February 22, 2013 UPDATE: Oceana has published a report about national seafood fraud. Two years of DNA testing found that a full third of seafood was mislabeled; snapper and tuna had the highest rates of fraud. Oceana has even created a handy map for a depressing look at your odds of purchasing mislabeled fish. You heard it […]
Two researchers at Indiana University, Kris Hauser and Casey Bennett, have developed a predictive system for determining how to treat patients that adapts to new health information over time, and it could reduce costs by up to 50 percent while similarly improving patient outcomes. The system, published in Artificial Intelligence in Medicine journal in January (PDF), […]
It took 20 years and $200 million in funding, but the FDA finally approved Swiss company Second Sight’s Argus II retinal prosthesis last week after the Opthalmic Device Panel unanimously voted in favor of approval last September. The system restores partial vision to sufferers of retinitis pigmentosa, an inherited disorder that progressively destroys the light-sensitive […]
Loren Collins is the author of Bullspotting: Finding Facts in the Age of Misinformation, published in October 2012. Since 2009, Collins has blogged (intermittently) at Barackryphal, debunking birther rumors and conspiracy theories related to President Barack Obama. Loren is a practicing attorney in Atlanta, Georgia. In late 2008, CNN cut its entire science and […]
Additive manufacturing, or its more commonly-referred to description as 3D printing, has been in the news a lot over the last few weeks, with stories about varied uses such as printing musical instruments, plastic magazines for rifles, and moonbases for European space missions. Now, a joint venture between academics at Edinburgh’s Heriot-Watt University and private […]
If you ever make the mistake of asking a dog owner how smart his or her pet is, be prepared to spend at least half an hour listening to how Fido figured out where the treats are kept or when Rex got a new toy and immediately buried it in the garden to stop anyone […]
“It’s crap.” That was the candid response of one eminent scientist towards Henry Markram’s Human Brain Project (HBP) at a meeting of the Swiss Academy of Sciences last January. The meeting was ostensibly reviewing the progress of high-performance computing in the neurosciences. For Markram, it felt like the inquisition. But on Monday it seemed like Markram’s […]
Butler’s Wharf lies on the south bank of the Thames, just to the East of Tower Bridge. One hundred years ago, tea clippers unloaded crates of tea from China and India, a commodity that made many investors rich and cemented the reputation of the Brits as a nation of tea drinkers, exchanging gossip over the […]
Never has liking a post on Tumblr or retweeting someone felt so profound. Canadian Astronaut Chris Hadfield, presently floating through space on the ISS as the flight engineer, has taken it upon himself to take jaw-dropping pictures of the Earth from space and then post those pictures on Tumblr. There is an astronaut currently in […]
Do you work at the Large Hadron Collider? Do you think it’s the coolest thing you could possibly do with your life? Then, you’re likely the physicist I met recently from CERN who enjoyed seeing pieces of his life reflected back in mainstream culture on The Big Bang Theory. This show. It’s amazing. People either watch it […]
