Technology/Science Articles

**SpiderTroll** · July 7th, 2010, 08:30 AM

**Derfel** · July 7th, 2010, 09:15 AM

**Sweetlou** · July 7th, 2010, 09:23 AM

lolz

**ugly** · July 7th, 2010, 11:16 AM

Exposure to Plants and Parks Can Boost Immunity

In a series of studies, scientists found that when people swap their concrete confines for a few hours in more natural surroundings — forests, parks and other places with plenty of trees — they experience increased immune function.

Stress reduction is one factor. But scientists also chalk it up to phytoncides, the airborne chemicals that plants emit to protect them from rotting and insects and which also seem to benefit humans.

**Derfel** · July 7th, 2010, 07:05 PM

**ugly** · July 7th, 2010, 07:37 PM

New Hormone Gel Could Regenerate Teeth in Place, Making Drilled Cavities Obsolete

The gel, the first of its kind, could eliminate the need to fill cavities or drill into the root canal of an infected tooth

A dentist would place a dab of the gel near a cavity, where it would encourage cells to grow, healing the tooth from within. It contains a peptide called MSH, melanocyte-stimulating hormone, which has been shown to encourage bone regeneration.

A team of French scientists tested the gel on mice that had cavities. After about a month, the cavities had disappeared ... Not only did new tooth cells grow, but they were also stronger

Airships could make a comeback as cargo carriers

Despite languishing in sci-fi B-movies for most of the last 70 years, King said several major air and defence companies, including Boeing and Lockheed Martin, were working on designs, and the US defence department had recently made a large grant to help develop the technology.

As a result, the helium-powered ships could be carrying freight – and even passengers – in as little as a decade's time, King told the Guardian.

King was speaking this week at the World Forum on Enterprise and the Environment in Oxford, which has made transport a major focus of debate about global efforts to cut the greenhouse gas emissions from burning fossil fuels, which are a major contributor to global warming and climate change.

...

Other benefits included the possibility that airships would not need to use airports if they were fitted with "lifts" to pick up and land cargo. This in turn would reduce the need for trucking goods to and from transport hubs, and allow less well-connected areas, perhaps in inland Africa, to take part in international trade, said King. For the same reasons the blimps could also be used to reach devastated areas in need of humanitarian aid, he said.

The essential idea of airships – that they are buoyed by being lighter than air – can be traced back to the use of air lanterns in the third century BC. The technology began to come of age when the Frenchmen Jean-François Pilâtre de Rozier and the Marquis d'Arlandes made the first flight in a balloon in 1783. By the 1920s airships were making regular trips across the Atlantic, and in 1929 a graf zeppelin circumnavigated the planet in just over 21 days.

The craze for blimps came to an abrupt halt after the death of many people when the Hindenburg caught fire in New Jersey, US. However research and development "languished but never halted", said the Smith School report.

Brain chips could help paralysed patients

Engineers are developing the technology, which employs tiny microchips to sense nerve messages, decode the signals, and turn thought into movement.

...

''If we can get the signals from these neurons and interpret them with what is called decoding algorithms, then we can move a robot device placed on the paralysed arm.''

Much of the technology is already available, he pointed out. Scientists have demonstrated ''mind-reading'' chips implanted into the brains of monkeys that can operate robot arms or move a cursor on a computer screen.

However none of these systems has involved wireless technology. Instead, a wire has been inserted through a hole drilled in the animal's skull.

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''It's a huge amount of data, so the bandwidth won't be enough,'' said Prof Quian Quiroga. ''We're trying to do some basic processing on the chip to reduce the bandwidth. So instead of 30,000 data points per second, maybe we'll be sending 100 data points per second, or 1,000.''

**monty slick** · July 7th, 2010, 09:40 PM

Awesome stuff ugly.

**ugly** · July 8th, 2010, 07:25 PM

First Batch of DARPA's Synthetic Blood Delivered to FDA, Could Be on Battlefields Soon

DARPA program launched in 2008 is coming to fruition, potentially providing medics an endless stream of universally accepted O-negative blood through a process known as blood pharming.

Two years ago, DARPA set a goal of creating a self-contained, synthetic platform that can cultivate red blood cells that can stand up to the violent demands of the battlefield. Through the process of "pharming," or genetically engineering an organism to generate large quantities of a useful substance, the DoD's R&D arm was hoping to end blood shortages on the battlefield for good.

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The biotech company, Arteriocyte, can turn an umbilical cord into 20 units of blood in about three days at a cost of about $5,000 per unit. That's a bit steep, but if the FDA approves the blood product and the company is able to scale the production method, fake blood could be the real deal.

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Most blood is at least 21 days old when it reaches far-flung battlefields. At that point, it has a shelf-life of seven days before some medical experts say it is expired (as Danger Room points out, this is disputed; for instance, the Red Cross gives blood 42 days before tossing it). Some say blood starts to go bad in just 14 days, or a week before it lands in combat zones.