Two high-profile entrepreneurs say they want to put a DNA sequencing machine on the surface of Mars in a bid to prove the existence of extraterrestrial life.
In what could become a race for the first extraterrestrial genome, researcher J. Craig Venter said Tuesday that his Maryland academic institute and company, Synthetic Genomics, would develop a machine capable of sequencing and beaming back DNA data… read more
Barnaby Jack, a Research Architect with the TRACE research team at McAfee, has reverse-engineered a pacemaker transmitter to make it possible to deliver deadly electric shocks to pacemakers within 30 feet and rewrite their firmware, SC Magazine reports.
In a speech at the BreakPoint security conference in Melbourne Wednesday, Jack said such attacks were tantamount to “anonymous assassination” and in a realistic but worse-case… read more
As we noted previously, Kim Suozzi, 23, has terminal brain cancer that is highly aggressive and growing rapidly in a location that makes surgery impossible, and her final wish is to be cryopreserved.
Alcor Life Extension Foundation announced Wednesday that it has offered to cryopreserve Kim at a reduced cost, with the staff donating their time for her cryopreservation.
“I learned about cryonics… read more
A group of educational researchers at Florida State University are drawing widespread attention after their paper measuring the superior results of a more “student-centered” approach to teaching science was published in the pre-eminent journal Science.
The stakes are extraordinarily high, so it is critical that the United States find more effective ways of teaching the so-called STEM fields (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) in K-12 classrooms, said the paper’s… read more
Craig Venter imagines a future where you can download software, print a vaccine, inject it, and presto! Contagion averted.
“It’s a 3-D printer for DNA, a 3-D printer for life,” Venter said at the inaugural Wired Health Conference in New York City, Wired Science reports.
The geneticist and his team of scientists are already testing out a version of his digital biological converter, or “teleporter.”… read more
“It’s not humanly possible to practice the best possible medicine. We need machines,” said Herbert Chase, a professor of clinical medicine at Columbia University and member of IBM’s Watson Healthcare Advisory Board, Wired Science reports.
“A machine like [IBM's Watson], with massively parallel processing, is like 500,000 of me sitting at Google and Pubmed, trying to find the right information.”
Yet though Watson is clearly a powerful tool,… read more
Graphene and associated one-atom-thick crystals offer the possibility of a vast range of new materials and devices by stacking individual atomic layers on top of each other, new research from The University of Manchester shows.
In a report published in Nature Physics, a group led Dr Leonid Ponomarenko and Nobel prize-winner Professor Andre Geim has assembled individual atomic layers on top of each… read more
North Carolina State University researchers have developed new techniques for stretching carbon nanotubes (CNT) and using them to create carbon composites that can be used as stronger, lighter materials in everything from airplanes to bicycles.
By stretching the CNT material before incorporating it into a composite for use in finished products, the researchers straighten the CNTs in the material, which significantly improves its tensile strength — and… read more
Scientists from the University of Leeds have found that the protein called prion helps our brains to absorb zinc, which is believed to be crucial to our ability to learn and the well-being of our memory.
The findings published on Tuesday 16 October in Nature Communications (open access) show that prion protein regulates the amount of zinc in the brain by helping cells absorb it… read more
Scientists at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center have taken the first steps to create neural-like stem cells from muscle tissue in animals.
“Reversing brain degeneration and trauma lesions will depend on cell therapy, but we can’t harvest neural stem cells from the brain or spinal cord without harming the donor,” said Osvaldo Delbono, M.D., Ph.D., professor of internal medicine at Wake… read more
One in five American adults show signs of chronic sleep deprivation, making the condition a widespread public health problem. Sleeplessness is related to health issues such as obesity, cardiovascular problems, and memory problems.
New findings presented at the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience Tuesday report the important role sleep plays, and the brain mechanisms at work as sleep shapes memory, learning, and behavior.
The findings show… read more
European astronomers have discovered a planet with about the mass of the Earth orbiting a star in the Alpha Centauri system — the star system nearest Earth. It is also the lightest exoplanet ever discovered around a star like the Sun.
The planet was detected using the HARPS instrument on the 3.6-metre telescope at ESO’s La Silla Observatory in Chile.
Alpha Centauri is one of… read more
Electrical stimulation using extradural electrodes — placed underneath the skull but not implanted in the brain — is a safe approach with meaningful benefits for patients with Parkinson’s disease, reports the October issue of Neurosurgery, official journal of the Congress of Neurological Surgeons.
The technique, called extradural motor cortex stimulation (EMCS), may provide a less-invasive alternative to electrical deep brain stimulation (DBS) for some patients with the… read more
Researchers at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) have identified a set of experimental drugs called LRRK2 inhibitors that may go beyond symptom relief to directly counter the inflammation and nerve cell death at the root of Parkinson’s.
These effects have been suggested in mouse and cell culture studies meant to approximate human disease.
Most Parkinson’s disease (PD) patients are still treated with a 42-year-old drug called L-DOPA, which… read more
People 70 and older who eat food high in carbohydrates have nearly four times the risk of developing mild cognitive impairment, and the danger also rises with a diet heavy in sugar, Mayo Clinic researchers have found.
Those who consume a lot of protein and fat relative to carbohydrates are less likely to become cognitively impaired, the study found.
Researchers tracked 1,230 people ages… read more