A team of Harvard statisticians has come up with a new way to track the flu virus using Internet search data. The system uses a method that has been used before, tracking searchers for key words and phrases, but has coupled it with additional data to improve its accuracy. The new model, ARGO (AutoRegression with Google search data), was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and was built on Google Flu Trends, which was Google’s flu tracking model that emerged in 200...

A surgically implantable, artificial kidney could be a promising alternative to kidney transplantation or dialysis for people with end stage renal disease (ESRD). Currently, more than 20 million Americans have kidney diseases, and more than 600,000 patients are receiving treatment for ESRD. U.S. government statistics indicate kidney care costs the U.S. health care system $40 billion annually, accounting for more than 6 percent of Medicare spending. “We aim to conduct clinical trials on an implan...

Researchers from the Department of Energy’s (DOE's) Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) have created a hybrid optical microscope/mass spectrometry-based imaging system capable of observing and analyzing specimens simultaneously. They have created a hybrid optical microscope, which also features a mass spectrometry-based imaging system. This new device paves the way for advance developments in the areas of chemical and pharmaceutical sciencesThe new device does not require any type of pretreatme...

Can you imagine burning your fingertips or feel that ice freezes your hand as you interact with a program of virtual reality? The Mexican company Vivoxie created Power Claw, a pair of gloves with an interface that stimulates the skin and allows the sense of touch in cyber worlds.The device generate the sensation of heat, cold, vibration and roughness of objects that are part of a virtual reality. The gloves are complemented with Oculus Rift glasses. Designed to work with the Oculus Rift virtu...

A recent analysis indicates that women who work 55 hours or more per week have a 30% higher risk of having a stroke than those working standard hours, making them just as likely to have a stroke as their male counterparts. The analysis was conducted by European public health re-searchers. It involved data from over 600,000 women and men enrolled in long-term observational studies in Europe and the United States. It was the first such analysis of the relationship between working long hours and st...

A McMaster PhD candidate has harnessed a component naturally found in tears to develop a contact lens-based drug delivery system for glaucoma patients. Chemical engineer Myrto Korogiannaki has used hyaluronic acid to help get drugs to the eye from a lens in a controlled way. Patients with front-of-the-eye diseases, such as glaucoma, traditionally use medicated eye drops twice a day to treat their ailment. But those drops are incredibly inefficient as only about five per cent of the drug they car...

MARTY was built in collaboration with Renovo Motors, an automotive start-up based in Silicon Valley that specializes in building advanced electric vehicle technology. Working closely together gave the Stanford team early access to a brand new platform derived from Renovo's electric supercar that delivers 4,000 pound-feet from on-motor gearboxes to the rear wheels in a fraction of a second, allowing precise control of the forces required to drift. "Stanford is a world leader in autonomous vehi...

Samsung promises that flexible and foldable screens are coming to devices soon. The company’s latest patent, which was spotted by Patently Mobile, is for a flexible phone that morphs into a smart bangle you can strap onto your wrist. It’s an entirely bizarre and futuristic idea that certainly puts more focus on accessibility than style, but it sure sounds awesome. The patent features a flexible OLED screen that’s so flexible you can curl it into a bracelet and wear it on your wrist as a smart...

A team of scientists from Stanford University is testing a new “tricorder” technology able to remotely detect abnormal matter, such as buried plastic explosives or even early stage cancers in humans, by manipulating microwaves and ultrasound. The new “radio frequency (RF)/ultrasound hybrid imaging system,” the brainchild of Assistant Professor Amin Arbabian and Research Professor Pierre Khuri-Yakub, was designed for remote detection of embedded objects in a number of different kinds of matter, i...

Scientists have discovered a new chemical that could reverse cataracts, one of the leading causes of blindness. This new substance could be used in eye drops, greatly simplifying the treatment and making it accessible to the general population at a low price and without intrusive procedures. A cataract is a clouding of the lens in the eye leading to a decrease in vision. It can affect one or both eyes, generally evolves slowly, and causes about 50% of all the blindness cases in the world. Catara...

Jellyfish and lampreys have among the most energy-efficient swimming motions of any animal. From a long time, researchers have assumed that in order to move forward, fly or swim, humans and animals exert pressure on surface, air or water around them. But a new study published in the journal Nature Communications has revealed that two sea animals do not follow the general theory. Jellyfish and lampreys pull their way through the water, as per the study. A Stanford led team shows how these anci...

The Large Hadron Collider began its second run of experiments in June after a two-year hiatus from being the world’s largest particle accelerator. And the results are promising, achieving the highest energy ever achieved in a laboratory by colliding subatomic particles at 13 teraelectronvolts (TeV), physicists hope that these high-energy collisions may produce entirely new particles and simulate conditions seen in the early universe, according to an MIT statement.Soon to be published in Physics ...

The analysis of MRI scans of the ageing hearts of nearly 3,000 adults was led by investigators at Johns Hopkins.' Our results are a striking demonstration of the concept that heart disease may have different pathophysiology in men and women and of the need for tailored treatments that address such important biologic differences,' said João Lima of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, who led the research. Published in the journal Radiology, this is believed to be the first long-term ...

The brainchild of aerospace engineer, RMIT alumnus and senior research associate Dr James Waldie, the SkinSuit has been worn by an astronaut inside the International Space Station (ISS) for the first time. Denmark’s first astronaut, Andreas Mogensen, spent 10 days in the ISS last month and pulled on the SkinSuit to test its effectiveness in the weightless conditions. Inspired by the striking bodysuit worn by Cathy Freeman at the 2000 Sydney Olympics, Waldie and his collaborators have spent more ...

Researchers at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) have designed the first on-chip metamaterial with a refractive index of zero, meaning that the phase of light can travel infinitely fast.,This new metamaterial was developed in the lab of Eric Mazur, the Balkanski Professor of Physics and Applied Physics and Area Dean for Applied Physics at SEAS, and is described in the journal Nature Photonics. “Light doesn’t typically like to be squeezed or manipula...

Tellspec Food Sensor is the world’s first consumer handled device able to scan food at a molecular level. It provides you with the most relevant and useful information about what is in your food so you can make an informed decision that better matches your health needs. The technology includes a three-part system ,a pocket-sized sensor, a cloud-based analysis engine, and a mobile app that work together to scan foods, identify calories, macronutrients, allergens, fiber, sugars, and also provide r...

People who have more than 11 moles on their right arm could have a higher risk of skin cancer. Researchers at King’s College London have investigated a new method that could be used by GPs to quickly determine the number of moles on the entire body by counting the number found on a smaller ‘proxy’ body area, such as an arm. Naevus (mole) count is one of the most important markers of risk for skin cancer despite only 20 to 40 per cent of melanoma arising from pre-existing moles. The risk is thoug...

Scientists are developing next-generation battery-free implantable pacemakers that may be powered by an unlikely source, the heart itself. The advancement is based upon a piezoelectric system that converts vibrational energy, created inside the chest by each heartbeat, into electricity to power the pacemaker. "Essentially, we're creating technology that will allow pacemakers to be powered by the very heart that they are regulating," said M Amin Karami, assistant professor of mechanical engineeri...

Parts produced by some commercial 3D printers may be toxic, according to a new study that raises concerns about how to dispose of parts and waste materials from the devices which are becoming increasingly popular. Researchers at the University of California, Riverside studied two common types of 3D printers, one that melts plastic to build a part, and another that uses light to turn a liquid into a solid part. They found that parts from both types of printers were measurably toxic to zebrafish e...

Tanvas’ surface haptics technology allows you, for the first time, to feel what you see on a touchscreen, the edges of keys, the snap of a toggle switch, the swipe of a turned page or the direction and magnitude of impacts in a game. The company is poised to change the way people interact with touchscreens across essentially every industry, from automotive to education, from retail to medical, from consumer electronics to industrial applications. The technology sends ultrasonic sound waves th...

For the first time ever, molecular oxygen has been found on a comet. Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko, currently being orbited by the European Space Agency's Rosetta spacecraft, is the subject of a study published in Nature. According to ESA researchers, the oxygen present in the comet's surrounding gasses has likely been there since the formation of the comet. "It is the most surprising discovery we have made so far, because oxygen was not among the molecules expected in a cometary coma," the Un...

New research finds that one night of sleep deprivation and six months on a high-fat diet could both impair insulin sensitivity to a similar degree, demonstrating the importance of a good night’s sleep on health. This study, conducted by Josiane Broussard, PhD, and colleagues from Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, CA, used a canine model to examine whether sleep deprivation and a high-fat diet affect insulin sensitivity in similar ways. When the body becomes less sensitive to insulin (i...

The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2015 has been awarded to Tomas Lindahl, Paul Modrich and Aziz Sancar “for mechanistic studies of DNA repair.” The three scientists outlined chemical pathways that cells in living things, including human beings, use to repair damaged DNA. "Their work has provided fundamental knowledge of how a living cell functions and is, for instance, used for the development of new cancer treatments," the academy said. The organization tweeted graphics explaining the scientists'...

NASA’s Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) mission has identified the process that appears to have played a key role in the transition of the Martian climate from an early, warm and wet environment that might have supported surface life to the cold, arid planet Mars is today. Scientists studying Mars’ atmosphere say solar storms probably played a big role in transforming the Red Planet from the warm, hospitable place it was billions of years ago to the cold world it is today. The miss...

A team of astronomers, led by Istvan Dékány of the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, has used data from the survey, taken between 2010 and 2014, to make a remarkable discovery, a previously unknown component of our home galaxy, the Milky Way. “The central bulge of the Milky Way is thought to consist of vast numbers of old stars. But the VISTA data has revealed something new, and very young by astronomical standards!” says Istvan Dékány, lead author of the new study. Analysing data fro...

A toxin in Polybia paulista's sting reportedly kills tumor cells without harming healthy ones. It seems like an oxymoron, but scientists say the venom of Polybia paulista, a wasp native to Brazil, fits that description. According to a study published in the Biophysical Journal this week, the wasp’s venom contains a toxin, named MP1, that selectively destroys tumor cells without harming normal ones. The BBC called the venom a potentially powerful “weapon against cancer.” In lab tests, MP1 was ...

Lack of adequate sleep can do more than just make you tired. It can short-circuit your system and interfere with a fundamental cellular process that drives physical growth, physiological adaptation and even brain activity, according to a new study from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Albrecht von Arnim, a molecular biologist based in the Department of Biochemistry and Cellular and Molecular Biology, studied plants but said the concepts may well translate to humans. His team examined h...

Scientists from Stanford University and the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory have made the first direct images showing that electrical currents can flow along the boundaries between tiny magnetic regions of a material that normally doesn’t conduct electricity. The results could have major implications for magnetic memory storage. "This can provide a more straightforward way to use magnetic material as memory,” said Eric Yue Ma, a graduate student in the laboratory of Z...

A research led by scientists from the University of the Pacific holds new possibilities for the treatment of cancer and other diseases using peptide drugs. The researchers concocted a technique to considerably enhance the lifespan of peptides such that they could be used more efficiently. Peptides are small chains of amino acids, the building blocks of proteins. Treating diseases like cancer by using peptides is thought to be effective because they can be more potent, and safer to use than large...

Researchers from the University of Alexandria have developed a cheaper, simpler and potentially cleaner way to turn seawater into drinking water than conventional methods. This could have a huge impact on rural areas of the Middle East and North Africa, where access to clean water is a pressing issue if social stability and economic development is to improve. Right now, desalinating seawater is the only viable way to provide water to growing populations, and large desalination plants are now a f...