Purdue University scientists have developed a new surgical glue that’s based on the proteins of sea mussels and other animals

Posted on July 26, 2017 by adminedit

Non-toxic glue modeled after adhesive proteins produced by mussels and other creatures has been found to out-perform commercially available products, pointing toward potential surgical glues to replace sutures and staples. More than 230 million major surgeries are performed worldwide each year, and over 12 million traumatic wounds are treated in the United States alone. About 60 percent of these wounds are closed using mechanical methods such as sutures and staples. “Sutures and staples have s...

University of Texas researcher have identified how pythons regenerate their organs and other secrets of the snake genome.

Posted on June 23, 2017 by adminedit

Evolution takes eons, but it leaves marks on the genomes of organisms that can be detected with DNA sequencing and analysis. As methods for studying and comparing genetic data improve, scientists are beginning to decode these marks to reconstruct the evolutionary history of species, as well as how variants of genes give rise to unique traits. A research team at the University of Texas at Arlington led by assistant professor of biology Todd Castoe has been exploring the genomes of snakes an...

Edward Via College of Osteopathic Medicine (VCOM) and Virginia Tech research study finds common household chemicals are responsible for diminished reproduction in mice

Posted on June 17, 2017 by adminedit

Edward Via College of Osteopathic Medicine (VCOM) and Virginia Tech researchers who were using a disinfectant when handling mice have discovered that two active ingredients in it cause declines in mouse reproduction. Although the chemicals responsible for the declines are common in household cleaning products and disinfectants used in medical and food preparation settings, including hand sanitizers, academic scientists have never published a rigorous study, until now, on their safety or toxicity...

University of Notre Dame have found that exposure to just 10 minutes of light at night suppresses biting and manipulates flight behavior in the Anopheles gambiae mosquito.

Posted on June 17, 2017 by adminedit

Scientists at the University of Notre Dame have found that exposure to just 10 minutes of light at night suppresses biting and manipulates flight behavior in the Anopheles gambiae mosquito, the major vector for transmission of malaria in Africa, according to new research published in the journal Parasites and Vectors. Critical behaviors exhibited by the species, such as feeding, egg laying and flying, are time-of-day specific, including a greater propensity for nighttime biting. A recent repo...

Rockefeller University have discovered tantalizing clues about the origins of our ability to understand what other people are thinking

Posted on May 19, 2017 by adminedit

Working with rhesus monkeys, researchers have identified a brain network dedicated to processing social interaction. Scientists call our ability to understand another person’s thoughts—to intuit their desires, read their intentions, and predict their behavior—theory of mind. It’s an essential human trait, one that is crucial to effective social interaction. But where did it come from? Working with rhesus macaque monkeys, researchers in Winrich Freiwald’s Laboratory of Neural Systems ...

Messerli Research Institute in Vienna research suggest Dogs are as smart as humans

Posted on April 9, 2017 by adminedit

Human communication is unique because it strongly relies on language as well as on the exceptional motivation of humans to share information with others. Identifying by means of words what someone is talking about is hardly available for non-human animals, but human as well as non-human animals can use the direction of others’ gaze and gestures to detect to which object or social partner others’ behaviour is referring to. https://youtu.be/crL6mn_LW28 Hence, following others’ gaze and g...

University of Maryland study has found that fruit flies genetically coded to take frequent naps had the strongest resistance to both a fungal infection and bacteria

Posted on March 30, 2017 by adminedit

University of Maryland study has found that fruit flies genetically coded to take frequent naps had the strongest resistance to both a fungal infection and bacteria that the World Health Organization says is one of the world’s most dangerous superbugs for humans. Researchers study the common fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster, because these tiny flies provide a great model system for studying issues important to human health. More than 70 percent of human disease-causing genes have a correspo...

Tufts University research were able to graft eyes onto tails of the Blind tadpoles and it was able to learn visually.

Posted on March 30, 2017 by adminedit

Blind tadpoles learn visually after researchers graft eyes onto tails and treat them with neurotransmitter drugs Blind tadpoles were able to process visual information from eyes grafted onto their tails after being treated with a small molecule neurotransmitter drug that augmented innervation, integration, and function of the transplanted organs, according to a paper published online today by researchers at the Allen Discovery Center at Tufts University in npj Regenerative Medicine, a Nature Re...

NYU research suggest brain size in primates can be predicted by diet.

Posted on March 28, 2017 by adminedit

Brain size in primates is predicted by diet, an analysis by a team of New York University anthropologists indicates. These results call into question “the social brain hypothesis,” which has posited that humans and other primates are big-brained due to factors pertaining to sociality. The findings, which appear in the journal Nature Ecology and Evolution, reinforce the notion that both human and non-human primate brain evolution may be driven by differences in feeding rather than in socializa...

Citizen science is the involvement of the public in scientific research – whether community-driven research or global investigations

Posted on February 6, 2017 by adminedit

Citizen science is the involvement of the public in scientific research – whether community-driven research or global investigations. The Citizen Science Association unites expertise from educators, scientists, data managers, and others to power citizen science. Join us, and help speed innovation by sharing insights across disciplines. https://youtu.be/UVuEsuk9Dgc Whether through grassroots action or technology-mediated crowdsourcing, there has been a rapid increase in public par...

Headset that can help boost your athletic performance using pulses of energy

Posted on January 26, 2017 by adminedit

Forget powders, pills, or shots — the fastest, most reliable way to boost your athletic performance might be inside your skull. The Halo Sport Neuropriming Headset uses pulses of energy to improve your training. Called neuropriming, it lets your motor cortex send stronger, more easily read signals to your muscles, so more fibers are activated with each rep, and strength is gained faster. Halo Neuroscience has released the first headphones for athletes. Research says sending targeted signals t...

Monkeys’ Use of Stone Tools Dates Back Hundreds of Years

Posted on July 13, 2016 by adminedit

A team from Oxford and the University of São Paulo in Brazil, found the earliest archaeological examples of monkey tool use outside of Africa. The research raises questions as to the origins and spread of tool use in New World monkeys and whether early human behaviour was influenced by observing monkeys using stones as tools. The researchers observed groups of modern capuchins at Serra da Capivara National Park in northeast Brazil, and combined this with archaeological...

‘Intelligent Knife’ Uses Desorption Electrospray Ionization and Rapid Evaporative Ionization MS for the rapid profiling of pathogens in human biofluid or tissue matrices

Posted on June 17, 2016 by adminedit

Scientists have developed an "intelligent knife" that can tell surgeons immediately whether the tissue they are cutting is cancerous or not. In the first study to test the invention in the operating theatre, the “iKnife” diagnosed tissue samples from 91 patients with 100 per cent accuracy, instantly providing information that normally takes up to half an hour to reveal using laboratory tests. The findings, by researchers at Imperial College London, are published today in the journal Scienc...

Walt Disney building smart toys and IOT devices

Posted on June 16, 2016 by adminedit

Walt Disney Co.'s lab network, together with scientists from MIT, the University of Washington and Carnegie Mellon, has developed systems that the company could use to help robots identify individuals, as well as to track everyday interactions between people and things. RapID is similar to an older Disney Research project called ID-Sense (see RFID for Reading People's Reactions). The goal of the ID-Sense project was to develop a system for identifying human-object interactions within a home o...

Smart Telescopic Contact Lens

Posted on June 11, 2016 by adminedit

Researchers in Switzerland are working to develop magnifying contact lenses that zoom in and out with a wink. The innovative new vision-enhancing system, the first of its kind, includes a set of telescopic lenses and smart glasses that can distinguish between blinks and winks so that the user can easily flick between zoomed and normal vision. The visual aids, which are still in the prototype stage, could be useful for those with visual impairment, which affects some 285 million people worl...

Electronic sensors that monitor temperature and pressure within the skull

Posted on May 3, 2016 by adminedit

Researchers have developed a new class of small, thin electronic sensors that monitor temperature and pressure within the skull – crucial health parameters after a brain injury or surgery – then melt away when no longer needed. This eliminates the need for additional surgery to remove the monitors and reduces the risk of infection and haemorrhage. Similar sensors can be adapted for postoperative monitoring in other body systems as well, the researchers say. Led by John A. Rogers, a professor ...

River pollution causes gender-bending in fish

Posted on April 12, 2016April 12, 2016 by adminedit

According to a recent report by the U.S. Geological Survey, male bass are experiencing sex changes due to chemicals that are found in most waterways across Northeast National Wildlife Refuges. Studies have found that up to 85% of male smallmouth bass in the region are demonstrating "characteristics of the opposite sex" – including eggs being located where testes should be. This isn't a one off – in fact, 27% of largemouth bass in the same region also show undesirable sex change indications. M...

Ford Is Testing Its Self-Driving Cars In The Dark

Posted on April 12, 2016 by adminedit

AUTONOMOUS RESEARCH VEHICLES USE LIDAR SENSOR TECHNOLOGY TO SEE IN THE DARK Ford tests Fusion Hybrid autonomous research vehicles at night, in complete darkness, as part of LiDAR sensor development – demonstrating the capability to perform beyond the limits of human drivers. Recent test at Ford Arizona Proving Ground shows how the company’s use of LiDAR technology and 3D maps work in conjunction to allow vehicles to drive without headlights on. Testing supports Ford Smart Mobility, the ...

NASA – Spider web in Zero Gravity

Posted on March 25, 2016 by adminedit

High school student Judith Miles Skylab experiment with Keith Demorest and Henry Floyd, both of Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC). In her experiment, called "Web Formation in Zero Gravity," spiders were released into a box and their actions recorded to determine how well they adapted to the absence of gravity. The experiment flew aboard the Skylab 3 mission and proved that spiders could still spin webs in microgravity. The experiement was designed to measure motor response, an indicat...

International Space Station Experiments

Posted on January 20, 2016January 20, 2016 by adminedit

Drosophila Motility, Behaviour and Ageing The main scientific objectives of the experiment are to study in more detail the mechanisms of the abnormal motility response encountered in space by young flies with consequences on the posterior aging response of the flies. For this purpose, three different fly strains with different phenotypes are used, in four configurations. The three strains are a long-lived strain, a short-lived strain and a strain showing an abnormal gravitropic resp...

New kind of insecticide

Posted on December 18, 2015 by smerchantny@gmail.com

Researchers at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana are studying Ants to come up with new ways to get rid of them. One of the most common house ant species might have been built for living in some of the smallest spaces in a forest, but the ants have found ways to take advantage of the comforts of city living. Grzegorz Buczkowski, a Purdue University research assistant professor of entomology, found that odorous house ant colonies become larger and more complex as they move from forest...

Regenerating teeth now possible

Posted on November 4, 2015November 4, 2015 by smerchantny@gmail.com

Using lasers to regenerate and grow body parts sounds like science fiction, but researchers have just demonstrated that it might be a tranformative tool in medicine—or at least dentistry—in the future. A Harvard-led team just successfully used low-powered lasers to activate stem cells and stimulate the growth of teeth in rats and human dental tissue in a lab. The results were published today in the journal Science Translational Medicine. Stem cells exist throughout the body, and they fasci...

Smart Mice with half Human brain

Posted on November 3, 2015November 3, 2015 by smerchantny@gmail.com

Smart Mice with half Human brain Mice have been created whose brains are half human. As a result, the animals are smarter than their siblings by professors at the University of Rochester Medical Center in New York. The idea is not to mimic fiction, but to advance our understanding of human brain diseases by studying them in whole mouse brains rather than in dishes. The altered mice still have mouse neurons – the “thinking” cells that make up around half of all their brain cells. But pra...

GMO – Genetically Modified Organisms

Posted on November 1, 2015 by smerchantny@gmail.com

Designer Babies Genetically modified babies have DNA from three different adults. Although having DNA from more than two sources can occur naturally (as in the cases of microchimerism and tetragametic chimerism), these 15 babies were created with a method called “cytoplasmic transfer,” which had been banned by the FDA. The method was initially developed to save female eggs that had been difficult to fertilize and was showing much promise—until tracking the growth of the genetically modified b...

Antiviral compound fully protects monkeys from Ebola

Posted on October 17, 2015 by adminedit

Rhesus monkeys were completely protected from the deadly Ebola virus when treated three days after infection with a compound that blocks the virus's ability to replicate. These encouraging preclinical results suggest the compound, known as GS-5734, should be further developed as a potential treatment, according to research findings to be presented tomorrow at the IDWeek conference. Travis Warren, Ph.D., a principal investigator at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Disease...

On Understanding Sleep

Posted on October 11, 2015 by adminedit

Scientists find what controls waking up and going to sleep. The latest finding from an Indian-American circadian rhythms expert at Northwestern University is that he has discovered how an animal’s biological clock wakes it up in the morning and puts it to sleep at night. In a study of brain circadian neurons that govern the daily sleep-wake cycle’s timing, doctor Ravi Allada and his team found that high sodium channel activity in these neurons during the day turn the cells on and ultimatel...

Combination drug therapy shrinks pancreatic tumors in mice

Posted on September 30, 2015 by adminedit

A combination of two drugs appears to be effective at shrinking pancreatic cancers in laboratory mice Pancreatic cancer is one of the most deadly of all human cancers, and its incidence is increasing. A combination of two drugs, one already approved by the Food and Drug Administration, appears to be effective at shrinking pancreatic cancers in laboratory mice, according to a new study by researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine. The drugs, which affect the structure and fu...