Embryonic stem cells aren’t the most promising source to find treatments for Alzheimer’s disease, researchers say. Other possibilities, such as treating buildups of protein in the brain, will likely reap rewards faster.
By using computer-aided drug discovery, an Ohio State University molecular biochemist and molecular imaging chemist are collaborating to create an imaging chemical that attaches predominantly to tau-bearing lesions in living brain.
Their hope is that the “designer” tracer will open the door for earlier diagnosis — and better treatments for Alzheimer’s, frontal temporal dementia and traumatic brain injuries like those suffered by professional athletes, all… read more
If successful, the four-year, 7 million euro, EU-funded AMARSi (Adaptive Modular Architecture for Rich Motor Skills) project (which started this month) will enable humanoid (and quadruped) bots to autonomously learn and develop motor skills in open-ended environments in the same way humans do — by learning from the data provided by movement and essentially rewiring their circuits to process and store the new knowledge they’ve acquired.
Signet is aiming its panels at larger scale solar installations: about 20MW of panels to be made in 2008, growing to 60MW or so once capacity has fully ramped.
Currently, solar panels are in the $8-9/W range installed. Signet hopes to bring that down to $3/W by 2010. The goal is to have $1.25/W panels when production starts in 2008, and drop that to sub-$1 by 2010.
Their… read more
Obscura Digital’s newest, longest multitouch wall has launched at the Hard Rock in Vegas, using three projectors to handle 100 hi-res images and videos simultaneously in real time.
Science educator James Drake built this amazing timelapse video from the perspective of the International Space Station as it flew over North and South America, created it by downloading a series of 600 photographs, Universe Today reports.
Scientists are growing ears, bone and skin in the lab, and doctors are planning more face transplants and other extreme plastic surgeries. Around the country, the most advanced medical tools that exist are now being deployed to help America’s newest veterans and wounded troops, Huffington Post reports.
In Los Angeles, surgeons used part of Michael Mills’ forehead to rebuild his nose after a bomb disfigured him in… read more
Meet Zoe: a digital talking head. She can express a range of human emotions on demand with “unprecedented realism” and could herald a new era of human-computer interaction, according to researchers at Toshiba’s Cambridge Research Lab and the University of Cambridge’s Department of Engineering, who created her.
Zoe, or her offspring, could be used as a visible version of Siri, as… read more
The Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2)gives customers the chance to bid on unused computing capacity to save money on low-priority work that can be deferred until computing demand and price are low.
Amazon has embraced Web apps as a way around Apple’s App Store subscription rules. The company has introduced Kindle Cloud Reader, an HTML5-based ebook reading app that provides access to Kindle content in the cloud and to Amazon’s Kindle Store.
Apple takes a 30% cut of sales made through its in-app purchasing system, as it does for App Store downloads. Amazon, which competes with Apple to sell ebooks,… read more
Amazon.com has launched a new program called Amazon Mechanical Turk, through which a computer can ask humans to perform tasks that it can’t do itself, such as identifying objects in photographs.
Amazon is developing extra large fonts for the Kindle, along with an audio-based menu navigation system that will help visually impaired users reach the Kindle’s integrated read-aloud feature.
Amazon.com is getting into the movie business by opening Amazon Studios, with the goal of using the Internet to put fresh movies on the big screen.
The new Internet movie studio will allow writers to upload screenplays to its website, where the global Internet audience can read them and offer feedback, or producers/directors can use them to make test movies. The test movies, which must be at… read more
Amazon.com Inc. is developing a high-end smartphone featuring a screen that allows for three-dimensional images without glasses, The Wall Street Journal reports.
Using retina-tracking technology, images on the smartphone would seem to float above the screen like a hologram and appear three-dimensional at all angles, and users may be able to navigate through content using just their eyes, according to sources,
With smartphones, Amazon could collect new… read more
Amazon is expected to unveil a new version of its Kindle e-book reader in less than two weeks.