A detailed picture of cell types in some areas of the mouse cortex is put to the test.
At Quora.com, I respond to quetions on Bitcoin and Cryptocurrency. Today, a reader asked “Will we all be using a blockchain-based currency some day?”.
This is an easy question to answer, but not for usual Geeky reasons: A capped supply, redundant bookkeeping, privacy & liberty or blind passion. No, these are all tangential reasons. But first, let’s be clear about the answer:
Yes, Virginia. We are all destined to move,
eventually, to a blockchain based currency.
I am confident of this because of one enormous benefit that trumps all other considerations. Also, because of flawed arguments behind perceived negatives.
Continue reading “Will we all be using a blockchain currency some day?” »
Yesterday, we announced the successful completion of the NAD+ Mouse Project after a great fundraiser, but it seems we are not done yet. The research team at Harvard has announced a new stretch goal for the last two days of the campaign.
A new $75,000 goal is to be the final step, and to support that, Dr. David Sinclair is offering to fund match the next $5000 in donations to the project to help it reach this final goal. So, for the next two days, all donations are worth double.
The final goal will be to add even more comprehensive testing, such as end-of-life pathology (frequency and specificity of neoplasms/tumors/cancer) and MRI diagnostics (body composition, lean-to-fat ratio). This would really allow the researchers to maximize the useful data they collect during the study and help assess any changes to cancer risk, why each animal died, and what age-related diseases were affected by the drug.
Today’s Google doodle features a man standing among large dinosaur bones in the Alberta Badlands.
It’s in honour of Joseph Burr Tyrrell, who was born 160 years ago in Weston, Ont.
Tyrrell, who died in 1957 at the age of 98, was a Canadian geologist, cartographer and mining consultant.
Continue reading “Google’s Doodle Is An Adorable Tribute To A Canadian Geologist” »
New research shows how police could use forensic DNA to track down a suspect’s relatives in genealogy databases that store a different kind of genetic data—and that were never intended for use in police investigations.
In other words, if your sibling leaves DNA at a crime scene, it could lead detectives to your door. That suggests new investigative possibilities for police—and also new concerns about genetic privacy and whether authorities who use forensic DNA in creative ways might be overstepping their bounds, says Noah Rosenberg, a professor of biology at Stanford University and senior author of a study, which appears in Cell.
“The potential to link people’s genotypes across databases has been developing for some time. It is both of interest and concerning, depending on one’s point of view,” says Rosenberg, who is also a member of Stanford Bio-X.
Scientists in Australia have for the first time demonstrated the protection of correlated states between paired photons—packets of light energy—using the intriguing physical concept of topology. This experimental breakthrough opens a pathway to build a new type of quantum bit, the building blocks for quantum computers.
The research, developed in close collaboration with Israeli colleagues, is published today in the prestigious journal, Science, a recognition of the foundational importance of this work.
“We can now propose a pathway to build robust entangled states for logic gates using protected pairs of photons,” said lead author Dr. Andrea Blanco-Redondo at the University of Sydney Nano Institute.
