Casper is the latest startup to chase the pet market.
You may have heard of Casper, the flashy startup that’s been credited with “waking up” the sleepy mattress industry by selling direct-to-consumer. Casper, as you probably guessed, makes mattresses for humans.
Continue reading… “There’s a Dog Version of Airbnb, Uber and Almost Every Other Service You Use”
These cows are in no hurry and meander to the dairy. They stop as they please along the way. Chew cud. Moo. Drop pats. Moo again. They nudge the soft earth or a companion before snorting and continuing on up through the paddocks to the shed.
Continue reading… “Robots, drones and cows that milk themselves”
New research has shown that a 3D-printed scaffolding could restore function to mice that had their ovaries removed. The scientists presented their research last week at the annual Endocrine Society meeting in Boston. The mice they were testing gave birth to healthy pups. Hopefully, in the future, this procedure can restore functionality to women who have lost their ability to give birth through age, chemotherapy, or other issues.
Continue reading… “3D printed ovaries allow for infertile mice to produce babies”
On a clear day last fall, an attached smartphone-sized Raspberry Pi computer, was harnessed and carefully fitted onto a cat, by German digital media student Dennis Siegel. Cosmo, a fluffy Maine coon hit the streets with a small device designed to tap into and amplify local Wi-Fi networks. As Cosmo wandered through a nearby park, his wi-fi device “wardrive” launched a series of commands designed to locate open Wi-Fi networks and break the encryption algorithms of those that were badly secured. After getting into a network owned by an area resident or business, Cosmo’s wardrive amplified it, allowing anyone within up to 650 feet of the cat to freely use a Wi-Fi network they hadn’t been given permission to access.
Continue reading… “Hacker Cats: A New Threat to your WI-FI”
With new advancements happening on a regular basis in the world of bioprinting, it’s hard to determine just which company is furthest ahead. Is it Organovo, the publicly traded company already working to create 3D printed mini kidneys with Australian researchers? Or is it one of the many research institutions making advancements in 3D printing ear drums, blood vessels, or carbon composites for bone regeneration? If one had to choose, they might lean towards 3D Bioprinting Solutions, who successfully 3D printed a thyroid gland, classified as an “organ construct”. And, today, news leaked that the Russian company had taken their research one step further, implanting a 3D printed thyroid into mice.
Continue reading… “3D printed thyroid gland implanted into mice”
There are some 320,000 unique mammalian viruses, according to estimates by virologists, and likely exponentially more existing on the planet today. Determining an accurate number would require billions more dollars and a great deal more manpower than is currently given to the study of viruses. Though a handful of viruses live in and on our bodies at all times—known as the virome—not all of them make us ill; just as often, they lie dormant. Many virus functions remain mysterious to scientists, such as how they enter a cell or replicate, though existing test advances, like the VirScan blood test, can tell you any infection you’ve ever had.
A professor of ophthalmology at the University of California San Francisco, Sretavan treats nerve damage related to glaucoma, a disease that’s the leading cause of irreversible blindness. It affects approximately 70 million people worldwide.
Glaucoma is a complex eye disease without a direct cause. Physicians measure pressure inside the eye to assess glaucoma risk. But that pressure normally fluctuates over time and there’s no easy way to measure pressure regularly, especially for elderly patients who often have a hard time making it to his office. Continue reading… “Innovation in Medicine through tiny sensors”
After applying linguistic tools to the calls of monkeys, researchers
now think they can understand what our primate relatives are saying
Fiona Macdonald – Researchers have used human linguistic tools to translate the language of Campbell’s monkeys (Cercopithecus campbelli), primates found in western Africa.
For years primatologists and linguists have been studying their advanced language to try to crack the code of monkey vocabulary, but now a team of researchers believe they may have finally done it, all thanks to the monkey term “krak”.
They found that Campbell’s monkeys in the Ivory Coast’s Tai Forest use the term krak to indicate that a leopard is nearby, and the sound “hok” to warn others that there’s an eagle circling overhead. You can listen to how these words sound over at Scientific American.
Continue reading… “Learning the Language of Monkey Talk”
Not all species weaken and become more likely to die as they age.
Most people would probably describe aging as when we our in our youth we are strong and healthy and then we weaken and die. But, in nature, the phenomenon of aging shows an unexpected diversity of patterns and is altogether rather strange, conclude researchers from The University of Southern Denmark.
Continue reading… “Surprising huge diversity in aging revealed in nature”
If they can grow muscle, can they make meat?
Modern Meadow is a startup based in Brooklyn, New York. They are aiming to commercialize leather and meat products that are not made from slaughtered animals but brewed in cell-culture vats. If it works, and if the market embraces the resulting products, it would lead to vast savings in water, land, and energy use associated with livestock production.
Continue reading… “Why is lab-grown beef better than ranchers raising cows?”
The humanized gene actually improved the animal’s behavior rather than messing up the system.
According to a new study, mice that receive a human version of a speech and language gene display accelerated learning. Don’t expect these findings to lead to a rush of smarter, “uplifted” animals—though they might just reveal something new and fascinating about the evolution of human speech and language.
Continue reading… “A mouse with a human speech gene learns faster”
“Now we can go inside the brain and change the way the mice reacts to a memory.”
Memories can be good, bad, or neutral. And now, they can be changed from good to bad, and vice versa, from within the brain—in genetically engineered mice, at least.
Continue reading… “Scientists turn bad memories into good ones in mice”
By delving into the futuring techniques of Futurist Thomas Frey, you’ll embark on an enlightening journey.
Learn More about this exciting program.