Technology

Imagine communicating with your bank, the IRS or your doctor by way of an Internet that was actually secure, where if any bad actor were to try to eavesdrop you would know immediately. Such is the promise of secure quantum communication, and has been since it was 'almost ready' starting in the 1990s. For quantum communication to become the standard, technical challenges still lie ahead. To make progress toward devices that can send and receive quantum data, researchers at Stanford University have created a novel quantum light source.  The physics of quantum communication is admittedly…

Scarring is a natural part of any healing process but scar formation within blood vessels can be deadly. To prevent scarring and the dangerous damage that follows, researchers writing in ACS Biomaterials Science and Engineering discuss development of a new biodegradable material with built-in vitamin A, which has been shown to reduce scarring in blood vessels. This soft elastic material can be used to treat injured vessels or be used to make medical devices, such as stents and prosthetic vascular grafts, to give them intrinsic healing properties. Early tests have shown that the material can…

It’s a common assumption that being online means you’ll have to part ways with your personal data and there’s nothing you can do about it. Not true, according to two communication professors. In their new book, Obfuscation: A User’s Guide for Privacy and Protest (MIT Press, 2015), they argue both that your privacy is being eroded through acts way, way more heinous than you might think, and that contrary to popular belief, there is something you can do about it. Part philosophical treatise and part rousing how-to, Obfuscation reads at times as an urgent call to arms. “Machines don’t forget…

How do you know the paper claiming GMO toxicity is in a journal that isn't very reputable? They don't have $9 to renew their domain. It seems like only yesterday (oh wait, it was) that I wrote about the latest Gilles-Eric Seralini Scud missile against science and all things evidence-based.  Now RetractionWatch notes that the whole domain his disappeared - because the rigorous editors and management at something called the Scholarly Journal of Agricultural Sciences forgot to pay their bill.  This is their URL now: That comes one day after his press conference to suggest that "GMO Bt…

Surgeons removing a malignant brain tumor don’t want to leave cancerous material behind, but they also need to protect healthy brain matter and minimize neurological harm. Once the patient’s skull is open, there’s no time to send tissue samples to a pathology lab to be frozen, sliced, stained, mounted on slides and investigated under a bulky microscope in order distinguish between cancerous and normal brain cells. A handheld, miniature microscope could allow surgeons to “see” at a cellular level in the operating room and determine where to stop cutting. The researchers hope that after testing…

A small pilot study in the Journal of Medical Internet Research finds that using smartphone reminders to prompt people to get moving may help reduce sedentary behavior. Prior papers have corrolated sedentary time to increased risk of breast, colorectal, ovarian, endometrial, and prostate cancers as well as weight gain, higher BMI, and obesity. Still, we love our phones. Surveys finds that adults in the U.S. report spending an average of about 8 waking hours per day being sedentary.  Researchers Darla E. Kendzor, PhD of the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center and Kerem Shuval,…

A new method to determine if bacteria are susceptible to antibiotics within a few hours could slow the appearance of drug resistance and allow doctors to more rapidly identify the appropriate treatment for patients with life threatening bacterial infections. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, antibiotic resistance causes two million illnesses and 23,000 deaths annually, costing the U.S. economy approximately $20-billion a year in direct health care costs and nearly eight million extra days in the hospital. Indeed, bacteria are evolving resistance to antibiotics much…

Heartbeats can now be measured without placing sensors on the body, thanks to a new way to measure heartbeats remotely, in real time, and under controlled conditions with as much accuracy as electrocardiographs. The researchers say this will allow for the development of "casual sensing" -- taking measurements as people go about their daily activities, for instance, when they are going to bed or getting ready to start the day. Kind of like a Fitbit, except accurate "Taking measurements with sensors on the body can be stressful and troublesome, because you have to stop what you're doing," says…

I don't like using the term "consumer" because it implies an economic function of the searcher.  There is certainly an economy (exchange of value) in the Searchable Web Ecosystem but "consumers" are really "searchers".  I say "consumers" because people identify with that word more readily than they do with the word "searcher".  A "consumer" is someone like you and me: we consume things.  A "searcher" is someone who is statistically measured in a more clinical environment.Well, there you have it: an arbitrary and artificial distinction between "consumer" and "searcher" in…

No one expects much of the social sciences, so a heavy reliance on undergraduate psychology student surveys to draw conclusions and resulting lack of reproducibility is dismissed, but the National Institutes of Health is nearly half of the federal government's and lack of reproducibility in biology and other life sciences is of greater concern for that reason. If it can't be replicated, is it science? Sure, but it's a complex explanation for the public educated on the science process. To promote the reproducibility and transparency of biomedical and biological research, the Federation of…