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Electric stimulation of brain releases powerful, opiate-like painkiller

The benefits of morphine without the addiction
January 3, 2013

decrease_uopioid_receptor.

Researchers used electricity on certain regions in the brain of a patient with chronic, severe facial pain to release an opiate-like substance that’s considered one of the body’s most powerful painkillers.

The findings help explain what happens in the brain that decreases pain during the brief sessions of electricity, says Alexandre DaSilva, the senior researcher in the study from the University of Michigan School of… read more

Topics: Cognitive Science/Neuroscience

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How to lose 50 years of aging in 16 days

January 3, 2013

acs_gold_nanoparticle_hairs

Attention seniors: French scientists have developed a process that permanently dyes white hair without harmful chemicals.

Philippe Walter and colleagues soaked white hairs in a solution containing fluorescent gold nanoparticles.

The hairs turned pale yellow and then darkened to a deep brown. The color remained even after repeated washings.

Using an electron microscope, the scientists confirmed that the particles were forming inside the hairs’ central core cortex.… read more

Topics: Nanotech/Materials Science

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The slower you grow, the longer you live

Fish study may also apply to humans
January 3, 2013

Gasterosteus_aculeatus

New research from the University of Glasgow suggests that lifespan is affected by the rate at which bodies grow early in life: manipulating growth rates in stickleback fish can extend their lifespan by nearly a third or reduce it by 15 percent.

A team from the University’s Institute of Biodiversity, Animal Health and Comparative Medicine altered the growth rate of 240 fish by exposing… read more

Topics: Biomed/Longevity | Human Enhancement

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Why you should go paperless in 2013

January 3, 2013

573px-Tablet

Are you still printing things out? Really?

Amazingly, the average office worker still uses about 10,000 sheets of paper per year, the EPA says.

To make a new push for a really paperless office, the “Paperless Coalition,” which includes Google Drive, HelloFax, Manilla, HelloSign, Expensify, Xero and Fujitsu ScanSnap, has launched a… read more

Topics: Computers/Infotech/UI | Innovation/Entrepreneurship

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How to watch chemo killing liver tumors in real time

Immediate feedback shows if chemotherapy worked, or if additional treatment is needed
January 3, 2013

Specialized DPCBCT scans of a liver tumor in a 73 y.o. man before and after chemoembolization (second and fourth column from left) match up closely with MRI scans taken over a month later (first and third columns). (Credit: Johns Hopkins Medicine)

Using two successive pairs of specialized CT scans, a team of Johns Hopkins and Dutch radiologists has produced real-time images of liver tumors dying from direct injection of anticancer drugs into the tumors and their surrounding blood vessels.

Within a minute, the images showed whether the targeted chemotherapy did or did not choke off the tumors’ blood supply and saved patients a month of worry… read more

Topics: Biomed/Longevity

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Acrobatic space rovers to explore moons and asteroids

An autonomous system for exploring the solar system's smaller members, such as moons and asteroids, could bring us closer to a human mission to Mars
January 2, 2013

probos surveyer2

Stanford researchers in collaboration with NASA JPL and MIT have designed a robotic platform that involves a mother spacecraft deploying one or several spiked, roughly spherical rovers to the Martian moon Phobos.

Measuring about half a meter wide, each rover would hop, tumble and bound across the cratered, lopsided moon, relaying information about its origins, as well as its soil and other surface materials.

Developed by… read more

Topics: Space

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Better than human

Imagine that 7 out of 10 working Americans got fired tomorrow. What would they all do?
January 2, 2013

rethink_baxter

It’s hard to believe you’d have an economy at all if you gave pink slips to more than half the labor force. But that — in slow motion — is what the industrial revolution did to the workforce of the early 19th century, says Wired maverick Kevin Kelley.

Two hundred years ago, 70 percent of American workers lived on the farm. Today automation has eliminated all but 1 percent… read more

Topics: AI/Robotics | Social/Ethical/Legal

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Google Glass update

January 2, 2013

google_glass

Summary of an IEEE Spectrum report

In the next few weeks, Google will start shipping its Google Glass to developers. More-polished consumer models are expected in 2014.

Details about Glass are still sketchy but here’s what we know:

  • The lightweight browband, which looks like an ordinary pair of reading glasses minus the lenses, connects to an earpiece that has much the same electronics you’d

… read more

Topics: VR/Augmented Reality/Computer Graphics

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Cosmic radiation found harmful to astronauts during space travel

NASA-funded study shows exposed mice develop symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease
January 2, 2013

This NASA shapeship design may no longer be able to protect astronauts during a trip to and from Mars (credit: NASA)

Cosmic radiation — which would bombard astronauts on deep space missions to places like Mars — could accelerate the onset of Alzheimer’s disease, a new study in the open-access journal PLOS ONE shows.

“Galactic cosmic radiation poses a significant threat to future astronauts,” said M. Kerry O’Banion, M.D., Ph.D., a professor in the University of Rochester Medical Center (URMC) Department of Neurobiology and… read more

Topics: Biomed/Longevity | Cognitive Science/Neuroscience | Space

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Single-molecule motor sits on a single-atom ball bearing

Can be run forward or in reverse, depending on where electrons are injected
December 31, 2012

The base of the device holds a Ru atom, and the five-armed device can rotate on top of it (credit:

Researchers have created a reversible rotor that sits atop a ball bearing — a single ruthenium atom, Ars Technica reports.

The base of the system involves a boron atom that coordinates three ringed structures that are chemically similar to the bases of DNA. Nitrogens at a corner of these ringed structures coordinate the ruthenium atom, placing it at the peak of a three-sided pyramid.

The ruthenium atom acts… read more

Topics: Nanotech/Materials Science

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The future of medicine is now

December 31, 2012

foundation_medicine_analyzer

Six medical innovations are poised to transform the way we fight disease, The Wall Street Journal reports.

  • Surgeons at Boston Children’s Hospital have developed a way to help children born with half a heart to essentially grow a whole one — by marshaling the body’s natural capacity to heal and develop.
  • Oxford Nanopore Technologies has unveiled the first of a generation of tiny DNA sequencing devices that

… read more

Topics: Biomed/Longevity | Biotech

Comments (19)

Adafruit to teach electronics through puppets in new kids’ show

December 28, 2012

circuit_playground

 

Adafruit, the kit-based electronics retailer and promoter of hobbyist engineering, is aiming to teach electronics to a younger demographic, using puppets, says Wired.

Their new online show, titled Circuit Playground, will teach the essentials of electronics and circuitry to children through kid-friendly dolls.

As a learning companion, Adafruit has also recently produced the coloring book E is for Electronics, and will carry … read more

Topics: Electronics | Entertainment/New Media

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Is growth over?

December 28, 2012

Growth in real GDP per capita, with actual (from .2 to 2.5 percent per year) and hypothetical paths (credit: Robert J. Gordon)

Global growth from the current industrial revolution (computers, the web, mobile phones) is slowing — especially in advanced-technology economies, and long-term economic growth may grind to a halt, Robert J. Gordon, Stanley G. Harris Professor in the Social Sciences and Professor of Economics at Northwestern University, has argued.

Now economist Paul Krugman counters in The New York Times that we are moving toward a… read more

Topics: Computers/Infotech/UI | Innovation/Entrepreneurship | Singularity/Futures

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Social media: five predictions for 2013

December 28, 2012

tout

What does 2013 hold in store for the world of social media? CNET predicts:

1. MySpace relaunches; no one cares (no-brainer)

2. Twitter-Instagram photo rivalry continues to develop

3. Tout (video-sharing service) breaks out

4. Bigger bucks for Twitter (ads possible)

5. Facebook buys RockMelt? (its own browser)

Topics: Social Networking/Web/Education

Comments (8)

Synaptic electronic circuits that learn and forget like neural processes

December 27, 2012

nanoionic device

Rui Yang, Kazuya Terabe and colleagues at the National Institute for Materials Science (NIMS), and the International Center for Materials Nanoarchitectonics (MANA) in Japan and at the California NanoSystems Institute/UCLA have developed “nanoionic” (processes connected with fast ion transport in all-solid-state nanoscale systems) devices capable of a broad range of neuromorphic and electrical functions.

Background

Such a device would allow for fabrication of on-demand configurable circuits,… read more

Topics: Cognitive Science/Neuroscience | Electronics | Nanotech/Materials Science

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