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Monkey genes shed light on brain mysteries

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A cross-section of the neocortex and cerebellum from an adult rhesus monkey brain has been labeled with a stain that highlights brain cells. (Credit: Allen Institute)

A project led by Seattle’s Allen Institute for Brain Science has mapped out how genes get fired up in key areas of a rhesus monkey’s brain as it develops – and the results could help researchers unlock the mysteries surrounding autism, microcephaly, schizophrenia and other neurological conditions.

The gene expression map, laid out today in research published by the journal Nature, shows that rhesus macaque monkeys are much better models than the usual mice for humans when it comes to brain development. It also confirms the view that different neurological disorders follow dramatically different genetic pathways.

“The sets of genes that turn on early, and the sets of genes that turn on in the adult, shift dramatically,” Allen Institute neuroscientist Ed Lein, the study’s senior author, told GeekWire.

The gene map follows up on earlier work that Lein and his colleagues have done with mice, to track how the brain develops from its fetal stage to adulthood. The Allen Institute has done similar work with adult human brains and fetal brains as well.

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Brain Observatory peers into the minds of mice

Brain Observatory research
Senior scientist Jerome Lecoq and research associate Kate Roll inspect a microscope platform from the Allen Brain Observatory that was used to record real-time cellular activity in the visual cortex of mice as they were shown pictures and movies. (Credit: Allen Institute)

The Allen Brain Observatory is open for business, revealing what’s running through the mind of a mouse as it sees patterns of light and dark, pictures of butterflies and tigers – or even the opening scene of Orson Welles’ 1958 classic film, “Touch of Evil.”

The online repository of 30 trillion bytes’ worth of brain-cell readings represents the latest scientific offering from the Allen Institute for Brain Science, funded by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen. It follows through on a $300 million pledge that Allen made more than four years ago.

The Allen Institute’s president and chief scientific officer, Christof Koch, has compared the project to a Hubble Space Telescope for the brain.

“No one has ever taken this kind of industrial approach to surveying the active brain at cellular resolution in order to measure how the brain processes information in real time,” Koch said today in the institute’s announcement of the data release. “This is a milestone in our quest to decode how the brain’s computations give rise to perception, behavior and consciousness.”

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Hotline traffic can predict disease outbreaks

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Mosquitoes are carries of dengue fever. (Credit: CDC)

Researchers from the University of Washington and elsewhere say they can forecast the rise and fall of dengue fever outbreaks as much as three weeks in advance by analyzing the patterns of phone calls to public-health hotlines.

Dengue fever is spread by a mosquito-borne virus that infects millions of people a year. The infection causes a flu-like illness and can produce potentially lethal complications. There’s no specific cure or vaccine available, but early detection and proper medical care can reduce fatality rates below 1 percent, the World Health Organization says.

The researchers’ experiment, described today in a paper published by the journalScience Advances, focused on cases of the disease reported in Lahore, Pakistan. A telephone hotline was set up in Lahore in the wake of a 2011 dengue epidemic to help the public deal with the disease. Researchers analyzed more than 300,000 calls made to the hotline during 2012 and 2013 to see how many came from which locale, on a block-by-block basis.

They found that call volumes spiked in advance of two outbreaks, in August of 2012 and 2013, and rose at the same time as a dramatic increase in hospital cases in the fall of 2013. “The appeal of our model is its usefulness despite its sheer simplicity,” the authors wrote.

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BlueDot innovation factory raises $10.1million

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BlueDot CEO Naveen Jain at his office in Bellevue, Wash. (GeekWire photo)

BELLEVUE, Wash. – BlueDot, the “innovation factory” founded by serial tech entrepreneur Naveen Jain, says it has completed a $10.1 million Series A funding round with an assist from the likes of XPRIZE founder Peter Diamandis.

Jain told GeekWire that Diamandis’ breakthrough investment fund, Bold Capital Partners, is among the participants in the round. So is Soma Somasegar, a former Microsoft executive who is now a venture partner at Madrona Venture Group. And so is CerraCap Ventures, a fund that made a splash late last year with its investment in Special Occasions, NDTV’s online wedding planning platform in India.

“Bold Capital, CerraCap Ventures, I and many other successful executives and entrepreneurs invested in the round,” Jain, who was born in India, confirmed in an email today. He said the round valued BlueDot at $60 million.

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Microsoft, UW raise the bar on DNA data storage

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The pink smear of DNA at the end of this test tube can store incredible amounts of encoded digital data. (Credit: Tara Brown Photography / University of Washington)

Computer scientists from Microsoft and the University of Washington say they’ve set a new standard for DNA storage of digital data – but they acknowledge that the standard won’t last long.

For now, the bar is set at 200 megabytes. That’s how much data the researchers were able to encode in synthetic DNA pairings, and then correctly read out again. The encoded files included a high-definition music video by the band OK Go, titled “This Too Shall Pass”… the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in more than 100 languages … the top 100 books from Project Gutenberg … and the Crop Trust’s global seed database.

But Karin Strauss, the principal Microsoft researcher on the project, acknowledges that so much more is theoretically possible.

“You could pack an exabyte of data in an inch cubed,” she told GeekWire. An exabyte is equal to 8 quintillion bits of information, which is much more information than is contained in the Library of Congress. (Exactly how much more? That’s a matter of debate.)

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Mass extinction traced to a ‘one-two punch’

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What led to the mass extinction that did in the dinosaurs more than 65 million years ago? Scientists say volcano-caused climate change was a contributing cause. (Credit: Zina Deretsky / NSF)

Scientists generally agree that a catastrophic asteroid blast killed off the dinosaurs and most of Earth’s other species more than 65 million years ago, but newly described evidence supports the view that there was an additional culprit: rapid climate change brought on by volcanic eruptions.

The idea that the Cretaceous-Paleogene mass extinction was a one-two punch isn’t new. For decades, scientists have debated how much the eruptions in the Indian subcontinent’s Deccan Traps contributed to the die-off, as opposed to the miles-wide space rock that hit the coast of Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula.

A study of ancient Antarctic fossil seashells, published online today in Nature Communications, turns the spotlight on the volcanoes’ effect.

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6 bright ideas for summer science books

Lumin-essence
Swirls of bioluminescent dinoflagellates, called Noctiluca scintillans, sparkle under the night sky in a quiet cove on Shaw Island. To learn more about how Floris van Breugel took this picture, visit ArtInNaturePhotography.com. (Copyright 2011 Floris van Breugel)

Summer reading is often light and airy, but those are qualities that don’t usually apply to science books. Now that school’s out, summer blockbusters are showing up in the theaters, and the vacation season has begun, here are a few recently published books that provide a completely different kind of “light reading,” plus some heavy-duty science to balance things out.

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‘Voyage of Time’ trailer sends you on cosmic trip

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The poster for “Voyage of Time” emphasizes the film’s cosmic subject matter. (Credit: IMAX)

The video trailer for “Voyage of Time” provides a trippy taste of a movie that’s been more than 30 years in the making – and tells the story of a universe that’s been billions of years in the making.

Make that two movies: The big-screen IMAX version of Terrence Malick’s film, narrated by Brad Pitt with a running time of 40 minutes, is due for release on Oct. 7. There’ll also be a 90-minute version narrated by Cate Blanchett.

What’s the difference? That’s not exactly clear. The longer version is described as a “poetic and provocative ride full of open questions,” while the IMAX experience “immerses audiences directly into the story of the universe and life itself.”

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UW says prof violated sex harassment rules

The University of Washington says that an internal investigation has found virus researcher Michael Katze violated sexual harassment policies – and that disciplinary action is currently under consideration.

Michael Katze
The University of Washington says virologist Michael Katze has violated university sexual harassment policies. (Credit: UW)

“His conduct was inappropriate and not in any way reflective of the university’s values,” UW spokesman Norm Arkans said today in a statement posted online. “This is why the matter is now in the faculty disciplinary process, through which an appropriate outcome will be adjudicated.”

The statement came after BuzzFeed published a lengthy report delving into the details of the investigation. The UW case is the latest in a series of academic sexual-harassment cases to come to light.

Buzzfeed quoted Katze’s attorney, Jon Rosen, as saying that Katze will “continue to vigorously defend against the false and salacious charges pending before the University of Washington adjudication panel.”

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Stephen Hawking warns of ‘AI arms race’

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British physicist Stephen Hawking chats with Larry King. (Credit: Ora.TV)

British physicist Stephen Hawking says the potential threat from artificial intelligence isn’t just a far-off “Terminator”-style nightmare. He’s already pointing to signs that AI is going down the wrong track.

“Governments seem to be engaged in an AI arms race, designing planes and weapons with intelligent technologies,” Hawking told veteran interviewer Larry King. “The funding for projects directly beneficial to the human race, such as improved medical screening, seems a somewhat lower priority.”

It’s not surprising that Hawking is worried about AI – he’s been issuing warning for years. But the concern over an AI arms race adds a short-term spin to the long-term concern.

There’s certainly an AI race going on, spanning a spectrum from Microsoft’s vision of AI-enhanced applications to the self-driving cars that so many companies seem to be working on. Hawking has joined forces with SpaceX founder Elon Musk, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak and thousands of other techies in expressing deep concern about the military side of AI.

In the “Larry King Now” online interview, available via Ora.TV, Hawking acknowledged that AI can bring lots of benefits to humanity. “Imagine algorithms able to quickly assess scientists’ ideas, catch cancer earlier and predict the stock markets,” he said.

But Hawking said AI’s reach will have to be strictly regulated.

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