Technology

In 2013, the US FDA got tired of being stonewalled when it came to seeing proof of Google-backed 23andMe marketing claims regarding BRCA-related genetic risk and drug response, along with marketing blurbs that they can make it possible to “take steps toward mitigating serious diseases” such as diabetes, coronary heart disease, and breast cancer. They had asked to see such proof starting in 2009 and the company refused. Maybe 23andMe figured all that money spent on campaign contributions was going to get them a free-pass, it is difficult to know, but by 2013 the FDA was not having it, sending…

Governments and taxpayers deserve to know that their money is being spent on something worthwhile to society. Individuals and groups who are making the greatest contribution to science and to the community deserve to be recognized. For these reasons, all research has to be assessed. Judging the importance of research is often done by looking at the number of citations a piece of research receives after it has been published. Let’s say Researcher A figures out something important (such as how to cure a disease). He or she then publishes this information in a scientific journal, which…

Now with added "2". Shutterstock Hypertext Transfer Protocol, HTTP, is a key component of the world wide web. It is the communications layer through which web browsers request web pages from web servers and with which web servers respond with the contents of the page. Like much of the Internet it’s been around for decades, but a recent announcement reveals that HTTP/2, the first major update in 15 years, is about to arrive. The original HTTP protocol was the protocol first used by Sir Tim Berners-Lee at CERN where the web was created in 1991. This was improved over many years and finalized…

Scientifically engineered tissues intended to repair or regenerate damaged or diseased human tissues require three-dimensional tissue constructs that are densely packed with living cells. The Bio-P3, an innovative instrument able to pick up, transport, and assemble multi-cellular microtissues to form larger tissue constructs is described in an article in Tissue Engineering, Part C: Methods. Andrew Blakely, MD, Kali Manning, Anubhav Tripathi, PhD, and Jeffrey Morgan, PhD, Rhode Island Hospital and Brown University, Providence, RI, developed the manual Bio-P3 device, and in the article "Bio-…

It's always helpful to have text or verbal claims about where a video was taken, but when it comes to terrorists or other criminals, they might not be telling the truth.  Researchers from Ramón Llull University in Spain have created a system capable of geolocating videos by comparing audiovisual content with a worldwide multimedia database and it is able to locate where the videos were taken with no indication of where they were produced. All of the data contained in the videois merged together and grouped in clusters so that, using algorithms developed by the researchers, they can be…

DreamWorks Animation Foliage System "trees" in "How To Train Your Dragon." Courtesy of DreamWorks Animations By Emilie Lorditch, Inside Science (Inside Science) – From a tree's exquisitely textured trunk, up to its diverging branches and finally, fluttering leaves, it can be easy to see the complex work that lies ahead for the movie artists and computer programmers tasked with recreating the intricacy and beauty of nature. This Saturday, scientists, engineers and artists will celebrate the recent advances in technology that create realistic worlds on screen from imaginary visions. The Academy…

Protecting privacy in an age of online big data is difficult and social network data adds its own challenges, something that has been a concern since Science 2.0 began in 2006, when genomic data was really beginning its ascent.  There is obviously a great deal of good in data analysis - we will soon be able to successfully predict outbreaks, rather than creating computer models that predict the past fine but perform poorly in the nonlinear real world. Even now, large databases like those of the U.S. Census Bureau contain data that, when aggregated and analyzed, can point possible social…

The Blacksmith Group has unveiled the world’s first compact 3-D printer that can also scan items into digitized models - and it was crowdfunded. The Blacksmith Genesis allows users to scan any item, then edit the digitized model and print it out in 3-D. The first production run will be shipped out in March to the people who supported the crowdfunding campaign. It is available for pre-order at a cost of $2,200, with flat rate shipping to 70 countries worldwide for another $150. It is housed in a black aluminum casing, weighs 6 kilograms and features a 2-inch LCD display, Wi-Fi, an integrated…

If you thought it has been a while since you heard any more rumors about the long-awaited Apple TV, they are about to be replaced by even more exciting possibility - that Apple may be about to build an electric car. The Wall Steet Journal kicked things off with a report that Apple had been hiring “hundreds” of staff with automotive design skills to work on a project called “Titan” that may be a self-driving electric vehicle configured in a (not-so-exciting) mini-van design. There are several back-stories to this potential move by Apple. In one, we see continuing competition with rival…

Researchers from Paragon Vision Sciences, Innovega, Pacific Sciences and Engineering,  EPFL and the University of California, San Diego and Rockwell Collins have developed a novel method to electronically switch the wearer's view between normal vision and telescopic - a wink. That kind of switching functionality is crucial for the lenses to be widely useful for non-AMD sufferers who would still like to be able to have magnification "on demand", like if they want to read something. The obvious problem is that we 'wink' every second, but they are instead blinks. Problem solved,…