HUMODS: November 2008

11/29/2008 PERMALINK

Unlimited energy from a simple, clean, renewable source

Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion (OTEC) is a clean, renewable energy source that exploits the difference in temperature between ocean surface water and deeper water. "This has the potential to become the biggest source of renewable energy in the world," says Robert Cohen, who headed the US federal ocean thermal energy programme in the early 1970s ... more

11/28/2008 PERMALINK

Tiny vibration-powered generator

A compact vibration-powered generator priced at about US$10 can generate 10μW of power with vibrational inputs at 20Hz frequency and 1G acceleration, perfect for powering pocket, implantable and wearable technologies ... more

11/28/2008 PERMALINK

Polymers 'battered' with nanoparticles create self healing materials

Research chemists have devised an elegant process that simply and cheaply covers small particles of polymer with a layer of silica-based nanoparticles to create a highly versatile material that can be used to create a range of high performance materials. Self healing paints and clever packaging that can be tailored to let pass in, out or both precise levels of water and air ... University of Warwick

11/28/2008 PERMALINK

For your eyes only, the perfect interface for you

In a radically new approach to computer interface design, researchers are working on an interface that can access each user's vision and motor abilities and then generate a mathematically-based version of itself that is perfectly optimized for that individual ... University of Washington

11/28/2008 PERMALINK

Cheaper, more energy efficient computers using memristors

Researchers at HP Labs in Palo Alto, CA, are betting that a new fundamental electronic component--the memristor--will keep computer power increasing at its usual fast rate for years to come. Memristors, first predicted in 1971 by Berkeley professor Leon Chua, are nanoscale devices with unique properties: a variable resistance and the ability to remember the resistance even when the power is off ... more

11/28/2008 PERMALINK

Blood chemical causes bacteria to turn lethal

Scientists have discovered the key chemical that signals Bacillus anthracis, the bacterium that causes anthrax, to become lethal. Without the presence of the bicarbonate transporter in the bloodstream, the scientists found, bacteria do not become virulent. This finding opens up new avenues of exploration for the development of treatments for bacterial infections ... Scripps Research Institute

11/28/2008 PERMALINK

Mapping DNA sequences in minutes for a few hundred dollars

A new technique, called single-molecule real-time sequencing (SMRT), could map DNA sequences 30,000 times faster than current methods, accelerating researchers' work to unravel the complex mutations that cause human disease. Pacific Biosciences Inc., the company that developed the technique, claims that it has the potential to decipher a person's entire genome in about 15 minutes ... more

11/28/2008 PERMALINK

3-D printed bone replacement implants

Using CT data, doctors in Japan are implanting individually crafted replacements for skull bones. In a new clinical study of 70 adults over the next two years, the researchers will evaluate whether the new 3-D printed material can be clinically beneficial ... more

11/28/2008 PERMALINK

Does your brain use DNA to store long-term memories?

To remember a particular event, a specific sequence of neurons must fire at just the right time. For this to happen, neurons must be connected in a certain way by chemical junctions called synapses. But it is a mystery how they last over decades, since the proteins in the brain that form synapses are destroyed and replaced constantly. Now experiments in mice suggest that long-term memories may be preserved by a process called DNA methylation - the addition of chemical caps called methyl groups onto our DNA ... more

11/28/2008 PERMALINK

Have researchers found the prime determinant of life span?

The metabolic stability of regulatory networks, that is the ability of cells to maintain stable concentrations of reactive oxygen species (ROS) and other critical metabolites is the prime determinant of life span ... more

11/27/2008 PERMALINK

Experimental drug explodes bacteria from the inside out

An international team of biochemists has discovered how an experimental drug unleashes its destructive force inside the bacteria that cause tuberculosis (TB). The finding could help scientists develop a strategy for drug development against many bacterial infections ... more

11/27/2008 PERMALINK

Harnessing light to drive nanomachines

Scientists have proven that the force of light can be harnessed to drive nanobots and other nano-scale machines. The prototype is shown in the image. Researchers envision a future where this process powers quantum information processing and sensing devices, as well as communications that run at ultra-high speed and consume little power ... Yale

11/26/2008 PERMALINK

Researchers identify first universal mechanism of aging

Researchers have discovered that DNA damage decreases a cell's ability to regulate which genes are turned on and off in particular settings. This mechanism, which applies to all lifeforms from fungus and to human, appears to be a universal culprit for aging. "This is the first potentially fundamental, root cause of aging that we've found," says Harvard Medical School professor of pathology David Sinclair ... more

11/26/2008 PERMALINK

Predicting how markets will move with lots of cognobots

Researchers are trying to create new sets of economic simulations called agent-based models that can better anticipate how markets will behave. The goal is to provide policymakers with more realistic pictures of different types of markets so they can better avert future economic catastrophe ... Argonne National Laboratory

11/26/2008 PERMALINK

Mammals can regrow damaged inner retina nerve cells

For the first time mammals have been stimulated to regrow inner nerve cells in damaged retinas, the part of the eye that converts light into nerve impulses to the brain ... University of Washington

11/26/2008 PERMALINK

Heart assist pumps more breakdown than breakthrough

Ventricular assist devices (VADs), surgically-placed mechanical pumps that can support failing hearts or buy time to transplant, are associated with high hospital costs and high rates of early death among Medicare recipients, say researchers ... Duke University Medical Center

11/25/2008 PERMALINK

Turning cancer's bodyguard protein into a cancer assassin

If you're a cancer cell, you want a protein called Bcl-2 on your side because it usually functions as a trusted bodyguard, protecting the cancer cell from programmed death and allowing it to grow into a tumor. But sometimes Bcl-2 can turn into a cancer cell assassin and now Dr. Siva Kolluri and other researchers have engineered a peptide that can make that happen ... more

11/25/2008 PERMALINK

Smart pill-bot delievers drugs to precise points

The Philips Research iPill is a tiny capsule, similar to a camera pill, designed to be swallowed and pass through your digestive tract programmed to deliver medicine in a controlled fashion to particular spots of your digestive track ... more

11/25/2008 PERMALINK

Disrupting the teamwork of germs is better than killing them

Keeping germs from cooperating can cure disease faster and help delay or prevent the evolution of drug resistance that occurs when we used traditional drugs such as antibiotics that seek to kill germs one by one ... Univ. of Arizona

11/25/2008 PERMALINK

Adult brain neurons can remodel connections

Overturning a century of prevailing thought, scientists are finding that neurons in the adult brain can remodel their connections. "Knowing that neurons are able to grow in the adult brain gives us a chance to enhance the process and explore under what conditions we can make it happen," said Professor Elly Nedivi ... MIT

11/25/2008 PERMALINK

Learning how to reprogram your own brain

Researchers have found that when patients with partial vision loss focus on using another part of their retina to compensate for that loss, their brain seems to compensate by reorganizing its neural connections. "Our results show that the patient's behavior may be critical to get the brain to reorganize in response to disease," said Professor Eric Schumacher ... Georgia Tech

11/25/2008 PERMALINK

Designing propulsion systems for body repairing nanobots

In a discover that will help put life extending, body repairing nanobots inside your body sooner, researchers have shown for the first time at the molecular level how a protein called kinesin generates the force needed to walk along cellular beams known as microtubules ... MIT

11/24/2008 PERMALINK

Compounds targeting mitochondria promise radical life extension

In labs across the country, researchers are developing compounds that target the cellular engines called mitochondria that some researchers believe could lead to a single new class of drugs that offer a virtual cure for the diseases of aging. The first, resveratrol, is already in clinical trials. "It's going to revolutionize western medicine," said Doug Wallace, a pioneer of mitochondrial medicine at the UC at Irvine ... watch ... Wired

11/24/2008 PERMALINK

4D microscope can image fleeting nano-structural changes

A breakthrough technology, dubbed four-dimensional (4D) electron microscopy, is for the first time accomplishing the real-time, real-space visualization of fleeting changes in the structure and shape of nano-scale matter barely a billionth of a meter in size ... Caltech

11/24/2008 PERMALINK

The new computational nature of all the sciences

Computer science is no longer just about computers. It's now about open wiki science, using cognitive bots as lab assistances/collaborators and says Cornell CS professor Ken Birman is on the way to becoming the universal science, a framework underpinning all other sciences. To the traditional theoretical scientists and bench scientists must now be added a third approach, the computational scientists ... more

11/23/2008 PERMALINK

New anti-viral compount cures numerous viruses

Phosphatidylserine, a lipid molecule that is normally positioned on the internal surface of a cell, flips to the outside of the cell when the cell is infected by a virus. A new anti-viral compound has been found that binds to phosphatidylserine on the infected cells. "The binding raises a red flag to the body's immune system," said Dr. Philip Thorpe. "Forcing the deployment of defensive white blood cells to attack the infected cells." Destroying before the virus has a chance to replicate cells infected with influenza, herpes, smallpox, rabies, HIV and many other viruses ... UT Southwestern

11/23/2008 PERMALINK

Yet another game where bots are now beating humans

UC Berkley students build human-beating Rubik's Cube solving bot. Is there any game left where humans can still outperform bots? ... watch ... more

11/23/2008 PERMALINK

Air Force working on flying bug bots

The Air Force is working on the next generation of unmanned aerial vehicles that will be much smaller than the current models in use over Iraq and Afghanistan. Micro Aerial Vehicles, or MAVs, could be as tiny as bumblebees and capable of flying undetected into buildings, where they could photograph, record, and even attack insurgents and terrorists ... more

11/23/2008 PERMALINK

Graphene molecular memory switch breakthrough

Researchers have discovered that a strip of graphite only 10 atoms thick can be broken with a jolt of electric current -- and repaired with another. Over and over. "We've tested it in the lab 20,000 times with no degradation," said Professor James Tour. "Its lifetime is going to be huge, much better than flash memory." These new switches are also fast. In fact, they react faster than his lab's current testing systems can measure. And they're robust ... Rice University

11/21/2008 PERMALINK

Brain surface electrical activity can be used to read words & control prostheses

Using neural activity recorded from a sheet of electrodes laid directly on the surface of a patient's brain, scientists can predict the movement of fingers, as well as which of several sounds the patient is imagining. The research is a step towards robotic hands that moves fingers with as little mental effort as it takes to move flesh fingers and computer interfaces that can read the words you think. "It could create the basis for a brain-computer interface that is very intuitive," said researcher Gerwin Schalk ... more

11/21/2008 PERMALINK

Google's new voice-search bot a milestone for voice interfaces

Unlike simple voice interfaces, like for airline reservations, Google's voice search bot has to contend with any topic under the sun or beyond. What makes it possible is the huge amount of data Google has collected on how people use search and a set of data correlating speech samples with written words obtained from Google's free directory service, Goog411. Look for this iPhone bot to be added to Google's Android and to improve constantly. "The nice thing about this application is that Google will collect all this speech data," says MIT scientist Jim Glass. "And by getting all this data, they will improve their recognizer even more." ... more

11/21/2008 PERMALINK

Compounds in red wine that reduce age-related cognitive loss discovered

Scientists call it the "French paradox" -- that despite consuming food high in cholesterol and saturated fats, the French enjoy low death rates from heart disease, fewer tumors and less age-related cognitive loss. Red wine has been known to be a factor and now researchers have discovered exactly how red wine reduces cognitive loss. Naturally occurring compounds in red wine called polyphenols reduce the toxicity of existing plaques and block the formation of proteins that build the toxic plaques thought to destroy brain cells, thus reducing age-related cognitive deterioration and cutting the incidence of diseases like Alzheimer's ... UCLA

11/21/2008 PERMALINK

Rice gene discovery doubles output in drought areas promising famine relief

Research has yielded a way to double the output of rice crops in some of the world's poorest, most distressed areas. Jerome Bernier, a PhD student has found a group of genes in rice that enables a yield of up to 100 per cent more in severe drought conditions ... University of Alberta

11/20/2008 PERMALINK

Biomarkers of aging that can predict chronological & physiological age

Scientists have identified for the first time biomarkers of aging which are highly predictive of both chronological and physiological age. Biomarkers are biochemical features that can be used to measure the progress of disease or the effects of treatment. This is the first step toward identifying similar biomarkers in humans that would provide a means of scientifically validating anti-aging therapies ... Buck Institute for Age Research

11/20/2008 PERMALINK

DARPA SyNAPSE smart bot project gets underway

The Pentagon's crash program to create an artificial brain called Systems of Neuromorphic Adaptive Plastic Scalable Electronics or SyNAPSE has gotten underway with a contract to a group at IBM. The goal is to create a bot with a 'neuroscience-inspired architecture that can address a wide range of cognitive abilities -- perception, planning, decision making, and motor control' ... more

11/20/2008 PERMALINK

Scientists have finished first genome-wide sequence of an extinct animal

Using next-generation DNA-sequencing instruments, scientists have sequenced the 4 billion DNA bases in the genome of the woolly mammoth, an extinct species of elephant that had adapted to living in the cold environment of the northern hemisphere. The team used the hairs of a mammoth mummy that had been buried in the Siberian permafrost for 20,000 years to obtain the mammoth's DNA ... more

11/20/2008 PERMALINK

Government utterly fails in efforts to counter bioterrorism

Shortly before the 9/11 attack and the anthrax mail attacks on Congress and the media, two microbiologists happened onto and published a simple way to modify viruses to make them 100% deadly. No vaccine or anti-viral would work against such modded viruses and the body's own defenses would be useless. Get infected by such a modded virus and death is certain. Suddenly, a single rogue microbiologist might be able to give a terrorist group a weapon capable of killing 100 million Americans in a terror attack. The threat matrix had shifted radically. Did our government respond by plowing billions into understanding the genetics of viruses well enough to end their threat to humanity once and for all? I'm afraid not. Instead they have squandered an estimated $50 billion buying 300 million doses of smallpox vaccine that would be totally useless against a modded version and built up a vast pathogen security bureaucracy that has contributed almost nothing towards the science needed to remove the modded virus threat. Fortunately, a number of brilliant scientists, working mostly outside of the government's clown circus, are seeking just such a breakthrough. Either we get viruses or they will one day get us ... more

11/19/2008 PERMALINK

Embryonic stem cells proven to restore lost hearing and vision

Stem cells from embryos can be used to restore lost hearing and vision in animals. One team repaired hearing in guinea pigs using human bone marrow stem cells, while another team grew functioning eyes in tadpoles using frog cells. "These discoveries illustrate stem cell research's continuing extraordinary potential to treat a wide range of deadly and disabling diseases that affect millions," said Anand Swaroop, a stem cell researcher at the National Eye Institute ... more

11/19/2008 PERMALINK

The 'smart' anthropic principle ~ our universe's finely tuned bias towards intelligent life

Physicists tell us that when our sun fuses hydrogen, 0.007 percent of the mass of the hydrogen atoms is converted into energy, but if that percentage were 0.006 or .0008 percent, life could never have existed. Had our universe contained just a little more matter, gravity would have made it implode. Had it contained just a little less, the universe would have expanded too quickly to form galaxies. If matter had been more evenly distributed, it would not have clumped together to form galaxies. If it had been clumpier to begin with than it was, it black holes would have formed instead of stars and planets. It the 'strong force' that binds atomic nuclei were a bit more powerful, all the protons in the early universe would have paired off and there would be no hydrogen, no stars, no water, no life. And recently cosmologists learned that if the quantity of dark energy had been any bigger, "there would have been enough repulsion from it to overwhelm the gravity that drew the galaxies together, drew the stars together, and drew Earth together," explains Stanford physicist Leonard Susskind. "This is the one fine-tuning that seems to be extreme," says physicist and Nobel laureate Steven Weinberg. "Far beyond what you could imagine just having to accept as a mere accident." The 'strong' anthropic principle holds that the laws of physics are biased towards life. And since astronomers tell us that unless our species gets smart enough to inhabit multiple star systems our universe will destroy us, that bias appears to actually be focused more on fostering intelligent life. Call it the 'smart' anthropic principle, that our universe by its very nature, functions as an engine for the causation of intelligence ... more on the anthropic principal and the multiverse alternative to it ... worldview

11/19/2008 PERMALINK

Inventing investigative journalism that is truly of, by and for the people

Corporate print and broadcast journalists love to complain that net news sites only feed off the news they dig out through their investigations, but the net is evolving a whole new way of democratizing investigative journalism. Now anyone can point out a matter that needs investigating and pledge their support. A net journalist can take up the challenge and propose a budget, which concerned citizens can support to complete the project and expose all the facts ... Spot.us

11/19/2008 PERMALINK

Adult stem cell engineered tissue transplant breakthrough

The first tissue-engineered trachea (windpipe), utilizing the patient's own stem cells, has been successfully transplanted into a young woman with a failing airway. The bio-engineered trachea immediately provided the patient with a normally functioning airway, thereby saving her life ... Bristol University ... watch

11/19/2008 PERMALINK

Military out for blood ~ funds more development of breakthrough blood making technology

DARPA has awarded a $1.95 million contract to Arteriocyte, a Cleveland company that's experimenting with a technology developed at Johns Hopkins that enables the rapid expansion of umbilical cord blood. The technology, called Nanex, uses a nanofiber-based structure that mimics bone marrow in which blood cells multiply, according to the company ... more

11/18/2008 PERMALINK

Researchers achieve breakthrough in cell sorting technology

Researchers have developed a cell sorting device that separates multiple target cell types with high throughput, high purity and near lossless recovery. Their multitarget magnetically activated cell sorter (MT-MACS) utilizes a combination of microfluidics and magnetophoresis to achieve simultaneous addressable sorting of multiple target cell types in a continuous flow ... UC Santa Barbara

11/18/2008 PERMALINK

Is that a security bot silently creeping up behind you?

GroundBot is a robust, lightweight, sealed spherical security bot that hosts cameras and sensors and features impressive off-road performance. And unlike the competition, this bot is able to move virtually in silence, while under remote controlled or programmed to navigate on its own using GPS ... watch

11/18/2008 PERMALINK

Forget the PC, a PSC (personal super computer) is now under $10K

"We've all heard desktop supercomputer claims in the past, but this time it's for real," said Burton Smith, Microsoft Technical Fellow. "Heterogeneous computing, where GPUs work in tandem with CPUs, is what makes such a breakthrough possible." NVIDIA says its machine delivers 250 times the processing power of a conventional PC workstation for about the same price. Complex, data-intensive computations can now happen right on your desktop ... more

11/18/2008 PERMALINK

Jekyll/Hyde protein stimulates brain stem-cell maturation & kills brain cells

Like a Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde protein, Cdk5 can stunt learning, reduce motor control and even causes Alzheimer's disease. But it also stimulates stem-cell maturation. Cdk5 is a kinase, a protein that interact with all sorts of other proteins and modifies them through a process called protein phosphorylation. "When Cdk5 messes with hooligans, it causes big trouble," said Dr. Amelia Eisch. "When it hangs with the straight-A students, it actually helps other cells reach their full potential." ... more

11/18/2008 PERMALINK

A single exposure to stress found to impair decision making ability for several days

It is probably unwise to make any important decisions for a few days after experiencing a high-stress event. In experiments using rats, neuroscientists found that a single exposure to uncontrollable stress impairs decision making for several days, causing the rats to lose their normal ability to reliably seek out the larger of two rewards ... University of Washington

11/18/2008 PERMALINK

Is your cell phone spying on you for Big Brother?

The Feds have long had a technology codenamed Triggerfish that spoofs cell towers to zero in on a more exact cell phone location, once receiving general location data from the telecoms. Since August the ACLU has received a stream of documents under the Freedom of Info Act that appear to indicate that Triggerfish has now been upgraded to allow the Feds to track your cell phone directly whenever they wish with no warrants or help from the telecoms required. Other reports have indicated that they may also have tech to remotely activate the microphone on your cell ... ACLU

11/18/2008 PERMALINK

Student-built mobile bots get more and more interesting

Students at the Upper Austria University of Applied Sciences recently put on an interesting little hexabot dance competition to demo the capabilities of six-legged mobile bots ... watch

11/18/2008 PERMALINK

Are Second Life, podcasting, & Web 2.0 the future of education?

Educators will met in Berlin to consider how Web 2.0 technologies like social networking, blogs and wikis are changing the nature of education and how the old educational organizations and institutions need to respond to stay relevant. Hopefully, the Europeans will follow MIT's lead in establishing their open courseware project ~ free lectures, notes and videos from MIT, no registration required ... more

11/17/2008 PERMALINK

Researchers find how some old brains can still function like youngsters

Scientists have found that those with a high performance on memory tests when they are more than 80 years old, called the super aged, have far fewer fiber-like tangles of a protein called tau that accumulates inside brain cells and is thought to eventually kill the cells. While those with normal memories had moderate numbers of tangles and Alzheimer patients had many more tangles ... more

11/17/2008 PERMALINK

Billions of particles of anti-matter created in lab ~ warp speed Mr. Scott !

Take a gold sample the size of the head of a push pin, shoot a laser through it, and suddenly more than 100 billion particles of anti-matter appear. The anti-matter shoots out of the target in a cone-shaped plasma jet. This new ability to create lots of particles in a small laboratory opens the door to several fresh avenues of anti-matter research, including an understanding of the physics underlying various astrophysical phenomena such as black holes and gamma ray bursts ... Lawrence Livermore National Lab

11/17/2008 PERMALINK

3-D images good enough to see individual biological molecules

Researchers have taken the first-ever close-up 3D images of the sacculus (the cell-wall structure of a bacteria) using new high-tech microscopy techniques. "What we saw were long skinny tubes wrapping around the bag like the ribs of a person or a belt around the waist," said Prof. Grant Jensen. "We also saw that the sacculus is just a single layer thick. This is both a technological and biological advance." ... Caltech

11/17/2008 PERMALINK

Breakthrough Searaser can tap wave energy and store it for later use

There is a lot of energy in wave motion and the Searaser prototype harnesses it to constantly pump seawater more than 160ft above sea level, from where it can be released as need into hydroelectric generators to power homes. The inventor, Alvin Smith of Dartmouth Wave Energy, calculates that each full-size unit could produce enough electricity to supply 470 homes ... more

11/17/2008 PERMALINK

New survey telescope makes humanity 5 times safer from impact extinction

The primary mission of Pan-STARRS is to detect Earth-approaching asteroids and comets that could be dangerous to the planet. When the system becomes fully operational, the entire sky visible from Hawaii (about three-quarters of the total sky) will be photographed at least once a week, and all images will be entered into powerful computers at the Maui High Performance Computer Center ... MIT

11/16/2008 PERMALINK

Key breakthrough could keep your brain young & sharp

Researchers have discovered that the protein receptor Ryk has a key role in the differentiation of neural stem cells, and demonstrated a signaling mechanism that regulates neuronal differentiation as stem cells begin to grow into neurons, paving the way for brain regeneration. “Neural stem cells can potentially be used for cell-replacement therapy," said principal investigator Wange Lu ... University of Southern California

11/16/2008 PERMALINK

IBM wants to sell you a bot that surpasses your brain by 2025

By 2025 you will be able to buy the computing power of the human brain for $1,000, according to Dr Colin Harrison, a director and "Master Inventor" for IBM. "Deep Blue (the bot that beat Russian Chess Champion Gary Kasparov) has roughly the processing capacity of a lizard, and the early Blue Genes has roughly the processing capacity of small rodent," said Dr Harrison. "If you want to get to the processing capacity of a human being, I think you need something like 10 petaFLOPS." ... more

11/15/2008 PERMALINK

Open spectrum breakthrough may bring wireless revolution

Researchers and engineers say that the FCC recently declaring a large chunk of radio spectrum open means that future wireless gadgets will be able to blast tens of megabits per second of data over hundreds of kilometers. "This is a beginning of a wireless revolution," says Anant Sahai, a professor of electrical engineering and computer science at the UC Berkeley ... more

11/15/2008 PERMALINK

Amazing breakthrough lets you become a billionaire for just $10 million

Amazing fiat currency breakthrough in wealth accumulation technology, apparently makes it possible to buy a bank for only $10 million and get billions in bailout money from the US government ... more ... watch

11/15/2008 PERMALINK

We don't need no stinking mouse ~ gesture control gets real

Cheap gesture game playing and "Minority Report" computer control is now possible using Mgestyk Technologies' customizable gesture-based control system ... watch

11/14/2008 PERMALINK

Silencing natural growth inhibitors causes the regeneration of neurons

Researchers have temporarily silenced genes that prevent mature neurons from regenerating, causing them to recover and re-grow vigorously after damage. The breakthrough promises to make possible brain or spinal cord regeneration to correct injury or age-related malfunctions ... Children's Hospital Boston

11/14/2008 PERMALINK

Mixture of DNA and chromophores can self-assemble into fiber optic network cables

DNA strands can be easily converted into tiny fiber optic cables that guide light along their length. The optical cables self-assemble from a mixture of DNA and molecules called chromophores that can absorb and pass on light ... more

11/14/2008 PERMALINK

Quality voice recognition will move computers from laps to pockets

Researchers at Google have developed sophisticated voice recognition software to work with the company's search software for the Apple iPhone. Users of the free application can simply ask any question verbally to obtain search results ... watch ... more

11/14/2008 PERMALINK

Breakthrough wind generator design ups power output by 50%

ExRo Technologies has developed a new kind of generator for harvesting energy from wind. The breakthrough design replaces a mechanical transmission with an electronic one that increases the range of wind speeds at which it can operate efficiently and makes it more responsive to sudden gusts and lulls to increase overall power output by 50 percent ... more

11/13/2008 PERMALINK

Humans see a planet orbiting another star for the first time

The first images of an exosolar planet ever taken rotating in a dust belt around the star Fomalhaut were used to create the closer up rendering shown below. For years evidence has piled up that most stars seem to have trapped in their gravity wells planets, comets, and asteroids, just like our home star. Now we can see it is really true with our own eyes and we need to incorporate this monumental discovery into our worldview.

11/13/2008 PERMALINK

Nanoflash memory could put a supercomputer in your pocket

Researchers are exploiting the unique properties of carbon nanotubes to create a much cheaper and far more compact, non-volatile memory cell that uses very little power to store huge amounts of information at high speeds ... University of Nottingham

11/13/2008 PERMALINK

Programming matter to be solid or liquid at the flip of a nano-switch

A group of organic compounds called lipids that are the building blocks of cell membranes can be switched between liquid and solid in membranes using charged nano-particles. "The electric charge acted as a switch," explains Prof. Steve Granick. "Nano-particles with a negative charge switched membranes from liquid to solid. Nanoparticles with a positive charge switched the membranes from solid to liquid." ... University of Illinois

11/13/2008 PERMALINK

Adult stem cells can let humans regenerate limbs like amphibians

Researchers say the ability to reprogram adult somatic cells to ESCs in culture means natural or synthetic molecules can be used to reprogram adult somatic cells inside your body into adult stem cells that can recapitulate the development of a tissue, organ or appendage or stimulate resident adult stem cells to do so. Regenerators like fish and amphibians do this naturally and can show researchers which molecules are required for such stimulation and reprogramming ... more

11/13/2008 PERMALINK

Scientists warn that Earth's next ice age could be permanent

A new analysis of the dramatic cycles of ice ages and warm intervals over the past million years, published in Nature, concludes that the climatic swings are the gyrations of a system poised to settle into a permanent colder state -- with expanded ice sheets at both poles ... NYTimes (reg req)

11/13/2008 PERMALINK

Turning your cell phone into a Star Trek Tricorder

Low cost nano-scale electromechanical sensors might soon be able to turn your cell phone into a Star Trek tricorder. The cantilevers can be shrunk down to the nano-scale and the operating electronics can be contained on a single tiny chip. The potential is there for real-time environmental sensors in battle, in industry, in health care and for consumers ... Clemson University

11/12/2008 PERMALINK

Can bioengineers make deadly viruses mutate themselves to death?

Bioengineers are seeking a designer drug that could sidetrack a deadly viral plague by forcing a viral pathogen to mutate itself out of existence ... Rice University

11/12/2008 PERMALINK

Life extension technique proven in huge study

A new study of over 350,000 people across Europe has found that for each 5-cm (2-inches) increase in waist circumference your mortality risk goes up by 17% for men and 13% for women ... more

11/12/2008 PERMALINK

Google flu tracker using search terms works much better than CDC's system

We've found that certain search terms are good indicators of flu activity. Google Flu Trends uses aggregated Google search data to estimate flu activity in your state up to two weeks faster than traditional flu surveillance systems used by the Centers for Disease Control ... more

11/12/2008 PERMALINK

Interacting with nature dramatically improves cognitive function

Strolling through a natural setting has been found to dramatically improve cognitive function in a way that city strolling does not. The effect is thought to stem from nature being filled with interesting stimuli that trigger your involuntary attention in a modest, pleasing fashion. While strolling in a city forces your brain to remain at a high level of vigilance to filter out relevant stimuli from irrelevant but often highly intrusive stimuli ... more

11/12/2008 PERMALINK

Smart laser may change the way surgeons seal cuts & wounds

A team of researchers have perfected a new smart laser welding system that can seal wounds and surgical cuts far better than any existing method by precisely and dynamically controlling the laser's heat output to complete a perfect closure every time without risk of tissue damage from excess heat ... Tel Aviv University Applied Physics Group

11/11/2008 PERMALINK

Molecular inhibitor may cure SARS, croup, herpes & virus-caused cancers

"The molecular inhibitor we developed is very potent against the SARS virus by binding to and blocking the use of a specific protein, called papain-like protease, or PLpro, involved in viral replication and evasion of the immune system," said Dr. Arun Ghosh. "This is the first design and discovery of an inhibitor for this class of proteins. We are hopeful that this will open the door to new treatments for other diseases as well." ... Purdue University

11/11/2008 PERMALINK

New Nanomaterial Could Be Breakthrough For Implantable Medical Devices

Researchers have found that the unique properties of a new material, nanoporous ceramic membranes, can be used to create new devices that can be implanted into the human body. These materials, said Dr. Roger Narayan, "create an interface between human tissues and medical devices that is free of protein buildup," a major problem with other implant materials ... North Carolina State University

11/11/2008 PERMALINK

Open source & cloud-computing allowing cheap, flexible business startups

In what could be a major breakthrough that accelerating new company development and the pace of future change, open source software and cloud-computing platforms such as Amazon's Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2), Microsoft's Azure Services Platform, and Google App Engine are making business startup much cheaper ... cheap & flexible ... open cloud

11/11/2008 PERMALINK

Artificial brain to muscle connection can restore voluntary movement

An artificial connection between nerve cells in the brain and muscles has been shown to restore voluntary movement to paralyzed limbs. Muscles were directly stimulated using the activity of neurons in the motor cortex, the part of the brain that normally controls limb movement, explained Dr. Chet Moritz (left) and Dr. Eberhard Fetz (right) ... University of Washington

11/11/2008 PERMALINK

Coding insects navigation techniques into smart bots

Autonomous bot navigation in unstructured environments has proven to be a difficult challenge. Small flying insects use a process called optical flow to navigate by translating changes in luminance into the relative speed and proximity of objects around them. Researchers at the University of Maryland Autonomous Vehicle Laboratory (AVL) are studying how nature solves these problems and have successfully programmed optical flow into a small helicopter that uses it to fly down corridors ... watch

11/10/2008 PERMALINK

Engineering edible bacteria to improve your health and extend your lifespan

Synthetic biology is the quest to design and build novel organisms that perform useful functions. Since our bodies are home to an estimated 10 bacterial cells for each human cell, the potential exists to colonize our bodies with designer bacteria bots that can dramatically improve our health and extend our lives ... MIT

11/10/2008 PERMALINK

Telling who spoke to you and what was said from a brain scan

With the help of neuroimaging and data mining techniques researchers have been able to map brain activity associated with the recognition of speech sounds and voices that they are now able to tell who has spoken to a person and what was said by brain scans alone ... Maastricht University

11/10/2008 PERMALINK

A new way to make electricity, a tiny flexible charge pump generator

Researchers have developed a new type of small-scale electric power generator able to produce alternating current through the cyclical stretching and releasing of zinc oxide wires encapsulated in a flexible plastic substrate with two ends bonded ... Georgia Tech

11/10/2008 PERMALINK

Engineering better virus killer cells for your body's immune system

HIV is a master of disguise, able to rapidly change its molecular fingerprint to hide itself from your immune system's virus killing T-cells. But now, scientists have engineered immune cells that can see through HIV's many disguises ... Cardiff University

11/10/2008 PERMALINK

Gene therapy fixes malfunctioning rods/cones and restores vision

Researchers have used gene therapy to restore useful vision to mice with degeneration of the light-sensing retinal rods and cones, a common cause of human blindness ... Massachusetts General Hospital
See also Adult stem-cell treatment repairs retina damage

11/09/2008 PERMALINK

Tiny med-bots for surgery and inside body therapies

An interesting collection of short summaries of recent developments in med-bot research can be found at Next Big Future

11/09/2008 PERMALINK

Were smart bots the cause of the financial meltdown?

The New York Times and the Huffington Post have recently been wondering if an AI bot run amok is to blame for the current economic meltdown. Journalists don't know enough economics to realize that enormous government guaranteed loan programs putting $5 Trillion dollars into low-rate mortgages tend to cause huge real estate bubbles that go pop without any help from smart bots.

11/09/2008 PERMALINK

Loss of myelin a major cause age-related mental & physical decline

Researchers have found that the loss of myelin, the fatty sheath of "insulation" that coats our nerve axons and allows for fast signaling bursts in our brains, is a major cause of physical and mental decline as we age. Put another way, after middle age, we start to lose the battle to repair the myelin in our brain, and our motor and cognitive functions begin a long, slow downhill slide ... UCLA Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior

11/08/2008 PERMALINK

Turning human fat stem cells into living, beating heart muscle

Hearts damaged by heart attacks or congenital abnormalities may soon be repaired with heart tissue generated from the patient's own fat, completely eliminating the problems of tissue and organ rejection. Fat tissue stem cells have the capacity to grow into various body cells ... Bernard O'Brien Institute

11/08/2008 PERMALINK

Scientists create DNA tweezers

Scientists create DNA tweezers capable of capturing, holding and releasing a DNA object. The discovery is an important step closer to the fabrication o fDNA nano-devices able to perform sophisticated functions ... more

11/08/2008 PERMALINK

Controlling atoms like they were the flippers of a pinball machine

We demonstrate the feasibility of controlling an atomic scale mechanical device by an external electrical signal. By precisely controlling the tip current and distance we make two atom pairs behave like the flippers of an atomic-sized pinball machine ... more

11/07/2008 PERMALINK

Honda's new exoskeleton walking-assist bot

Honda unveiled its second experimental walk-assisting bot that helps support body weight to let those with weakened legs walk normally, go up and down stairs or into and out of a crouching position ... more

11/07/2008 PERMALINK

Gene therapy appear to provide a permanent cure for AIDS

When an AIDS patient needed a bone marrow transplant to treat leukemia, Dr. Hutter tried an experiment. He used the bone marrow cells from a donor with a naturally occurring genetic mutation rendering his cells immune to HIV/AIDS, then had his patient stop taking AIDS meds. Normally, go off meds would cause the virus to come roaring back, but since the transplant the patient's blood has stayed completely clear of HIV for more than 600 days ... more

11/07/2008 PERMALINK

How 'molecular machines' kick start gene activation revealed

Using electron microscopy, researchers have discovered the process by which 'molecular machines' inside your cells are able to activate genes at different times in a cell's life to produce the mRNA necessary to make the proteins needed to allow your cells to continue healthy function ... Imperial College London

11/06/2008 PERMALINK

Tiniest solar cells ever built successfully tested

Made of an organic polymer, the solar cells are designed to provide power sources for microscopic machines. "I think these materials have a lot more potential than traditional silicon," says Dr. Xiaomei Jiang. "They could be sprayed on any surface that is exposed to sunlight -- a uniform, a car, a house." ... more

11/06/2008 PERMALINK

Attaching tiny polymer "backpacks" to cells

Engineers have outfitted cells with tiny "backpacks" that could allow them to deliver chemotherapy agents, diagnose tumors or become building blocks for tissue engineering. "The goal is to perturb the cell as little as possible," said Professor Robert Cohen ... MIT

11/06/2008 PERMALINK

Chinese and African added to publicly available genomes

The genomes of a Yoruba from Nigeria and a Han Chinese were added to those of scientists James Watson and Craig Venter to bring to four the number of human genomes sequenced and made publicly available. Producing these new public genomes cost less than 1/10 of one percent of what the first human genome cost ... MIT

11/06/2008 PERMALINK

A protein compass guides amoebas toward their prey

In a breakthrough that could guide medical nanobots swimming through your bloodstream, biologists have discovered that amoebas glide toward their prey with the help of a protein switch that controls a molecular compass. Image shows glowing compass protein at the leading edge of an amoeba hunting for food ... Firtel Lab, University of California, San Diego

11/06/2008 PERMALINK

Breakthrough in nano-scale atom-by-atom assembly of semiconductors

Here, we report the assembling of complex atomic patterns at room temperature by the vertical interchange of atoms between the tip apex of an atomic force microscope and a semiconductor surface ... abstract ... analysis

11/05/2008 PERMALINK

Extend your lifespan by giving up your sense of smell

Many animals have been shown to live longer when raised on low calorie diets, but researchers were surprise to find that even well fed worms would live longer if deprived of their sense of smell. The research suggests that the worms' sensation of food is critical to controlling their metabolism and life span ... Washington University School of Medicine

11/05/2008 PERMALINK

Seeing someone you hate lights up special hate circuit in your brain

People who view pictures of someone they hate display activity in distinct areas of the brain that, together, may be thought of as a 'hate circuit', according to new research by scientists. Brain areas that correlate with the sentiment of hate are distinct from those related to emotions such as fear, threat and danger ... University College London

11/05/2008 PERMALINK

A man and his bots go on a state-of-the-art hostage rescue mission

Join the mission with these clips from FutureWeapons documenting the Macroswiss Spyrobot mobile robot, Crab climbing robot, Short Range Throwing Camera bot, Giraffe pole camera, and GunCam with helmet mounted display ... watch part 1 ... watch part 2

11/04/2008 PERMALINK

Lost in news about the presidential race is the big win for open networks

The cable and telecom stranglehold over the internet that has most of America paying twice as much for only 10 or 20% of the download speed enjoyed by citizens of more advanced nations took a blow today, when the Federal Communications Commission voted to authorize the unlicensed use of so-called "white spaces" spectrum for a new open source internet ... more

11/04/2008 PERMALINK

Progress in using pluripotent stem (iPS) cells to fight aging

Dr. Shinya Yamanaka's lab has found a way to cause adult cells to become pluripotent stem (iPS) cells without viral integration into the genome. This opens up the possibility of using iPS cells in regenerative therapies for counteracting problems caused by aging and disease ... Gladstone Institutes

11/04/2008 PERMALINK

Get the anti-aging gain without the starvation diet pain

A drug designed to specifically hit a protein linked to the life-extending benefits of a meager diet can essentially trick the body into believing food is scarce even when it isn't. The drug called SRT1720, which acts through the protein SIRT1, enhances running endurance, protects against weight gain and insulin resistance even when eating a high-fat diet, the researchers report. The drug works by shifting the metabolism into a fat-burning mode that normally takes over only when energy levels are low ... more

11/04/2008 PERMALINK

A ethanol/biodiesel mini-refinery small enough to fit in your garage

A new $30,000 mini-refinery can simultaneous produce up to 120 gallons per day of ethanol and 450 gallons per day of biodiesel ... Allard Research and Development

11/04/2008 PERMALINK

Artificial electric-eel cells - the ultimate implant power source

Researchers are designing artificial electrocytes (the energy-generating cells in electric eels) that are more powerful and efficient than the natural cells they mimic and could one day be used to power tiny medical implants and nanobots ... Yale University

11/04/2008 PERMALINK

Anti-Frailty Pill restored 20% to muscle mass

Researchers report that a daily oral dose of MK-677 increased muscle mass in the arms and legs of healthy older adults by 20% without any serious side effects, suggesting that it may be a safe and effective way of reducing age-related frailty. Levels of growth hormone (GH) and of insulin-like growth factor I (IGF- I) in seniors who took MK-677 increased to those found in healthy young adults ... University of Virginia Health System

11/04/2008 PERMALINK

Cell protein suppresses pain 8-times more effectively than morphine

PAP (prostatic acid phosphatase) shown in red in the image, "has the potential to be a groundbreaking treatment for pain and has previously not been studied in pain-sensing neurons," said lead study author Mark J. Zylka, Ph.D. "It appeared to work much better (8x) than the commonly used drug morphine." ... UNC School of Medicine

11/04/2008 PERMALINK

Lots of DNA snippets often come together to form a gene

Only about 6% of your genes are made from a single, linear piece of your DNA. Most of your genes are made from sections of DNA found at different locations along a strand. The data encoded in the various fragments are joined together into a functional messenger RNA (mRNA) molecule that forms the template for the generation of your body's proteins ... more

11/04/2008 PERMALINK

Scarab, a nuclear powered bot for lunar prospecting

The polar craters of the moon lie in permanent shadow and may hold water ice frozen in the deep cold. The Scarab rover has been designed to carry a 1-meter coring drill and a payload of science instruments that can analyze the abundance of hydrogen, oxygen and other materials ... watch Scarab in action ... Carnegie Mellon

11/04/2008 PERMALINK

Increase the resolution of your reality with the Geode RES bot

A RES bot is an intelligent reality enhancement system that dynamically builds and updates a location-based data set for your use. A good RES bot should take your interests, your friend's locations, and all available location net data into account to provide you with intel that increases the resolution of your reality. Geode for Firefox is an early effort at creating a RES bot ... Geode

11/04/2008 PERMALINK

Narcissistic people are most likely to emerge as leaders

Researchers found that people who score high in narcissism tend to take control of leaderless groups. Narcissism is a trait in which people are self-centered, exaggerate their talents and abilities, and lack empathy for others. “Not only did narcissists rate themselves as leaders, which you would expect, but other group members also saw them as the people who really run the group,” said psychology Professor Amy Brunell, lead author of the study ... Ohio State University

11/04/2008 PERMALINK

Watch 60 Minutes' segment on brain-computer interfaces

Quietly in a number of laboratories, an astounding technology is developing that directly connects the human brain to a computer. It's like a sudden leap in human evolution ... watch 60 Minutes segment

11/04/2008 PERMALINK

Wearware medic-on-a-chip bot treats soldiers immediately

NanoEngineering professor Joseph Wang is leading a project to create a field hospital on a chip that soldiers can wear on the battlefield. The automated sense-and-treat system will detect biomarkers that signal common battlefield injuries such as trauma, shock, brain injury or fatigue and automatically administer the proper medication, thus beginning the treatment well before the soldier reaches a field hospital ... UC San Diego

11/04/2008 PERMALINK

'Near perfect' absorption of sunlight, from all angles

"To get maximum efficiency when converting solar power into electricity, you want a solar panel that can absorb nearly every single photon of light, regardless of the sun's position in the sky," said Prof. Shawn-Yu Lin, who led the research project. "Our new anti-reflective coating makes this possible." ... Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

11/04/2008 PERMALINK

Fungus that naturually produces diesel fuel discovered

"These are the first organisms that have been found that make many of the ingredients of diesel," Prof. Scott Strobel said. "This is a major discovery." Listen to MP3 description of discovery ... Montana State University

11/04/2008 PERMALINK

25% silicon solar cell efficiency breakthrough finally achieved

Long sought milestone of 25 per cent efficiency silicon solar cells finally achieved by UNSW's ARC Photovoltaic Centre of Excellence ... more

11/03/2008 PERMALINK

Genetic 'clock' senses cell's condition, excutes DNA programs

Bioengineers have created blinking fluorescent proteins inside E. coli cells with a blink rate that changes when the temperature, energy source or other environmental conditions change. The research is a big step toward creation of a DNA nanobot able to read the internal state of a cell accurate and react intelligently to the cellular environment detected based on a sequence of logical steps coded into its DNA ... UC San Diego