Here First - Science and Technology Blog

A breakthrough in the treatment of high blood pressure could improve the life expectancy for a million Australians whose condition does not normalise with drugs. The procedure uses radio waves to muteness or destruct nerves in arteries supplying the kidneys. First results indicate a substantial decrease in blood pressure for most of the patients taking part in the study.

Cancer is one of the heaviest problems confusing modern medicine. Recently, Researchers have cracked the genetic code for two of the most common cancer types. This is the beginning of a global effort to catalog all the genes that go amiss among the many types of human cancer, the BBC reports. Too much time spent under the sun apparently leads to most of the 30,000 mutations contained within the DNA code for melanoma, or skin cancer. Outside experts told the BBC that no previous study has managed to link specific mutations to their causes. Researchers also discovered more than 23,000 errors in the lung cancer DNA code, most of them induced by cigarette smoke exposure. A heavy smoker could get one new mutation, potentially harmless but as well possibly a cancer trigger, for every 15 cigarettes that they smoke. The fresh cancer correspondences could conduct to better blood exams for diagnosing the respective cancers, also as better targeted drugs. Blood tests could even break the ...

 TESTS made recently in Germany have uncovered that men who drink beer could keep down their chances of developing prostate cancer. Experimentations have demonstrated that a compund found in beer blocks a chemical reaction that can conduct to the developing of prostate cancer. This harsh disease is treated with drugs that does the same thing.  "We hope that one day we can demonstrate that xanthohumol prevents prostate cancer development, first in animal models and then in humans, but we are just at the beginning." said one of the scientist involved in the study Xanthohumol is a potent antioxidant, recognised to bear anti-cancer properties. It could also be found in various fruits. In a previous study was proposed that the chemical compound could cut down the chances of females getting breast cancer. via

The BiDi Screen is an example of a new type of I/O device that possesses the ability to both capture images and display them. This thin, bidirectional screen extends the latest trend in LCD devices, which has seen the incorporation of photo-diodes into every display pixel. Using a novel optical masking technique developed at the Media Lab, the BiDi Screen can capture lightfield-like quantities, unlocking a wide array of applications from 3-D gesture interaction with CE devices, to seamless video communication. http://web.media.mit.edu/~mhirsch/bidi/ Video credits: M Hirsch, MIT Media Lab

Ferrofluid (magnetic fluid) sculptures by two Japanese artists that move like something out of a science fiction movie.

Researcher Kwabena Boahen is looking for ways to mimic the brain's supercomputing powers in silicon -- because the messy, redundant processes inside our heads actually make for a small, light, superfast computer. via ted.com

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