Bionic eye implants are finally hitting the market — first in Europe, and hopefully soon in the U.S., ExtremeTech reports.
These implants can restore sight to completely blind patients — though only if the blindness is caused by a faulty retina, as in macular degeneration.
Second Sight
The first of these implants, Argus II, developed by Second Sight, is already available in Europe.… read more
Last December, MIT announced the creation of MITx, an ambitious project to recreate the MIT classroom experience online. In March, the MITx prototype course — “Circuits and Electronics,” (6.002x) — debuted.
In May, MIT and Harvard University jointly announced the creation of edX, an organization that will further develop the MITx platform and enable other universities to use it as well.
As MIT and Harvard gear up to… read more
In New Model Army, a near-future science fiction novel by Adam Roberts, human intelligence evolves into a hivemind that makes people the violent cells of a collective being, says Alan Jacobs in The Atlantic.
New Model Army raises a set of discomfiting questions: Are our electronic technologies on the verge of enabling truly collective human intelligence? And if that happens, will we like the results?
Roberts… read more
Google Chairman Eric Schmidt and investor Peter Thiel took aim at each other in a recent debate, CNET reports.
Schmidt said technology and access to information has increased productivity and quality of life worldwide. Thiel thanked Schmidt for “doing a fantastic job” as “minister of propaganda” for Google. The tech sector has made remarkable strides in the areas of computers and software, he said, but has seen a “catastrophic” failure in other… read more
Engineers at National Tsing Hua University (NTHU) in Taiwan have invented a tiny low-power circuit based on memristors that could improve security for data transmission over the Internet and via Near Field Communication (NFC) from smartphone wallets, IEEE Spectrum reports.
The security of many digital transactions depends on generating truly random numbers, something that’s difficult to do using today’s digital circuits, which typically produce numbers… read more
Mayo Clinic researchers have found a novel way to monitor real-time chemical changes in the brains of patients undergoing deep brain stimulation (DBS), using a small neurochemical sensor implanted in the patient’s brain, linked wirelessly to a laptop.
The groundbreaking insight will help physicians more effectively use DBS to treat brain disorders such as Parkinson’s disease, depression and Tourette syndrome.
University of Saskatchewan researchers have discovered the chemical pathway that Cannabis sativa uses to create bioactive compounds called cannabinoids, paving the way for the development of marijuana varieties to produce pharmaceuticals or cannabinoid-free industrial hemp.
U of S adjunct professor of biology Jon Page explains that the pathway is an unusual one, involving a specialized version of one enzyme, called hexanoyl-CoA synthetase, and another enzyme,… read more
Jean-Charles Beugnot and Vincent Laude at Université de Franche-Comté in Besançon, France have simulated how light generates phonons inside an optical fiber and how the phonons then interact with the light that generated them, the Technology Review Physics ArXiv Blog reports.
They found that the light ends up guiding the phonons that it creates. In other words, it’s possible to create and then steer sound using light,… read more
The recommended dietary allowance, or RDA, of vitamin C is less than half what it should be, scientists argue in a recent report, because medical experts insist on evaluating this natural, but critical nutrient in the same way they do pharmaceutical drugs and reach faulty conclusions as a result.
The researchers say there’s compelling evidence that the RDA of vitamin C should be raised to 200 milligrams per… read more
A novel technique for measuring tiny, rapid-fire secretions in the brains and mouthparts of fruit flies (drosophila) is providing insights into the beneficial effects of eating less — information that ultimately could help people suffering from neuromuscular disorders.
Using the method, researchers uncovered never-before-seen brain chemistry that helps explain why fruit flies genetically manipulated to mimic conditions such as Parkinson’s disease and myasthenia gravis are more vigorous… read more
Researchers at Rice University and Lockheed Martin have found a way to make multiple high-performance anodes from a single silicon wafer for lithium-ion batteries.
The process uses simple silicon to replace graphite as an element in rechargeable lithium-ion batteries, laying the groundwork for longer-lasting, more powerful batteries for applications such as commercial electronics and electric vehicles.
The research, led by… read more
Intel has invested €2.5 billion ($3.1 billion) in ASML, a Dutch company that dominates the market for the lithographic equipment that etches circuits onto silicon, reports The Economist.
The investment will provide €829m for ASML’s research-and-development efforts and will buy the resulting tools, due in a few years.
Of Intel’s R&D money, €553m will go on technology to make chips on silicon wafers 450mm in diameter. Twice as many chips… read more
Johns Hopkins researchers, working with an international consortium, say they have generated stem cells from skin cells from a person with a severe, early-onset form of Huntington’s disease (HD), and turned them into neurons that degenerate just like those affected by the fatal inherited disorder.
By creating “HD in a dish,” the researchers say they have taken a major step forward in efforts to better… read more
A clinical trial of an Alzheimer’s disease treatment developed at MIT has found that the nutrient cocktail can improve memory in patients with early Alzheimer’s.
The results confirm and expand the findings of an earlier trial of the nutritional supplement, which is designed to promote new connections between brain cells.
Alzheimer’s patients gradually lose synapses, leading to memory loss and other cognitive impairments. The… read more
University of Utah physicists have invented a new “spintronic” organic light-emitting diode (OLED) that promises to be brighter, cheaper and more environmentally friendly than the kinds of LEDs now used in television and computer displays, lighting, traffic lights and numerous electronic devices.
The Utah physicists made a prototype of the new kind of LED — known technically as a spin-polarized organic LED or spin OLED —… read more