Real-life Jedi: Pushing the limits of mind control

BBC News - Real-life Jedi: Pushing the limits of mind control
We are standing in a testing room at IBM's Emerging Technologies lab in Winchester, England.

On my head is a strange headset that looks like a black plastic squid. Its 14 tendrils, each capped with a moistened electrode, are supposed to detect specific brain signals.

In front of us is a computer screen, displaying an image of a floating cube.

As I think about pushing it, the cube responds by drifting into the distance.

Admittedly, the system needed a fair bit of pre-training to achieve this single task. But it has, nonetheless, learned to associate a specific thought pattern with a particular movement.

BBC News - Artificial blood vessels created on a 3D printer

BBC News - Artificial blood vessels created on a 3D printer

Artificial blood vessels made on a 3D printer may soon be used for transplants of lab-created organs.

Until now, the stumbling block in tissue engineering has been supplying artificial tissue with nutrients that have to arrive via capillary vessels.

A team at the Fraunhofer Institute in Germany has solved that problem using 3D printing and a technique called multiphoton polymerisation.

"We are establishing a basis for applying rapid prototyping to elastic and organic biomaterials," said Dr Tovar.

"The vascular systems illustrate very dramatically what opportunities this technology has to offer, but that's definitely not the only thing possible."

Lung cancer vaccine discovered in Cuba? | Ubergizmo

Lung cancer vaccine discovered in Cuba? | Ubergizmo: Do you think it is rather ironic that a country like Cuba who produces some of the best cigars around, have managed to stumble upon a therapeuitc vaccine against lung cancer, touted to be the world’s first? Yes, I too, find it rather hard to believe, but with lung cancer being quite the astute killer (5-year survival rate for late-stage lung cancer can be less than 1%), perhaps this dose of good news is what the world needs considering what you read in the papers and watch on TV, seeing wave after wave of depressing news.

The vaccine is known as CimaVax-EGF, where it will target both stage 3 and stage 4 lung cancer patients who have failed to exhibit any kind of positive response to other treatment methods including chemotherapy and radiotherapy. While the vaccine will not offer a cure, it is said to minimize the cancer’s growth as it possesses antibodies which are able to combat the proteins that allow uncontrolled cell growth.

Turning cancer into a “manageable, chronic disease by generating antibodies against the proteins which triggered the uncontrolled cell proliferation,” according to Gisela Gonzalez at the Center of Molecular Immunology (CIM) in Havana, this discovery might just help those who are flirting with death at the moment.

BBC News - Soil bacterium helps kill cancers

BBC News - Soil bacterium helps kill cancers

A bacterium found in soil is a showing promise as a way of delivering cancer drugs into tumours.

UK and Dutch scientists have been able to genetically engineer an enzyme into the bacteria to activate a cancer drug.

Researchers have been investigating the possibilities of clostridium "vectors" to deliver cancer drugs for decades.

The scientists from the University of Nottingham and Maastricht University were able to genetically engineer an improved version of an enzyme into C.sporogenes.
(Professor Nigel Minton University of Nottingham).

Tooth regrowth gel spells the end of dentist visits

Tooth regrowth gel spells the end of dentist visits | Ubergizmo

A team of French scientists at the National Institute for Health and Medical Research in Paris tested if the hormone could stimulate tooth growth.
Their findings, published in the American Chemical Society journal ACS Nano, could signal hurtnot just an end to fillings, but the dreaded dentist drill as well. They stumbled across the solution in the form of a tooth treatment gel that is said to stimulate regrowth of a natural tooth. This gel is made up of a natural chemical that can be found in our bodies, and so far tests in mice have proved to be effective, although there are no known results of long term effects just yet.

See also: http://www.credentis.com/
and: http://www.naturalnews.com/030632_teeth_cavities.html

Drug From New Zealand Kills Cancer Cells By Starving Them Of Glucose

Drug From New Zealand Kills Cancer Cells By Starving Them Of Glucose

Scientists at the University of Auckland in New Zealand have designed a new compound that starves certain cancer cells of glucose, depriving them of energy and causing them to die.

“Normal cells can use glucose efficiently, whereas many cancers produce energy inefficiently through aerobic glycolysis. These cells become addicted to glucose and need to import large quantities of glucose to survive,” explains Associate Professor Michael Hay from the Auckland Cancer Society Research Center (ACSRC) and Maurice Wilkins Center for Molecular Biodiscovery.

“Using STF-31 we have shown that it is possible to selectively inhibit the ability of certain cancer cells to take up glucose. This starves them of energy and causes them to die. Importantly, treatment with STF-31 did not appear to cause toxicity in normal cells and so presages a novel way to selectively target cancer cells.”

Link: http://stm.sciencemag.org/content/3/94/94ra70.abstract

BBC News - IBM produces first 'brain chips'

BBC News - IBM produces first 'brain chips'

IBM has developed a microprocessor which it claims comes closer than ever to replicating the human brain.

Dharmendra Modha, IBM's project leader, explained that they were trying to recreate aspects of the mind such as emotion, perception, sensation and cognition by "reverse engineering the brain."

IBM's work on the SyNAPSE project continues and the company, along with its academic partners, has just been awarded $21m (£12.7m) by the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).

Link IBM: http://www.ibm.com/smarterplanet/us/en/business_analytics/article/cognitive_computing.html

Hydrogen made by enzyme is faster and cheaper

Scientists have shown how an enzyme from a microbe can produce hydrogen from water more quickly and cheaply.

"This nickel-based catalyst is really very fast," said co-author Morris Bullock of the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Washington state in the US. 

The new research published in Science takes us a step closer to this vision by avoiding the use of rare and costly chemicals to extract it from water.


Although it is fast, at present the process uses up too much electrical energy to be viable for real-world applications.

However, the authors note that "these results highlight the substantial promise molecular catalysts hold for the production of hydrogen".

BBC News - Hydrogen made by enzyme is faster and cheaper

Smart Cancer Targeting

Source (ScientificAmerican.com): Smart Cancer Targeting

"Smart" anticancer drug systems can use mechanisms similar to swarm intelligence to locate sites of disease in the human body.

Geoffrey von Maltzahn and coworkers may have come up with the most ingenious solution yet. They have created "scouting" or Signaling nanoparticles that pave the way to the location of a tumor inside a living mouse, and then communicate the tumor location to Receiving nanoparticles, or the rest of the "swarm."

Scientists unveil tools for rewriting the code of life - MIT News Office

Source: Scientists unveil tools for rewriting the code of life - MIT News Office
New technology from MIT and Harvard can edit DNA at the genome scale, giving cells novel functions.
Such technology could enable scientists to design cells that build proteins not found in nature, or engineer bacteria that are resistant to any type of viral infection.

Imec news-imec

Source: Imec news-imec (sorry article is in Dutch, but there is always google translate).

Dutch research institute TNO together with Belgium Imec and Polymer Vision have developed a thin plastic microprocessor. Possible usage in flexible screens, clothing and package material.

Together with NFC this is another step closer to a complete integrated digital world.

Concept Bio Robot fridge keeps your food fresh in gel | Ubergizmo

Concept Bio Robot fridge keeps your food fresh in gel | Ubergizmo

This super thin fridge makes use of a special gel-like substance to keep your food cold and fresh. The substance is odorless and non-sticky so you can put things in and take them out just as they were, without having any additional greens on your food.
The fridge doesn’t take up a large footprint, unlike fridges of today. In fact, the fridge can be mounted on walls or even the ceiling to save space. And because it has no moving parts, it won’t be giving out that humming noise we’re all so used to listening to in our kitchen. The Bio Fridge is still a concept now, but if this fridge gets to go into production, it’ll easily be one of the coolest fridges ever designed.
Check out some videos: Fridge video & Kitchen of 2050

Portable brain tumor treatment system kills cancer while you take out the trash -- Engadget

Portable brain tumor treatment system kills cancer while you take out the trash -- Engadget

We've seen robots that perform brain surgery and lasers that cook tumors, and now a team of researchers are well on their way to bringing mobility to the battle against brain cancer. The NovoTTF-100A, which just received FDA approval, is basically a set of insulated electrodes, attached to an electronic box, that pumps low intensity electrical fields to the site of a freshly diagnosed GBM (glioblastoma multiforme) tumor. The fields, known as Tumor Treatment Fields (TTF), play off the electrically charged elements of cancer cells to stunt the tumor's growth, and may in some cases actually reverse it. A recent test of the system showed comparable results to chemotherapy, without the usual lineup of side effects, including nausea, anemia, fatigue, and infection. Given, patients using the system are expected to wear the thing continuously, but we'd say walking around with a cap full of electrodes is a small price to pay for giving cancer the boot. Full PR after the break.

he NovoTTF-100A System is made by Novocure of Portsmouth, N.H.
Source: Novocure

Real Retinas Grown in Lab Hold Eye Transplant Promise

Lab-grown human organs may seem like futuristic technology, but in a lab in Kobe, Japan, researchers are growing new retinas in a dish.

"This retina tissue made in the test tube was clearly real. It mimicked the complex structure of the retina in the eye," said Yoshiki Sasai at the RIKEN Center for Developmental Biology in Kobe, lead researcher on the study, published today (April 7) in the journal Nature.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2011/04/06/real-retinas-grown-lab-hold-eye-transplant-promise/#ixzz1IoY2MupK

Real Retinas Grown in Lab Hold Eye Transplant Promise - FoxNews.com

Prosthetic arm that is controlled by brain signals

General_Public - News & Events - Ryerson University: "Two Ryerson University undergraduate biomedical engineering students are changing the world of medical prosthetics with a newly developed prosthetic arm that is controlled by brain signals."

Since the device does not include microelectronics and motors, it costs one-quarter of other functional prosthetic arms, which can run users more than $80,000, depending on the complexity of the prosthesis. Other prosthetic arms with a similar degree of control require patients to undergo a complex muscle re-innervation surgery – a complicated procedure that costs about $300,000 and is not available in Canada and not covered by the provincial health plan. As the AMO Arm is non-invasive, the period of adjustment for new users is drastically decreased. While traditional prosthetics may require weeks of learning and training, basic function with the AMO Arm can be mastered in mere minutes.

Major advance for bionic eye

UNSW: The University of New South Wales - Sydney Australia - News - Major advance for bionic eye

UNSW researchers have unveiled the microchip which is expected to power Australia’s first bionic eye.


The microchip is performing well in preliminary lab testing. It will be at the core of the Wide-View neurostimulator device being developed by BVA, with the first full implant of the system in a patient planned for 2013.

The bionic eye technology being developed by UNSW and its partners in BVA – the Bionic Ear Institute, Centre for Eye Research Australia, NICTA and University of Melbourne – aims to help people who have experienced vision loss due to retinitis pigmentosa (RP) and age-related macular degeneration (AMD).