23
POPSParalyzed Man Speaks Again Using Brain Implant So they knew his brain's speech centers were still functioning. They just needed a way to connect those speech centers to a speech synthesizer - an artificial mouth if you will. Researchers implanted a special kind of electrode in his brain, one that's "impregnated with neurotrophic factors" that encourage brain neurons to grow into and around the electrode. Essentially this electrode forms a very strong connection with brain neurons, which results in a strong signal that reliably comes from the same part of the patient's brain over time. Over a period of weeks, Guenther and his team worked to decode the signals coming from the man's brain. Eventually, he was able "to produce three vowel sounds with good accuracy," said Guenther. The man produces these sounds as quickly as he would normal speech, and Guenther added, "The long-term goal within five years is to have him use the speech brain–computer interface to produce words directly."
9
POPSNew Mechanism For Superconductivity? If superconductors could be designed to operate at temperatures closer to room temperature, the results would be revolutionary. Traditional theories of superconductivity hold that electrons within certain nonmagnetic materials can pair up when jostled together by atomic vibrations known as phonons. In other words, phonons provide the “glue” that makes superconductivity possible. Park and his colleagues now describe a different type of “glue” giving rise to superconducting behavior. A new mechanism for the electron-pairing glue that gives rise to superconductivity could allow researchers to design new materials that exhibit superconducting materials at higher temperatures, perhaps even opening the door to the “Holy Grail” of superconducting materials—one that works at room temperature.
20
POPSEinstein's Relativity Theory Proven
So far so good, but here's where things get odd. Gluons have absolutely no mass, while the total mass of the quarks only represents 5% of the mass of the protons and neutrons. So, an explanation for the missing 95% of the mass had to be found. The experts discovered that the missing percentage of the mass derives from the energy resulting from the interactions and movements of the quarks and gluons. This basically states that mass and energy are equivalent, just like Einstein's theory indicated, and, even more: mass can be transmuted into energy and vice versa. Extrapolating on the basis of this equation, it can be calculated how much energy is obtained while converting specific amounts of mass. Sadly, this was also used as a ground for building the atomic bomb. "Until now, this has been a hypothesis," shared the National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) in France in a press release, cited by Discovery. "It has now been corroborated for the first time."
30
POPSA Diamond Bigger than Earth Discovered The diamond is actually the crystallized interior of a white dwarf – or the hot core of a star that is left over after the star uses up its nuclear fuel and dies. It is made mostly of carbon and is coated by a thin layer of hydrogen and helium gases.
17
POPSAn Algorithm with No Secrets A hash algorithm turns an ordinary message into a "digital fingerprint," which can then be used to keep the original message secret during transit or to guarantee that it hasn't been tampered with en route. But a hash function is only considered secure if there is no practical way to run it backward and find the original message from the fingerprint. Equally important, there should be no trivial way to produce two messages with exactly the same fingerprint. The weaknesses discovered by Wang and others relate to this problem--something cryptographers call "a collision." The latter issue is complicated by the fact that it is impossible to completely avoid collisions. So the best algorithm is one that simply makes collisions extremely hard to produce. "You shouldn't be able to find them," says William Burr, manager of the Security Technology Group for NIST. "The computation should be too great."
12
POPSNew Spin Record Set: 1 Million rpm The new motor could be applied for faster drills and more efficient and compact compressors for cars and airplanes. The trend towards increasingly smaller cell phones and other teensy electronic devices means ever smaller holes must be drilled to make them, and that requires higher rotational speeds, the researchers said. "Our findings will rapidly be converted into concrete applications and products," said Johann Kolar, one of the researchers involved in the feat.
10
POPSNuclear Fusion Will Become Reality by 2011 In its National Ignition Facility (NIF), LLNL will have a laser capable of heating plasma to the absurdly-high temperatures needed for nuclear fusion. The completion of the device is scheduled for 2009, whereas the first test will begin in 2010. Researchers at the lab are confident that, by 2011, they could obtain sustainable and entirely controllable fusion. The year of 2020 was set as a marker for the construction of the first commercial power plant, to employ the new technology. If their endeavors are successful, then the world could see a major transformation, as far as energy production goes. Having a reliable and perfectly safe source of power will virtually eliminate the need for fossil-fuel power plants, and even wind and solar farms will become obsolete. In order for this to happen, governments worldwide will have to make a huge financial effort, to install these energy-producing plants across their territories.
19
POPSArtists stage street scenes to lurk in Google maps Like many first-time Street View users, Kinsley and Hewlett, then roommates, typed in their address and found their house. Kinsley and Hewlett soon found themselves discussing surveillance and virtual reality, and began considering how they might explore those issues and Street View through art. "But instead of dwelling on the darker undertones of these issues, we began to think about ways of playing with the system," Kinsley said in an e-mail interview from Iceland, where he is participating in an artist residency. The "Street With a View" project was his master of fine arts thesis project at Carnegie Mellon University. "We were interested in interjecting something staged, something fictional, into Street View and playing with - and subtly questioning - the notion of reality in something that we perceive as a factual representation of our world," said Kinsley, 26.
15
POPSCooling the Brain Michale Fee and his colleagues created the cooling device using technology similar to that used in portable electronic beverage coolers. They say that it could be used to study other complex behaviors, such as walking or swimming. "We can also use this cooling technology to discover which brain regions control the timing of different complex behaviors in different animals, something that has been very difficult to assess until now," Fee said in the release. "We know that HVC is related in some ways to human cortex, so it could be showing us a very general mechanism for representing the passage of time within the brain." The research was published today in the journal Nature.
16
POPSTop 10 Forecasts for 2009 and Beyond 6. Professional knowledge will become obsolete almost as quickly as it’s acquired. An individual’s professional knowledge is becoming outdated at a much faster rate than ever before. 7. The race for biomedical and genetic enhancement will-in the twenty-first century-be what the space race was in the previous century. 8. Urbanization will hit 60% by 2030. 9. The Middle East will become more secular while religious influence in China will grow. 10. Access to electricity will reach 83% of the world by 2030.
17
POPSThe Power of the Memory Molecule Nevertheless, this paper marks an important advancement in understanding how chemical pathways in the brain are able to encode and recall events and experiences.
26
POPSDoes the Human Mind Have Potential “Super Powers”? So, if all of us have latent super-abilities, is it possible to activate them permanently, or at least periodically, without compromising normal brain functioning? Probably, say the Australian scientists who used transcranial magnetic stimulation to temporarily switch off the frontal temporal lobe of volunteers. Afterwards the subjects showed an immediate improvement in calendar calculating, naming the day of the week of any recent history event, and in their artistic abilities. Of course these were just the abilities tested. Scientists do not know all of the latent abilities that humans may possess. It has been predicted that more advanced neurological studies may someday discover how to allow “Regular” people to tap into the incredible latent powers of their own mind, and thereby unleashing some of the “superhuman” potential in all of us.
14
POPSScientists Identify Two Routes to Nerve Cell Regeneration In the long run, the optimal strategy for treating spinal injuries may involve a combination of therapies that restore neurons’ ability to grow axons and ones that counteract inhibitory signals near the injury. “You want to do each, and you may need to do both,”
12
POPSGene Therapy Might Cure AIDS While cautioning that the Berlin case could be a fluke, David Baltimore, who won a Nobel prize for his research on tumor viruses, deemed it "a very good sign" and a virtual "proof of principle" for gene-therapy approaches. Dr. Baltimore and his colleague, University of California at Los Angeles researcher Irvin Chen, have developed a gene therapy strategy against HIV that works in a similar way to the Berlin case. Drs. Baltimore and Chen have formed a private company to develop the therapy.
12
POPS'Junk' DNA proves functional Over evolutionary time, these repeats were dispersed within different species, creating new regulatory sites throughout these genomes. Thus, the set of genes controlled by these transcription factors is likely to significantly differ from species to species and may be a major driver for evolution. This research also shows that these repeats are anything but "junk DNA," since they provide a great source of evolutionary variability and might hold the key to some of the important physical differences that distinguish humans from all other species. The GIS study also highlighted the functional importance of portions of the genome that are rich in repetitive sequences.
17
POPSMichael Crichton 1942 - 2008 But what a strange career the man had, from Harvard Medical School to the top of the book and movie charts to Hollywood blockbusters to odd best-selling jeremiads against Japanese businessmen and global warming activists. The consistent themes of his work are the consequences of man's own hubris and a thoroughgoing paranoia. Someone is always coming up with a brilliant notion in Crichton, and it always goes hideously kablooey. Bring dinosaurs back to life? Okay, but they'll escape and gobble you up. Organ transplants? Fine until the medical establishment starts harvesting them for profit. Robots? Forget about the robots: they'll shoot you down ("Westworld") or come after you with knives ("Runaway"). Plastic surgery, biotech implants, chasing tornadoes? All terrible, terrible ideas ("Looker," "The Terminal Man," "Twister").
13
POPSFirst complete cancer genome sequenced Understanding the genetic basis of cancer could lead to highly personalized treatments, says Mardis. “Right now, they’re all treated the same way they were 25 years ago,” she says of AML patients. It would be nice, Mardis says, if doctors could tell their patients, “Here’s what we know about your disease, and here are your best treatment options.”
8
POPSPersonal Genome Project releasing genetic data Apparently the information being released to the PGP 10 today consists of around 20% of each volunteer's exome, a total of less than 1% of a complete genome sequence - but with the promise of much more to come. Ultimately, the PGP aims to provide complete genome sequences for all of its volunteers, which will become more and more feasible as the cost of DNA sequencing continues to plummet. There won't be any major medical breakthroughs from analysis of the PGP10 data, but this is a tremendous first step in the direction of personalised medicine. It's also an important experiment to see whether the noble open-access model of the PGP can survive contact with reality. As Church notes in the NY Times article: "We don't yet know the consequences of having one's genome out in the open. But it's worth exploring." Anyone who's interested in getting their genome sequenced by the PGP - and sharing the resulting information with the world - should consider registering for inclusion.
9
POPSOperating inside a Beating Heart "We know how to repair valves. But what patients and doctors want is a more rapid recovery," says Marc Gillinov, It can take two or three months for a patient to recover from an open-heart procedure; if the heart didn't have to be stopped, the recovery time could drop significantly. Performing the surgery on a beating heart would also give the surgeon instant feedback on the effectiveness of the procedure. "You'd know just as you do it whether the valve is working well," Gillinov says. Data from the 3-D ultrasound images is analyzed using special software written by the researchers. The software can predict where heart tissue will be approximately 70 to 100 milliseconds in the future, so the position of the tip of the handheld surgical tool can be adjusted accordingly. Sensors in the tool also detect whether it comes in contact with the tissue. "We can detect very quickly if things deviate greatly from what's predicted and then pull back the to get it out of the way,"
10
POPSStudy finds value in 'junk' DNA "Alu elements are a major source of new exons. Because Alu is a primate-specific retrotransposon, creation of new exons from Alu may contribute to unique traits of primates, so we want to better understand this process," said the study's senior author Yi Xing, Ph.D., assistant professor of internal medicine and biomedical engineering, who holds a joint appointment in the University of Iowa Carver College of Medicine and the UI College of Engineering. To study the impact of Alu-derived exons on human gene expression, the researchers used a high-density exon microarray. The technology has nearly six million probes for monitoring the expression patterns of all human exons. Using data generated by these microarrays, the scientists analyzed 330 Alu-derived exons in 11 human tissues. The team then identified a number of exons with interesting expression and functional characteristics.
12
POPSVolcanic lightning may have sparked life on Earth In the classic Miller-Urey experiment, a mixture of gases and water that Miller thought were present on early Earth was heated and zapped with electricity to mimic lightning. This created five identifiable amino acids. Yet Miller tested three versions of his spark flask. One of the two lesser-know setups – the volcanic apparatus – created 22 amino acids that could be positively identified. The findings could also give clues to life on other planets. The conditions found in the volcanic spark flask could conceivably have once existed on Mars or Titan, and Bada is developing instruments that could detect tiny amounts of amino acids frozen beneath the surface of the Red Planet.
10
POPSComputing with RNA That opens up the possibility of computing devices that can respond to specific conditions within the cell, he says. For example, it may be possible to develop drug delivery systems that target cancer cells from within by sensing genes used to regulate cell growth and death. "You can program it to release the drug when the conditions are just right, at the right time and in the right place," these biocomputers are built from three main components--sensors, actuators, and transmitters--all of which are made up of RNA. The input sensors are made from aptamers, RNA molecules that behave a bit like antibodies, binding tightly to specific targets. Similarly, the output components, or actuators, are made of ribozymes, complex RNA molecules that have catalytic properties similar to those of enzymes. These two components are joined by yet another RNA molecule that serves as a transmitter, which is activated when a sensor molecule recognizes input chemical and triggers an actuator molecule
10
POPSMapping the Bio Cosmos Microbes are responsible for many biogeochemical cycles and are crucial to the continued function of the , Woese's efforts to clarify the evolution and diversity of microbes provided an invaluable service to ecologists and conservationists. Woese’s big idea is that primitive life existed as a community of cells that freely exchanged genes. They shared a basic translation system for making proteins, but had little else in common. These cells evolved as a community and not as distinct lineages. Before Woese, the tree of life had two main branches called prokaryotes and eukaryotes, the prokaryotes composed of cells without nuclei and the eukaryotes composed of cells with nuclei.
3
Clips
Latest Pops
Latest Comments
Most Pops
Tags
Print
Save
Turn on live update