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2013-05-15

Carbon nanotubes: Adding ionic liquid to nanotube films could build smaller gadgets, and create 'Smart Windows' that darken in bright sun

The challenge has been figuring out how to incorporate all those great properties into useful electronic devices. A new discovery by four scientists at the University of California, Riverside has brought us closer to the goal. They discovered that by adding ionic liquid -- a kind of liquid salt -- they can modify the optical transparency of single-walled carbon nanotube films in a controlled pattern.

"It was a discovery, not something we were looking for," said Robert Haddon, director of UC Riverside's Center for Nanoscale Science and Engineering. Scientists Feihu Wang, Mikhail Itkis and Elena Bekyarova were looking at ways to improve the electrical behavior of carbon nanotubes, and as part of their research they also looked at whether they could modulate the transparency of the films. An article about their findings was published online in April in Nature Photonics.

The scientists spent some time trying to affect the optical properties of carbon nanotube films with an electric field, with little success, said Itkis, a research scientist at the Center for Nanoscale Science and Engineering. "But when we applied a thin layer of an ionic liquid on top of the nanotube film we noticed that the change of transparency is amplified 100 times and that the change in transparency occurs in the vicinity of one of the electrodes, so we started studying what causes these drastic changes and how to create transparency in controlled patterns."

An ionic liquid contains negative and positive ions which can interact with the nanotubes, dramatically influencing their ability to store an electrical charge. That increases or decreases their transparency, similar to the way that glasses darken in sunlight. By learning how to manipulate the transparency, scientists may be able to start incorporating nanotube films into products that now rely on slower or heavier components, such as metal oxide.

For instance, using nanotube films meshed with a film of ionic liquid, scientists could create more cost effective Smart Windows, that darken when it's hot outside and become lighter when it's cold.

"Smart Windows are a new industry that has been shown to save 50 percent of your energy costs," said Itkis. "On a very hot day you can shade your window just by turning a switch, so you don't have to use as much air conditioning. And on a winter day, you can make a window more transparent to let in more light."

The scientists still need to study the economic viability of using nanotube film, but Bekyarova said one possible advantage would be that carbon nanotubes are ultra thin -- about 1,000 times smaller than a single strand of hair -- so you would need very little to cover a large area, such as the windows of a large building.

Itkis said nanotube films also hold great promise in building lighter and more compact analytical instruments such as spectrometers, which are used to analyze the properties of light.

In this application, a nanotube film with an array of electrodes can be used as an electrically configurable diffraction grating for an infrared spectrometer, allowing the wavelength of light to be scanned without moving parts.

Furthermore, by using addressable electrodes, the spatial pattern of the induced transparency in the nanotube film can be modified in a controlled way and used as an electrically configurable optical media for storage and transfer of information via patterns of light.

Carbon nanotubes have great potential, but there is still plenty of work to be done to make them useful in electronics and optoelectronics, Haddon said.

"The challenge is to harness their outstanding properties," he said. "They won't be available at Home Depot next week, but there is continuing progress in the field."

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Q1 mobile phone sales buoyed by Asia-Pac

SAN FRANCISCO—First quarter mobile phone sales grew less than 1 percent compared to the first quarter of last year, with only the Asia-Pacific region showing year-over-year growth, according to market research firm Gartner Inc.

Mobile phone sales in the Asia-Pacific region grew by 6 percent compared with the first quarter of last year, Gartner said. All other regions of the world saw year-over-year declines in mobile phone sales, according to the firm.

In all, global mobile phone sales totaled nearly 426 million in the first quarter, Gartner said. Smartphone sales totaled 210 million units in the first quarter, up 43 percent from the first quarter of last year, Gartner said.

"More than 226 million mobile phones were sold to end users in Asia-Pacific in the first quarter of 2013, which helped the region increase its share of global mobile phones to 53.1 percent year-on-year," said Anshul Gupta, principal research analyst at Gartner, in a statement.

In the EMEA region (Europe, the Middle East and Africa), first quarter mobile phone sales were down nearly 4 percent compared with the first quarter of 2012, Gartner said. Sales were down nearly 10 percent in North America, 4 percent in Latin America and 7 percent in Japan, Gartner said.

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Passenger car drivers are more likely to die in crashes with SUVs, regardless of crash ratings

The study is being presented May 16 at the annual meeting of the Society of Academic Emergency Medicine in Atlanta.

In head-on collisions between passenger cars and SUVs, the UB researchers found that drivers in passenger cars were nearly 10 times more likely to die if the SUV involved had a better crash rating. Drivers of passenger cars were more than four times more likely to die even if the passenger car had a better crash rating than the SUV.

"When two vehicles are involved in a crash, the overwhelming majority of fatalities occur in the smaller and lighter of the two vehicles," says Dietrich Jehle, MD, UB professor of emergency medicine at Erie County Medical Center and first author.

"But even when the two vehicles are of similar weights, outcomes are still better in the SUVs," he says, "because in frontal crashes, SUVs tend to ride over shorter passenger vehicles, due to bumper mismatch, crushing the occupant of the passenger car."

When crash ratings were not considered, the odds of death for drivers in passenger cars were more than seven times higher than SUV drivers in all head-on crashes. In crashes involving two passenger cars, a lower car safety rating was associated with a 1.28 times higher risk of death for the driver and a driver was 1.22 times more likely to die in a head-on crash for each point lower in the crash rating.

The UB researchers conducted the retrospective study on severe head-on motor vehicle crashes in the Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS) database between 1995 and 2010. The database includes all motor vehicle crashes that resulted in a death within 30 days and includes 83,521 vehicles involved in head-on crashes.

"Along with price and fuel efficiency, car safety ratings are one of the things that consumers rely on when shopping for an automobile," says Jehle. These ratings, from one to five stars, are based on data from frontal, side barrier and side pole crashes that compare vehicles of similar type, size and weight. The one to five star safety rating system was created in 1978 by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

Jehle notes that after manufacturers addressed the roll-over problem with SUVs that plagued these vehicles in the 1980s and 1990s, rollover crashes are now much less common in SUVs.

"Currently, the larger SUVs are some of the safest cars on the roadways with fewer rollovers and outstanding outcomes in frontal crashes with passenger vehicles," he says.

Jehle says that prior studies on frontal crashes have found that compared to passenger cars with a 5-star crash rating, cars with a rating from one to four stars have a 7-36% increase in driver death rates.

"Passenger vehicles with excellent safety ratings may provide a false degree of confidence to the buyer regarding the relative safety of these vehicles as demonstrated by our findings," says Jehle. "Consumers should take into consideration the increased safety of SUVs in head-on crashes with passenger vehicles when purchasing a car."

Co-authors with Jehle, all from UB, are: Albert Arslan and Chirag Doshi, MD candidates in the School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences; Joseph Consiglio, data manager/statistician for the UB Department of Emergency Medicine and a graduate student in the Department of Biostatistics in the School of Public Health and Health Professions; Juliana Wilson DO, a post-doctoral scholar in the Department of Emergency Medicine and Christine DeSanno DO, a resident in the UB Department of Emergency Medicine.

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Using clay to grow bone: Researchers use synthetic silicate to stimulate stem cells into bone cells

May 14, 2013 — In new research published online May 13, 2013 in Advanced Materials, researchers from Brigham and Women's Hospital (BWH) are the first to report that synthetic silicate nanoplatelets (also known as layered clay) can induce stem cells to become bone cells without the need of additional bone-inducing factors. Synthetic silicates are made up of simple or complex salts of silicic acids, and have been used extensively for various commercial and industrial applications, such as food additives, glass and ceramic filler materials, and anti-caking agents.

"With an aging population in the US, injuries and degenerative conditions are subsequently on the rise," said Ali Khademhosseini, PhD, BWH Division of Biomedical Engineering, senior study author. "As a result, there is an increased demand for therapies that can repair damaged tissues. In particular, there is a great need for new materials that can direct stem cell differentiation and facilitate functional tissue formation. Silicate nanoplatelets have the potential to address this need in medicine and biotechnology."

"Based on the strong preliminary studies, we believe that these highly bioactive nanoplatelets may be utilized to develop devices such as injectable tissue repair matrixes, bioactive fillers, or therapeutic agents for stimulating specific cellular responses in bone-related tissue engineering," said Akhilesh Gaharwar, PhD, BWH Division of Biomedical Engineering, first study author. "Future mechanistic studies will be performed to better understand underlying pathways that govern favorable responses, leading to a better understanding of how materials strategies can be leveraged to further improve construct performance and ultimately shorten patient recovery time."

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Alligator stem cell study gives clues to tooth regeneration

May 14, 2013 — Alligators may help scientists learn how to stimulate tooth regeneration in people, according to new research led by the Keck School of Medicine of USC.

For the first time, a global team of researchers led by USC pathology Professor Cheng-Ming Chuong, M.D., Ph.D., has uncovered unique cellular and molecular mechanisms behind tooth renewal in American alligators. Their study, titled "Specialized stem cell niche enables repetitive renewal of alligator teeth," appears in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the official journal of the United States National Academy of Sciences.

"Humans naturally only have two sets of teeth -- baby teeth and adult teeth," said Chuong. "Ultimately, we want to identify stem cells that can be used as a resource to stimulate tooth renewal in adult humans who have lost teeth. But, to do that, we must first understand how they renew in other animals and why they stop in people."

Whereas most vertebrates can replace teeth throughout their lives, human teeth are naturally replaced only once, despite the lingering presence of a band of epithelial tissue called the dental lamina, which is crucial to tooth development. Because alligators have well-organized teeth with similar form and structure as mammalian teeth and are capable of lifelong tooth renewal, the authors reasoned that they might serve as models for mammalian tooth replacement.

"Alligator teeth are implanted in sockets of the dental bone, like human teeth," said Ping Wu, Ph.D., assistant professor of pathology at the Keck School of Medicine and first author of the study. "They have 80 teeth, each of which can be replaced up to 50 times over their lifetime, making them the ideal model for comparison to human teeth."

Using microscopic imaging techniques, the researchers found that each alligator tooth is a complex unit of three components -- a functional tooth, a replacement tooth, and the dental lamina -- in different developmental stages. The tooth units are structured to enable a smooth transition from dislodgement of the functional, mature tooth to replacement with the new tooth. Identifying three developmental phases for each tooth unit, the researchers conclude that the alligator dental laminae contain what appear to be stem cells from which new replacement teeth develop.

"Stem cells divide more slowly than other cells," said co-author Randall B. Widelitz, Ph.D., associate professor of pathology at the Keck School of Medicine. "The cells in the alligator's dental lamina behaved like we would expect stem cells to behave. In the future, we hope to isolate those cells from the dental lamina to see whether we can use them to regenerate teeth in the lab."

The researchers also intend to learn what molecular networks are involved in repetitive renewal and hope to apply the principles to regenerative medicine in the future.

The authors also report novel cellular mechanisms by which the tooth unit develops in the embryo and molecular signaling that speeds growth of replacement teeth when functional teeth are lost prematurely. Co-authors include colleagues from the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries, University of Georgia, National Cheng Kung University, National Taiwan University, and Xiangya Hospital in China.

The research was supported by the National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases through grants 5R01AR042177-19, 5R01AR060306-03 and 2R01AR047364-11A1.

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Flu in pregnancy may quadruple child's risk for bipolar disorder

May 14, 2013 — Pregnant mothers' exposure to the flu was associated with a nearly fourfold increased risk that their child would develop bipolar disorder in adulthood, in a study funded by the National Institutes of Health. The findings add to mounting evidence of possible shared underlying causes and illness processes with schizophrenia, which some studies have also linked to prenatal exposure to influenza.

"Prospective mothers should take common sense preventive measures, such as getting flu shots prior to and in the early stages of pregnancy and avoiding contact with people who are symptomatic," said Alan Brown, M.D., M.P.H, of Columbia University and New York State Psychiatric Institute, a grantee of the NIH's National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH). "In spite of public health recommendations, only a relatively small fraction of such women get immunized. The weight of evidence now suggests that benefits of the vaccine likely outweigh any possible risk to the mother or newborn."

Brown and colleagues reported their findings online May 8, 2013 in JAMA Psychiatry.

Although there have been hints of a maternal influenza/bipolar disorder connection, the new study is the first to prospectively follow families in the same HMO, using physician-based diagnoses and structured standardized psychiatric measures. Access to unique Kaiser-Permanente, county and Child Health and Development Study databases made it possible to include more cases with detailed maternal flu exposure information than in previous studies.

Among nearly a third of all children born in a northern California county during 1959-1966, researchers followed, 92 who developed bipolar disorder, comparing rates of maternal flu diagnoses during pregnancy with 722 matched controls.

The nearly fourfold increased risk implicated influenza infection at any time during pregnancy, but there was evidence suggesting slightly higher risk if the flu occurred during the second or third trimesters. Moreover, the researchers linked flu exposure to a nearly sixfold increase in a subtype of bipolar disorder with psychotic features.

A previous study, by Brown and colleagues, in a related northern California sample, found a threefold increased risk for schizophrenia associated with maternal influenza during the first half of pregnancy. Autism has similarly been linked to first trimester maternal viral infections and to possibly related increases in inflammatory molecules.

"Future research might investigate whether this same environmental risk factor might give rise to different disorders, depending on how the timing of the prenatal insult affects the developing fetal brain," suggested Brown.

Bipolar disorder shares with schizophrenia a number of other suspected causes and illness features, the researchers note. For example, both share onset of symptoms in early adulthood, susceptibility genes, run in the same families, affect nearly one percent of the population, show psychotic behaviors and respond to antipsychotic medications.

Increasing evidence of such overlap between traditional diagnostic categories has led to the NIMH Research Domain Criteria (RDoC) project, which is laying the foundation for a new mental disorders classification system based on brain circuits and dimensional mechanisms that cut across traditional diagnostic categories.

The research was also funded by NIH's Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD).

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From ocean to land: The fishy origins of our hips

Tetrapods, or four-legged animals, first stepped onto land about 395 million years ago. This significant change was made possible by strong hipbones and a connection through the spine via an ilium -- features that were not present in the fish ancestors of tetrapods.

In a study published in the journal Evolution and Development, Dr Catherine Boisvert of the Australian Regenerative Medicine Institute at Monash University, MacQuarie University's Professor Jean Joss and Professor Per Ahlberg of Uppsala University examined the hip structures of some of human's closest fish cousins.

They found the differences between us and them are not as great as they appear -- most of the key elements necessary for the transformation to human hips were actually already present in our fish ancestors.

Dr Boisvert and her collaborators compared the hip development -- bones and musculature -- of the Australian lung fish and the Axolotl, commonly known as the Mexican Walking Fish. The results showed that, surprisingly, the transition from simple fish hip to complex weight-bearing hip could be done in a few evolutionary steps.

"Many of the muscles thought to be 'new' in tetrapods evolved from muscles already present in lungfish. We also found evidence of a new, more simple path by which skeletal structures would have evolved," Dr Boisvert said.

The researchers found that the sitting bones would have evolved by the extension of the already existing pubis. The connection to the vertebral column could have evolved from an illiac process already present in fish.

"The transition from ocean-dwelling to land-dwelling animals was a major event in the evolution of terrestrial animals, including humans, and an altered hip was an essential enabling step," Dr Boisvert said.

"Our research shows that what initially appeared to be a large change in morphology could be done with relatively few developmental steps."

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2013-05-14

First X-class solar flares of 2013

May 14, 2013 — On May 13, 2013, the sun emitted an X2.8-class flare, peaking at 12:05 p.m. EDT. This is the the strongest X-class flare of 2013 so far, surpassing in strength the X1.7-class flare that occurred 14 hours earlier. It is the 16th X-class flare of the current solar cycle and the third-largest flare of that cycle. The second-strongest was an X5.4 event on March 7, 2012. The strongest was an X6.9 on Aug. 9, 2011.

The X2.8-class flare was also associated with a coronal mass ejection, or CME, another solar phenomenon that can send billions of tons of solar particles into space, which can potentially affect electronic systems in satellites and on the ground. The CME was not Earth-directed, but could pass NASA's STEREO-B, Messenger and Spitzer spacecraft. Their mission operators have been notified. Experimental NASA research models show that the CME left the sun at 1,200 miles per second beginning at 12:18 p.m. EDT. If warranted, operators can put spacecraft into safe mode to protect the instruments from solar material.

Solar flares are powerful bursts of radiation. Harmful radiation from a flare cannot pass through Earth's atmosphere to physically affect humans on the ground, however -- when intense enough -- they can disturb the atmosphere in the layer where GPS and communications signals travel. This disrupts the radio signals for as long as the flare is ongoing -- the radio blackout associated with this flare has since subsided.

The Impacts of Solar Flares

Some people worry that a gigantic "killer solar flare" could hurl enough energy to destroy Earth, but this is not actually possible.

"X-class" denotes the most intense flares, while the number provides more information about its strength. An X2 is twice as intense as an X1, an X3 is three times as intense, etc.

This flare erupted from an active region just out of sight over the left side of the sun, a region that will soon rotate into view. This region has produced two smaller M-class flares as well.

The May 12 flare was also associated with a coronal mass ejection, another solar phenomenon that can send billions of tons of solar particles into space, which can affect electronic systems in satellites and on the ground. Experimental NASA research models show that the CME left the sun at 745 miles per second and is not Earth-directed, however its flank may pass by the STEREO-B and Spitzer spacecraft, and their mission operators have been notified. If warranted, operators can put spacecraft into safe mode to protect the instruments from solar material. There is some particle radiation associated with this event, which is what can concern operators of interplanetary spacecraft since the particles can trip computer electronics on board.

Increased numbers of flares are quite common at the moment because the sun's normal 11-year activity cycle is ramping up toward solar maximum, which is expected in 2013. Humans have tracked the solar cycle continuously since it was discovered in 1843, and it is normal for there to be many flares a day during the sun's peak activity. The first X-class flare of the current solar cycle occurred on Feb. 15, 2011, and there have been another 15 X-class flares since, including this one. The largest X-class flare in this cycle was an X6.9 on Aug. 9, 2011.

NOAA's Space Weather Prediction Center (http://swpc.noaa.gov) is the U.S. government's official source for space weather forecasts, alerts, watches and warnings.

What is a solar flare?

For answers to these and other space weather questions, please visit the Space Weather Frequently Asked Questions page (http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/sunearth/spaceweather/index.html).

TAG:Solar Flare Sun Northern Lights Geomagnetic Storms Atmosphere Weather

玉器新流行：小型精品走俏市场

嘉德2013春拍拍品清乾隆白玉螭龙乾隆年制铭扳指

　　纵览最近几年拍场上成绩不俗的玉器,无论是皇帝玺印、扳指,还是插屏、如意,我们都能看出它们具有两个共同特点,那就是与以前流行的大型玉器相比,它们显得小巧玲珑但制作精美.

　　近年来的玉器拍卖市场上,以扳指、印章、插屏为代表的小型精品玉器开始受到投资者的关注,扳指,原是古人射箭时戴在大拇指上拉弓用的工具,由于满族尚骑射,清代男子喜欢以扳指作为装饰品,从清乾隆、嘉庆朝开始,扳指的实用性逐渐丧失,人们用各种美玉材料制作扳指,还在上面雕刻了龙马、花草、山水、人物、诗词等纹饰和图案.

　　近年来,样式小巧、工艺精湛的扳指受到市场青睐,价格一路攀升,一些雕工精细、严整,体积较小的插屏也有不错的市场表现.玉插屏是用玉雕琢成长方形或其他形状的薄片状,插于木座或玉石器座上用以装饰.清代玉插屏非常盛行,乾隆时常会以精雕紫檀插屏镶嵌珍罕玉石.除了扳指和插屏,造型小巧的如意也是很受藏家欢迎的一类小型精品玉器.由于寓意吉祥,古时许多皇室贵族、文人雅客都对收藏玉如意情有独钟.亮相拍场的各类玉如意无论是古物还是新工,都价值不菲,动辄以百万论身价,帝王玉玺和名人印章在拍场中一直成绩不俗.

　　然而玉器价格主要受雕工、玉料、时代等因素的影响,玉质、玉色、光泽、致密度、绺裂、玷污等等都是玉器鉴别玉材等级的重要因素,在不少收藏家看好小型精品玉市场发展前景的同时,也有业内人士提醒到,评价一件玉器的优良,“大小”并非决定性因素.

来源:新浪收藏

TAG:玉器新流行：小型精品走俏市场翡翠翡翠手镯中国翡翠网翡翠新闻

玩家两万买块毛料赌石转手卖10万

　　13日,文博会三联水晶玉石分会场出现“赌石”、“开门红”,该分会场的翡翠毛料成品公盘大会上,前来淘宝的莫先生当场从2万元的毛料中开出价值10万的墨翠宝料！

　　来自广州的莫先生是浸淫玉石行业20多年的“老手”,他在会场逛了一圈后,一块其貌不扬却标价2万的翡翠毛料引起他的注意.他熟练地打灯照皮,泼水看色,最后掂量几下便毫不犹豫地掏钱付账.随后,毛料被当场切开,经鉴定,竟是一块好水好种的墨翠宝料,很快就被人以10万元的高价买下.

　　据介绍,未经加工的毛料上面会有一层风化形成的“蒙皮”,让人看不到玉石本质,赌石就是隔着蒙皮,通过经验和运气判断玉石价值的一种高风险玉石交易.家住宝安的王先生,抱着“玩玩”的心态花800元买了3块毛料,竟幸运地从一块不到一千克的小玉石中开出了好料.他告诉记者,这块好料是运气的象征,他要摆在办公桌上给自己带来好运.据悉,三联水晶玉石文化村的翡翠毛料公盘将从即日持续到18日,市民们还可来尝试一下“赌石”的味道.(记者易芬见习记者郭斌)

来源:新浪收藏

TAG:玩家两万买块毛料赌石转手卖10万翡翠翡翠手镯中国翡翠网翡翠新闻

奇妙色彩稀缺产量帕拉伊巴碧玺

　　还没有哪次新宝石种的发现能教人如此身心激荡。太过奇妙的色彩，太过奇缺的产量，如果矿源就此打住，那它就永远只能是少数地质学家的标本，它的高价将不再有任何商业意义。一场大规模的寻宝就此展开，随着相同颜色、成分的宝石陆续发现，于是便引发起一场珠宝界关于帕拉伊巴定义的巨大争端！

ENZO 高级珠宝系列帕拉伊巴碧玺项链

　　专门为全球宝石实验室提供广泛而专业的宝石和宝石优化鉴定，以及钻石分级等服务的机构LMHC，致力于修订并提供全球化、标准化的宝石鉴定报告。目前LMHC发布的12份信息表中，有一份便是专为帕拉伊巴碧玺而设。在这份最后更新于2011年12月的第六版报告中，对帕拉伊巴碧玺进行了如下定义：帕拉伊巴碧玺是蓝色 ( 电光蓝、霓虹蓝、紫蓝色)、蓝绿色到绿蓝色或绿色的、呈现中等到高饱和色调(相对于其他各种电气石)的电气石，不论产自何处都主要含有铜 (Cu) 和锰 (Mn)。因这种宝石最初开采于巴西的帕拉伊巴，所以帕拉伊巴就是这种电气石的品种名。

　　换言之，帕拉伊巴只是这种宝石最初的产地和得名原因，而只要含有铜和锰且呈现上述色彩外观就能这样冠名。在报告的补充说明部分也进一步明确了这一点——帕拉伊巴碧玺是一种含铜和锰的电气石。该宝石种名称源于最初的开采地巴西帕拉伊巴，但如今可能开采自很多其他地方。

　　至此，尘埃落定——只要DNA 和长相同时达标，就可冠上“帕拉伊巴”的大名。实际上，在报告的注释里对颜色和产地的描述都留了一定的空间，所以说，到底是不是帕拉伊巴，关键的关键还是恒量元素。这样的结果既能最大限度地满足市场需求，又能保持宝石种的品质，可谓皆大欢喜。

Boucheron 宝诗龙Cameleon 系列手镯

　　LMHC究竟是何方神圣？

　　LMHC 是Laboratory Manua lHarmonisation Committee 的缩写，也就是“实验室指南协调委员会”，是专门为全球宝石实验室提供广泛而专业的宝石和宝石优化鉴定以及钻石分级等服务的机构。他们最主要的一项工作是对来自世界各地珠宝界的说法进行研究，综合之后专门修订并提供全球化的、标准化的宝石鉴定报告说辞。来自全球的5 家顶级宝石实验室成员每年会聚在一起讨论并对信息表做出调整，它们分别是意大利米兰的CISGEM、美国的卡尔斯巴德、纽约和泰国曼谷的GIA、泰国曼谷的GIT-Gem、瑞士卢塞恩的Gübelin 和瑞士巴塞尔的SSEF。

　　LMHC有多少可信度？

　　LMHC 最初是应GILC(GemstoneIndustry and Laboratory Committee宝石工业和实验室委员会)的需求而设立的，所以不会与任何商贸组织建立正式联系，这也在相当程度上保证了其公信力。为了促进全球珠宝界能使用更加客观适合的以及更准确的实验室成果，LMHC 会不断更新相关鉴定内容并制成标准信息表发布在其官网上，以期全球各地的人们都能及时获取当下最新的和实用的宝石信息。

TAG:帕拉伊巴宝石碧玺珠宝奇妙色彩稀缺产量帕拉伊巴碧玺

Oldest fossil hominin ear bones ever recovered: Discovery could yield important clues on human origins

May 13, 2013 — A new study, led by a Binghamton University anthropologist and published this week by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, could shed new light on the earliest existence of humans. The study analyzed the tiny ear bones, the malleus, incus and stapes, from two species of early human ancestor in South Africa. The ear ossicles are the smallest bones in the human body and are among the rarest of human fossils recovered.

Unlike other bones of the skeleton, the ossicles are already fully formed and adult-sized at birth. This indicates that their size and shape is under very strong genetic control and, despite their small size, they hold a wealth of evolutionary information.

The study, led by Binghamton University anthropologist Rolf Quam, was carried out by an international team of researchers from institutions in the US, Italy and Spain. They analyzed several auditory ossicles representing the early hominin species Paranthropus robustus and Australopithecus africanus. The new study includes the oldest complete ossicular chain (i.e. all three ear bones) of a fossil hominin ever recovered. The bones date to around two million years ago and come from the well-known South African cave sites of Swartkrans and Sterkfontein, which have yielded abundant fossils of these early human ancestors.

The researchers report several significant findings from the study. The malleus is clearly human-like, and its size and shape can be easily distinguished from our closest living relatives, chimpanzees, gorillas and orangutans. Many aspects of the skull, teeth and skeleton in these early human ancestors remain quite primitive and ape-like, but the malleus is one of the very few features of these early hominins that is similar to our own species, Homo sapiens. Since both the early hominin species share this human-like malleus, the anatomical changes in this bone must have occurred very early in our evolutionary history. Says Quam, "Bipedalism (walking on two feet) and a reduction in the size of the canine teeth have long been held up as the "hallmark of humanity" since they seem to be present in the earliest human fossils recovered to date.

Our study suggests that the list may need to be updated to include changes in the malleus as well." More fossils from even earlier time periods are needed to corroborate this assertion, says Quam. In contrast to the malleus, the two other ear ossicles, the incus and stapes, appear more similar to chimpanzees, gorillas and orangutans. The ossicles, then, show an interesting mixture of ape-like and human-like features.

The anatomical differences from humans found in the ossicles, along with other differences in the outer, middle and inner ear, are consistent with different hearing capacities in these early hominin taxa compared to modern humans. Although the current study does not demonstrate this conclusively, the team plans on studying the functional aspects of the ear in these early hominins relying on 3D virtual reconstructions based on high resolution CT scans. The team has already applied this approach previously to the 500,000 year-old human fossils from the Sierra de Atapuerca in northern Spain. The fossils from this site represent the ancestors of the Neandertals, but the results suggested their hearing pattern already resembled Homo sapiens. Extending this type of analysis to Australopithecus and Paranthropus should provide new insight into when our modern human pattern of hearing may have evolved.

TAG:Early Humans Human Evolution Anthropology Fossils Cultures Evolution

腕间的那枚魔力手环

　　在珠宝中，手环是一个女人的第二双手臂，它能散发魔力，把不同女人的性格特质修饰得更加完美，也让越来越多的女人达成了一种共识，手环的光芒并非仅仅来自它的体积或是钻石数目的多寡。每个创意都让它像一滴晶莹光亮的水滴，或是热烈的爱情那样，引人入胜。

TANGO GOLD系列手链POMELLATO

STARRYNIGHT系列手链 MIKIMOTO

　　金色的爱情密码

　　在所有爱情故事中，男女主人公历尽千辛万苦最终修成正果时，都喜欢用金色的背影来表达，或许，金色就是让人充满希望与圆满的代名词。

　　Mikimoto StarryNight系列手链的设计灵感来自蒲公英，名字源自法语 dent-de-lion。被风吹散的白色蒲公英化身为许多带着种子的小白伞在高空飞扬，为所到之处散发崭新的生机，也象征着佩戴者的乐观情怀。粉红金和日本Akoya珍珠的搭配，充满精致高雅的气息。Pomellato哑光宽手链以18K玫瑰金打造。品牌一直秉承严谨、扎实的信念，在制作时，每个链环的内部也填满玫瑰金，为了达到轻巧的特点，在工艺中必须将链环压到很扁很薄，来充分体现出轻盈的质感，展示出大尺寸珠宝的别样风情。

黑丝手链 WELLENDORFF

ENCHANTED LOTUS系列手镯 DE BEERS

　　银色的承诺

　　承诺，往往都是银色的，纯净的几乎不含任何杂质，让人忍不住去眺望、触碰。

　　Wellendorff黑丝手链如品牌每条金丝编花手链一样，白金线以直径仅为0.3毫米的手工缠绕，饰以细小的螺旋纹，最终达到丝绸般柔软而坚韧的触感。优雅质朴的白金及黑色冷珐琅诉说着经典与神秘。制作中将纤细的雕刻花纹刻画在纯洁的黑色冷珐琅上，以钻石镶边作为装饰，素净中增添了几分高贵。De Beers Enchanted Lotus系列手镯纯净优雅的莲花造型，代表着母爱的圣洁。品牌将母爱化作传世的珍宝，用唯美的钻石珠宝倾诉对母亲的深深祝福。密镶钻石的莲花造型别具匠心，完美展现De Beers珠宝精湛细腻的镶嵌工艺。钻石莲花与钻石水珠相连也象征着自然界的万物重生。

ANIMAL WORLD系列手镯 CHOPARD

ENCHANT系列手镯 TIFFANY&CO

　　彩色的幻想梦

　　梦，注定终身与女人相伴。不真实，但却美好。企图清醒，却无法自拔。

　　Tiffany&Co. Enchant系列手镯从19世纪传统花园大门上精雕细琢的对称图案中汲取灵感，令人宛若置身于曼妙迷人的自然仙境。设计师以白色和彩色钻石打造出飘逸卷曲的华美线条，轻盈灵动的自然气息跃然呈现，展现出大自然的蓬勃生机与斑斓之美。Chopard Animal World系列手镯，以8克拉黑钻、紫水晶、祖母绿、蓝宝石、石榴石、天蓝石呈现的甲虫，栩栩如生。旁边的气泡以18k白金镶满白钻和黑钻打造，中间是表盘，一举多得。多种颜色搭配，仿佛夏夜里深蓝色天宇下闪耀着的繁星，多彩多姿。

TAG:手环钻石手链珠宝腕间的那枚魔力手环

Seabird bones reveal changes in open-ocean food chain

A research team, led by Michigan State University and Smithsonian Institution scientists, analyzed the bones of Hawaiian petrels -- birds that spend the majority of their lives foraging the open waters of the Pacific. They found that the substantial change in petrels' eating habits, eating prey that are lower rather than higher in the food chain, coincides with the growth of industrialized fishing.

The birds' dramatic shift in diet, shown in the current issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, leaves scientists pondering the fate of petrels as well as wondering how many other species face similar challenges.

"Our bone record is alarming because it suggests that open-ocean food webs are changing on a large scale due to human influence," said Peggy Ostrom, co-author and MSU zoologist. "Our study is among the first to address one of the great mysteries of biological oceanography -- whether fishing has gone beyond an influence on targeted species to affect nontarget species and potentially, entire food webs in the open ocean."

Hawaiian petrels' diet is recorded in the chemistry of their bones. By studying the bones' ratio of nitrogen-15 and nitrogen-14 isotopes, researchers can tell at what level in the food chain the birds are feasting; generally, the larger the isotope ratio, the bigger the prey (fish, squid and crustaceans).

Between 4,000 and 100 years ago, petrels had high isotope ratios, indicating they ate bigger prey. After the onset of industrial fishing, which began extending past the continental shelves around 1950, the isotope ratios declined, indicating a species-wide shift to a diet of smaller fish and other prey.

Much research has focused on the impact of fishing near the coasts. In contrast, the open ocean covers nearly half of Earth's surface. But due to a lack of historical records, fishing's impact on most open-ocean animal populations is completely unknown, said lead author Anne Wiley, formerly an MSU doctoral student and now a Smithsonian postdoctoral researcher.

"Hawaiian petrels spend the majority of their lives foraging over vast expanses of open ocean," she said. "In their search for food, they've done what scientists can only dream of. For thousands of years, they've captured a variety of fish, squid and crustaceans from a large portion of the North Pacific Ocean, and a record of their diet is preserved in their bones."

Addressing fishery impact through a chronology of bones is remarkable. Most marine animals die at sea, where their bones are buried on the ocean bottom. But after three decades of fossil collection in the Hawaiian Islands -- the breeding grounds of the Hawaiian petrel -- co-author Helen James of the Smithsonian Institution and her colleagues have amassed a collection of more than 17,000 ancient Hawaiian petrel bones.

"The petrels breed in burrows and caves where, if they die, their bones are likely to be preserved for a long time," James said. "It's fortuitous to find such a rich bone record for a rare oceanic predator."

Further studies are needed to explore how the shift down the food chain is affecting Hawaiian petrels. For a coastal seabird, however, a similar shift in diet has been associated with decreases in population -- bad news for a federally protected bird.

Since petrels exploit fishing grounds from the equator to near the Aleutian Islands -- an area larger than the continental United States -- their foraging habits are quite telling. If petrels, signal flares for open-ocean food webs, have had a species-wide change in feeding habits, how many other predators around the world has fishing impacted? And what role do consumers play?

"What you choose to put on your dinner plate -- that's your connection with the endangered Hawaiian petrel, and with many other marine species," Wiley said.

The research was funded by the National Science Foundation, MSU and the Smithsonian Institution.

TAG:Fish Marine Biology Fisheries Oceanography Ecology Geography

Scientists find extensive glacial retreat in Mount Everest region

Members of the team conducting these studies will present their findings on May 14 at the Meeting of the Americas in Cancun, Mexico -- a scientific conference organized and co-sponsored by the American Geophysical Union.

Glaciers in the Mount Everest region have shrunk by 13 percent in the last 50 years and the snowline has shifted upward by 180 meters (590 feet), according to Sudeep Thakuri, who is leading the research as part of his PhD graduate studies at the University of Milan in Italy.

Glaciers smaller than one square kilometer are disappearing the fastest and have experienced a 43 percent decrease in surface area since the 1960s. Because the glaciers are melting faster than they are replenished by ice and snow, they are revealing rocks and debris that were previously hidden deep under the ice. These debris-covered sections of the glaciers have increased by about 17 percent since the 1960s, according to Thakuri. The ends of the glaciers have also retreated by an average of 400 meters since 1962, his team found.

The researchers suspect that the decline of snow and ice in the Everest region is from human-generated greenhouse gases altering global climate. However, they have not yet established a firm connection between the mountains' changes and climate change, Thakuri said.

He and his team determined the extent of glacial change on Everest and the surrounding 1,148 square kilometer (713 square mile) Sagarmatha National Park by compiling satellite imagery and topographic maps and reconstructing the glacial history. Their statistical analysis shows that the majority of the glaciers in the national park are retreating at an increasing rate, Thakuri said.

To evaluate the temperature and precipitation patterns in the area, Thakuri and his colleagues have been analyzing hydro-meteorological data from the Nepal Climate Observatory stations and Nepal's Department of Hydrology and Meteorology. The researchers found that the Everest region has undergone a 0.6 degree Celsius (1.08 degrees Fahrenheit) increase in temperature and 100 millimeter (3.9 inches) decrease in precipitation during the pre-monsoon and winter months since 1992.

In subsequent research, Thakuri plans on exploring the climate-glacier relationship further with the aim of integrating the glaciological, hydrological and climatic data to understand the behavior of the hydrological cycle and future water availability.

"The Himalayan glaciers and ice caps are considered a water tower for Asia since they store and supply water downstream during the dry season," said Thakuri. "Downstream populations are dependent on the melt water for agriculture, drinking, and power production."

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the Water Research Institute-Italian National Research Council are funding this research.

TAG:Global Warming Ice Ages Climate Snow and Avalanches Water Environmental Issues

Out of sync: Body clocks altered at cell level in depression

May 13, 2013 — Every cell in our bodies runs on a 24-hour clock, tuned to the night-day, light-dark cycles that have ruled us since the dawn of humanity. The brain acts as timekeeper, keeping the cellular clock in sync with the outside world so that it can govern our appetites, sleep, moods and much more.

But new research shows that the clock may be broken in the brains of people with depression -- even at the level of the gene activity inside their brain cells.

It's the first direct evidence of altered circadian rhythms in the brain of people with depression, and shows that they operate out of sync with the usual ingrained daily cycle. The findings, in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, come from scientists from the University of Michigan Medical School and other institutions.

The discovery was made by sifting through massive amounts of data gleaned from donated brains of depressed and non-depressed people. With further research, the findings could lead to more precise diagnosis and treatment for a condition that affects more than 350 million people worldwide.

What's more, the research also reveals a previously unknown daily rhythm to the activity of many genes across many areas of the brain -- expanding the sense of how crucial our master clock is.

In a normal brain, the pattern of gene activity at a given time of the day is so distinctive that the authors could use it to accurately estimate the hour of death of the brain donor, suggesting that studying this "stopped clock" could conceivably be useful in forensics. By contrast, in severely depressed patients, the circadian clock was so disrupted that a patient's "day" pattern of gene activity could look like a "night" pattern -- and vice versa.

The team uses material from donated brains obtained shortly after death, along with extensive clinical information about the individual. Numerous regions of each brain are dissected by hand or even with lasers that can capture more specialized cell types, then analyzed to measure gene activity. The resulting flood of information is picked apart with advanced data-mining tools.

Lead author Jun Li, Ph.D., an assistant professor in the U-M Department of Human Genetics, describes how this approach allowed the team to accurately back-predict the hour of the day when each non-depressed individual died -- literally plotting them out on a 24-hour clock by noting which genes were active at the time they died. They looked at 12,000 gene transcripts isolated from six regions of 55 brains from people who did not have depression.

This provided a detailed understanding of how gene activity varied throughout the day in the brain regions studied. But when the team tried to do the same in the brains of 34 depressed individuals, the gene activity was off by hours. The cells looked as if it were an entirely different time of day.

"There really was a moment of discovery," says Li, who led the analysis of the massive amount of data generated by the rest of the team and is a research assistant professor in U-M's Department of Computational Medicine at Bioinformatics. "It was when we realized that many of the genes that show 24-hour cycles in the normal individuals were well-known circadian rhythm genes -- and when we saw that the people with depression were not synchronized to the usual solar day in terms of this gene activity. It's as if they were living in a different time zone than the one they died in."

Huda Akil, Ph.D., the co-director of the U-M Molecular & Behavioral Neuroscience Institute and co-director of the U-M site of the Pritzker Neuropsychiatric Disorders Research Consortium, notes that the findings go beyond previous research on circadian rhythms, using animals or human skin cells, which were more easily accessible than human brain tissues.

"Hundreds of new genes that are very sensitive to circadian rhythms emerged from this research -- not just the primary clock genes that have been studied in animals or cell cultures, but other genes whose activity rises and falls throughout the day," she says. "We were truly able to watch the daily rhythm play out in a symphony of biological activity, by studying where the clock had stopped at the time of death. And then, in depressed people, we could see how this was disrupted."

Now, she adds, scientists must use this information to help find new ways to predict depression, fine-tune treatment for each depressed patient, and even find new medications or other types of treatment to develop and test. One possibility, she notes, could be to identify biomarkers for depression -- telltale molecules that can be detected in blood, skin or hair.

And, the challenge of determining why the circadian clock is altered in depression still remains. "We can only glimpse the possibility that the disruption seen in depression may have more than one cause. We need to learn more about whether something in the nature of the clock itself is affected, because if you could fix the clock you might be able to help people get better," Akil notes.

The team continues to mine their data for new findings, and to probe additional brains as they are donated and dissected. The high quality of the brains, and the data gathered about how their donors lived and died, is essential to the project, Akil says. Even the pH level of the tissue, which can be affected by the dying process and the time between death and freezing tissue for research, can affect the results. The team also will have access to blood and hair samples from new donors.

The researchers note that the Pritzker funding in combination with federal research funding made it possible for the scientists to study this issue in an exploratory way. The research was historically funded by a Conte Center grant from the National Institute of Mental Health, and partly funded by the William Lion Penzner Foundation, the Della Martin Foundation, the Office of Naval Research (N00014-09-1-059 and N00014-12-1-0366), the National Alliance for Research on Schizophrenia and Depression's Abramson Family Foundation Investigator Award, and an International Mental Health Research Organization -- Johnson & Johnson Rising Star Translational Research Award.

The work was funded in large part by the Pritzker Neuropsychiatric Disorders Research Fund, and involved researchers from the University of Michigan, University of California's Irvine and Davis campuses, Weill Cornell Medical College, the Hudson Alpha Institute for Biotechnology, and Stanford University.

In addition to Li and Akil, the study's authors are Blynn G. Bunney, Fan Meng, Megan H. Hagenauer, David M. Walsh, Marquis P. Vawter, Simon J. Evans, Prabakhara V. Choudary, Preston Cartagena, Jack D. Barchas, Alan F. Schatzberg, the late Edward G. Jones, Richard M. Myers, U-M MBNI co-director Stanley J. Watson, Jr., and William E. Bunney.

TAG:Mental Health Research Brain Tumor Genes Depression Mental Health Intelligence