The normally diurnal birds don't need time to adjust their circadian clocks before departing for their winter habitats Each year, billions of songbirds set out on autumn evenings to fly to their wintering grounds, necessitating a change of daily rhythm for the usually diurnal animals. Scientists had always assumed that the birds gradually adjusted their rhythm, but new technology has now enabled researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology in Radolfzell, with international partners...

NASA’s Glenn Research Center in Cleveland has signed its first commercial Startup licensing agreement with AirFlare LLC in Nashville, Tennessee to productize the Glenn-patented Portable Unit for Metabolic Analysis, or PUMA. This agreement makes AirFlare the go-to source for the public to access NASA technology in the fitness market. Startup NASA is a new opportunity offered by NASA’s Technology Transfer Program. Startup companies can apply to license patented NASA technology with no up-front pa...

This technology is a device that uses electrical activity to facilitate the wound healing process while protecting the wound. The bandage is made of an electroactive material (pictured above) that is stimulated by the heat of the body and the pressure of cell growth, thus no external power source is required. NASA has developed a high-tech electroactive bandage that creates an electric charge to help promote the healing process of wounds. Electroactive material is so sensitive that a push ...

Millions of people worldwide need glasses or contact lenses to see or read properly. We introduce a computational display technology that predistorts the presented content for an observer, so that the target image is perceived without the need for eyewear. By designing optics in concert with prefiltering algorithms, the proposed display architecture achieves significantly higher resolution and contrast than prior approaches to vision-correcting image display. We demonstrate that inexpensive ligh...

Most people notice that they naturally experience different levels of sleepiness and alertness throughout the day, but what causes these patterns? Sleep is regulated by two body systems: sleep/wake homeostasis and the circadian biological clock . When we have been awake for a long period of time, sleep/wake homeostasis tells us that a need for sleep is accumulating and that it is time to sleep. It also helps us maintain enough sleep throughout the night to make up for the hours of being awake...

Astronauts know their bodies will be tested during time spent on the International Space Station, from the 15 daily sunrises and sunsets wreaking havoc on their circadian rhythms to the lack of gravity that weakens bone density and muscle. NASA is working to counteract these otherworldly challenges to enable long-term human exploration of space. For example, special lighting helps with sleep, and rigorous exercise helps keep astronauts’ bodies strong. But, frustratingly, bone loss continue...

Turn Your Smartphone into Any Kind of Sensor It started when NASA answered a call for a tool to detect dangerous gases and chemicals with a smartphone. The result became a smartphone-linked device that can do, well, just about anything someone can build a sensor for. The NODE+ platform can be outfitted with an array of different sensor modules for detecting light, gases, temperature, motion and more. It can store data or transmit it to a smart device using Bluetooth wireles...

NASA Ames Research Center received an unusual call for help: a local woman was still bleeding weeks after giving birth, despite every attempt to halt it — including nine surgeries. Her condition, known as postpartum hemorrhage, can result from a number of different complications during childbirth. Left untreated, it can prove fatal. Ames researchers and engineers proposed applying pressure to the woman’s entire lower body using an inflated anti-gravity suit, or G-suit — like tightly wrapping ...

Nanoparticles known as Cornell dots, or C dots, have shown great promise as a therapeutic tool in the detection and treatment of cancer. Now, the ultrasmall particles – developed more than a dozen years ago by Ulrich Wiesner, the Spencer T. Olin Professor of Engineering – have shown they can do something even better: kill cancer cells without attaching a cytotoxic drug. A study led by Michelle Bradbury, director of intraoperative imaging at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and associ...

Researchers have discovered that a protein found naturally in cells that provides some protection from viruses is responsible for creating mutations that drive resistance to tamoxifen treatment in breast cancer. Because the protein, known as APOBEC3B, is found in elevated quantities in other kinds of cancer cells, the finding explains differential responses to treatment and opens the door to boosting the effectiveness of tamoxifen and related breast cancer therapies that inhibit the ability of e...

Far too many diseases do not have a proven means of prevention or effective treatments. We must gain better insights into the biological, environmental, and behavioral influences on these diseases to make a difference for the millions of Americans who suffer from them. Precision medicine is an emerging approach for disease treatment and prevention that takes into account individual variability in genes, environment, and lifestyle for each person. While some advances in precision medicine have be...

Photoswitches are a family of small-molecules designed to photo-modulate the activity of specific signaling proteins: One color turns the protein ‘on’; a different color turns it ‘off’. Photoswitches were conceived at the Nanomedicine Development Center for the Optical Control of Biological Function at UC Berkeley Light-sensitive proteins are changing the way scientists study how new drug candidates affect critical properties of heart and nerve cells. The proteins, discovered by Max Planck re...

When was the last time you experienced inconvenient train delays? Do you wish that railway companies could do a better job of predicting when breakdowns will occur? Whereas in the past, maintenance traditionally consisted of checking rail vehicles at designated operating centers on a regular basis to resolve obvious problems and maintain machines, digital technologies are opening the door to a new level of service. Siemens' Allach locomotive plant on the outskirts of Munich is a high-tech ...

Nanoscale secondary ion mass spectrometry (nanoSIMS or nano secondary ion mass spectrometry) is a nanoscopic scale resolution chemical imaging mass spectrometer based on secondary ion mass spectrometry. It works based on a coaxial optical design of the ion gun and the secondary ion extraction, and on an original magnetic sector mass spectrometer with multicollection. NanoSIMS not only refers to the technique used, but also the mass spectrometer specialized for this method. There are currently...

Natural light has all kinds of health benefits: improving sleep, mood, metabolism, and even workplace performance. But every room has its dark spaces, and sometimes you can’t avoid turning the lights on when it’s sunny out—wasteful as it seems. Sit the globe-like smart mirror in a sunny spot, orient its “pointer” toward where you want more light, and it will do the rest. The solar-powered Lucy, equipped with photo sensors and photovoltaic cells, will tilt its mirror to follow the sun, ensurin...

Researchers have shown that when parts of a genome known as enhancers are missing, the heart works abnormally, a finding that bolsters the importance of DNA segments once considered “junk” because they do not code for specific proteins. On the left, a mouse embryo showing enhancer activity (blue staining) in the developing heart. On the right, a closeup of this heart, showing that the enhancer is active in the left ventricle, left atrium, and right atrium of the heart. (Credit: Mammalian Func...

A high-glycemic load diet is linked to higher depression symptoms, fatigue and mood disturbance compared to a low-glycemic load diet, a new study finds. The glycemic load (GL) helps people assess how food portions affect blood sugar levels, and can be useful for people with diabetes who may be unsure about how a meal could affect their management. Foods with a high GL are those with a high carbohydrate value that influence blood glucose levels quickly. Bread, rice and many breakfast cereal...

At some point in their lives, 15 percent of people with diabetes will develop a painful and hard-to-treat foot ulcer. Twenty-four percent of those affected will require a lower-leg amputation because of it. And, in some instances, what seems like a harmless sore might even lead to death. A Northwestern Engineering team has developed a new treatment for this severe and potentially deadly complication of diabetes. Called a “regenerative bandage,” the novel material heals diabetic wounds four ti...

A Chinese government-backed company intends to fly up to 20 passengers to the edge of space, more than any other commercial space travel firm is currently planning. The China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology has designed a winged rocket that takes off under its own power (it doesn’t need to be carried to a high altitude by another aircraft, as is the case with many of the other proposed space tourism projects). “The vehicle will take off vertically like a rocket and land on the runway aut...

The Saver Emergency Breath System is a personal life saving device that allows you to breathe clean air in the event of a fire. Saver helps prevent smoke inhalation which is the leading cause of fire fatalities. Saver filters chemical substances and removes carbon monoxide and toxic gases giving you up to 5 minutes of breathable air—Enough to get you and your family safely out of the house during a fire. https://youtu.be/XAaZjtjcHZA Triple Filter Technology Saver is designed with a tripl...

Northwestern Medicine scientists, working with the Pediatric Emergency Care Applied Research Network (PECARN), recently assessed whether an RNA biosignature of the body’s response to infection could distinguish if infants 60 days or younger with fever were experiencing a serious bacterial infection. The results, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, show how RNA biosignatures may be an alternative – and more accurate – method to identify infants with bacterial infectio...

Phototactic behaviour directs some bacteria towards light and others into darkness: This enables them to utilize solar energy as efficiently as possible for their metabolism, or, otherwise, protects them from excessive light intensity. A team of researchers headed by Clemens Bechinger from the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems and the University of Stuttgart, as well as colleagues from the University of Düsseldorf have now found a surprisingly simple way to direct synthetic microswimm...

A team of 13 students from the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, VA, has earned First Place in NASA’s 2015-2016 University Aeronautics Design Challenge for their concept of an electric-powered, commuter-sized airplane featuring “green aviation” technologies. Sponsored by NASA’s Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate, the engineering design contest specifically asked students to incorporate distributed electric propulsion, or DEP, in their concept for an airplane that could enter se...

Developing oral care products to prevent and treat oral diseases requires model systems to test the potential therapies before applying them to humans. However, the ability of current models to accurately reflect human oral physiology or predict the effects of therapies on the human disease state is limited, and can be a rate limiting stage of the development process. Colgate-Palmolive is working with Draper to create an advanced gum tissue model that improves the predictive power of the testing...

MolecuLight i:X uses the principle of fluorescence to capture and document either still images or videos of wounds as well as their surrounding areas where potentially harmful bacteria may be present, without the need of contrast agents. MolecuLight’s first product, the i:X, is a handheld fluorescence imaging device that allows clinicians to quickly, safely, and easily visualize and precisely target bacterial presence and distribution in and around wounds, in real-time at the point-of-care. T...

San Francisco-based digital health startup Augmedix is now trying to establish a mass market for Google Glass in the healthcare industry. Augmedix, which adapted Google Glass to help doctors take notes as they examine patients, is earning revenues from hundreds of physicians who subscribe to the company’s service, CEO Ian Shakil says. Augmedix, founded in 2012 by Shakil, now counts users in almost all U.S. states. Every day, the company says, about 5,000 patients see a doctor who wears a G...

Chemical contrast has long been sought for label-free visualization of biomolecules and materials in complex living systems. Although infrared spectroscopic imaging has come a long way in this direction, it is thus far only applicable to dried tissues because of the strong infrared absorption by water. It also suffers from low spatial resolution due to long wavelengths and lacks optical sectioning capabilities. We overcome these limitations through sensing vibrational absorption–induced photothe...

Sound can now be structured in three dimensions. Researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems and the University of Stuttgart have found a way of generating acoustic holograms, which could improve ultrasound diagnostics and material testing. The holograms can also be used to move and manipulate particles. Shaped with ultrasound: Max Planck researchers from Stuttgart transmit ultrasonic waves through a bath of water © Kai Melde / MPI for Intelligent Systems Pee...

Northwestern University research team has developed a 3-D printable ink that produces a synthetic bone implant that rapidly induces bone regeneration and growth. This hyperelastic “bone” material, the shape of which can be easily customized, one day could be especially useful for the treatment of bone defects in children. Bone implantation surgery is never an easy process, but it is particularly painful and complicated for children. With both adults and children, often times bone is harvested...

Researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Leipzig and the University, have identified neural mechanisms that help us understand whether a difficult and complex social situation is emotionally positive or negative. “When someone offends you while smiling, should your brain interpret it as a smile or an offense? The mechanism we found includes two areas in the brain that act almost as ‘remote controls’ that together determine what value to attribute to a s...