Medical Tech 

Magnetic nanoparticles could stop blood clot-caused strokes

By loading magnetic nanoparticles with drugs and dressing them in biochemical camouflage, Houston Methodist researchers say they can destroy blood clots 100 to 1,000 times faster than a commonly used clot-busting technique. The finding, reported in Advanced Functional Materials (early online), is based on experiments in human blood and mouse clotting models. If the drug delivery system performs similarly well in planned human clinical trials, it could mean a major step forward in the prevention of strokes, heart attacks, pulmonary embolisms, and other dire circumstances where clots — if not quickly busted…

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Transport Tech 

New Vehicle Technology Reinvents Our Wheels

Take a summer road trip into the future of driving: You can hop on an electric scooter designed for the modern urban jungle or get behind the wheel of a car that’s more connected than your LinkedIn profile. Want more? How about a super-posh hybrid and zero-emission fuel that’s a real waste. Young urbanites are clamoring for a greener transportation option. India-based company Mahindra has heard their cries. The GenZe utility cycle’s zero-emissions electric motor doesn’t need tune-ups or oil changes, and its larger, 16-inch front tire offers extra stability…

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Medical Tech 

Microneedle painlessly monitors drug levels without the need to draw blood

Microneedle technology has been around for years, and we’ve seen vaccines andmedication administered via the technique, which uses tiny needles to break only the upper layer of the patient’s skin. Now, the pain-free tech is being used for something a little different, with researchers creating a device capable of monitoring patient drug levels – something that usually requires the drawing of blood. The development of the new system was a joint effort between the University of British Columbia (UBC) and the Paul Scherrer Institute (PSI) in Switzerland. It consists of a small patch…

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IT 

Quantum Computers are coming. The World Might Not Be Ready.

Quantum mechanics, Carl Sagan once observed, is so strange that “common sense is almost useless in approaching it.” Scientists still don’t understand exactly why matter behaves as it does at the quantum level. Yet they’re getting better at exploiting its peculiar dynamics — in ways that may soon upend the technology business. One of the most interesting applications is in computing. In theory, quantum computers could take advantage of odd subatomic interactions to solve certain problems far faster than a conventional machine could. Although a full-scale quantum computer is still…

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Medical Tech 

uDISCO: A Novel Tissue Clearing Technique for Visualization of Central Nervous System

The three-dimensional nature of biological specimens poses a challenge to whole organ imaging, due to the obscuring effects of light scatter. Innovative tissue-clearing techniques, combined with advances in imaging of cleared tissue, have increasingly been under investigation as substitutes for histological methods. Researchers from Ludwig Maximilian University have established a novel tissue-clearing and whole-body imaging technique, named “ultimate DISCO” (uDISCO).   Tissue clearing and shrinkage (up to 65%) were achieved by exposure to a solvent, which eliminated water and fat content over the course of several days. Using this technique,…

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IT 

Google’s Project Loon balloons to cover Sri Lanka with internet access

Bringing internet to remote regions by sending internet-enabled balloons into the stratosphere sure sounds like a wild idea, but it’s about to become a reality for the resident of Sri Lanka. The government of the island nation has just announced a partnership with Google that will bring affordable high-speed internet access to every inch of the country using the company’s Project Loonballoons. Project Loon wouldn’t really be at home anywhere other than the Google X lab, the company’s secretive research arm from which all manner of left-field ideas have emerged, including glucose-monitoring…

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Transport Tech 

Next stop, the future: New York subway set for train and station upgrades

Life for commuters on New York’s subway system is set to get a little more comfortable, with the announcement that both its trains and stations are set for a revamp. The new subway cars will boast bigger doors for easier access, more standing space, Wi-Fi and USB charging ports. The updates to the trains and stations are part of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s (MTA) US$27 billion, five-year Capital Program to renew and expand its network and follow the installation of On The Go! touchscreen information kiosks. In total, 1,025 new subway…

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IT 

Home PC outperforms a supercomputer in complex calculations

The GPU in your gaming rig performs crazy amounts of calculations to really bring to life the Cyberdemon in the new Doom, but scientists are increasingly applying that power to more academic pursuits. Russian physicists have put a computer running a consumer-level Nvidia GPU to work on equations that are normally performed using a powerful supercomputer, and found that the home PC solved them in 15 minutes – far faster than the supercomputer’s time of two or three days. A GPU is designed with multiple threads of processing power, which allows…

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Other Tech 

Insect-Inspired Eyes Give Sight to Mini Drones

Buzzing may not be the only thing drones have in common with insects. Tiny drones of the future might “see” their world with tiny, artificial sensors inspired by flying insects’ compound eyes. The experimental sensors are small and light enough to fit on the tiniest drones, which could give them the ability to sense and avoid collisions in cluttered spaces. Smaller and Smaller Like most other gadgets, scientists are looking to make drones smaller and smaller for a number of reasons. For one, a tiny drone is far stealthier and…

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Other Tech 

How Trucks Can Make Delivery Drones a Reality

Delivery drones may still seem a ways off because of new U.S. commercial drone regulations requiring drones to stay within sight of their human operators on the ground. But such rules pose no problem for a U.S. startup that developed a drone capable of launching from delivery trucks and dropping off packages within the driver’s line of sight. The HorseFly drone developed by Workhorse Group, an electric vehicle company in Cincinnati, Ohio, is an octocopter designed to ride aboard a delivery truck. Once it gets a delivery mission, the drone can take off through the truck’s roof with a…

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