SISSA Trieste, Italy research on sense of smell during infancy and adolescence

Posted on December 16, 2016December 16, 2016 by

Psychologists and neuroscientists have thoroughly investigated olfactory behaviours in newborns and adults, but relatively little is known about the characteristics of the sense of smell during infancy and adolescence. SISSA - Scuola Internazionale Superiore di Studi Avanzati - International School for Advanced Studies In a study carried out by SISSA in collaboration with the Please Touch Museum of Philadelphia (an interactive science museum for children), over 150 children aged 3 to 11...

Cyber Valley Germany-Science and industry form one of Europe’s largest research partnerships in artificial intelligence

Posted on December 15, 2016 by

Intelligent systems will shape our future: they could drive us as autonomous cars, help us out in the home on a daily basis or perform medical services as tiny robots. An initiative by the Max Planck Society and the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems in the Stuttgart-Tübingen area is bringing together partners from science and industry to establish Cyber Valley where systems can be developed that will be capable of performing such feats. Winfried Kretschmann, Minister-President of Bade...

University of Minnesota has developed a prototype that allows people to control a robotic arm using only their brain.

Posted on December 15, 2016 by

Researchers at the University of Minnesota have made a major breakthrough that allows people to control a robotic arm using only their minds. The research has the potential to help millions of people who are paralyzed or have neurodegenerative diseases. The study is published online today in Scientific Reports, a Nature research journal. View a University of Minnesota video of the research subjects in action. “This is the first time in the world that people can operate a robotic arm t...

MIT’s Study On – Tuning Social Networks to Gain the Wisdom of the Crowd

Posted on December 14, 2016 by

eToro OpenBook enables investors to view, follow and copy the network's top traders automatically. As we engage more with social networking sites, there is always the danger of a “group think” mentality–when people follow a group consensus rather than critically evaluate information; make decisions without guidance from the social network; or follow “gurus” who provide them with bad information. So how do we avoid these errors and maximize the “wisdom of the crowd”? Part of the answer may ...

Max Planck’s reserach discribes, how eyes form pictures at a cellular level by arranging neurons into distinct layers

Posted on December 12, 2016 by

How cells set the stage for the visual world Researchers reveal the crucial first step that forms the different layers of the retina The retina consists of different layers of neurons. Emerging neurons have to migrate to find the right position in the appropriate layer. However, how these migration events are executed and orchestrated is poorly understood. Researchers at the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics (MPI-CBG) in Dresden now studied how the first layer of neur...

Berkeley National Laboratory researchers have new understanding of metastability clears path for next-generation materials

Posted on December 11, 2016 by

They say diamonds are forever, but diamonds in fact are a metastable form of carbon that will slowly but eventually transform into graphite, another form of carbon. Being able to design and synthesize other long-lived, thermodynamically metastable materials could be a potential gold mine for materials designers, but until now, scientists lacked a rational understanding of them. Now researchers at the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have published a ...

Researchers at the University of Tokyo found that a protein called parafibromin acts like a computer logic board within the cell by integrating and converting multiple disparate signals from the outside into appropriate responses.

Posted on December 11, 2016 by

Newly discovered protein converts multiple signal inputs into appropriate cellular outputs Study finds molecule that functions as cellular “logic board” Researchers at the University of Tokyo found that a protein called parafibromin acts like a computer logic board within the cell by integrating and converting multiple disparate signals from the outside into appropriate responses. This finding paves the way for the development of innovative therapeutics and preventive measures against cancer...

Dobot M1. First Industrial Robotic Arm for Small Business and Home

Posted on December 10, 2016 by

Dobot M1 is a Professional SCARA based robotic arm with interchangeable heads for small business, educators and Innovators. You can program the arm to do various automated function in a manufacturing plant, it can enhance your efficiency in production line with picking and placing feature, visual system and more. Innovators can use it for 3d printing, double color 3d print, 3d print on rail, laser engrave on wood, plastic, paper, leather, soldering, drawing, painting, picking...

Create tomorrow’s innovators and idea-makers with littleBits electronic building blocks, a platform for large and small inventions for kids

Posted on December 10, 2016 by

'LittleBits' is a platform for large and small inventions for kids. The kit includes electronic building blocks that snap-on with magnet and allow kids to build projects in minutes. We spend more than eleven hours a day with technology, but most people don’t know how it works, and spend the majority of their time consuming media. We believe people are born creative, and our electronic building blocks help to unleash the inventor within by engaging them in an incredibly powerful, exhilarating ...

New study of water-saving plants advances efforts to develop drought-resistant crops

Posted on December 5, 2016 by

As part of an effort to develop drought-resistant food and bioenergy crops, scientists at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory have uncovered the genetic and metabolic mechanisms that allow certain plants to conserve water and thrive in semi-arid climates. Semi-arid plants such as agave have adapted to survive in areas with little rainfall by developing a specialized mode of photosynthesis called crassulacean acid metabolism, or CAM. Unlike plants in wetter environments, C...

Life Advice From Leaders

Posted on December 4, 2016 by

Bill Gates - six of his best pieces of wisdom https://youtu.be/A_-4cByHOew Don’t make the same decision twice... On making decisions about your business, Gates advises people to take their time. Consider the issue from every angle and make sure whatever choice you make is the right one for your business. You don’t want to be wasting time coming back and having to change your original decision. “If you're too willing to reopen issues, it interferes not only with your execution b...

MIT Media Lab’s Biomechatronics group develops Bionic ankle-foot prosthesis that normalizes walking gait for persons with leg amputation

Posted on December 3, 2016 by

Biomechatronics Group at MIT Media Lab's mission is two fold. First, seek to restore function to individuals who have impaired mobility due to trauma or disease through research and development. Second, develop technologies that augment human performance beyond what nature intends. These objectives are met by combining the scientific discipline of organismal and cellular neuromechanics with the technological discipline of bionic device design. Our research staff and students include biomecha...

MIT’s research on Fluid Interface

Posted on December 2, 2016 by

Reality Editor is a new kind of tool for empowering you to connect and manipulate the functionality of physical objects. Just point the camera of your smartphone at an object built with the Open Hybrid platform and its invisible capabilities will become visible for you to edit. Drag a virtual line from one object to another and create a new relationship between these objects. With this simplicity, you are able to master the entire scope of connected objects. https://youtu.be/oC9qNe8Bwck Th...

Max Planck Germany Science Tunnel Enables cross stream knoweldge share – Fundamental discoveries in one discipline can lead to crucial advances in completely different areas tomorrow

Posted on November 30, 2016 by

Today, new technologies build on a broad spectrum of scientific findings. Fundamental discoveries in one discipline can lead to crucial advances in completely different areas tomorrow. In all probability, this tendency will only intensify in the future. Or, to put it another way, after centuries of diversification, the life sciences, natural sciences and engineering disciplines are converging once again. This is the cusp on which the sciences are poised today – and, now and then, also caught in ...

Light sheet microscopy is a powerful method for imaging the development and function of whole living organisms

Posted on November 28, 2016 by

Light sheet microscopy is a novel microscopy technique developed in the last ten years that is uniquely suited to image large living organisms. In a light-sheet microscope, a laser light sheet illuminates the sample perpendicularly to the observation along a thin plane within the sample. Out-of-focus and scattered light from other planes - which often impair image quality - is largely avoided because only the observed plane is illuminated. Researchers develop a combination of software and hardw...

NASA’s technology helps ‘Unique Logic’ develop attention-training game to sustain their attention in order to complete tasks

Posted on November 25, 2016 by

Imagine moving an object using only your mind. Software company Unique Logic’s Time on Task exercise makes that feat possible, at least on a computer screen. The game, which is designed to teach people how to sustain their attention in order to complete tasks, involves getting a forklift operator to transport a stack of crates from the ground onto the back of a big rig. It doesn’t seem like a particularly interesting plot, except for the fact that, instead of using a remote control to dictate th...

UNIVERSITY OF OREGON team suggest that fault curvature may control where big quakes occur

Posted on November 25, 2016 by

Major earthquakes - magnitude 8.5 and stronger -- occur where faults are mostly flat, say University of Oregon and French geologists. Curvier faults, they report in the journal Science, are less likely to experience earthquakes exceeding that strength. Large earthquakes, known as mega-quakes, were long thought to be possible only at the boundary between fast converging, young tectonic plates until two giant earthquakes -- the magnitude 9.4 quake in Indonesia in 2004 and the 9.0 quake in Japan...

Northwestern University Scientists identify neurochemical signal likely missing in Parkinson’s

Posted on November 24, 2016 by

Two Northwestern University neuroscientists have identified the neurochemical signal likely missing in Parkinson’s disease by being the first to discover two distinctly different kinds of neurons that deliver dopamine to an important brain region responsible for both movement and learning/reward behavior. “It has been dogma for decades that all dopamine neurons are somehow involved in both movement and reward, but this didn’t really make sense,” said Daniel A. Dombeck, the study’s senior auth...

Berkeley Lab X-Rays has captured Images of Photosynthesis in Action

Posted on November 24, 2016 by

Never mind the story of Moses parting the Red Sea. How exactly do plants split water? An international team of scientists is getting closer to the answer thanks to unprecedented, atomic-scale images of a protein complex found in plants, algae, and cyanobacteria captured by ultrafast X-ray lasers. The experiments, led by the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), are helping researchers narrow down the process by which the protein, called photosyste...

CORNELL UNIVERSITY’s research has found cancer cells ‘talk’ to their environment, and it talks back

Posted on November 24, 2016 by

Interactions between an animal cell and its environment, a fibrous network called the extracellular matrix, play a critical role in cell function, including growth and migration. But less understood is the mechanical force that governs those interactions. A multidisciplinary team of Cornell engineers and colleagues from the University of Pennsylvania have devised a method for measuring the force a cell -- in this case, a breast cancer cell -- exerts on its fibrous surroundings. Understanding ...

Hunt for dark matter and other phenomena that help scientists better understand how the universe functions at its most fundamental level

Posted on November 20, 2016 by

At least a quarter of the universe is invisible. Unlike x-rays that the naked eye can't see but equipment can measure, scientists have yet to detect dark matter after three decades of searching, even with the world's most sensitive instruments. But dark matter is so fundamental to physics that scientists supported by the Department of Energy's Office of Science are searching for it in some of the world's most isolated locales, from deep underground to outer space. "Without dark matter, it'...

Clay Mathematics Institute has offered a prize of US$1,000,000 to the one who provides scientific explanation from a mathematical point of view for confinement of particles

Posted on November 19, 2016 by

In mathematical physics, the Yang–Mills existence and mass gap problem is an unsolved problem and one of the seven Millennium Prize Problems defined by the Clay Mathematics Institute, which has offered a prize of US$1,000,000 to the one who solves it. In physics, confinement of particles is such an important phenomenon that the Clay Mathematics Institute has even pledged an award of a million dollars to anyone who can give a convincing and exhaustive scientific explanation from a mathematical...

Enhancing the Superconducting Properties of an Iron-Based Material

Posted on November 10, 2016 by

Scientists pioneer method that enables material to carry more electrical current without resistance at a higher temperature Brookhaven physicist Qiang Li (right) and materials scientist Lijun Wu in an electron microscopy lab in the Condensed Matter Physics and Materials Science Department at Brookhaven Lab. Li and his team used electron microscopes to examine the microstructural defects that appeared in an iron-based superconducting material after the material was bombarded with low-energy pr...

Mouse experiments with Zika antibody suggest protection for fetuses

Posted on November 8, 2016November 8, 2016 by

In early studies on mice, a research team has found a Zika virus antibody that when given to pregnant animals protected their fetuses, and also protected adult mice from the disease. The findings raise hope for a potential treatment to prevent maternal-fetal transmission of the virus to prevent microcephaly and other devastating birth defects until a vaccine is available and also may help guide vaccine development. The team, based at Washington University School of Medicine and Vanderbilt Uni...

SlicePlanner new hybrid approach to planning, combining an old-fashioned paper and digital calendars.

Posted on November 7, 2016 by

SlicePlanner is a brand new hybrid approach to planning, combining an old-fashioned paper ... our unique system complements your favorite digital calendars. Slice Planner is the first ever paper planner connected to the digital calendars. It is not only an old-fashioned paper planner refreshed by the technology of 2016 but also a specially-designed time management system that presents a new approach to planning your day and time. Powered by computer vision and augmented reality, our unique...

BRIGHAM YOUNG UNIVERSITY -Sunshine matters a lot to mental health.

Posted on November 4, 2016 by

Sunshine matters. A lot. The idea isn't exactly new, but according to a recent BYU study, when it comes to your mental and emotional health, the amount of time between sunrise and sunset is the weather variable that matters most. Your day might be filled with irritatingly hot temperatures, thick air pollution and maybe even pockets of rainclouds, but that won't necessarily get you down. If you're able to soak up enough sun, your level of emotional distress should remain stable. Take away sun ...

Berkeley Lab scientists have identified ‘How our cells keep errors in the transporting genetic information in cells process in check’

Posted on November 4, 2016 by

Mistakes happen. This is the case in the process of transporting genetic information in cells. How our cells keep errors in this process in check is the subject of a new paper by researchers at the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab). They found that RNA-binding proteins are regulated such that gateway proteins can recognize and block aberrant strands of genetic code from exiting the nucleus. Unused messenger RNA (mRNA) strands that cannot exit the ...

MIT researchers and their colleagues are designing an imaging system that can read closed books.

Posted on November 3, 2016 by

New computational imaging method identifies letters printed on first nine pages of a stack of paper. MIT researchers and their colleagues are designing an imaging system that can read closed books. In the latest issue of Nature Communications, the researchers describe a prototype of the system, which they tested on a stack of papers, each with one letter printed on it. The system was able to correctly identify the letters on the top nine sheets. “The Metropolitan Museum in New York show...

MIT research scientists set traps for atoms with single-particle precision

Posted on November 3, 2016 by

Atoms, photons, and other quantum particles are often capricious and finicky by nature; very rarely at a standstill, they often collide with others of their kind. But if such particles can be individually corralled and controlled in large numbers, they may be harnessed as quantum bits, or qubits — tiny units of information whose state or orientation can be used to carry out calculations at rates significantly faster than today’s semiconductor-based computer chips. In recent years, scientists ...

Northwest University Researcher Guillermo Ameer Has Developed Regenerative Bandage That Heals Diabetic Wounds Faster

Posted on October 8, 2016 by

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...