Human Body Lesson for Kids | Learn about the Human Body. Taste of Cinema. The Zeitgeist Movement Global. Eye Cells Inkjet-Printed for First Time. Using an inkjet printer, researchers have succeeded in printing adult eye cells for the first time. The demonstration is a step toward producing tissue implants that could cure some types of blindness. Scientists have previously printed embryonic stem cells and other immature cells. But scientists had thought adult cells might be too fragile to print. Now, researchers have printed cells from the optic nerves of rats, finding the cells not only survived, but also retained the ability to grow and develop. Why Can't Humans Regenerate Body Parts?
The loss of nerve cells in the retina causes many eye diseases that lead to blindness, said Dr. Martin and his colleagues separated retinal ganglion cells (which transmit signals from the eye to the brain) and glial cells (which provide support and protection for neurons) from the retinal tissue of adult rats. 3-D Printed Body Parts, Finally! "The printed cells were indistinguishable from cells that hadn’t been printed," Martin said.
Future Rx: Marijuana without the forgetfulness. Marijuana's negative effects on memory are well known. But now scientists have pinpointed where in the brain the drug causes this forgetfulness, and it's separate from where pot exerts its medicinal effects. If this finding, drawn from experiments with lab mice, is also found to apply to humans, it means scientists someday may be able to design medical marijuana that doesn't impede a patient's working memory while treating his or her pain. Working memory is the ability to hold more than one thought in your head for a period of time. "We have found that the starting point for this phenomenon — the effect of marijuana on working memory — is the astroglial cells," study researcher Giovanni Marsicano, of the French biomedical researcher institution INSERM, said in a statement.
Brain cells The researchers found that this disruption of working memory comes not from the drug's effects directly on the brain's neurons, but on a different type of cells: the brain's helper cells called astroglia. Iain McGilchrist: The divided brain. 7 Scientifically Proven Ways To Grow New Brain Cells, Neurogenesis | 4 Mind 4 Life: Mental Health Tips. Neurogenesis - “The birth of new neurons in the brain; also referred to as the process in which neurons are created.”The growth of new brain cells occurs in the region of the brain called the “hippocampus.”
The ‘hippocampus’ is an area involved with memory, learning, and other cognitive functions. In order to live and become part of our brain, new neurons formed in the hippocampus-region need support from surrounding nutrients from blood and glial cells. Most importantly, they need support from other surrounding neurons – otherwise these new brain cells will die. Though thousands of new brain cells are formed and produced via the hippocampus each and every day, many die quickly after birth. When we can keep them alive for this crucial period after birth, we are able to effectively boost the power of the human brain by adding new brain cells to the bank of existing cells. Eating blueberries can trigger the growth of new brain cells? More on how this works according to its inventor [Dr. Meditation found to increase brain size.
Kris Snibbe/Harvard News Office Sara Lazar (center) talks to research assistant Michael Treadway and technologist Shruthi Chakrapami about the results of experiments showing that meditation can increase brain size. People who meditate grow bigger brains than those who don’t. Researchers at Harvard, Yale, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have found the first evidence that meditation can alter the physical structure of our brains. Brain scans they conducted reveal that experienced meditators boasted increased thickness in parts of the brain that deal with attention and processing sensory input. In one area of gray matter, the thickening turns out to be more pronounced in older than in younger people. “Our data suggest that meditation practice can promote cortical plasticity in adults in areas important for cognitive and emotional processing and well-being,” says Sara Lazar, leader of the study and a psychologist at Harvard Medical School.
Controlling random thoughts. 9 Overlooked Technologies That Could Transform The World. What I've noticed is that most people don't really pay attention to "science" news, unless it's something that they can see immediately. I think this is at least partially because of the amount of news that comes out daily - whatever we may think about the quality of news, there is just a flood of it, which makes picking out "interesting" items difficult. When I talk about (just for example) the idea of gene therapy, most people think that it is still complete science fiction, as opposed to a very near-term product that will be available. Of course, CSP has been around for years, so it isn't really "new" to the average person.
What they don't realize is the way that efficiencies have improved... And electronic currency is still in the "only oddballs use it" phase - people are aware of it, but mostly because of the issues bitcoin has had in the recent past. Finally, of course, for a majority of people, the only science fiction they think of it Star Wars/Trek, or (advanced!) The Power of Technology. Visit page > Big Think is a global forum connecting people and ideas. It may be a cliché to say that knowledge is power, but that doesn’t make the statement any less true.
We know that there are just 24 hours in a day, that you are bombarded with information, and that the bombardment will only escalate. We believe that not all information is equal. We believe that expertise is invaluable and should be shared. Influencers and Innovation: Alan Emtage. A Stick Figure Guide to the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES)
(A play in 4 acts. Please feel free to exit along with the stage character that best represents you. Take intermissions as you see fit. Click on the stage if you have a hard time seeing it. If you get bored, you can jump to the code. Most importantly, enjoy the show!) Act 1: Once Upon a Time... Act 2: Crypto Basics Act 3: Details Act 4: Math! Epilogue I created a heavily-commented AES/Rijndael implementation to go along with this post and put it on GitHub. The Design of Rijndael is the book on the subject, written by the Rijndael creators. Please leave a comment if you notice something that can be better explained. Update #1: Several scenes were updated to fix some errors mentioned in the comments.Update #2: By request, I've created a slide show presentation of this play in both PowerPoint and PDF formats.
University of South Carolina researchers convert T-shirt into energy storage medium - Images. The researchers used a standard T-shirt purchased from a local discount store for their work Image Gallery (8 images) As manufacturers of smartphones and mobile devices strive to make their products increasingly portable, they repeatedly come up against the constraints of existing battery technology. However, Xiaodong Li, a professor at the University of South Carolina (USC) believes that we will soon be able to employ the clothes we wear to help overcome such challenges and to this end, Li has transformed T-shirt material into an energy storage medium which could one day be used to power portable devices. View all Beginning with a standard T-shirt purchased from a local discount store, Li’s team soaked the garment in a solution of fluoride, then dried and baked the fabric at high temperature in an oven, which is designed to exclude oxygen in order to prevent the fabric from igniting.
Source: University of South Carolina About the Author Adam is a tech and music writer based in North Wales. Free Lectures Online. Whether your goal is to earn a promotion, graduate at the top of your class, or just accelerate your life, lectures can help get you there. Our archives of lectures cover a huge range of topics and have all been handpicked and carefully designed by experienced instructors throughout the world who are dedicated to helping you take the next step toward meeting your career goals. Lifelong learns can turn their free time turn into self-improvement time. The online lectures on this list are more than lecture notes or a slideshow on a topic -- they were designed for audiences like you, with carefully sequenced themes and topics taught by veteran educators, and often with additional resources for your own independent study. The lectures are available to anybody, completely free of charge.
Lecture courses are a valid and vital learning tool, and may be one of the best methods of learning available. Why Nikola Tesla was the greatest geek who ever lived. Additional notes from the author: If you want to learn more about Tesla, I highly recommend reading Tesla: Man Out of Time Also, this Badass of the week by Ben Thompson is what originally inspired me to write a comic about Tesla. Ben's also got a book out which is packed full of awesome. There's an old movie from the 80s on Netflix Instant Queue right now about Tesla: The Secret of Nikola Tesla. It's corny and full of bad acting, but it paints a fairly accurate depiction of his life. The drunk history of Tesla is quite awesome, too. Unsolved Problems.
Phys.org - Science News, Technology, Physics, Nanotechnology, Space Science, Earth Science, Medicine. Scale of Universe - Interactive Scale of the Universe Tool. Science In A Scoop: Making Liquid Nitrogen Ice Cream. Hide captionThe Smitten Ice Cream shop in the Hayes Valley of San Francisco serves fresh ice cream with one novel ingredient: liquid nitrogen. The shop is located inside of a repurposed shipping container.
Alan Greenblatt/NPR Robyn Sue Fisher's ice cream shop, Smitten, in San Francisco's Hayes Valley, may at moments resemble a high school chemistry lab, but that's because Fisher uses liquid nitrogen to freeze her product. Nitrogen is "a natural element," she notes. What makes it essential to Smitten is the ability to make ice cream fresh to order. Because servings are made on the spot, each one requires just a few ingredients. The mint chip, for example, contains just organic cream and milk, mint and a dash of salt. "This is the best ice cream I ever had," says my son, who is only 7 but already an experienced ice cream taster, as he spoons his way through an order of chocolate. He's not alone in his opinion.
Of course, there's nothing new about making ice cream with liquid nitrogen.