After Jeopardy, Watson 1, Mankind 0. Next up...doctors

IBM to Collaborate with Nuance to Apply Watson Analytics Technology to Healthcare

IBM and Nuance Communications, Inc. have announced a research agreement to explore, develop and commercialize the Watson computing system’s advanced analytics capabilities in the healthcare industry.

Sprinkle a little water on some sodium silicide and presto...battery power

Technology breakthrough fuels laptops and phones, recharges scientist's 60-year career




How does a scientist fuel his enthusiasm for chemistry after 60 years? By discovering a new energy source, of course.

Cheat sheet for surgeons, cut there and not there

Nerves Light Up to Warn Surgeons Away - Technology Review

Surgeons take pains to avoid injuring nerves in and around surgical sites—a stray cut could lead to muscle weakness, pain, numbness, or even paralysis. In delicate operations like prostate removal, for instance, accidentally damaging nerves can lead to incontinence or erectile dysfunction. Scientists at University of California San Diego have announced a new method for lighting up nerves in the body with fluorescent peptides, which could act as markers to keep surgeons away.

If you don't yet know about Ray Kurzweil, you have some catching up to do...

2045: The Year Man Becomes Immortal

Love it or hate it, Ray Kurzweil's theory of 'The Singularity' must be accepted as a legitimate possibility of what the future holds in store for humanity.

GOOOOOOOOOOOAAAAAAAAAAAAALLLLLLLLLLLLL

Best goal of the 2010-2011 EPL season scored by Wayne Rooney of the greatest team on the planet, ManU.

Drawing blood safer than shedding skin in terms of generating stem cells

"Researchers at Johns Hopkins have found a better way to create induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells — adult cells reprogrammed with the properties of embryonic stem cells — from a small blood sample. This new method, described last week in Cell Research, avoids creating DNA changes that could lead to tumor formation.

Johns Hopkins researchers created the safer iPS cells by transferring a circular piece of DNA into blood cells from anonymous donors to deliver the needed genetic components. The traditional way is to use viruses to carry DNA into a cell’s genome. Unlike the viral methods, the circular DNA the Hopkins team used is designed to stay separate from the host cell’s genome. After the iPS cells formed, the circular DNA delivered into the blood cells was gradually lost.

Linzhao Cheng, Ph.D says the new method is also more efficient than the traditional use of skin cells to make iPS cells. “After a skin biopsy, it takes a full month to grow the skin cells before they are ready to be reprogrammed into iPS cells, unlike the blood cells that only need to grow for eight or nine days,” says Cheng. “The time it takes to reprogram the iPS cells from blood cells is also shortened to two weeks, compared to the month it takes when using skin cells.”

Safer way to make induced pluripotent stem cells | KurzweilAI

Popeye proved right...eating spinach is good for your muscles

(PhysOrg.com) -- After taking a small dose of inorganic nitrate for three days, healthy people consume less oxygen while riding an exercise bike. A new study in the February issue of Cell Metabolism traces that improved performance to increased efficiency of the mitochondria that power our cells.

...up until recently nitrate wasn't thought to have any nutritional value at all. It has even been suggested that this component of vegetables might be toxic. But Eddie Weitzberg [of the Karolinska Institutet in Sweden] and his colleague Jon Lundberg earlier showed that dietary nitrate feeds into a pathway that produces nitric oxide with the help of friendly bacteria found in our mouths. Nitric oxide has been known for two decades as a physiologically important molecule.

Want more efficient muscles? Eat your spinach

Key ingredient for the origin of life on earth...clay?

Physicists at Harvard’s School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS), Princeton, and Brandeis have demonstrated the formation of semipermeable vesicles from inorganic clay.

The research, published online this week in the journal Soft Matter,shows that clay vesicles provide an ideal container for the compartmentalization of complex organic molecules.

The authors say the discovery opens the possibility that primitive cells might have formed inside inorganic clay microcompartments.

Clay-armored bubbles may have formed first protocells | KurzweilAI

Under The Radar: The Internet Just Ran Out of Numbers

On February 3, it finally happened: the clock ran out on the Internet as we know it. That was the day that the stash of Internet protocol addresses that are used to identify and locate computers connected to the Internet—the telephone numbers of the online world—was exhausted.

The Internet Just Ran Out of Numbers - Technology Review