Technology

Phylo: Crowdsourcing Genomic Research

Over the past three years, 300,000 gamers have helped scientists with genomic research by playing Phylo, an online puzzle game that is a cross between Tetris, Rubik's cube and an old-fashioned sliding-tile puzzle game. As gamers line up colored recta ...

Article - News Staff - Oct 24 2013 - 11:24am

Glucose Testing: Measuring Blood Sugar In Skin Cells Light

Living with Type 1 and Type 2 diabetes means constant awareness of blood glucose (sugar) levels to ensure they remain stable. People do this at home using electronic devices that read sugar levels in a tiny drop of blood but a team of German researchers h ...

Article - News Staff - Oct 27 2013 - 8:22am

PubMed Commons: Post-Publication Peer Review Goes Mainstream

I have written a lot about how I think the biggest problem in science communication today is the disproportionate value we place on where papers are published when assessing the validity and import of a work of science, and the contribution of its authors ...

Article - Michael Eisen - Oct 30 2013 - 8:00am

SORT-OUT VI Trial Results

Both drug-eluting stents (DES) with biocompatible polymers and DES with biodegradable polymers were associated with low major adverse coronary events, demonstrating the non-inferiority of the biocompatible polymer stents in patients undergoing percutaneou ...

Article - News Staff - Oct 31 2013 - 9:00am

Rise Of The Machines- AI Can Play Angry Birds Like A Human

A  team at Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne has won an international artificial intelligence competition by creating software that can play the famous video game "Angry Birds" like a human. If you have never seen "Angry Birds”, the g ...

Article - News Staff - Oct 30 2013 - 12:05pm

Now Broadcasting From The Moon At Laser Speeds

NASA's Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE) was launched in early September and arrived in orbit around the Moon in October. Its mission is to probe the Moon’s environment but it’s also carrying an interesting piece of technology- a ...

Article - News Staff - Nov 2 2013 - 11:26am

Singularity Update: New Transistor Mimics The Behavior Of A Synapse

The world's best supercomputers are staggeringly inefficient and energy-intensive machines and the human brain is staggering in its own right; putting a brain's information into CDs would require a skyscraper full of them and, unlike MP3s, there ...

Article - News Staff - Nov 3 2013 - 11:06am

Minority Report Future: Computer Model Anticipates Burglary Hot Spots

A new computer model says it can predict, by census block group, where burglaries are likely to occur. Using the model developed by a University of California Riverside sociologist Prof. Robert Nash Parker, the Indio police department in souther Californi ...

Article - News Staff - Nov 4 2013 - 10:57am

Bio Patch That Can Regenerate Bone

A bio patch  bone-regeneration kit uses a collagen platform seeded with particles containing the genes needed for producing bone to regenerate missing or damaged bone- basically, it puts DNA into a nano-sized particle that delivers bone-producing instruct ...

Article - News Staff - Nov 7 2013 - 11:37am

EcoBot Robot Can Collect Human Waste And Convert It Into Electricity

EcoBot, a robot that can function completely on its own by collecting waste and converting it into electricity, has an "engine room" that is modeled on the human heart.The artificial device incorporates shape memory alloys- smart materials- and ...

Article - News Staff - Nov 8 2013 - 11:52am