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We’re used to dealing with three physical dimensions and one extra dimension of time as we move through the Universe, but two teams of scientists have shown that a fourth spatial dimension could reach beyond the limits of up and down, left and right, and forwards and backwards.
As you might expect given this is bending the laws of physics, the experiments involved are partly theoretical and very complex, and touch on our old friend quantum mechanics.
By placing together two specially designed 2D setups, two separate teams of researchers — one in Europe and one in the US — were able to catch a glimpse of this fourth spatial dimension through what’s known as the quantum Hall effect, a certain way of restricting and measuring electrons.
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They say you can’t judge a book by its cover, but humans can judge whether another person is sick by looking at a photo for just a few seconds.
That may not sound remarkable — until you consider that the sick people in the photos were in the very early stages of illnesses. They were participants in a scientific experiment and had agreed to be infected with a bacterium that would cause an inflammatory response. Their portraits were taken just two hours after infection.
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This modified engine was demonstrated to drive over 100 miles on a single gallon of gas. Why hasn’t this technology been further developed? Explore more forbidden science: http://ow.ly/BSI430hyNGN
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All animals need to breathe oxygen and we know that regions of the ocean that are losing oxygen are becoming more and more common. We’re seeing the marine animals leaving those areas.
Almost two dozen marine scientists from around the world have issued a warning about an often-overlooked side effect of climate change and pollution.
In a paper published this week in Science, they say oxygen is disappearing from increasingly large areas of ocean and threatening marine life.
The research, sponsored by an international body affiliated with UNESCO, finds the problem has been growing since the 1950s. Over the last 50 years, the amount of affected ocean has expanded by 4.5 million square kilometres to 32 million square kilometres of coastal and deep-sea water.
Screeech. You’ve landed. Time to relax those butt cheeks.
It was only this morning you booked this flight, and now you’re on the other side of the planet. Amazing. You’re nervous but excited to visit Australia for the first time. One week to explore the city and five weeks on a new design project. When that project match showed up in your feed you claimed it in two seconds. You’ve already earned 24,000 $design in the peerism economy.
Ping. “Need a room?”.
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Today, we are going to take a look at a new study in which scientists at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research have recently identified a type of cell that appears to be implied in thymic involution—the shrinking of the thymus[1].
Thymic involution is somewhat of a mystery in biology, a phenomenon that isn’t fully understood that happens to everyone with age and is a driving cause of immunosenescence, the age-related decline in our immune systems’ ability to fight disease. This new study helps to shed light on why it happens.
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Contact-free measurement of vital signs is already a reality, but with a few important limitations some of which researchers at Cornell University may be able to overcome. Currently used devices typically require the patient to be in close proximity to the sensor, and they’re only able to measure the breathing and heart rates, along with body movement.
Technology developed at Cornell involves tags worn on clothing, or just placed near the patient, that emit radio waves toward the lungs and heart to measure their activity accurately, while allowing the patient to move around. Additionally, blood pressure may also be measured this way, but more work will be required to validate the technology.
The new technique relies on so-called near-field coherent sensing, which allows each tag to have a unique radio signal. This permits many patients in the same facility to be monitored uniquely and without any interference.
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Today, we have a new paper that discusses how induced pluripotency and cellular senescence, two of several possible cellular states, share similarities[2]. It is likely no surprise that the two states are closely related and that some of the mechanisms for one process are shared by the other. It appears that certain key signaling molecules are important in determining both cell fate and senescence.
Controlling cell behavior in living animals
As our understanding of guiding cell fate grows rapidly by the passing year, it has huge implications for therapies that seek to control cellular activities and encourage certain types of cells to be created. Research is now starting to move beyond the petri dish and to where cells are being programmed in situ in living animals.
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Dr. Oliver Medvedik Vice President of LEAF appears in this new TED interview where he talks about aging research and the possibilities of future medicine.
Aging happens to all of us, but scientists still don’t know the mechanism behind it. We need to focus on finding an answer, says molecular biologist Oliver Medvedik.
If given the option, would you choose to live forever? Many of us would say “yes,” but with one major caveat: just as long we don’t age. In scientific terms, aging means “a progressive loss of fitness in an organism over time,” says molecular biologist and TED Fellow Oliver Medvedik. What causes this loss of fitness in humans is multifaceted, although scientists are exploring different theories including — and these are just a few of the many avenues of research — the deterioration of the health of our telomeres (the ends of our chromosomes), changes in cell mitochondria, inefficient clearance of damaged cell proteins, and the senescence of stem cells, leading to chronic inflammation and a depletion of stem cells.
Although it causes a loss of fitness and health, aging is not seen as a disease. “The FDA defines a disease as something that afflicts only a segment of the population. But aging affects everyone,” says Medvedik, the co-founder of Genspace, a citizen science biotech lab, and a professor of bioengineering at the Cooper Union in New York City. And because aging is not considered a disease by the government, it limits the amount of federal funding available in order to study it.