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Scientists pleasantly 'shocked' by skills of Foldit gamers

It's not every day that a news item details the intelligence of the masses, lurking in the brains of unassuming passersby, just waiting to be uncovered for the greater good. But when it comes to the massively multiplayer online game Foldit, this is precisely the story, and it keeps getting better.

Launched in 2008 at the University of Washington, the protein folding game first made news for its potential to use the collective brainpower of gamers everywhere to unlock the fundamental mysteries of certain diseases. Then gamers began to prove this potential, solving various protein riddles that further our … Read more

Online calculator helps screen for cancer early

A nonprofit research database system called QResearch--which already screens for heart disease, kidney disease, and serious blood cots--is now introducing what look to be highly accurate lung and gastroesophageal cancer screenings as well.

The University of Nottingham and ClinRisk researchers behind the computer-based tool say that their findings, published this week in the British Journal of General Practice, indicate that 10 percent of the patients predicted to be most at risk of developing one of the cancers accounted for 77 percent of actual cancer diagnoses over the following two years.

Chair of the Royal College of General Practitioners Dr. … Read more

Message boards provide years of help for women who miscarry

With about one in six pregnancies ending in miscarriage or stillbirth, plenty of women have to endure the loss of a developing life. For those who turn to online message boards, a new survey finds, there can be great solace in the company of others who have experienced the same loss.

The survey of more than 1,000 anonymous women on 18 messages boards was launched by researchers at the University of Michigan and Georgia Health Sciences University to better understand how women use these forums and why.

The most common reason women gave for choosing to participate in message … Read more

Chime.in: Do we need another social network?

Until someone figures out how to cram more than 24 hours into a day, people have a limited amount of time. Most of us don't spend 100 percent of it on the Internet. And we don't devote all of the time we do spend on the Net to social networking.

Already, by my count, there are four major social networks: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google Plus, with Facebook presumably consuming a disproportionate amount of all time that people spend on these sites. Might there be room for one more big-time contender?

That's the question posed by Chime.in, … Read more

A great week for Google challengers

For companies that would take on Google's near-monopoly in the search business, being big is a challenge. There is, in fact, only one truly big Google rival left: Microsoft's Bing. And while it's a worthy opponent in terms of features and raw ingenuity, it's still a hugely pricey, money-losing venture.

Being a smaller, more specialized Google competitor, however, can work. And good things happened for two of my favorites this week.

Favorite #1 is  DuckDuckGo. Despite the wacky name, it's a traditional search engine. In fact, part of its appeal is that it feels … Read more

Millions of tweets reveal global mood trends

It may not be terribly surprising that many of us find our moods dipping over the course of the day, and that by nightfall we light up again. Or that our moods are perkiest on weekends, regardless of which days our weekends fall on (i.e., Fridays and Saturdays in the United Arab Emirates).

What's of note, according to an analysis of 2.4 million tweets in 84 countries by researchers out of Cornell, is that these mood trends hold steady across cultures and borders, hinting at some sort of deeper trend whose basis is in being human, not … Read more

Startup helps find cheapest prescription drugs

Everyone knows food and gas prices can vary by location, but the same is often true of prescription drugs.

GoodRX, which launched a new Web site today at the Health 2.0 conference in San Francisco, aims to show consumers where they can find the lowest price on prescription drugs by ZIP code.

"A lot of innovation looks at price transparency and convenience for health procedures, but nobody is looking to improve the consumer experience," said Doug Hirsch, co-founder of the Los Angeles-based startup. "We believe this first product from GoodRX can help every consumer in the U.S. easily save money."

Pulling data from state and federal agencies and from pharmacies directly, GoodRX says it analyzes more than a million prices for more than 6,000 drugs at 25,000 pharmacy locations in the United States. This allows consumers to compare prices on specific drugs based on where they live. … Read more

Foldit game leads to AIDS research breakthrough

In 2008, University of Washington scientists released the game Foldit, hoping a sort of critical mass of gamers would mess around with proteins and, in the process, uncover some of their intrigue. (We have more than 100,000 types of proteins in our bodies alone.)

Last year, we checked in on the project's progress, and principal investigator Zoran Popovic said that some 60,000 people worldwide had taken on the challenge. Popovic hoped the initial results his team reported on last year would convince those on the sidelines that scientific discovery games could actually lead to important breakthroughs.

Well, … Read more

New social network connects people by gut flora

Earlier this year, researchers at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory in Heidelberg, Germany, published a study identifying genetic markers found in people's stomachs that appear related to obesity and other diseases.

After that, "I got between 50 and 100 e-mails from regular people having problems with the stomach or diarrhea and wondering if we can help them," Peer Bork, a biochemist at the lab, told Nature last week. "They were long e-mails. There must be a lot of frustrated people out there."

Given the interest level, Bork and his colleagues launched MyMicrobes, which could be … Read more