[TECH NEWS] IBM and Nuance Communications, Inc. on Feb. 17 announced a research agreement to explore, develop and commercialize the Watson computing system’s advanced analytics capabilities [the recent star of “Jeopardy”] in the healthcare industry. The research and technology initiative will combine IBM’s Deep Question Answering (QA), Natural Language Processing, and Machine Learning capabilities with Nuance’s speech recognition and Clinical… Read more »
[TECH NEWS] The famous Arrhenius relationship states that things happen faster as they get hotter. In chemistry, that’s generally true but there’s an important exception: the speed at which proteins fold into their functional shape. It’s easy to think that proteins ought to fold more quickly as they cool down and then unfold more quickly as they heat up. But… Read more »
[TECH NEWS] Neurons are complicated, but the basic functional concept is that synapses transmit electrical signals to the dendrites and cell body (input), and axons carry signals away (output). In one of many surprise findings, Northwestern University scientists have discovered that axons can operate in reverse: they can send signals to the cell body, too. It also turns out axons… Read more »
[TECH NEWS] A team led by Charles Lieber, a professor of chemistry at Harvard, and Shamik Das, lead engineer in MITRE’s nanosystems group, has designed and built a reprogrammable circuit out of nanowire transistors. Several tiles wired together would make the first scalable nanowire computer, says Lieber. Such a device could run inside microscopic, implantable biosensors, and ultra-low-power environmental or… Read more »
[TECH NEWS] Whether or not you’re fond of Indian, Southeast Asian and Middle Eastern food, stroke researchers at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center think you may become a fan of one of their key spices. The scientists created a new molecule from curcumin, a chemical component of the golden-colored spice turmeric, and found in laboratory experiments that it affects mechanisms that protect… Read more »
[TECH NEWS] Australian clinical researchers have noted an extraordinary and unexpected benefit of osteoporosis treatment – that people taking bisphosphonates are not only surviving well, better than people without osteoporosis, they appear to be gaining an extra five years of life. Associate Professor Jacqueline Center and Professor John Eisman, from Sydney’s Garvan Institute of Medical Research, based their findings on… Read more »
[TECH NEWS] A company is testing whether stem cells from fat could help prevent long-term damage after a heart attack. Too much fat around the waist may be bad for your health, but the stem cells it contains might one day save your life. Starting this month, a new European trial aims to determine whether stem cells harvested from a… Read more »
[TECH NEWS] BioTime, Inc. (NYSE Amex:BTX) Jan. 3 announced a $4 million equity financing by its subsidiary, Embryome Sciences, Inc. Concurrent with the financing, Embryome Sciences will be renamed ReCyte Therapeutics, Inc. and will develop therapeutic products for cardiovascular and blood diseases. The National Academy of Sciences has estimated that a potential 58 million Americans afflicted with cardiovascular disease and… Read more »
[TECH NEWS] Whitehead Institute researchers have linked hyperactivity in the mechanistic target of rapamycin complex 1 (mTORC1) cellular pathway, to reduced ketone production, which is a well-defined physiological trait of aging in mice. Their results are reported in the December 23 edition of the journal Nature. “This is the first paper that genetically shows that the mTORC1 pathway in mammals… Read more »
[TECH NEWS] In research published Dec. 19, scientists have studied human brain samples to isolate a set of proteins that accounts for over 130 brain diseases, including Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, epilepsies and forms of autism and learning disability. The brain is the most complex organ in the body with millions of nerve cells connected by billions of synapses. Within… Read more »
