There's an art to a good teardown. Todd McClellan, a Toronto photographer who?s disassembled everything from pianos to iPads, has perfected it.
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Apr. 30, 2013 ? The atoms that make up ordinary matter fall down, so do antimatter atoms fall up? Do they experience gravity the same way as ordinary atoms, or is there such a thing as antigravity?
These questions have long intrigued physicists, says Joel Fajans of the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), because "in the unlikely event that antimatter falls upwards, we'd have to fundamentally revise our view of physics and rethink how the universe works."
So far, all the evidence that gravity is the same for matter and antimatter is indirect, so Fajans and his colleague Jonathan Wurtele, both staff scientists with Berkeley Lab's Accelerator and Fusion Research Division and professors of physics at the University of California at Berkeley -- as well as leading members of CERN's international ALPHA experiment -- decided to use their ongoing antihydrogen research to tackle the question directly. If gravity's interaction with anti-atoms is unexpectedly strong, they realized, the anomaly would be noticeable in ALPHA's existing data on 434 anti-atoms.
The first results, which measured the ratio of antihydrogen's unknown gravitational mass to its known inertial mass, did not settle the matter. Far from it. If an antihydrogen atom falls downward, its gravitational mass is no more than 110 times greater than its inertial mass. If it falls upward, its gravitational mass is at most 65 times greater.
What the results do show is that measuring antimatter gravity is possible, using an experimental method that points toward much greater precision in future. They describe their technique in the April 30, 2013 edition of Nature Communications.
How to measure a falling anti-atom
ALPHA creates antihydrogen atoms by uniting single antiprotons with single positrons (antielectrons), holding them in a strong magnetic trap. When the magnets are turned off, the anti-atoms soon touch the ordinary matter of the trap's walls and annihilate in flashes of energy, pinpointing when and where they hit. In principle, if the experimenters knew an anti-atom's precise location and velocity when the trap is turned off, all they'd have to do is measure how long it takes to fall to the wall.
ALPHA's magnetic fields don't turn off instantly, however; almost 30-thousandths of a second pass before the fields decay to near zero. Meanwhile flashes occur all over the trap walls at times and places that depend on the anti-atoms' detailed but unknown initial locations, velocities, and energies.
Wurtele says, "Late-escaping particles have very low energy, so gravity's influence is more apparent on them. But there were very few late escaping anti-atoms; only 23 of the 434 escaped after the field had been turned off for 20-thousandths of a second."
Fajans and Wurtele worked with their ALPHA colleagues and with Berkeley Lab associates, UC Berkeley lecturer Andrew Charman and postdoc Andre Zhmoginov, to compare simulations with their data and separate gravity's effects from those of magnetic field strength and particle energy. Much statistical uncertainty remained.
"Is there such a thing as antigravity? Based on free-fall tests so far, we can't say yes or no, " says Fajans. "This is the first word, however, not the last."
ALPHA is being upgraded to ALPHA-2, and precision tests may be possible in one to five years. The anti-atoms will be laser-cooled to reduce their energy while still in the trap, and the magnetic fields will decay more slowly when the trap is turned off, increasing the number of low-energy events. Questions physicists and nonphysicists have been wondering about for more than 50 years will be subject to tests that are not only direct but could be definitive.
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Public release date: 30-Apr-2013
Share ] Contact: Brian Lin
brian.lin@ubc.ca
604-822-2234
The JAMA Network Journals
With the number of doses and cost of human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccines a barrier to global implementation, researchers have found that girls who received two doses of HPV vaccine had immune responses to HPV-16 and HPV-18 infection that were noninferior to (not worse than) the responses for young women who received three doses, according to a study in the May 1 issue of JAMA, a theme issue on child health. The authors note that more data on the duration of protection are needed before reduced-dose schedules can be recommended.
Simon R. M. Dobson, M.D., of the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, presented the findings of the study at a JAMA media briefing.
"Globally, cervical cancer is the second most common cause of cancer morbidity and mortality in women. Human papillomavirus infection has been identified as a necessary cause for the development of cervical cancer, with HPV genotypes 16 and 18 accounting for approximately 70 percent of cervical cancer cases," according to background information in the article. "Global use of HPV vaccines to prevent cervical cancer is impeded by cost. A 2-dose schedule for girls may be possible."
Dr. Dobson and colleagues conducted a study to determine whether average antibody levels to HPV-16 and HPV-18 among girls receiving 2 doses were noninferior to women receiving 3 doses. The authors also looked at antibody levels to HPV-6 and HPV-11, and compared girls given 2 or 3 doses. The randomized, phase 3, multicenter study included 830 Canadian females from August 2007 through February 2011. Follow-up blood samples were provided by 675 participants (81 percent). Girls (9-13 years of age) were randomized 1:1 to receive 3 doses of quadrivalent HPV vaccine at 0, 2, and 6 months (n=261) or 2 doses at 0 and 6 months (n=259). Young women (16-26 years of age) received 3 doses at 0, 2, and 6 months (n=310). Antibody levels were measured at 0, 7, 18, 24, and 36 months.
The researchers found that the geometric mean titer (GMT) antibody levels in girls receiving 2 doses were noninferior to the respective GMTs in women receiving 3 doses for all 4 genotypes, with GMT ratios of 2.07 for HPV-16 and 1.76 for HPV-18. "Girls given 2 doses vs. 3 doses had a noninferior antibody response for all 4 vaccine genotypes," with GMT ratios of 0.95 for HPV-16 and 0.68 for HPV-18.
"The GMT ratios for girls (2 doses) to women (3 doses) remained noninferior for all genotypes to 36 months. Antibody responses in girls were noninferior after 2 doses vs. 3 doses for all 4 vaccine genotypes at month 7, but not for HPV-18 by month 24 or HPV-6 by month 36."
The authors write that these are the first data, to their knowledge, "on the duration of the immune response of young adolescent girls to a reduced-dose schedule of quadrivalent HPV vaccine out to 3 years." However, "The clinically meaningful difference between the 2- and 3-dose schedules cannot yet be determined."
"Reducing the number of doses affects vaccine and administration costs as well as potentially improving uptake rates. Evidence-based decision making in public health has led to reduced-dose schedules for hepatitis B, pneumococcal, and meningococcal serogroup C vaccine programs. There is a balance to be found between the incremental value of an additional dose on population effectiveness and the opportunity costs of using the resources required for the extra dose in other public health programs. This is especially the case for HPV vaccines at their present cost."
(JAMA. 2013;309(17):1793-1802; Available pre-embargo to the media at http://media.jamanetwork.com)
Editor's Note: Please see the article for additional information, including other authors, author contributions and affiliations, financial disclosures, funding and support, etc.
There will also be a digital news release available for this study, including the JAMA Report video, embedded and downloadable video, audio files, text, documents, and related links. This content will be available at 3 p.m. CT Tuesday, April 30 at this link.
Editorial: HPV Vaccination - Too Soon for 2 Doses?
" the study by Dobson et al provides encouraging preliminary evidence that a 2-dose quadrivalent HPV vaccine series in girls may be as immunogenic as a 3-dose series in women, although the duration of protection may be less," writes Jessica A. Kahn, M.D., M.P.H., and David I. Bernstein, M.D., M.A., of the Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center and the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine, in an accompanying editorial.
"If future studies establish that a 2-dose series leads to a durable immune response and effectively prevents HPV-related cancers in both women and men, the benefits would be substantial for reducing the global burden of cervical cancer and other HPV-related diseases. The potential to further reduce morbidity and mortality due to HPV-related cancers would be especially significant in less developed regions of the world, where the cost of vaccination and implementation of adolescent vaccination programs present significant barriers, but where primary prevention strategies are most urgently needed."
(JAMA. 2013;309(17):1832-1833; Available pre-embargo to the media at http://media.jamanetwork.com)
Editor's Note: Please see the article for additional information, including financial disclosures, funding and support, etc.
###
[ | E-mail | Share ] ?
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.
Public release date: 30-Apr-2013 Share ] Contact: Brian Lin
brian.lin@ubc.ca
604-822-2234
The JAMA Network Journals
With the number of doses and cost of human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccines a barrier to global implementation, researchers have found that girls who received two doses of HPV vaccine had immune responses to HPV-16 and HPV-18 infection that were noninferior to (not worse than) the responses for young women who received three doses, according to a study in the May 1 issue of JAMA, a theme issue on child health. The authors note that more data on the duration of protection are needed before reduced-dose schedules can be recommended.
Simon R. M. Dobson, M.D., of the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, presented the findings of the study at a JAMA media briefing.
"Globally, cervical cancer is the second most common cause of cancer morbidity and mortality in women. Human papillomavirus infection has been identified as a necessary cause for the development of cervical cancer, with HPV genotypes 16 and 18 accounting for approximately 70 percent of cervical cancer cases," according to background information in the article. "Global use of HPV vaccines to prevent cervical cancer is impeded by cost. A 2-dose schedule for girls may be possible."
Dr. Dobson and colleagues conducted a study to determine whether average antibody levels to HPV-16 and HPV-18 among girls receiving 2 doses were noninferior to women receiving 3 doses. The authors also looked at antibody levels to HPV-6 and HPV-11, and compared girls given 2 or 3 doses. The randomized, phase 3, multicenter study included 830 Canadian females from August 2007 through February 2011. Follow-up blood samples were provided by 675 participants (81 percent). Girls (9-13 years of age) were randomized 1:1 to receive 3 doses of quadrivalent HPV vaccine at 0, 2, and 6 months (n=261) or 2 doses at 0 and 6 months (n=259). Young women (16-26 years of age) received 3 doses at 0, 2, and 6 months (n=310). Antibody levels were measured at 0, 7, 18, 24, and 36 months.
The researchers found that the geometric mean titer (GMT) antibody levels in girls receiving 2 doses were noninferior to the respective GMTs in women receiving 3 doses for all 4 genotypes, with GMT ratios of 2.07 for HPV-16 and 1.76 for HPV-18. "Girls given 2 doses vs. 3 doses had a noninferior antibody response for all 4 vaccine genotypes," with GMT ratios of 0.95 for HPV-16 and 0.68 for HPV-18.
"The GMT ratios for girls (2 doses) to women (3 doses) remained noninferior for all genotypes to 36 months. Antibody responses in girls were noninferior after 2 doses vs. 3 doses for all 4 vaccine genotypes at month 7, but not for HPV-18 by month 24 or HPV-6 by month 36."
The authors write that these are the first data, to their knowledge, "on the duration of the immune response of young adolescent girls to a reduced-dose schedule of quadrivalent HPV vaccine out to 3 years." However, "The clinically meaningful difference between the 2- and 3-dose schedules cannot yet be determined."
"Reducing the number of doses affects vaccine and administration costs as well as potentially improving uptake rates. Evidence-based decision making in public health has led to reduced-dose schedules for hepatitis B, pneumococcal, and meningococcal serogroup C vaccine programs. There is a balance to be found between the incremental value of an additional dose on population effectiveness and the opportunity costs of using the resources required for the extra dose in other public health programs. This is especially the case for HPV vaccines at their present cost."
(JAMA. 2013;309(17):1793-1802; Available pre-embargo to the media at http://media.jamanetwork.com)
Editor's Note: Please see the article for additional information, including other authors, author contributions and affiliations, financial disclosures, funding and support, etc.
There will also be a digital news release available for this study, including the JAMA Report video, embedded and downloadable video, audio files, text, documents, and related links. This content will be available at 3 p.m. CT Tuesday, April 30 at this link.
Editorial: HPV Vaccination - Too Soon for 2 Doses?
" the study by Dobson et al provides encouraging preliminary evidence that a 2-dose quadrivalent HPV vaccine series in girls may be as immunogenic as a 3-dose series in women, although the duration of protection may be less," writes Jessica A. Kahn, M.D., M.P.H., and David I. Bernstein, M.D., M.A., of the Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center and the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine, in an accompanying editorial.
"If future studies establish that a 2-dose series leads to a durable immune response and effectively prevents HPV-related cancers in both women and men, the benefits would be substantial for reducing the global burden of cervical cancer and other HPV-related diseases. The potential to further reduce morbidity and mortality due to HPV-related cancers would be especially significant in less developed regions of the world, where the cost of vaccination and implementation of adolescent vaccination programs present significant barriers, but where primary prevention strategies are most urgently needed."
(JAMA. 2013;309(17):1832-1833; Available pre-embargo to the media at http://media.jamanetwork.com)
Editor's Note: Please see the article for additional information, including financial disclosures, funding and support, etc.
###
[ | E-mail | Share ] ?
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.
Source: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2013-04/tjnj-sce042513.php
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In our review of the Explorer edition of Google Glass, we were surprised at the lack of security features -- there's nothing to stop anyone from picking up your pair, accessing your data and having complete control. We're obviously not the only ones to have noticed this, and developer Mike DiGiovanni, who has his own set of high-tech specs, has come up with an app to alleviate those worries. Called Bulletproof, the app registers when Glass parts from face and engages a lock screen, which can then be disabled with a user-defined combination of swipes and taps on the wearable's touchpad. A brief video demo of the app is available below, and those with the hardware will likely know how to get it loaded using the files linked at the source. It's good to see the dev community already putting out useful software, but it does make you wonder why Google didn't think of it first.
Filed under: Wearables, Software, Google
Via: SlashGear
Source: Mike DiGiovanni (Google+)
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7:00am Tuesday 30th April 2013 in News By Sophia Sleigh, Reporter
Sutton scouts held their annual St George?s Day display.
Scout groups and explorer units joined together on Sunday, April 28, for a St George?s Day assembly in Manor Park, Sutton.
They all set off for a parade through the town which was followed by a short service.
?
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Jawbone is acquiring BodyMedia, makers of health monitoring armbands, for over $100 million. No further details have been made public about the deal.
Source: http://gizmodo.com/jawbone-is-acquiring-bodymedia-makers-of-health-monito-485791286
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WASHINGTON (AP) ? Built to dominate the enemy in combat, the Army's hulking Abrams tank is proving equally hard to beat in a budget battle.
Lawmakers from both parties have devoted nearly half a billion dollars in taxpayer money over the past two years to build improved versions of the 70-ton Abrams.
But senior Army officials have said repeatedly, "No thanks."
It's the inverse of the federal budget world these days, in which automatic spending cuts are leaving sought-after pet programs struggling or unpaid altogether. Republicans and Democrats for years have fought so bitterly that lawmaking in Washington ground to a near-halt.
Yet in the case of the Abrams tank, there's a bipartisan push to spend an extra $436 million on a weapon the experts explicitly say is not needed.
"If we had our choice, we would use that money in a different way," Gen. Ray Odierno, the Army's chief of staff, told The Associated Press this past week.
Why are the tank dollars still flowing? Politics.
Keeping the Abrams production line rolling protects businesses and good paying jobs in congressional districts where the tank's many suppliers are located.
If there's a home of the Abrams, it's politically important Ohio. The nation's only tank plant is in Lima. So it's no coincidence that the champions for more tanks are Rep. Jim Jordan and Sen. Rob Portman, two of Capitol's Hill most prominent deficit hawks, as well as Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown. They said their support is rooted in protecting national security, not in pork-barrel politics.
"The one area where we are supposed to spend taxpayer money is in defense of the country," said Jordan, whose district in the northwest part of the state includes the tank plant.
The Abrams dilemma underscores the challenge that Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel faces as he seeks to purge programs that the military considers unnecessary or too expensive in order to ensure there's enough money for essential operations, training and equipment.
Hagel, a former Republican senator from Nebraska, faces a daunting task in persuading members of Congress to eliminate or scale back projects favored by constituents.
Federal budgets are always peppered with money for pet projects. What sets the Abrams example apart is the certainty of the Army's position.
Sean Kennedy, director of research for the nonpartisan Citizens Against Government Waste, said Congress should listen when one of the military services says no to more equipment.
"When an institution as risk averse as the Defense Department says they have enough tanks, we can probably believe them," Kennedy said.
Congressional backers of the Abrams upgrades view the vast network of companies, many of them small businesses, that manufacture the tanks' materials and parts as a critical asset that has to be preserved. The money, they say, is a modest investment that will keep important tooling and manufacturing skills from being lost if the Abrams line were to be shut down.
The Lima plant is a study in how federal dollars affect local communities, which in turn hold tight to the federal dollars. The facility is owned by the federal government but operated by the land systems division of General Dynamics, a major defense contractor that spent close to $11 million last year on lobbying, according to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics.
The plant is Lima's fifth-largest employer with close to 700 employees, down from about 1,100 just a few years ago, according to Mayor David Berger. But the facility is still crucial to the local economy. "All of those jobs and their spending activity in the community and the company's spending probably have about a $100 million impact annually," Berger said.
Jordan, a House conservative leader who has pushed for deep reductions in federal spending, supported the automatic cuts known as the sequester that require $42 billion to be shaved from the Pentagon's budget by the end of September. The military also has to absorb a $487 billion reduction in defense spending over the next 10 years, as required by the Budget Control Act passed in 2011.
Still, said Jordan, it would be a big mistake to stop producing tanks.
"Look, (the plant) is in the 4th Congressional District and my job is to represent the 4th Congressional District, so I understand that," he said. "But the fact remains, if it was not in the best interests of the national defense for the United States of America, then you would not see me supporting it like we do."
The tanks that Congress is requiring the Army to buy aren't brand new. Earlier models are being outfitted with a sophisticated suite of electronics that gives the vehicles better microprocessors, color flat panel displays, a more capable communications system, and other improvements. The upgraded tanks cost about $7.5 million each, according to the Army.
Out of a fleet of nearly 2,400 tanks, roughly two-thirds are the improved versions, which the Army refers to with a moniker that befits their heft: the M1A2SEPv2, and service officials said they have plenty of them. "The Army is on record saying we do not require any additional M1A2s," Davis Welch, deputy director of the Army budget office, said this month.
The tank fleet, on average, is less than 3 years old. The Abrams is named after Gen. Creighton Abrams, one of the top tank commanders during World War II and a former Army chief of staff.
The Army's plan was to stop buying tanks until 2017, when production of a newly designed Abrams would begin. Orders for Abrams tanks from U.S. allies help fill the gap created by the loss of tanks for the Army, according to service officials, but congressional proponents of the program feared there would not be enough international business to keep the Abrams line going.
This pause in tank production for the U.S. would allow the Army to spend its money on research and development work for the new and improved model, said Ashley Givens, a spokeswoman for the Army's Ground Combat Systems office.
The first editions of the Abrams tank were fielded in the early 1980s. Over the decades, the Abrams supply chain has become embedded in communities across the country.
General Dynamics estimated in 2011 that there were more than 560 subcontractors throughout the country involved in the Abrams program and that they employed as many as 18,000 people. More than 40 of the companies are in Pennsylvania, according to Sen. Robert Casey, D-Pa., also a staunch backer of continued tank production.
A letter signed by 173 Democratic and Republican members of the House last year and sent to then-Defense Secretary Leon Panetta demonstrated the depth of bipartisan support for the Abrams program on Capitol Hill. They chided the Obama administration for neglecting the industrial base and proposing to terminate tank production in the United States for the first time since World War II.
Portman, who served as President George W. Bush's budget director before being elected to the Senate, said allowing the line to wither and close would create a financial mess.
"People can't sit around for three years on unemployment insurance and wait for the government to come back," Portman said. "That supply chain is going to be much more costly and much more inefficient to create if you mothball the plant."
Pete Keating, a General Dynamics spokesman, said the money from Congress is allowing for a stable base of production for the Army, which receives about four tanks a month. With the line open, Lima also can fill international orders, bringing more work to Lima and preserving American jobs, he said.
Current foreign customers are Saudi Arabia, which is getting about five tanks a month, and Egypt, which is getting four. Each country pays all of their own costs. That's a "success story during a period of economic pain," Keating said.
Still, far fewer tanks are coming out of the Lima plant than in years past. The drop-off has affected companies such as Verhoff Machine and Welding in Continental, Ohio, which makes seats and other parts for the Abrams. Ed Verhoff, the company's president, said his sales have dropped from $20 million to $7 million over the past two years. He's also had to lay off about 25 skilled employees and he expects to be issuing more pink slips in the future.
"When we start to lose this base of people, what are we going to do? Buy our tanks from China?" Verhoff said.
Steven Grundman, a defense expert at the Atlantic Council in Washington, said the difficulty of reviving defense industrial capabilities tends to be overstated.
"From the fairly insular world in which the defense industry operates, these capabilities seem to be unique and in many cases extraordinarily high art," said Grundman, a former deputy undersecretary of defense for industrial affairs and installations during the Clinton administration. "But in the greater scope of the economy, they tend not to be."
___
Online:
Abrams tank: http://www.army.mil/factfiles/equipment/tracked/abrams.html
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Follow Richard Lardner on Twitter: https://twitter.com/rplardner
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/army-says-no-more-tanks-congress-insists-115422396.html
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