Posts Under Tech News Category

[TECH NEWS] Israeli scientists at Ben Gurion University of the Negev in Be’er Sheva have just completed a study proving the protein enzyme telomerase can delay development of Lou Gehrig’s disease in laboratory mice – a medical breakthrough that may carry massive implications for human sufferers with the disease. The team led by Prof. Esther Priel, director of the School… Read more »

[TECH NEWS] Neuroscientists at the University of California, Berkeley, and the Champalimaud Center for the Unknown in Portugal have demonstrated that the brain (rat model) is more flexible and trainable than previously thought. Major advances in neuroscience could lead to a wider range of brain-controlled prosthetic limbs that can restore mobility for people. Their new study, to be published Sunday,… Read more »

[TECH NEWS] The larva of the arctic drosophilid fly, Chymomyza costata, is probably the most complex multicellular organism that can survive submergence in liquid nitrogen (-196 °C) in a fully hydrated state. A research team in the Czech Republic headed by Vladimír Koštál examined the associations between the physiological and biochemical parameters of differently acclimated larvae and their freeze tolerance. Entering diapause,… Read more »

[TECH NEWS] University of California, San Diego researchers have developed a new injectable hydrogel that could be an effective and safe treatment for tissue damage caused by heart attacks. The study by Karen Christman and colleagues appears in the Feb. 21 issue of the Journal of the American College of Cardiology. Christman is a professor in the Department of Bioengineering… Read more »

[TECH NEWS] The Qualcomm Tricorder X PRIZE is a $10 million global competition to stimulate innovation and integration of precision diagnostic technologies, making reliable health diagnoses available directly to “health consumers” in their homes. The dire need for improvements in health and healthcare in the U.S. has captured the attention of government, industry, and private citizens for years. But a… Read more »

[TECH NEWS] The smallest transistor ever built—in fact, the smallest transistor that can be built—has been created using a single phosphorous atom by an international team of researchers at the University of New South Wales, Purdue University and the University of Melbourne. The single-atom device was described Sunday (Feb. 19) in a paper in the journal Nature Nanotechnology. Michelle Simmons,… Read more »

[TECH NEWS] The quest to grow meat in a lab rather than on an animal is due to reach its climax this fall, with the first-ever culture-dish hamburger served to a celebrity taster after a $330,000 development effort. Mark Post, a physiologist at the University of Maastricht in the Netherlands, said the project is being funded by an anonymous investor… Read more »

[TECH NEWS] Neuroscientists at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine have made a dramatic breakthrough in their efforts to find a cure for Alzheimer’s disease. The researchers’ findings, published in the journal Science, show that use of a drug in mice appears to quickly reverse the pathological, cognitive and memory deficits caused by the onset of Alzheimer’s. The results point… Read more »

[TECH NEWS] Man may not live by bread alone, but cancer in animals appears less resilient, judging by a study that found chemotherapy drugs work better when combined with cycles of short, severe fasting. Even fasting on its own effectively treated a majority of cancers tested in animals, including cancers from human cells. The study in Science Translational Medicine, part… Read more »

[TECH NEWS] In a small study that might sound like science fiction, researchers could predict what people were hearing based on their brain activity. “As you listen to a sound, it activates certain parts of the auditory cortex of your brain,” said Brian Pasley, a UC Berkeley neuroscientist and lead author of the study published Jan. 31 in PLoS Biology…. Read more »