The technology decontaminates the air and exposed surfaces by bathing them in a narrow spectrum of visible-light wavelengths, known as HINS-light. Clinical trials at Glasgow Royal Infirmary have shown that the HINS-light Environmental Decontamination System provides significantly greater reductions of bacterial pathogens in the hospital environment than can be achieved by cleaning and disinfection alone, Read more about Disinfectant using light[…]
Behavioral economics tells us that emotions can profoundly affect individual behavior and decision-making. Does this also apply to societies at large, i.e., can societies experience mood states that affect their collective decision making? By extension is the public mood correlated or even predictive of economic indicators? Here we investigate whether measurements of collective mood states Read more about Twitter mood predicts the stock market[…]
Led by Steven Dubowsky, a professor in both the Department of Mechanical Engineering and the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics, and graduate students Amy Bilton and Leah Kelley, the group built a small prototype of the system last spring to test algorithms they had developed to run it. They have since demonstrated that the prototype Read more about Drinking water, from sunshine[…]
Farming spiders for their silk is very very difficult. Farming silkworms is easy. Spider silk is one of the strongest light materials known to man and is better for all kinds of things than hemp, including making lightweight bulletproof vests. GM silkworms to produce super spider silk | COSMOS magazine.
In a first step toward helping severely paralyzed people communicate more easily, Utah researchers have shown that it is possible to translate recorded brain waves into words, using a grid of electrodes placed directly on the brain. Although they have only done it with one person and individual words can only be identified with accuracy Read more about Electrodes translate brain waves into words – latimes.com[…]
IBM has published the most detailed map of a macaque brain ever, with 6602 of it’s pathways in 383 regions of the brain. Besides being pretty it’s very interesting
An upper layer of Earth s atmosphere recently collapsed in an unexpectedly large contraction the sheer size of which has scientists scratching their heads NASA announced Thursday. The layer of gas – called the thermosphere – is now rebounding again. This type of collapse is not rare but its magnitude shocked scientists. “This is the Read more about Thermosphere collapses and nobody knows why[…]
Scientists find antibodies that prevent most HIV strains from infecting human cells — Science Blog.
Not only that, but presenting people with facts can entrench them further in their beliefs. People willfully ignore facts that don’t correspond to their opinions. “This bodes ill for a democracy, because most voters — the people making decisions about how the country runs — aren’t blank slates. They already have beliefs, and a set Read more about People ignore facts, opinions are based on beliefs[…]
It could potentially also be used to regenerate bones Tooth Regeneration Gel Could Replace Painful Fillings : Discovery News.
Touch is both the first sense to develop and a critical means of information acquisition and environmental manipulation. Physical touch experiences may create an ontological scaffold for the development of intrapersonal and interpersonal conceptual and metaphorical knowledge, as well as a springboard for the application of this knowledge. In six experiments, holding heavy or light Read more about Incidental Haptic Sensations Influence Social Judgments and Decisions — Ackerman et al. 328 (5986): 1712 — Science[…]
Stem cells can be made to grow around a three dimensional scaffold in your mouth in as quick as around nine weeks. Much better than dental implants! Columbia University Medical Center Press Release.
The UK Metropolitan Police has been recording the frequency variations on the National Grid every second and a half for the past five years. When examining recordings, scientists are able to match the variations in the recordings with the database and establish exactly when the recording was made. If there are multiple matches, the recording Read more about Electrical network frequency analysis[…]
They now know where it is and where it’s going. Einstein said it couldn’t be done. Measurement of the Instantaneous Velocity of a Brownian Particle — Li et al., 10.1126/science.1189403 — Science.
Entangled photons have been able to instantaneously transmit their states over 500 m before, but the Chinese have managed to increase this range massively, allowing them to be used for communicative purposes. Quantum teleportation achieved over 16 km.
What they did is email genetic code to a machine, which constructed DNA and implanted that in a virus cell, after removing the old DNA. The synthetic DNA then reproduced and it’s reproductions also carried the synthetic DNA. The reproduction is the ‘life’ bit. They’re calling it Cynthia. Scientists Create First Synthetic Cell – WSJ.com.
YouTube – Stephen Wolfram: Computing a theory of everything.
Scientists have found the first multicellular animals that apparently live entirely without oxygen. The creatures reside deep in one of the harshest environments on earth: the Mediterranean Ocean's L'Atalante basin, which contains salt brine so dense that it doesn't mix with the oxygen-containing waters above. Previous samples taken from the water and sediments in the Read more about Animals That Live Without Oxygen discovered[…]
Chinese doctors have used arsenic in the treatment of APL (leukemia) with cure rates of 90% since 1992 without the side-effects of chemo (hair loss, suppression of bone marrow function). A paper from Shanghai shows that it works by targetting specific proteins that feed the cancer. China scientists show how arsenic treats blood cancer | Read more about Chinese scientists use arsenic to kill blood cancers[…]
Using Google search technology you can now browse through the entire archive of Popular Science magazine and read the old issues online. New! Browse the Complete PopSci Archive | Popular Science.
And we’ve known this since the 1890s. Experiments repeatedly show that multitasking basically makes you perform badly at any of the tasks you’re performing. Now, however, it turns out that not only do you do badly at the tasks, but it also destroys your capacity for reasoning. This article walks quickly through the history of Read more about Seriously: multitasking is bad for you![…]
A team of US research scientists have made a startling breakthrough in solar-cell development, creating flexible wire-based cell substrates that use just one per cent of the silicon needed for brittle and comparatively heavy conventional cells. Solar cells made from this material would not only be less expensive than current photovoltaics, but due to their Read more about Flexible, low weight solar cells[…]
Professor Jones [NB the guy who sent all the wierd emails that were uncovered revealing that data was spurious and that he’d hammer into the ground all global warming sceptic scientists] also conceded the possibility that the world was warmer in medieval times than now – suggesting global warming may not be a man-made phenomenon.And Read more about Climategate admitted – sort of[…]
These guys are doing huge wetware experiments in their own home, at a fraction of the cost of government / academic projects. They have a large community and have a repository of hardware plans to get you started for a fraction of the price of a full lab. DIY Bio: A Growing Movement Takes on Read more about DIY Biology[…]
The nanorobotic arm is built out of DNA origami: large strands of DNA gently encouraged to fold in precise ways by interaction with a few hundred short DNA strands. The products, around 100 nanometers in diameter, are eight times larger and three times more complex than what could be built with a simple crystalline DNA Read more about Nanoscale: Robot Arm Places Atoms and Molecules With 100% Accuracy[…]