Partners to strengthen co-operation
VTT and Finland Post Corporation have strengthened their co-operation in research and development. The new co-operation agreement allows Finland Post Corporation to utilise VTT’s versatile knowledge of intelligent logistics in technology projects. The first joint projects relate to RFID (Radio frequency identification) and automation technologies.
Finland Post Corporation is a service company that specialises in intelligent l
BabyBot, a robot modelled on the torso of a two year-old child, is helping researchers take the first, tottering steps towards understanding human perception, and could lead to the development of machines that can perceive and interact with their environment.
The researchers used BabyBot to test a model of the human sense of ’presence’, a combination of senses like sight, hearing and touch. The work could have enormous applications in robotics, artificial intelligence (AI) and mac
The situation in Navarre with regard to climate change is one of concern given that gas emissions from the greenhouse effect are even greater than the average in Spain (45%). This is the conclusion of Miren Sarasíbar Iriarte on defending her PhD Law thesis at the Public University of Navarre recently. She analysed sources involving legal norms regulating the environmental functions of forests with reference to international, European Community and Spanish legislation.
Doctor Sarasibar
The Asia-Pacific region faces a number of challenges in preparing for an influenza pandemic, yet gaps and inconsistencies in plans across the continent could hinder an effective response to a pandemic, according to a new report presented today at the Lancet Asia Medical Forum 2006, Singapore.
Over 80% of human deaths from avian influenza (H5N1) recorded to date have occurred in South East Asia, which suggests that countries in the region could be the epicentre of the next human influenza
Middle-aged English people are healthier than their American counterparts, according to a collaborative study issued today by English and US researchers.
Americans aged between 55 and 64 suffer from diseases such as diabetes, high-blood pressure and lung cancer at rates up to twice those seen among similar aged people in England, reports the study, published on 3 May in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
By analysing a large representative sample of peopl
Humans are more susceptible to developing the eye cancer retinoblastoma than mice because, unlike humans, mice can compensate for the loss of activity of a gene critical to normal retinal development , according to results of a study by investigators at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. The study, published today in the open access journal BMC Biology, explains why humans with a defective copy of the Retinoblastoma gene RB1 are at high risk of developing cancer of the retina, or retinoblast
An important source of uncertainty in predictions about global warming is how plants will respond to increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide. Now biologists at the University of California, San Diego have made significant advances toward understanding the mechanism plants use to regulate their carbon dioxide intake.
The study, published in the May 1 early on-line edition of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, shows how the level of carbon dioxide in the atm
Intranasal influenza vaccine compared to shots in a phase 3 study; Data announced today at Pediatric Academic Societies Annual Meeting
An intranasal influenza vaccine proved to be more effective than the injectable influenza vaccine in children older than 6 months and younger than 5 years of age, according to study data presented today at the annual meeting of the Pediatric Academic Societies in San Francisco.
The results point to a new way of looking at how to best
Asthmatic patients showed significant improvement in peak expiratory flow, airway responsiveness and number of symptom-free days after treatment with bronchial thermoplasty, a new procedure designed to reduce the ability of airway smooth muscle to narrow from inflammation.
These results appear in the May 1 issue of the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, published by the American Thoracic Society.
Gerard Cox, M.B., F.R.C.P.C., of the Firestone Institut
Duke University Medical Center researchers have developed a simple formula that will enable anesthesiologists to predict, based on individual patient characteristics, how much blood to have on hand in the operating room prior to coronary artery bypass surgery.
The new formula not only can save hospital resources and staff time, but also can lead to a more rational allocation of banked blood, according to the researchers.
Before a bypass procedure, blood typically is deliver
A significant difference between human and chimpanzee immune cells may provide clues in the search to understand the diverse array of human immune-related diseases. Researchers at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) School of Medicine have uncovered a a specific type of molecule expressed on non-human primate T cells, but not human T cells. T cells are important orchestrators of the immune system.
In a study to be published on-line in advance of publication in Proceedings of
For young people who clearly seem to be developing early signs of schizophrenia, treatment with the antipsychotic drug olanzapine appears to lower or delay the rate of conversion to full-blown psychosis, according to an article by a Yale School of Medicine researcher in the May issue of The American Journal of Psychiatry.
The findings are preliminary since 60 patients began the study and 17 completed it. Despite the long recruitment period and multiple study sites, participat
A new MRI guided technique known as manual interleaved MR-guided focused ultrasound (MRgFUS) safely treats fibroids in 60% less time than conventional MRgFUS, according to a new study by researchers from the Lahey Clinic in Burlington, MA.
For the study, researchers analyzed the results of 14 women with symptomatic fibroids who were treated with the rapid interleaved MRgFUS. The researchers found that interleaved MRgFUS permitted up to 127 sonications–sound wave pulses that break
Percutaneous image-guided biopsy of renal masses is safe and accurate, and it frequently alters clinical decision making, says a new study from the University of Michigan.
For the study, the researchers reviewed 153 kidney biopsies in 126 patients. The researchers found that more than 60% of patients had a change in their treatment–whether surgery, tumor ablation, chemotherapy or radiation–due to biopsy results, and that as many as 75 unnecessary kidney removals were potentially avoid
Even wings that are still in development help living birds gain traction on slopes and scale obstacles
Biologists have long argued about how birds evolved the ability to fly, because it is not immediately evident what improvement in fitness would result from ancestral, partly evolved wings. Two theories have recently dominated the debate: one postulates that flight evolved in tree-dwelling ancestors that used their forelimbs to help them glide, while the other considers ancestral
Heart rhythm disturbances are target for preventive treatment.
Using a new genomic strategy that has the power to survey the entire human genome and identify genes with common variants that contribute to complex diseases, researchers at Johns Hopkins, together with scientists from Munich, Germany, and the Framingham Heart Study, U.S.A., have identified a gene that may predispose some people to abnormal heart rhythms that lead to sudden cardiac death, a condition affecting more than
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