Mind control: This optogenetics system makes it possible to control brain cells with light in freely moving animals. The prototype plugs in to an implant in an animal's brain. 
Credit: Kendall Research

Optogenetics  has been hailed as a breakthrough in biomedical science—it promises to use light to precisely control cells in the brain to manipulate behavior, model disease processes, or even someday to deliver treatments.

But so far, optogenetic studies have been hampered by physical constraints. The technology requires expensive, bulky lasers for light sources, and a fiber-optic cable attached to an animal—an encumbrance that makes it difficult to study how manipulating cells affects an animal's normal behavior.

Now Kendall Research, a startup in Cambridge, Massachusetts, is trying to free optogenetics from these burdens. It has developed several prototype devices that are small and light and powered wirelessly. The devices would allow mice and other small animals to move freely. The company is also developing systems to control experiments automatically and remotely, making it possible to use the technique for high-throughput studies.

Christian Wentz, the company's founder, began the work while a student in Ed Boyden's lab at MIT. He was studying ways to make optogenetics more useful for research on how the brain affects behavior. Optogenetics relies on genetically altering certain cells to make them responsive to light, and then selectively stimulating them with a laser to either turn the cells on or off. Instead of a laser light source, Kendall Research uses creatively packaged LEDs and laser diodes, which are incorporated into a small head-borne device that plugs into an implant in the animal's brain.

The device, which weighs only three grams, is powered wirelessly by supercapacitors stationed below the animal's cage or testing area. Such supercapacitors are ideal for applications that need occasional bursts of power rather than a continuous source. The setup also includes a wirelessly connected controller that plugs into a computer through a USB. "It's essentially a wireless router for the brain," says Wentz.

The wireless capabilities allow researchers to control the optogenetics equipment remotely, or even schedule experiments in advance.

Casey Halpern, a neurosurgeon at the University of Pennsylvania and one of several researchers beta-testing the device, says the physical impediments of current optogenetics techniques are tremendous. "You almost can't do any behavioral experiment in a meaningful way," he says.

Earlier this year, President Barack Obama’s administration unveiled a proposal to commit more than $10 billion for the creation of a nationwide broadband network for public safety officials, thereby enabling businesses to grow more rapidly, teachers to better educate their students, and public safety officials to more easily and efficiently access state-of-the-art, secure, nationwide, and interoperable mobile communications.

While the President’s announcement highlighted the urgent need for mobile broadband for all Americans as a way to ensure global competitiveness, those in the public sector in particular have received the news extremely well. Many of these agencies, because of limited adoption and budget constraints to date, have been forced to resort to the use of legacy  communications systems, such as two-way radios, for example, which offer only extremely limited capabilities.  In today’s fast-paced, technologically-advanced world, this type of communication is inadequate, decreases effectiveness and delays response time during emergencies.  Because of this, public sector officials have viewed the latest news as a welcome, and, much needed, call to action for their industry.

According to a recent report by Bharat Book Bureau about the public safety wireless broadband market, The report states that, “wireless broadband is essential [for public safety officials] for addressing mission-critical needs requiring high data throughput for applications such as video surveillance, automated vehicle license plate recognition, biometric identification, mobile crime scene units and mobile incident command…”

So, for those who work in the Public Sector, how will 4G benefit you?  Whether you work for a fire department, a police department, or for a school, 4G is expected to provide significant benefits, including, but certainly not limited to:

• Better efficiency, increased mobility and improved job performance overall:With greater mobility, increased security and larger data storage capabilities, work performance and output production improves.
• Increased data rates:  Allows for greater capacity of data storage and even enables video applications, information that can be vitally important to officers in the field.
• Improved multipath and power performance: Minimizes intra-cell multiuser interference, thereby guarantee the securing of confidential information.

Northern Michigan University in Marquette, Michigan, is one example of a school that is already bridging the digital divide.  Earlier this year, the university deployed a wireless network to extend broadband coverage throughout the campus, and even into the city itself.  The next-generation network not only provides high speed broadband access to those students who live off-campus, but it also offers businesses and other public service users with the access and mobility needed for them to successfully live and work more efficiently.

In response to this revolution, technology developers have already introduced a variety of products that have built in 4G, or optional 4G broadband access.   Panasonic is one such company.  The Panasonic Toughbook computers, including the new Android^TM-powered Toughpad business tablet, are built with optional integrated 4G mobile broadband access, which enablers public safety officials to access data faster and from remote areas, keeps their information safe and secure, and overall enables them to more efficiently and productively perform their important duties.

Tell us what benefits 4G will have for you and your organizations!

Google announces free in-home wireless broadband service MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., April 1, 2007 - Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) today announced the launch of Google TiSP (BETA)™, a free in-home wireless broadband service that delivers online connectivity via users' plumbing systems. The Toilet Internet Service Provider (TiSP) project is a self-installed, ad-supported online service that will be offered entirely free to any consumer with a WiFi-capable PC and a toilet connected to a local municipal sewage system. "We've got that whole organizing-the-world's-information thing more or less under control," said Google Co-founder and President Larry Page, a longtime supporter of so-called "dark porcelain" research and development. "What's interesting, though, is how many different modalities there are for actually getting that information to you - not to mention from you." For years, data carriers have confronted the "last hundred yards" problem for delivering data from local networks into individual homes. Now Google has successfully devised a "last hundred smelly yards" solution that takes advantage of preexisting plumbing and sewage systems and their related hydraulic data-transmission capabilities. "There's actually a thriving little underground community that's been studying this exact solution for a long time," says Page. "And today our Toilet ISP team is pleased to be leading the way through the sewers, up out of your toilet and - splat - right onto your PC." Users who sign up online for the TiSP system will receive a full home self-installation kit, which includes a spindle of fiber-optic cable, a TiSP wireless router, installation CD and setup guide. Home installation is a simple matter of GFlushing™ the fiber-optic cable down to the nearest TiSP Access Node, then plugging the other end into the network port of your Google-provided TiSP wireless router. Within sixty minutes, the Access Node's crack team of Plumbing Hardware Dispatchers (PHDs) should have your internet connection up and running. "I couldn't be more excited about, and am only slightly grossed out by, this remarkable new product," said Marissa Mayer, Google's Vice President of Search Products and User Experience. "I firmly believe TiSP will be a breakthrough product, particularly for those users who, like Larry himself, do much of their best thinking in the bathroom." ********************************************************************************************* Google TiSP (BETA) is a fully functional, end-to-end system that provides in-home wireless access by connecting your commode-based TiSP wireless router to one of thousands of TiSP Access Nodes via fiber-optic cable strung through your local municipal sewage lines. INSTALLING TSP Installing a typical home TiSP system is a quick, easy and largely sanitary process -- provided you follow these step-by-step instructions very, very carefully. #1   Remove the spindle of fiber-optic cable from your TiSP installation kit. #2   Attach the sinker to the loose end of the cable, take one safe step backward and drop this weighted end into your toilet. #3   Grasp both ends of the spindle firmly while a friend or loved one flushes, thus activating the patented GFlush™ system, which sends the weighted cable surfing through the plumbing system to one of the thousands of TiSP Access Nodes. #4   When the GFlush is complete, the spindle will (or at least should) have largely unraveled, exposing a connector at the remaining end. Detach the cable from the spindle, taking care not to allow the cable to slip into the toilet. #5   Plug the fiber-optic cable into your TiSP wireless router, which has a specially designed counterweight to withstand the centripetal force of flushing. #6   Insert the TiSP installation CD and run the setup utility to install the Google Toolbar (required) and the rest of the TiSP software, which will automatically configure your computer's network settings. #7   Within sixty minutes -- assuming proper data flow -- the other end of your fiber-optic cable should have reached the nearest TiSP Access Node, where our Plumbing Hardware Dispatchers (PHDs) will remove the sinker and plug the line into our global data networking system. #8   Congratulations, you're online! (Please wash your hands before surfing.) Note: If you have any difficulty installing, operating or simply living with TiSP, we suggest joining the COMMENT ON THIS POST

Jonathan Mak, a student at the Polytechnic University, poses with his laptop showing his self-designed logo in tribute of Apple founder Steve Jobs in Hong Kong on October 7, 2011

A Hong Kong design student said on Friday he was overwhelmed and felt "unreal" after his sombre logo in tribute to Apple founder Steve Jobs caused a worldwide Internet sensation.

The design, featuring Jobs's silhouette incorporated into the bite of a white Apple logo on a black background, has gone viral on the Internet since news of his death.

"I feel so unreal," Jonathan Mak, a second year graphic design student at Hong Kong Polytechnic University, told AFP, after he was inundated with tens of thousands of emails and messages on his Twitter account.

"You don't get to 180 thousands notes without feeling slightly insane," the 19-year-old posted on another microblogging site Tumblr Friday, referring to the messages he has received.

Mak said newspapers in the United States and Germany have contacted him about buying the copyright to use his logo and had received job offers.

"I am flattered by the attention but I would like to focus on my study before taking on any full-time job," said the bespectacled student, adding that he was trying to cope with his new-found fame.

"I'm quite busy now actually as I'm trying to finish a school project."

When asked about whether he would be targeting commercial opportunities, Mak said he was considering contacting Apple on copyright issues because his design is based on Apple's own logo.

Some merchandisers have reportedly used his logo for commemorative memorabilia for Jobs such as t-shirts and caps that are being sold on the Internet.

"I will consider using any proceeds I make from the copyright for cancer research, as suggested by some people to me on the Internet," he said. Jobs died at 56 of pancreatic cancer.

Mak said he first came up with the design after Jobs announced his resignation in late August, but the logo received little attention at the time.

The teenager said the Apple founder had inspired him in his design.

"He was a minimalist, which is the way I would like to emphasise in my design -- fewer elements but a powerful message."

"Steve Jobs strongly believed in his own ideas and continued with his beliefs no matter how people criticised him. He was courageous," said Mak.

If you would like to share your thoughts, memories, and condolences, please email rememberingsteve@apple.com
and asloinfo@spicyindia.in

NEW YORK: Apple on Wednesday announced the death of its visionary co-founder Steve Jobs.

"We are deeply saddened to announce that Steve Jobs passed away today," the company's board of directors said in a statement.

"Steve's brilliance, passion and energy were the source of countless innovations that enrich and improve all of our lives. The world is immeasurably better because of Steve."

The Silicon Valley icon who gave the world the iPod and the iPhone resigned as CEO of the world's largest technology corporation in August, handing the reins to current chief executive Tim Cook.


Jobs had battled cancer in 2004 and underwent a liver transplant in 2009 after taking a leave of absence for unspecified health problems. He took another leave of absence in January, his third since his health problems began, before resigning as CEO six weeks ago. Jobs became Apple's chairman and handed the CEO job over to his hand-picked successor, Tim Cook.

The news Apple fans and shareholders had been dreading came the day after Apple unveiled its latest version of the iPhone, just one in a procession of devices that shaped technology and society while Jobs was running the company.

Jobs started Apple with a high school friend in a Silicon Valley garage in 1976, was forced out a decade later and returned in 1997 to rescue the company. During his second stint, it grew into the most valuable technology company in the world with a market value of $351 billion. OnlyExxon Mobil, which makes it money extracting and refining oil instead of ideas, is worth more.

Cultivating Apple's countercultural sensibility and a minimalist design ethic, Jobs rolled out one sensational product after another, even in the face of the late-2000s recession and his own failing health.



He helped change computers from a geeky hobbyist's obsession to a necessity of modern life at work and home, and in the process he upended not just personal technology but the cellphone and music industries. For transformation of American industry, he ranks among his computer-age contemporary, Microsoft Corp. co-founder Bill Gates and other creative geniuses such as Walt Disney that left an indelible imprint on the world. Jobs died as Walt Disney Co.'s largest shareholder, a by-product of his decision to sell computer animation studio Pixar in 2006.

Perhaps most influentially, Jobs in 2001 launched the iPod, which offered "1,000 songs in your pocket." Over the next 10 years, its white earphones and thumb-dial control seemed to become more ubiquitous than the wristwatch.

In 2007 came the touch-screen iPhone, joined a year later by Apple's App Store, where developers could sell iPhone "apps" which made the phone a device not just for making calls but also for managing money, editing photos, playing games and social networking. And in 2010, Jobs introduced the iPad, a tablet-sized, all-touch computer that took off even though market analysts said no one really needed one.

Steven Paul Jobs was born Feb. 24, 1955, to Joanne Simpson, then an unmarried graduate student, and Abdulfattah Jandali, a student from Syria. Simpson gave Jobs up for adoption, though she married Jandali and a few years later had a second child with him, Mona Simpson, who became a novelist.

Steven was adopted by Clara and Paul Jobs of Los Altos, Calif., a working-class couple who nurtured his early interest in electronics. He saw his first computer terminal at NASA's Ames Research Center when he was around 11 and landed a summer job at Hewlett-Packard before he had finished high school.

Jobs enrolled in Reed College in Portland, Ore., in 1972 but dropped out after a semester.

"All of my working-class parents' savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn't see the value in it," he said at a Stanford University commencement address in 2005. "I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out."

When he returned to California in 1974, Jobs worked for video game maker Atari and attended meetings of the Homebrew Computer Club with Steve Wozniak, a high school friend who was a few years older.

Wozniak's homemade computer drew attention from other enthusiasts, but Jobs saw its potential far beyond the geeky hobbyists of the time. The pair started Apple in Jobs' parents' garage in 1976. Their first creation was the Apple I - essentially, the guts of a computer without a case, keyboard or monitor.

The Apple II, which hit the market in 1977, was their first machine for the masses. It became so popular that Jobs was worth $100 million by age 25. Time magazine put him on its cover for the first time in 1982.

During a 1979 visit to the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center, Jobs again spotted mass potential in a niche invention: a computer that allowed people to access files and control programs with the click of a mouse, not typed commands. He returned to Apple and ordered the team to copy what he had seen.

It foreshadowed a propensity to take other people's concepts, improve on them and spin them into wildly successful products. Under Jobs, Apple didn't invent computers, digital music players or smartphones - it reinvented them for people who didn't want to learn computer programming or negotiate the technical hassles of keeping their gadgets working.

"We have always been shameless about stealing great ideas," Jobs said in an interview for the 1996 PBS series "Triumph of the Nerds."

The engineers responded with two computers. The pricier one, called Lisa, launched to a cool reception in 1983. A less-expensive model called the Macintosh, named for an employee's favorite apple, exploded onto the scene in 1984.

The Mac was heralded by an epic Super Bowl commercial that referenced George Orwell's "1984" and captured Apple's iconoclastic style. In the ad, expressionless drones marched through dark halls to an auditorium where a Big Brother-like figure lectures on a big screen. A woman in a bright track uniform burst into the hall and launched a hammer into the screen, which exploded, stunning the drones, as a narrator announced the arrival of the Mac.

There were early stumbles at Apple. Jobs clashed with colleagues and even the CEO he had hired away from Pepsi, John Sculley. And after an initial spike, Mac sales slowed, in part because few programs had been written for the new graphical user interface .

Meanwhile, Microsoft copied the Mac approach and introduced Windows, outmaneuvering Apple by licensing its software to slews of computer makers while Apple insisted on making its own machines.

Software developers wrote programs first for Windows because it had millions more computers . A Mac version didn't come for months, if at all.

With Apple's stock price sinking, conflicts between Jobs and Sculley mounted. Sculley won over the board in 1985 and pushed Jobs out of his day-to-day role leading the Macintosh team. Jobs resigned his post as chairman of the board and left Apple within months.

"What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating," Jobs said in his Stanford speech. "I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life."

He got into two other companies: Next, a computer maker, and Pixar, a computer-animation studio that he bought from George Lucas for $10 million.

Pixar, ultimately the more successful venture, seemed at first a bottomless money pit. Then came "Toy Story," the first computer-animated full-length feature. Jobs used its success to negotiate a sweeter deal with Disney for Pixar's next two films. In 2006, Jobs sold Pixar to The Walt Disney Co. for $7.4 billion in stock, making him Disney's largest individual shareholder and securing a seat on the board.

With Next, Jobs was said to be obsessive about the tiniest details of the cube-shaped computer, insisting on design perfection even for the machine's guts. He never managed to spark much demand for the machine, which cost a pricey $6,500 to $10,000.

Ultimately, he shifted the focus to software - a move that paid off later when Apple bought Next for its operating system technology, the basis for the software still used in Mac computers.

By 1996, when Apple bought Next, Apple was in dire financial straits. It had lost more than $800 million in a year, dragged its heels in licensing Mac software for other computers and surrendered most of its market share to PCs that ran Windows.

Larry Ellison, Jobs' close friend and fellow Silicon Valley billionaire and the leader of Oracle Corp., publicly contemplated buying Apple in early 1997 and ousting its leadership. The idea fizzled, but Jobs stepped in as interim chief later that year.

He slashed unprofitable projects, narrowed the company's focus and presided over a new marketing push to set the Mac apart from Windows, starting with a campaign encouraging computer users to "Think different."

"In the early days, he was in charge of every detail. The only way you could say it is, he was kind of a control freak," he said. In his second stint, "he clearly was much more mellow and more mature."

In the decade that followed, Jobs kept Apple profitable while pushing out an impressive roster of new products.

Apple's popularity exploded in the 2000s. The iPod, smaller and sleeker with each generation, introduced many lifelong Windows users to their first Apple gadget.

ITunes, in 2003, gave people a convenient way to buy music legally online, song by song. For the music industry, it was a mixed blessing. The industry got a way to reach Internet-savvy people who, in the age of Napster, were growing accustomed to downloading music free. But online sales also hastened the demise of CDs and established Apple as a gatekeeper, resulting in battles between Jobs and music executives over pricing and other issues.

Jobs' command over gadget lovers and pop culture swelled to the point that, on the eve of the iPhone's launch in 2007, faithful followers slept on sidewalks outside posh Apple stores for the chance to buy one. Three years later, at the iPad's debut, the lines snaked around blocks and out through parking lots, even though people had the option to order one in advance.

The decade was not without its glitches. Apple was swept up in a Securities and Exchange Commission inquiry into stock-options backdating in the mid-2000s, a practice that artificially boosted the value of options grants. But Jobs and Apple emerged unscathed after two former executives took the fall and eventually settled with the SEC.

Jobs' personal ethos - a natural food lover who embraced Buddhism and New Age philosophy - was closely linked to the public persona he shaped for Apple. Apple itself became a statement against the commoditization of technology - a cynical view, to be sure, from a company whose computers can cost three or more times as much as those of its rivals.

For technology lovers, buying Apple products meant gaining entrance to an exclusive club. At the top was a complicated and contradictory figure who was endlessly fascinating - even to his detractors, of which Jobs had many. Jobs was a hero to techno-geeks and a villain to partners he bullied and to workers whose projects he unceremoniously killed or claimed as his own.

Unauthorized biographer Alan Deutschman described him as "deeply moody and maddeningly erratic." In his personal life, Jobs denied for two years that he was the father of Lisa, the baby born to his longtime girlfriend Chrisann Brennan in 1978.

Few seemed immune to Jobs' charisma and will. He could adeptly convince those in his presence of just about anything - even if they disagreed again when he left the room and his magic wore off.

"He always has an aura around his persona," said Bajarin, who met Jobs several times while covering the company for more than 20 years as a Creative Strategies analyst. "When you talk to him, you know you're really talking to a brilliant mind."

But Bajarin also remembers Jobs lashing out with profanity at an employee who interrupted their meeting. Jobs, the perfectionist, demanded greatness from everyone at Apple.

Jobs valued his privacy, but some details of his romantic and family life have been uncovered. In the early 1980s, Jobs dated the folk singer Joan Baez, according to Deutschman.

In 1989, Jobs spoke at Stanford's graduate business school and met his wife, Laurene Powell, who was then a student. When she became pregnant, Jobs at first refused to marry her. It was a near-repeat of what had happened more than a decade earlier with then-girlfriend Brennan, Deutschman said, but eventually Jobs relented.

Jobs started looking for his biological family in his teens, according to an interview he gave to The New York Times in 1997. He found his biological sister when he was 27. They became friends, and through her Jobs met his biological mother. Few details of their relationships have been made public.

But the extent of Apple secrecy didn't become clear until Jobs revealed in 2004 that he had been diagonosed with - and "cured" of - a rare form of operable pancreatic cancer called an islet cell neuroendocrine tumor. The company had sat on the news of his diagnosis for nine months while Jobs tried trumping the disease with a special diet, Fortune magazine reported in 2008.

In the years after his cancer was revealed, rumors about Jobs' health would spark runs on Apple stock as investors worried the company, with no clear succession plan, would fall apart without him. Apple did little to ease those concerns. It kept the state of Jobs' health a secret for as long as it could, then disclosed vague details when, in early 2009, it became clear he was again ill.

Jobs took a half-year medical leave of absence starting in January 2009, during which he had a liver transplant. Apple did not disclose the procedure at the time; two months later, The Wall Street Journal reported the fact and a doctor at the transplant hospital confirmed it.

In January 2011, Jobs announced another medical leave, his third, with no set duration. He returned to the spotlight briefly in March to personally unveil a second-generation iPad .

In 2005, following the bout with cancer, Jobs delivered Stanford University's commencement speech.

"Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life," he said. "Because almost everything - all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important." 

Google celebrates 13th birthday with Google Doodle

Google Inc. is an Americanmultinational public corporation invested in Internetsearch, cloud computing, andadvertising technologies. Google hosts and develops a number of Internet-basedservices and products, andgenerates profit primarily from advertising through its AdWords program. The company was founded by Larry Page and SergeyBrin, often dubbed the "Google Guys", while the two were attending Stanford University as PhD candidates. It was firstincorporated as a privately held company on September 4, 1998, and its initial public offering followed on August 19, 2004. At thattime Larry Page, Sergey Brin, and Eric Schmidt agreed to work together atGoogle for twenty years, until the year 2024. The company's mission statementfrom the outset was "to organize the world's information and make ituniversally accessible and useful",and the company's unofficialslogan – coined by Google engineer Amit Patel  and supported by Paul Buchheit – is "Don't beevil". In 2006, the companymoved to its current headquarters in MountainView, California.

It has been estimated that Google runs over onemillion servers in data centers around the world, and processes over onebillion search requests  and about twenty-four petabytes of user-generated data every day. Google'srapid growth since its incorporation has triggered a chain of products,acquisitions, and partnerships beyond the company's core web search engine. Thecompany offers online productivity software, such as its Gmail email service, and social networking tools, including orkut and, more recently, Google Buzz and Google+.Google's products extend to the desktop as well, with applications such as theweb browser Google Chrome, the Picasa photo organization and editingsoftware, and the Google Talk instant messaging application. Notably, Google leads thedevelopment of the Android mobile operating system, used on a number ofphones such as the Motorola Droid and the Samsung Galaxy smart phone series', as well as thenew Google Chrome OS  best known as the main operatingsystem on the Cr-48 and also, since 15 June 2011, oncommercial Chrome books such as the Samsung Series 5  and AcerAC700. Alexa lists the main U.S.-focused google.comsite as the Internet's most visited website, and numerous international Googlesites (google.co.in(14) is the most visited site in India, google.co.uk in theU.K, etc.) are in the top hundred, as are several other Google-owned sites suchas YouTube (Alexa:3), Blogger(Alexa:6), and Orkut. Google also ranks number two in the BrandZ brand equity database. The dominantmarket position of Google's services has led to criticism of the company over issues including privacy,copyright, and censorship. 

The search engine marks entering its teens by turning its home page into a birthday party scene.

Surrounded by multi-coloured balloons and streamers, its logo is adorned with party hats and sits behind a table heaped with wrapped presents and a large white birthday cake with 13 candles.

Although Google's founders, Stanford University graduate students Larry Page and Sergey Brin, built their first search engine in 1996, it was not until 1998 that they formalised their work and created Google.

The company filed for incorporation on September 4, 1998, and the Google.com domain was registered on September 15. The search engine officially celebrates its birthday on September 27.

The pair came up with the name as a play on the word “googol”, the mathematical term for a 1 followed by 100 zeros.

Toronto: Our brain continues to grow well into our 20s -- not just stopping at adolescence as once thought in medical science.

New evidence to this effect has been unearthed by biomedical engineering researchers Christian Beaulieu and his doctoral student Catherine Lebel, from University of Alberta in Canada.

Lebel recently moved to the US to work at the University of California in Los Angeles where she is a post-doctoral fellow working with an expert in brain-imaging research.

"This is the first long-range study using a type of imaging that looks at brain wiring to show that in the white matter, there are still structural changes happening during young adulthood," says Lebel, the Journal of Neuroscience reports.

"The white matter is the wiring of the brain; it connects different regions to facilitate cognitive abilities. So the connections are strengthening as we age in young adulthood," Lebel added, according to an Alberta statement.

The researchers relied on magnetic resonance imaging (MRIs) to scan the brains of 103 healthy people aged between five and 32 years.

Each subject was scanned at least twice, with a total of 221 scans being conducted overall. The study demonstrated that parts of the brain continue to develop post-adolescence within individual subjects.

The results revealed that young adult brains were still wiring the frontal lobe; tracts responsible for complex cognitive tasks such as inhibition, high-level functioning and attention.

Researchers speculated that this may be due to a plethora of life experiences in young adulthood, such as pursuing post-secondary education, starting a career, independence and developing new social and family relationships.

"What's interesting is a lot of psychiatric illness and other disorders emerge during adolescence... it may be one of the factors that makes someone more susceptible to developing these disorders," says Beaulieu.

Washington: Forty thousand web users worldwide have been assisting astronomers analyze light from 150,000 stars in hopes of finding earth-like or exoplanets. Now the web users have discovered two such potential plants.

Citizen scientists, under the project Planet Hunters launched last December, analyzed real scientific data collected by NASA's Kepler mission. The mission has been searching for planets beyond our own solar system - called exoplanets, since its launch in March 2009.

The astronomers at the Yale University have announced the first two potential exoplanets discovered by Planet Hunters users, the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society reports.

"This is the first time that the public has used data from a NASA space mission to detect possible planets orbiting other stars," said Yale astronomer Debra Fischer, who helped launch the Planet Hunters project.

The candidate planets orbit their host stars with periods ranging from 10 to 50 days - much shorter than the 365 days it takes the Earth to orbit the Sun - and have radii that range in size from two-and-a-half to eight times the Earth's radius, according to a NASA statement.

Despite those differences, one of the two candidates could be a rocky planet similar to the size of the Earth (as opposed to a giant gas planet like Jupiter), although they aren't in the so-called "habitable zone" where water and therefore life as we know it, could exist.

Next, the Planet Hunters team used the W.M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii to analyze the host stars.

"I think there's a 95 per cent chance or greater that these are bona fide planets," Fischer said.

"These. . . candidates might have gone undetected without Planet Hunters and its citizen scientists," said Meg Schwamb, Yale researcher and Planet Hunters co-founder.

"Obviously Planet Hunters doesn't replace the analysis being done by the Kepler team. But it has proven itself to be a valuable tool in the search for other worlds," added Schwamb.

After scaling the cliff walls of the Grand Canyon and driving the Le Mans racetrack for 24 hours, a tiny Japanese robot is set for a new challenge -- Hawaii's grueling Ironman Triathlon course. (Reuters)

Panasonic's "Evolta" run robot, powered by the company's Evolta rechargable batteries, is demonstrated during a news conference in Tokyo September 15, 2011. The company said three types of Evolta robots, developed to swim, bike and run, will challenge to complete an Ironman triathlon course in Hawaii, a total of about 230 km, within one week or 168 hours from October 24, 2011, powered by three AA-size rechargeable Evolta batteries, the company said. REUTERS/Yuriko Nakao (JAPAN - Tags: SCIENCE TECHNOLOGY

Panasonic's "Evolta" bike robot, powered by the company's Evolta rechargable batteries, is demonstrated during a news conference in Tokyo September 15, 2011. The company said three types of Evolta robots, developed to swim, bike and run, will challenge to complete an Ironman triathlon course in Hawaii, a total of about 230 km, within one week or 168 hours from October 24, 2011, powered by three AA-size rechargeable Evolta batteries, the company said. REUTERS/Yuriko Nakao (JAPAN - Tags: SCIENCE TECHNOLOGY

 Panasonic's "Evolta" swim robot, powered by the company's Evolta rechargable batteries, is demonstrated at a pool during a news conference in Tokyo September 15, 2011. The company said three types of Evolta robots, developed to swim, bike and run, will challenge to complete an ironman triathlon course in Hawaii, a total of about 230 km, within one week or 168 hours from October 24, 2011, powered by three AA-size rechargeable Evolta batteries, the company said. REUTERS/Yuriko Nakao (JAPAN - Tags: SCIENCE TECHNOLOGY

Panasonic's "Evolta" run robot, powered by the company's Evolta rechargable batteries, is demonstrated during a news conference in Tokyo September 15, 2011. The company said three types of Evolta robots, developed to swim, bike and run, will challenge to complete an Ironman triathlon course in Hawaii, a total of about 230 km, within one week or 168 hours from October 24, 2011, powered by three AA-size rechargeable Evolta batteries, the company said. REUTERS/Yuriko Nakao (JAPAN - Tags: SCIENCE TECHNOLOGY)

Panasonic's "Evolta" swim robot, powered by the company's Evolta rechargable batteries, is demonstrated at a pool during a news conference in Tokyo September 15, 2011. REUTERS/Yuriko Nakao