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Barely a week later, cosmologist Lawrence Krauss at Arizona State University tweeted a rumour that the detector had already picked up a signal.

Now Krauss claims that the original rumour has been confirmed by an independent source.


Barely a week later, cosmologist Lawrence Krauss at Arizona State University tweeted a rumour that the detector had already picked up a signal.

Now Krauss claims that the original rumour has been confirmed by an independent source.

“Stay tuned!” he tweeted. “Gravitational waves may have been discovered!! Exciting.”

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The primary reason hoverboards have become public enemy #1 in recent times is due to their unfortunate tendency to catch fire and explode due to their lithium-ion batteries overheating.

But a new lithium-ion battery developed by scientists in the US could put an end to such dramas. Researchers at Stanford University have made the world’s first lithium-ion battery that shuts off before it overheats, then restarts immediately when its temperature has cooled.

Conventional lithium-ion batteries comprise a pair of electrodes and a liquid or gel electrolyte that carries charged particles between them. However, if the battery’s temperature reaches around 150 degrees Celsius (300 degrees Fahrenheit) as a result of a defect or overcharging, the electrolyte can catch fire and trigger an explosion, as we’ve seen in many sad cases.

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CRISPR, CRISPR, CRISPR. We’ve all heard about it’s gene editing capability, but it has potential to do so much more — controlling genes and offering a precise delivery system.

More than an editing platform

The CRISPR-Cas9 system does a wonderful job, partly because it targets genes so specifically. It’s not the only system that does this, but it’s the cheapest and easiest to create so far. For those with imagination however, this targeting quality means it could do so much more than simply snip away at sequences. Targeting promoter sequences, delivering a payload to a specific region of DNA…the platform has enormous potential.

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ProfusaLast week at CES, South San Francisco based Profusa showed off an upcoming injectable sensor that can be used to continuously monitor oxygen levels in tissue. Measuring only five millimeters long and a tiny 250 microns in diameter, the biosensor can be injected into tissue with just a hypodermic needle. It consists of a soft hydrogel scaffold that allows it to be biologically compatible with the surrounding tissue without any foreign body response. The sensor also contains a special chemical marker that changes fluorescence depending on the amount of oxygen that reacts with it. An optical reader placed on the skin measures the fluorescence and relays the data to a smartphone. The biosensor can last as long as two years (at which point the chemical marker begins to lose its potency), and because it contains no electronics and is completely biocompatible there’s no need to remove it.

On stage at the CES Digital Health Summit, Profusa CEO Dr. Ben Hwang gave a live demonstration of how the sensor works in action. As two of his colleagues with the sensors implanted and using a blood pressure cuffs performed stretches to simulate changes in blood flow, a graph displayed the live view of the changing tissue oxygen levels at the site of the sensors.

We had the opportunity to talk to Dr. Hwang after his talk, and he shared that the first application of the sensor is the Lumee Oxygen Sensing System, which is designed to monitor oxygen levels during the wound healing process. Sufficient oxygen flow through a wound is vital to the healing process, and Lumee can detect low oxygen levels early in the healing process and even before treatment or surgery begins.

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