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How the human brain adapts to injury

Findings also show how you can train your brain to handle injuries more efficiently
January 17, 2013

hemisphere takeover

Scientists at the Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) Center for Cognitive Brain Imaging (CCBI) have used a new combination of neural imaging methods to discover exactly how the human brain adapts to injury.

The research shows that when one brain area loses functionality, a “back-up” team of secondary brain areas immediately activates, replacing not only the unavailable area but also its confederates.

Developing… read more

Topics: Biomed/Longevity | Cognitive Science/Neuroscience

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A major step toward an Alzheimer’s treatment and vaccine

January 17, 2013

PET scan of the brain of a person with AD showing a loss of function in the temporal lobe (credit: Wikimedia Commons)

A way to stimulate the brain’s natural defense mechanisms in people with Alzheimer’s disease has been discovered by researchers at Université Laval, CHU de Québec and pharmaceutical firm GlaxoSmithKline (GSK): a molecule known as MPL (monophosphoryl lipid A) that stimulates the activity of the brain’s immune cells.

The breakthrough opens the door to developing a treatment for Alzheimer’s disease and a vaccine to prevent the… read more

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

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Google glass to hit developers’ hands this month

January 16, 2013

google_io2012_glasses

Developers who want to get their hands on Google’s Project Glass won’t have to wait much longer, Mashable reports.

Google announced plans Tuesday to hold a “Glass Foundry” in San Francisco and New York in the coming weeks: two full days of hacking that will allow developers to get an early look at Glass and start developing for the platform.

Glass Foundry will be… read more

Topics: VR/Augmented Reality/Computer Graphics

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Using an electron beam to manipulate nanoparticles

January 16, 2013

How to trap a gold nanoparticle in an environmental cell: an electron beam passes through a silicon nitride window and grabs the nanoparticle (credit: Haimei Zheng et al./Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory)

Scientists from Berkeley Lab and the National University of Singapore have developed a way to manipulate nanoparticles using an electron beam.

They used an electron beam from a transmission electron microscope to trap gold nanoparticles and direct their movement, and to assemble several nanoparticles into a tight cluster.

They also imaged the nanoparticles as they manipulated them.

Based on their results, the scientists… read more

Topics: Nanotech/Materials Science | Physics/Cosmology

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Intelligent molecules

January 16, 2013

Solvent-induced collapse of an environmentally responsive copolymer (attached to a gold surface and an atomic force microscope tip). The molecule changes length in response to increased salt concentration. (Credit: Michael A. Nash, and Hermann E. Gaub/ACS Nano)

It sounds like science fiction: “intelligent molecules” that react to external stimuli and reversibly change their shape.

But now Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität (LMU) physicists have succeeded for the first time in creating a chemical reaction, using a single polymer molecule, that makes this process visible.

Dr. Michael Nash and his colleagues placed a self-generated synthesized polymer on a gold surface using an atomic force microscope… read more

Topics: Computers/Infotech/UI | Nanotech/Materials Science

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Asteroid deflection mission seeks smashing ideas

January 16, 2013

AIDA_mission_concept_node_full_image

A space rock several hundred meters across is heading towards our planet and the last-ditch attempt to avert a disaster — an untested mission to deflect it — fails.

This fictional scene of films and novels could well be a reality one day. So the European Space Agency (ESA) is appealing for research ideas to help guide the development of a U.S.-European asteroid deflection mission… read more

Topics: Space | Survival/Defense

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Building electronics bottom-up

January 16, 2013

Nanodots of iron oxide were laid out in a highly ordered pattern without the use of templates. The average diameter of the particles was 25 nanometers, with regular spacing of 45 nm. (Credit: Christopher G. Hardy et al./University of South Carolina)

University of South Carolina’s Chuanbing Tang is out to turn the microelectronics industry upside down.

Currently, modern electronics are primarily fabricated by etching the smooth surface of a starting material — say, a wafer of silicon, using micro- or nanolithography to establish a pattern on it. This top-down method might involve a prefabricated template, such as a photomask, to establish the pattern.

But the approach… read more

Topics: Electronics | Nanotech/Materials Science

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To make open access work, we need to do more than liberate journal articles

January 16, 2013

reading_book

In the days since the tragedy of Aaron Swartz’s suicide, many academics have been posting open-access PDFs of their research as an act of solidarity with Swartz’s crusade to liberate (in most cases publicly funded) knowledge for all to read.

While this has been a noteworthy gesture, the problem of open access isn’t just about the ethics of freeing and sharing scholarly information. It’s as much —… read more

Topics: Social Networking/Web | Social/Ethical/Legal

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Synthetic oscillating gel ‘acts alive’

A synthetic material rebuilds itself through chemical communication, similar to bacteria
January 15, 2013
Oscillating gel pieces will move back together after being sliced

Synthetic self-moving gels can “act alive” and mimic primitive biological communication, University of Pittsburgh researchers have found.

The synthetic system can reconfigure itself through a combination of chemical communication and interaction with light.

“This is the closest system to the ultimate self- recombining material, which can be divided into separated parts and the parts move autonomously to assemble into a structure resembling the original,… read more

Topics: Nanotech/Materials Science | Synthetic Biology

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Marine robots detect endangered whales

January 15, 2013

Two robots equipped with instruments designed to “listen” for the calls of baleen whales detected nine endangered North Atlantic right whales in the Gulf of Maine last month.

The team of researchers, led by Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) scientists Mark Baumgartner and Dave Fratantoni, reported their sightings to NOAA, the federal agency responsible for enforcing the Marine Mammal Protection Act.

NOAA Fisheries Service,… read more

Topics: AI/Robotics | Environment/Climate

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Internet activist, a creator of RSS, is dead at 26, apparently a suicide

January 15, 2013

AaronSwartzPIPA

Aaron Swartz, a wizardly programmer who as a teenager helped develop code that delivered ever-changing Web content to users and who later became a steadfast crusader to make that information freely available, was found dead on Friday in his New York apartment, The New York Times reports.

At 14, Mr. Swartz helped create RSS, the nearly ubiquitous tool that allows users to subscribe to online information. He… read more

Topics: Internet/Telecom | Social/Ethical/Legal

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Flexible nanocircuits that can go on almost anything

Electronic chips in your clothes to monitor your vitals? A tablet that folds up and fits in your back pocket?
January 15, 2013

flex_circuits

Research scientists Stephen Bedell and Davood Shahrjerdi at IBM’s Thomas J Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, New York think that flexible nanoscale circuits can do just that, IBM Research reports.

The flexible nanoelectronic circuit Bedell and Shahrjedri designed is 10,000 times thinner than a piece of paper, and was peeled off of a silicon wafer and put onto plastic — an industry first.

These circuits… read more

Topics: Electronics | Nanotech/Materials Science

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Controlling heat like light

New approach using nanoparticle alloys allows heat to be focused or reflected just like electromagnetic waves
January 15, 2013

An MIT researcher has developed a technique that provides a new way of manipulating heat, allowing it to be controlled much as light waves can be manipulated by lenses and mirrors.

The approach relies on engineered materials consisting of nanostructured semiconductor alloy crystals.

Heat is a vibration of matter — technically, a vibration of the atomic lattice of a material — just as sound… read more

Topics: Nanotech/Materials Science | Physics/Cosmology

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Pill-sized device provides rapid, detailed imaging of esophageal lining

Novel system could allow broader screening for esophageal cancer, other conditions
January 15, 2013

Physicians may soon have a new way to screen patients for Barrett’s esophagus, a precancerous condition usually caused by chronic exposure to stomach acid. Researchers at the Wellman Center for Photomedicine at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) have developed an imaging system enclosed in a capsule about the size of a multivitamin pill that creates detailed, microscopic images of the esophageal wall.

The system… read more

Topics: Biomed/Longevity | Electronics | Nanotech/Materials Science

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How to convert connective tissue directly into neurons

January 14, 2013

Primary human fibroblast cell

Repression of a single protein in ordinary fibroblasts (connective tissue) is sufficient to directly convert them into functional neurons, scientists in the U.S. and China have discovered.

The findings could have far-reaching implications for the development of new treatments for neurodegenerative diseases like Huntington’s, Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s.

In recent years, scientists have dramatically advanced the ability to induce pluripotent stem cells to become almost any type of… read more

Topics: Biotech | Cognitive Science/Neuroscience

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