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2011 Lemelson–M.I.T. Student Inventor Prizes Offer a Glimpse of the Future in Medical and Security Screening Tech [Slide Show] |  |
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Posted by Mary Canady March 9th, 2011 .
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The Lemelson–M.I.T. Program recognized four student inventors Wednesday poised to make a profound impact in the areas of disease diagnostics, drug development, assistive devices such as wheelchairs, and security screening for explosives. Each of the winners--from the California Institute of Technology; Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (R.P.I.); and the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign (U.I.U.C.)--receives a $30,000 prize to help bring their emerging technologies to market. [More]
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News, Scientific American, Syndication »
2011 Lemelson-M.I.T. Student Inventor Prizes Offer a Glimpse of the Future in Medical and Security Screening Tech [Slide Show] | |
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Posted by Mary Canady March 9th, 2011 .
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| No Comments |
The Lemelson–M.I.T. Program recognized four student inventors Wednesday poised to make a profound impact in the areas of disease diagnostics, drug development, assistive devices such as wheelchairs, and security screening for explosives. Each of the winners--from the California Institute of Technology; Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (R.P.I.); and the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign (U.I.U.C.)--receives a $30,000 prize to help bring their emerging technologies to market. [More]
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Signals in a Storm: Seeing Brain Cells Communicate (preview) | |
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Posted by Mary Canady March 9th, 2011 .
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If you could pause time for an instant and make yourself small enough to discern individual molecules, the far right of this image is what you might see when one brain cell communicates with another across a synapse--the point of contact between two nerve cells. How the brain senses, thinks, learns and emotes depends on how all its nerve cells, or neurons, communicate with one another. And as a result, many laboratories are working feverishly to understand how synapses function--and how psychiatric drugs, which target them, improve patients’ lives.
Yet neuroscientists are hobbled by the fact that synapses are extremely complex, vanishingly small and extraordinarily fast. Thanks to the coordinated efforts of over 1,400 types of molecules, one neuron communicates with another by spitting out chemical neurotransmitters that carry its message across a thin gap to a receptive surface on its partner. The only way to provide a full account of what goes on at the synapse is to build a computer model that is as realistic as possible. The hope is that running a moment-by-moment, molecule-by-molecule simulation will yield novel insights that could then be tested experimentally.
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Easier Said Than Done: Using Implants to Electrically Stimulate Paralyzed Vocal Cords | |
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Posted by Mary Canady March 7th, 2011 .
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Vocal cord paralysis can strike as a result of a stroke, disease or trauma to the head or neck, thereby making breathing, swallowing and speaking difficult. Depending on the severity of the paralysis--it can affect either one or both of the elastic bands of muscle tissue that give us our voices--treatment can involve speech therapy, surface electrical stimulation or even surgery. Now a team of researchers is pursuing a way of alleviating such paralysis through a hybrid approach that involves placing electrodes just under the skin, where they can stimulate very specific nerves and potentially restore movement to a damaged vocal cord. [More]
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How to Kill a Parasite | |
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Posted by Mary Canady March 3rd, 2011 .
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Every villain has his Achilles' heel. And microscopic scoundrels are no exception. The challenge for those who wish to ward off microbial bad guys is to identify that weak spot. Now, scientists studying the toxoplasmosis parasite think they’ve done just that. They share the secret in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences . [Carrie Brooks et al, Toxoplasma gondii sequesters centromeres to a specific nuclear region throughout the cell cycle ] [More]
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Evolution Abroad: Creationism Evolves in Science Classrooms around the Globe | |
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Posted by Mary Canady March 3rd, 2011 .
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As the familiar battles over evolution education continue to play out in U.S. state legislatures and school boards, other countries are facing very different dynamics. Much of the world lives outside of any law that requires separation of church and state, making creationism trickier to disentangle from public school curricula. [More]
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Retinal implant to restore partial sight approved for use in Europe | |
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Posted by Mary Canady March 3rd, 2011 .
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After decades of development and years of clinical trials, an optical prosthesis capable of restoring at least partial vision to those suffering from retina-damaging diseases will hit the market. Second Sight Medical Products, Inc. , said Wednesday that its Argus II Retinal Prosthesis System has been approved for sale throughout most of Europe. Sylmar, Calif.–based Second Sight is planning to apply for U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval this year. [More]
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Giving HIV a Poor Reception: New AIDS Treatment Tinkers with Immune Cell Genes | |
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Posted by Mary Canady March 3rd, 2011 .
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BOSTON--A novel treatment for HIV could involve changing the genes in a person's immune cells and, ultimately, in his or her stem cells, as well. It might even lead to a cure for that deadly disease. Promising advances in that direction were presented here Monday at the 18th Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections.
The pieces have been coming together for some time. First came the understanding that HIV enters a cell by grabbing on to a CD4 receptor molecule on the surface, and then on to a co-receptor molecule--the one most commonly used is called CCR5.
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SciFoo: Imagining the future | |
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Posted by Mary Canady March 1st, 2011 .
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Which technology will have the greatest impact in the next 10 years: the Internet, genomics or geoengineering? Are you optimistic about the future, or pessimistic? Find out how some of the sharpest thinkers imagine the world in the next decade and in 2050. This second of four videos about Science Foo Camp 2010 was filmed at Google's headquarters in California during the event.
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Organs-on-a-Chip for Faster Drug Development | |
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Posted by Mary Canady February 25th, 2011 .
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One of the most challenging aspects of drug development is testing. Scientists are forced either to experiment on whole animals, which is expensive, raises ethical issues and may not predict effects in humans, or to perform tests on microscopic human cells found in tissue cultures, which have been altered to live forever and bear little relation to actual living, breathing people. But researchers are working on a new technique to help bridge that gap: microchips that simulate the activities and mechanics of entire organs and organ systems. These “organs on a chip,” as they are called, are typically glass slides coated with human cells that have been configured to mimic a particular tissue or interface between tissues. Developers hope they could bring drugs to market more quickly and, in some circumstances, perhaps even eliminate the need for animal testing.
The chips are still in their early stages, but investigators are translating more and more body parts to the interface. Last summer bioengineers at Harvard University wrote in the journal Science that they had created a device that mimics a human lung: a porous membrane surrounded by human lung tissue cells, which breathes, distributes nutrients to cells and initiates immune responses. In November 2010 Japanese researchers announced online in Analytical Chemistry that they had built a chip that simultaneously tests how liver, intestine and breast cancer cells respond to cancer drugs, and in February 2010 scientists publishing in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA developed a microscale replica of the human liver that allowed them to observe the entire life cycle of hepatitis C, a virus that is difficult to observe in cultured cells.
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