A star system 94 light-years away known as HD 164595 is a possible candidate for intelligent life, based on an announcement by an international team of researchers.
On May 15, 2015, Russian astronomers picked up a radio signal on the RATAN-600 radio telescope in Russia “in the direction of HD164595,” an international group of astronomers stated in a document* now being circulated through contact person Alexander Panov,… read more
Engineers from MIT and Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD) are 3D-printing structures based on shape-memory polymers that “remember” and spring back to their original shapes when heated to a certain temperature “sweet spot” — even after being stretched, twisted, and bent at extreme angles.
That makes them useful for applications ranging from soft actuators that turn solar panels toward the sun to tiny drug capsules… read more
The next step in ultrasound imaging will let doctors view specific cells and molecules deeper in the body, such as those associated with tumors or bacteria in our gut.
A new study from Caltech outlines how protein engineering techniques might help achieve this milestone. The researchers engineered protein-shelled nanostructures called gas vesicles (which reflect sound waves) to exhibit new properties useful for ultrasound technologies. In the future,… read more
UCLA neurosurgeons used ultrasound to “jump-start” the brain of a 25-year-old man from a coma, and he has made remarkable progress following the treatment.
The technique, called “low-intensity focused ultrasound pulsation” (LIFUP), works non-invasively and without affecting intervening tissues. It excites neurons in the thalamus, an egg-shaped structure that serves as the brain’s central hub for processing information.
“It’s almost as if we were jump-starting the… read more
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