Win US $ 20,000 :Submit A proposal for Low cost WiFi connectivity for field Application

Wireless Internet Connectivity for Field Applications

AWARD: $20,000 USD | DEADLINE: 4/05/15 | ACTIVE SOLVERS: 44 | POSTED: 2/03/15

Data collection in outdoor field studies is problematic and inefficient without a reliable wireless internet connection. The Seeker is looking for a low cost solution to bring wireless internet up to 80 km for field applications without direct line of sight. Many other requirements are given in the Detailed description of the Challenge.

This Challenge requires only a written proposal.

Source: InnoCentive Challenge ID: 9933677

Challenge Overview

The Seeker collects data in outdoor fields all over the world. In rural areas, wireless internet connectivity for field data collection is not always possible. The Seeker needs innovative solutions to provide wireless internet connectivity for field applications. The desired solution should provide wireless internet connectivity to mobile handheld devices operating at a distance of up to 80km from a particular base station without a direct line of sight.

This is a Theoretical Challenge that requires only a written proposal to be submitted. The Challenge award will be contingent upon theoretical evaluation of the proposal by the Seeker.

To receive an award, the Solvers will not have to transfer their exclusive IP rights to the Seeker. Instead, they will grant to the Seeker a non-exclusive license to practice their solutions.

At the Seekers sole discretion, the winning Solver(s) may be invited to a Seeker-Solver event after the Challenge for continued discussions.

Goto Challenge page >>

Win US $ 20,000 :Submit A proposal for Low cost WiFi connectivity for field Application

4:35 PM Computer Science/Information Technology, Engineering/Design, Nature, Physical Sciences, Theoretical-licensing, Win $ 20000

A new recipe for low-density steel that has a combination of strength and malleability beyond that of the lightest, strongest known metals is reported in Nature

Brittle intermetallic compound makes ultrastrong low-density steel with large ductility

Although steel has been the workhorse of the automotive industry since the 1920s, the share by weight of steel and iron in an average light vehicle is now gradually decreasing, from 68.1 per cent in 1995 to 60.1 per cent in 2011 . This has been driven by the low strength-to-weight ratio (specific strength) of iron and steel, and the desire to improve such mechanical properties with other materials. Recently, high-aluminium low-density steels have been actively studied as a means of increasing the specific strength of an alloy by reducing its density. But with increasing aluminium content a problem is encountered: brittle intermetallic compounds can form in the resulting alloys, leading to poor ductility. Here we show that an FeAl-type brittle but hard intermetallic compound (B2) can be effectively used as a strengthening second phase in high-aluminium low-density steel, while alleviating its harmful effect on ductility by controlling its morphology and dispersion. The specific tensile strength and ductility of the developed steel improve on those of the lightest and strongest metallic materials known, titanium alloys. We found that alloying of nickel catalyses the precipitation of nanometre-sized B2 particles in the face-centred cubic matrix of high-aluminium low-density steel during heat treatment of cold-rolled sheet steel. Our results demonstrate how intermetallic compounds can be harnessed in the alloy design of lightweight steels for structural applications and others

a, As-cold-rolled microstructure consisting of austenite matrix (γ) and B2 stringer bands. RD, rolling direction; ND, normal direction. b, Annealed microstructure having fine B2 precipitates in between the retained B2 bands in austenite matrix. c, Scanning TEM image of the annealed high-specific-strength steel (HSSS) showing morphologies of B2 particles. The inset shows the selected area diffraction pattern of a B2 precipitate. d, Partitioning of alloying elements between B2 precipitate and austenite matrix. e, Sketches illustrating the formation mechanism of B2 precipitates of types 2 and 3 in b.

Read original article at A lighter, stronger, flexible steel

A new recipe for low-density steel that has a combination of strength and malleability beyond that of the lightest, strongest known metals is reported in Nature

4:10 PM automotive industry, flexible metal, metal, strognger metal, ultrastrong

Quick DNA Scans Could Ensure Food Is Safe to Eat

Tools to analyze DNA in meals, including fish, may soon help eliminate fraudulent claims as to what type of food is being sold or served.
Credit: Michael Saechang

An apple can kill, a sprinkle of sprouts can send you to the hospital and your succulent, pan-seared red snapper may actually be tilefish. Despite rising concerns about food safety and authenticity, contamination rates by salmonella, campylobacter,Escherichia coli and other common pathogens have not fallen or are actually on the increase, depending on the microbe, according to a 2013 report from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Each year foodborne illnesses caused by these microorganisms sicken 48 million Americans, hospitalize 128,000 and kill 3,000, according to the agency.

Food fraud is also increasing. In 2014 Oceana, an international conservation organization, published a two-year study of 1,215 seafood samples and 46 fish types from 674 retailers in 21 states. They found that a third of samples were mislabeled.

Tools to analyze DNA in food items may soon help eliminate these problems. Techniques ranging from whole genome sequencing to the ability to create artificial DNA labels that indicate points of origin are surprisingly affordable now, and have led to novel global collaborations and inventions. Scientists worldwide are working to create databases of foodborne microbial strains, sequence the most common pathogens and tag foods for immediate traceability. The new initiatives promise to speed investigations and reduce foodborne illnesses and deaths; the techniques could also spot food fakery by marketers.

Genome Trakr, a five-year collaboration between the University of California, Davis; Agilent Technologies; and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, promises to perform whole genome sequencing on a total of 100,000 types of common foodborne pathogens. The technology maps the entire DNA sequence of a microbe, and allows scientists to distinguish one strain from another, allowing fast track-back and earlier elimination of outbreaks around the world. The project began in March 2012 and the database, hosted by the National Center for Biotechnology Information, will be available online and at no cost to researchers and public health officials. The zoom-in detail of a sequenced genome will make it possible to distinguish different strains of a microbe that are otherwise indistinguishable, and trace back a small cluster outbreak before it becomes widespread.

Right now that kind of trace-back is difficult without detailed epidemiologic exposure data. A recent study from Cornell University suggests the new technology is an effective and faster replacement. Using whole genome sequencing, researchers were able to double the number of cases associated with a known 2010 outbreak of a strain of salmonella called salmonella Heidelberg at a long-term care facility in New York City. They even found cases outside the metro region.

Whole genome sequencing has already proved successful in halting serious food outbreaks. In 2012 researchers isolated the specific strain in a salmonella outbreak in tuna sushi that sickened 258 individuals, and tracked it back to a processing plant in India. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration investigated the plant and found 10 sanitation slipups, including four outright violations of safety protocols. In 2014 the FDA was able to halt a U.S.Listeria outbreak that had killed one and sickened seven others. They genotyped and linked the strain to soft Hispanic-style cheeses manufactured by a company called Roos Foods, which ceased all manufacturing after being shut down by the FDA

The gigantic open-access Genome Trakr database should speed up this kind of detective work by providing an enormous volume of data that has already been analyzed. The project’s director, U.C. Davis microbiologist Bart Weimer, says that “We’ve just extended the project to China, and they will map another 10,000 genomes and deposit them. We have other global collaborations pending.”

Sequencing a whole genome is only one of the new approaches to food safety, however. Food fraud prevention is also benefitting from a large international project called The International Barcode of Life (iBOL), which is building a genetic library of all life on Earth. Initiated in 2003 by geneticist Paul Hebert at the University of Guelph in Ontario, it offers a global online database of DNA labels, akin to the bar codes on food packaging, for different species. These DNA bar codes are sequences from a small and stable region of the genome, which can reliably be used to identify a species.

The project has already created over 2.6 million bar-code records for almost 200,000 species of plants and animals, and Hebert hopes to reach 500,000 by the end of 2015. The BOL can distinguish farmed from wild salmon because they are two different species. A 2015 report from the CDC used bar coding to identify imported poisonous puffer fish that were being sold in the U.S. as nonpoisonous varieties. “DNA testing is often the only way to correctly identify food and medicinal products,” says Mark Stoeckle, a researcher at The Rockefeller University who used DNA bar codes to finger fake fish sold in New York City in a 2009 experiment that became known as “sushigate.”

Finally, inspired by the bar-coding idea, one new company, DNATrek, is creating synthetic bar codes for food items. The technology consists of DNA sequences extracted from plants; it is an odorless, colorless and tasteless material which can be mixed with already-in-use food coatings (such as natural waxes and oils) and sprayed on foods. The DNA sequences act like invisible bar codes and can be applied at each point of risk in the food chain: the farm, the sorting facility, the distributor, the packer and even the retailer. These bar codes can be read by polymerase chain reaction testing, a process that generates millions of copies of a small piece of DNA, so that it can be easily identified. “When an outbreak occurs,” says company founder Anthony Zografos, “polymerase chain reaction technology can read the DNA code in about 20 minutes in the laboratory, allowing immediate trace-back rather than weeks or months.”

The codes can also help verify the authenticity of a product like Italian olive oil: The tags should trace back to an olive farm and to packing facilities in Italy. DNATrek’s technology has been approved by the FDA, and this year will be tested in the U.S. supply chain. A similar DNA bar code has been designed by the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich. There, researcher Robert Grass and colleagues created DNA labels encapsulated in small, food-safe silica particles that are already used as additives in certain foodstuffs. They then added the particles to milk. Later polymerase chain reaction testing was able to detect the labels in cheese and yogurt made from the milk. Regulatory hoops still need to be overcome, before widespread adoption of the second method, however.

DNA Trek’s Zografos thinks that smartphones may one day have apps that can actually detect bacterial contamination or synthetic bar codes. “My colleagues and I were thinking how wonderful that invention could be, but how many years away it was. And then we saw that a professor at U.C.L.A. had developed a smartphone app that could read a single virus or bacteria.” That researcher, bioengineer Aydogan Ozcan, recently published a study with his colleagues showing that a cellphone-based imaging system could detect viruses and nanoparticles. The phone is essentially converted into an advanced fluorescent microscope. The mobile microscopy unit uses the phone's camera to visualize and measure the length of single-molecule DNA strands.

So the day may not be far off when we can hold our phones over a fish fillet to make sure we know what we are eating.

Quick DNA Scans Could Ensure Food Is Safe to Eat

9:02 AM analyse food, dna scan, fish analysis, food, safe food

Quick DNA Scans Could Ensure Food Is Safe to Eat

Tools to analyze DNA in meals, including fish, may soon help eliminate fraudulent claims as to what type of food is being sold or served.
Credit: Michael Saechang

An apple can kill, a sprinkle of sprouts can send you to the hospital and your succulent, pan-seared red snapper may actually be tilefish. Despite rising concerns about food safety and authenticity, contamination rates by salmonella, campylobacter,Escherichia coli and other common pathogens have not fallen or are actually on the increase, depending on the microbe, according to a 2013 report from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Each year foodborne illnesses caused by these microorganisms sicken 48 million Americans, hospitalize 128,000 and kill 3,000, according to the agency.

Food fraud is also increasing. In 2014 Oceana, an international conservation organization, published a two-year study of 1,215 seafood samples and 46 fish types from 674 retailers in 21 states. They found that a third of samples were mislabeled.

Tools to analyze DNA in food items may soon help eliminate these problems. Techniques ranging from whole genome sequencing to the ability to create artificial DNA labels that indicate points of origin are surprisingly affordable now, and have led to novel global collaborations and inventions. Scientists worldwide are working to create databases of foodborne microbial strains, sequence the most common pathogens and tag foods for immediate traceability. The new initiatives promise to speed investigations and reduce foodborne illnesses and deaths; the techniques could also spot food fakery by marketers.

Genome Trakr, a five-year collaboration between the University of California, Davis; Agilent Technologies; and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, promises to perform whole genome sequencing on a total of 100,000 types of common foodborne pathogens. The technology maps the entire DNA sequence of a microbe, and allows scientists to distinguish one strain from another, allowing fast track-back and earlier elimination of outbreaks around the world. The project began in March 2012 and the database, hosted by the National Center for Biotechnology Information, will be available online and at no cost to researchers and public health officials. The zoom-in detail of a sequenced genome will make it possible to distinguish different strains of a microbe that are otherwise indistinguishable, and trace back a small cluster outbreak before it becomes widespread.

Right now that kind of trace-back is difficult without detailed epidemiologic exposure data. A recent study from Cornell University suggests the new technology is an effective and faster replacement. Using whole genome sequencing, researchers were able to double the number of cases associated with a known 2010 outbreak of a strain of salmonella called salmonella Heidelberg at a long-term care facility in New York City. They even found cases outside the metro region.

Whole genome sequencing has already proved successful in halting serious food outbreaks. In 2012 researchers isolated the specific strain in a salmonella outbreak in tuna sushi that sickened 258 individuals, and tracked it back to a processing plant in India. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration investigated the plant and found 10 sanitation slipups, including four outright violations of safety protocols. In 2014 the FDA was able to halt a U.S.Listeria outbreak that had killed one and sickened seven others. They genotyped and linked the strain to soft Hispanic-style cheeses manufactured by a company called Roos Foods, which ceased all manufacturing after being shut down by the FDA

The gigantic open-access Genome Trakr database should speed up this kind of detective work by providing an enormous volume of data that has already been analyzed. The project’s director, U.C. Davis microbiologist Bart Weimer, says that “We’ve just extended the project to China, and they will map another 10,000 genomes and deposit them. We have other global collaborations pending.”

Sequencing a whole genome is only one of the new approaches to food safety, however. Food fraud prevention is also benefitting from a large international project called The International Barcode of Life (iBOL), which is building a genetic library of all life on Earth. Initiated in 2003 by geneticist Paul Hebert at the University of Guelph in Ontario, it offers a global online database of DNA labels, akin to the bar codes on food packaging, for different species. These DNA bar codes are sequences from a small and stable region of the genome, which can reliably be used to identify a species.

The project has already created over 2.6 million bar-code records for almost 200,000 species of plants and animals, and Hebert hopes to reach 500,000 by the end of 2015. The BOL can distinguish farmed from wild salmon because they are two different species. A 2015 report from the CDC used bar coding to identify imported poisonous puffer fish that were being sold in the U.S. as nonpoisonous varieties. “DNA testing is often the only way to correctly identify food and medicinal products,” says Mark Stoeckle, a researcher at The Rockefeller University who used DNA bar codes to finger fake fish sold in New York City in a 2009 experiment that became known as “sushigate.”

Finally, inspired by the bar-coding idea, one new company, DNATrek, is creating synthetic bar codes for food items. The technology consists of DNA sequences extracted from plants; it is an odorless, colorless and tasteless material which can be mixed with already-in-use food coatings (such as natural waxes and oils) and sprayed on foods. The DNA sequences act like invisible bar codes and can be applied at each point of risk in the food chain: the farm, the sorting facility, the distributor, the packer and even the retailer. These bar codes can be read by polymerase chain reaction testing, a process that generates millions of copies of a small piece of DNA, so that it can be easily identified. “When an outbreak occurs,” says company founder Anthony Zografos, “polymerase chain reaction technology can read the DNA code in about 20 minutes in the laboratory, allowing immediate trace-back rather than weeks or months.”

The codes can also help verify the authenticity of a product like Italian olive oil: The tags should trace back to an olive farm and to packing facilities in Italy. DNATrek’s technology has been approved by the FDA, and this year will be tested in the U.S. supply chain. A similar DNA bar code has been designed by the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich. There, researcher Robert Grass and colleagues created DNA labels encapsulated in small, food-safe silica particles that are already used as additives in certain foodstuffs. They then added the particles to milk. Later polymerase chain reaction testing was able to detect the labels in cheese and yogurt made from the milk. Regulatory hoops still need to be overcome, before widespread adoption of the second method, however.

DNA Trek’s Zografos thinks that smartphones may one day have apps that can actually detect bacterial contamination or synthetic bar codes. “My colleagues and I were thinking how wonderful that invention could be, but how many years away it was. And then we saw that a professor at U.C.L.A. had developed a smartphone app that could read a single virus or bacteria.” That researcher, bioengineer Aydogan Ozcan, recently published a study with his colleagues showing that a cellphone-based imaging system could detect viruses and nanoparticles. The phone is essentially converted into an advanced fluorescent microscope. The mobile microscopy unit uses the phone's camera to visualize and measure the length of single-molecule DNA strands.

So the day may not be far off when we can hold our phones over a fish fillet to make sure we know what we are eating.

Quick DNA Scans Could Ensure Food Is Safe to Eat

9:01 AM analyse food, dna scan, fish analysis, food, safe food

Ebola Drug Trial Has Encouraging Early Results, and Questions Follow

An Ebola treatment center run by the Alliance for International Medical Action has tested the drug favipiravir. Credit Sylvain Cherkaoui/Cosmos for ALIMA Sylvain Cherkaoui/Cosmos for ALIMA

For the first time, a drug is showing promising signs of effectiveness in Ebola patients participating in a study. The medicine, which interferes with the virus’s ability to copy itself, seems to have halved mortality — to 15 percent, from 30 percent — in patients with low to moderate levels of Ebola in their blood, researchers have found. It had no effect in patients with more virus in their blood, who are more likely to die.

The drug, approved as an influenza treatment in Japan last year, was generally well tolerated.

“The results are encouraging in a certain phase of the disease,” Dr. Sakoba Keita, director of disease control for the Guinean Ministry of Health, said in a telephone interview. The drug is being tested in Guinea, one of the three West African countries most affected by the Ebola crisis.

The early findings have not yet been announced, but they raise questions about which patients, if any, outside the study should be offered treatment with the drug, favipiravir. “These are very difficult, agonizing decisions,” said Susan Ellenberg, a professor of biostatistics at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine, who was not involved in the research. She cautioned that early results were sometimes not borne out.

Avigan, a drug approved as an anti-influenza drug in Japan, is showing promise in treating ebola. Credit Issei Kato/Reuters Issei Kato/Reuters

The drug has been provided on an emergency basis to Ebola patients in European countries, but not in Africa. The Japanese maker of the drug announced in October that it had 20,000 courses of treatment in stock. The epidemic is now ebbing but is not over. The World Health Organization on Wednesdayreported 124 new cases in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia in the week that ended on Sunday, warning of an increased geographical spread in Guinea and a rise in new cases in all three countries for the first time this year.

Early reports of the interim results of the drug trial have created unanticipated complications, delaying the testing of at least one other therapy as researchers reconsidered plans and some doctors pressed to make favipiravir more widely available.

Researchers and health authorities have been quietly debating whether and when to release the preliminary results of the study. The dilemmas they face echo those from the early years of the AIDS epidemic. Because mortality was so high in a disease with no proven treatment, there was demand to provide experimental therapies to everyone.

The results for the drug favipiravir are based on an analysis of 69 patients older than 14 who have received it at two sites in Guinea since December. The survival rates of those with low to moderate levels of virus in their blood were significantly better than those of patients previously treated at a center run by Doctors Without Borders in Guéckédou, Guinea.

Caroline Guele, 31, a rice farmer who lost two children and her husband to Ebola, received the drug in January at the site run by the Alliance for International Medical Action soon after she developed symptoms. She said she believed it contributed to her survival. “When I heard I could take the medicine, I actually prayed to God it would help me,” she said in a telephone interview Wednesday.

In a typical drug study, participants would be randomly assigned to take the drug or not, and the outcomes would be compared to see if the drug made a difference. However, because Ebola is so deadly and there is no known treatment aside from supportive care, all patients in the study were provided with the treatment. Fluctuating death rates during the current epidemic have complicated researchers’ efforts to assess whether the new drug should be credited with the reduced mortality.

The drug was expected to be most effective in patients receiving it within two to three days of showing symptoms, similar to antiviral treatments for influenza. However, most study participants arrived at the Ebola treatment units later in their illnesses, a median of five days after their symptoms began, so results were analyzed instead in terms of the approximate levels of virus in the blood.

Independent boards charged with monitoring the drug trial detected the encouraging findings and recommended that they be made public. Results were submitted for review to the Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infection, which will take place in Seattle at the end of the month. A draft of an abstract of the findings was reviewed by The New York Times.

“With Ebola, there’s precious little good news,” said Dr. Susan Shepherd, who served as medical coordinator at a treatment unit run by the Alliance for International Medical Action, one of two sites where the drug was tested. (The other was a facility run by Doctors Without Borders.)

Dr. Shepherd added, “There will, I think, be an enormous pressure and desire to offer the treatment more broadly.”

A patient is treated at the ALIMA ebola treatment center in Nzerekore, Guinea. Credit Sylvain Cherkaoui/Cosmos for ALIMA Sylvain Cherkaoui/Cosmos for ALIMA

The trial is sponsored by the French public research institute Inserm, with support from the European Union, and is run by a consortium of organizations and the Guinean government. The drug, also known by the trade name Avigan, was developed by the Japanese company Toyama Chemical, part of Fujifilm Group, and approved for influenza treatment in that country last March after safety testing.

The company has said it would produce more doses of the drug in anticipation of the trial. It has also provided the tablets on an emergency basis to several Ebola patients in Europe, according to a company spokeswoman, Kana Matsumoto. She said that the drug had never been provided on that basis to patients in any African country, and that the company had no comment as to whether it would do so in the future given the new findings.

“With a medication that seems to be safe, you really don’t have a leg to stand on in terms of this person gets it and this person doesn’t,” Dr. Shepherd said. “The problem we seem to have is it doesn’t help at all for people who have high viral loads.”

Researchers hope that some patients’ lives might be saved by bolstering the immune system, including through transfusions of serum extracted from the blood of Ebola survivors, which contains virus-fighting antibodies.

However, expectations around favipiravir have contributed to a delay in a trial of serum transfusions, also known as convalescent plasma therapy, in Guinea’s capital, according to Roeland Scholtalbers, the head of communications for the Institute of Tropical Medicine in Antwerp, Belgium, the study’s sponsor.

Some doctors are urging that if favipirivir has a positive effect and seems safe, it should be given to everyone with the virus.

If patients getting the serum transfusions also get favipiravir, it would probably be more difficult to discern whether the serum had an effect. Mr. Scholtalbers said that just because early results for favipiravir came first did not mean that researchers or the public should “put more hope on that solution than any other solution.”

“There are pretty good arguments to think that plasma can give good impact,” she continued. “It will be a shame if we don’t manage as a scientific community to test it.”

Dr. Xavier Anglaret, the lead investigator of the favipiravir trial in Guinea, said that he and his colleagues agreed that the other study was important. “The plasma trial should start as early as possible,” he said.

Both trials are all the more important because of the abrupt cancellation last Friday of a study testing a third therapy, the anti-viral drug brincidofovir, after the manufacturer found an insufficient number of Ebola patients in Liberia, where the trial had been planned, to determine the effectiveness of the drug.

Dr. Anglaret said researchers had expected to have results from all three studies around the same time. Instead, one study advanced ahead of the others, with early results that are encouraging but not definitive. As of Tuesday, Dr. Anglaret said, the favipiravir trial had enrolled 101 patients in the continuing study.

The complications of managing the Ebola trials are a sign that more needs to be done to prioritize research in future outbreaks, said Dr. Bernard Lo, a bioethicist and president of the Greenwall Foundation in New York City.

Ebola Drug Trial Has Encouraging Early Results, and Questions Follow

8:48 AM DRUG FOR EBOLA, EBOLA, EBOLA cure, Preventing Ebola