Two recent research studies “lift robotic imaging and telemedicine to the next level,” says Sherif F. Nagueh, MD, Medical Director of the Echocardiography Laboratory at the Methodist DeBakey Heart and Vascular Center in Houston, Texas in JACC-Imaging.
In Germany, Partho P. Sengupta, MD, of Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai used a small, lightweight robotic-arm connected to a personal computer in Munich to do… read more
Scientists at the Luxembourg Centre for Systems Biomedicine (LCSB) of the University of Luxembourg have grafted induced neuronal stem cells (iNSC) into the brains of mice, with long-term functionality and stability, for the first time. Six months after implantation, the new neurons, reprogrammed from skin cells, became fully and functionally integrated into the brain, creating synapses and glial cells.
This successful implantation of neurons raises… read more
Weizmann Institute scientists have found that given the right conditions, cube-shaped nanoparticles self-assemble into unexpectedly beautiful and complex helical structures.
The scientists describe their research in the journal Science.
Rafal Klajn, PhD, and postdoctoral fellow Gurvinder Singh, PhD, of the Institute’s Organic Chemistry Department used nanocubes of an iron oxide material called magnetite, which has magnetic properties.
Together with the research group of… read more
University of Cincinnati psychology grad student Luis Favela has tested the ability of blind people* to navigate a house-like structure using a device called the Enactive Torch.
Favela found the device enables the visually impaired to judge their ability to comfortably pass through narrow passages, like an open door or busy sidewalk, as well as if they were actually seeing such pathways themselves.
The… read more
University of Montreal researchers have developed a collaborative 3D sketching system called Hyve-3D (Hybrid Virtual Environment 3D), which they presented at the SIGGRAPH 2014 conference in Vancouver this week.
“Hyve-3D is a new interface for 3D content creation via embodied and collaborative 3D sketching,” said lead researcher Professor Tomás Dorta of the university’s School of Design.
“The system is a… read more
Researchers at Empa and the Max Planck Institute for Solid State Research have succeeded in “growing” single-wall carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs) with a single predefined structure, with identical electronic properties.
The CNTs self-assembled out of tailor-made organic precursor molecules on a platinum surface, as reported by the researchers in the journal Nature.
With a diameter of roughly one nanometer, SWCNTs should be considered as quantum… read more
Researchers from the University of Cambridge, University of Oxford, and Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität in Munich have demonstrated a new hybrid form of perovskite* materials, using them to make high-brightness LEDs that the researchers say will be cheaper and easier to manufacture in the future.
The materials could also be used in flexible color displays.
The results are published in the journal Nature… read more
MIT engineers have fabricated a new elastic material coated with microscopic, hairlike structures that tilt in response to a magnetic field.
Depending on the field’s orientation, the microhairs can tilt to form a path through which fluid can flow; the material can even direct water upward, against gravity.
Each microhair, made of nickel, is about 70 microns high and 25 microns wide — about one-fourth the… read more
Engineers at Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS), Wyss Institute, and MIT have developed a robot that assembles itself into a complex shape in four minutes flat, then folds itself up and crawls away — all without human intervention.
The design was based on the principle of Shrinky Dinks (the classic children’s toy that shrinks a plastic-paper composite in a rigid form when… read more
Computer scientists in China have devised a software algorithm based on Bayesian statistics that can automatically check a Wikipedia entry and rank it by its quality.
Bayesian analysis is commonly used to assess the content of emails and determine the probability that the content is spam or junk mail, and if so, filter it from the user’s inbox if the probability is high.
Writing in the… read more
The tiny addition of a chemical mark called called a methyl group atop a gene that is well known for its involvement in clinical depression and posttraumatic stress disorder can affect the way a person’s brain responds to threats, according to a new study by Duke University researchers.
The study results, published August 3 in Nature Neuroscience, go beyond genetics to help explain why some… read more
Rice University researchers have developed a new ultralight but tough nanofoam called “GO-0.5BN” from atom-thick sheets.
The finding is an update to a previous computer-simulation study of “pillared boron nitride (PBN)” reported in July by KurzweilAI.
The Rice team has now actually produced and tested the material. The nanostructure’s floors and walls are made of graphene oxide that self-assembles with the assistance of hexagonal boron… read more
IBM announced today, August 7, the first computer chip to achieve one million programmable “neurons,” 256 million programmable “synapses,” and 46 billion “synaptic operations” per second per watt — simulating the function of neurons and synapses in the brain.*
Neurosynaptic. At 5.4 billion transistors, this low-power, production-scale “neurosynaptic” (brain-inspired) chip (the size of a postage stamp), is one of the largest CMOS chips ever built, IBM says.… read more
Age-related declines in intelligence are strongly related to declines on a very simple task of visual perception speed, researchers report in Cell Press journal Current Biology (open access) on August 4.
The evidence comes from experiments in which researchers showed 600 healthy older people very brief flashes of one of two shapes on a screen and measured the time it took each of them to reliably tell… read more
Researchers at Yale School of Medicine have discovered a new drug compound that reverses the brain deficits of Alzheimer’s disease in mice. Their findings are published in the Aug. 5 issue of the journal PLoS Biology (open access).
The compound, TC-2153, inhibits the negative effects of a protein called STtriatal-Enriched tyrosine Phosphatase (STEP) on learning and memory. These cognitive functions are impaired in Alzheimer’s.
“Decreasing STEP levels reversed… read more