Menu

Blog

Page 8892

Jan 18, 2018

This is the darkest material on Earth

Posted by in categories: materials, space travel

And it’s changing everything from art to space exploration. http://cnn.it/2hPFph3

Read more

Jan 18, 2018

This bed is making the lives of carers and patients easier

Posted by in category: biotech/medical

Click on photo to start video.

This bed has a rolling sheet that helps move disabled patients.

Read more

Jan 18, 2018

CES 2018 gets serious about health, wellness and medical tech

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, health

With the slew of self-care, fitness and sleep devices on show at CES, the health and medical industries are making big rumbles in consumer tech.

Read more

Jan 18, 2018

This drone can catch fish for you!

Posted by in category: drones

Read more

Jan 18, 2018

Stud finder on steroids

Posted by in category: robotics/AI

This add-on Android device can help you see into walls.

Read more

Jan 18, 2018

Food store AI sees what you put in basket

Posted by in categories: food, robotics/AI

Jump to media player A prototype system spots what shoppers pick up so that they can avoid queuing to pay at the till.

Read more

Jan 18, 2018

Researchers Have Developed A New Way To Block Pain

Posted by in category: neuroscience

For anyone who has accidentally injured themselves, Dr. Zachary Campbell not only sympathizes, he’s developing new ways to blunt pain.

“If you have ever hit yourself with a hammer, afterward, even a light touch can be painful for days or even weeks,” said Campbell, who researches pain on the molecular level at The University of Texas at Dallas. “While many of us may not be coordinated enough to avoid an accident, my goal is to disrupt the inception and persistence of pain memories.”

Campbell directs the Laboratory of RNA Control and recently published a study in the journal Nature Communications in close collaboration with Dr. Ted Price, an associate professor from the Pain Neurobiology Research Group, and Dr. Michael Burton, a new assistant professor from the School of Behavioral and Brain Sciences who conducted postdoctoral work at UT Dallas.

Continue reading “Researchers Have Developed A New Way To Block Pain” »

Jan 18, 2018

Researchers Recreate DNA Of Man Who Died In 1827 Despite Having No Body To Work With

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, genetics

An international team of researchers led by a group with deCODE Genetics, a biopharmaceutical company in Iceland, has partly recreated the DNA of a man who died in 1827, despite having no body to take tissue samples from. In their paper published in the journal Nature Genetics, the team describes reconstructing “a sizable portion” of the original DNA of the man by studying DNA samples from his descendants.

In a unique and interesting project, the team worked with genetic information from people living in Iceland to recreate the DNA of a man well known in that country due to his unique story. He was an escaped black slave who made his way to Iceland—a place where there were no other people of African descent. That made his DNA extremely unique. More importantly, the man, Hans Jonatan, was, as the story goes, “welcomed with open arms,” which meant he was able to marry a local woman and have children. Those children produced children of their own, who inherited part of Jonatan’s DNAdding to the story, Iceland just happens to have one of the most extensive genealogical databases in the world today—it includes data on over a third of the entire population of the country.

In this new effort, the researchers took advantage of the unique situation to find Jonatan’s descendants by narrowing an original pool of 788 descendants down to a manageable 182—each one of whom held one small piece of the puzzle in their genes. After much work, the team reports that they were able to use the pieces they found to recreate a large part of Jonatan’s DNA without using any tissue from him at all—the first time such a feat has ever been achieved. They were also able to trace some of Jonatan’s ancestry starting with his mother, an African slave on a plantation in St. Croix, which at the time of Jonatan’s birth was a Danish colony. They believe his father was a white European.

Continue reading “Researchers Recreate DNA Of Man Who Died In 1827 Despite Having No Body To Work With” »

Jan 18, 2018

Humans Share a Relevant Gene With This Fish That Can Repair Its Spinal Cord

Posted by in category: biotech/medical

The lamprey looks about as different from a human as you can imagine. This fish has an eel-like, finless body, bulging eyes, and a circle of frankly horrifying teeth in place of a jaw, which some species use to latch onto other animals and suck their blood.

Yet these alien-looking creatures share something fairly extraordinary with humans: we both contain genes that, in the lamprey, allows it to repair broken spinal cords.

The discovery shows promise for medicine: if we could one day activate the same gene in humans, we could reverse spinal cord damage — even paralysis.

Continue reading “Humans Share a Relevant Gene With This Fish That Can Repair Its Spinal Cord” »

Jan 18, 2018

How to use the new Google app that matches your face with famous paintings

Posted by in category: media & arts

The Google Arts & Culture app went viral over the weekend as people discovered the funny results it can provide. Some are accurate while others aren’t so much.

Here’s how to use it.

Read more