UPDATE 8/31/2012 10:15 a.m. EDT:
This just in from Shannon Vyff: “We have raised $27,000.00 in just a week, we were at $17,000.00 Thursday when a generous $10,000.00 donation from Life Extension Foundation come in. Our minimum goal is $35,000.00 to cover transportation and cryopreservation costs — if additional funds are raised Kim is hoping to be able to cover standby as well. I’m very thankful to our… read more
Standard head movements made while exposed to static 7 Tesla magnetic fields produced by a heavy duty magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scanner seem to temporarily lower concentration and visuospatial awareness, an experimental study published online in Occupational and Environmental Medicine shows.
The effects were particularly noticeable in tasks requiring high levels of working memory, which may have implications for surgeons and other healthcare staff working within the vicinity of… read more
To go beyond Moore’s law and reduce the size of integrated circuits down to single-atom thickness, researchers led by Jiwoong Park, assistant professor of chemistry and chemical biology at Cornell, have invented a way to pattern single-atom films of graphene and insulating boron nitride without the use of a silicon substrate.
The new “patterned regrowth” technique could lead to substrate-free circuits so thin that they could float on… read more
Danielle Peers has lived the thrill and pressure, revelled in competition and brought home hardware from the Paralympic Games. But beneath the cheers, the University of Alberta researcher questions whether the Paralympic movement is as empowering as its benevolent image.
The former Paralympian bronze medallist and women’s wheelchair basketball world champion says the history of the Paralympic movement dates to the freak shows… read more
Researchers from the University of Bonn and the Central Institute of Mental Health in Mannheim found that “problematic” Internet users, especially women, are more often carriers of a variation in the CHRNA4 gene, the nicotinic acetylcholine receptor gene, which that also plays a major role in nicotine addiction and generation of dopamine.
The T- variant (CC genotype) of the rs1044396 polymorphism on the CHRNA4 gene occurred significantly more frequently*, the… read more
arXiv, the free repository that has revolutionized the way scientists share information, is adopting a new governance and business model that will allow it to grow and succeed in the future.
Beginning in January and running through 2017, the Simons Foundation will provide up to $300,000 per year as a matching gift for the funds generated through arXiv’s membership fees. The grant also… read more
A biotech company called Cerulean says its nanoparticle-delivered cancer drugs are better at attacking tumors, Technology Review reports.
One result of the side effects of cancer treatments is that patients often can’t tolerate or survive a combination of different drugs at the same time — which can limit a doctor’s ability to knock out the disease. The head of a Boston-area biotech called Cerulean Therapeutics… read more
A team of astronomers led by researchers from the Niels Bohr Institute, have observed a simple sugar molecule in the gas surrounding a young star, proving that the building blocks of life were already present during planet formation.
They also found other complex organic molecules, including ethylene-glycol, methyl-formate and ethanol.
Sugar around new stars
“In the protoplanetary disc of gas and dust surrounding… read more
By affixing nanoscale gold spheres onto a microscopic bead of glass, researchers have created a super-sensor that can detect even single samples of the smallest known viruses.
The sensor uses a peculiar behavior of light known as “whispering gallery mode,” named after the famous circular gallery in St. Paul’s Cathedral in London, where a whisper near the wall can be heard around the gallery due to frequency… read more
Scientists at the Department of Energy’s (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory have precisely measured a key parameter of electron interactions called non-adiabatic spin torque that is essential to the future development of spintronic data storage devices.
(Current data storage technology has a functional limit: magnetically stored digital information becomes unstable when too tightly packed. The denser, faster, and smarter technology of spintronics may offer a solution. Spintronic devices use electron spin to… read more
NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) mission has led to a bonanza of millions of new-found supermassive black holes and extreme galaxies called “hot DOGs” — dust-obscured galaxies that burn brightly with infrared light, thought to be among the brightest galaxies ever found.
The latest findings are helping astronomers better understand how galaxies and the behemoth black holes at their centers grow and evolve together.
For example, the giant… read more
The brain clock — the suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN) in the hypothalamus — is driven in part by metabolism, the production and flow of chemical energy in cells, a new study reveals.
The researchers focused primarily on a phenomenon known as “redox” in neural tissues of the SCN from the brains of rats and mice.
(Redox represents the energy changes of cellular metabolism (usually through the transfer of electrons). When a… read more
Stem cells, embryo research and synthetic biology are just a few of the issues that will force strange new political alliances, University of Pennsylvania bioethicist Jonathan D. Moreno writes in New Scientist.
The new biology, or biotechnology — including stem cells, embryo research, synthetic biology and reproductive technology — has unprecedented power to change basic life processes.
One recent example is the controversy over the “three-parent… read more
EPFL’s Group for Fibre Optics (GFO) has developed a technology that improves the resolution of measurements taken by optical fibers embedded in structures such as nuclear reactors, bridges, dams and buildings, or in smaller objects, providing valuable information about a structure’s heat or state of fatigue and wear.
Until now, data could be collected from points about one meter apart using optical fibers (thin glass threads) embedded in construction… read more
Automated assistance may soon be available to neuroscientists tackling the brain’s complex circuitry, according to research presented last week at the Aspen Brain Forum in Colorado.
Robots that can find and simultaneously record the activity of dozens of neurons in live animals could help researchers to reveal how connected cells interpret signals from one another and transmit information across brain areas — a task that would be… read more