British doctors have successfully used gene therapy for the first time to cure a Welsh toddler born without an immune system, the Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children said on Wednesday.
The London hospital said 18-month-old Rhys Evans had been cured of the fatal genetic condition X-linked Severe Combined Immunodeficiency Disease (X-SCID), commonly known as “baby in the bubble” syndrome. More here.
Continue reading… “‘Bubble Boy’ Cured in Gene Therapy Breakthrough”
The folks at Taito Corp who are paid to make newer and improved karaoke machines have discovered a way to make even the most tone deaf singers sound great with a new technology for perfect-pitch karaoke. While most of you may think Karaoke is just a strange world of artistic wanna-bees, this article talks about significant break throughs in this technology – hooks for scoring singing, correcting pitch, and more. Should also make those Karaoke parties a little more tolerable.
Continue reading… “Perfect Pitch Karaoke”
So far all the planets found outside our solar system have been gas giants. So they are not habitable, and couldn’t really hold life as we know it. But “planet hunter” David Charbonneau is looking for another planet just like Earth, and claims that astronomers are “very close”.
Last year, Charbonneau led a team that made the first direct detection of the atmosphere of a planet outside our solar system.
Continue reading… “In Search of Other Habitable Planets”
By the end of the decade, the people who disarm bombs and search for survivors after a disaster may no longer need to put their lives on the line — a machine, possibly made in Japan, will do the dangerous stuff.
That is one goal of the Japanese government’s $37.7 million Humanoid Robotics Project (HRP), which aims to market within a few years robots that can operate power shovels, assist construction workers and care for the elderly.
In the process, a new multi-billion-dollar Japanese industry could be born.
Reuters: Because chickens grow up to lay eggs faster than sheep, goats or cattle begin producing milk, researchers say, the birds could be a quicker source of biologically produced drugs to treat a range of problems, from blood loss to cancer.
Genetically engineered chickens produced consistent levels of an enzyme in their eggs, suggesting they could be used as living “bioreactors” to make proteins used in human medicine, the team at the University of Georgia and AviGenics, Inc., reported.
Continue reading… “Biopharmaceuticals Using Chickens as Bioreactors”
There is only one solution to the endemic corruption strangling Romania’s economy and hurting its chances of joining NATO — legalize bribes and tax them, a leading financial newspaper quipped Monday.
An April Fools spoof in a front-page article in the Ziarul Financiar proposed a sliding scale of taxes on “commissions and supplementary insurance payments for health and a better life,” starting with a five percent levy on bribes of up to one million euros.
Many recent wireless projects rely on an increasingly popular technology known as 802.11b, or Wi-Fi (short for wireless fidelity), an inexpensive and popular networking standard that uses an unlicensed portion of the radio spectrum. It’s cheap, fast and spreading like a virus, especially in high-tech centers like New York, Seattle and Silicon Valley in particular, where the abundance of early adopters and evangelists has produced the greatest concentration of “hot spots.”
Continue reading… “Underground Movement in Wireless Technology”
People using Internet search engines are more interested in business, travel and jobs and less interested in sex sites than they were five years ago, according to a study led by a Penn State University researcher.
In May 1997, 16.8% of searches on the Excite search engine were for sex-related or pornographic Web sites. By May 2001, that percentage had dropped almost in half to 8.5%, according to an article in the March edition of IEEE Computer, a journal of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers.
Bioengineer Morris Benjaminson is figuring out how to create fish on demand, to develop a device that would grow fresh flesh aboard a space ship to feed astronauts.
The researchers cut chunks of muscle from oversized goldfish into pan-sized pieces. They worked quickly to keep the flesh alive. “The fish is dead, but the tissue isn’t,” Benjaminson explains. The chunks were washed in alcohol and stuck in a vat of fetal bovine serum, a nutrient extracted from the blood of unborn calves. After a week, the fish chunks had grown by 14 percent.
Continue reading… “Growing Fish Flesh in Space”
The discovery of a gene involved in an inherited skin disease opens the possibility of treatments for skin aging.
Scientists believe that the body chemical which is produced by the gene acts like “biological glue” holding other skin forming chemicals together.
The protein, called extracellular matrix protein (ECM) may act like a natural sunscreen to prevent sun damage and prevent the skin from aging.
Japan now has some incredibly high-tech toilets, complete with a unique electronic control panel that controls a water jet for cleaning the posterior, a hot air blow dryer, a fake flushing sound to cover up the noise, a seat warmer, and other nice features, not to mention the occasional amusing gaijin encounter. Prototype models can also chemically analyze urine using lasers.
Continue reading… “Toilets of the Future”
NASA is reporting that physicists at Harvard University have managed to stop light altogether. The implications of this discovery are rather staggering — quantum encryption and quantum computers might be just around the corner! I don’t think this will mean any immediate changes – but it is a significant step.
Continue reading… “The Science of Stopping Light”
By delving into the futuring techniques of Futurist Thomas Frey, you’ll embark on an enlightening journey.
Learn More about this exciting program.