Football pitch-sized billboard to open in Times Square

Due to open later today, New York's Times Square is now home to one of the world's largest and most expensive digital billboards in the world. Measuring the length of a football pitch, and running the entire length of one city block, it is situated along the front of the Marriott Marquis Hotel, just outside the intersection of Seventh Avenue and Broadway. No exact measurements have been announced prior to the launch, but as a guide a football pitch in the U.S. is 110 metres long, it is said to be six to eight stories high. The site is one of the busiest in the U.S, with more than 300,000 pedestrians entering the area on a normal day. Another 115,000 drivers and passengers pass by it every day. The display feature almost 24 million LED pixels. To advertise on the screen will costs more than $2.5 million for four weeks, ranking it as one of the most expensive pieces of outdoor ad real estate on the market. A digital art exhibition by the Universal Everything studio collective will animate the screen from Tuesday night. Google will take over as the exclusive, debut advertiser a week later, on Tuesday 24 November, with a campaign that runs through the New Year. The screen is the biggest and the only one to cover an entire city block, from 5th Street to 46th Street on Broadway, in the Times Square area. Source: InAVat...
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Lab engineered vaginas implanted in patients in US

Scientists reported today the first human recipients of laboratory-grown vaginal organs. A research team led by Anthony Atala, M.D., director of Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center’s Institute for Regenerative Medicine, describes in the Lancet long-term success in four teenage girls who received vaginal organs that were engineered with their own cells. “This pilot study is the first to demonstrate that vaginal organs can be constructed in the lab and used successfully in humans,” said Atala. “This may represent a new option for patients who require vaginal reconstructive surgeries. In addition, this study is one more example of how regenerative medicine strategies can be applied to a variety of tissues and organs.” The girls in the study were born with Mayer-Rokitansky-Küster-Hauser (MRKH) syndrome, a rare genetic condition in which the vagina and uterus are underdeveloped or absent. The treatment could also potentially be applied to patients with vaginal cancer or injuries, according to the researchers. The girls were between 13 and 18 years old at the time of the surgeries, which were performed between June 2005 and October 2008. Data from annual follow-up visits show that even up to eight years after the surgeries, the organs had normal function.  “Tissue biopsies, MRI scans and internal exams using magnification all showed...
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History Making Operation Gives Man Two Prosthetic Arms And Hands He Can Control

Baugh completes a task showcasing his control of the MPL.: Image Credit: Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laborator A Colorado man made history at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) this summer when he became the first bilateral shoulder-level amputee to wear and simultaneously control two of the Laboratory’s Modular Prosthetic Limbs. Most importantly, Les Baugh, who lost both arms in an electrical accident 40 years ago, was able to operate the system by simply thinking about moving his limbs, performing a variety of tasks during a short training period. Baugh was in town for two weeks in June as part of an APL-funded research effort to further assess the usability of the MPL, developed over the past decade as part of the Revolutionizing Prosthetics Program. Before putting the limb system through the paces, Baugh had to undergo a surgery at Johns Hopkins Hospital known as targeted muscle reinnervation. “It’s a relatively new surgical procedure that reassigns nerves that once controlled the arm and the hand,” explained Johns Hopkins Trauma Surgeon Albert Chi, M.D. “By reassigning existing nerves, we can make it possible for people who have had upper-arm amputations to control their prosthetic devices by merely thinking about the action they want to perform.” After recovery, Baugh...
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World’s First Time-controlled Molecular Self-Organization

Credit: National Institute for Materials Science (NIMS) Technologies Division) developed a method for preprogramming the timing of molecules to initiate self-organization by mixing molecules with modified side chains.  (a) Previously reported porphyrin molecule 1; (b) two kinds of self-organization in which porphyrin molecule 1 is able to take part. A particulate structure is formed early, but that disappears with time and then a fibrous structure is formed; (c) self-organization involving molecule 1 to form a fibrous structure begins in about four hours The results of this research will be published in the German Chemical Society’s journal “Angewandte Chemie International Edition” in the near future. Molecular self-organization is widely observed in nature, and is a critical phenomenon in terms of developingsystems that perform complex functions as seen in such natural mechanisms as photosynthesis and neurocircuits. Attempts have been made to develop new materials capable of executing advanced functions using the principle behind the phenomenon of molecular self-organization. However, due to the spontaneous nature of molecular self-organization, it is extremely difficult to control the phenomenon by design. In particular, almost no research had been conducted to control the timing of the self-organization phenomenon including...
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Next stop Mars: Nasa launches new Orion spacecraft, marks new era

The Delta IV Heavy rocket with the Orion spacecraft lifts off from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Cape Canaveral, Florida. (Reuters/Steve Nesius) Nasa's new Orion spacecraft streaked toward orbit Friday on a high-stakes test flight meant to usher in a new era of human exploration leading ultimately to Mars. The unmanned orbital journey began with a sunrise liftoff witnessed by thousands of Nasa guests eager to watch what the agency called "history in the making." "The star of the day is Orion," said Nasa Administrator Charles Bolden Jr., back for the second morning in a row. He called it "Day One of the Mars era." Orion's debut will be brief - just 4½ hours from launch to splashdown, with two orbits of Earth. But for the first time in 42 years, Nasa is sending a spacecraft built for humans farther than a couple hundred miles from Earth. The previous time was the Apollo 17 moon shot. And it's Nasa's first new vehicle for space travel since the shuttle. Friday's flight test brings Nasa "one step closer" to putting humans aboard Orion, Bolden said just before liftoff. Sluggish rocket valves and wind halted Thursday's launch attempt. Everything went Nasa's way Friday, and the Delta IV rocket blasted off with Orion as dawn broke. Nasa was aiming for a peak altitude of 3,600 miles (5,800 kilometers)on Orion's second lap...
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