Bale stunner earns Spanish Cup win for Real over Barca

Valencia: Gareth Bale raced away to score a stunning late winner as Real Madrid made light of the absence of top scorer Cristiano Ronaldo to beat arch-rivals Barcelona 2-1 to win a riveting King's Cup final on Wednesday.

Wales winger Bale, who joined Real for a world record fee in the close season, galloped down the left wing into the penalty area in the 85th minute at Valencia's Mestalla stadium and slipped the ball superbly between the legs of Barca goalkeeper Jose Manuel Pinto.

Angel Di Maria had put Real ahead in the 11th minute in the 228th meeting between the two sides when he finished off a swift break with a low shot that Pinto could only palm into the net before Marc Bartra headed in from Xavi's corner in the 68th to make it 1-1.

After Bale struck, Barca had a chance to send the match into extra time in the 89th minute when Neymar, the Catalan club's marquee signing of the close season, found space in the area but his stabbed effort crashed back off a post when he had the goal at his mercy.

"I think the team played a fabulous match tonight in a very entertaining game," Real captain Iker Casillas said in an interview with Spanish television broadcaster TVE.

"We are happy for all the fans who came here to Valencia tonight," added the Spain keeper, who was beaten only once, by Bartra's goal, in nine matches in this season's Cup.

"Now we have to enjoy this moment and think about the league and the Champions League."

Bale was the first Welshman to feature in Spain's 'Clasico' between the world's two richest clubs by income and his wonder goal went some way towards justifying the 100 million euros ($138 million) Real paid Tottenham Hotspur to lure him to La Liga.

The 24-year-old, whose season has been disrupted by a series of minor injuries, stepped up to fill the void left by Ronaldo, who has been sidelined by knee and muscle problems in his left leg, and outshone Barca's four-times World Player of the Year Lionel Messi, who again failed to perform on the big stage.

It was Real's 19th victory in Spain's domestic Cup competition, seven fewer than record winners Barca, and their second in four years after they beat the Catalan club 1-0 in the 2011 showpiece.

It was also a first trophy for their Italian coach Carlo Ancelotti in his debut season and his side still have a chance of becoming only the second team after Barca in 2009 to win a treble of La Liga, Champions League and King's Cup titles.

They are second in the domestic league, three points behind leaders Atletico Madrid with five games left, and play holders Bayern Munich in the semi-finals of Europe's elite club competition this month.

Reuters
 

Bale stunner earns Spanish Cup win for Real over Barca

Valencia: Gareth Bale raced away to score a stunning late winner as Real Madrid made light of the absence of top scorer Cristiano Ronaldo to beat arch-rivals Barcelona 2-1 to win a riveting King's Cup final on Wednesday.

Wales winger Bale, who joined Real for a world record fee in the close season, galloped down the left wing into the penalty area in the 85th minute at Valencia's Mestalla stadium and slipped the ball superbly between the legs of Barca goalkeeper Jose Manuel Pinto.

Angel Di Maria had put Real ahead in the 11th minute in the 228th meeting between the two sides when he finished off a swift break with a low shot that Pinto could only palm into the net before Marc Bartra headed in from Xavi's corner in the 68th to make it 1-1.

After Bale struck, Barca had a chance to send the match into extra time in the 89th minute when Neymar, the Catalan club's marquee signing of the close season, found space in the area but his stabbed effort crashed back off a post when he had the goal at his mercy.

"I think the team played a fabulous match tonight in a very entertaining game," Real captain Iker Casillas said in an interview with Spanish television broadcaster TVE.

"We are happy for all the fans who came here to Valencia tonight," added the Spain keeper, who was beaten only once, by Bartra's goal, in nine matches in this season's Cup.

"Now we have to enjoy this moment and think about the league and the Champions League."

Bale was the first Welshman to feature in Spain's 'Clasico' between the world's two richest clubs by income and his wonder goal went some way towards justifying the 100 million euros ($138 million) Real paid Tottenham Hotspur to lure him to La Liga.

The 24-year-old, whose season has been disrupted by a series of minor injuries, stepped up to fill the void left by Ronaldo, who has been sidelined by knee and muscle problems in his left leg, and outshone Barca's four-times World Player of the Year Lionel Messi, who again failed to perform on the big stage.

It was Real's 19th victory in Spain's domestic Cup competition, seven fewer than record winners Barca, and their second in four years after they beat the Catalan club 1-0 in the 2011 showpiece.

It was also a first trophy for their Italian coach Carlo Ancelotti in his debut season and his side still have a chance of becoming only the second team after Barca in 2009 to win a treble of La Liga, Champions League and King's Cup titles.

They are second in the domestic league, three points behind leaders Atletico Madrid with five games left, and play holders Bayern Munich in the semi-finals of Europe's elite club competition this month.

Reuters
 

Google Glass to assist surgeons soon

New York: The eyewear device Google Glass can be a useful tool in surgical settings, a promising research reveals.

In a research at Maria Fareri Children's Hospital of Westchester Medical Center in New York, an attending surgeon wore Google Glass daily for four consecutive weeks.

A daily log was kept and activities with a potential applicability were identified.

“We were overwhelmed to find that the technology was useful in hands-free photo/video documentation, hands-free telephone calls, billing codes and internet searches for unfamiliar medical terms or syndromes,” said Oliver Muensterer, a pediatric surgeon at Maria Fareri Children's Hospital.

The researchers obtained a Glass device through Google's explorer programme.

“We are just beginning to explore the functionality of this new device in medicine and surgery,” Muensterer added.

Glass is essentially a head-worn computer with a screen, camera, microphone and audio transmitter, which is controlled by voice commands.

“This allows a surgeon to interact with the device without breaking scrub, even during surgery,” he noted.

A big issue with Glass is how to handle patient privacy, particularly because the device connects to the internet via wi-fi and thereby streams its data through Google's servers.

According to researchers, it would be great if an encrypted version of Glass were available in the future for medical use, including the exclusive streaming to secure servers.

The study was published in the International Journal of Surgery.

IANS

Google Glass to assist surgeons soon

New York: The eyewear device Google Glass can be a useful tool in surgical settings, a promising research reveals.

In a research at Maria Fareri Children's Hospital of Westchester Medical Center in New York, an attending surgeon wore Google Glass daily for four consecutive weeks.

A daily log was kept and activities with a potential applicability were identified.

“We were overwhelmed to find that the technology was useful in hands-free photo/video documentation, hands-free telephone calls, billing codes and internet searches for unfamiliar medical terms or syndromes,” said Oliver Muensterer, a pediatric surgeon at Maria Fareri Children's Hospital.

The researchers obtained a Glass device through Google's explorer programme.

“We are just beginning to explore the functionality of this new device in medicine and surgery,” Muensterer added.

Glass is essentially a head-worn computer with a screen, camera, microphone and audio transmitter, which is controlled by voice commands.

“This allows a surgeon to interact with the device without breaking scrub, even during surgery,” he noted.

A big issue with Glass is how to handle patient privacy, particularly because the device connects to the internet via wi-fi and thereby streams its data through Google's servers.

According to researchers, it would be great if an encrypted version of Glass were available in the future for medical use, including the exclusive streaming to secure servers.

The study was published in the International Journal of Surgery.

IANS

Thiruvananthapuram to host Animation Masters Summit

Thiruvananthapuram: The city is set to host the Indian Animation Masters Summit, starting April 25, which will be attended by the best animators in the country later.

Organised by Technopark based Indian animation major, Toonz Animation, the two-day event will see the likes of Devdutt Pattanai, Ajit Rao, Dhimant Vyas, Sanjiv Waeerkar, Nina Sabnani, Prosenjit Ganguly,Gitanjali Rao, Shekhar Mukherjee, Chetan Sharma,Vaibhav Kumaresh, Manisha Mohan, Gayatri Rao and Ranjit Singh Tony taking part in the summit.

The event is being organised as part of the 15th anniversary celebrations of Toonz.

"This year, we have decided to bring together the Indian animation masters to discuss a road map for the Indian animation industry as well as provide a platform for animation enthusiasts to meet and learn from them," said P. Jayakumar, CEO of Toonz Group.

"We believe that this initiative will set a launch pad for a collective learning in the industry," added Jayakumar.

Since setting up shop here at the Technopark campus in 1999, Toonz Animation made a mark in the global animation arena with the production of the India's first animated series "Tenali Raman".

Fifteen years later, they are one of the top animation production houses in Asia Pacific region, with numerous animation features that have fetched them many prestigious national and international recognitions.

IANS

Thiruvananthapuram to host Animation Masters Summit

Thiruvananthapuram: The city is set to host the Indian Animation Masters Summit, starting April 25, which will be attended by the best animators in the country later.

Organised by Technopark based Indian animation major, Toonz Animation, the two-day event will see the likes of Devdutt Pattanai, Ajit Rao, Dhimant Vyas, Sanjiv Waeerkar, Nina Sabnani, Prosenjit Ganguly,Gitanjali Rao, Shekhar Mukherjee, Chetan Sharma,Vaibhav Kumaresh, Manisha Mohan, Gayatri Rao and Ranjit Singh Tony taking part in the summit.

The event is being organised as part of the 15th anniversary celebrations of Toonz.

"This year, we have decided to bring together the Indian animation masters to discuss a road map for the Indian animation industry as well as provide a platform for animation enthusiasts to meet and learn from them," said P. Jayakumar, CEO of Toonz Group.

"We believe that this initiative will set a launch pad for a collective learning in the industry," added Jayakumar.

Since setting up shop here at the Technopark campus in 1999, Toonz Animation made a mark in the global animation arena with the production of the India's first animated series "Tenali Raman".

Fifteen years later, they are one of the top animation production houses in Asia Pacific region, with numerous animation features that have fetched them many prestigious national and international recognitions.

IANS

Gen next plastic computers closer to reality

Washington: Scientists have developed a new technique that brings inexpensive computers, cell phones and other systems that substitute flexible plastic for silicon chips one step closer to reality. 

Researchers at the University of Iowa and colleagues at New York University have made a new proposal for overcoming a major obstacle to the development of such plastic devices - the large amount of energy required to read stored information. 

Although it is relatively cheap and easy to encode information in light for fibre optic transmission, storing information is most efficiently done using magnetism, which ensures information will survive for years without any additional power. 

"So a critical issue is how to convert information from one type to another," said Michael Flatte, professor of physics and astronomy in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences (CLAS) and director of the UI Optical Science and Technology Center. 

"Although it does not cost a lot of energy to convert one to the other in ordinary, silicon-chip-based computers, the energy cost is very high for flexible, plastic computing devices that are hoped to be used for inexpensive "throwaway" information processors. 

"Here we show an efficient means of converting information encoded in magnetic storage to light in a flexible plastic device," said Flatte. 

Flatte and his colleagues successfully accomplish information transduction (or transfer and conversion) between a magnet and an organic light-emitting diode at room temperature and without electrical current flow between the magnet and the organic device. 

"The magnetic fields from the magnetic storage device directly modify the light emission from the device. This could help solve problems of storage and communication for new types of inexpensive, low-power computers based on conducting plastics," said professor Markus Wohlgenannt, also of the Department of Physics and Astronomy and the Optical Science and Technology Center. 

Professor Andrew Kent of New York University noted that while these studies were conducted on relatively large devices, miniaturised devices would operate on the same principles and enable new types of high capacity storage technologies. 

The study was published in the journal Nature Communications. PTI

Gen next plastic computers closer to reality

Washington: Scientists have developed a new technique that brings inexpensive computers, cell phones and other systems that substitute flexible plastic for silicon chips one step closer to reality. 

Researchers at the University of Iowa and colleagues at New York University have made a new proposal for overcoming a major obstacle to the development of such plastic devices - the large amount of energy required to read stored information. 

Although it is relatively cheap and easy to encode information in light for fibre optic transmission, storing information is most efficiently done using magnetism, which ensures information will survive for years without any additional power. 

"So a critical issue is how to convert information from one type to another," said Michael Flatte, professor of physics and astronomy in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences (CLAS) and director of the UI Optical Science and Technology Center. 

"Although it does not cost a lot of energy to convert one to the other in ordinary, silicon-chip-based computers, the energy cost is very high for flexible, plastic computing devices that are hoped to be used for inexpensive "throwaway" information processors. 

"Here we show an efficient means of converting information encoded in magnetic storage to light in a flexible plastic device," said Flatte. 

Flatte and his colleagues successfully accomplish information transduction (or transfer and conversion) between a magnet and an organic light-emitting diode at room temperature and without electrical current flow between the magnet and the organic device. 

"The magnetic fields from the magnetic storage device directly modify the light emission from the device. This could help solve problems of storage and communication for new types of inexpensive, low-power computers based on conducting plastics," said professor Markus Wohlgenannt, also of the Department of Physics and Astronomy and the Optical Science and Technology Center. 

Professor Andrew Kent of New York University noted that while these studies were conducted on relatively large devices, miniaturised devices would operate on the same principles and enable new types of high capacity storage technologies. 

The study was published in the journal Nature Communications. PTI

Scientists find protein that lets egg and sperm hook up

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Washington: You can forget about the birds and the bees. If you really want to learn how babies are made, you need to know about Juno and Izumo.

Fertilization takes place when an egg cell and a sperm cell recognize one another and fuse to form an embryo. But how they recognize each other in order to hook up had remained a mystery.

Researchers said on Wednesday they have identified a protein on the egg cell's surface that interacts with another protein on the surface of a sperm cell, allowing the two cells to join.

This protein, dubbed Juno in honor of the ancient Roman goddess of fertility and marriage, and its counterpart in sperm,

named Izumo after a Japanese marriage shrine, are essential for reproduction in mammals including people, they said.

This new understanding of the role of these two proteins could help improve the treatment of infertility and guide the development of new contraceptives, the researchers said.

"By identifying this interaction between Juno and Izumo, we now know the identity of the receptor proteins found on the surface of our father's sperm and our mother's egg that must interact at the moment at which we were conceived," said Gavin Wright of the Welcome Trust Sanger Institute in Britain, one of the researchers in the study published in the journal Nature.

The researchers are now screening infertile women to try to determine whether problems with the Juno receptor are to blame.

"It is remarkable that about 20 percent of infertility cases have an unexplained cause," said Enrica Bianchi of the Sanger Institute, another of the researchers.

"We are now asking whether Juno is involved in these cases of unexplained infertility," Bianchi added.

Wright said that if defects in the Juno receptor are in fact implicated in human infertility, a simple, non-invasive genetic screening test could be developed to identify affected women.

"This then would allow us to guide the fertility treatment," Wright said, letting affected women proceed directly to a procedure called intracytoplasmic sperm injection involving direct injection of sperm into an egg obtained from in vitro fertilization.

Japanese researchers identified the sperm cell's Izumo protein in 2005, but the identity of its counterpart on the egg cell had remained elusive. The Sanger Institute researchers made an artificial version of Izumo to try to find an answer, and found that it interacted with Juno to initiate fertilization.

They then developed mice that lacked Juno. The females of these mice were infertile because their egg cells did not fuse with sperm. The Japanese researchers earlier had shown that male mice lacking the Izumo sperm protein were also infertile.

In the new study, the researchers detected a quick loss of the Juno protein from the egg's surface after fertilization. They said this may account for how a fertilized egg blocks out additional sperm cells, preventing formation of embryos with more than one sperm cell that would not be viable.

Scientists find protein that lets egg and sperm hook up

Share

Washington: You can forget about the birds and the bees. If you really want to learn how babies are made, you need to know about Juno and Izumo.

Fertilization takes place when an egg cell and a sperm cell recognize one another and fuse to form an embryo. But how they recognize each other in order to hook up had remained a mystery.

Researchers said on Wednesday they have identified a protein on the egg cell's surface that interacts with another protein on the surface of a sperm cell, allowing the two cells to join.

This protein, dubbed Juno in honor of the ancient Roman goddess of fertility and marriage, and its counterpart in sperm,

named Izumo after a Japanese marriage shrine, are essential for reproduction in mammals including people, they said.

This new understanding of the role of these two proteins could help improve the treatment of infertility and guide the development of new contraceptives, the researchers said.

"By identifying this interaction between Juno and Izumo, we now know the identity of the receptor proteins found on the surface of our father's sperm and our mother's egg that must interact at the moment at which we were conceived," said Gavin Wright of the Welcome Trust Sanger Institute in Britain, one of the researchers in the study published in the journal Nature.

The researchers are now screening infertile women to try to determine whether problems with the Juno receptor are to blame.

"It is remarkable that about 20 percent of infertility cases have an unexplained cause," said Enrica Bianchi of the Sanger Institute, another of the researchers.

"We are now asking whether Juno is involved in these cases of unexplained infertility," Bianchi added.

Wright said that if defects in the Juno receptor are in fact implicated in human infertility, a simple, non-invasive genetic screening test could be developed to identify affected women.

"This then would allow us to guide the fertility treatment," Wright said, letting affected women proceed directly to a procedure called intracytoplasmic sperm injection involving direct injection of sperm into an egg obtained from in vitro fertilization.

Japanese researchers identified the sperm cell's Izumo protein in 2005, but the identity of its counterpart on the egg cell had remained elusive. The Sanger Institute researchers made an artificial version of Izumo to try to find an answer, and found that it interacted with Juno to initiate fertilization.

They then developed mice that lacked Juno. The females of these mice were infertile because their egg cells did not fuse with sperm. The Japanese researchers earlier had shown that male mice lacking the Izumo sperm protein were also infertile.

In the new study, the researchers detected a quick loss of the Juno protein from the egg's surface after fertilization. They said this may account for how a fertilized egg blocks out additional sperm cells, preventing formation of embryos with more than one sperm cell that would not be viable.