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Canadian researchers cure cancer and nobody notices. Dammit, we’ve just cured cancah! Why is no one listening? Last week, researchers at the University of Alberta in Edmonton cured cancer, but I bet you haven’t heard about it. The method employs dichloroacetate, which is currently used to treat metabolic disorders. Via Health : Breakthrough: sensors that can convert thoughts into speech A mind reading machine has edged closer to reality after scientists found a way of converting thoughts into words. Researchers were able to render brain signals into speech for the first time, relying on sensors attached to the brain surface. The breakthrough, which is up to 90 percent accurate, will be a boon for paralysed patients who cannot speak and could help read anyone’s thoughts ultimately, reports the Telegraph. “We were beside ourselves with excitement when it started working,” said Prof Bradley Greger, bioengineer at the Utah University who led the project. “It was just one of the moments when everything came together. “We have been able to decode spoken words using only signals from the brain with a device that has promise for long-term use in paralysed patients who cannot speak. The breakthrough came when the team attached two button-sized grids of 16 tiny electrodes to an epileptic’s brain’s speech centres, says the journal of Neural Engineering.
Noise kills, and blights lives in Europe - environment - 31 March 2011 Western Europeans suffer a heavy toll of death and disability through exposure to excessive noise, making it second only to air pollution as an environmental cause of ill health. That's the conclusion of the world's first comprehensive report on the health effects of noise, published this week by the World Health Organization and the European Commission's Joint Research Centre. Between them, western Europe's inhabitants – with an estimated adult population in 2001 of 340 million – were found to lose as much as 1.6 million years of healthy living per year. The toll from air pollution is estimated at 4.5 million years of healthy living lost per year. Deadly noise The most dramatic effects are in heart disease, because exposure to noise can kill people. Noise has been shown to raise blood pressure and blood-borne concentrations of stress hormones and fatty materials even when people are asleep. Cap on noise Quieter vehicles More From New Scientist Promoted Stories Recommended by
Large Hadron Collider: A Russian Scientist Accidently Put His Head Inside a Particle Accelerator and Didn't develop Super Powers or Die | Gifts and Free Advice With all the news about the Large Hadron Collider I thought readers of this blog would be interested in what happened to a Russian Scientist named Anatoli Petrovich Bugorski in 1978. As a 36 year old researcher at the Institute for High Energy Physics in Protvino, Bugorski used to work with the largest Soviet particle accelerator, the synchrotron U-70. On July 13, 1978, Bugorski was checking a malfunctioning piece of equipment when an accident occurred due to failed safety mechanisms. Bugorski was leaning over the piece of equipment when he stuck his head in the part through which the proton beam was running. Reportedly, he saw a flash “brighter than a thousand suns”, but did not feel any pain. The left half of Bugorski’s face swelled up beyond recognition, and over the next several days started peeling off, showing the path that the proton beam (moving near the speed of light) had burned through parts of his face, his bone, and the brain tissue underneath. Best Discount Gifts
UCSB scientists discover how the brain encodes memories at a cellular level (Santa Barbara, Calif.) –– Scientists at UC Santa Barbara have made a major discovery in how the brain encodes memories. The finding, published in the December 24 issue of the journal Neuron, could eventually lead to the development of new drugs to aid memory. The team of scientists is the first to uncover a central process in encoding memories that occurs at the level of the synapse, where neurons connect with each other. "When we learn new things, when we store memories, there are a number of things that have to happen," said senior author Kenneth S. Kosik, co-director and Harriman Chair in Neuroscience Research, at UCSB's Neuroscience Research Institute. "One of the most important processes is that the synapses –– which cement those memories into place –– have to be strengthened," said Kosik. This is a neuron. (Photo Credit: Sourav Banerjee) Part of strengthening a synapse involves making new proteins. When the signal comes in, the wrapping protein degrades or gets fragmented.
Half of Germany's doctors prescribe placebos - health - 13 March 2011 PRESCRIPTIONS of placebos are booming in Germany and Switzerland, reveals a report released last week by the German Medical Association (GMA). For example, 53 per cent of the doctors from the Medical University of Hannover said they would prescribe placebos such as vitamin pills and homeopathic remedies. Half the doctors in a national Swiss survey agreed. Their use of such treatments contrasts with the UK, where homeopathic treatments have been rejected by scientists. However, "physicians should be made aware of the value of the placebo effect in the daily treatment of patients", says Christoph Fuchs, chief executive of the GMA. "Their use is of enormous importance for medical practice." Subscribe to New Scientist and you'll get: New Scientist magazine delivered every week Unlimited access to all New Scientist online content - a benefit only available to subscribers Great savings from the normal price Subscribe now! More From New Scientist WHO accused of huge HIV blunder (New Scientist)
Tumours could be the ancestors of animals - health - 11 March 2011 CANCER remains a formidable foe even 40 years after Richard Nixon officially declared war on it. A new and controversial hypothesis now offers hope that the war can ultimately be won. It suggests tumours have a limited ability to evade modern therapies - a consequence of the idea that cancer is our most distant animal ancestor, a "living fossil" from over 600 million years ago. Some cancers evolve resistance to a treatment within a few years. Astrobiologists Charles Lineweaver at the Australian National University in Canberra and Paul Davies at Arizona State University in Tempe have an alternative explanation. Their hypothesis builds on an old idea that suggests a link between cancer and the origin of multicellular animals, sometime before 600 million years ago. Cancer is thought to be triggered by a malfunction of the genes that try to hold back this uncontrolled replication. The hypothesis helps to explain some of the more unusual features of tumours, says Lineweaver. (YouTube)
Mobile phones boost brain activity - health - 23 February 2011 WHAT is your cellphone doing to your brain? The latest study shows that long calls boost brain activity, though whether this is harmful is not known. Nora Volkow, director of the US National Institute on Drug Abuse in Bethesda, Maryland, and colleagues attached cellphones to each ear of 47 volunteers. The group found a 7 per cent increase in activity in regions of the brain near the phone's antenna when the phone was receiving a call (Journal of the American Medical Association, vol 305, p 808). Volkow says it is too early to tell whether this is good or bad for the brain. Subscribe to New Scientist and you'll get: New Scientist magazine delivered every week Unlimited access to all New Scientist online content - a benefit only available to subscribers Great savings from the normal price Subscribe now! More From New Scientist Curious mathematical law is rife in nature (New Scientist) Human sex from the inside out (New Scientist) Every living thing in the Antarctic Ocean mapped (New Scientist)
Raise alcohol prices to save British livers - health - 25 February 2011 SOARING rates of alcohol abuse and liver disease in the UK can be reversed by copying French and Italian strategies of cutting cheap booze from supermarkets. So say a group of health researchers, whose analysis shows that since 1986, UK death rates from liver disease, 80 per cent of which is alcohol-related, have more than doubled from 4.9 to 11.4 per 100,000 people. In France and Italy, the opposite has occurred, with death rates of 50 per 100,000 in the early 1960s falling to less than 10 per 100,000 today (The Lancet, DOI: 10.1016/S0140-6736(11)60022-6). The solution, says lead author Nick Sheron at the University of Southampton, UK, was to take cheap alcohol out of the system. New Scientist Not just a website! More From New Scientist Impossibly heavy planet is the first 'mega-Earth' (New Scientist) Mystery Voynich manuscript gets preliminary alphabet (New Scientist) Bacterial explanation for Europa's rosy glow (New Scientist) Reaping the whirlwind of Nazi eugenics (New Scientist)
Body morph illusions: How to become superhuman Sandrine Ceurstemont, video producer You may think only aliens could have multiple limbs. But now an experiment conducted by Henrik Ehrsson and his colleagues from Karolinska Institute in Sweden has shown that humans can also feel what it's like to have a third arm and even flinch if it's threatened with a knife (see video above). The illusion is perceived when a person's right arm, and a similar fake arm, are stroked simultaneously when both are in view. For the brain trick to work, the extra arm also has to be lined up with the real one and be placed in an anatomically-appropriate position. The third arm illusion is similar to the rubber hand illusion, where a person feels like a fake hand is their own when their real arm is hidden from view and stroked at the same time. Using a similar technique, the team previously showed that a person can feel like another body, or that of a mannequin, is their own.
Diabetics: is it time to bin the insulin? - health - 24 February 2011 A PIONEERING hormone treatment may be the secret to an easy life for diabetics, consigning insulin shots and regular glucose monitoring to the medical history books. Most people associate diabetes with insulin, the pancreatic hormone that dictates how much glucose circulates in blood. Type 1 diabetics have to inject the hormone because they can't make it themselves. Now, the spotlight is turning on insulin's lesser-known pancreatic twin, glucagon, as a treatment that could control blood glucose levels without the need for daily monitoring. Whereas insulin clears surplus glucose from the blood after meals, squirrelling it away in the liver, muscles and elsewhere, glucagon does the opposite when we are hungry, ordering the liver to release stores of glucose "fuel" into the blood or to make more if none is available. To investigate glucagon's role, Roger Unger at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas and ...