Research

One week playing violent video games alters brain activity

Researchers at the Indiana University School of Medicine have been studying the effects of media violence for more than a decade. Now, for the first time, they are showing that violent video games directly alter brain activity--not after years of play, but after one week.

It must be noted that the researchers, who presented their findings at this week's Radiological Society of North America annual meeting in Chicago, studied only 28 young men, ages 18 to 29. In other words, these findings are preliminary at best.

Still, the small study shows a direct relationship between playing violent video games … Read more

Biologists one step closer to neutralizing HIV

Researchers around the world have been studying a group of recently-identified antibodies capable of neutralizing most strains of HIV, with the hopes of developing a vaccine that produces antibodies with these same properties.

Now, biologists out of the California Institute of Technology--led by Nobel Laureate David Baltimore--are one step closer to a vaccine with their new method of delivering these antibodies to lab mice, thereby protecting them from HIV.

Their approach, called Vectored ImmunoProphylaxis (VIP) and outlined in today's online issue of Nature, turns the traditional vaccination method on its head.

For the most part, researchers have focused … Read more

Will it be a C-section? Childbirth simulator helps predict

Traditionally, doctors and midwives have used a technique called pelvimetry to measure the pelvis and try to determine its adequacy for giving birth. But pelvis size is just one factor in how smoothly labor will go, rendering the method largely insufficient.

Scientists in France have been working to take some of the guesswork out of labor predictions. Today, at the Radiological Society of North America's annual meeting, they are presenting results of a study showing that their newly developed software, called Predibirth, predicts birth outcomes quite accurately.

The researchers used their software to process magnetic resonance images of 24 … Read more

Laptop Wi-Fi could slow down a man's swimmers, study finds

A new report from Argentinian scientists states that electromagnetic radiation in a laptop's Wi-Fi connection could take the swagger out of sperm.

The thought-provoking article, published in the journal Fertility and Sterility, is the culmination of a study conducted by Conrado Avendano, a biochemist working for the Nascentis Center of Reproductive Medicine in Cordoba, Argentina, in conjunction with a group of medical professionals.

The study found that semen from 29 donors placed for four hours in room-temperature petri dishes 3 centimeters from a laptop actively connected to Wi-Fi showed "a significant decrease in progressive sperm motility and an … Read more

'Graphene foam' sensor sniffs out bombs

A mesh of one-atom-thick graphene foam could become man's best friend in sniffing out explosives.

The Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute announced last week the creation of a graphene material that is 10 times more sensitive when detecting gases than current sensors used by bomb squads. It's also robust and can be made cheaply, according to its inventors.

Using the material to sense ammonia and nitrogen dioxide gases given off by explosive devices could lead to more sensitive and long-lasting tools for bomb detection. It can also be modified for industrial and medical uses in which sensors detect leaks of … Read more

Does stress lead to sleep texting?

Do you sleep with your iPhone next to the picture of Miley Cyrus on your nightstand?

You might soon wish to reconsider this habit.

For it seems that some people are grabbing at their phones in the middle of the night and unconsciously sending texts.

The Daily Mail informs me that these are often incoherent little messages that not even Esperanto experts can decipher.

Dr. David Cunnington, a sleep expert at the Melbourne Sleep Disorder Center in Australia told the Mail: "We have had patients who have reported sending text messages to their friends and family while asleep."… Read more

The 30-year battery: New chemistry holds promise

While consumers may simply crave longer-lasting batteries for electronic gadgets, the holy grail for many material scientists is batteries that can pump power into the grid for hours.

Stanford University researchers today detailed a new electrode material they claim holds promise for grid storage batteries that can work 30 years without a dramatic decline in performance.

In the lab, the copper and iron-based nano-engineered material was able to take 40,000 charge/discharge cycles while still maintaining an 80 percent capacity. By contrast, the lithium ion batteries used in consumer electronics degrade noticeably after only a few hundred cycles.

The … Read more

Nike, doctors team on tech to get athletes' eyes in shape

You can't do push-ups with your eyeballs, but doctors are discovering there are exercises that can make eyesight stronger.

Professional athletes spend countless hours improving their physical strength, speed, and agility. Now, thanks to new gadgets developed by Nike and optical science company Acuvue, high-performance professionals are working to better their vision without the need for surgery, glasses, or goggles. … Read more

What if you could collect all of the world's data into one place?

Occasionally we see some learned organization counting the number of bytes of data that humans have produced to date. And I've been known to scoff at these projections.

Seriously folks, even if you think that the number is 789.332 yottabyes on some given day--let's say today--the number is bigger tomorrow. And it gets bigger the next day. Even the rate of growth of the world's collective data is meaningless. Who would ever try to collect it all in one place and do something with it?

Oops. Someone actually is trying to collect all the data in … Read more

Spare a little computing power to fight malaria

After IBM's Watson computing system defeated two human competitors on Jeopardy this year, it partnered with the nonprofit Scripps Research Institute to direct the tournament prize money toward finding a cure for drug-resistant malaria.

Now all the team is asking for is a little help from around the globe. It's using the World Community Grid, described as a "supercomputer of the people," to use spare computing power from volunteered PCs.

Since the Grid was set up seven years ago, some 575,000 people in more than 80 countries have donated spare computing power from nearly 2 … Read more