Science

With lung cancer being the leading cause of cancer-related deaths in the U.S., effective early screening is key to saving lives. Researchers at the Mayo Clinic say they've developed new software that can help classify lung nodules noninvasively, saving lives and health care costs.

A pilot study of the program called Computer-aided Nodule Assessment and Risk Yield, or Canary, appears in the April issue of the Journal of Thoracic Oncology.

Canary leans on data from high-resolution CT images of a common type of cancerous nodule in the lung called pulmonary adenocarcinomas. It matches every pixel of the lung image to one of nine unique radiological exemplars. In the pilot study, it was able to classify the lesions as aggressive or indolent with high sensitivity, as compared to microscopic analyses of the lesions after being surgically removed and analyzed by lung pathologists.… Read more

In the wild, sea lions are kept busy with hunting prey, caring for young, and swimming about in the great big ocean. In captivity, they have more time to devote to activities like sunning themselves, playing, and rocking out.

Ronan the California sea lion lives at the Long Marine Laboratory at the University of California in Santa Cruz. University researchers have studied Ronan's ability to keep the beat of musical tracks by nodding her head. She seems to particularly enjoy upbeat, jazzy disco numbers.

Ronan was first trained to bob her head to a simple metronome-like sound. Once she figured that out, she was able to find and keep the beat of more complex music all on her own. Previously, this ability has only been observed in parrots and humans.… Read more

At first glance, it's a black dress festooned with colorful embroidery. But Nikki Day had much more than style in mind when threading the intricate pattern into the garment's left side.

The British fashion design and knitwear student researched the morphology of various classes of cortical neurons and then embroidered images to reflect the theory of schizophrenia as a disease of aberrant brain circuit connectivity.

"The dress is tight and slightly restricts movement to reflect the effect these brain cell malfunctions can have in limiting people with the disease in everyday life," she says. "The intricate needlework draws you in and before you know it you are discussing how the cortical neural circuits are formed." … Read more

It's nice to think each of us is entirely unique, a one-of-a-kind aggregate of life experiences colliding with genes that set us apart from everyone else. And while this is true to an extent, it's also true that certain telltale blueprints exist for us, all the way down to the way we move our faces if we are, say, depressed.

So researchers at the University of Southern California's Institute for Creative Technologies are developing a Kinect-driven avatar they call SimSensei to track and analyze in real time a person's facial movements, body posture, linguistic patterns, acoustics, and behaviors such as fidgeting which, taken together, signal psychological distress.… Read more

Humanity lost a little more ground to machines last weekend, in case you're counting down the days to when Skynet takes charge of the planet.

A computer defeated a professional Japanese chess (shogi) player for the first time in a public match, Kyodo News tells us grimly.

A program called Ponanza, developed by Issei Yamamoto, took down 30-year-old Shinichi Sato on Saturday in the Shogi Master Versus Machine Match.

Sato was doing well until he made mistakes midway through the game. … Read more

Editor's note: This is the final installment of a four-part series. Read part 1, "Plotting the next Silicon Valley -- you'll never guess where;" part 2, "New Silicon Valley in the Andes: Promise and paradox;" and part 3, "Riding shotgun with the man behind an Andean Silicon Valley."

In the previous installments of this series on Ecuador's plan to build its own hub of research and innovation on par with the likes of Silicon Valley and South Korea's Incheon, I've focused on the big dream and the big possibilities.

It's time for a reality check to round things out.

First, let's review the plan for Yachay, the name chosen for the Ecuadorian government's planned "City of Knowledge" already under construction at a rural location in the country's northern Andean highlands. It all starts with a university that Rene Ramirez, Ecuadorian minister of higher education, science, technology, and innovation, hopes will one day be on par with the likes of Stanford University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, or the California Institute of Technology.

"We want Yachay to be part of that international network of knowledge development, putting Ecuador in a good position globally," Ramirez told me when I visited him in Quito. … Read more

Scientists cite as a major driver of climate change the large amount of carbon dioxide in the Earth's atmosphere that's created by the burning of fossil fuels. They spend day after day trying to figure out a way to generate power for the world's populations, but at the same time leave a smaller carbon footprint.

Now, researchers at the University of Georgia say they've hit upon a way to take the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and turn it into useable industrial products. The impact of such a discovery is potentially huge.

The goal is to remove the CO2 directly from the air and turn it into biofuel -- not only helping power the world, but hopefully taking down global temperatures at the same time.

The researchers essentially have created a microorganism that acts like a plant that removes the carbon dioxide from the air and turns it into something we can use. During photosynthesis, plants utilize sunlight, water, and carbon dioxide from the air to create their food source. This would behave in a similar fashion. … Read more

Editor's note: This is the third part of Crave's four-part series on Ecuador's attempt to become Latin America's hub for science, technology, and innovation. Read part 1, "Plotting the next Silicon Valley -- you'll never guess where," and part 2, "New Silicon Valley in the Andes: Promise and paradox."

QUITO, Ecuador--Right now, I'm one of the final things standing between Ramiro Moncayo and a vacation he's been waiting to take for years. It's just a few days before Christmas, and needless to say, he is very excited about the couple of days he is about to spend with his family on a holiday getaway.

Moncayo is the project manager for Yachay, the ambitious planned city that the equally ambitious government of Ecuador's leftist President Rafael Correa has been trying to shove into existence for a few years now.

Since taking office just a half decade ago and with the help of a fountain of oil revenues, Correa and company have modernized the nation's highways, created the third-fastest growing economy in Latin America, and more than tripled the number of Ecuadorian citizens connected to the Internet, according to the president's office.

Next up on the industrialization to-do list: Ecuador plans to create the first top-tier research university in Latin America and surround it with all the facilities and human capital needed to make this developing nation, which is roughly the size of the state of Colorado, a global player in science, technology, and innovation. (There is, however, some reason for skepticism, as I mention in part 2 of the series.) … Read more

Forget those old stereotypes of scientists as gray-haired men in laboratories wearing bottle-cap glasses. Rapper Coma Niddy tells the world that it doesn't matter who you are, as you too can be a scientist. He does, however, say you have to be curious and never give up.

The video was produced as part of a PBS Digital Studios project, and Comma Niddy is science educator who raps on everything from nanotechnology to dark matter. … Read more