In two parallel projects by Harvard’s Wyss Institute, researchers have created new genomes inside the bacterium E. coli in ways that test the limits of genetic reprogramming and open new possibilities for increasing flexibility, productivity. and safety in biotechnology.
The work was led by Dr. George Church, Robert Winthrop Professor of Genetics at Harvard Medical School and founding core faculty member at the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering.… read more
Thanks to Google, Minecraft players can now toy with quantum teleportation and Einstein’s “spooky action at a distance,” MIT Technology Review reports.
One reason for the popularity of the video game Minecraft is the way its blocky universe faithfully adheres to the physics of the real one. Google has now released a software package that introduces quantum physics to the game, an area of… read more
An aggressive form of breast cancer known as “triple negative” is very difficult to treat: Chemotherapy can shrink such tumors for a while, but in many patients they grow back and gain resistance to the original drugs.
MIT chemical engineers have designed nanoparticles that carry the cancer drug doxorubicin, as well as short strands of RNA that can shut off one of the genes that cancer cells… read more
A fast, efficient way to turn cells extracted from routine liposuction into liver cells — a feat with huge potential for regenerative medicine — has been developed by Stanford University School of Medicine scientists
The scientists performed their experiments in mice, but the adipose (fat) stem cells they used came from human liposuction and actually became human, liver-like cells that flourished inside the mice’s bodies.… read more
Craig Venter has built a prototype of a “Digital Biological Converter” (DBC) that would allow what he calls “biological teleportation”: receiving DNA sequences over the Internet to synthesize proteins, viruses and even living cells, The Guardian reports.
It could, for example, fill a prescription for insulin, provide flu vaccine during a pandemic or even produce phage viruses targeted… read more
Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Brookhaven National Laboratory have developed a general approach for combining different types of nanoparticles, guided by synthetic DNA to self-assemble into large-scale composite materials.
The technique opens many opportunities for mixing and matching particles with different magnetic, optical, or chemical properties to form new, multifunctional materials or materials with enhanced performance for a wide range of potential applications.… read more
Scientists at Rice University are enhancing the natural antioxidant properties of cerium oxide, used in vehicle catalytic converters, to make it useful for medical applications.
Rice chemist Vicki Colvin led a team that created small, uniform spheres of cerium oxide and gave them a thin coating of fatty oleic acid to make them biocompatible.
The researchers say their discovery has… read more
A team of researchers is designing life-like autonomous bio-inspired robotic jellyfish for the U.S Navy, based on the discovery of how jellyfish move with the lowest cost of transport of any animal.
Possible civilian applications include pollution monitoring, ecological studies, and cleaning oil in water.
Researchers have found that rather than moving continuously through water while swimming, jellyfish use a critical pause between the… read more
While scanning the sky for the oldest cosmic light, ESA’s Planck satellite captured snapshots of some of the largest objects populating the Universe today: galaxy clusters and superclusters.
Several hundred galaxies and the huge amounts of gas that permeate them are depicted in this view of the core of the Shapley Supercluster, the largest cosmic structure in the local Universe.
The supercluster… read more
IBM Research has unveiled two new Watson-related cognitive technologies that are expected to help physicians make more informed and accurate decisions faster and to cull new insights from electronic medical records (EMR).
The “WatsonPaths” and “Watson EMR Assistant” projects are the result of a year-long research collaboration with faculty, physicians and students at Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine of Case… read more
UCLA psychologists have used brain-imaging techniques to study what happens to the human brain when it slips into unconsciousness.
Their research, published in the online open-access journal PLOS Computational Biology, is an initial step toward developing a scientific definition of consciousness, the researchers say.
“In terms of brain function, the difference between being conscious and unconscious is a bit like the difference between driving… read more
University of Washington computer scientists have created a software program that watches a user’s movements and gives spoken feedback on what to change to accurately complete a yoga pose.
“My hope for this technology is for people who are blind or low-vision to be able to try it out, and help give a basic understanding of yoga in a more comfortable setting,” said
The… read more
Many people assume that this quest to interpret dreams has failed. This conclusion is premature, Kelly Bulkeley, former president of the International Association for the Study of Dreams and author of Dreaming in the World’s Religions: A Comparative History,” writes in The New York Times. …
“I have conducted several experiments in “blind analysis,” a technique developed with the help of the psychologist G. William… read more
The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center and IBM have announced that MD Anderson is using the IBM Watson cognitive computing system for its mission to eradicate cancer.
Following a year-long collaboration, IBM and MD Anderson showcased a prototype of MD Anderson’s Oncology Expert Advisor powered by IBM Watson at a news conference on October 18,
The organizations discussed… read more
IBM has unveiled a prototype of a new brain-inspired computer powered by what it calls “electronic blood,” BBC News reports.
The firm says it is learning from nature by building computers fueled and cooled by a liquid, like our minds.
The human brain packs phenomenal computing power into a tiny space and uses only 20 watts of energy – an efficiency IBM is keen to match.… read more