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May 24, 2016
US biochemist wins award for rewriting DNA to mimic evolution
Posted by Bryan Gatton in categories: biotech/medical, engineering, evolution
US biochemical engineer Frances Arnold on Tuesday won a million-euro technology prize in Finland for her work on “directed evolution”, a method of rewriting DNA to improve medicines and develop green fuels.
“Frances Arnold receives the 2016 Millennium Technology Prize in recognition of her discoveries that launched the field of ‘directed evolution’, which mimics natural evolution to create new and better proteins in the laboratory,” the Technology Academy Finland, which awards the prize at two-year intervals, said in a statement.
Arnold, 59, who is a professor of chemical engineering at California Institute of Technology, said her work made it possible to “solve human problems”, such as replacing toxic chemicals like fossil fuels.
May 23, 2016
Harvard Team Takes Major Step toward Overcoming Antibiotic Resistance
Posted by Bruno Henrique de Souza in category: biotech/medical
Cientistas de Harvard University criou uma nova plataforma para superar a resistência aos antibióticos.
May 23, 2016
Sneak peek: A first look at YouTube’s VR interface within Daydream
Posted by Karen Hurst in categories: mobile phones, virtual reality
On Thursday, Google, a unit of Alphabet Inc.
At first, it will also only run on a select number of devices — most of which are touch-enabled (think Google’s own Chromebook Pixel, the Asus Chromebook Flip and Acer’s R11).
Like numerous other announcements Google made at its I/O developers conference this week, the Android apps integration feature won’t be available for users until this fall. For the layman, that means that while you may be able to install Android apps, some of them might not be ideal until developers eventually get around to making things work correctly. You’ll be able to make a Skype call, work with Office files, be productive offline, and play games like Minecraft or Hearthstone.
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May 23, 2016
U.S. lawmaker orders NASA to plan for trip to Alpha Centauri
Posted by Klaus Baldauf in category: space travel
Representative John Culberson (R–TX) wants agency to envision a spacecraft that can travel at 10% light-speed.
May 23, 2016
Size quantization of Dirac fermions in graphene
Posted by Karen Hurst in categories: electronics, particle physics
May 23, 2016
American Entrepreneurs Will Build the Fountain of Youth in Fiji
Posted by Dan Kummer in category: life extension
May 23, 2016
Neuron-Based Chips Will Soon Become Commonplace, This Startup Founder Says
Posted by Shailesh Prasad in category: computing
What does it mean to be alive? This question has been haunting us since the beginning of time. Thousands if not millions of novelists, philosophers, scientists have tried to answer.
However, for practical purposes, you don’t really need to know: you just live. You just learn to move in this world according to a certain set of rules, and as long as they work, you keep going.
All things considered this is not much different to the approach to brain-like computers that a Newark, California, based startup named Koniku is taking. Most of the experiments in this field are focused on trying to understand and replicate the infinite complexity of the brain using artificial methods, or on creating interfaces that connect the physical world with machines.
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May 23, 2016
HIV Genes Have Been Cut Out of Live Animals Using CRISPR
Posted by Dan Kummer in categories: bioengineering, biotech/medical
For the first time ever, scientists were able to successfully cut out the HIV genes from live animals, and they had over a 50% success rate.
A significant milestone was achieved today in the fight against HIV—scientists led by Kamel Khalili of the Comprehensive NeuroAIDS Center at Temple University just reported that, for the first time, HIV genes have been successfully eliminated from the genomes of animals infected with the virus.
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