Blood samples.
You probably know your blood type: A, B, AB or O. You may even know if you’re Rhesus positive or negative. But how about the Langereis blood type? Or the Junior blood type? Positive or negative? Most people have never even heard of these.
Yet this knowledge could be “a matter of life and death,” says University of Vermont biologist Bryan Ballif…
Continue reading… “Blood mystery solved: Two new blood types identified”
Kamagasaki, Japan. A slum in Nishinari-Ku one of 24 wards in Osaka, with a density of 30,000 people in every 2000 meter radius. Source: Androniki Christodoulou
Booming urban populations have seen poverty on the rise in some of the world’s biggest cities. Of the 3.49 billion people that now live in cities, 827.6 million are slum dwellers, according to a UN Habitat Report. Global slums can be vastly different in nature…
Continue reading… “A satellite tour of the world’s biggest slums”
An adult Chikilidae, a new species of legless amphibian known as a caecilian, with eggs and hatchlings.
Since before the age of dinosaurs it has burrowed unbothered beneath the monsoon-soaked soils of remote northeast India – unknown to science and mistaken by villagers as a deadly, miniature snake.
Continue reading… “New legless amphibian found in India”
Michael Houghton
In a poetic turn of virology, the scientist who discovered hepatitis C in 1989 has now also discovered a vaccine that will hopefully cure the now-incurable disease.
Not only is it poetic, it’s an accomplishment that many thought was impossible. Because hepatitis C is more virulent than HIV, no one was confident a vaccine against all the various strains around the world could be developed. But Michael Houghton, the University of Alberta researcher who announced his work today at the Canada Excellence Research Chairs Summit in Vancouver, says his vaccine works against every known strain of the virus…
Continue reading… “The scientist who discovered Hepatitis C says he’s now discovered the vaccine”
A controllable transistor engineered from a single phosphorus atom shown here in the center of an image from a computer model, sits in a channel in a silicon crystal.
The smallest transistor ever built — in fact, the smallest transistor that can be built — has been created using a single phosphorus atom by an international team of researchers at the University of New South Wales, Purdue University and the University of Melbourne.
The single-atom device was described Sunday (Feb. 19) in a paper in the journal Nature Nanotechnology.
Michelle Simmons, group leader and director of the ARC Centre for Quantum Computation and Communication at the University of New South Wales, says the development is less about improving current technology than building future tech…
Continue reading… “Single-atom transistor is end of Moore’s Law”
An intestinal cell monolayer after exposure to nanoparticles, shown in green.
Billions of engineered nanoparticles in foods and pharmaceuticals are ingested by humans daily, and new Cornell research warns they may be more harmful to health than previously thought.
A research collaboration led by Michael Shuler, the Samuel B. Eckert Professor of Chemical Engineering and the James and Marsha McCormick Chair of Biomedical Engineering, studied how large doses of polystyrene nanoparticles — a common, FDA-approved material found in substances from food additives to vitamins — affected how well chickens absorbed iron, an essential nutrient, into their cells…
Continue reading… “Nanoparticles in food, vitamins could harm human health”
Google knows a thing or two about complex calculations performed across very big data sets. Which is why chemists are borrowing ideas from the search company to help them predict how substances react with each other.
PageRank is the algorithm that Google uses to determine the relevancy of links. Now, scientists from Washington State University have borrowed ideas from the code to understand how molecules interact with each other…
Continue reading… “How Google’s algorithms are solving chemistry’s trickiest calculations”
Miniature chameleon
This little chameleon is one of four miniature lizards identified in Madagascar, adding to our growing list of amazingly teeny animals. The one on the match in this picture is a juvenile, but even the adults max out at 30 millimeters. They’re the smallest lizards in the world, and some of the smallest vertebrates found to date. (Pics)
Continue reading… “World’s tiniest lizards discovered in Madagascar”
ASU engineers are working on technological advances that promise to help enhance infrared photodetection used in sophisticated weapons and surveillance system, industrial and home security systems, medical diagnostics and night vision equipment for law enforcement and driving safety.
Arizona State University researchers are finding ways to improve infrared photodetector technology that is critical to national defense and security systems, as well as used increasingly in medical diagnostics, commercial applications and consumer products…
Continue reading… “New nano-material combinations produce leap in infrared technology”
Smaller and more efficient plus.
A team of University of California, San Diego researchers has built the smallest room-temperature nanolaser to date, as well as an even more startling device: a highly efficient, “thresholdless” laser that funnels all its photons into lasing, without any waste.
The two new lasers require very low power to operate, an important breakthrough since lasers usually require greater and greater “pump power” to begin lasing as they shrink to nano sizes. The small size and extremely low power of these nanolasers could make them very useful components for future optical circuits packed on to tiny computer chips, Mercedeh Khajavikhan and her UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering colleagues report in the Feb. 9 issue of the journal Nature…
Continue reading… “Electrical engineers build ‘No-Waste’ laser”
New findings about Humpback whales change old views.
Whale song and the development of whale culture is a fascinating thing. Now researchers from the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), Columbia University and Australia have found that humpback whales from different sides of the same ocean basin are singing different songs — an surprising finding since whales from the same basin usually sing the same tunes.
Previously, when whale songs from the same basin were compared, researchers found that the songs typically consisted of the similar parts or what is called in whale song parlance as “themes,” or distinct sounds which are often repeated in cycles lasting up to 30 minutes…
Continue reading… “Humpback whales living in same ocean basin found singing different tunes”
Otavia antiqua
It looks like an insignificant spec of dust, but if scientists are right, it could be the ancestor of us all.
Meet Otavia antiqua, a microscopic, sponge-like African fossil that could be the earliest known animal…
Continue reading… “Meet Otavia antiqua, possibly the ancestor of all animals”
By delving into the futuring techniques of Futurist Thomas Frey, you’ll embark on an enlightening journey.
Learn More about this exciting program.