PhdGuy

by David Salisbury | Posted on Friday, May. 10, 2013 — 3:56 PM

Sharon Weiss, right, chatting with Kelly Perry, a legislative fellow in Sen. Lamar Alexander's office, at the Capitol Hill reception. (Vanderbilt Federal Relations)

Following an early morning flight to Washington, D.C., on May 7, Associate Professor of Electrical Engineering and Physics Sharon Weiss braved the rainy weather to head to Capitol Hill and meet with staff members in the offices of Sen. Lamar Alexander, Sen. Bob Corker, Rep. Jim Cooper and Rep. Chuck Fleischmann as well as the Democratic staff on the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology’s Subcommittee on Research.

by Leigh MacMillan | Posted on Friday, May. 10, 2013 — 3:53 PM

(iStock)

A team of Vanderbilt and Harvard investigators has “profiled” developing cells in the heart – to discover which genes and regulatory networks govern early heart valve development. The information is necessary for generating heart valves from a patient’s own cells, a goal of the tissue engineering consortium, SysCODE.

by Jennifer Wetzel | Posted on Thursday, May. 9, 2013 — 1:41 PM

Researchers at Vanderbilt University have received grant awards from the National Institutes of Health as part of the Autism Centers of Excellence (ACE) research program. The NIH announced grant awards of $100 million over five years to 11 centers nationwide, three of which feature projects from Vanderbilt Kennedy Center investigators, to further studies on autism treatment and intervention.

“These are large-scale grants focused on dramatically accelerating our understanding of the best personalized treatment approaches for children with autism spectrum disorders,” said Zachary Warren, Ph.D., director of the Vanderbilt Kennedy Center’s Treatment and Research Institute for Autism Spectrum Disorders. “Having our institution involved in three distinct ACE Network projects means our Vanderbilt scientists will be powerfully partnering with families in our own backyard to answer the big questions of how best to treat children with autism.”

by Bill Snyder | Posted on Thursday, May. 9, 2013 — 1:31 PM

2012 Vanderbilt Prize Winner Joan Steitz, Ph.D., second from left, with, from left, Susan Wente, Ph.D., Vanderbilt Prize Student Scholar and M.D./Ph.D. student Jacqueline Clauss, who Steitz will mentor this year, and Jennifer Blackford, Ph.D., who oversees Clauss’ neuroscience research. (photo by Steve Green)

Viruses are among the most confounding creatures on the planet.

by Kathy Whitney | Posted on Thursday, May. 9, 2013 — 1:19 PM

Peggi Angel, Ph.D., research instructor in Biochemistry, studies congenital aortic valve stenosis in children. It’s a disease where the heart valve, which is normally very thin, becomes bloated with extracellular matrix. This occurs rapidly in some children but not in others.

In her quest to understand the mechanisms behind this rapid extracellular matrix formation in pediatric aortic valves, she turned to the Vanderbilt Heart and Vascular Institute Main Heart Registry and Biorepository.

by Dagny Stuart | Posted on Thursday, May. 9, 2013 — 9:12 AM

Carlos Arteaga, M.D., has been appointed to lead two major new cancer research initiatives at Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center. (photo by Joe Howell)

Carlos Arteaga, M.D., professor of Medicine and Cancer Biology, has been appointed to lead two newly created cancer research initiatives at the Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center.
He has been named the founding director of the Center for Cancer Targeted Therapies (CCTT) and director of the Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center Research Network (VICCRN).

by Leigh MacMillan | Posted on Thursday, May. 9, 2013 — 8:00 AM

(iStock)

The antioxidant enzyme glutathione peroxidase 7 (GPX7) is often “turned off” in esophageal adenocarcinoma and its precancerous condition known as Barrett’s esophagus.

Posted on Wednesday, May. 8, 2013 — 3:57 PM

“Eight weeks and 30,000 students gave me a crash course in the future of digital learning technologies,” writes engineering professor Doug Schmidt in this Vanderbilt Magazine column on his experience teaching one of Vanderbilt University’s first massive open online courses, or MOOCs.

KEEP READING »

by David Salisbury | Posted on Wednesday, May. 8, 2013 — 8:33 AM

The Compact Muon Solenoid detector is the size of a small house and is one of the largest experiments at the Large Hadron Collider. (CERN/CMS)

By discovering evidence of the Higgs boson, a new sub-atomic particle that may explain why we all have weight, an international team of physicists working at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in Switzerland are providing new insights into the underlying structure of space and time.

Posted on Monday, May. 6, 2013 — 11:21 AM

Using the tools of physics, chemistry, engineering, physiology and molecular biology, researchers are exploring the unfathomable complexity that affects our development and growth and individual responses to disease, drugs, and aging. John Wikswo, Gordon A. Cain University Professor of biomedical engineering and A.B. Learned Professor of Living State Physics  and University Professor of Biomedical Engineering, Molecular Physiology and Biophysics and Physics and Astronomy, gave this presentation at TedX Nashville on April 6, 2013.

Although Google Glass is not yet in the hands of many owners and retail availability may be a year away, developers are moving full steam ahead with the development of apps. Fullscreen Labs has jumped into the fray with a new app called Fullscreen BEAM that enables users to upload videos from Google Glass directly to their YouTube account.

Like other apps we have seen, the process of “installing” the app really just consists of visiting a web site, signing up, and associating your Google Glass device with your account. Once that step is completed, Fullscreen BEAM app users can upload their videos straight to YouTube. A couple options are available, including the ability to mark videos as private when uploaded. Doing so might be a good idea for users who can review the videos at a later time to decide whether it is really something they want out in public. The app also has options to configure a user’s Twitter account so links to new videos can be tweeted automatically.

comScore released smartphone manufacturer and operating system data today for the first quarter of 2013 in the U.S. market. The numbers show Android continuing to dominate with 52 percent market share for operating systems. This was down slightly from December 2012 when Android held 53.4 percent of the market. Blackberry also slid down to only 5.2 percent of the market and Symbian took a small dip. Apple’s iOS was the big gainer for the quarter jumping 2.7 percent to grab 39 percent of the market and Microsoft also gained slightly.

While Android enjoyed  the top spot in terms of operating platforms, Apple continued to hold a grip in terms of manufacturer market share with their 39 percent share of the market. The 2.7 percent jump outpaced Samsung’s gain of 0.7 percent of the market. HTC, Motorola, and LG all saw their market share slide during the quarter.

Slowly but surely Google’s Photo Spheres continue the march toward general availability and usability throughout the web with Google’s release of a widget enabling them to be embedded on any web site. Up to now, Photo Spheres could only load on Google+ and Google Maps along with a couple third-party services that had figured out how to make them viewable. The new widget is not the easiest thing to deploy as web site owners will have to add a call to the Google+ API and then add some extensive code on their site where the Photo Sphere should appear. The Photo Spheres themselves have to be hosted on either Google+ or PicasaWeb. No doubt it will not be long before other developers streamline this process to make it easier for site owners to both deploy the widget and quickly grab the proper URL and parameters for a Photo Sphere.

In the meantime, Android users continue to wait for progress on making Photo Sphere capable camera apps as widely available so they can start to contribute to the library of Photo Spheres.

“Tonight we see as a launching point not just for sustainable impact, but also many promising ventures,” Kate Mytty, program administrator for IDEAS, said in opening the ceremony.

Ten teams chosen by a panel of expert judges took home prizes of $5,000, $7,500 and $10,000. Three other teams, whose projects won the most online votes, received Community Choice Awards of $1,500 each. Each winning team delivered a brief presentation upon receiving its award.

The teams — 41 semifinalists in total — were comprised of MIT affiliates and others, represented seven different categories: water; emergency and disaster; health; energy and environment; education; finance and entrepreneurship; and agriculture.

Nine Yale College juniors received honors from the Council of Masters in recognition of their scholarship, contributions to college life and their character.

The prizes, winning students, and the award citations written by masters who nominated them follow:

Joseph Lentilhon Selden Memorial Award

The Joseph Lentilhon Selden Memorial Junior Award is to given each year to a member of the junior class of Yale College whose verve, idealism, and constructive interest in music and the humanities exemplify those qualities for which Selden is remembered. In recent years this award has gone to a student especially notable for his or her contribution in the field of music.

Consumers seeking a commitment-free mobile service will now have another option next month when AT&T launches their ‘All In One’ prepaid brand.  Plans are still tentative, but it’s probable that AT&T will offer a tiered-plan system dependent on the type of phone.

Pricing for feature phones will likely start at $35 a month, and smartphones will start at $50 a month.  This type of plan will provide customers with unlimited talk, text, and a 2GB data cap.  There are rumors of another plan being added on that will offer 5GB of mobile data for $70 a month.

The Yale Whiffenpoofs will once again bring their a cappella talents to the small screen when they appear in the Season 4 finale of “Glee.”

The show will air on Thursday, May 9, at 9 p.m. (EDT and PDT) on the FOX network.

The Whiffs already have a tie with "Glee": The ensemble has performed in two benefit concerts with “Glee” cast member Darren Criss — a 2011 fundraiser for the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation and the Trevor Project, which provides crisis intervention for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and questioning young people; and an April 14 performance supporting P.S. Arts, which helps bring arts education to underserved public schools.

Barnes & Noble announced today they have entered into a new partnership with Google to bring several new apps to their Nook HD and Nook HD+ products. Foremost among the additions is the Google Play Store, which will increase the number of available apps for Nook HD owners from about 10,000 to well over 700,000. B&N CEO William Lynch indicated the new partnership is a result of research and sales data from the recently completed holiday shopping season that indicated users are shifting to more general purpose tablets instead of e-readers. To be successful in the tablet market, “the breadth of applications available is really critical.”

No terms of the deal were released, but other Google apps that will now be available to Nook HD device owners include the Chrome Browser, Gmail, YouTube and Google Maps. Through the Google Play store, users will also be able to access Music. The newest line of Nook HD devices were released last September. B&N is trying to compete with top tablet manufacturers like Samsung, Amazon, Apple and Asus. Unfortunately for B&N, after weak holiday sales, they have slipped out of the top five tablet manufacturers, replaced by Microsoft during the first quarter of 2013 according to IDC.

Google announced an additional location to its growing Fiber network, and this time it is Shawnee, Kansas.  This makes sense because of it’s proximity to Kansas City, which has already been selected to receive Google Fiber service.

Google says that they selected Shawnee as a Fiber candidate due to the city’s vision of keeping their citizens informed and involved using the internet.  This is awesome news for the people of Shawnee, whose city council announced the news after voting on bringing Fiber to town.  There is no expected date for Fiber’s arrival in Shawnee, but engineers will be working hard to get the service up and running as soon as possible.

The Acer Iconia B1 just became available only a couple of months ago, but Acer just announced new versions slated for June. They will now offer a 3G version that will feature a MediaTek quad-core processor. The WiFi version will still have the 1.2GHz dual-core MediaTek processor, but both versions will get bumped up to 1GB of RAM as opposed to 512MB of RAM. You will also have your choice of 8GB or 16GB for storage, but they offer a microSD slot for expandability. The display on both devices remains the same, 7-inches with a resolution of 1024 x 600. Last but not least, the materials are more of a premium feel similar to the Iconia A1, and the back will be white.

Pricing starts at €129 for the WiFi version and €179 for the 3G version. Expect to see these mid-June in Europe, Africa, and the Middle East. Hit the break for the full presser.

A new kind of cosmic flash may reveal something never seen before: the birth of a black hole.

When a massive star exhausts its fuel, it collapses under its own gravity and produces a black hole, an object so dense that not even light can escape its gravitational grip. According to a new analysis by an astrophysicist at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), just before the black hole forms, the dying star may generate a distinct burst of light that will allow astronomers to witness the birth of a new black hole for the first time.

Tony Piro, a postdoctoral scholar at Caltech, describes this signature light burst in a paper published in the May 1 issue of the Astrophysical Journal Letters. While some dying stars that result in black holes explode as gamma-ray bursts, which are among the most energetic phenomena in the universe, those cases are rare, requiring exotic circumstances, Piro explains. "We don't think most run-of-the-mill black holes are created that way." In most cases, according to one hypothesis, a dying star produces a black hole without a bang or a flash: the star would seemingly vanish from the sky—an event dubbed an unnova. "You don't see a burst," he says. "You see a disappearance."

After Facebook bought Instagram, I think we all expected there to be a little crossover in features between both services. Instagram has already introduced a location service with their photos, and now they’ve debuted a photo tagging feature called “Photos of You.” You or your friends can tag each other in pictures, and there’s now a separate section of your profile where you can view photos that you’ve been tagged in. If this sounds similar to Facebook’s photo albums, well… That’s because it is similar to Facebook’s photo albums. Fortunately, you’ve got a few days before those tagged photos go public, so you can change your privacy settings to tone down who can see what or who can tag you in photos. Hit the link below to get the update and start checking it out.

Verizon has started rolling out a small Android 4.1.2 OTA update for Galaxy Note II users. While there’s nothing major in the update, you do get more applications added to multiwindow, as well as the ability to change your quick toggles in display settings. Verizon is also removing the Zappos app and throwing in a handful of bug fixes across several apps. Nothing major, but definitely an update worth getting. Hit the source below to get the full changelog from Verizon.

source: Verizon Wireless

In honor of the Mexican holiday Cinco de Mayo, there will be free salsa dance lessons offered in downtown New Haven at 2 p.m. on Sunday, May 5. The event is sponsored by the shops at Yale, a local merchants' group.

Alisa from Alisa’s House of Salsa will lead an hour-and-a-half class in the Latin American dance on Market Island in the Broadway area (adjacent to the Broadway Center parking lot).

All are invited.