Binocular vision gene :Research could lead to treatments for some visual disorders

In work that could lead to new treatments for sensory disorders in which people experience the strange phenomena of seeing better with one eye covered, MIT researchers report that they have identified the gene responsible for binocular vision.

Unlike horses and eagles, whose eyes on the sides of their heads provide two different scenes, humans see a single, in-depth view. Now researchers from the Picower Institute for Learning and Memory at MIT have identified the gene responsible for melding images from two eyes into one useful picture in the brain.

The work, which appeared in the Sept. 4 issue of the Public Library of Science (PLoS) Biology and in the journal Cerebral Cortex, shows that a novel gene is necessary for binocular vision.

"There are other instances in the brain where two different inputs have to be properly aligned and matched--such as auditory and visual projections to the midbrain that enable us to orient to sound," said lead author Mriganka Sur, Sherman Fairchild Professor of Neuroscience at the Picower Institute and head of the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at MIT. "This is the first study to pinpoint a gene with this kind of job."

Two points of view

Binocular vision allows us to perceive depth and carry out detailed visual processing. The images projected by each eye are aligned and matched up in brain regions called the visual thalamus and cortex.

The MIT researchers discovered that the genes Ten_m3 and Bcl6 have a key role in the early development of brain pathways for vision and touch. Ten_m3 appears to be critical for the brain to make sense of the two disparate images from each eye.

In mice that had the Ten_m3 gene knocked out, projections from their two eyes were mismatched in their brains. Because each eye's projection suppresses the other, the mice were blind, even though their eyes worked normally.

Remarkably, the researchers found that when the output of one eye was blocked at a molecular level, the knockout mice could see again. With one eye's conflicting input shut down, the other eye was able to function, though only with monocular vision.

"This is an amazing instance of 'gain of function' that proves immediately that the gene is directly responsible for creating matched projections from the two eyes," Sur said.

Human disorders in which the Ten_m family of genes is affected are often accompanied by visual deficits. "There are reports of human visual conditions in which simply closing one eye allows a person to see much better," Sur said. "We believe that genes such as Ten_m3 are at the heart of these disorders."

Co-authors include Catherine A. Learney, former MIT postdoctoral associate now at the University of Sydney; Atomu Sawatari, Kelly A. Glendining, Sam Merlin, Paul Lattouf and Natasha Demel of the University of Sydney; MIT affiliates Gabriel Kreiman, Kuan H. Wang and Ning-Dong Kang; Reinhard Fassler and Xiaohong Zhou of the Max Planck Institute for Biochemistry in Germany; and Susumu Tonegawa, Picower Professor of Biology and Neuroscience at MIT.

This work was supported by the National Institutes of Health, the Simons Foundation and Australia's National Health and Medical Research Council.

Basic of Binocular vision

Binocular vision is vision in which both eyes are used together. The word binocular comes from two Latin roots, bin for two, and oculus for eye. Having two eyes confers at least four advantages over having one. First, it gives a creature a spare eye in case one is damaged. Second, it gives a wider field of view. For example, a human has a horizontal field of view with one eye of about 150 degrees and with two eyes of about 180 degrees. Third, it gives binocular summation in which the ability to detect faint objects is enhanced. Fourth it can give stereopsis in which parallax provided by the two eyes' different positions on the head give precise depth perception. Such binocular vision is usually accompanied by singleness of vision or binocular fusion, in which a single image is seen despite each eye's having its own image of any object.

Other phenomena of binocular vision include utrocular discrimination, eye dominance, allelotropia, and binocular rivalry.

Technorati : Binocular vision

Silicon Storage Technology’s gets a boost,

24hoursnewsThursday, September 13th, 2007 at 3:38 pm in Silicon Storage Technology.

You have to forgive Silicon Storage Technology (ticker:SSTI) if it's feeling a bit down in the dumps lately. The Sunnyvale maker of flash storage products for consumer devices could use a friend right about now. It's struggling to sort out its potential backdated options problems, it's fighting delisting by Nasdaq because it hasn't filed financial statements in about a year, and its stock price has been hovering around $3 per share for the past few months.

On Thursday, SST got a big hug, but not necessarily the kind it wanted.

Los Angeles-based Riley Investment Partners filed a schedule 13-D indicating it now held about 6.1 percent of the company's stock after going on a stock buying binge starting in late July. At the end, the fund attached a love letter of sorts explaining its interests:

"RIM believes the shares of the Issuer to be significantly undervalued…In fact, when one backs out cash and investments, the market is valuing SST's NOR flash business, product pipeline and licensing revenue stream at only $60 million-which RIM believes to be an extremely low valuation by any measure."

We all would like to hear we're worth more than everyone thinks, right? But this love is not unconditional:

"RIM has communicated this view to the Issuer's management… RIM's desire, at this point in time, is to work assiduously and aggressively with the current management team on behalf of all shareholders."

And here's the catch:

"RIM's sincere hope is that management and the Board of Directors share its sense of urgency…If they do not, it will force RIM to take a more proactive approach, one which will include, among other things, the nomination of new directors…communicating with other stockholders, making proposals to the Issuer concerning the capitalization and operations of the Issuer."

more from Silicon Storage Technology,>>

SST (Silicon Storage Technology, Inc., NASDAQ: SSTI), a leader in flash memory technology, today announced a new addition to the company's popular SuperFlash-based FlashFlex family of 8-bit, 8051-compatible microcontrollers, the SST89V54RD-33-C-QIF. Leveraging the company's innovative packaging technology, the new SST89V54RD is available in a 6mm x 6mm WQFN package, making it the smallest 8051-based microcontroller currently on the market. The device's miniature size and low power consumption are ideal for small form factor mobile applications, such as notebook PCs, MP3 players and GPS systems, as well as home entertainment devices including HDMI products. Additionally, the SST89V54RD supports in-system programming (ISP) and in-application programming (IAP), which provide a variety of benefits to device manufacturers and consumers alike.

"As the sophistication of mobile devices increases, size reduction and low power consumption become even larger issues for product design teams," said Paul Lui, senior vice president of the Standard and Special Product Group at SST and president of SST China. "The new thin and powerful SST89V54RD was designed to help our customers meet the size, power and performance requirements of next-generation portable consumer electronic devices."

In addition to a tiny 6mm x 6mm footprint, the WQFN package offers an extremely low-profile nominal package height of only 0.7mm (maximum total thickness of 0.8mm), making the new SST89V54RD well suited for height-constrained mobile applications.

In-Field Re-Programmability Through IAP and ISP
Like all of SST's FlashFlex microcontrollers, the SST89V54RD supports both IAP and ISP, enabling the user to update the flash device in the field or in an application. Both IAP and ISP lower cost and improve time-to-market for manufacturers, while bringing enhanced user experiences and convenience to consumers. These re-programming features also have a significant role in enabling increased functionality, such as remote diagnostics and product monitoring, in network- or Internet-enabled devices.

Pricing and Availability
Samples of the SST89V54RD-33-C-QIF FlashFlex microcontroller are available now. Pricing starts at $1.20 in 10K unit quantities. For more information about this or other SST products, please contact an SST sales representative, or visit the company's Web site at http://www.sst.com.

About Silicon Storage Technology, Inc.
Headquartered in Sunnyvale, California, SST designs, manufactures and markets a diversified range of memory and non-memory products for high volume applications in the digital consumer, networking, wireless communications and Internet computing markets. Leveraging its proprietary, patented SuperFlash technology, SST is a leading provider of nonvolatile memory solutions with product families that include various densities of high functionality flash memory components and flash mass storage products. The Company also offers its SuperFlash technology for embedded applications through its broad network of world-class manufacturing partners and technology licensees, including TSMC, which offers it under its trademark Emb-FLASH. SST's non-memory products include NAND controller-based products, smart card ICs, flash microcontroller and radio frequency ICs and modules. Further information on SST can be found on the company's Web site at http://www.sst.com.

Forward-Looking Statements
Except for the historical information contained herein, this news release contains forward-looking statements regarding flash memory and non-memory market conditions, SST's future financial performance, the performance of new products and SST's ability to bring new products to market that involve risks and uncertainties. These risks may include timely development, acceptance and pricing of new products, the terms and conditions associated with licensees' royalty payments, the impact of competitive products and pricing, and general economic conditions as they affect SST's customers, as well as other risks detailed from time to time in the SST's SEC reports, including the Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2005 and on Form 10-Q for the quarters ended March 31, June 30 and September 30, 2006.

For more information about SST and the company's comprehensive list of product offerings, please call 1-888/SST-CHIP. Information can also be requested via email to literature@sst.com or through SST's Web site at http://www.sst.com. SST's head office is located at 1171 Sonora Court, Sunnyvale, Calif.; telephone: 408/735-9110; fax: 408/735-9036.

Technorati : Silicon

Recall your email

24hoursnews :IBM has released the latest versions of its enterprise collaboration software, Lotus Notes 8 and Lotus Domino 8. Lotus Notes 8 brings together e-mail, calendar, instant messaging, office productivity tools and custom applications.

It includes productivity tools enabling users to create open standards-based versions of spreadsheets, word processing documents and presentations, in addition to supporting many file formats from traditional stand-alone applications. It also supports multiple platforms, including Linux and Windows for clients and Windows, Linux, Sun Solaris, AIX and IBM System i for servers

How often you've wished you could recall an email which you regret having sent, or which could embarrass you.

Fret not, help is here. IBM's latest offerings in the collaboration platform, Lotus Notes 8 and Domino 8 come with a recall feature that allows you to call back an email that has been sent. Developed over the last 2 years, version 8 is based on the feedback of 25,000 businesses around the world.

According to the company, this release is one of the best in terms of collaboration features. It also has significant inputs from IBM's India labs. More importantly, this version can be accessed on the Blackberry platform too. The software will offer features like email, collaboration, calendar, instant messaging and other office productivity tools and custom applications.

It is for the first time that a software is based on the open-source eclipse platform, a departure from the fact that otherwise IBM has in the past used its proprietary technology.

Sandesh Bhat, director (design and technology innovation), IBM, said: "The whole idea behind this was to offer users the best in the Web2.0 capabilities. This is also our endeavour to develop the desktop of the future.

Lotus Notes 8 is much more than an email service, unlike competitive offerings. Lotus Notes 8 integrates work by building in instant messaging and presence awareness, office tools to create and edit documents, presentations and spreadsheets and infusing a business' custom applications, including help desk, CRM, sales force, discussion forums, blogs and more.

This is all possible as Lotus Notes 8 is built on the programming model of Lotus Expeditor 6.1.1, which is based on eclipse.org open standards. Lotus Expeditor 6.1.1 enables the construction and deployment of enterprise mash-ups, also known as composite applications. Lotus Notes 8 and Domino 8 support a variety of platforms, including Linux and Windows for clients and Windows, Linux, Sun Solaris, AIX and IBM System for servers.

The office collaboration market is estimated to be in millions. Frost and Sullivan in one of its reports mentioned that IBM with a 44.5 per cent market share is a market leader in India.

Technorati : Recall, email

Tata Tele launches Web browser Moblie

Tata Teleservices has launched a Web browser mobile phone 'Samsung Explore' that is customised to access the Internet.

At Rs 5,499, the phone has other features such as 0.3-mega pixel digital camera, FM radio, MP3 player, mobile tracker, SOS alert and provision to insert external memory cards.

Starter kits and SIM cards would be additionally charged. Tariff plans for Internet access include Rs 10 a day, Rs 30 for 7 days and Rs 99 for a month - all offering unlimited access at speeds of about 156 kbps, Mr Srinivas Rao Sarapalli, Chief Operating Officer, Tamil Nadu Circle, Tata Teleservices, said at a press conference.

Both pre-paid and post-paid consumers can use this phone. The company currently has over 1.9 crore subscribers, about 60 per cent of who access the Internet via mobile phones.

The company expects to sell about 4,000 'Samsung Explore' handsets this month, Mr Sarapalli said.

Subscriber base

Tata Teleservices has about 9 lakh subscribers in Chennai and Tamil Nadu telecom circles and is investing about Rs 400 crore this year to expand network in the State.

It expects to add about 60 lakh subscribers pan India and is investing about Rs 4,000 crore in network expansion and other activities.

More

Tata Teleservices, in association with Samsung Telecommunications, unveiled a web browser fully optimised for mobile Internet here on Thursday.

The web browser is being introduced on the Samsung 'Explore' handset.

"This innovation opens up the Internet to those without access to a personal computer," said Pankaj Sethi, President (Value Added Services), Tata Teleservices. The access speed will be between 40 to 80 kbps, enabling viewers to open any web page in 20-30 seconds, he added. The browser, which is expected to be three to four times faster than GPRS (General Packet Radio Service), will enable the user to browse all websites, search and email. It will, however, not be possible to show videos in the current devices. The browser is based on the QSC6020 product from the Qualcomm single chip family. The Samsung 'Explore' handset, which also has a camera, FM radio and MP3 player, is priced at Rs. 5,499. Mobile Internet will come at prices ranging from Rs. 10 a day to Rs. 99 a month with unlimited access.

Chennai Correspondent writes:

According to Srinivas Rao Sarapilli, Chief Operating Officer, (Tamil Nadu Circle), Tata Teleservices, the web browser, powered by Novarra Inc., can be downloaded on a handset enabled with Binary Runtime Environment for Wireless (BREW).

Mr. Sarapilli said Tata Indicom aimed at expanding its subscriber base in Tamil Nadu from nine lakh to a million users by the year-end. Its country-wide user base is estimated to be around 19 million, which the company wants to expand to 25 million in the next few months.

Technorati : Tata Tele

Web TV show

MySpace still has a few cards up its sleeve -- including the connections it has to some of the top names in traditional media, thanks to its parent company, media and entertainment giant News Corp.

The social-networking site announced today that it has signed an exclusive deal with Ed Zwick and Marshall Herskovitz, the Hollywood duo that produced such hit TV shows as Thirtysomething and My So-Called Life, for the rights to a new Internet drama the pair are working on, called Quarterlife.

Episodes -- or webisodes -- of the show, which follows a group of twentysomethings through the eyes of one young girl with a video-blog, will appear first on MySpaceTV, and then on the Quarterlife.com website.

Jeff Berman, the general manager of MySpaceTV, said in an interview that the show was a "landmark moment" for MySpace, and that it would be "the highest-quality serialized content ever to appear on the Internet. We're talking about the same production values as 24 or Prison Break."

There have been a number of episodic TV-style shows created for the Internet, including the popular Lonelygirl15 show, which was developed by a trio of unknowns and also appears on MySpaceTV. More recently, former Walt Disney CEO Michael Eisner's company created a show called Prom Queen, which aired on MySpaceTV and drew a large following.

Entertainment websites have been speculating for several months about a possible Internet offering from Mr. Zwick and Mr. Herskovitz, after a number of reports leaked out about TV writers and production staff working on something called Quarterlife. The Hollywood duo had a traditional TV show of the same name that ran briefly in 2005.

"We've been talking to [Zwick and Herskovitz] for the past several weeks, and we're delighted to be able to announce this," Mr. Berman said. The first "webisode" will be posted on MySpaceTV on November 11, he said.

Under the terms of the deal, the social-networking site has a 24-hour window during which the webisode will only be available on MySpaceTV. After that, it will appear on Quarterlife.com. Both sites will have interactive features, Mr. Berman said, but on MySpace viewers will be able to interact with the cast through their MySpace pages.

MySpace users and bloggers on other sites will also be able to "embed" the webisodes in their pages by pasting in a small chunk of code, as they can with video clips on other sites such as YouTube, Blip.tv and DailyMotion.

When asked whether the new show would have a mobile component involving cellphones, Mr. Berman said "stay tuned." He also said that MySpaceTV was working on several other projects with content creators in the entertainment community.

According to Mr. Berman, more than 50 million users stream video each month from their MySpace webpages, and the social-networking site as a whole produces 500 million individual video streams

Little More :24hoursnews sponsored by www.careerbd.com

Faced with Facebook's exponential growth, MySpace hopes to keep its users onside with what it says is the first network-quality television series produced directly for the internet.

The social network announced today it had secured the exclusive international distribution rights for Quarterlife, a new series from Emmy award-winning producers Marshall Herskovitz and Edward Zwick.

MySpace Australia spokesman Darain Faraz said the deal was just the first of many shows it planned to offer through MySpace TV, which up until now has consisted mainly of user-submitted clips.

He said within the next few weeks the site would announce a number of "local content sharing deals" with Australian content providers.

"We are on the verge of announcing some fairly huge stuff," he said.

MySpace has 3.8 million registered Australian users but its growth rate now lags well behind Facebook's, which earlier this year surpassed 200,000 Australian users.

But where Facebook's expansion is now being driven by third-party applications, which have rapidly expanded the functionality of the site, MySpace is looking to hold on to its users through new features such as MySpace TV and Instant Messenger.

Quarterlife, which will premier in seven languages on MySpace's global sites on November 11, delves into the lives of six people in their 20s and charts their "coming of age as a part of the digital generation".

The show was unashamedly written to appeal to today's tech-savvy youth - the central character, a young woman named Dylan, is a blogger whose video diary divulges a few too many of her friends' closest secrets.

It purports to be a "truthful depiction of the way young people speak, work, think, love, argue and express themselves".

To that end, Herskovitz and Zwick - the force behind My So-Called Life, thirtysomething, Legends of the Fall and Blood Diamond - will invite their audience to participate in the ongoing development of the series "through writing and video submissions".

There will be 36 episodes in total and the producers plan to create a mini social network around the show through a website, quarterlife.com. It will also have its own profile page on MySpace, which MySpace says will include bonus content such as character profiles, behind-the-scenes video footage and storyline secrets.

Herskovitz and Zwick said the fact Quarterlife was an independent project meant they had full "creative autonomy", which isn't always possible when producing shows for traditional TV networks.

"For better or worse, Quarterlife is truly our own vision," Herskovitz said.

The Quarterlife concept was originally conceived three years ago as a TV pilot called "¼ life", developed for the US network ABC. The project was axed due to "creative differences" between the producers and ABC, after which the script was completely rewritten for an internet audience.

"When Emmy award-winning producers come to MySpace TV - you know this is reaching a whole new level," Myspace CEO Chris DeWolfe said in a statement.

In the US, MySpace has already dabbled extensively in digital broadcasting, securing the rights to a number of smaller series and short clips including the web series Prom Queen, a teen-oriented serial drama made by a US studio owned by former Disney boss Michael Eisner.

Technorati : Myspace, Web TV

AMD with quad-core processor -Intel new invention

24hoursnews : Intel is aiming to extend its performance lead over AMD with the introduction of the industry's first quad-core processors designed for multi-processor servers.
The chip giant has rolled out six quad-core Xeon 7300 series processors, which deliver more than twice the overall performance and more than three times the performance per watt of its previous generation of dual-core server chips. The chips are the last to be converted to Intel's Core micro-architecture, a process that has been under way since 2006.
The 7300 series are more energy efficient than previous chips. It comprises chips that run at clock speeds of up to 2.93GHz at 130W, several 80W processors and a 1.8GHz, 50W version that is targeted specifically at four-socket blade servers.
In addition to having twice as many cores, the 7300 chips come with up to four times the memory capacity of the dual-core multi-processor platforms, which Intel maintained will allow businesses to consolidate their server environments to reduce space, power and running costs.
"Intel Xeon-based multi-processor servers are the backbone of the enterprise," said Tom Kilroy, Intel vice president and co-general manager of the digital enterprise group.
"With the Xeon 7300 series, Intel is delivering new levels of performance and performance per watt, and is driving the Intel Core micro-architecture into such innovative systems as four-socket, 16-core blades that use less energy than our older models."
The Xeon 7300 series means IT managers can pool their single, dual- and quad-core Core-based servers into a dynamic virtual server infrastructure that allows for live, virtual machine migration. This should improve situations including failover, load balancing, disaster recovery and server maintenance.
Brian Byun, VMware's vice president of global partners and solutions, said: "VMware and Intel have worked together to optimise VMware ESX Server on the Xeon 7300. Our partners and customers benefit from increased platform choice and performance headroom from the quad-core four-socket server systems."
Intel said that the 7300 series running the VMmark benchmark designed for measuring virtualisation performance, achieved the highest single server result so far. Results from key server manufacturers testing the 7300 series are also proving encouraging.
HP has proclaimed world-record results for a ProLiant DL580 G5 server running the TPC-C benchmark for database performance, while IBM claimed its 7300-based, System x3850 M2 server using the SPECint*_rate_base2006 benchmark for integer throughout, also set a new world record.
Intel claims silicon crown despite AMD Barcelonaa.

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AMD's Barcelona Chip to Get Speed Boost This Year.

On the same day that Advanced Micro Devices Inc. officially released its Barcelona server processor, the company said it would have a faster version of the quad-core Opteron device out by year's end.

Initially, the top clock speed on the quad-core chip is 2 GHz. But Randy Allen, vice president and general manager of AMD's server and workstation division, said at the Barcelona launch event here Monday evening that the company will have a 2.5-GHz version ready for shipment in December.

The confirmation of the planned speed bump may have been the most significant bit of news out of the product launch, which was held at the Letterman Digital Arts Center on the grounds of the Presidio, a former U.S. Army base that now is part of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area.

The announcement mostly featured a long list of executives from hardware vendors offering support and praise for AMD without taking any shots at its main processor rival, Intel Corp. That was left to AMD officials, but even they rarely if at all mentioned Intel by name.

Hector Ruiz, AMD's chairman and CEO, said the company's initial development in 2003 of an x86-compatible Opteron that could run both 32-bit and 64-bit applications raised the bar "for what an industry should expect from a processor company."

Ruiz claimed that the new Opteron would have "a similarly profound effect on computing," even though Intel turned the tables on AMD and beat it to market with quad-core processors by 10 months. Last week, Intel released a new Xeon 7300 line of quad-core chips with clock speeds of up to 2.93 GHz.

Executives from IBM, Hewlett-Packard Co., Sun Microsystems Inc. and Dell Inc. appeared at AMD's launch event in person or via video to announce plans to add the Barcelona chip to their server product lines, with shipments scheduled to begin as early as next month. Among them was Dell Chairman and CEO Michael Dell, who said his company intends to double its lineup of AMD-based systems by year's end.

Jonathan Schwartz, Sun's president and CEO, said his company is aiming to use the quad-core Opteron to double its AMD-based server business. However, Sun in January announced a deal with Intel to develop a full of line of Xeon-based servers and workstations. That ended a two-year-old strategy under which Sun had exclusively used Opterons in its x86 systems.

Technorati : AMD, quad-core