Science and research

Vertigo sufferers seek treatment on YouTube

Though YouTube shouldn't exactly be your most trusted source of medical advice, in at least one case, videos on the site can help people manage a common form of vertigo without having to see a doctor, according to researchers from the American Academy of Neurology.

However, as is the case with pretty much any aggregator on the Internet (think Wikipedia), one should proceed with a healthy dose of caution, because just over half the videos are accurate -- which means, of course, that the others aren't.

The researchers who reviewed YouTube videos of the Epley maneuver, which can … Read more

Google science fair entrants focus on health, environment

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. -- Google held the final round of its second annual international science fair on Monday morning, hosting 15 contestants from around the world between the ages of 13 and 18.

The science fair this year has grown considerably as not only did Google receive thousands of entries from more than 100 countries, but the program now also accepts entries in not just English but also 14 different languages.

Most of the projects derive from the United States, but there were also contestants present from India, Canada, Spain, the Ukraine, Swaziland, and Malta. Entrants are also judged in … Read more

Thermal imaging may help fight obesity

All fat is not equal. Brown adipose tissue, more commonly called brown fat and abundant in both newborns and hibernating mammals, is the good fat, playing a prominent role in how quickly our bodies burn calories.

Brown fat also produces as much as 300 times more heat than any other tissue in the body, according to scientists at the University of Nottingham, so these scientists have developed a thermal imaging technique to measure not only a person's brown fat stores but also how much heat that fat produces.… Read more

New tech could target and treat irregular heartbeats

Researchers are reporting that they have found, for the first time, that tiny electrical spinning tops ("rotors") within the heart cause atrial fibrillation (AF), a type of arrhythmia in which the heartbeat is faster and irregular.

What's more, they found that by targeting the so-called eye of the storm, they could actually slow or even terminate the AF, the multidisciplinary team from UC San Diego, UCLA, and Indiana University reports in the July issue of the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.

Today, catheter ablation is a common therapy used to treat AF, but because the … Read more

Musical glove could improve mobility after spinal cord injury

A wireless musical glove developed at Georgia Tech not only teaches users to play songs on the piano, but may also improve the sensation and mobility of the hands of people who have suffered spinal cord injuries, researchers report.

The Mobile Music Touch (MMT) device, which works alongside a computer and a keyboard, improved rehabilitation even in patients who had sustained the injury more than a year earlier -- a point at which improvements tend to be minimal at best.… Read more

DARPA drops the bass to extinguish fire

Citing a lack of innovation in fire-extinguishing methods over the last 50 years, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) last week revealed an ear-buzzing new method for putting out fires: blast it with fine-tuned frequencies.

Officially referred to as "acoustic suppression of flame," this simple yet potentially revolutionary method simply relies on two speakers playing a specific low frequency toward the fire.

The resulting acoustics increase air velocity, making it easier to alter the origin of the fire's combustion, also known as the flame boundary layer. … Read more

Tapping Earth's magnetic field for indoor navigation

While outdoor navigation has been mastered with GPS satellites and cell phone triangulation, indoor navigation has proven more tricky.

Now, a group of researchers at the University of Oulu in Finland has tapped the Earth's magnetic field to create an indoor positioning system (IPS). The researchers say their approach was inspired by studying the way homing pigeons and lobsters use anomalies in the magnetic field to navigate their travels.

Researchers explain in a paper (PDF) -- titled "Ambient magnetic field-based indoor location technology / Bringing the compass to the next level" -- that the same magnetic field that … Read more

Rare footage captures real sound of 1953 A-bomb blast

Odds are that not many folks out there have seen a nuclear explosion up close. And it turns out that most of the films we've seen are dubbed or contain stock blast sound effects, a point I wasn't aware of before coming across a blog curated by Alex Wellerstein, an historian of science at the American Institute of Physics.

Most films of nuclear explosions got dubbed. If they do contain an actual audio recording of the test blast itself (something I'm often suspicious of -- I suspect many were filmed silently and have a stock blast sound … Read more

Screen yourself for skin cancer with this free iOS app

Got a new mole? A bad sunburn? A family member with a skin cancer diagnosis?

UMSkinCheck, a free new app for iPhone and iPad developed at the University of Michigan, includes a risk calculator that will help you determine your individual risk. If you have any concern at all, it guides you through taking a series of 23 photos that cover your entire body to develop a baseline for future photo comparisons.

"Whole body photography is a well-established resource for following patients at risk for melanoma," Michael Sabel, lead physician in app development and associate professor of surgery … Read more

Smartphone display could improve eye diagnoses

Smartphones could soon be used not only to view complex inner-eye photos for diagnoses, but also to take, send, and view pictures of damage to the front of the eye or to eyelids, according to a new study out of Emory University.

Smartphones may even make passe those annual eye doctor visits if their imaging is good enough for diagnosing and planning treatment for a range of eye conditions -- good news for those who, like myself, prefer to perform as many chores as possible (think shopping) from the comfort of my home.

The researchers at Emory collected data on … Read more