Monday, August 25, 2008

Pharmacology

After a confirmed test of the anxiolytic efficacy in a mouse model, receptor antagonists haloperidol, mecamylamine, and ketanserin were applied. Haloperidol completely reversed the anxiolytic effects, and mecamylamine and ketanserin nearly completely reversed the effects. This shows that aniracetam's anxiolytic mechanism is facilitated by D2/D3 dopamine, nicotinic acetylcholine, and 5-HT2A receptors.

Aniracetam has also been shown to selectively modulate the AMPA glutamate receptor and was used as the parent compound to derive a class of drugs known as the ampakines which are being investigated as nootropics and neuroprotective drugs for the treatment of Alzheimer's disease and other neurodegenerative conditions.

Despite the fat solubility of aniracetam its half-life is much shorter than common racetam analogs such as Piracetam.

Thursday, August 21, 2008

Wide Area Augmentation System

The Wide Area Augmentation System (WAAS) is an air navigation aid developed by the Federal Aviation Administration to augment the Global Positioning System (GPS), with the goal of improving its accuracy, integrity, and availability. Essentially, WAAS is intended to enable aircraft to rely on GPS for all phases of flight, including precision approaches to any airport within its coverage area.

WAAS uses a network of ground-based reference stations (Benchmark DGPSRs transmitting differential corrections (DCs, located within spaces protected from the public inside airportsin North America and Hawaii, to measure small variations in the GPS satellites' signals in the western hemisphere. Measurements from the reference stations are routed to master stations, which queue the received DCs and send the correction messages to geostationary WAAS satellites in a timely manner (at least every 5 seconds or better). Those satellites broadcast the correction messages back to Earth, where WAAS-enabled GPS receiver uses the corrections while computing its position to improve accuracy. The longer any given DC has been delayed, the less benefit it will produce.

The International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) calls this type of system a Satellite Based Augmentation System (SBAS). Europe and Asia are developing their own SBASs, the Indian Gagan, the European Geostationary Navigation Overlay Service (EGNOS) and the Japanese Multi-functional Satellite Augmentation System (MSAS), respectively. Commercial systems include StarFire and OmniSTAR.

Monday, August 11, 2008

VersionTracker

VersionTracker.com is a website that tracks software releases. It started out originally as a Mac OS software tracker, eventually expanding into Mac OS X, Microsoft Windows and Palm OS.

VersionTracker does not host the majority of the software listed (it merely links to them), only in special agreements with the developers.

VersionTracker also offers a software called VersionTracker Pro that checks software versions on a user's computer and then queries its database to see if any updates are available. This feature is available only to paid subscribers. Browsing and searching the database is free.

Tuesday, August 05, 2008

Neogeography

Neogeography literally means "new geography", and is commonly applied to the usage of geographical techniques and tools used for personal and community activities or for utilization by a non-expert group of users. Application domains of neogeography are typically not formal or analytical.

The term and field owes much of its inspiration to the Locative media movement that sought to expand the use of location-based technologies to personal expression and society.

Traditional GIS Geographic Information Systems historically have developed tools and techniques targeted towards formal applications that require precision and accuracy. By contrast, Neogeography tends to apply to the areas of approachable, colloquial applications. The two realms can have overlap as the same problems are presented to different sets of users: experts and non-experts.