The RoboRoach, a Kickstarter project, is the “world’s first commercially available cyborg” — part cockroach and part machine.
The backpack communicates directly to the roach’s neurons in its antennas via small electrical pulses.
The cockroach undergoes a short surgery (under anesthesia) in which wires are placed inside the antenna. Once it recovers, a backpack is temporarily placed on its back.
When you send a command… read more
Researchers at Boston University School of Medicine (BUSM) have uncovered important clues about a biochemical pathway in the brain that may one day expand treatment options for schizophrenia.
This research focused on key components of the brain known as NMDA receptors. These receptors are located on nerve cells in the brain and serve as biochemical gates that allow calcium ions (electrical charges) to enter the… read more
Apple shared details of the next version of its iOS mobile operating system (due out this Fall) during the opening keynote address at its annual developer conference Monday. Nick Bilton at The New York Times offers a detailed blow-by-blow account, and Tech Crunch has a good summary. Or watch the keynote.
Notable:
The elegant new flat look:
The forthcoming… read more
An international team of scientists has developed crop models to better forecast food production to feed a growing population — projected to reach 9 billion by mid-century — in the face of climate change.
In a paper appearing in Nature Climate Change, Members of the Agricultural Model Intercomparison and Improvement Project unveiled an all-encompassing modeling system that integrates multiple crop simulations with improved climate change models.
AgMIP’s… read more
Patients needing knee replacements at the San Mateo Medical Center in California are being coached by a digital avatar, MIT Technology Review reports.
The avatar, Molly, interviews them in Spanish or English about the levels of pain they feel as a video guides them through exercises, while the 3-D cameras of a Kinect device measure their movements.
The ultimate goal is for the routine to be… read more
The connections make the clock precise but also let it adjust to changes in day/night cycles.
The World Health Organization lists shift work as a potential carcinogen, says Erik Herzog, PhD, Professor of Biology in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis.
And that’s just one example among many of the troubles we cause ourselves when we override the biological clocks in our brains… read more
Oregon Health & Science University neurosuirgeons have developed a safer new way to perform the surgery for Parkinson’s disease. It allows for more accurate placement of the brain electrodes and is likely safer for patients.
The success and safety of the new surgical technique could have broad implications for deep brain stimulation,(DBS) surgical procedures.
With traditional DBS surgery, there is a small chance of… read more
Publishing, music, shopping, journalism – all revolutionized by the Internet. Next in line? Education.
Now U.S. academics are offering world-class tuition — free — to anyone who can log on, anywhere in the world, is this the end of campus life?
The Guardian explores.
The Guardian says it has acquired top-secret documents about the NSA datamining tool, called Boundless Informant, that details and even maps by country the voluminous amount of information it collects from computer and telephone networks.
The focus of the internal NSA tool is on counting and categorizing the records of communications, known as metadata, rather than the content of an email or… read more
A study in the journal Cell reveals that a significant number of new neurons in the hippocampus — a brain region crucial for memory and learning — are generated in adult humans.
“It was thought for a long time that we are born with a certain number of neurons, and that it is not possible to get new neurons after birth,” says senior study author Jonas Frisén of the Karolinska Institute.… read more
Researchers in the University of Minnesota’s College of Science and Engineering have developed a new noninvasive system that allows people to control a flying robot using a brain-computer interface.
The study has the potential to help people who are paralyzed or have neurodegenerative diseases.
The open access study was published in IOP Publishing’s Journal of Neural Engineering.
Five subjects (three female and two… read more
New MIT analysis should enable development of improved color displays and biomedical monitoring systems.
Tiny particles of matter called quantum dots, which emit light with exceptionally pure and bright colors, have found a prominent role as biological markers. In addition, they are realizing their potential in computer and television screens, and have promise in solid-state lighting.
New research at MIT could now make these… read more
Researchers from the University of Louisville in Kentucky are developing new materials and production methods using modified quantum dots and inkjet printing to make organic light emitting diodes (OLEDs) more cheaply and easily.
For home lighting applications, OLEDs hold the promise of being both environmentally friendly and versatile. Though not as efficient as regular light-emitting diodes (LEDs), they offer a wider range of material choices and are… read more
Lawrence Livermore (LLNL) scientist Nir Goldman and University of Ontario Institute of Technology colleague Isaac Tamblyn have found that icy comets that crashed into Earth billions of years ago could have produced life-building organic compounds.
Comets contain a variety of simple molecules, such as water, ammonia, methanol, and carbon dioxide, and an impact event with a planetary surface would provide an abundant supply… read more
Purdue University researchers have demonstrated a method for “temporal cloaking” of optical communications, representing a potential tool to thwart would-be eavesdroppers and improve security for telecommunications.
“More work has to be done before this approach finds practical application, but it does use technology that could integrate smoothly into the existing telecommunications infrastructure,” said Purdue graduate student Joseph Lukens, working with … read more