Trip To Miami - Growing Up Poor Changes Young Brains

Source      - http://www.medpagetoday.com/
By             - Chris Kaiser
Category   - Trip To Miami
Posted By - Homewood Suites Miami

Trip To Miami

Exposure to poverty in early childhood was associated with smaller brain structures later in life, but nurturing seemed to offset poverty's negative effect, researchers found.

MRI scans showed that impoverished children had smaller white (P=0.005) and gray (P<0.001) matter volumes compared with normative values in early adolescence, according to Joan Luby, MD, of the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, and colleagues.

Poverty was also a significant predictor of left hippocampus volume (P=0.02), and left amygdala volume (P=0.01), they reported online Oct. 28 in JAMA Pediatrics.

The association of poverty with volumes of the right hippocampus and right amygdala only approached statistical significance (P=0.09 for both).

However, supportive parental language during a laboratory task conducted while children were preschool age positively influenced left and right hippocampus volumes later in life (P<0.05 for both).

In addition, stress in a child's life negatively influenced brain development, but only the volume of the right hippocampus (P<0.05).

Regarding the influence of parental education on brain development, researchers found no effect.

"This work adds to our growing awareness that early adversity can powerfully influence human development throughout a life span," wrote Charles A. Nelson, PhD, of Boston Children's Hospital, in an accompanying editorial.

"Exposure to early life adversity should be considered no less toxic than exposure to lead, alcohol, or cocaine, and, as such, it merits similar attention from public health authorities," Nelson concluded.

There is evidence that children exposed to poverty have poorer cognitive skills, but neurobiological data in humans is sparse, Luby and colleagues said.

They investigated the effect of poverty on brain development in a group of children, ages 6 to 12, who were followed since preschool. The 145 children were recruited from a larger group of children who participated in a preschool depression study.

Parents were evaluated annually regarding stress during preschool years. After age 9, both children and parents were interviewed.

The assessment of supportive or hostile parenting was made after evaluating parent/child interactions during a task.

"The finding that the effects of poverty on hippocampal development are mediated through care-giving and stressful life events further underscores the importance of high-quality early childhood care-giving, a task that can be achieved through parenting education and support, as well as through preschool programs that provide high-quality supplementary care-giving and safe haven to vulnerable young children," the authors concluded.

The authors noted limitations of the study including an oversampling of children with depression in the original cohort, the absence of earlier imaging that would have allowed bidirectional mediation modeling, and the absence of more detailed aspects of poverty such as nutrition, parental psychopathology, and genetic factors.

Suites In Miami - 3D iPhones Just The Start Of Nanoveu's Technologies

Source      - http://www.zdnet.com/
By            - Victoria Ho
Category  - Suites In Miami
Posted By - Homewood Suites Miami

Suites In Miami

Singapore startup Nanoveu has figured out a way to mass produce nanoimprinted products, printing down to a resolution of a nanometer—the dimensions of atomic particles.

There are plenty of potential applications for this, but the eight-man startup has kicked off its commercial portfolio with a set of iPhone and iPad screen protectors that allow users to view 3D movies on the devices without needing to wear 3D glasses. This is pretty similar to what the Nintendo 3DS has on its upper screen, for example.

Nanoveu's founder and CEO, Alfred Cheong, said the company decided to get into this because it was "low-hanging fruit". People understand how to display 3D to the human eye, but the trick to getting these displays to cooperate requires extra-fine manufacturing. To wit, Nanoveu's iPhone screen protector has packed 500,000 separate lenses into its screen surface, indistinguishable to the naked eye. The iPad version has 6 million lenses.

Nanoveu's software takes the left and right eye viewing angles of a 3D movie or photo and separates them, and the individual lenses over each pixel direct the left-right views to the user, resulting in a 3D projection.

You have to view the compatible content through Nanoveu's app, and it takes most standard image formats such as .mpo.

The manufacturing method is based on nanoimprint lithography, which researchers have been working on since the mid-90s. Being able to mass produce nanoimprinted products, though, means the company can put its EyeFly 3D films on retail for just US$25 at Apple stores--it had launched at around US$35. Films to fit Android phones and tablets are in the works.

The company has far bigger ambitions beyond 3D screens, however. The company is in the midst of closing a second round of funding of S$1.8 million (US$1.45 million), having raised its first angel round of S$3 million (US$2.4 million) at the end of 2012. It hasn't started looking for Series A funding from VCs yet, said Chong.

The brains behind the operation is Frank Chan, Nanoveu's CTO. He was a research scientist working on 3D imaging for medical institutions such as National University Hospital (NUH) and Singapore General Hospital (SGH), and had received several research grants from the National Research Foundation (NRF) to work on glasses-free 3D display technology.

Hotels Near Marlins Park - Cosmetic Contacts Can Be Dangerous

Source       - http://www.coshoctontribune.com/
By             - Jessie Balmert
Category   - Hotels Near Marlins Park
Posted By  - Homewood Suites Miami

Hotels Near Marlins Park

Lady Gaga-inspired circle lenses or cat’s eye contacts might complete a Halloween look, but without a prescription, cosmetic lenses are illegal and can lead to eye infections or worse.

Federal law requires consumers to have a prescription from a licensed professional to obtain contact lenses, whether they are corrective or not. It’s illegal to sell cosmetic lenses, which the FDA monitors as medical devices, over-the-counter, said Nancy Manns, executive director of the Ohio Optical Dispensers Board.

Since mid-2012, the board’s investigator has served 15 businesses with cease and desist orders, warning them to stop selling cosmetic contacts. The businesses range from a Mexican grocery store in Defiance to a wig shop in Lima and a gas station in Columbus.

Most businesses stop after receiving a letter, but those that persist can face an injunction from the Ohio Attorney General’s Office and a fine, Manns said. With one investigator to review complaints about licenses in addition to roguecat-eye contacts, many businesses continue to sell lenses unchecked.

Without a prescription, the contacts can be dangerous. Using lenses not properly fitted to an eye can cause pain, infection, cornea ulcers and blindness, said Sherry Williams, president and CEO of Prevent Blindness Ohio.

Popular among teenagers and during Halloween, the lenses can cause irrevocable harm within a few hours, Williams said. Across the U.S., an estimated 200 people each year develop serious eye infections that warrant surgery because of improper use of contacts, according to Prevent Blindness Ohio.

“No amount of time is a safe amount of time to wear a black-market contact,” Williams said. “When you’re 13, 14 or 16 and having a corneal transplant, your visual quality is going to be impacted for life.”

Most cosmetic contact lenses are approved for use if obtained through an eye doctor. One exception is circle lenses, popularized by Lady Gaga’s “Bad Romance” music video because the FDA has not approved them for use.

“I’m certain (Lady Gaga) had no clue, but certainly children don’t understand that, and they want to emulate the celebrity,” Williams said.

Holiday In Miami - The Biggest Complaints About The iPad Air, 9 Days Before It Has Even Been Released

Source       - http://news.yahoo.com/
By             - Daniel Bean
Category   - Holiday In Miami
Posted By - Homewood Suites Miami

Holiday In Miami

It's become an annual tradition: Complaining about Apple products before they are released or anyone has even touched them.

The new iPad Air and iPad mini were announced at Apple's press event Tuesday, and the complaints are rolling in, with just over a week before their in-store availability dates. Both devices are, at their cores, newer versions of last year's iPads, with some improved specs and added features.

What features and improvements did Apple leave out? How did Apple screw up its newest iPads? Well, that's evidently for Twitter to decide.

What follows is a comprehensive rundown of the most persistent complaints about the iPad Air and the iPad mini, days before either has been released. While new complaints are sure to pop up as soon as these tablets start shipping, let's focus on the perceived errors of Apple's yet-to-be-sold latest.

(Sidenote: Many deskchair pundits were most disappointed by Internet rumors that didn't pan out: a Microsoft Surface-like keyboard cover, a gold color option, the inclusion of Touch ID, Apple's fingerprint sensor technology. Indeed: A surprising number of Twitter users really wanted the gold.)

Hotels Near Marlins Park - Sleep Walking And 5 Other Crazy Things People Do In Their Sleep

Source      - http://abcnews.go.com/
By            - SYDNEY LUPKIN
Category  - Hotels Near Marlins Park
Posted By - Homewood Suites Miami

Hotels Near Marlins Park

Sleep walking can be embarrassing – especially if you happen to, say, wander onto the subway tracks in Boston and stir up a panic among fellow commuters who have to rescue you. 

That's what happened to one Boston woman earlier this week in the city's Davis Square station. The woman told first responders she fell asleep on a station bench and woke up on the tracks, according to Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority officials. 

The woman escaped with only an arm injury because no train was coming when she fell, officials said. 

On the bright side, she didn't sleep-swim, sleep-have-sex-with-anyone or sleep-shoot-herself-in-the-knee.

Click through to check out some more wacky things people have done in their sleep.

Suites Near University Of Miami - A New Biological Clock Measures Altered DNA, Not Birthday Candles

Source      - http://www.latimes.com/
By            - Melissa Healy
Category  - Suites Near University Of Miami
Posted By - Homewood Suites Miami

Suites Near University Of Miami

Move over birthday candles, and step aside telomeres; there may be a new kind of biological clock in town. And this one may prove useful in predicting where age-related diseases such as cancer are most likely to strike.

The proposed new body clock measures DNA methylation -- the process by which genes are altered as the body's cells differentiate and their genetic programs change to meet new demands. Researchers pored over the DNA of some 8,000 samples from 51 different tissues and cells -- including blood, brain, muscle, heart, lungs, liver and pancreas --  to devise a formula by which DNA methylation could be used to determine the age of the tissue from which the tested cells are drawn.

Horvath's research, published Monday in the journal Genome Biology, makes clear that the answer to the question "how old is this person?" may change depending on which tissue is checked.

In a single individual, the "DNAm" ages of diverse tissues largely converge on one number. But certain tissues may diverge from the norm. By comparing a specific tissue's "DNAm" age with the person's chronological age -- or with the DNAm age suggested by the person's other tissues -- physicians may one day be able to identify organs or tissues that are aging at an accelerated rate. That, in turn, may allow them to identify tissues that are vulnerable to abnormal processes such as cancer, or already under attack.

The author of the new research, UCLA bioinformatician Steve Horvath, found that a woman's breast tissue routinely tests as being older than her chronological age by two to three years. That, the authors speculated, may help explain why breast cancer is the most common cancer affecting women. Looking at the methylation of cells taken from the breasts of women with breast cancer, Horvath observed that tissue near the site of a tumor was, on average, 12 years older by DNAm standards than the rest of her body.

By contrast, musculoskeletal tissue and cardiac muscle typically look younger on DNAm readings than their owner's actual years -- owing, perhaps, to the rejuvenating effects of stem cells that remain relatively plentiful in those tissues through life, and come to the rescue whenever injury or disease set in.

The resulting "clock" also may one day offer scientists a way to measure whether anti-aging measures and regenerative medicine are delivering on their promise of turning back the hands of time.

Not surprisingly, embryonic stem cells or induced pluripotent stem cells -- adult cells that have been manipulated to revert to near-embryonic form -- were found to have an age of near zero as measured by this technique.

An exhaustive scan of the 121 sets of data on DNA methylation collected from patients both healthy and sick also showed that we age at different rates over our lifespans.

"The clock's ticking rate isn't constant," Horvath said. "It ticks much faster when we're born and growing from children into teenagers, then slows to a constant rate when we reach 20."

Horvath said he aims to develop and extend his body clock technique by looking at whether measures that stop the body's DNAm clock also stop the aging process, or whether doing so has negative effects. Meanwhile, UCLA has filed a provisional patent on Horvath's DNAm bioticker.

Golf Resort In Miami - Black-Hole Boffins Close In On Gravity Waves

Source      - http://www.theregister.co.uk/
By             - Richard Chirgwin
Category   - Golf Resort In Miami
Posted By - Homewood Suites Miami

Golf Resort In Miami

While the world looks for ways to directly observe gravity waves, boffins at Australia's Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) say they've used information about the Einsteinian prediction to examine huge black holes.

In what they call a “new chapter in astronomy”, post-doctoral CSIRO fellow Dr Ryan Shannon and PhD student Vikram Ravi believe they've worked out the likely – and low – rate of background gravitational waves in the universe.

They've done this by examining data from the Parkes radio-telescope's PPTA (Parkes Pulsar Timing Array) project which, along with a previous CSIRO-Swinburne University collaboration provides 20 years' worth of pulsar timing data.

The timing of pulsar signals is extremely precise, the researchers say, but as a gravitational wave passes the pulsar's region, it would swell or shrink distances in that region, changing the timing of the pulse from Earth's point of view.

“The strength of the gravitational wave background depends on how often supermassive black holes spiral together and merge, how massive they are, and how far away they are. So if the background is low, that puts a limit on one or more of those factors,” CSIRO says in its media release.

As a result, the group believes one model used to explain supermassive black holes, galactic merger, should be discarded because it doesn't explain enough of the mass of black holes. The timing data will next be used to test other models of supermassive black hole growth.

Project leader, CSIRO's Dr George Hobbs, believes the timing data will one day allow direct detection of gravitational waves. “We haven't yet detected gravitational waves outright, but we're now into the right ballpark to do so,” he says.

He explained that combining pulsar-timing data from Parkes with that from other telescopes in Europe and the USA — a total of about 50 pulsars — should provide enough accuracy to detect gravitational waves “within ten years”.