Europa League Group E soccer match, at Rome's Olympic stadium

AS Roma Brazilian midfielder Taddei , right, and FC Basel midfielder Xherdan Shaqiri in action during their Europa League Group E soccer match, at Rome's Olympic stadium, Thursday Dec. 3, 2009.







AS Roma Brazilian midfielder Julio Baptista, left, and FC Basel defender David Abraham of Argentina vie for the ball during their Europa League Group E soccer match, at Rome's Olympic stadium, Thursday, Dec. 3, 2009.



AS Roma forward Mirko Vucinic, of Montenegro, second from right, is hugged by teammate Philippe Mexes, of France, after scoring during a Europa League Group E soccer match between AS Roma and FC Basel, at Rome's Olympic stadium, Thursday, Dec. 3, 2009.


photo: AP

Facebook to lose geography networks, add privacy features

By Doug Gross, CNN

Facebook users will lose geographic networks but gain the ability to decide with every post which friends get to see it

(CNN) -- Facebook users will soon lose the ability to join a network of friends who live in the same area but will gain the widely desired ability to control who sees every piece of information they post.

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, in an open letter to users that appeared on the site Wednesday morning, said the social networking site has outgrown the usefulness of regional networks.

"[A]s Facebook has grown, some of these regional networks now have millions of members and we've concluded that this is no longer the best way for you to control your privacy," he said in the letter.

Almost half of all Facebook users are members of at least one regional network, according to Zuckerberg. Users can specify that some of their posts on the site only go to specific networks.

Other networks like high schools, colleges and places of employment will not be affected by the change.

In place of the geography networks,Facebook will be creating what it calls a simpler network for privacy controls.

The highlight will be the option of deciding which Facebook friends see updates, photos or other posts at the time they're posted -- "something many of you have asked for," Zuckerberg said.

"In addition, we'll also be fulfilling a request made by many of you to make the privacy-settings page simpler by combining some settings," he said.

The letter said that, in the next couple of weeks, Facebook's roughly 350 million users will be asked to review and update their privacy settings. A message on the site will explain the changes and take users to the page where they can update the settings, Zuckerberg said.

In the several hours after Zuckerberg's letter was posted, more than 18,000 users had posted replies to it. Most of the feedback appeared positive.

"Great idea!!" one user wrote. "Privacy is seriously important on Facebook, I got about 800 friends that come from different groups of people and places. Thanks."

Others took the opportunity to write about a persistent pet issue for some users -- the desire for a "dislike" button to criticize other people's posts. Facebook has made no statements about whether that potentially drama-inducing feature will ever be added.


source: cnn.com

U.S. Allows New Stem-Cell Lines for Research

By Alice Park

President Obama looks at brain cells through a microscope with Dr. Marston Linehan as he tours the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md., before making a major announcement regarding the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act
Jim Watson / AFP / Getty

Nobody likes a busy signal. And for U.S. stem-cell researchers, none has been more frustrating than the one on the National Institutes of Health's (NIH) Human Embryonic Stem Cell Registry home page. That's where the government agency lists all of the embryonic-stem-cell lines that scientists are allowed to study using taxpayer dollars. For months, the page has been depressingly static. "None are available at this time," it read. "Please check back later."

That message changed Dec. 2 at 12:30 p.m. ET, when the government finally made available the first 13 stem-cell lines that researchers can study with federal funds. Researchers had been awaiting the announcement since March 9, when President Obama signed an Executive Order lifting the ban that former President George W. Bush had placed on government support of human-embryonic-stem-cell research. The previous Administration had restricted federally funded studies to only the dozen or so stem-cell lines that had been created before Aug. 9, 2001. The new policy allows scientists to experiment with any existing stem-cell line, regardless of when it was created, as long it meets specific criteria showing it was derived in an ethically and scientifically responsible manner.

Already, the Federal Government has given out 31 grants totaling about $21 million for research involving the larger pool of human embryonic stem cells. But the recipients of that money have been waiting to use it since September, when the NIH, charged with establishing and applying the stem-cell vetting criteria, began reviewing potentially eligible cells. In addition to the 13 lines approved on Wednesday, another 96 lines are waiting for the green light, 20 of which may get it by Friday.

"It's exciting to be able to say that, after what clearly has been a time of frustration on the part of the scientific community over their inability to gain access to federally funded cell lines, that's now changing," Dr. Francis Collins, director of NIH, told reporters during a telephone briefing. "Because the vast majority of basic biomedical research that goes on in the U.S. is supported by NIH, the fact that researchers who are our grantees could not work on the new lines was seen by many people as a significant deterrent to rapid progress in the field."

Progress will certainly accelerate as more stem-cell lines are added to the government registry. A larger pool of available stem cells is a more accurate reflection not only of the diversity of the population but also of the variety of forms that treatable diseases can take. That translates into more opportunities for researchers to study basic human development and disease development, screen new drugs for their effectiveness against disease and create entirely new therapies. The ultimate goal is to use stem cells, which can morph into any of the body's hundreds of different cell types, to cure disease by repairing or even replacing damaged or defective cells.

Of the 13 newly approved lines, 11 came from the lab of Dr. George Daley, director of the Stem Cell Transplantation Program at Children's Hospital Boston and a member of the Harvard Stem Cell Institute; the other two came from Dr. Ali Brivanlou, an embryologist at Rockefeller University. Daley's submission for NIH review was 130 pages long, he says, including a 16-page informed-consent document signed by each of the donors of the embryos from which the stem-cell lines were derived, ensuring that the donors were aware of where their embryos were going and what they would be used for. "Our documents were very exhaustive," Daley says. "Probably too exhaustive. But I stand behind that process. I think it does need to be scrupulous and done with great care."

That kind of meticulousness probably helped expedite the NIH's approval of the new lines, a process that involves applying a checklist of criteria spelled out by the agency and providing documentation that the cells meet all of the requirements exactly. This review, says Collins, boils down to NIH staff agreeing that all the necessary criteria for inclusion have been met. Approval of some lines may be less straightforward if certain requirements have not been met to the letter. For instance, since stem-cell lines are drawn from unused embryos donated to research by couples undergoing the IVF procedure, researchers must offer proof that each couple was fully informed of all their options for discarding excess embryos. If the proper documentation doesn't exist, an NIH working group would have to determine whether the spirit of the requirement was met.

Some experts worry that the stringent vetting and documentation processes may place an undue burden on labs that have painstakingly created human-embryonic-stem-cell lines using their own hard-earned private funds. (Researchers are still prohibited from using federal money to create new stem-cell lines because of a congressional ban on harming or destroying embryos.) According to some estimates, as many as 780 such lines may exist worldwide, but not all labs may be willing to subject themselves to the scrutiny and administrative hassle of registering their lines with the NIH. Even among the handful of stem-cell lines that were eligible for federally funded study under President Bush, only one has so far been resubmitted for NIH review and inclusion in the government registry.

In many cases, researchers studying existing stem-cell lines do so free of any monetary strings, which means they are also entitled to any potential commercial windfall that may come from the application of the cells to a treatment or therapy. "Any discoveries they make using the lines will be theirs," says Amy Wilkerson, associate vice president for research support at Rockefeller University, who oversaw the submission of the university's lines.

But despite the relatively slow start for American stem-cell research, Rockefeller's Brivanlou is hopeful that the NIH approvals mark the beginning of a new era in our understanding of human development. "I consider it a shame that at the beginning of the 21st century, we know more about how development works in the worm, the fruit fly and the mouse than we know about our own development. And it's not because of scientific limitations or technological limitations," he says. "It would be nice if someday people are allowed to ask basic questions simply about where we come from as human beings. I'm optimistic that we are experiencing the first steps in the right direction."


source: Time.com

Man Can Control Robotic Hand with Thoughts

By AP / ARIEL DAVID

Amputee Pierpaolo Petruzziello touches a robotic hand during a press conference in Rome, Dec. 2, 2009

(ROME) — An Italian who lost his left forearm in a car crash was successfully linked to a robotic hand, allowing him to feel sensations in the artificial limb and control it with his thoughts, scientists said Wednesday.

During a one-month experiment conducted last year, 26-year-old Pierpaolo Petruzziello felt like his lost arm had grown back again, although he was only controlling a robotic hand that was not even attached to his body.

"It's a matter of mind, of concentration," Petruzziello said. "When you think of it as your hand and forearm, it all becomes easier."

Though similar experiments have been successful before, the European scientists who led the project say this was the first time a patient has been able to make such complex movements using his mind to control a biomechanic hand connected to his nervous system.

The challenge for scientists now will be to create a system that can connect a patient's nervous system and a prosthetic limb for years, not just a month.

The Italy-based team said at a news conference in Rome on Wednesday that in 2008 it implanted electrodes into the nerves located in what remained of Petruzziello's left arm, which was cut off in a crash some three years ago.

The prosthetic was not implanted on the patient, only connected through the electrodes. During the news conference, video was shown of Petruzziello as he concentrated to give orders to the hand placed next to him.

During the month he had the electrodes connected, he learned to wiggle the robotic fingers independently, make a fist, grab objects and make other movements.

"Some of the gestures cannot be disclosed because they were quite vulgar," joked Paolo Maria Rossini, a neurologist who led the team working at Rome's Campus Bio-Medico, a university and hospital that specializes in health sciences.

The euro2 million ($3 million) project, funded by the European Union, took five years to complete and produced several scientific papers that have been submitted to top journals, including Science Translational Medicine and Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Rossini said.

After Petruzziello recovered from the microsurgery he underwent to implant the electrodes in his arm, it only took him a few days to master use of the robotic hand, Rossini said. By the time the experiment was over, the hand obeyed the commands it received from the man's brain in 95 percent of cases.

Petruzziello, an Italian who lives in Brazil, said the feedback he got from the hand was amazingly accurate.

"It felt almost the same as a real hand. They stimulated me a lot, even with needles ... you can't imagine what they did to me," he joked with reporters.

While the "LifeHand" experiment lasted only a month, this was the longest time electrodes had remained connected to a human nervous system in such an experiment, said Silvestro Micera, one of the engineers on the team. Similar, shorter-term experiments in 2004-2005 hooked up amputees to a less-advanced robotic arm with a pliers-shaped end, and patients were only able to make basic movements, he said.

Experts not involved in the study told The Associated Press the experiment was an important step forward in creating a viable interface between the nervous system and prosthetic limbs, but the challenge now is ensuring that such a system can remain in the patient for years and not just a month.

"It's an important advancement on the work that was done in the mid-2000s," said Dustin Tyler, a professor at Case Western Reserve University and biomedical engineer at the VA Medical Center in Cleveland, Ohio. "The important piece that remains is how long beyond a month we can keep the electrodes in."

Experts around the world have developed other thought-controlled prostheses. One approach used in the United States involves surgery to graft shoulder nerves onto pectoral muscles and then learning to use those muscles to control a bionic arm.

While that approach is necessary when the whole arm has been lost, if a stump survives doctors could opt for the less invasive method proposed by the Italians, connecting the prosthesis to the same system the brain uses to send and receive signals.

"The approach we followed is natural," Rossini said. The patient "didn't have to learn to use muscles that do a different job to move a prosthesis, he just had to concentrate and send to the robotic hand the same messages he used to send to his own hand."

It will take at least two or three years before scientists try to replicate the experiment with a more long-term prosthesis, the experts said. First they need to study if the hair-thin electrodes can be kept in longer.

Results from the experiment are encouraging, as the electrodes removed from Petruzziello showed no damage and could well stay in longer, said Klaus-Peter Hoffmann, a biomedical expert at the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft, the German research institute that developed the electrodes.

More must also be done to miniaturize the technology on the arm and the bulky machines that translate neural and digital signals between the robot and the patient.

Key steps forward are already being made, Rossini said. While working with Petruzziello, the Italian scientists also were collaborating on a parallel EU-funded project called "SmartHand," which has developed a robotic arm that can be directly implanted on the patient.


source: Time.com

Top 10 People Caught on Facebook

In case you haven't figured it out by now, Facebook isn't as private as you might think. Everyone from underage drinkers to White House gate-crashers has been undone by the proof of their misdeeds on the social-networking site

The White House Gate-crashers

In an apparent bid to burnish their Q rating and boost their chances of being selected for the cast of a Washington-based reality show, Washington socialites Tareq and Michaele Salahi slipped into a Nov. 24 White House state dinner given in honor of Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. The couple snapped pictures of themselves posing with the rest of the VIP guests, including Vice President Joe Biden and Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, and posted them on Michaele's Facebook profile. The Washington Post broke the story the following day. The Secret Service apologized for the glaring security lapse, although a spokesman downplayed the risk the couple posed to President Obama and other event attendees. The gambit did reek of a Balloon Boy-esque grab for fame rather than anything more nefarious. It's as yet unknown what if any charges the Salahis face. Read more:


source: Time.com

Figures from Antony Gormley's 'Amazonian Field, 1992'

LONDON, ENGLAND - DECEMBER 01: Figures from Antony Gormley's 'Amazonian Field, 1992' on fill a gallery at the Royal Academy of Arts 'Earth: Art of a Changing World' exhibition on December 1, 2009 in London. New and recent work from 35 artists and a selection of commissions from emerging artists is on display at the Royal Academy from December 3, 2009 to January 31, 2010.








credit photo: Gettyimages

The World AIDS Day in India

Students form the symbol of AIDS to mark World AIDS Day in the northern Indian city of Shimla December 1, 2009.




Medical students take part in a candlelight vigil during an AIDS awareness campaign on the occasion of World AIDS Day in the northern Indian city of Amritsar December 1, 2008. India has the world's third highest caseload with 2.5 million infections.



Traditional Bihu dancers participate in an event to mark World AIDS Day in Gauhati, India, Tuesday, Dec. 1, 2009. Nearly 2.5 million people in India are infected with HIV, the AIDS virus, but talking about the disease and sexual health issues in general is still largely taboo.

credit photo: Reuters