Providence, RI (Scicasts) – On April 12, 2011, nearly 15 years after she became paralyzed and unable to speak, a woman controlled a robotic arm by thinking about moving her...
Cambridge, MA (Scicasts) – A little more than a decade ago, researchers discovered an ancient mechanism that cells use to silence genes. Like a dimmer switch turning down a light, RNA interference (RNAi) dials down gene activity in simple organisms as well as in humans.
Providence, RI (Scicasts) – On April 12, 2011, nearly 15 years after she became paralyzed and unable to speak, a woman controlled a robotic arm by thinking about moving her arm and hand to lift a bottle of coffee to her mouth and take a drink. [video]
Berkeley, CA (Scicasts) – Imagine charging your phone as you walk, thanks to a paper-thin generator embedded in the sole of your shoe. This futuristic scenario is now a little closer to reality. [video]
Bournemouth, UK (Scicasts) – Solentim, a provider of high resolution imaging for fast clone selection, has announced the new Cell Metric CLD bench top system, optimised to provide fast, reliable and automated cell line development (CLD).
Bloomington, IN (Scicasts) – Sloppy shipping of a donated human retina to an Indiana University researcher studying a leading cause of vision loss has inadvertently helped uncover a previously undetected mechanism causing the disease. The discovery has led researchers to urge review of how millions of dollars are spent investigating the cause of a type of age-related macular degeneration called choroidal neovascularization.
Los Angeles, CA (Scicasts) – If you throw a rubber balloon filled with water against a wall, it will spread out and deform on impact, while the same balloon filled with honey, which is more viscous, will deform much less. If the balloon's elastic rubber was stiffer, an even smaller change in shape would be observed. By simply analyzing how much a balloon changes shape upon hitting a wall, you can uncover information about its physical properties.
Toronto, ON (Scicasts) – In the age of high-speed computing, the photon is king. However, producing the finely tuned particles of light is a complex and time-consuming process, until now.
New York, NY (Scicasts) – Migraine pain sits at the upper end of the typical pain scale – an angry-red section often labelled “severe.” At this intensity, pain is debilitating. Yet many sufferers do not get relief from – or cannot tolerate – over-the-counter and commonly prescribed pain medications.
Berkeley, CA (Scicasts) – Knowing how a living cell works means knowing how the chemistry inside the cell changes as the functions of the cell change. Protein phosphorylation, for example, controls everything from cell proliferation to differentiation to metabolism to signalling, and even programmed cell death (apoptosis), in cells from bacteria to humans. It's a chemical process that has long been intensively studied, not least in hopes of treating or eliminating a wide range of diseases.
Durham, NC (Scicasts) – By developing software that uses 3-D models of proteins involved in cystic fibrosis, a team of scientists at Duke University has identified several new molecules that may ease the symptoms of the disease.
Philadelphia, PA (Scicasts) – Protein design is technique that is increasingly valuable to a variety of fields, from biochemistry to therapeutics to materials engineering. University of Pennsylvania chemists have taken this kind of design a step further; using computational methods, they have created the first custom-designed protein crystal.
Cambridge, MA (Scicasts) – A research collaboration between the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University and Children’s Hospital Boston has created a microfluidic device that can harvest rare circulating tumour cells (CTCs) from blood to enable their expansion in culture for analysis.
Cambridge, MA and Shenzhen, China (Scicasts) – BGI, a China-based genomics organization, has introduced its latest-generation cloud-based Software as a Service (SaaS) solution, EasyGenomics, at the 10th Bio-IT World Conference & Expo being held April 24 to 26 in Boston, Mass.
Champaign, IL (Scicasts) ― Real-time, 3-D microscopic tissue imaging could be a revolution for medical fields such as cancer diagnosis, minimally invasive surgery and ophthalmology. University of Illinois researchers have developed a technique to computationally correct for aberrations in optical tomography, bringing the future of medical imaging into focus.
Atlanta, GA (Scicasts) – Researchers from the Georgia Institute of Technology and University of California San Francisco have advanced scientists' ability to view a clear picture of a single cellular structure in motion. By identifying molecules using compressed sensing, this new method provides needed spatial resolution plus a faster temporal resolution than previously possible.
Heidelberg, Germany (Scicasts) – Just as banks store away only the most valuable possessions in the most secure safes, cells prioritise which genes they guard most closely, researchers at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory's European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI) have found.
Santa Clara, CA (Scicasts) - Agilent Technologies has introduced Infiniium 90000 Q-Series oscilloscopes with real-time bandwidth of 63 GHz on two channels and 33 GHz on four channels. The new lineup includes 10 four-channel models ranging from 20 GHz to 63 GHz, all of which are bandwidth upgradeable. These new scopes deliver the lowest noise and have the lowest jitter measurement floor in the oscilloscope industry, ensuring superior measurement accuracy.
Männedorf, Switzerland (Scicasts) – According to a report from Tecan, it's Infinite M1000 plate reader has enabled researchers at the Institute of Entomology (ENTU), Czech Republic, to automate hourly luminescence measurement of transgenic Drosophila for the study of insect circadian clocks.
