Autism is thought to result from abnormal cell communication. Testing a new theory, researchers at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine have used a newly discovered function of an old drug called suramin — used medically for the treatment of African sleeping sickness — to restore cell communications in a mouse model of autism, reversing symptoms of the devastating disorder.
The findings… read more
Students in countries like India and Brazil have been signing up in droves for these massive open online courses, or MOOCs, offered for free from top-tier universities, such as Stanford, MIT, and Harvard.
Yet in the world’s poorest regions, where even reliable high-speed Internet access capable of streaming course lecture videos is hard to come by, delivering a useful education to the masses is clearly not a straightforward operation,… read more
We say that time flies, it marches on, it flows like a river — our descriptions of time are closely linked to our experiences of moving through space.
Now, new research suggests that the illusions that influence how we perceive movement through space also influence our perception of time. The findings provide evidence that our experiences of space and time have even more in common than previously… read more
Using a handsfree kit or sending text messages is the same as being above the legal alcohol limit, an experiment by Scientists from Australian universities in collaboration with the University of Barcelona has demonstrated.
The Australian universities of Wollongong, Victoria, Swinburne of Technology, the Institute for Breathing and Sleep, and the University of Barcelona measured the reaction capacity behind the wheel of 12 healthy volunteers who participated… read more
Playing video games for an hour each day can improve subsequent performance on cognitive tasks that use mental processes similar to those involved in the game, according to research published March 13 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE.
Previous evidence points to a causal link between playing action video games and enhanced cognition and perception. But what about the benefits of playing other types of video games?… read more
At the recent Moriond Conference, the ATLAS and CMS collaborations at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) presented preliminary new results, finding that the new particle is looking more and more like a Higgs boson, the particle linked to the mechanism that gives mass to elementary particles.
It remains an open question, however, whether this is the Higgs… read more
Ultrafast supercomputers that operate at speeds 100 times faster than current systems may now be one step closer to reality.
A team of IBM researchers working on a U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA)-funded program have found a way to transmit massive amounts of data with unprecedented low-power consumption. They increased the speed by 66 percent while cutting the power in half, compared to the previous… read more
University of Toronto scientists have found evidence that stimulating the brain using repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) may be an effective strategy to improve cognitive function for patients with schizophrenia.
“In a randomized controlled trial, we evaluated whether rTMS can improve working memory in schizophrenia,” said Dr. Mera Barr and senior author Dr. Zafiris Daskalakis. “Our results showed that rTMS resulted in a significant improvement in working… read more
Researchers have conducted a remote reconnaissance of a distant solar system with a new telescope imaging system that sifts through the blinding light of stars.
Using a suite of high-tech instrumentation and software called Project 1640, the scientists collected the first chemical fingerprints, or spectra, of this system’s four red exoplanets, which orbit a star 128 light years away from Earth.
A detailed description of the… read more
The number of potentially habitable planets in our galaxy is greater than previously thought, according to a new analysis by a Penn State researcher, and some of those planets are likely lurking around nearby stars.
“We now estimate that if we were to look at 10 of the nearest small stars we would find about four potentially habitable planets,” said Ravi Kopparapu, an Evan… read more
A pair of stars in the third-closest star system to the Sun has been discovered by an astronomer — the closest star system discovered since 1916.
The discovery was made by Kevin Luhman, an associate professor of astronomy and astrophysics at Penn State University and a researcher in Penn State’s Center for Exoplanets and Habitable Worlds.
The star system, named “WISE J104915.57-531906″ (discovered in a map by… read more
Researchers in the Evolutionary Bioinformatics Laboratory at the University of Illinois in collaboration with German scientists have been using bioinformatics techniques to probe the world of proteins for answers to questions about the origins of life.
Proteins are formed from chains of amino acids and fold into three-dimensional structures that determine their function. According to crop sciences professor Gustavo Caetano-Anollés, very little is known about… read more
At a panel discussion at SXSW Monday, Defense Distributed (DEFCAD) founder Cody Wilson unveiled that DEFCAD is working on plans to expand its efforts beyond just firearms to any controversial object users feel like uploading, including grenades and patented ones, VentureBeat reports.
Cody:
Can 3D printing be subversive? If it can, it will be because it allows us to make the important things — not trinkets, not lawn gnomes,… read more
At the SXSW Interactive Festival, Timothy Jordan, Google’s Senior Developer Advocate, showed off how you navigate Google Glass and how apps like Gmail, the New York Times, and Evernote work on the glasses, ABC News reports.
The glasses have a small screen visible over your right eye. The right arm of the glasses, which contains the computing parts (processor, RAM, etc.), is equipped with a… read more
Research from the University of Maryland School of Medicine has revealed key features in proteins needed for life to function on Mars and other extreme environments.
The researchers, funded by NASA, studied organisms that survive in the extreme environment of Antarctica.
They found subtle but significant differences between the core proteins in ordinary organisms and Haloarchaea, organisms that can tolerate severe conditions such as… read more