im going to turn this into an oil painting:

How much do you like your Instagram pictures? Enough to get a few likes? Enough to think you'd kick ass as a photographer? Enough to convert them into amazing oil paintings that you can hang on your wall? Pixelist is a company that's trying to turn your Instagram photos into hand-made oil paintings that will live forever on canvas. How will those pictures of food and sunset and feet pictures look now?

Pixelist, which is currently raising funds (it just cleared its goal, actually) on IndieGoGo, will let you convert your Instagram pictures to 12x12" canvases for $90 (regular pictures go to 12x16"). If you want to go bigger, Pixelist offers paintings up to 6x6' monsters (that'll run a solid $1000). You're basically commissioning an artist to paint for you.

The pictures have some requirements though, Pixelist says it won't accept images with "more than two humans, animals or related forms" for their standard size. Moving up in sizes will give you a little bit more freedom. Also, the photos that Pixelist can paint can only be intricate to a point. [Pixelist,

Here are some examples of their work. You can learn more about Pixelist here. [Pixelist via swissmiss]

Source: http://gizmodo.com/im-going-to-turn-this-into-an-oil-painting-http-inst-902880198

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'Scent device' aims to sniff out bladder cancer

Bladder cancer kills more than 15,000 Americans each year, and is expected to cause about 73,000 new cancer cases in 2013.

Researchers report they have developed a "scent device" called the Odoreader that they hope may prove to be a reliable way to sniff out cancer in patients' urine before it becomes a serious problem.

The Odoreader device correctly predicted 100 percent of bladder cancer cases from urine samples tested, researchers reported.

(Credit: University of Liverpool)

More than 500,000 bladder cancer survivors live in the U.S., according to the American Cancer Society. Nine out of 10 of those affected are 55 years of age or older.

"It is a disease that, if caught early, can be treated effectively, but unfortunately we do not have any early screening methods other than diagnosis through urine tests at the stage when it starts to become a problem," study researcher Dr. Chris Probert, a professor at the University of Liverpool's Institute of Translational Medicine in the U.K., said in a news release.

Most cases of bladder cancer begin in cells that line the inside of the bladder, the Mayo Clinic notes. It can cause symptoms like blood in the urine, frequent or painful urination, and back and pelvic pain.

The BRCA biomarker is sometimes used to screen for risk of breast and ovarian cancers. But, currently there are aren't reliable biomarkers -- or measurable molecular signs of a disease -- that can be used to screen for bladder cancer, according to the study authors.

That's where the Odoreader could come in.

Previous research suggests dogs can successfully sniff out bladder cancer, as 60 Minutes reported in 2005. Dogs are now being utilized by some health care facilities to try and spot other types of cancers, including ovarian types.

The researchers speculated the dogs were picking up the scents of certain gasses emitted by urine. They built a device that contains a sensor that can analyze the gases and create a readout of the chemicals found in the urine within 30 minutes.

They tested it on 24 samples taken from patients with confirmed cases of bladder cancer and 74 samples from patients who had urological symptoms, but no confirmed cancer. The Odoreader correctly picked 100 percent of the cancer patients.

The study was published July 8 in PLoS One.

Prober added that bladder cancer can be expensive to treat because of multiple scopes required to track the cancer's development, so the new test may dramatically cut costs.

Other ways to diagnose bladder cancer include a cytoscope tube with a lens inserted through the urethra under local anesthesia, imaging tests of the urinary tract, a biopsy or a urine test to look for presence of cancer cells, according to the Mayo Clinic.

"The researchers say that the test would be around 96% accurate in practice and their findings are only based on a relatively small number of samples, taken only from men," Dr. Sarah Hazell, senior science communications officer at the nonprofit Cancer Research U.K., said to the BBC.

She added while the work is promising, there's still a ways to go.

"It is another promising step towards detecting bladder cancer from urine samples, something that would ultimately provide a less invasive means of diagnosing the disease," she commented.

This story originally appeared as "Scent device ODOREADER may sniff out bladder cancer" on CBSNews.com.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/cnet/JhqR/~3/WNXCP1rdBzk/

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World's food supply got a little more plentiful: Resistance gene found against ug99 wheat stem rust pathogen

June 27, 2013 ? The world's food supply got a little more plentiful thanks to a scientific breakthrough.

Eduard Akhunov, associate professor of plant pathology at Kansas State University, and his colleague, Jorge Dubcovsky from the University of California-Davis, led a research project that identified a gene that gives wheat plants resistance to one of the most deadly races of the wheat stem rust pathogen -- called Ug99 -- that was first discovered in Uganda in 1999. The discovery may help scientists develop new wheat varieties and strategies that protect the world's food crops against the wheat stem rust pathogen that is spreading from Africa to the breadbaskets of Asia and can cause significant crop losses.

Other Kansas State University researchers include Harold Trick, professor of plant pathology; Andres Salcedo, doctoral candidate in genetics from Mexico; and Cyrille Saintenac, a postdoctoral research associate currently working at the Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique in France. The project was funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and Borlaug Global Rust Initiative.

The team's study, "Identification of Wheat Gene Sr35 that Confers Resistance to Ug99 Stem Rust Race Group," appears in the journal Science.

It identifies the stem rust resistance gene named Sr35, and appears alongside a study from an Australian group that identifies another effective resistance gene called Sr33.

"This gene, Sr35, functions as a key component of plants' immune system," Akhunov said. "It recognizes the invading pathogen and triggers a response in the plant to fight the disease."

Wheat stem rust is caused by a fungal pathogen. According to Akhunov, since the 1950s wheat breeders have been able to develop wheat varieties that are largely resistant to this pathogen. However, the emergence of strain Ug99 in Uganda in 1999 devastated crops and has spread to Kenya, Ethiopia, Sudan and Yemen, though has yet to reach the U.S.

"Until that point, wheat breeders had two or three genes that were so efficient against stem rust for decades that this disease wasn't the biggest concern," Akhunov said. "However, the discovery of the Ug99 race of pathogen showed that changes in the virulence of existing pathogen races can become a huge problem."

As a first line of defense, wheat breeders and researchers began looking for resistance genes among those that had already been discovered in the existing germplasm repositories, he said.

"The Sr35 gene was one of those genes that was discovered in einkorn wheat grown in Turkey," Akhunov said. "Until now, however, we did not know what kind of gene confers resistance to Ug99 in this wheat accession."

To identify the resistance gene Sr35, the team turned to einkorn wheat that is known to be resistant to the Ug99 fungal strain. Einkorn wheat has limited economic value and is cultivated in small areas of the Mediterranean region. It has been replaced by higher yielding pasta and bread wheat varieties.

Researchers spent nearly four years trying to identify the location of the Sr35 gene in the wheat genome, which contains nearly two times more genetic information than the human genome.

Once the researchers narrowed the list of candidate genes, they used two complimentary approaches to find the Sr35 gene. First, they chemically mutagenized the resistant accession of wheat to identify plants that become susceptible to the stem rust pathogen.

"It was a matter of knocking out each candidate gene until we found the one that made a plant susceptible," Akhunov said. "It was a tedious process and took a lot of time, but it was worth the effort."

Next, researchers isolated the candidate gene and used biotechnical approaches to develop transgenic plants that carried the Sr35 gene and showed resistance to the Ug99 race of stem rust.

Now that the resistance gene has been found, Akhunov and colleagues are looking at what proteins are transferred by the fungus into the wheat plants and recognized by the protein encoded by the Sr35 gene. This will help researchers to better understand the molecular mechanisms behind infection and develop new approaches for controlling this devastating pathogen.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/top_news/top_science/~3/pyaQ1l90Ii4/130627141726.htm

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Jordan Ozuna: Dating Justin Bieber? Still Married?!?

Source: http://www.thehollywoodgossip.com/2013/06/jordan-ozuna-dating-justin-bieber-still-married/

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Jordan Ozuna: Dating Justin Bieber? Still Married?!?

Source: http://www.thehollywoodgossip.com/2013/06/jordan-ozuna-dating-justin-bieber-still-married/

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Climate tug of war disrupting Australian atmospheric circulation patterns

June 26, 2013 ? Further evidence of climate change shifting atmospheric circulation in the southern Australian-New Zealand region has been identified in a new study.

The study, in the Nature journal Scientific Reports, demonstrates that mid-latitude high pressure zones (30^oS-45^oS) are being pushed further into the Southern Ocean by rising global temperatures associated with greenhouse warming. This is despite more frequent occurrences of strong El Ni?os in recent decades, which should have drawn the high pressure zones in the opposite direction toward the equator.

"What we are seeing," says study lead author, Mr Guojian Wang "is a 'tug of war' between stronger El Ni?os driving the winds north and the greenhouse gas-warming effect driving the winds south."

Mr Wang, said the result confirms the robustness of the Southern Hemisphere circulation changes over the past three to four decades as the global temperature rose, "so much so that it overode the influence from strong El Ni?os during this period."

Study co-author, Dr Wenju Cai said the most conspicuous change is a rising sea level pressure in the mid-latitude bands and a decreasing sea level pressure over the Southern high latitudes (55^o-70^oS), a pattern referred to as the Southern Annular Mode. The changing pressures indicate a poleward or southward expansion of the tropical and subtropical atmospheric zones.

In turn, this indicates that over the long-term, there is a relationship between a rising global mean temperature and an upward trend of the Southern Annular Mode.

"The research reinforces our past work that climate change is altering Southern Hemisphere circulation and increases our confidence in this conclusion," Dr Cai said.

Dr Cai has previously reported on changes in atmospheric circulation that have been shifting and strengthening the Pacific Ocean winds poleward and in turn strengthening the ocean circulation, pushing the East Australian Current further south down the Australian coast.

He said during El Ni?o, the warmer ocean releases heat to the atmosphere and global average temperatures increase. At the same time, warm ocean surface temperatures along the equator cause the tropical and subtropical atmospheric belts to move toward the equator, generating a 'negative' phase of the Southern Annular Mode.

"On year-to-year time scales, higher global temperatures are associated with a negative phase of the Mode but over the past 35 years, when El Ni?o has been strong and conducive to a negative trend, we are seeing an opposite trend with the circulation systems moving southward impacting on regional climate," he said.

The project was funded through the Australian Climate Change Science Program.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/~3/-ms3vXaI4mM/130626113658.htm

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Russia, U.S. fail to set up Syria peace talks

By Oliver Holmes and Tom Miles

BEIRUT/GENEVA (Reuters) - Talks between the United States and Russia to set up a Syrian peace conference produced no deal on Tuesday, with the powers on either side of the two-year civil war failing to agree when it should be held or who would be invited.

Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal accused the Syrian government of "genocide" and described the involvement in the conflict of foreign militias backed by Iran as "the most dangerous development".

Washington and Moscow announced plans for the peace conference last month, but their relations have since deteriorated rapidly, as momentum on the battlefield has swung in favor of President Bashar al-Assad.

Washington decided this month to provide military aid to the rebels fighting Assad, while Moscow refused to drop its support for the Syrian leader it has continued to arm.

After five hours of talks in Geneva sponsored by the United Nations, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Gennady Gatilov said there was still no agreement over whether Assad's ally Iran should be allowed to attend the conference, or who would represent the Syrian opposition.

The United States and Western European powers have joined Arab countries and Turkey in supporting the mainly Sunni Muslim rebels. Russia and Iran support Assad, who has made gains in recent weeks with the help of thousands of fighters from the Iranian-backed Lebanese Shi'ite militia Hezbollah.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov will meet next week, and further talks on the conference are expected to follow, a U.N. statement said.

In Damascus, Assad's forces fired mortars and shells at Zamalka and Irbin, just east of the government-held city centre, in an assault backed by air strikes, opposition activists said.

Rebels who grabbed footholds in Damascus nearly a year ago say they now face an advancing Syrian military buoyed by support from Hezbollah.

If the insurgents are driven from the capital's eastern suburbs, they would lose supply routes and suffer a heavy blow in their drive to end four decades of Assad family rule.

In Jeddah, Prince Saud repeated Saudi Arabia's call for the rebels to be armed. "Syria is facing a double-edged attack. It is facing genocide by the government and an invasion from outside the government," he told a news conference with Kerry. "(It) is facing a massive flow of weapons to aid and abet that invasion and that genocide. This must end."

The Saudi foreign minister attacked Iranian involvement. "The most dangerous development is the foreign participation, represented by Hezbollah and other militias supported by the forces of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard," he said.

Saudi Arabia, a Sunni state which views Shi'ite Iran as its arch-rival, has increased aid to Syrian rebels in recent months, supplying anti-aircraft missiles among other weapons.

Security in Syria's neighbors Iraq and Lebanon, where the conflict has aggravated Sunni-Shi'ite tensions, has crumbled.

Suicide bombers killed eight people north of Baghdad on Tuesday, a day after 39 people died when 10 car bombs exploded in the capital. Violence has spiraled in Iraq since April.

"GETTING OUT OF HAND"

In Lebanon, clashes between the Lebanese army and gunmen led by an anti-Hezbollah Sunni cleric engulfed the southern port of Sidon on Sunday and Monday. At least 40 people were killed, including 18 soldiers, security sources said.

Sectarian hatred has even flared in Sunni-majority Egypt, where a crowd attacked and killed five Shi'ites on Sunday.

Lakhdar Brahimi, the U.N.-Arab League mediator, urged the United States and Russia to help "contain this situation that is getting out of hand, not only in Syria but also in the region".

Speaking in Geneva before the talks with U.S. and Russian officials, Brahimi said he doubted that the Syria peace conference could take place next month, citing disarray among Assad's political opponents.

More than 93,000 people have been killed in Syria since peaceful protests erupted in March 2011. Assad's violent response helped to provoke what is now a civil war that has driven nearly 1.7 million refugees into neighbouring countries.

Outgunned rebels are looking to Western and Arab nations to help them to reverse Assad's gains. But although the United States announced unspecified military aid this month, it is unclear whether this can shift the balance against the Syrian leader and his allies.

Kerry wants to ensure aid to the rebels is properly coordinated, partly out of concern that weapons could end up in the hands of Islamist militants who are prominent in their ranks. "Our goal is very clear, we cannot let this be a wider war, we cannot let this contribute to more bloodshed and prolongation of the agony of the people of Syria," he said.

(Additional reporting by Mahmoud Habboush in Dubai and Lesley Wroughton in Jeddah; Writing by Alistair Lyon and Peter Graff, editing by David Stamp)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/russia-u-fail-set-syria-peace-talks-074752996.html

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