The Augmented BNCI Communication projects has developed a new brain-computer interface system to enhance communication skills of people with cerebral palsys.

Cerebral palsy is a chronic movement disability affects between 2 and 3 per 1,000 people. People with Dyskinetic Cerebral Palsy (DCP), 15% of the cases, have normal intelligence ability but cannot speak or express themselves due to lack of motor control. "Since they cannot express themselves, these children do not connect with other people and end up not developing their intelligence," says Biomechanics Institute of Valencia (IBV) researcher Juanma Belda.

According to a new global-scale projection, terrestrial vegetation emits several million tons of extremely low-volatility organic compounds (ELVOCs) per year to the atmosphere, which affect cloud seeds via formation of low-volatility vapors. These oxidation products of compounds such as monoterpenes results in an increase of condensing vapors that can further form cloud condensation nuclei over the continents and have an influence on the formation of clouds.

The results show how a number of natural compounds, which together account for around 70 percent of the biological hydrocarbon emissions, produce low-volatility products and how they can possibly effect the climate via aerosol particles. 

In America, where there is a two-party system, there are numerous opportunities to compromise or cross party lines politically, so looking at where someone falls on a conservative-liberal graph lines doesn't tell us much about how they will vote. Democrats receive over 90 percent of education union donations, for example, so no left-right model predicted that the education reform known as No Child Left Behind would pass  91-8 in the Senate and 384-41 in the House.

A new adjustable female shoe based on memory shape composite of leather and Nitinol material allows fitting the shoe to the foot shape after obtaining anthropometric measurements through a portable scanner and modifying it with a machine that completes the process directly in the shop. The "InstantShoe" prototype expected to be out on the market at the end of 2015.

A new study has found that endocrine disrupting chemicals--which can interfere with the actions of hormones in the body--are present in some plastic teethers for babies, and the chemicals can leach out of the products.

Investigators detected significant endocrine activity in 2 of 10 plastic teethers. One teether contained methyl-, ethyl- and propylparaben, while the second contained at least 6 different endocrine disrupting compounds that remain so far unidentified.

A class of FDA-approved cancer drugs may be able to prevent problems with brain cell development associated with disorders including Down syndrome and Fragile X syndrome, researchers at the University of Michigan Life Sciences Institute have found.

The researchers' proof-of-concept study using fruit fly models of brain dysfunction was published today in the journal eLife. They show that giving the leukemia drugs nilotinib or bafetinib to fly larvae with the equivalent of Fragile X prevented the wild overgrowth of neuron endings associated with the disorder. Meanwhile, the drugs--both tyrosine-kinase inhibitors--did not adversely affect the development or neuronal growth in healthy flies.