“The world is getting richer, healthier, better educated, more peaceful, and better connected, and people are living longer; yet half the world is potentially unstable,” according to Jerome C. Glenn, CEO of The Millennium Project and co-author of the “2012 State of the Future,” an overview of our global situation, problems, solutions, and prospects for the future.
The 16th Annual Edition includes 145 pages and… read more
UC Santa Barbara scientists Omar Saleh and Deborah Fygenson have created a dynamic gel made of DNA that mechanically responds to stimuli in much the same way that cells do.
The project has potential applications in smart materials, artificial muscle, understanding cytoskeletal mechanics, research into nonequilibrium physics, and DNA nanotechnology.
“The gel has active mechanical capabilities in that it generates forces independently, leading to… read more
The BIQ house in Germany features a “bio-adaptive façade” that uses microalgae to generate renewable energy and provide shade, PSFK reports.
Designed for the International Building Exhibition in Hamburg, the zero-energy house will be the first real-life test for the new façade system.
Algae in the bio-reactor façades grow faster in bright sunlight to provide more shade. The bio-reactors power the building by capturing solar thermal… read more
Max Planck Institute (MPI) for Medical Research scientists are developing a complete circuit diagram of the brain of the mouse using an electron microscope to make fine extensions of almost every single neuron visible.
Most axons are less than one micron thick, some even smaller than 100 nanometers. “The electron microscope is the only microscope with a high enough resolution to enable individual axons lying next to each other… read more
A technique developed by UCLA researchers and their European colleagues can produce 3D images of breast tissue that are two to three times sharper than those made using current CT scanners at hospitals.
The technique also uses a lower dose of X-ray radiation than a mammogram.
These higher-quality images could allow breast tumors to be detected earlier and with much greater accuracy.
One… read more
3D printer leader 3D Systems announced today that it plans to provide Singularity University (SU) with several of its 3D printers.
“We are excited to be part of Singularity’s visionary initiative to democratize access to 3D content-to-print solutions that will enable greater entrepreneurialism and inventiveness,” said Abe Reichental, President and CEO of 3D Systems.
“SU has shown a great deal of foresight and leadership in… read more
The ability to recognize faces is so important in humans that the brain appears to have an area solely devoted to the task: the fusiform gyrus in the temporal lobe, Science Now reports.
Brain imaging studies consistently find that this region of becomes active when people look at faces. Skeptics have countered, however, that these studies show only a correlation, but not proof, that activity in this… read more
A team of neuroscientists led by Professor Anthony Zador, Ph.D., of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory have proposed a revolutionary new way to create a connectivity map (“connectome”) of the whole brain of the mouse at the resolution of single neurons: high-throughput DNA sequencing.
The only current method for obtaining the connectome with high precision relies on laboriously examining individual cell-to-cell contacts (synapses) in electron microscopes, which is slow, expensive… read more
University of California, Davis researchers for the first time have looked inside gallium manganese arsenide, which could open up an entirely new class of faster, smaller devices based on an emerging field known as “spintronics.”
Materials of this type might be used to read and write digital information not by using the electron’s charge, as is the case with today’s electronic devices, but by using… read more
A new study from the Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice finds that America’s public schools saw a 96 percent increase in students but increased administrators and other non-teaching staff a staggering 702 percent since 1950. Teaching staff, in comparison, increased 252 percent, Reason reports.
If non-teaching personnel had grown at the same rate as student population, American public schools would have an additional $24.3… read more
Full-body or X-ray scanners used for airport security screening may affect the function of insulin pump or continuous glucose monitoring (CGM) devices.
Andrew Cornish and H. Peter Chase, MD, University of Colorado, Denver, caution that the motor of an insulin delivery pump or glucose monitoring device may experience electromagnetic malfunctioning when passed through an airport security scanner.
“Given the increased use of insulin pump therapy around the world, with hundreds… read more
Northwestern University scientists have developed a new family of compounds that could slow the progression of Parkinson’s disease.
Parkinson’s, the second most common neurodegenerative disease, is caused by the death of dopamine neurons, resulting in tremors, rigidity and difficulty moving. Current treatments target the symptoms but do not slow the progression of the disease.
The compounds work by blocking calcium. The compounds target and shut a relatively… read more
For researchers in the biological sciences, however, the future training of robots has been made much easier thanks to a new program called “PaR-PaR” (Programming a Robot).
Nathan Hillson, a biochemist at the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)’s Joint BioEnergy Institute (JBEI), led the development of PaR-PaR, a simple high-level, biology-friendly, robot-programming language that allows researchers to make better use of liquid-handling robots… read more
Early detection of soft-tissue diseases, such as breast cancer, typically requires invasive biopsies. Now, a new self-assembled nanoparticle developed by Bin Liu at the A*STAR Institute of Materials Research and Engineering and co-workers may soon make biopsies obsolete.
The team’s material significantly enhances the safety of two-photon microscopy (TPM) — a technique that uses fluorescent probes to generate three-dimensional pictures of cancer cell structures in… read more
Researchers at University of Western Ontario and the Lawson Health Research Institute have found that functional changes within a key brain network occur directly after a 30-minute session of noninvasive, neurofeedback training.
Background
Dysfunction of this cognitive-control network has previously been implicated in a range of brain disorders including attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, schizophrenia, depression, and post-traumatic stress disorder.
During neurofeedback, users learn to… read more