People can carry versions of genes that promote disease, also variations that promote good health. An international team of 70 scientists from Mexico, Sweden, the U.K., and the U.S. has found a crucial example of the latter. The group has identified a genetic variant that guards against obesity, a condition affecting almost one in every...
Category: TRENDS IN HI-TECH SCIENCE
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WHAT TOMORROW’S REFINERY WILL LOOK LIKE
Austrian solar company Fronius is building a prototype of tomorrow’s refinery – not a maze of pipes carrying petroleum fluids and gases from tank to tank, but a plant that makes “green” hydrogen on-site using only solar energy and water. Hydrogen is establishing itself as a niche fuel in the future’s energy mix, especially in...
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A FIRST: INJECTION CURES GENETIC DEFECT
For the first time, bioscientists have cured a genetic defect with an injection. The defective gene spawns a rare illness called transthyretin amyloidosis, in which the liver makes a malformed protein that accumulates in the heart, eventually causing the heart to stop. In its first test, the one-time injection halted almost all production of the...
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LOOKING AN ANCIENT HUMAN COUSIN IN THE FACE
A fossilized skull found and hidden away in China during the late 1930s has ignited debate among archeologists. The skull has a brain case as big as modern humans, but also huge eye sockets, heavy brow ridges, and an enormous molar. When the skull was recently delivered to scientists, those who first examined it named...
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SMARTER THAN YOUR AVERAGE TIRE
Step aside, smart highways and smart traffic lights. Tires are getting wise, too. Goodyear Tire & Rubber and Bridgestone are introducing tires with sensors that communicate with algorithms trained up on machine learning to monitor tires’ wear, air pressure, temperature, vibration, the condition of the roads a tire has been rubbing against, and other factors. ...
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GREEN HYDROGEN FOR YOUR GREEN CAR
Electric and hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles (EVs and HVs) operate on different power trains but share a common problem: a lack of infrastructure to refuel. Hydrogen’s problem is worse. EVs can plug into a wall socket at home or a kiosk connected to the electric grid but HVs have to find a tankful of the gas. ...
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PROTEIN FOUND THAT COMBATS AGE-RELATED MEMORY LOSS
Scientists at the University of Texas have discovered that a protein in red blood cells can be a powerful foe of the loss of hearing and memory, and also brain inflammation, that too often accompany aging. The protein is called ADORA2B and is known to release more oxygen from red blood cells when people are...
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THE ULTIMATE WAY TO STORE YOUR DIGITAL FILES
Flash memory is nice, but there’s a far superior place to store computer files. It’s a thousand times more dense than flash, it requires no energy to maintain, and it’s unusually stable. It’s DNA. Humans have piled up about 10 trillion gigabytes of computer files so far, and every day we add about 2.5 million...
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AHOY! NUCLEAR POWER MINI-PLANTS ARE FLOATING YOUR WAY
Denmark’s Seaborg Technologies, a start-up named for Danish-American chemist Glenn Seaborg who helped discover ten radioactive elements, is planning to make not just a new kind of nuclear power plant but also to deliver it in a whole new way. The company has designed nuclear plants the size of a shipping container and will float...
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ANOTHER WAY FOR ADS TO GET INTO YOUR HEAD
During January’s Super Bowl, Harvard University dream researcher Deirdre Barrett collaborated with brewer Molson Coors in a marketing test. The night before the game, volunteers watched a 90-second online video featuring waterfalls and mountain scenery – both of which feature in Coors’ logos – coupled with an eight-hour, overnight soundtrack featuring breezes, sounds of nature,...
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