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May 20, 2019

New autism research on single neurons suggests signaling problems in brain circuits

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, chemistry, neuroscience

Autism affects at least 2% of children in the United States—an estimated 1 in 59. This is challenging for both the patients and their parents or caregivers. What’s worse is that today there is no medical treatment for autism. That is in large part because we still don’t fully understand how autism develops and alters normal brain function.

One of the main reasons it is hard to decipher the processes that cause the disease is that it is highly variable. So how do we understand how autism changes the ?

Using a new technology called single-nucleus RNA sequencing, we analyzed the chemistry inside specific brain cells from both and those with autism and identified dramatic differences that may cause this disease. These autism-specific differences could provide valuable new targets for drug development.

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May 20, 2019

Don’t kill that spider in your house. It’s unlikely to bite you and is good for the environment

Posted by in category: futurism

They’ll catch lots of pests, and most aren’t at all aggressive or dangerous.

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May 20, 2019

NASA launches rah-rah trailer for 2024 moon mission: ‘We are going’

Posted by in category: space travel

Let Captain Kirk get you excited about returning humans to the moon.

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May 20, 2019

Good News, Everybody! Someone Once Patented Plans For Keeping A Severed Head Alive

Posted by in category: futurism

O,.,0.


It was what’s called a “prophetic patent”—one that isn’t real yet.

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May 20, 2019

Geologists Just Discovered a Source of Volcanoes Deeper Than Ever Before

Posted by in categories: materials, space

Researchers have pinpointed a previously unknown source of volcanoes in the extreme depths of Earth — in the transition zone between the upper and lower mantle.

Until now, we thought we had a handle on the ways in which volcanoes form, welling up from the molten regions in the upper mantle beneath our planet’s crust, but the new discovery takes things much farther down.

In the Bermuda islands, which sit atop an extinct volcanic seamount, geologists have found the first direct evidence that material from the transition zone, between 400 and 650 kilometres (250 and 400 miles) below Earth’s surface, can bubble up and be spewed out of volcanoes.

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May 20, 2019

After augmented reality, the virtual world still affects you

Posted by in category: augmented reality

Augmented reality can change “how you turn your head, how well you do on tasks, and how you connect socially with other physical people in the room…”

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May 20, 2019

Kavli and Nobel Laureates Tackle Science’s Big Questions

Posted by in categories: information science, science

The National Academy of Sciences is always an impressive place, with visitors greeted out front by a more-then-life-sized bronze statue of Albert Einstein. In keeping with the spirit of the academy, Einstein is not depicted standing with his eyes looking upward to some fantastic future. Rather, he is seated, looking slightly downward in thought, holding papers on which his equations are written—doing the hard work of trying to make that fantastic future happen.

On April 9th, the academy hosted an event, sponsored by the Kavli Foundation and produced by Scientific American, that honored 10 individuals who have also done the hard work of making the world better through their scientific research. The 10 were all winners of Nobel Prizes, Kavli Prizes or both. And for one hour, they took to the stage in the Fred Kavli Auditorium within the academy building to field questions by Scientific American Editor-In-Chief Mariette DiChristina. This video represents a few of the highlights of that panel discussion.

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May 20, 2019

New Artificial Intelligence Sees Like a Human, Bringing Us Closer to Skynet

Posted by in category: robotics/AI

The new technology could be used for the development of effective and time-sensitive search-and-rescue robots.

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May 20, 2019

The Tamagotchi is back after 23 years. This time it comes in colour

Posted by in category: futurism

https://youtube.com/watch?v=V3GWrAJ9P-8

There are four colours to choose from.

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May 20, 2019

Driverless cars working together can speed up traffic

Posted by in categories: robotics/AI, transportation

A fleet of driverless cars working together to keep traffic moving smoothly can improve overall traffic flow by at least 35 percent, researchers have shown.

The researchers, from the University of Cambridge, programmed a small fleet of miniature to drive on a multi-lane track and observed how the changed when one of the cars stopped.

When the cars were not driving cooperatively, any cars behind the stopped car had to stop or slow down and wait for a gap in the traffic, as would typically happen on a real road. A queue quickly formed behind the stopped car and overall traffic flow was slowed.

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