The tactile imaging sensor has been developed by Chang-Hee Won, an associate professor of electrical and computer engineering at Temple.

“The human hands have this incredible ability to touch something and tell if it’s soft or hard, if it’s wet, or even it’s temperature,” said Won, who is also director of the Control, Sensor, Network and Perception Laboratory in Temple’s College of Engineering. “We’re trying to emulate this tactile sensation with a device that will really quantify this by giving us the mechanical properties of what we are feeling.”

Won said the tactile imaging sensor could aid doctors when they feel lesions, lumps or tumors while doing physical exams on patients by detecting the size and shape of the lesion or tumor, as well as its elasticity and mobility.

“Once a doctor feels a lesion, lump or tumor, they can use this device to really characterize the mechanical properties of the irregularity that they have felt,” he said.

Won said that studies have shown that cancerous lesions and tumors tend to be larger, more irregular in shape or have harder elasticity. “Using the information gleaned by our device, we can determine the probability of this lesion or tumor being either malignant or benign.”

The portable tactile imaging sensor can be attached to any desktop or laptop computer that has a Firewire cable port. Equipped with four LED lights and a camera, the 4.5-inch device has a flexible transparent elastomer cube on the end, into which light is injected.

When the doctor feels an irregularity while giving a patient a physical exam, he or she can place the sensor against the skin where the irregularity was felt. The sensor uses the total internal reflection principle, which keeps the injected light within the elastomer cube unless an intrusion from a lesion or tumor changes the contour of the elastomer’s surface, in which case the light will reflect out of the cube.

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Barrister Aoife Carroll said the Voluntary Help Scheme has experienced a “significant rise” in NGOs using its services to help people who are unable to afford legal representation.

She said the economic downturn means many do not have the resources to pay for private solicitors, and the State legal aid scheme is so overstretched that waiting lists can run to several months.

The Voluntary Help Scheme is a brokerage service which refers NGOs and their clients to lawyers who have relevant experience in their areas. The lawyers then offer their advice and sometimes representation on a pro bono basis.

“There has been a significant rise in the numbers of NGOs using the scheme, and the number of cases they’re referring to us,” Carroll said. “With the economic downturn people don’t have the funds to go to private solicitors. In some places the legal aid waiting lists are up to eight or nine months and people cannot wait that long for help, even when they may qualify.”

She said the scheme has seen a particular increase in cases relating to mortgage or debt issues. The Voluntary Help scheme is one of a number of different projects offering free legal advice.

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GARDAÍ ARE INVESTIGATING the case of a woman who was found naked and beaten in a field in Co Longford.

Ciarán Mullooly of RTÉ said on Morning Ireland today that the incident occurred yesterday in a field in Tinnynarr near the Dublin to Sligo road at Edgeworthstown.

He said that a local man was out walking his dog and became aware of an incident in the next field and contacted gardai immediately.

Gardaí said that at 10am they were alerted to the case of serious assault of a woman in her late teens.

The woman was taken to Midland Regional Hospital in Mullingar and treated for her injuries.

A male in his thirties was arrested and detained under Section 4 of the Criminal Justice Act 1984 at Longford Garda Station in relation to this incident.

He was later released without charge.

Mullooly said that the woman was 18 years ancient and was found in a shaken and injured condition.

He said she had been beaten about the head and body and was naked when found.

Mullooly said the woman “is lucky to be alive today” and that gardaí say at this stage their main task is to speak to the woman.

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Recep ‘Alex’ Cetin is accused of killing Marion Graham and Kathy Dinsmore in August. The two county Down women, who were both in their 50s, were found stabbed to death in a wood near the city of Izmir.

If the court finds that Cetin is an adult after the hearing on 29 December, he could face a much longer sentence if found guilty.

RTÉ reports that local police say that Cetin’s birth certificate suggests he is only 17 but prosecutors believe he is 18.

According to local reports at the time of the murder, police believed the waiter stabbed Graham and her friend because she refused to allow him marry her 15-year-ancient daughter.

He made his first appearance in court on 22 August and has been remanded in custody since.

The Irish Independent reports that Graham’s daughter Shannon, who was in a relationship with Cetin, is to give evidence at the hearing.

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He died in 2005 and his family said the allegations were incorrect and unsubstantiated.

A Prime Time Investigates programme, A Mission to Prey, was found to have defamed Fr Kevin Reynolds after claiming that he raped a young woman while working as a missionary and fathered her child. Those allegations have since been described by RTÉ as “baseless, without any foundation whatever and untrue”.

RTÉ has issued a response saying its approach during research to allegations concerning the activity of Irish members of those orders while on missionary service overseas, “was to deal with the senior levels of the relevant orders in Ireland”.

RTÉ made the Christian Brothers authorities in Ireland aware that it was researching and producing the programme. It communicated the details of its specific research into the GG Dillon matter to the Christian Brothers in Ireland at the most senior level. No request was made by the Christian Brothers to RTÉ to refer the questions to the Order in South Africa. Prime Time Investigates but also made separate efforts to secure comment from within the Christian Brothers’ school system in South Africa, without success.

RTÉ also said that the lack of formal allegations to relevant authorities about sexual abuse is not unusual and that while making the programme, Prime Time Investigates interviewed a number of child sexual abuse experts in South Africa. It said these experts stated that victims of sexual abuse in South Africa “are commonly reluctant to report these crimes”.

The statement also said that RTÉ Current Affairs also wrote twice to the Dillon family. It said that the Dillon family wrote a letter to RTÉ in October but that the family addressed the letter to a section of the broadcaster not responsible for current affairs programming.

RTÉ said it understands that Tyrone Selmon, who made the claims about Br Dillon, has followed Irish coverage of the programme and of his claims and has maintained his position in respect of his allegations.

The response, issued by Kevin Dawson, Head of Corporate Communications in RTÉ, also cited the testimonies of several people who claim to have been abused by Br Dillon which they say were made “independently of each other and voluntarily”.

The Dillon family wrote to the Irish Catholic paper and described the programme as “utterly despicable”, while calling on Br Dillon’s name to be cleared.

They said that there had never been any claims of abuse against him during the 60 years he worked as a missionary.

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The catch? All of them – except one – are dead, leaving just one dictator standing… so he can’t delight in a Nando’s meal with his closest mates.

The Last Dictator Standing ad features Robert Mugabe setting a table for friends – before reminiscing about water fights with Libya’s Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, fun in the sand with Iraq’s Saddam Hussein, playground time with South Africa’s PW Botha and tank-surfing with Uganda’s Idi Amin.

But when the dream ends, Mugabe is left alone at his huge dinner table, with only a portrait of Napoleon Bonaparte for company.

Nando’s is a South African chain that has not shied away from controversy – another recent ad, this time in print, made reference to the so-called ‘Black Tuesday’ when the country passed a secrecy bill.

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Nuclear lamina is the material that lines the inside of a cell’s nucleus. Its major structural component is a family of proteins called lamins, of which B-type lamins are prominent members and thought to be absolutely essential for a cell’s survival. Mutations in lamins have been linked to a number of human diseases. Lamins are thought to suppress the expression of certain genes by binding directly to the DNA within the cell’s nucleus.

The role of B-type lamins in the differentiation of embryonic stem cells into various types of cells, depending on where in a body they are located, was thought to be crucial. The lamins were thought to use their DNA-binding suppression abilities to tell a cell which type of development pathway to follow.

But the team–including Carnegie’s Youngjo Kim, Katie McDole, and Chen-Ming Fan–took a hard look at the functions of B-type lamins in embryonic stem cells and in live mice.

They found that, counter to expectations, lamin-Bs were not essential for embryonic stem cells to survive, nor did their DNA binding directly regulate the genes to which they were attached. But, mice deficient in B-type lamins were born with improperly developed organs-including defects in the lungs, diaphragms and brains-and were unable to breathe.

“Our works seems to indicate that while B-type lamins are not part of the early developmental tissue-building process, while they are vital in facilitating the integration of different cell types into the complex architectures of various developing organs,” Kim, the lead author, said. “We have set the stage to dissect the ways that a cell’s nuclear lamina promote tissue organization process during development.”

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, concludes a study published on bmj.com today. Although it shows that first-time mums who opt for a home birth are at a higher risk of adverse outcomes, the overall risk is low in all birth settings.

The researchers say their results “support a policy of offering women with low risk pregnancies a choice of birth setting” and will enable women and their partners to have informed discussions with health professionals about plotted place of birth.

The benefits and risks of birth in different settings have been widely debated in recent years, but there is a lack of excellent quality evidence comparing the risk of rare but serious perinatal adverse outcomes in these settings.

Perinatal refers to the period just before, during or shortly after birth.

So a team led by Professor Peter Brocklehurst from the University of Oxford for the Birthplace in England Collaborative Group set out to compare perinatal outcomes and interventions in labour by plotted place of birth across all NHS trusts in England.

Plotted place of birth included home, freestanding midwifery units, midwife-led units on a hospital site with obstetric services, and obstetric units.

Serious adverse outcomes included stillbirth after start of care in labour, early neonatal death, brain injury (encephalopathy), faeces in the lungs (meconium aspiration syndrome), and injuries to the upper arm or shoulder during birth.

A total of 64,538 single, full term infants born to women with low risk pregnancies were involved in the study. Factors, such as maternal age, ethnic group, body mass index and deprivation score were taken into account.

Overall, the rate of adverse outcomes was low in all birth settings (4.3 per 1,000 births) and there were no significant differences in the odds of an adverse outcome for any of the non-obstetric unit settings compared with obstetric units.

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Quote:Novel Influenza A Viruses
Five cases of human infection with a novel influenza A virus were reported during the 2010–11 influenza season from three states. All five cases were infected with swine-origin influenza A (H3N2) viruses. Two cases occurred in September (Pennsylvania and Wisconsin), one case in October (Pennsylvania), and two cases in November (Minnesota). Two of the five cases occurred in adults, and three occurred in children. Two of the five cases were hospitalized; all five have recovered fully from their illness. The two cases in Pennsylvania were not related. The cases in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania had direct contact with swine or lived in areas close to swine farms. The two cases from Minnesota occurred in a father (index case) and child. The father had a nasopharyngeal swab positive for swine-origin influenza A (H3N2) virus and had direct swine exposure 6 days before illness onset. The child, whose infection with influenza A (H3N2) virus was confirmed several weeks later by serologic testing, did not have direct swine exposure, and most likely bought infection from close contact with her father. Other persons in the same household also had ILI during the same period, but serologic results were either negative or inconclusive.

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