Technology

To clear blood clots in the brain, doctors often perform an endovascular procedure, where a surgeon inserts a thin wire through a patient’s main artery, usually in the leg or groin. Guided by a fluoroscope that simultaneously images the blood vessels using X-rays, the surgeon then manually rotates the wire up into the damaged brain vessel. A catheter can then be threaded up along the wire to deliver drugs or clot-retrieval devices to the affected region. Soon, a snake may be able to do it without the exhausting manual effort by a surgeon.  Stroke is a top five cause of death and…

Millennials, the first "Net Generation," say they can use many technologies simultaneously, masterfully switching from emails to instant messaging, app notifications, RSS feeds, and rants on Twitter much better than older generations. Maybe they can. Generation Z certainly can. A new study simulated a typical working environment, complete with technology interruptions, to allow scholars to track the effects on participants' inhibitory processes. College-age participants (naturally) totaling and a few other folks totaling 177 were divided into three groups: those who received IT interruptions…

Some mosquito species, such as Aedes aegypti, have been able to weave their way through evolutionary time despite having no ecological value, basically being just delivery mechanisms for things like Dengue fever, the most common vector-borne disease in the world. We could wipe them out and the rest of the ecosystem would be just fine but environmentalists have promoted a lot of fear about science-based mitigation approaches, like a male mosquito rendered sterile, and they hate pesticides more than they love poor people, so that leaves...clothes? Maybe. In a study, disease-free mosquitoes got…

When I was a youngster, I typed on a 1950s portable typewriter.  I was not a hipster, I was poor. But I loved to write. When I got older our school had a computer lab but typing out computer code seemed pointless. I used a newfangled roller pen and a notepad and when the code was ready, I would type it in and save it to cassette tape. When I went to college I programmed on a Univac 1100/62 but I still wrote the code in longhand. The instructor in the lab asked me not to type so hard. I was used to a manual typewriter and I was crushing the keyboard In 1978 Battlestar Galactica…

As Science 2.0 approaches its 12th anniversary people have asked me about the reasons for its longevity. Some of if it just riding out the ups and downs of culture, of course, we are a boring but reliable science site, and obviously there was some luck. (1) Our prestige was always high, our success was evident, and in 2015 the Trustees at the American Council on Science and Health asked me to become the second President of the organization. The co-founder had passed away and they had endured some tribulations prior to that but Science 2.0's maverick spirit had been pioneered by the Council in…

Telepathic communication might be one step closer to reality thanks to new research from the University of Washington. A team created a method that allows three people to work together to solve a problem using only their minds. In BrainNet, three people play a Tetris-like game using a brain-to-brain interface. This is the first demonstration of two things: a brain-to-brain network of more than two people, and a person being able to both receive and send information to others using only their brain. The team published its results in Scientific Reports after being posted on arXiv last year. "…

Responding to chemical changes is a crucial function of biological cells. For example, cells can respond to chemicals by creating certain proteins, boosting energy production, or self-destructing. Chemicals are also used by cells to communicate with each other and coordinate a response or send a signal, such as a pain impulse. However, in natural cells these chemical responses can be very complex, involving multiple steps. This makes them difficult to engineer, for example if researchers wanted to make natural cells produce something useful, like a drug molecule, but now scientists at…

As government control of science funding increased, and government spent billions convincing young scholars that only government-funded academia was a fulfilling science career, competition grew at a rapid pace. And collaboration declined. Unwillingness to cooperate is understandable when small labs are competing with an ever-increasing pool of small labs stepping over each over for finite government funding; if a scientist has an experiment that fails and publishes it, they gave a competitor an advantage, while positive results must be rushed to publication before competitors can do so. Yet…

Choosing a good but memorable password is hard. Here are some tips on how you can do it.  The best practice is to have a password manager, other than your web browser, and use it.  Do not use obvious personal information as part of a password.  Use a password manager.  Google Chrome and all modern browsers can remember your passwords for you as can your phone.  However, if you loose your phone or your computer has a weak password it can compromise all your other passwords.  I would suggest using a password manager, there are many, to generate and store your…

As the Apollo 11 Lunar Module approached the moon's surface for the first manned landing, commander Neil Armstrong switched off the auto-targeting feature of the LM's computer and flew the spacecraft manually. A new video, created at Arizona State University's School of Earth and Space Exploration, shows what Armstrong saw out his window as the lander descended — and that means we can see for yourself why he took control. They used the crew's voice recording, the timings, a video taken on film and images taken from lunar orbit by the LROC over the last 10 years. The only actual visual record…