tool also allows exposure to fluctuate as a user pans his or her device, thereby creating the potential for HDR panoramic shots during transitions from dark to bright areas. Interestingly enough, this version relies not upon an actual gyroscope, but a "simulated" one, created from motion-tracking algorithms (that's how it works on older 3GS handsets, as well). Users who already have a 360 Panorama account can still use it on their Android handsets, allowing them to upload and store all their photos in one place. Eventually, this storage system will allow for syncing across both iOS and Android hemispheres, though at the moment, it's a strictly web-based affair. Pan past the break for a brief demo video, or check out some sample shots in the gallery, below.
ScienceDaily (Nov. 21, 2011) ? Following the OPERA collaboration's presentation at CERN on Sept. 23, inviting scrutiny of their neutrino time-of-flight measurement from the broader particle physics community, the collaboration has rechecked many aspects of its analysis and taken into account valuable suggestions from a wide range of sources.
One key test was to repeat the measurement with very short beam pulses from CERN. This allowed the extraction time of the protons, that ultimately lead to the neutrino beam, to be measured more precisely.
The beam sent from CERN consisted of pulses three nanoseconds long separated by up to 524 nanoseconds. Some 20 clean neutrino events were measured at the Gran Sasso Laboratory, and precisely associated with the pulse leaving CERN. This test confirms the accuracy of OPERA's timing measurement,?ruling out one potential source of systematic error. The new measurements do not change the initial conclusion. Nevertheless, the observed anomaly in the neutrinos' time of flight from CERN to Gran Sasso still needs further scrutiny and independent measurement before it can be refuted or confirmed.
On Nov. 17, the collaboration submitted a paper on this measurement to the peer reviewed Journal of High Energy Physics.
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Journal Reference:
The OPERA Collaboraton. Measurement of the neutrino velocity with the OPERA detector in the CNGS beam. Journal of High Energy Physics, 2011; (submitted) [link]
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Novel ALS drug slows symptom progression, reduces mortality in phase 2 trialPublic release date: 20-Nov-2011 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Mike Morrison mdmorrison@partners.org 617-724-6425 Massachusetts General Hospital
Treatment with dexpramipexole a novel drug believed to prevent dysfunction of mitochondria, the subcellular structures that provide most of a cell's energy appears to slow symptom progression in the neurodegenerative disease amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). Promising results of a phase 2 trial of dexpramipexole are receiving advance online publication in Nature Medicine. Some preliminary results of the study were presented at the 2009 International Symposium on ALS/MND and the 2010 American Academy of Neurology annual meeting.
"Today there are only two FDA-approved drugs used to treat ALS riluzole, which extends life about 10 percent, and Nuedexta, which treats the emotional instability that characterizes ALS and other neurological disorders," says Merit Cudkowicz, MD, director of the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) Neurology Clinical Trials Unit and ALS Center, lead author of the study. "We need more therapies to slow, halt and ultimately reverse the course of disease and also therapies to treat the symptoms."
Also known as Lou Gehrig's disease, ALS is a progressive neurodegenerative disease affecting motor neurons in the brain and spinal cord. Death of these nerve cells stops the transmission of neural impulses to muscle fibers, leading to weakness, paralysis and usually death from respiratory failure. Mitochondrial dysfunction is among several factors believed to underlie nerve cell death. Initially developed by Knopp Biosciences of Pittsburgh, dexpramipexole appears to protect neurons from mitochondrial dysfunction.
Several investigators from Knopp, which sponsored the study reported in the current article, collaborated with Cudkowicz and the Northeast ALS Consortium on the trial. Co-founded and co-directed by Cudkowicz, the Northeast ALS Consortium includes over 100 clinical sites throughout North America that work collaboratively on clinical trials and has established the infrastructure necessarily to quickly and efficiently bring forward new treatments for people with the disorder.
The progression of ALS can vary widely, with some patients surviving decades after diagnosis and others dying within a year. Therefore it can be quite challenging to develop phase 2 trials, which need both to test dosage levels and to determine potential effectiveness in small groups of participants over brief periods of time. To meet this challenge, the research team devised a two-stage study. In the first, 102 patients who had recently been diagnosed with ALS were randomized into four groups, receiving oral tablets of either a placebo or dexpramipexole at total daily dosages of either 50, 150 or 300 mg for 12 weeks. When that stage was completed, participants continuing in the trial received placebo only for four weeks and then were re-randomized into two different groups, receiving daily dosages of either 50 or 300 mg of the study drug for 24 weeks.
Results of the first stage showed that receiving dexpramipexole appeared to slow the progression of symptoms measured both by the ALS Functional Rating Scale and by pulmonary capacity. The protective effect was greatest in the 300 mg group in whom symptom progression was approximately 30 percent slower than in the placebo group and little effect was seen in those receiving 50 mg. The second stage had similar results, with slower disease progression and a reduced risk of death in participants receiving the higher dosage. While results were not generally statistically significant, due to the small size and short duration of the study, all data trends were dose responsive.
"Since individual participants could have been in different treatment groups in the first and second stages of the study, seeing the same dose-dependent differences at both stages gives us confidence in the data. In a way, this was two supportive studies in one trial design," says Cudkowicz. "Confirmation of these findings in the phase 3 clinical trial, which is currently ongoing, would give us even more confidence in this study design for phase 2 testing in ALS. We hope that adding this drug to the approved treatments for ALS would give patients a chance to stay healthier longer, with slower decline of function and increased survival." Cudkowicz is the Julieanne Dorn Professor of Neurology at Harvard Medical School.
###
The phase 3 clinical trial sponsored by Biogen Idec, which has licensed development and commercialization of dexpramipexole from Knopp began earlier this year and has completed enrollment at locations around the world. Valentin Gribkoff, PhD, an advisor to Knopp Biosciences, is corresponding author of the Nature Medicine article.
Additional co-authors are Michael Bozik, Evan Ingersoll, James Mather, Donald Archibald, Mary Sullivan, Craig Amburgey and Juliet Moritz, Knopp Biosciences; David Schoenfeld, MGH Biostatistics; Robert Miller and Dan Moore, California Pacific Medical Center, San Francisco; Hiroshi Mitsumoto, Columbia University Medical Center, and Jeremy Shefner, State University of New York Upstate Medical University, Syracuse.
Celebrating the 200th anniversary of its founding in 1811, Massachusetts General Hospital (www.massgeneral.org) is the original and largest teaching hospital of Harvard Medical School. The MGH conducts the largest hospital-based research program in the United States, with an annual research budget of nearly $700 million and major research centers in AIDS, cardiovascular research, cancer, computational and integrative biology, cutaneous biology, human genetics, medical imaging, neurodegenerative disorders, reproductive biology, regenerative medicine, reproductive biology, systems biology, transplantation biology and photomedicine.
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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.
Novel ALS drug slows symptom progression, reduces mortality in phase 2 trialPublic release date: 20-Nov-2011 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Mike Morrison mdmorrison@partners.org 617-724-6425 Massachusetts General Hospital
Treatment with dexpramipexole a novel drug believed to prevent dysfunction of mitochondria, the subcellular structures that provide most of a cell's energy appears to slow symptom progression in the neurodegenerative disease amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). Promising results of a phase 2 trial of dexpramipexole are receiving advance online publication in Nature Medicine. Some preliminary results of the study were presented at the 2009 International Symposium on ALS/MND and the 2010 American Academy of Neurology annual meeting.
"Today there are only two FDA-approved drugs used to treat ALS riluzole, which extends life about 10 percent, and Nuedexta, which treats the emotional instability that characterizes ALS and other neurological disorders," says Merit Cudkowicz, MD, director of the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) Neurology Clinical Trials Unit and ALS Center, lead author of the study. "We need more therapies to slow, halt and ultimately reverse the course of disease and also therapies to treat the symptoms."
Also known as Lou Gehrig's disease, ALS is a progressive neurodegenerative disease affecting motor neurons in the brain and spinal cord. Death of these nerve cells stops the transmission of neural impulses to muscle fibers, leading to weakness, paralysis and usually death from respiratory failure. Mitochondrial dysfunction is among several factors believed to underlie nerve cell death. Initially developed by Knopp Biosciences of Pittsburgh, dexpramipexole appears to protect neurons from mitochondrial dysfunction.
Several investigators from Knopp, which sponsored the study reported in the current article, collaborated with Cudkowicz and the Northeast ALS Consortium on the trial. Co-founded and co-directed by Cudkowicz, the Northeast ALS Consortium includes over 100 clinical sites throughout North America that work collaboratively on clinical trials and has established the infrastructure necessarily to quickly and efficiently bring forward new treatments for people with the disorder.
The progression of ALS can vary widely, with some patients surviving decades after diagnosis and others dying within a year. Therefore it can be quite challenging to develop phase 2 trials, which need both to test dosage levels and to determine potential effectiveness in small groups of participants over brief periods of time. To meet this challenge, the research team devised a two-stage study. In the first, 102 patients who had recently been diagnosed with ALS were randomized into four groups, receiving oral tablets of either a placebo or dexpramipexole at total daily dosages of either 50, 150 or 300 mg for 12 weeks. When that stage was completed, participants continuing in the trial received placebo only for four weeks and then were re-randomized into two different groups, receiving daily dosages of either 50 or 300 mg of the study drug for 24 weeks.
Results of the first stage showed that receiving dexpramipexole appeared to slow the progression of symptoms measured both by the ALS Functional Rating Scale and by pulmonary capacity. The protective effect was greatest in the 300 mg group in whom symptom progression was approximately 30 percent slower than in the placebo group and little effect was seen in those receiving 50 mg. The second stage had similar results, with slower disease progression and a reduced risk of death in participants receiving the higher dosage. While results were not generally statistically significant, due to the small size and short duration of the study, all data trends were dose responsive.
"Since individual participants could have been in different treatment groups in the first and second stages of the study, seeing the same dose-dependent differences at both stages gives us confidence in the data. In a way, this was two supportive studies in one trial design," says Cudkowicz. "Confirmation of these findings in the phase 3 clinical trial, which is currently ongoing, would give us even more confidence in this study design for phase 2 testing in ALS. We hope that adding this drug to the approved treatments for ALS would give patients a chance to stay healthier longer, with slower decline of function and increased survival." Cudkowicz is the Julieanne Dorn Professor of Neurology at Harvard Medical School.
###
The phase 3 clinical trial sponsored by Biogen Idec, which has licensed development and commercialization of dexpramipexole from Knopp began earlier this year and has completed enrollment at locations around the world. Valentin Gribkoff, PhD, an advisor to Knopp Biosciences, is corresponding author of the Nature Medicine article.
Additional co-authors are Michael Bozik, Evan Ingersoll, James Mather, Donald Archibald, Mary Sullivan, Craig Amburgey and Juliet Moritz, Knopp Biosciences; David Schoenfeld, MGH Biostatistics; Robert Miller and Dan Moore, California Pacific Medical Center, San Francisco; Hiroshi Mitsumoto, Columbia University Medical Center, and Jeremy Shefner, State University of New York Upstate Medical University, Syracuse.
Celebrating the 200th anniversary of its founding in 1811, Massachusetts General Hospital (www.massgeneral.org) is the original and largest teaching hospital of Harvard Medical School. The MGH conducts the largest hospital-based research program in the United States, with an annual research budget of nearly $700 million and major research centers in AIDS, cardiovascular research, cancer, computational and integrative biology, cutaneous biology, human genetics, medical imaging, neurodegenerative disorders, reproductive biology, regenerative medicine, reproductive biology, systems biology, transplantation biology and photomedicine.
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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.
NEW YORK (Reuters) ? With just a few protesters huddled against the cold winds at Zuccotti Park on Friday, city officials are hoping protests which have taken place here for the past two months have run their course.
"There are problems in the country," New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg said on his weekly radio show. "You can make yourself heard, which I think has been done. Now it's time to get back and build the economy and create the good paying jobs that people need."
Having been evicted in the early hours of Tuesday morning by New York police and no longer allowed to camp at the park, just a handful of occupiers huddled together against brisk autumn winds in a largely empty space.
Most demonstrators may have just had protest hangovers, after a series of marches on Thursday that slowed traffic in the financial district and led to some scuffles with police and more than 200 arrests.
Organizers insist they are sticking around.
"A lot of us went to bed last night thinking we had the best day of the movement," said protest spokesman Ed Needham. "We all thought, we still believe, this is still the unfolding of a new chapter."
With no organized network of housing for scores of protesters who traveled to New York from other cities, the movement is confronting fundamental questions of where to gather and where to sleep.
"It's hard to say where it's going right now," said John Carhart, 28, of New Jersey.
He said organizers were hoping to find an indoor space before the end of the year, "so people will have a place to put their belongings and a place to sleep that's not outside."
A few local churches are housing some of those left homeless by the evictions from Zuccotti Park. The protesters are allowed to return and congregate in the park, but they cannot sleep or lie down, and few have returned.
Caiti Lattimer said she and others like her who live in New York are hosting those from out of town. But she acknowledged that the coming Thanksgiving holiday may thin the ranks.
"People are going home for Thanksgiving," she said. "But there are still people who ... will remain."
Organizers declined to elaborate on the movement's next move, saying discussions and plans are ongoing.
But protesters at meetings late Thursday night said conversations about the group's future ranged from plans to occupy homes foreclosed by banks to boycotting major chain stores during the upcoming holidays.
According to NPR, a recent meeting of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which included more than 200 scientists, concluded with a report stating it expects climate change to bring more intense weather events. The panel specifically noted more rainfall, heat waves and other natural disasters are in the forecast as a result of climate change.
The IPCC notes the frequency of heavy rainfall will likely increase this century in many different regions. Additionally, more powerful hurricanes and typhoons are likely to occur, but these events will see a gradual, small increase instead of a steep one. With the debut of this report, here are some facts about climate change:
* Since the industrial revolution, the burning of fuel and constant deforestation has led to the release of greenhouse gases, especially carbon dioxide, in the atmosphere, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.
* These greenhouse gases prevent heat from re-entering space and create a warming effect, also known as global warming or climate change, on the earth.
* The Washington State Department of Ecology notes while climate change can impact weather events, it also has the potential to impact agriculture, human health, water resources, and energy use.
* Despite the fact there is a warming trend, different regions will experience changes differently as well and there is the possibility that a few areas could see temperatures drop instead of increasing.
* In the late 1990s, numerous nations attempted to join together to establish the Kyoto Protocol, a treaty designed to ensure countries would commit to combating climate change.
* The U.S. failed to ratify the treaty over concerns that China and India would not have to follow the outlined changes or commit to reducing their own emissions.
* Nearly a decade later in Copenhagen, Denmark, world leaders met again to discuss and reach agreements on the growing concern of global warming.
* The 2009 summit focused on the dispute between the U.S. and China and if the nations couldn't agree it could have potentially killed any further international agreements at the summit.
* President Barack Obama also attended and spoke at the summit to help work out disagreements over China joining the pledge and although they fell short of expectations, agreements were finally reached.
Rachel Bogart provides an in-depth look at current environmental issues and local Chicago news stories. As a college student from the Chicago suburbs pursuing two science degrees, she applies her knowledge and passion to both topics to garner further public awareness.
STATE COLLEGE, Pa. (AP) ? The NCAA has told Penn State it will investigate the school in the wake of a child sex abuse scandal that has shocked the campus, and cost its former president and coach Joe Paterno their jobs.
NCAA president Mark Emmert sent a letter to Penn State president Rod Erickson saying that the governing body for college sports will examine "Penn State's exercise of institutional control over its intercollegiate athletics programs" in the case of Jerry Sandusky, the former defensive coordinator accused of serial child sex abuse.
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Public release date: 20-Nov-2011
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