Mars One has launched its astronaut selection program for the first humans to set foot on Mars and make it their home.
Mars One invites would-be Mars settlers from anywhere in the world to submit an online application — the first of the four rounds in the selection procedure.
Round One will run for over five months and end on 31st August… read more
Three “PhoneSats” rode to space Sunday aboard the maiden flight of Orbital Science Corp.’s Antares rocket from NASA’s Wallops Island Flight Facility in Virginia.
The goal of NASA‘s PhoneSat mission is to determine whether a consumer-grade smartphone — such as the Nexus One phones running Android, used here — can be used as the main flight avionics of a capable, yet very inexpensive,… read more
Sophisticated genetic circuits allow an individual bacterium within a colony to act on its own while also ensuring that the colony pulls together in hard times, striking a balance between selflessness and selfishness,.researchers from Rice University’s Center for Theoretical Biological Physics (CTBP), Tel Aviv University, and Harvard Medical School have shown.
“Our findings suggest new principles for collective decisions that allow both random behavior by… read more
Scientists at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) have found a way to turn bone marrow stem cells directly into brain cells.
Current techniques for turning patients’ marrow cells into cells of some other desired type are relatively cumbersome, risky and effectively confined to the lab dish.
The new finding points to the possibility of simpler and safer techniques.
Cell therapies derived from patients’… read more
Now you can your own glowing plant at home, using synthetic biology and computer software.
All backers from the USA who back this Kickstarter project with $40 or more will receive seeds to grow a glowing plant at home.
From the Kickstarter page:
Once we have the plant, it is just a matter of breeding enough offspring to grow seeds for all backers. You can… read more
NASA‘s Kepler mission has discovered two new planetary systems that include three super-Earth-size planets in the “habitable zone,” the range of distance from a star where the surface temperature of an orbiting planet might be suitable for liquid water.
Two of the newly discovered planets orbit a star smaller and cooler than the sun. Kepler-62f is only 40 percent larger than Earth, making… read more
VizWiz, a free iPhone app, gives real-time help to blind users, The New York Times reports.
VizWiz users take a photograph as best as they can — it may take several tries before the desired object is properly framed — and then record one question about it (“What is on the label of the can?”).
Besides needing help identifying food labels, they may want… read more
Keeping up with current scientific literature is a daunting task, considering that hundreds to thousands of papers are published each day. Now researchers from North Carolina State University have developed a computer program to help them evaluate and rank scientific articles in their field.
The researchers use a text-mining algorithm to prioritize research papers to read and include in their Comparative Toxicogenomics Database… read more
Cornell researchers have created spongelike nanoparticles with separate compartments that could deliver two or more different drugs to the same location, with precise control over the amounts, avoiding unpleasant side effects.
The technology might also be applied to catalysts used to enhance chemical reactions, which are sometimes formed into porous nanoparticles to expose more surface area. Compartmented particles could allow two or more catalysts to… read more
The cell protein machines that copy DNA in a model organism pause frequently during this copying process, creating the potential for dangerous mutations to develop that can contribute to cancer and other diseases., University of York researchers have discovered.
The project focused on a bacterium called Escherichia coli, a powerful model for studying the DNA copying process.
“We have analyzed what causes most of… read more
Researchers at the University of Leeds are using the feet of tree frogs as a model for a tiny robot designed to crawl inside patients’ bodies during keyhole surgery.
It is designed to move across the internal abdominal wall of a patient, allowing surgeons to see what they are doing on a real-time video feed.
The tree frog’s feet provide a solution to the… read more
DARPA researchers have demonstrated a new five-micron-pixel long-wave infrared (LWIR) camera that could make this class of camera smaller and less expensive. (A micron is a millionth of a meter.)
The military uses LWIR (also know as “far IR”) cameras as thermal imagers to detect humans at night. These cameras are usually mounted on vehicles as they are too large to be carried by a… read more
Engineers at the University of California, San Diego have invented a “nanosponge” capable of safely removing a broad class of dangerous toxins from the bloodstream — including toxins produced by MRSA, E. coli, poisonous snakes and bees.
These nanosponges, thus far studied in mice, can neutralize “pore-forming toxins,” which destroy cells by poking holes in their cell membranes. Unlike other anti-toxin platforms that need to… read more
At a time when sequencing the genome is becoming democratized, questions have arisen about the interpretation of these data and their secure storage. Sophia Genetics, an EPFL Science Park start-up, specializes in this area.
Complete sequencing of the genome will soon enable personalized treatments. Moreover, new prescription drugs based on genetic markers are coming on the market. Given the drastic reduction in the… read more
A new commercial U.S. rocket soared into the Virginia sky Sunday (April 21) on a debut flight that paves the way for eventual cargo flights to the International Space Station for NASA, Space.com reports.
The private Antares rocket, built by Orbital Sciences, is a two-stage booster designed to launch tons of supplies to the International Space Station aboard a new unmanned cargo ship called Cygnus.… read more