Pittsburgh Penguins' Jarome Iginla (12) and center Sidney Crosby warm up before an NHL hockey game against the New York Islanders in Pittsburgh, Saturday, March 30, 2013. (AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar)
Pittsburgh Penguins' Jarome Iginla (12) and center Sidney Crosby warm up before an NHL hockey game against the New York Islanders in Pittsburgh, Saturday, March 30, 2013. (AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar)
Pittsburgh Penguins' Jarome Iginla, left, meets the media outside the Penguins locker room before an NHL hockey game against the New York Islanders in Pittsburgh Saturday, March 30, 2013. (AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar)
Pittsburgh Penguins' Jarome Iginla meets the media before an NHL hockey game against the New York Islanders in Pittsburgh Saturday, March 30, 2013. Iginla will make is debut with the Penguins in the game. (AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar)
Pittsburgh Penguins' Jarome Iginla, top center, meets the media outside the Penguins locker room before an NHL hockey game against the New York Islanders in Pittsburgh Saturday, March 30, 2013. (AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar)
Pittsburgh Penguins' Jarome Iginla arrives to meet the media outside the Penguins locker room before an NHL hockey game against the New York Islanders in Pittsburgh Saturday, March 30, 2013. (AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar)
PITTSBURGH (AP) ? After scoring more than 500 goals in Calgary, Jarome Iginla just wants to fit in with Sidney Crosby and the streaking Pittsburgh Penguins.
The former Flames captain, acquired early Thursday in Pittsburgh's latest blockbuster trade, made his Penguins debut Saturday against the New York Islanders.
Pittsburgh was looking for its 15th straight victory, which would be two shy of the NHL record set by Mario Lemieux and the 1992-93 Penguins.
"They have a great team, obviously, with great chemistry and great leadership," Iginla said before the game. "I'm just coming to fit in, work hard with them and compete."
Iginla, a six-time All-Star, arrived in Pittsburgh on Friday night and was in the lineup Saturday, a game earlier than originally anticipated.
The 35-year-old forward had 525 goals and 570 assists in 1,219 regular-season games during 16 seasons with Calgary. He had nine goals and 13 assists in 31 games this season.
"The Penguins have been dealing with pressure for a while and they're rolling," Iginla said. "They're a very skilled group, very dynamic, but they work hard and compete hard. I'm just coming in to join that."
The move for Iginla, who waived his no-trade clause to come to Pittsburgh, was the Penguins' third big deal in a week, bolstering them from Stanley Cup contenders to prohibitive favorites. Pittsburgh also obtained former Dallas Stars captain Brenden Morrow and bruising defenseman Doug Murray from San Jose.
"It was already enticing (to come to Pittsburgh), but it's more enticing once you see (Pittsburgh) really going for it," Iginla said. "I'm not as young as I once was and every year that goes by you want to win more."
Iginla is in the final year of his contract and will be an unrestricted free agent July 1. He led Calgary to the 2004 Stanley Cup finals, but the Flames haven't been to the playoffs since 2009 and are currently 14th in the Western Conference.
Pittsburgh general manager Ray Shero gave up the rights to a couple of prospects and a 2013 first-round draft pick to grab Iginla, a future Hall of Famer still searching for his first championship after 16 seasons in western Canada.
"I enjoyed playing (in Calgary). But if you leave, you want to go to have a really great crack to win and I think they have that here," Iginla said.
The stunning deal capped a furious four-day stretch for Shero, who brought in Morrow from Dallas on Sunday and Murray on Monday. In the span of 96 hours, the Penguins added three players with a combined 1,682 points and 189 career playoff games.
And they did it without giving up a single player on a roster that had put together the NHL's second-best record with a month to go in the lockout-shortened regular season.
With his future up in the air, Iginla was scratched from Calgary's lineup against Colorado on Wednesday night, ending his consecutive games streak at 441.
Pittsburgh sent the rebuilding Flames the rights to college players Kenneth Agostino and Ben Hanowski as well as its first pick in this year's draft for the league's fifth-leading active scorer.
R2D2 greets the crowd at this year's WonderconANAHEIM, CA - The power of the Force may be elusive outside the fictional Star Wars universe but fans of R2D2 can take home their very own astromech droid if they have the time and money to build it.
Hundreds of potential droid crafters waited in line to hear from a panel belonging to the R2D2 Builders Club, a group of hobbyists who have been assembling their own functional Star Wars robots out of aluminum, plastic and even wood since 1999.
But how much time does it take to build a bleeping and whirling R2 lookalike?
"Thats the magic question," said Victor Franco, who has been building his own droids for over a decade. "It's the one you don't want your spouse to know the answer to."
And the answer varies, depending on just how detailed and capable you want your droid to be, with the final price ranging from as little as $500 up to $10,000.
"The average cost is a little over $5,000," Franco said. "A single small aluminum part can cost $100. It's not for the faint of heart."
Not surprisingly, a large variety of parts and electronics go into replicating one of the droids, with potential parts including plywood, aluminum, resin, styrene, transmitters and receivers speed controller servo motor and circuits.
"There's no one way to make an R2 unit," said William Miyamoto. "The plus side of using plastic is you pretty much can just use an cacti knife and glue."
At the other end of the spectrum, a finished R2 unit made from aluminum can weight more than 200 pounds and forces the creators to decide if they want their droid to be remote controlled or less mobile.
"I did run over a kid once," deadpanned Chris Romines.
But the four R2 builders said it is a project worth both their time and money. And when a droid is complete, it is almost immediately put into service, appearing at conventions and events for children. The droids have even starred in television commercials for companies like Verizon and ESPN and cruised across the red carpet at movie premiers.
When a pair of the hand crafted R2 units took to the stage on Friday at Wondercon, They were greeted with the type of "oohs and ahhs" normally reserved for cute animal videos or small children performing adorable tricks.
"I was poor when I was a kid so I took my toys apart and put them back together," fellow builder Mike Senna said of how he first became inspired to join the R2 club.
The R2-D2 Builders Club had humble beginnings when creator Dave Everett first launched the club as a Yahoo group, posting the blueprints showing how other aspiring builders could follow his lead.
Today, the club has thousands of members around the world and brought dozens of their robots to the most recent, annual Star Wars Celebration event.
" At the StarWars Celebration we even have droid races, including a mouse droid race," said Michael McMaster. "But when I started I was electronics illiterate."
If you're caught without your reading glasses, or you encounter some terrifically fine print on a box or contract, you have two options: curse your abnormal retina design, or pinch your fingers together. It's like adjusting the f-stop on your eyeballs.
Instructables poster mikey77 shows us how it's done, using three fingers?the thumb joined up against an index finger, with a middle finger forming the base?to create a small hole through which to see tiny things more clearly. It's obviously not for lengthy reading, but it can help in a ... pinch (sorry). Here's how it works:
You are effectively creating a pinhole lens. This gives a slight magnification and significantly increases your depth of field (the range that is in focus). It does this by greatly limiting the amount of light going through the lens in your eye. It is like adjusting the F stop in a camera.
Tried this out? Got another last-ditch reading and vision tip?
How To Make Instant Reading Glasses | Instructables
Student-loan defaults surged in the first three months of 2013, while efforts to collect bad loans are faltering, according to credit analysts and government audits. It is the latest twist in a college debt crisis that is hanging over recent graduates and dragging on the broader economy.
Credit-rating firm Equifax said $3.5 billion in government and private student loans went bad in the first three months of 2013, the most since the company began keeping track. The U.S. Department of Education said 6.8 million federal student loan borrowers are now in default, representing $85 billion in debt. And the department's systems for collecting the bad loans are struggling to keep up.
The Department's Office of Inspector General found in December that more than $1.1 billion in defaulted student loans were stuck in a sort of computer limbo.
Read More: Study: Student Loan Balances Are Up, and So Are Delinquencies
"The Department is not pursuing collection remedies and borrowers are unable to take steps to remove their loans from default status," wrote Assistant Inspector General for Audit Patrick Howard in the Dec. 13 report, which blames a system installed in 2011 by Xerox that is supposed to transfer defaulted loan accounts from servicing companies to private collection agencies. Those collection firms have considerable power, including the ability to garnish up to 15 percent of a borrower's wages. But none of that can happen until the accounts are transferred.
A Xerox spokesman declined to comment, referring inquiries to the Department of Education.
"While we regret this delay, we are taking active steps to work with the vendor to resolve the problem," Department of Education spokesman Chris Greene said in an e-mail. He denied that borrowers who have cleared up their defaults are not being removed from defaulted status, but acknowledged "a small percentage" of bad loans have been caught up in the problem.
He said some $600 million of the affected loans will be transferred "in the coming weeks."
Read More:How the Student Loan Crisis Drags Down Home Prices
But government auditors say some damage is already done. The Inspector General's office says the collection problem led to a "material weakness" in the department's financial controls last fiscal year ? an issue Education Secretary Arne Duncan has vowed to address. Nonetheless, spokesman Chris Greene says the numbers came out right in the end.
"Taxpayers and borrowers can rely on the integrity and accuracy of our financial reporting," Greene said.
Critics say the collection issues are a sign of a much larger problem.
"I take personal responsibility for the situation beginning, but personal responsibility does not mean you spend the rest of your life financially compromised," said Jason Paskowitz, a financial analyst from Tenafly, N.J.
Read More: Student-Loan Delinquencies Now Surpass Credit Cards
Paskowitz is 46 years old, but still owes more than $39,000 on loans he took out to finance his college education at Binghamton University in New York in the 1980s.
He borrowed only about $20,000. But after Paskowitz fell ill during his first year of law school in 1989 and dropped out, his loans went into default. Interest and fees began piling up, so even though records show he has paid roughly $26,000, he still owes nearly twice his original principal ? 25 years after graduation.
He says he was hounded for years by collection agents ? "they called me every name in the book" ? and in 2008 was hit with an "administrative garnishment" seizing nine percent of his debt. He says the collection agencies did not give him the full range of options available to him under the law.
"Their primary motivation is just to get as much as they can as quickly as they can," he said.
Persis Yu, an attorney with the National Consumer Law Center in Boston says keeping borrowers on the hook or not providing them with information can be in the collection firms' best interests.
"Their incentives aren't necessarily aligned with protecting borrowers' interests," she said.
Read More: Lenders Mobilize to Help College Kids Manage Student Loans
The Department recently attempted to address those concerns by lowering some of the commissions it pays the collection firms. Converting a defaulted loan to a "rehabilitation loan" ? which rolls outstanding loan balances and fees into a new loan that removes the borrower from default ? now pays the collection firm as little as eleven percent of the outstanding loan balance, compared to as much as 15 percent previously. But the option is still far more lucrative than a disability discharge, which wipes out the loan entirely and pays the collection firm a few hundred dollars in administrative fees.
"The Higher Education Act is a very complicated statute," Yu said, "and debt collectors aren't necessarily in the best position to explain options to borrowers."
But spokesman Chris Greene says the Department of Education is keeping tabs on the collection firms and looking out for borrowers' interests?including a new "one-stop" portal for complaints about the firms at https://www.myeddebt.com.
"Our entire approach to default collections is structured to encourage full repayment while ensuring borrowers understand both the consequences of their failure to repay and the options available to help them get out of default."
MOSCOW/CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) - Two Russian cosmonauts and a U.S. astronaut took a short cut to the International Space Station on Thursday, arriving at the orbital outpost less than six hours after their Soyuz capsule blasted off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.
The express route, used for the first time to fly a crew to the station, shaved about 45 hours off the usual ride, allowing NASA astronaut Chris Cassidy and Russian cosmonauts Pavel Vinogradov and Alexander Misurkin to get a jumpstart on their planned 5.5-month mission.
The crew's Soyuz capsule parked itself at the station's Poisk module at 10:28 p.m. EDT (0228 GMT Friday), just five hours and 45 minutes after launch.
All previous station crews, whether flying aboard NASA's now-retired space shuttles or on Russian Soyuz capsules, took at least two days to reach the station, a $100 billion research laboratory that flies about 250 miles above Earth.
"The closer the station, the better we feel. Everything is going good," the cosmonauts radioed to flight controllers outside of Moscow as the Soyuz capsule approached the orbital outpost, a project of 15 nations.
On hand to greet the new crew were Expedition 35 commander Chris Hadfield, with the Canadian Space Agency, NASA astronaut Thomas Marshburn and cosmonaut Roman Romanenko.
Russia tested the expedited route, which required very precise steering maneuvers, during three unmanned station cargo flights before allowing a crew to attempt it.
"Ballistics is a difficult thing. If for some reason you are not able to correct the orbit of the station or they have to avoid space debris ... that can disrupt this method," said Igor Lisov, an expert at the Russian publication Novosti Kosmonavtiki.
The advantage, however, is that the crew doesn't have to stay for two days inside the cramped Soyuz capsule. It also means they can arrive before any disabling effects of adapting to microgravity, which can include nausea, dizziness and vomiting, and that medical experiments and samples can arrive at the station sooner, enhancing science results.
Russian engineers began looking at new flight paths to reach the station about three years ago, Vinogradov said at a prelaunch press conference.
"At first everybody was really apprehensive about it, but later on our ballistic specialists calculated the possibility, looked at the rocket and verified the capabilities of the Soyuz vehicle, which now has a digital command-and-control system and an onboard computer that can do pretty much anything," he said.
Russian engineers already are looking into cutting the trip time to two orbits, Vinogradov added.
(Additional reporting by Alissa de Carbonnel; Editing by Jason Webb and Philip Barbara)
FILE - A Friday, Aug. 31, 2012 photo from files showing Russian tycoon Boris Berezovsky talking to the media after losing his case against Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich as he leaves the High Court in London. United Kingdom police have said that Berezovsky has been found dead Saturday March 23, 2013.(AP Photo/Sang Tan, File)
FILE - A Friday, Aug. 31, 2012 photo from files showing Russian tycoon Boris Berezovsky talking to the media after losing his case against Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich as he leaves the High Court in London. United Kingdom police have said that Berezovsky has been found dead Saturday March 23, 2013.(AP Photo/Sang Tan, File)
LONDON (AP) ? How do you burn through billions?
The death of Boris Berezovsky, whose body was found Saturday inside his upscale English home, has refocused attention on the fantastic wealth racked up by Russia's ruthless oligarchs ? and their propensity for spending it. Berezovsky, 67, had once been considered Russia's richest man ? but by this January, a British judge was wondering whether the tycoon would be able to pay his debts.
Police say post mortem examinations have found that Berezovsky died from hanging. There was no violent struggle, and no evidence of anyone else being involved, they said. His lawyer said the oligarch had been in "a horrible, terrible" emotional state. The tycoon had survived several assassination attempts, including a 1994 car bomb in Moscow, and there was speculation as to whether his death was natural, part of a conspiracy or a suicide.
To understand how one man could lose so much money, it helps to see how he made it in the first place.
___
FOUNDATIONS OF A FORTUNE
Berezovsky, a mathematician, made his fortune in the 1990s during the catastrophic privatization of the Soviet Union's state-run economy. That era was marked by hyperinflation, contract killings and rampant corruption. As Russia's GDP crumbled, oligarchs leveraged their ties to ruthless criminals and crooked officials to tear off huge chunks of the country's assets for themselves, draining resources and stripping factories to build fabulous fortunes.
Berezovsky ? whose interests ran from automobiles to airplanes to aluminum ? was one of this dark period's primary beneficiaries. He became a political operator in Russian President Boris Yeltsin's inner circle, trading on his connections to rack up assets estimated by Forbes to be worth roughly $3 billion in 1997.
"No man profited more from Russia's slide into the abyss," author Paul Klebnikov wrote in a critical profile of Berezovsky titled "Godfather of the Kremlin."
Eventually, the abyss began threatening Berezovsky as well.
The tycoon had been instrumental in orchestrating the accession of Yeltsin's successor, Vladimir Putin, but when the new leader and Berezovsky began to clash, his political cover disintegrated. Berezovsky then fled the country in 2000, eventually claiming political asylum in Britain.
___
LIVING LARGE IN LONDON
How much money Berezovsky really had ? and how much he was able to take with him from Moscow ? remains shrouded in uncertainty. Rich Russians at the time routinely stashed their money in labyrinthine offshore trusts or held assets under the names of associates or family members. Many deals weren't even put into writing.
What's clear is that the 1998 Russian financial crisis, coupled with Berezovsky's spectacular fall from political grace, had a big impact on his bottom line. Forbes estimated his post-Moscow fortune in the hundreds of millions. Rival oligarch Roman Abramovich testified in court that Berezovsky had been down to his last $1 million when he fled Russia.
If Berezovsky were strapped for cash, he didn't show it. He rode around London in a reinforced Maybach limousine and was often seen huddled with business contacts in the exclusive hotels that line London's Hyde Park. His string of oversize mansions in England, France and the Caribbean suggested he was a cut above the average millionaire.
Russian officials seemed to believe that Berezovsky had plenty of cash on hand, trying ? with mixed success ? to claw back some of the exile's assets. Charges are still pending against him in relation to the alleged embezzlement of some $13 million from Russia's now-defunct SBS-Agro bank. Berezovsky had also previously been convicted in absentia of bilking hundreds of millions of rubles from the airline company Aeroflot and the carmaker AvtoVaz.
___
THE BILLS PILE UP
Berezovsky often expressed a fondness for Britain's legal system, despite his frequent and expensive encounters with it. A search of British court records throws up roughly three dozen judgments ? libel, fraud, divorce, breach of contract ? involving the tycoon in some way.
Berezovsky sued a business associate over a fraudulent loan. Other business associates sued him over a botched oil deal. Berezovsky sued Forbes over an unflattering profile. He sued Russian television for suggesting he had a hand in the poisoning death of ex-Russian KGB officer Alexander Litvinenko. His second wife sued him for a divorce. His girlfriend sued him for a house he'd promised her. He sued the wife of his long-time partner, Badri Patarkatsishvili, in a complicated dispute over how to split the man's assets after his death.
The sums involved were staggering. The loan deal was worth $5 million. His second divorce settlement in 2011 reportedly cost him 100 million pounds (about $154 million at the time). Patarkatsishvili's assets could be worth hundreds of millions more. The biggest lawsuit of all, against Abramovich for breach of contract and blackmail, was for a mind-boggling $5.6 billion.
Berezovsky lost the lawsuit against Abramovich last year and the judge involved stopped just short of calling him a liar. He was stuck with tens of millions of pounds in legal bills.
___
A FORTUNE FALTERS
Whatever the extent of Berezovsky's wealth, his expensive divorce, Patarkatsishvili's death and his paper mountain of litigation left it much reduced.
In 2008, Berezovsky was forced to sell the Darius, a 110-meter (360-foot) -long custom-built yacht that many believed was an attempt to compete with an even larger ship, the Eclipse, being built for Abramovich.
Earlier this month, the Times of London reported that Berezovsky was downsizing his art collection, selling off his homes, firing staff and closing his office in London's upscale Mayfair district.
In a January ruling in a dispute between Berezovsky and his ex-girlfriend Helena Gorbunova, High Court Judge George Mann wrote that the oligarch's fortune appeared to have been spread thin.
"On the evidence, Mr. Berezovsky is a man under financial pressure," he said.
A person familiar with the deal tells The Associated Press that free agent pitcher Kyle Lohse and the Milwaukee Brewers have reached agreement on a three-year contract worth $33 million.
Several media outlets reported the deal Monday. The person spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity because an official announcement was expected later in the day.
The 34-year-old Lohse joined the Brewers exactly a week before they're set to open the season at home against Colorado.
Lohse enjoyed his best season in the majors last year, going 16-3 with a 2.86 ERA and helping the St. Louis Cardinals earn an NL wild-card spot. He is 118-109 lifetime with a 4.45 ERA in 12 seasons with Minnesota, Cincinnati, Philadelphia and St. Louis.
You might say the week is never really done in consumer technology news. Your workweek, however, hopefully draws to a close at some point. This is the Weekly Roundup on Engadget, a quick peek back at the top headlines for the past seven days -- all handpicked by the editors here at the site. Click on through the break, and enjoy.
For a trio of Western University students, Kim Pritchard?s presentation was inspiring yet sobering.
When Pritchard spoke to a class of first-year health sciences students, it was part of a 50-presentation tour meant to garner interest in the Bust a Move for Breast Health event, set for April 6 at the London Convention Centre.
Melanie Lyons, Alyson Kincaid and Nina Polic, a group of friends in the class, left the presentation wanting to get involved and help the cause. But, the trio knew it would be a daunting task.
Raising $1,000 per person is not an easy feat for anyone, let alone a group of university students. They initially dismissed the idea but quickly changed their minds.
?Later that week while we were studying, Alyson said she really wanted to try and do it,? Lyons said. ?Her grandmother is currently battling breast cancer, and her other grandmother passed away from the disease. After sharing our experiences with cancer, we decided if we worked really hard we could raise the money.?
They started by reaching out to friends and family. Then, they tapped into the Western student body, which proved difficult, Lyons said, since most students are on a limited budget.
A pass-the-hat fundraiser got the ball rolling and was followed by a video game hockey tournament. Dubbed NHL for Charity, students living in residence paid a $10 entry fee to compete for bragging rights.
The trio also organized a successful bottle drive.
?It?s been difficult, but we?ve been able to raise more than half our goal so far,? Lyons said.
Fundraising as a group is an area where many teams have seen success, Pritchard said.
In all, there are 60 teams and more than 430 individuals registered for London?s inaugural Bust a Move, expected to generate close to $500,000 for medical equipment, patient care and comfort items at St. Joseph Health Care?s new Breast Care Centre.
Thanks to Pritchard?s presentations, there will be a strong presence from a younger crowd.
?Breast screening and breast health starts at a very young age,? said Pritchard, senior development officer at St. Joe?s. ?So we really wanted to get young people involved.?
Described as a ?day-long fitness extravaganza,? the event will be attended by 300 volunteers and will feature fitness sessions run by the Athletic Club.
Oh, and Richard Simmons will be in town for the final session of the six-hour day.
Lyons is looking forward to that and more. The 18-year-old broke her ankle last month but is still hoping to participate with her friends.
?Alyson and Nina have been exercising a lot,? Lyons said. ?And we?ve all made efforts to eat healthier. We?re very excited for the event, and we?re grateful to be able to share the opportunity as friends.?
T-cell therapy eradicates an aggressive leukemia in 2 childrenPublic release date: 25-Mar-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Rachel Salis-Silverman
Salis@email.chop.edu
267-426-6063
Children's Hospital of Philadelphia
Holly Auer
holly.auer@uphs.upenn.edu
215-200-2313
Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania
CHOP/Penn Medicine oncology team reports complete remission in pediatric ALL patients
Two children with an aggressive form of childhood leukemia had a complete remission of their diseaseshowing no evidence of cancer cells in their bodiesafter treatment with a novel cell therapy that reprogrammed their immune cells to rapidly multiply and destroy leukemia cells. A research team from The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia and the University of Pennsylvania published the case report of two pediatric patients Online First today in The New England Journal of Medicine. It will appear in the April 18 print issue.
One of the patients, 7-year-old Emily Whitehead, was featured in news stories in December 2012 after the experimental therapy led to her dramatic recovery after she relapsed following conventional treatment. Emily remains healthy and cancer-free, 11 months after receiving bioengineered T cells that zeroed in on a target found in this type of leukemia, called acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL).
The other patient, a 10-year-old girl, who also had a complete response to the same treatment, suffered a relapse two months later when other leukemia cells appeared that did not harbor the specific cell receptor targeted by the therapy.
"This study describes how these cells have a potent anticancer effect in children," said co-first author Stephan A. Grupp, M.D., Ph.D., of The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, where both patients were treated in this clinical trial. "However, we also learned that in some patients with ALL, we will need to further modify the treatment to target other molecules on the surface of leukemia cells."
Grupp is the director of Translational Research for the Center for Childhood Cancer Research at The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, and a professor of Pediatrics at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. Michael Kalos, Ph.D., an adjunct associate professor in the department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine in the Perelman School of Medicine at Penn, is co-first author on the study.
The current study builds on Grupp's ongoing collaboration with Penn Medicine scientists who originally developed the modified T cells as a treatment for B-cell leukemias. The Penn team reported on early successful results of a trial using this cell therapy in three adult chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) patients in August of 2011. Two of those patients remain in remission more than 2 years following their treatment, and as the Penn researchers reported in December 2012 at the annual meeting of the American Society of Hematology, seven out of ten adult patients treated at that point responded to the therapy. The team is led by the current study's senior author, Carl H. June, M.D., the Richard W. Vague Professor in Immunotherapy in the department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine and the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania and director of Translational Research in Penn's Abramson Cancer Center.
"We're hopeful that our efforts to treat patients with these personalized cellular therapies will reduce or even replace the need for bone marrow transplants, which carry a high mortality risk and require long hospitalizations," June said. "In the long run, if the treatment is effective in these late-stage patients, we would like to explore using it up front, and perhaps arrive at a point where leukemia can be treated without chemotherapy."
The research team colleagues adapted the original CLL treatment to combat another B-cell leukemia: ALL, which is the most common childhood cancer. After decades of research, oncologists can currently cure 85 percent of children with ALL. Both children in the current study had a high-risk type of ALL that stubbornly resists conventional treatments.
The new study used a relatively new approach in cancer treatment: immunotherapy, which manipulates the immune system to increase its cancer-fighting capabilities. Here the researchers engineered T cells to selectively kill another type of immune cell called B cells, which had become cancerous.
T cells are the workhorses of the immune system, recognizing and attacking invading disease cells. However, cancer cells fly under the radar of immune surveillance, evading detection by T cells. The new approach custom-designs T cells to "see" and attack the cancer cells.
The researchers removed some of each patient's own T cells and modified them in the laboratory to create a type of CAR (chimeric antigen receptor) cell called a CTL019 cell. These cells are designed to attack a protein called CD19 that occurs only on the surface of certain B cells.
By creating an antibody that recognizes CD19 and then connecting that antibody to T cells, the researchers created in CTL019 cells a sort of guided missile that locks in on and kills B cells, thereby attacking B-cell leukemia. After being returned to the patient's body, the CTL019 cells multiply a thousand times over and circulate throughout the body. Importantly, they persist for months afterward, guarding against a recurrence of this specific type of leukemia.
While the CTL019 cells eliminate leukemia, they also can generate an overactive immune response, called a cytokine release syndrome, involving dangerously high fever, low blood pressure, and other side effects. This complication was especially severe in Emily, and her hospital team needed to provide her with treatments that rapidly relieved the treatment-related symptoms by blunting the immune overresponse, while still preserving the modified T cells' anti-leukemia activity.
"The comprehensive testing plan that we have put in place to study patients' blood and bone marrow while they're undergoing this therapy is allowing us to be able to follow how the T cells are behaving in patients in real time, and guides us to be able to design more detailed and specific experiments to answer critical questions that come up from our studies," Kalos said.
The CTL019 therapy eliminates all B cells that carry the CD19 cell receptor: healthy cells as well as those with leukemia. Patients can live without B cells, although they require regular replacement infusions of immunoglobulin, which can be given at home, to perform the immune function normally provided by B cells.
The research team continues to refine their approach using this new technology and explore reasons why some patients may not respond to the therapy or may experience a recurrence of their disease. Grupp said the appearance of the CD19-negative leukemia cells in the second child may have resulted from her prior treatments. Unlike Emily, the second patient had received an umbilical cord cell transplant from a matched donor, so her engineered T cells were derived from her donor (transplanted) cells, with no additional side effects. Oncologists had previously treated her with blinatumomab, a monoclonal antibody, in hopes of fighting the cancer. The prior treatments may have selectively favored a population of CD19-negative T cells.
"The emergence of tumor cells that no longer contain the target protein suggests that in particular patients with high-risk ALL, we may need to broaden the treatment to include additional T cells that may go after additional targets," added Grupp. "However, the initial results with this immune-based approach are encouraging, and may later even be developed into treatments for other types of cancer."
###
Funding from the National Institutes of Health (grants 1RO1 CA165206, R01 CA102646 and R01 CA116660), the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society, and the Alliance for Cancer Gene Therapy supported this study.
In August 2012, the University of Pennsylvania and Novartis announced an exclusive global research and licensing agreement to further study and commercialize these novel cellular immunotherapies using chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) technologies. As part of the transaction, Novartis acquired exclusive rights from Penn to CART-19, the therapy that was the subject of this clinical trial and which is now known as CTL019.
"Chimeric Antigen Receptor-Modified T Cells for Acute Lymphoid Leukemia," New England Journal of Medicine, Online First, March 25, 2013. To appear in print April 18, 2013.
About The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia:
The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia was founded in 1855 as the nation's first pediatric hospital. Through its long-standing commitment to providing exceptional patient care, training new generations of pediatric healthcare professionals and pioneering major research initiatives, Children's Hospital has fostered many discoveries that have benefited children worldwide. Its pediatric research program is among the largest in the country, ranking third in National Institutes of Health funding. In addition, its unique family-centered care and public service programs have brought the 516-bed hospital recognition as a leading advocate for children and adolescents. For more information, visit http://www.chop.edu.
About Penn Medicine:
Penn Medicine is one of the world's leading academic medical centers, dedicated to the related missions of medical education, biomedical research, and excellence in patient care. Penn Medicine consists of the Raymond and Ruth Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania (founded in 1765 as the nation's first medical school) and the University of Pennsylvania Health System, which together form a $4.3 billion enterprise.
The Perelman School of Medicine has been ranked among the top five medical schools in the United States for the past 16 years, according to U.S. News & World Report's survey of research-oriented medical schools. The School is consistently among the nation's top recipients of funding from the National Institutes of Health, with $398 million awarded in the 2012 fiscal year.
The University of Pennsylvania Health System's patient care facilities include: The Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania -- recognized as one of the nation's top "Honor Roll" hospitals by U.S. News & World Report; Penn Presbyterian Medical Center; and Pennsylvania Hospital -- the nation's first hospital, founded in 1751. Penn Medicine also includes additional patient care facilities and services throughout the Philadelphia region.
Penn Medicine is committed to improving lives and health through a variety of community-based programs and activities. In fiscal year 2012, Penn Medicine provided $827 million to benefit our community.
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T-cell therapy eradicates an aggressive leukemia in 2 childrenPublic release date: 25-Mar-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Rachel Salis-Silverman
Salis@email.chop.edu
267-426-6063
Children's Hospital of Philadelphia
Holly Auer
holly.auer@uphs.upenn.edu
215-200-2313
Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania
CHOP/Penn Medicine oncology team reports complete remission in pediatric ALL patients
Two children with an aggressive form of childhood leukemia had a complete remission of their diseaseshowing no evidence of cancer cells in their bodiesafter treatment with a novel cell therapy that reprogrammed their immune cells to rapidly multiply and destroy leukemia cells. A research team from The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia and the University of Pennsylvania published the case report of two pediatric patients Online First today in The New England Journal of Medicine. It will appear in the April 18 print issue.
One of the patients, 7-year-old Emily Whitehead, was featured in news stories in December 2012 after the experimental therapy led to her dramatic recovery after she relapsed following conventional treatment. Emily remains healthy and cancer-free, 11 months after receiving bioengineered T cells that zeroed in on a target found in this type of leukemia, called acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL).
The other patient, a 10-year-old girl, who also had a complete response to the same treatment, suffered a relapse two months later when other leukemia cells appeared that did not harbor the specific cell receptor targeted by the therapy.
"This study describes how these cells have a potent anticancer effect in children," said co-first author Stephan A. Grupp, M.D., Ph.D., of The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, where both patients were treated in this clinical trial. "However, we also learned that in some patients with ALL, we will need to further modify the treatment to target other molecules on the surface of leukemia cells."
Grupp is the director of Translational Research for the Center for Childhood Cancer Research at The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, and a professor of Pediatrics at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. Michael Kalos, Ph.D., an adjunct associate professor in the department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine in the Perelman School of Medicine at Penn, is co-first author on the study.
The current study builds on Grupp's ongoing collaboration with Penn Medicine scientists who originally developed the modified T cells as a treatment for B-cell leukemias. The Penn team reported on early successful results of a trial using this cell therapy in three adult chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) patients in August of 2011. Two of those patients remain in remission more than 2 years following their treatment, and as the Penn researchers reported in December 2012 at the annual meeting of the American Society of Hematology, seven out of ten adult patients treated at that point responded to the therapy. The team is led by the current study's senior author, Carl H. June, M.D., the Richard W. Vague Professor in Immunotherapy in the department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine and the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania and director of Translational Research in Penn's Abramson Cancer Center.
"We're hopeful that our efforts to treat patients with these personalized cellular therapies will reduce or even replace the need for bone marrow transplants, which carry a high mortality risk and require long hospitalizations," June said. "In the long run, if the treatment is effective in these late-stage patients, we would like to explore using it up front, and perhaps arrive at a point where leukemia can be treated without chemotherapy."
The research team colleagues adapted the original CLL treatment to combat another B-cell leukemia: ALL, which is the most common childhood cancer. After decades of research, oncologists can currently cure 85 percent of children with ALL. Both children in the current study had a high-risk type of ALL that stubbornly resists conventional treatments.
The new study used a relatively new approach in cancer treatment: immunotherapy, which manipulates the immune system to increase its cancer-fighting capabilities. Here the researchers engineered T cells to selectively kill another type of immune cell called B cells, which had become cancerous.
T cells are the workhorses of the immune system, recognizing and attacking invading disease cells. However, cancer cells fly under the radar of immune surveillance, evading detection by T cells. The new approach custom-designs T cells to "see" and attack the cancer cells.
The researchers removed some of each patient's own T cells and modified them in the laboratory to create a type of CAR (chimeric antigen receptor) cell called a CTL019 cell. These cells are designed to attack a protein called CD19 that occurs only on the surface of certain B cells.
By creating an antibody that recognizes CD19 and then connecting that antibody to T cells, the researchers created in CTL019 cells a sort of guided missile that locks in on and kills B cells, thereby attacking B-cell leukemia. After being returned to the patient's body, the CTL019 cells multiply a thousand times over and circulate throughout the body. Importantly, they persist for months afterward, guarding against a recurrence of this specific type of leukemia.
While the CTL019 cells eliminate leukemia, they also can generate an overactive immune response, called a cytokine release syndrome, involving dangerously high fever, low blood pressure, and other side effects. This complication was especially severe in Emily, and her hospital team needed to provide her with treatments that rapidly relieved the treatment-related symptoms by blunting the immune overresponse, while still preserving the modified T cells' anti-leukemia activity.
"The comprehensive testing plan that we have put in place to study patients' blood and bone marrow while they're undergoing this therapy is allowing us to be able to follow how the T cells are behaving in patients in real time, and guides us to be able to design more detailed and specific experiments to answer critical questions that come up from our studies," Kalos said.
The CTL019 therapy eliminates all B cells that carry the CD19 cell receptor: healthy cells as well as those with leukemia. Patients can live without B cells, although they require regular replacement infusions of immunoglobulin, which can be given at home, to perform the immune function normally provided by B cells.
The research team continues to refine their approach using this new technology and explore reasons why some patients may not respond to the therapy or may experience a recurrence of their disease. Grupp said the appearance of the CD19-negative leukemia cells in the second child may have resulted from her prior treatments. Unlike Emily, the second patient had received an umbilical cord cell transplant from a matched donor, so her engineered T cells were derived from her donor (transplanted) cells, with no additional side effects. Oncologists had previously treated her with blinatumomab, a monoclonal antibody, in hopes of fighting the cancer. The prior treatments may have selectively favored a population of CD19-negative T cells.
"The emergence of tumor cells that no longer contain the target protein suggests that in particular patients with high-risk ALL, we may need to broaden the treatment to include additional T cells that may go after additional targets," added Grupp. "However, the initial results with this immune-based approach are encouraging, and may later even be developed into treatments for other types of cancer."
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Funding from the National Institutes of Health (grants 1RO1 CA165206, R01 CA102646 and R01 CA116660), the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society, and the Alliance for Cancer Gene Therapy supported this study.
In August 2012, the University of Pennsylvania and Novartis announced an exclusive global research and licensing agreement to further study and commercialize these novel cellular immunotherapies using chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) technologies. As part of the transaction, Novartis acquired exclusive rights from Penn to CART-19, the therapy that was the subject of this clinical trial and which is now known as CTL019.
"Chimeric Antigen Receptor-Modified T Cells for Acute Lymphoid Leukemia," New England Journal of Medicine, Online First, March 25, 2013. To appear in print April 18, 2013.
About The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia:
The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia was founded in 1855 as the nation's first pediatric hospital. Through its long-standing commitment to providing exceptional patient care, training new generations of pediatric healthcare professionals and pioneering major research initiatives, Children's Hospital has fostered many discoveries that have benefited children worldwide. Its pediatric research program is among the largest in the country, ranking third in National Institutes of Health funding. In addition, its unique family-centered care and public service programs have brought the 516-bed hospital recognition as a leading advocate for children and adolescents. For more information, visit http://www.chop.edu.
About Penn Medicine:
Penn Medicine is one of the world's leading academic medical centers, dedicated to the related missions of medical education, biomedical research, and excellence in patient care. Penn Medicine consists of the Raymond and Ruth Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania (founded in 1765 as the nation's first medical school) and the University of Pennsylvania Health System, which together form a $4.3 billion enterprise.
The Perelman School of Medicine has been ranked among the top five medical schools in the United States for the past 16 years, according to U.S. News & World Report's survey of research-oriented medical schools. The School is consistently among the nation's top recipients of funding from the National Institutes of Health, with $398 million awarded in the 2012 fiscal year.
The University of Pennsylvania Health System's patient care facilities include: The Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania -- recognized as one of the nation's top "Honor Roll" hospitals by U.S. News & World Report; Penn Presbyterian Medical Center; and Pennsylvania Hospital -- the nation's first hospital, founded in 1751. Penn Medicine also includes additional patient care facilities and services throughout the Philadelphia region.
Penn Medicine is committed to improving lives and health through a variety of community-based programs and activities. In fiscal year 2012, Penn Medicine provided $827 million to benefit our community.
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AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Havana?s Sports City Complex arena. Photo: tribuna.co.cu
HAVANA TIMES ? Before the January 1, 1959 triumph of the Cuban Revolution, sports in Cuba was limited to four professional baseball teams and a few outstanding individuals, who were always self-made individuals since the sports and recreation system of that time totally lacked governmental support.
In the pre-revolutionary era there was no sports infrastructure. Baseball was played almost exclusively in the capital. Nor did the country have sports schools. Participation in sports was limited to youth from wealthy families. In the private schools they attended were some facilities for engaging in sports, though almost never for serious competition.
When the revolution triumphed, physical culture and sports were recognized by the government as a right of the people and a way to promoting and maintaining good health. At that time, the building of the sports infrastructure began that would enable Cuba to develop its sports movement and achieve massive participation in sports across the country.
Over the past 54 years ? despite being a poor country without major natural resources, (depending essentially on imported oil for its energy needs), despite its population having doubled, and being subjected to an economic, trade and financial blockade (whose avowed aim is to ?create difficulties, hunger and disease so that the people themselves overthrow the government?) ? Cuba?s sports infrastructure was developed. As a result, this has turned the country into a powerhouse in that realm.
It?s difficult to summarize in a short review everything that has been done in the country in terms of sports. Nevertheless, the outcomes speak for themselves. From the start of the Olympic Games in 1896 up until 1956 ? a span of over 60 years ? Cuba won only four Olympic gold medals.
However, starting from nothing, in its 54 years of revolution the island won 67 gold medals by 2012.
In all the Pan American Games in which Cuba has participated, it has always come in second place, behind the United States ? except for the games held on the island (1991), where it came in first place, and in 1951 when it finished third. Prior to 1959 there were two Pan-American Games (in 1951 and 1955), in which Cuba won a total of 10 gold medals. After 1959, we?ve brought home 829 gold medals.
Cuba has developed a sports infrastructure throughout the country, including baseball stadiums in all provincial capitals and in some municipalities, many of them lighted for nighttime play.
A sports facility complex was built in Havana for holding the 1991 Pan American Games, one that includes facilities for all sports.
As for the system of school sports, this covers the entire country and culminates with the High Performance Athletes Training School, in Havana. However special mention is deserved by the Manuel Fajardo Higher Institute of Physical Culture, also in Havana, a university dedicated to sports and physical culture.
Sports Assistance Abroad
In the field of sports cooperation, Cuba currently provides technical assistance to more than 50 countries, to which it dedicates more than 8,000 teachers and coaches. As a result of this collaboration ? to cite only one example ? in the 2003 Pan American Games, Cuban coaches were involved with 71 teams from 17 countries. In the 2008 Olympics, the island had 18 collaborators (including coaches, physiotherapists and physicians) working with teams from 14 countries.
Hundreds of teachers, coaches and sports specialists from Third World countries have graduated in Cuba from sports schools or the institute mentioned above. Cuba also created the International School of Physical Education and Sports, which is attended by over 1,300 students from 71 countries.
In the field of sports medicine, Cuba cooperates with other Latin American countries, with these having access to the Institute of Sports Medicine. In addition, an anti-doping testing laboratory was built on the island, the fifth in the Americas, to provide services to developing countries in the fight against drug abuse, which is so damaging to sports and athletes.
In this brief summary I?ve tried to reflect what the Cuban Revolution has done in the field of sports, regarded as a right of the people, citing only the most salient issues ? since several books could be written on this subject.
Here I?ve referred only to ?muscular sports,? since I plan to discuss chess in a forthcoming post.
Resentment is an extremely bitter diet, and eventually poisonous. I have no desire to make my own toxins. Neil Kinnock
I am currently listening to the ?Savage Love? podcast, which is ? interesting. And given my interests (and hopefully cognizant of the dangers this entails), some of the advice he gives about sex and relationships can be applied beautifully to the area of creativity.
One piece of advice he gives often to ? more heavyweight women is that they are often rejected by men of their own age until they are about 30. At this time, male coevals who are romantically and sexually interested in heavyweight women learn to pursue what turns them on ? and overcome the social pressure from their peers to date thin or normal weight women. The interesting piece of advice he gave to heavyweight women was not to become bitter in the meantime.
I think it directly relates to creativity as well.
It takes time to become creative ? to be really good at what you do. And all the time you see others who have made it, who seem to have it easier, perhaps because they started earlier, or they had better teachers, are more talented, had a more supportive environment, had less distractions, more luck, whatever.
It can make you bitter and give up. It can make you cynical. It can make you become a bad critic or a bad translator/lector. It?s much, much easier to fall into this trap than to press on, no matter how important mastering the topic is for creative people.
Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful people with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan ?press on? has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race. Calvin Coolidge
Sure, if you notice that you have no talent for what you do, you should look for something that suits you more. You can change the domain or the medium. And you need to know how good the competition is if you want to make money out of your work. These are things that can and should stop you ? if you cannot overcome them with persistent training. But otherwise, I think the focus should be on improving oneself, looking at one?s own progress, and avoiding to fall into that trap. If you look at many successful creative people ? it took them a while. And a lot of work went into the trash-bin ? directly or via a few rejections.
So, take care not to become bitter. Have other interests you follow and a social network that stabilizes you when times get tough. Otherwise you strangle your own creativity and prevent yourself from becoming successful ? if (or hopefully rather when) your time comes.
Mar. 22, 2013 ? In August 2011, researchers from the U.S. Department of Agriculture were presented with a serious, and potentially very costly, puzzle in Kennewick, Wash. Since Kennewick lies within a region near the heart of Washington state's $1.5 billion apple-growing region, an annual survey of fruit trees is performed by the Washington State Department of Agriculture (WSDA) to look for any invading insects. This time the surveyors discovered a crabapple tree that had been infested by a fruit fly that they couldn't identify.
It was possible that the fly's larvae, eating away inside the crabapples as they grew toward adulthood, belonged to a relatively harmless species that had simply expanded its traditional diet. In that case, they posed little threat to the surrounding apple orchards in central Washington.
But the real fear was that they represented an expansion in the range of the invasive apple maggot fly, known to biologists as Rhagoletis pomonella. If so, then this would trigger a costly quarantine process affecting three counties in the state.
"In one of the world's leading apple-growing regions, a great deal of produce and economic livelihood rested on quickly and accurately figuring out which one of the flies was in that tree," says Jeffrey Feder, professor of biological sciences and a member of the Advanced Diagnostics & Therapeutics initiative (AD&T) at the University of Notre Dame. "And for these flies, it can sometime turn out to be a difficult thing to do."
As Feder and his team, including graduate student Gilbert St. Jean and AD&T research assistant professor Scott Egan, discuss in a new study in the Journal of Economic Entomology, the WSDA sent larvae samples to Wee Yee, research entomologist at the USDA's Yakima Agricultural Research Laboratory in Wapato, Wash. One larva was sent to Notre Dame for genetic analysis. The study sought to compare Notre Dame's genetic analysis to Yee's visual identification after the larvae had developed into adults. Fortunately, the fly identified, Rhagoletis indifferens, is not known to infest apples. The Notre Dame group further demonstrated that it is possible to genetically identify the correct fly species within two days, compared to the four months required to raise and visually identify the fly.
A separate study led by the Feder lab details how the apple maggot fly was recently introduced into the Pacific Northwest region of the U.S., likely via larval-infested apples from the East. The flies have subsequently reached as far north as British Columbia, Canada, and as far south as northern California. So far, though, the apple maggot has not been reported infesting any commercial apple orchards in central Washington.
"The correct identification of the larvae infesting crabapple trees saved the local, state and federal agencies thousands of dollars in monitoring, inspection and control costs," Yee said. "The cost to growers if the apple maggot had been found to be established in the region would have been very substantial (easily over half a million dollars), but the rapid diagnostic test developed at Notre Dame suspended the need to proceed with the rulemaking process, saving staff and administrative costs."
The Feder team is continuing to refine the genetic assays to develop a portable test that would be valuable in apple-growing regions, as well as ports of entry where fruit infested by nonlocal insect species can be rapidly detected, to prevent the spread of the insect.
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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by University of Notre Dame. The original article was written by Kirk Reinbold.
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TEHRAN, Iran (AP) ? Iran says if it's attacked by Israel, it will annihilate Tel Aviv and Haifa.
Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has final say on all key decisions in Iran, says Israel is too small to be called an enemy, and that the United States is the "center of animosity" toward the Islamic republic.
He made the comments in speech on Thursday to a crowd in northeastern Iran on the first day of the new Persian calendar year. His speech in the city of Mashhad was broadcast live on state radio.
Israel, which is believed to have the only nuclear weapons arsenal in the Mideast, has threated to take military action against Iran if diplomacy fails to stop Iran's alleged nuclear weapons program.
In the classical four-wing form of this illusion, the top line appears shorter than the bottom line, even though the lines are of equal length. Terminating circles still induce a perceptual effect of line length misjudgment, as will arrows with the line shafts removed.
By Charles Choi LiveScience
Even computers can get tricked by optical illusions, a new study finds.
Such research may help shed light on how vision works in the brain, and lead to better computer recognition of images, scientists added.
Optical illusions, more properly known as visual illusions, take advantage of how the brain perceives what the eyes tell it in a way that plays a variety of tricks on the mind. For instance, these illusions may cause people to see something that is not there, or not see something that is there, or see an unrealistic portrayal of object, or see one thing as two or more completely different things. By investigating how illusions fool the brain, researchers can learn more about the brain's inner workings
"In most cases, illusions can be really useful," said researcher Astrid Zeman, a cognitive neuroscientist at Macquarie University in Australia. "For example, we watch television and see continuous movement instead of a flickering set of still images."
One classic visual illusion is the M?ller-Lyer illusion, where arrowheads and arrow tails can influence the perceived length of a line. When arrowheads are placed at both ends of a line, they can make it look shorter than a line of equal length; when these are replaced by arrow tails, they can make it look longer. [Eye Tricks: Gallery of Visual Illusions]
There is ongoing debate as to what causes the M?ller-Lyer illusion in the brain. To learn more, scientists experimented with a computer image-recognition model designed to mimic the brain's vision centers to see which might generate specific patterns of errors similar to ones expected from the illusion.
"Recently, many computer models have tried to imitate how the brain processes visual information because it is so good at it," Zeman said. "We are able to handle all sorts of changes in lighting and background, and we still recognize objects when they have been moved, rotated or deformed. I was curious to see whether copying all of the good aspects of object recognition also has the potential to copy aspects of visual processing that could produce misjudgments."
The scientists discovered these artificial mimics of the brain could get duped by the illusion.
"What is exciting about these results is imagining what would happen in the future," Zeman told LiveScience. "If we build robots with artificial brains that are modeled off our brains, the implication is that these robots would also see illusions much like we do. By imitating the amazing accuracy, flexibility and robustness that we have in recognizing objects, we could also be copying potential errors in computation that manifest in visual illusions."
Tricking a computer The researchers first showed pairs of lines to a computer model of human vision. Each pair had one line that was longer than the other. Each line either had both an arrowhead and an arrow tail or an "X" at both ends. The computer model, named HMAX, had to guess which line was longer, and it was told when it was correct and when it was wrong. In this way, the investigators trained the system to correctly identify what long and short lines look like with 90 percent accuracy.
"We train a biologically plausible model and look at the influence of the images it is exposed to," Zeman said. "If we think of this visual system as something we implant in a robot, this means that we can grow whole bunch of robots up in different environments. Then, once our robots have matured and have learnt to see things, we can then smash their brains open to see what they are thinking. This is something that we can't quite do with humans."
The scientists then tested the system with pairs of lines. Again, each pair had one line that was longer than the other. However, this time the top line always had two arrow tails and the bottom line always had two arrowheads. In humans, if both lines are actually the same length, the top line will look longer.
The researchers found the model was indeed mildly vulnerable to the illusion, losing about 0.8 percent to 1.6 percent accuracy. Also, the effect on the model was stronger when the angle of fins of the arrowheads and arrow tails was more acute, just as with humans.
"I got really excited when we first saw an illusory effect ? we hadn't expected that to happen at all," Zeman said.
How illusions trick the mind These findings may eliminate a number of potential explanations for the illusion. For example, in the past, scientists had speculated this illusion was caused by human brains misinterpreting arrowheads and arrow tails as depth cues ? in modern-day environments, rooms, buildings and roads present boxy scenes with many edges, and so might lead people to unknowingly make predictions regarding depth whenever they run across angles and corners. However, since this computer model was not trained with 3-D images, these findings may rule out that idea. [The 10 Greatest Mysteries of the Mind]
Previously, researchers had also conjectured this illusion resulted from human brains focusing more on overall information about shapes instead of on their constituent parts. However, that seems not to be true with the model either.
All in all, these findings suggest the illusion doesn't necessarily depend on the environment or any rules people learn about the world. Rather, it may result from an inherent property of how the visual system processes information that requires further elucidation.
Future research could help computers recognize illusions, so they can reject impossibilities and paradoxes. "This can be very important, for example, when judging the distances and sizes of objects in target-tracking systems," Zeman said.
The researchers now aim to model a range of different visual illusions, especially ones where there is ongoing debate as to what causes them.
"There are so many visual illusions that exist out there, and new ones are coming out all the time," Zeman said. "These illusions bring to light new questions about how we perceive the world and the assumptions we make about the world. Currently there is no existing formal and comprehensive catalog of illusions, so one direction for future development would be to pool together all of this knowledge."
The scientists detailed their findings online Feb. 15 in the journal PLOS ONE.
Follow us @livescience, Facebook?andGoogle+. Original article on LiveScience.com.
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If you're caught without your reading glasses, or you encounter some terrifically fine print on a box or contract, you have two options: curse your abnormal retina design, or pinch your fingers together. It's like adjusting the f-stop on your eyeballs.
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Public release date: 25-Mar-2013
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