Technology

Unregulated Genetic Testing Websites Still Causing Concerns

Though 23andMe finally got FDA approval for a test, that is much different than the unvalidated claims about 250 conditions that they used to make. They got a cease and desist letter from the FDA because of their high profile. ...

Article - News Staff - Mar 5 2015 - 10:26pm

Synthetic Drugs: Legal Doesn't Mean Safe

In recent years, hundreds of new synthetic recreational drugs have emerged – drugs that neither the general public nor the scientific community know very much about. Many of these new synthetic drugs – often referred to as “legal highs” – are dangerous an ...

Article - The Conversation - Mar 8 2015 - 10:24am

New Method Detects Drug Abuse In Exhaled Breath

Drug testing is most commonly performed using urine samples and its accuracy has made it the gold standard, but collecting samples is inconvenient so a group of researchers from the Department of Laboratory Medicine at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden ha ...

Article - News Staff - Mar 8 2015 - 10:41am

Brain To Brain Interfaces May Turn Telepathy Into Reality

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to walk a mile (or 1.6 kilometers) in somebody else’s shoes? Or have you ever tried to send a telepathic message to a partner in transit to “pick up milk on your way home”? Recent advances in brain-computer int ...

Article - The Conversation - Mar 8 2015 - 8:55pm

Blood Test Predicts Cytokine Storm Drug Reaction In Humans

A new test that uses combinations of cells from a single donor’s blood can predict whether a new drug will cause a severe immune reaction in humans. ...

Article - News Staff - Mar 9 2015 - 2:17pm

To Halt The Rise Of The Machines, Think About Fuzzy Logic

Amid all the dire warnings that machines run by artificial intelligence (AI) will one day take over from humans we need to think more about how we program them in the first place. The technology may be too far off to seriously entertain these worries – fo ...

Article - The Conversation - Mar 9 2015 - 3:20pm

ResearchKit- Apple Goes Open Source For Medical Apps

Apple has found a new use for their iPhone- medicine. People had already created lots of apps, of course, but ResearchKit, due out next month, is the first Apple framework to make it easier.  The framework allows new ways to create apps to track movement, ...

Article - News Staff - Mar 9 2015 - 3:50pm

Back To BASIC For Synthetic DNA Design

A new system called BASIC could give synthetic biology a boost by creating artificial DNA that is faster, more accurate and more flexible than existing methods.  To engineer new organisms, scientists build artificial genes from individual molecules and the ...

Article - News Staff - Mar 10 2015 - 1:58pm

CRISPR/Cas9 Labeling System Makes A GPS For The Genome

A new app for finding and mapping chromosomal loci uses multicolored versions of CRISPR/Cas9. The labeling system, developed by  the University of Massachusetts Medical School, could be a key to understanding the spatial and temporal regulation of gene exp ...

Article - News Staff - Mar 12 2015 - 4:45pm

Carbon Nitride and Salmon Sperm

Two things that have caught my attention recently. The first concerns trapping solar energy.  One way to do this is to convert it directly into electricity with a solar panel, but one with much wider application would be to split water into oxygen and hydr ...

Blog Post - Robert H Olley - Mar 13 2015 - 7:42am