SmartCells has developed an injectable drug called SmartInsulin that senses high glucose levels and automatically dispenses insulin on demand.
As glucose levels drop off, the drug stabilizes, trapping insulin until the next glucose spike. Such a drug may cut down the number of insulin injections required to once a day and reduce the risk of hypoglycemia (low blood sugar), a potential hazard associated with current diabetic therapies.
Rice University scientists have created the first two-terminal memory chips that use only silicon to generate nanocrystal wires as small as 5 nanometers — far smaller than circuitry in even the most advanced computers and electronic devices. The technology breakthrough promises to extend the limits of miniaturization subject to Moore’s Law, and should be easily adaptable to nanoelectronic manufacturing techniques.
Jun Yao, a graduate student in Rice… read more
IBM says its MEMS/nanotech combo storage effort, Millipede, is creeping toward reality — this time with its first working quantum storage prototype.
A Millipede device will hold 4,096 miniature read-write heads and is expected to debut in 2006 or 2007 at 5 to 10 gigabytes and go up from there. It will use the same size packaging as SD flash cards, making it compatible with digital cameras, mobile phones… read more
By mimicking Nature’s way of distinguishing one type of cell from another, University of Wisconsin-Madison scientists now report they can more effectively seek out and kill cancer cells while sparing healthy ones.
In a series of cell-based experiments, the researchers’ system recognized and killed only those cells displaying high levels of receptors known as integrins. These molecules, which tend to bedeck the surfaces of cancer cells and… read more
President-elect Barack Obama plans to oncrease funding for basic research in physical and life sciences, mathematics, and engineering at a rate that would double basic research budgets over the next decade; and lift the current administration’s ban on federal funding of research on embryonic stem cell lines, among other stated goals.
Google Instant, now live, is search-before-you-type.
It takes what you have typed already, predicts the most likely completion and streams results in real-time for those predictions—yielding a smarter and faster search that is interactive, predictive and powerful.
Here are a few of the core features in Google Instant:
The universe is at least 156 billion light-years wide.
The calculation is based on the calculations that the universe is about 13.7 billion years old. So one might assume that the diameter of the universe is 27.4 billion light-years wide. But the universe has been expanding ever since the beginning of time, bringing the estimated diameter to 156 billion light-years.
The X PRIZE Foundation has announced plans to launch a multi-million-dollar Automotive X PRIZE (AXP) to inspire super-efficient vehicles that exceed 100 miles per gallon or its equivalent.
Google has quietly added voice and video chat into Gmail, putting the email service on a par with VoIP services like Skype, and Microsoft, AOL and Yahoo instant-message services.
Visionaries are making robots that can perform music, rescue disaster victims and even explore other planets on their own.
Max Planck Institute of Experimental Medicine researchers have discovered a possible mechanisms by which glial cells in the brain support axons and keep them alive.
Oligodendrocytes are a group of highly specialized glial cells in the central nervous system. They form the fat-rich myelin sheath that surrounds the nerve fibers as an insulating layer increases the transmission speed of the axons and also reduces ongoing… read more
The Pentagon’s National Security Space Office (NSSO) may begin a study in the near future on the possibility of using satellites to collect solar energy for use on Earth,
IBM’s Roadrunner, a 1.105 petaflop/s supercomputer at Los Alamos National Laboratory, retained the top spot as the world’s fastest supercomputer in the 32nd edition of the list of the world’s TOP500 supercomputers, released Friday.
A close second place went to the Cray XT5 supercomputer at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, called Jaguar. The system, only the second to break the petaflop/s barrier, posted a top performance of 1.059… read more
NEC’s Earth Simulator is still the fastest supercomputer in the world, according to the latest “TOP500” list, announced Monday.
At about half that rate is Thunder, built at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, followed by ASCI Q, from Los Alamos National Laboratory. A Chinese supercomputer made the top ten for the first time this year.
Jack Dongarra of the University of Tennessee, who maintains the list, and… read more
A giant cloud of superheated gas 6 million light years wide, and located about 300 million light years away, might be formed by several supermassive black holes.