Science News
OpenAI Just Beat Google DeepMind at Atari With an Algorithm From the 80s
Singularity Hub - 6 Apr 2017 17:00
AI research has a long history of repurposing old ideas that have gone out of style. Now researchers at Elon Musk's open source AI project have revisited "neuroevolution," a field that has been around since the 1980s, an...
Ancient Jerusalem Comes Alive in New Virtual-Reality App
Live Science - 6 Apr 2017 12:46Small protein is fundamental to muscle formation
Science Daily - 6 Apr 2017 23:19
A small protein named Myomixer is essential for the formation of skeletal muscle, researchers have discovered. These findings could eventually help treat genetic diseases such as muscular dystrophy and other myopathies, ...
Hospitals put your data at risk, study finds
Science Daily - 6 Apr 2017 22:35
Lying in a hospital bed, the last thing you should have to worry about is a personal data breach. Yet recent research found nearly 1,800 occurrences of large data breaches in patient information over a seven-year period.
To eat or not to eat (before exercising): That is the question
Science Daily - 6 Apr 2017 21:26
Exercise enthusiasts often wonder whether it's better to eat or fast before a workout. A new study is the first of its kind to show the effects of eating versus fasting on gene expression in adipose (fat) tissue in respo...
Doctors develop novel flu test to speed up respiratory treatment
Science Daily - 6 Apr 2017 21:24
Doctors and researchers have developed a novel way of using a swab test which can rapidly diagnose flu and other viral infections in patients with severe respiratory conditions - resulting in shorter courses of antibioti...
Modified virus as 'Trojan Horse' for delivering genes to repair congenital hearing loss
Science Daily - 6 Apr 2017 21:22
There are more than 300 genetic defects that have been found to prevent the hair cells in the human inner ear, the sensory cells of the ear as it were, from working properly. This can result in severe hearing impairment ...
Gluten allergy in coeliac disease may be provoked by virus
New Scientist - 6 Apr 2017 21:00
Some people seem to get coeliac disease after having an infection. Now experiments in mice suggest a common virus might bring on the autoimmune condition
Giant viruses may just be small viruses that stole hosts' genes
New Scientist - 6 Apr 2017 21:00
Genome sequences found in a waste-water plant seem to question the possibility that giant viruses are a whole new domain of life - but not everyone is convinced
Ability of stem cells expanded to regrow any tissue type
Science Daily - 6 Apr 2017 20:39
A new technique, which allows scientists to generate both embryonic and non-embryonic tissues from cultured stem cells, is a step toward growing donor organs and replacement tissues to combat aging and diseases.
Seemingly innocuous virus can trigger celiac disease
Science Daily - 6 Apr 2017 20:39
Infection with reovirus, a common but otherwise harmless virus, can trigger the immune system response to gluten that leads to celiac disease, according to new research.
Married couples with common ancestry also share similar genes
Science Daily - 6 Apr 2017 20:39
When two married people appear similar, it isn't necessarily a coincidence, but may be related to the tendency to marry someone with the same ancestry; a trend that can have important effects on the genetics of different...
New tool illuminates cell signaling pathways key to disease
Science Daily - 6 Apr 2017 20:39
In a major advance for fundamental biological research, scientists have developed a tool capable of illuminating previously inscrutable cellular signaling networks that play a wide variety of roles in human biology and d...
Attitudes vary across groups regarding meal choice in restaurants
Science Daily - 6 Apr 2017 20:38
Differences in opinions between parents and children and executives of restaurant chains represent a challenge in terms of promoting healthy eating habits. In order to better understand those opinions, researchers survey...
Turning skin cells into blood vessel cells while keeping them young
Science Daily - 6 Apr 2017 20:38
Researchers have identified a molecular switch that converts skin cells into cells that make up blood vessels, which could ultimately be used to repair damaged vessels in patients with heart disease or to engineer new va...
Cardiologist warns against dissolvable stents
Science Daily - 6 Apr 2017 20:38
Expert commentary on bioresorbable stents, an alternative to the traditional stents used in patients with cardiac conditions, encourages cardiologists to continue using conventional drug-eluting stents, instead of the ne...
Pet exposure may reduce allergy and obesity
Science Daily - 6 Apr 2017 20:38
If you need a reason to become a dog lover, how about their ability to help protect kids from allergies and obesity? A new study showed that babies from families with pets -- 70 per cent of which were dogs -- showed high...
Squid and octopus can edit and direct their own brain genes
New Scientist - 6 Apr 2017 20:14
These animals do not obey the commands of their DNA to the letter, instead interfering with the code and possibly leading to a special kind of evolution
Atmosphere containing water detected around rocky exoplanet
New Scientist - 6 Apr 2017 20:10
An exoplanet just 1.4 times the size of Earth has an atmosphere containing water and methane, new observations show
Coming to a lab bench near you: Femtosecond X-ray spectroscopy
Phys.org - 6 Apr 2017 20:00
The ephemeral electron movements in a transient state of a reaction important in biochemical and optoelectronic processes have been captured and, for the first time, directly characterized using ultrafast X-ray spectrosc...
Crystalline material could replace silicon to double efficiency of solar cells
Phys.org - 6 Apr 2017 19:50
A new material has been shown to have the capability to double the efficiency of solar cells by researchers at Purdue University and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory.
Mutation in clock gene explains why some night owls stay up late
New Scientist - 6 Apr 2017 19:01
People with delayed sleep phase disorder go to sleep several hours later and hate getting up early. A variant of a circadian clock gene could be to blame