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New Materials from MIT Could Lead to Furniture that Builds Itself

(All Photos Self Assembly Lab, MIT)


h/t - @Instapundit

Popular Mechanics - In Skylar Tibbit's world, clothes adapt automatically to the world around them. Furniture assembles itself. So do water systems, robots, interactive retail spaces, and space infrastructure. When you’re the director of MIT’s Self-Assembly Lab, just about anything can adapt on its own.

"We think the applications are currently limitless," he says.

Tibbits, leads an MIT team of designers, scientists, architects, and engineers who are exploring what they call 4D printing, which takes 3D materials and adds another dimension by having them adjust to their changing environments. While this type of work has happened at the nanoscale in chemistry, Tibbits says, it’s about to scale up.

By taking well-known materials, anything from wood to carbon fiber, and adding in other materials that respond actively to energy, the pieces can form specific geometries designed by the engineers. For example, the lab has designed wood pieces that fold into small toys—elephants, in this case—when water hits the wood, because the wood moves in a particular way in response to moisture. A future application could involve weaving fabric that responds to heat into a garment.

"We try to design specific geometries that can respond to energy sources," Tibbits says. "When you mix geometry and material properties they can respond and change their state."     Read More

Google Genomics Can Store Your Entire Genome Online

 

What Is Google Genomics?

Google Genomics provides an API to store, process, explore, and share DNA sequence reads, reference-based alignments, and variant calls, using Google's cloud infrastructure.

• Store alignments and variant calls for one genome or a million.
• Process genomic data in batch by running principal component analysis or Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium, in minutes or hours, by using parallel computing frameworks like MapReduce.
• Explore data by slicing alignments and variants by genomic range across one or multiple samples -- for your own algorithms or for visualization; or interactively process entire cohorts to find transition/transversion ratios, allelic frequency, genome-wide association and more using BigQuery.
• Share genomic data with your research group, collaborators, the broader community, or the public. You decide.

Google Genomics is implementing the API defined by the Global Alliance for Genomics and Health for visualization, analysis and more. Compliant software can access Google Genomics, local servers, or any other implementation.

So...if you would like to store your genome on Google's cloud infrastructure or just want more info, click here.

Also, check out this article from Gizmodo >>>  Why I'd Let Google Put My Genome in the Cloud

New Magnet Implanted in the Skull Defeats Deafness

h/t - @osamaelmageid

industry tap - Research in the field of medical technology is providing new solutions for complex medical problems. A revolutionary magnetic implant has shown a ray of hope to people who cannot benefit from traditional hearing aids.

Actor Billy Coughlin went deaf in one ear at the age of 17. Now, at age 22, a magnetic implant has restore his hearing.

The device is the new version of a BAHA – bone anchored hearing aid (BAHA) Attract. Unlike the traditional implant in which a metal screw was embedded in the patient’s head, the BAHA Attract involve the insertion of small magnetic disc beneath the skin behind the ear. 

See How It Works!

Wind turbine fires 'ten times more common than thought', experts warn

Study backed by Imperial College finds wind turbines prone to "catastrophic" fires but the true scale of the problem is unknown

The Telegraph - Wind turbines may catch on fire ten times more often than is publicly reported, putting nearby properties at risk and casting doubt on their green credentials, researchers have warned.

The renewable energy industry keeps no record of the number of turbine fires, meaning the true extent of the problem is unknown, a study backed by Imperial College London finds on Thursday.

An average of 11.7 such fires are reported globally each year, by media, campaign groups and other publicly-available sources, but this is likely to represent just the “tip of the iceberg”.

There could in fact be 117 turbine fires each year, it argues, based on analysis showing just 10pc of all wind farm accidents are typically reported.   Read More

Can This “Neuroscience Based” Music App Really Boost Your Brain Power By 400%?

Wired - Today, the brain sells. Take an old idea, put “neuro” in front of it and you have an apparently exciting new product. In a world that already offers a Neurobliss drink , No-Lie-MRI brain scanning, and Neuroleadership courses, it’s not really surprising that the Focus@will app has appeared, claiming it can boost your attention span by up to 400% using “neuroscience based music”.

Before I tell you why I’m skeptical, here’s how the company claims its instrumental music will help you “study more efficiently and work smarter”. The app’s premise is that it usually takes us time to focus because of the distracting effect of the environment. Their music has apparently been carefully engineered to reduce this distracting effect. The tunes go through “phase sequences” to ensure that they are neither too relaxing, nor too distracting. There’s a handy graph that shows how the music keeps you in this sweet spot between focus and daydreaming. “It works in the background,” they explain, “by subtly soothing the part of your brain, the limbic system, that is always on the lookout for danger, food, sex or shiny things.”

Here’s why I’m sceptical:

• The claims that Focus@will makes on its website are very specific. We’re told that attention span is boosted by up to 400% and that “trials show typical 12-15% positive increase in focus biomarker.” However, if you go to the “science” page of their website, there are no references to any trials. If you click on the “literature” tab, you’ll find a wide assortment of scientific references, some decades old, others more recent. Crucially, not one of them is a trial for the benefits of the Focus@will app.   Read More

First Artificial Red Blood Cells Made

Forbes - Artificial red blood cells good enough to be transfused into patients have been developed for the first time. Scaled up to industrial levels, the breakthrough could lead to factories producing virtually limitless supplies of cheap blood – technically called erythrocytes – for use in the world’s most common life-saving medical procedure.

“We have made red blood cells that are fit to go in a person’s body,” said Marc Turner, medical director at the Scottish National Blood Transfusion Service, who is leading the £5m ($8.5m) project funded by the Wellcome Trust. “Before now, we haven’t really had that.”

The announcement is the latest in the relatively new field of regenerative medicine, which has already seen the development of artificial skin, liver, bone, cartilage and blood vessels, though not always in useful quantities.

The new source of supply could consist entirely of Type O negative blood, which can be transfused into any patient. This is currently quite rare, as only 7 per cent of donors have Type O negative.   Read More

Paralyzed Men Move Their Legs Again With Breakthrough Spinal Treatment

Mashable - Researchers at the University of Louisville had only intended to study nerve pathways, but they made a far more surprising discovery. By applying electrical stimulation to the spinal cord through the use of an implant, patients with chronic complete paralysis were able to move.

After the initial findings with patient Rob Summers, three other paralyzed men were tested and able to move their legs, wiggle their toes.

See also: Brain Electrodes Could Mean Movement For Spinal Injury Patients [VIDEO]

CNN spoke with a spinal surgeon who called the discovery a “breakthrough.” “It shows you can have a living spinal cord under the layer of their injury,” he said.

Improvements didn’t stop at recovered movement. The men regained muscle mass and regulation of blood pressure as well as a dramatic improvement in their sense of well-being.

The study was published in the journal Brain.

Watch the Video!

38 Cute Baby Animal Photos

 

h/t - Tanya Torello

Puppy

 

 

Hedgehog

 

Cheetah Cub

Cute Pup

 

Squirrel

 

Kitten

See the Rest!

This Amazing Video Reveals How Smart Crows Really Are

Business Insider - Crows can solve some puzzles just about as well as 5 to 7-year-old children, found a Mar. 26 study in PLOS ONE that tested what researchers call the "Aesop's Fable Paradigm."

In the ancient Greek tale "The Crow and the Pitcher," a parched crow came upon a water pitcher that was partially full, but couldn't fit its beak far enough inside to reach the water. So the crow gathered pebbles and dropped them into the pitcher, raising the water level so it could quench its thirst — and showing an impressive understanding of the cause and effect of water displacement in the process.

Apparently, this wasn't too far fetched.

Crows, rooks, and jays, or Corvidae, top the avian I.Q. scale (sorry, owls); and studies have previously shown that they can indeed learn to raise the water level in a glass in order to snack on a floating worm.

A group of researchers decided to test the extent of these cognitive abilities by studying a clever species of crow native to the Pacific island of New Caledonia.

They wanted to see whether the crows could understand causal relationships — namely, the idea that if you drop objects in water, it raises the level of the water — and to compare the crows' results to those of children who had previously figured out similar puzzles.

So they caught six birds and devised six experiments, three of which had previously been done by children. Each task involved trying to raise the water level in a tube enough that the crow could grab the reward of a small scrap of meat tied to a cork.

As crows don't generally drop rocks in the wild — thankfully for the rest of us — the researchers trained them to pick up rocks and drop them into tubes. This was to get the birds used to the idea of using rocks as a tool (these birds are known to make and use tools). When children did the same experiment in 2012, they received similar training. Though the kids had only 5 trials for each experiment, the crows got 20 chances to see if they could successfully learn to solve each task.

Watch!

NASA Wants You To Pick The New Spacesuit

Serious Resistant Infections Increasingly Found in Children

Wired - Here’s some disturbing news published late last week in the Journal of the Pediatric Infectious Diseases Society by a team of researchers from two Chicago medical institutions plus an expert analyst of antibiotic resistance: Serious drug-resistant infections in children are rising across the United States. While the rate of their occurrence remains low overall, they nonetheless increased two- to three-fold over 10 years.

The group plumbed a national database of disease-causing bacteria retrieved from child patients who were treated in intensive-care units, regular hospital wards, and outpatient clinics between the beginning of 1999 and the end of 2011, looking for a particular pattern of resistance. That pattern, known as ESBL for short (for extended-spectrum beta-lactamase), indicates that bacteria no longer respond to a wide array of common antibiotics: any chemical relative of penicillin, and any of the cephalosporins. Bacteria that are ESBL-resistant respond to only a few remaining big-gun drugs, notably a small family of drugs — already under pressure from other resistance factors — known as the carbapenems. ESBL resistance is a particular concern because it tends to occur in gut bacteria such as E. coli; bacteria that have picked up that resistance DNA can be carried around undetected in the intestines and then cause a surprise infection later. Plus, some of that resistance DNA resides on plasmids, small loops of genetic code that transfer easily from one bacterium to another.   Read More

Coders, NASA Will Pay You to Help Hunt Down Asteroids

NASA is calling on coders to help in the hunt for potentially dangerous asteroids. Over the next six months, the agency will be offering a total of $35,000 in prizes in a contest series that aims to improve the way telescopes detect, track, and analyze incoming space rocks.   Read More

Pictures: Cheetahs of the Kalahari

 

Sibling Squash

Photograph by Gus Mills

National Geographic Big Cats explorer Gus Mills is examining cheetahs in the arid environment of the Kalahari. The cheetahs are tracked using San trackers, radios, and DNA analyses. This data helps park managers ensure the continued existence of the cheetahs and future monitoring. It also serves as an example for the conservation of the species in other arid regions. With National Geographic's support, Mills was able to complete his fieldwork and research.

Pictured: A three-week-old cub squashes one of its two litter mates during a brief visit by Mills to the den while the mother was out hunting. Mills and his team need to count the cubs and collect DNA from fur samples in order to establish paternity. Such brief interactions do not disturb the cheetahs, and they have never observed any adverse reaction by the mother or cubs.    

Read More & Watch the Slideshow!

Boy survives avalanche using air pockets

Polar bear cub unveiled to public at Toronto Zoo (VIDEO)

CBCNews - Toronto - The lone surviving polar bear cub at the Toronto Zoo made his public debut on Saturday.

The cub is only three months old, but it made waves on social media when it was featured in YouTube videos that went viral.

Video of the cub's first steps, first bath and first time romping around in snow garnered about six million hits online, but the animal had not been displayed in the flesh to the public until this weekend.
“You see the lineups? The popularity? It’s family day and everyone is here,” said Jeff Young, Toronto Zoo wildlife care supervisor.

The unveiling of the young cub is part of the zoo’s Polar Bear Month, which is geared towards saving polar bears and raising awareness through educational activities.

The cub, born Nov. 9, remains nameless. One of the activities the zoo asked the public to participate in is the name drive.   Read More 

Sochi Olympics 2014 | Snowboarding and Skiing Tricks Revealed

The Snow Leopard - Photos, Video - Mascot of The Sochi Olympics

Native to the Central Asian mountains, the snow leopard is a rare sight, with only about 6,000 left in the wild. They are hunted for their beautiful, warm fur and for their organs, which are used in traditional Chinese medicine.

Photograph by Michael Nichols, National Geographic

National Geographic - These rare, beautiful gray leopards live in the mountains of Central Asia. They are insulated by thick hair, and their wide, fur-covered feet act as natural snowshoes. Snow leopards have powerful legs and are tremendous leapers, able to jump as far as 50 feet (15 meters). They use their long tails for balance and as blankets to cover sensitive body parts against the severe mountain chill.

Snow leopards prey upon the blue sheep (bharal) of Tibet and the Himalaya, as well as the mountain ibex found over most of the rest of their range. Though these powerful predators can kill animals three times their weight, they also eat smaller fare, such as marmots, hares, and game birds.   Read More

Putin gets close with snow leopard

The Police Will Soon Be Able To Test DNA In The Field In Just 90 Minutes

Business Insider - Current human DNA tests take two to three weeks to be completed, and must be sent into an accredited laboratory. But a new rapid test, which could analyze human DNA in 90 minutes in the field, is nearly complete, Pentagon and industry officials told USA Today.
 
The change to an exponentially faster, mobile test will have huge implications for for law enforcement, war crimes investigations and immigration, Chris Asplen, the executive director of the Global Alliance for Rapid DNA Testing, told the paper.   Read More

Health scan: How stubborn bacteria avoid antibiotics

Jerusalem Post - The mechanism used by some bacteria to survive antibacterial treatment has been revealed for the first time by Hebrew University of Jerusalem researchers.

The mechanism used by some bacteria to survive antibacterial treatment has been revealed for the first time by Hebrew University of Jerusalem researchers. They suggest that their work could pave the way for new ways to control such pathogens.

In addition to the known phenomenon in which some bacteria achieve resistance to antibiotics through mutation, there are other types, known as “persistent bacteria,” that are not resistant to the antibiotics but simply continue to exist in a dormant or inactive state when exposed to antibacterial treatment. These bacteria “awaken” when that treatment is over, resuming their detrimental tasks.

Until now, scientists have been aware of a connection between these kinds of bacteria and the pathogen’s naturally occurring toxin HipA, but they didn’t know the cellular target of this toxin and how its activity triggers dormancy of the bacteria.

Now, the Jerusalem researchers, led by Prof. Gadi Glaser of the faculty of medicine and Prof. Nathalie Balaban of the Racah Institute of Physics, have been able to show how this comes about. They demonstrated that when antibiotics attack these bacteria, the HipA toxin disrupts the chemical “messaging” process necessary for nutrients to build proteins. This is interpreted by the bacteria as a “hunger signal” and sends them into an inactive state (dormancy) in which they are able to survive until the antibacterial treatment is over.

The research on persistent bacteria has been conducted in Balaban’s lab for several years, focusing on the development of a biophysical understanding of the phenomenon.

It will be combined with other work being done in Glaser’s lab that focuses on fighting persistent bacteria in the hope of leading to more effective treatment for bacterial infections.   Read More