Here First - Science and Technology Blog

Dolphins have the unparalleled ability to switch off and on diabetes, men of science have ascertained, in a discovery that might lead to remedy for the disease in humans.    Researchers determined that the mammal can stimulate the condition once there's little nutrient around and turn it off when nutrient is plenteous. They consider it is a unusual ability in the animal kingdom used in the mammal’s need to keep up high blood sugar levels to feed its big brain.  Scientists also think that this is an ability that humans have dropped off through evolution and that analyzing dolphins could guide to techniques to re-activate it. “Diabetes is to blame for 5% of human deaths globally,” said Dr Stephanie Venn-Watson, a veterinary epidemiologist and director of Clinical Research at the National Marine Mammal Foundation in San Diego.  “Maybe this is a vestige of something dormant that could be awakened and used as a therapy or cure.” It is believed that researching the...

It appears like  fusion power is just the next big thing that never happens. Although we're not quite on that point yet, 3 fresh reports altogether suggest we are at least getting a little closer. A great project between MIT and Columbia University suggested the hypothesis of a new path towards nuclear fusion reaction. By exploitation highly large and muscular donut shaped magnets, the men of science have produced an environment were plasma gets more densely concentrated — through a phenomenon known as turbulent pinching. To make this arrangement, a half-ton torus magnet is suspended inside a magnetic field, and then the plasma forms around it. This represents  the Levitating Dipole Experiment, and unfolds a potential third way of generating atomic power, apart from the current tokamaks and inertial nuclear fusion methods. Discoveries have as well been produced in the area of inertial fusion, and investigators at the National Ignition Facility in Livermore, California have...

US boffins funded by shadowy federal authorities allege they've produced a new kind of silicone implant that can generate electrical power from the motions of the bodily area in which it is localised. The fresh technology, developed at Princeton University in the States, necessitates adding piezo-electric lead zirconate titanate (PZT) to silicone, producing a material which generates electricity when squeezed, crushed or tilted. "Because the silicone is biocompatible, it is already used for cosmetic implants," note the Princeton engineers. "Natural body movements [could] power pacemakers, mobile phones and other electronic devices." "The new electricity-harvesting devices could be implanted in the body to power devices perpetually, and the body wouldn't reject them," adds Michael McAlpine, Princeton engineering prof. "As we get better at making these chips, we'll be able to make [the power units] larger and larger." Accurate exe...