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Nov 14, 2018
Historic breakthrough: WVU Rockefeller Neuroscience team first to use ultrasound to treat Alzheimer’s
Posted by Mary Jain in categories: biotech/medical, neuroscience
MORGANTOWN — World-leading brain experts at West Virginia University’s Rockefeller Neuroscience Institute are celebrating the historic breakthrough Alzheimer patients around the global have been waiting for.
“For Alzheimer’s, there’s not that many treatments available despite hundreds of clinical trials over the past two decades and billions of dollars spent,” said Dr. Ali Rezai, a neurosurgeon at WVU who led the team of investigators that successfully performed a phase II trial using focused ultrasound to treat a patient with early stage Alzheimer’s.
The WVU team tested the innovative treatment in collaboration with INSIGHTEC, an Israeli medical technology company. Earlier this year, INSIGHTEC was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to begin a phase II clinical trial of the procedure and selected the WVU Rockefeller Neuroscience Institute as the first site in the United States for the trial.
Nov 14, 2018
Engineered natural killer cells may be the next great cancer immunotherapy
Posted by Nicholi Avery in category: biotech/medical
Inspired by success with T cells, scientists equip other immune cells with cancer-homing protein.
Nov 13, 2018
When Silicon Valley gets religion — and vice versa
Posted by Derick Lee in categories: life extension, Ray Kurzweil, transhumanism
Some of the tech world’s brightest luminaries hope to postpone the unpleasantness of death, or avoid it entirely. Calico, a secretive company founded by Google, is looking for ways to lengthen human lifespans. Billionaires Larry Ellison, Peter Thiel, and Jeff Bezos have all contributed huge sums for research into anti-aging treatments. Ray Kurzweil, one of the tech industry’s leading futurists, has described three scientific and technological “bridges” that might lead to radically longer life.
Devotees of many religions believe in a soul that lives forever. In transhumanism, techies have found their own version of eternal life — and it’s finding unlikely fans.
Nov 12, 2018
Ray Kurzweil — The Path to The Singularity
Posted by Shailesh Prasad in categories: Ray Kurzweil, singularity
Nov 12, 2018
How solar panels could cool our homes while harvesting energy
Posted by Genevieve Klien in categories: solar power, sustainability
Nov 12, 2018
Scientists predict a ‘dark matter hurricane’ will collide with the Earth
Posted by Genevieve Klien in categories: climatology, cosmology, particle physics
Yes, here’s the story of the dark matter hurricane — a cosmic event that may provide our first glimpse of the mysterious, invisible particle.
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Jackson Ryan
Nov 12, 2018
We Just Got Closer Than Ever to Unlocking Graphene’s Superconducting Powers
Posted by Genevieve Klien in categories: biotech/medical, materials
Scientists are now closer than ever to being able to use graphene as a superconductor – to conduct electricity with zero resistance – making it useful for developing energy efficient gadgets, improving medical research, upgrading power grids, and much more besides.
The key to the new approach is heating a silicon carbide (SiC) crystal, itself a superconductor, until the silicon atoms have all evaporated. This leaves two graphene layers on top of each other in a way that, in certain conditions, offers no resistance to electrical current.
A similar dual-layer approach was also successfully used to turn graphene into a superconductor earlier this year. The difference here is the layers don’t have to be carefully angled on top of each other, which should make it easier to reproduce at scale.
Continue reading “We Just Got Closer Than Ever to Unlocking Graphene’s Superconducting Powers” »
Nov 12, 2018
Quantum leap for mass as science redefines the kilogramme
Posted by Saúl Morales Rodriguéz in category: science
Sealed in a vault beneath a duke’s former pleasure palace among the sycamore-streaked forests west of Paris sits an object the size of an apple that determines the weight of the world.
Forged against a backdrop of scientific and political upheaval following the French Revolution, a single, small cylinder of platinum-iridium alloy has laid largely undisturbed for nearly 130 years as the world’s benchmark for what, precisely, is a kilogramme.
The international prototype of the kilogramme, or “Le Grand K” as it is tenderly known, is one of science’s most hallowed relics, an analogue against which all other weights are compared and a totem of the metric system that accompanied the epoch of liberty, equality and fraternity.
Continue reading “Quantum leap for mass as science redefines the kilogramme” »