Researchers at Linköping University in Sweden and in France have developed a “neural pixel” device that when implanted in a mouse hippocampus brain slice detects the initial signal of an epileptic attack and also locally administers the exact dose of the natural neurotransmitter GABA needed to stop the attack.
The researchers used a conducting polymer called poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene) doped with poly(styrenesulfonate) (PEDOT:PSS) for electrodes. It has ten times… read more
Historian and author of the international bestseller Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, Yuval Noah Harari predicts the future of humanity.
“We are probably one of the last generations of Homo sapiens,” he tells BBC Radio 4′s Today programme.
Animation by Cognitive.
The first autonomous, untethered, entirely soft 3-D-printed robot (powered only by a chemical reaction) has been demonstrated by a team of Harvard University researchers and described in the journal Nature.
Nicknamed “octobot,” the bot combines soft lithography, molding, and 3-D printing.
“One longstanding vision for the field of soft robotics has been to create robots that are entirely soft, but the struggle has always been in replacing… read more
A rocky planet called Proxima b — the closest exoplanet to us — is in the habitable zone of Proxima Centauri, the closest star to our Solar System, a team of astronomers has found after painstaking observation and data analysis.
The new world orbits its cool red-dwarf parent star every 11.2 days and has a temperature suitable for liquid water to exist on its surface. A paper describing… read more
Researchers at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) have developed a system that uses high-speed visible light communications (VLC) to replace slower Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, allowing ceiling lights, for example, to provide an internet connection to laptops.
“VLC has many advantages compared with lower frequency communications approaches (including Wi-Fi and Bluetooth), such as energy efficiency, an unregulated communication spectrum, environmental friendliness, greater security, and no… read more
Neuroscientists at the University of Pittsburgh have identified the neural networks that connect the cerebral cortex to the adrenal medulla — the inner part of the adrenal gland, located above each kidney, which is responsible for the body’s rapid response in stressful situations.
These findings, reported in the online Early Edition of the journal … read more
Mayo Clinic and other members of the Geroscience Network* have developed strategies for taking new drugs to clinical trials — specifically, drugs that target processes underlying multiple age-related diseases and disabilities. And they’ve written six supporting articles that appeared Wednesday Aug. 17 in The Journals of Gerontology: Series A – Biological Sciences and Medical Sciences.
The Geroscience Network consists of 18 academic aging center, with the participation… read more
Researchers at McMaster University in Canada have developed a radically improved way to purify single-wall carbon nanotubes (SWNTs) — flexible structures that are one nanometer in diameter and thousands of times longer, and that may revolutionize computers and electronics, replacing silicon.
To do that, we need to separate out semiconducting (sc-SWNTs) and metallic (m-SWNTs) nanotubes. That’s a challenging problem, because both are created simultaneously in the process*… read more
The Rejuvenation Biotechnology Conference will be live-streamed Tuesday Aug. 16, starting at 1 PM PDT, and Wednesday Aug. 17.
The 2016 Rejuvenation Biotechnology Conference is focused on taking the Rejuvenation Biotechnology Industry to the next level by addressing the question: what will it take to push emerging breakthroughs in regenerative medicine from proof-of-concept to implementation?
This year’s conference seeks to answer this critical inquiry by… read more
Researchers from Polytechnique Montréal, Université de Montréal, and McGill University have designed a new cancer-drug-delivery nanotransporter system using more than 100 million flagellated, self-propelled bacteria that are capable of navigating through the bloodstream to administer a drug to tumors with precision.* The goal of the research is to avoid jeopardizing the integrity of organs and surrounding healthy tissues while reducing drug dosage.
In an experiment… read more
Seth Rogen (Freaks and Geeks, Knocked Up, Superbad) and collaborator Evan Goldberg are writing the script for a pilot for a new “half-hour comedy television series about the Singularity for FX,” Rogen revealed Thursday (August 11) on Nerdist podcast: Seth Rogen Returns (at 55:20 mark), while promoting his latest film, Sausage Party (an animated movie that apparently sets a new world record for f-bombs, based on… read more
A team of British and Chinese scientists has developed a new “metamaterial-based solid immersion lens” (mSIL) microscope lens design that can extend the magnification of an optical microscope to see objects smaller than the approximately 200 nanometers Abbe diffraction limit, the smallest size of bacteria.
Led by Zengbo Wang, PhD, at Bangor University UK and Prof Limin Wu at… read more
Anti-inflammatory drug mefenamic acid completely reversed memory loss and brain inflammation in mice genetically engineered to develop symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease and amyloid beta-induced memory loss, a team led by David Brough, PhD, from the University of Manchester has discovered.
The non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug (NSAID) drug targets an important inflammatory pathway called the NLRP3 inflammasome, which damages brain cells, according to Brough. This is the first time… read more
A new way to send mechanical signals through soft robots and other autonomous soft systems has been developed by researchers at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS), in collaboration with colleagues at the California Institute of Technology, described in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Soft autonomous systems, just like the human body, can perform delicate movements that… read more
Imagine a soft liquid-metal material right out of the T-1000 Terminator movie character. One that can morph itself into different self-propelling soft electronic circuits that act like live cells, communicating with each other.
Using a liquid metallic core* and semiconducting skin, such a soft material might be used to make instant flexible 3D electronic displays. Or morph into self-propelled biomedical diagnostic sensors, for example, reconfiguring themselves on demand, say… read more