In a new study published in the Journal of Neuroscience, Vanderbilt psychologists show that it is possible to learn through the application of a mild electrical current to the brain, and that this effect can be enhanced or depressed depending on the direction of the current.
The medial-frontal cortex is believed to be the part of the brain responsible for the instinctive “Oops!” response we have when we… read more
Nanoscale unique patterns* made from tiny, randomly scattered silver nanowires could authenticate goods, dealing with the growing problem of counterfeiting, say South Korea researchers.
The patterns are made by randomly dumping 20 to 30 individual nanowires, each with a diameter of about 70 nanometers and an average length of 10 to 50 microns, onto a thin plastic film, and could be used to tag a variety of goods from electronics and… read more
Researchers at Karolinska Institutet and Uppsala University have discovered that a substance called Vacquinol-1 makes cells from glioblastoma, the most aggressive type of brain tumor, literally explode.
When mice were given the substance, which can be given in tablet form, tumor growth was reversed and survival was prolonged. The findings are published in the journal Cell.
The established treatments for glioblastoma are… read more
Colorimetrix, a new app developed by University of Cambridge researchers, turns a smartphone into a portable medical diagnostic device.
The app could make monitoring conditions such as HIV, tuberculosis, malaria, diabetes, kidney disease, and urinary tract infections clearer and easier for both patients and doctors, and could eventually be used to slow or limit the spread of pandemics in the developing world, the researchers say.… read more
“Fresh” rock — nature’s atmospheric carbon dioxide regulator — explains why the Earth has become neither sweltering like Venus nor frigid like Mars. So say researchers from USC and Nanjing University in China.
Scientists have long known that “fresh” rock pushed to the surface via mountain formation effectively acts as a kind of sponge, soaking up the greenhouse gas CO2.
Left unchecked, however, that process would… read more
Google has announced Android Wear, a project that extends Android to wearables, starting with two watches, both due out this Summer: Motorola’s Moto 360 and LG’s G Watch.
Android Wear will show you info from the wide variety of Android apps, such as messages, social apps, chats, notifications, health and fitness, music playlists, and videos.
It will also enable Google Now functions… read more
University of Utah electrical engineers fabricated the smallest plasma transistors that can withstand the high temperatures and ionizing radiation found in a nuclear reactor.
Such transistors someday might enable smartphones that take and collect medical X-rays on a battlefield, and devices to measure air quality in real time.
“These plasma-based electronics can be used to control and guide robots to conduct tasks inside the nuclear reactor,”… read more
According to University of California, Berkeley, and Chinese researchers, a rapid succession of coronal mass ejections — the most intense eruptions on the sun — sent a pulse of magnetized plasma barreling into space and through Earth’s orbit.
Had the eruption come nine days earlier, when the ignition spot on the solar surface was aimed at Earth, it would have hit the planet, potentially wreaking… read more
Scientists at the Agency for Science, Technology and Research’s (A*STAR) Institute of Molecular and Cell Biology (IMCB) have developed a method to generate human induced pluripotent stem cells (hiPSCs) from a single drop of finger-pricked blood.
The method also enables donors to collect their own blood samples, which they can then send to a laboratory for further processing. The easy access to blood samples using the new… read more
Scientists at the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and Stanford University have discovered how graphene — a single layer of carbon atoms with great promise for future electronics — is superconducting in a graphene-calcium compound, meaning that graphene would carry electricity with 100 percent efficiency.
While it’s been known for nearly a decade that this combined material is superconducting, the new study offers the first… read more
Throwing down a challenge to the Oculus Rift virtual reality head-mounted display, Shu Yoshida, President, SCE Worldwide Studios, introduced at GDC 2014 Project Morpheus, a prototype virtual reality (VR) system that works with PS4 and could radically change gaming.
Yoshida said Sony’s Project Morpheus features a head-mounted display with 1080p HD resolution and a 90 degree field of… read more
A Stanford University team has developed a process to create flexible chips using carbon nanotubes (CNTs) that can tolerate electrical noise (rapid fluctuations in voltage).
In principle, CNTs should be ideal for making flexible electronic circuitry. These ultra-thin carbon filaments have the physical strength to take the wear and tear of bending, and the electrical conductivity to perform any electronic task. But flexible CNTs circuits didn’t have the… read more
North Carolina State University researchers have developed a stretchable antenna that can be incorporated into wearable technologies, such as health diagnostic and monitoring devices.
Wearable systems can be subject to a variety of stresses as patients move around, so the researchers wanted to develop an antenna that could be stretched, rolled, or twisted and always return to its original shape.
To create an appropriately resilient, effective… read more
Scientists at the Harvard’s Wyss Institute have built a set of self-assembling DNA cages that are up to one-tenth as wide as a bacterium. The structures are some of the largest and most complex structures ever constructed solely from DNA, they report in Science.
Moreover, the scientists visualized them using a DNA-based super-resolution microscopy method — and obtained the first sharp 3D optical images of intact synthetic DNA nanostructures… read more
MIT researchers are augmenting plants with nanomaterials that could enhance their energy production and give them completely new functions, such as monitoring environmental pollutants.
In a new Nature Materials paper, the researchers report boosting plants’ ability to capture light energy by 30 percent by embedding carbon nanotubes in the chloroplast, the plant organelle where photosynthesis takes place.
Using another type of carbon nanotube, they… read more