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[3:19] Rajesh Rao and Andrea Stocco test the first human brain-to-brain interface, allowing the brain to be controlled over the internet. When Rajesh plays a video game and thinks about firing at a target, the EEG picks up the signal and sends it across the internet, the Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation or TMS stimulates the region of Andrea’s brain that controls hand movement. This causes Andrea’s index finger to fire the cannon and blow up the target. [Source: World Science Festival YouTube link] Comments.

Ever seen a car pivot in place before, without the use of wheel dollies?

Physicists working with the Large Hadron Collider beauty experiment (LHCb) have discovered what appears to be an entire family of new particles that our current physics models can’t explain.

The existence of these new forms of matter, known as tetraquarks, challenges our current understanding of the role they play inside the protons and neutrons that make up atoms — the fundamental building blocks of everything we know and love in the Universe.

Continue reading “Physicists have discovered what looks like an entire family of new particles in the LHC” »

A story on robots and terrorists:

A REPORT from the UN has warned that killer robots which are designed to slay humans could be in the hands of terrorists within a few years.

One of the biggest challenges in treating brain cancer has been getting drugs to cross the blood-brain barrier and attack tumours where they’re needed.

But scientists say they’ve now developed a truly soluble liquid aspirin that can make its way into the brain, and, in the lab at least, kill cancerous glioblastoma cells without harming healthy brain tissue.

The research hasn’t been published in a peer-reviewed journal as yet, so we need to take it with a big pinch of salt for now. But scientists from the Brain Tumour Research Centre at the University of Portsmouth in the UK just presented it at the Brain Tumours 2016 conference in Poland.

Continue reading “Scientists say they’ve developed aspirin that crosses the blood-brain barrier” »

The SolarCity deal is going after one of the most lucrative slices of the power sector.

Researchers use graphene to create a new way of converting electricity into light, delivering the possibility of dramatic speed improvements over today’s chips.

No matter how many books crowded my parents’ living room bookshelves in my childhood home in New York, two always sat at eye level right in the center: Henry Kissinger’s Years of Upheaval and Alvin Toffler’s Future Shock.

The sun is losing its spots, and it’s certainly something that we shouldn’t take lightly. According to news.com.au, our fireball has gone blank for the second time this month, leading Meteorologist Paul Dorian to believe that the next solar minimum is approaching and there will be an increasing number of spotless days over the next few years. This matters because the amount of sun spots reportedly affects our climate.

So, let’s start with solar minimum. What is it exactly? Well, NASA explains it to be when the sun’s natural solar cycle shows the lowest amount of sunspots. You see, when at its best, the sun’s surface is covered in visible dark blemishes, or sunspots. The sun goes through a natural solar cycle approximately every 11 years, and each cycle is marked by the increase and decrease of sunspots – with the highest number of sunspots in any given solar cycle being the “solar maximum” and the lowest number being “solar minimum.”

The sun at its best.