Science and research

FDA approves bionic eye for adults with rare genetic disease

For most of us, light-sensitive cells that line our retinas convert light rays into electrical impulses that travel through the optic nerve to the brain to be assembled into images. But for an estimated 1 in 4,000 people in the U.S. with a genetic condition called retinitis pigmentosa, or RP, those cells are damaged, which most commonly impairs vision at night. What's more, treatment to prevent eventual (if unlikely) total blindness remains elusive.

Enter the Argus II Retinal Prosthesis System, which the FDA approved today to treat a very specific population: adults 25 and older with severe to profound RP who have bare or no light perception in both eyes but inner layer retinal function and a history of the ability to see forms.

Though the bionic eye doesn't restore vision to these patients, it could allow them to detect light and dark, which in turn could help them identify the movement or location of objects.… Read more

What a heart rate monitor says about your relationship

New research out of UC Davis suggests that when couples who are romantically involved interact, their heart and respiratory rates sync up.

But that doesn't mean you should bring a pair of heart rate monitors to scout out potential partners on your first date. When study participants were paired with someone outside their relationship, neither their heart rates nor their breathing closely matched.

To conduct their research, which was funded by the National Science Foundation and published in the International Journal of Psychophysiology and Emotion, the psychologists in one study placed couples a few feet apart in a quiet, calm room and instructed them not to talk or touch. In another, the couples were asked to mimic each other without speaking. In both instances, heart and respiratory rates were closely matched.… Read more

Carbon nanotube Cupid perfect for tiny crushes

If you like someone just a teeny-weeny bit, this Cupid is your ticket to love on Valentine's Day.

Physics students at Brigham Young University crafted this nifty god from carbon nanotubes that are 10,000 times smaller than a human hair.

They began by laying down microscopic iron "seeds" to form a Cupid pattern. When they applied a heated gas to the iron, the seeds sprouted into the desired shape. … Read more

Language 'time machine' a Rosetta stone for lost tongues

One of my favorite things about watching old movies is hearing how people might have spoken in eras past -- the expressions they used, their old-school smack talk. But what did the languages from thousands of years back sound like? Hollywood, as far as I know, has yet to make a movie in which characters talk in authentic proto-Austronesian.

The language nerd in me, was, therefore, excited to discover that scientists from UC Berkeley and the University of British Columbia have created a computer program to rapidly reconstruct vocabularies of ancient languages using only their modern language descendants. … Read more

Another close asteroid encounter for Earth coming Friday

In a few days, sky watchers in Eastern Europe, Asia, and Australia will get a chance to see one big rock hurtling through the heavens. One very big rock. Compared with other asteroids traveling through space, this one may seem a relative pebble -- at half the size of a football field -- but for Earth, it will make for a relatively close call.

"This is a record-setting close approach," says Don Yeomans of NASA's Near Earth Object Program at JPL. "Since regular sky surveys began in the 1990s, we've never seen an object this big get so close to Earth." … Read more

Unlocking Ma Bell: How phone phreaks came to be

Imagine a day when it cost an arm and a leg to use the phone, especially for long-distance calls. Then imagine that buried deep within the telephone network infrastructure was a flaw -- a hole that allowed those who were aware of it, and capable of exploiting it, to make all the free calls they want.

These days, phone calls are free -- or nearly so -- and hackers put their energies into computer networks, jailbreaking iPhones, and other more modern pursuits. But back in the 1950s and 1960s, a new group of people emerged, people who were fascinated by … Read more

Awesome Antarctic research station can crawl out of the snow

Antarctica isn't the friendliest place on earth. It's cold. It's snowy. It's tough on researchers and tough on their research stations. The cold continent has seen its fair share of stations abandoned as they're slowly consumed by layers of snow and ice. A new research station is looking to outlast its predecessors by crawling up above the snow when needed.

The Halley VI research station is the newest addition to the family for the British Antarctic Survey. It's known as the "first fully re-locatable research station in the world." That means it's got legs and it knows how to use them.… Read more

Your smartphone knows which side of the brain you're using

Some people use the left, some the right, but which side of the brain do you primarily use for language? It may seem like a trivial question, but for one thing, if you ever have to undergo any type of brain surgery, the answer can help avoid damage to speech areas.

While lab tests can provide the answer, an app that involves a few minutes of concentration works just as well, according to a study in the journal Frontiers in Psychology.

Furthermore, a version of the app for patients with schizophrenia trains them to improve their focus so that when … Read more

First complete 'bionic man' unveiled in U.K.

He's got blood flowing through him, but he sure isn't human. Meet Rex, the world's first complete "bionic man."

Rex has the face of a man; prosthetic limbs; a functional artificial blood-circulatory system; and artificial organs including a pancreas, kidney, spleen, and trachea. At 6.5-feet tall, Rex is valued at a whopping $1 million.

Created for the TV documentary series "How to Build a Bionic Man," Rex was constructed by a team of roboticists. The researchers say they wanted to test scientific boundaries and demonstrate how modern science is beginning to catch up with sci-fi in the race to replace body parts with man-made alternatives. … Read more

Use your cell phone to detect mercury levels in water

It may not make your list of must-have camping gear, but a new sheet that detects mercury levels in water may prove useful to those who live or work downstream from industrial and mining sites (such as gold mines and coal-fired powered plants) and want to drink the local water.

When dipped in water for five minutes, the sheet, manufactured by chemists at the University of Burgos in Spain, signals the presence of mercury by turning red -- a process that can be seen with the naked eye.

Take a picture of that sheet with a digital camera, and you can learn the specific concentration of the mercury, a metal that is liquid at room temperature and has been found to cause long-term neurological issues after accumulating in the brain.… Read more