Tech

The brains of people with epilepsy appear to react to music differently from the brains of those who do not have the disorder, a finding that could lead to new therapies to prevent seizures, according to research presented at the American Psychological Association's 123rd Annual Convention.

"We believe that music could potentially be used as an intervention to help people with epilepsy," said Christine Charyton, PhD, adjunct assistant professor and visiting assistant professor of neurology at The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center, who presented the research.

The Institute of Laser Engineering (ILE), Osaka University, has succeeded to reinforce the Petawatt [3] laser "LFEX" to deliver up to 2,000 trillion watts in the duration of one trillionth of one second (this corresponds to 1000 times the integrated electric power consumed in the world). By using this high-power laser, it is now possible to generate all of the high-energy quantum beams (electrons, ions, gamma ray, neutron, positron).

The price fluctuation of fine wines can now be predicted more accurately using a novel artificial intelligence approach developed by researchers at UCL. The method could be used to help fine wine investors make more informed decisions about their portfolios and encourage non-wine investors to start looking at wine in this manner and hence increase the net trade of wine. It is expected that similar techniques will be used in other 'alternative assets' such as classic cars.

Virginia Commonwealth University Massey Cancer Center researchers at the VCU Center for the Study of Tobacco Products (CSTP) have developed the first ever, evidence-based model that can predict with up to 90 percent accuracy the amount of nicotine emitted by an electronic cigarette (e-cigarette). The study was published in the journal Nicotine and Tobacco Research.

ConAgra Foods, Inc. , which makes products like Hunt's tomatoes, Reddi-wip whipped cream and Chef Boyardee canned pasta, announced today that all of the company’s facilities in the U.S. and Canada have completed the transition to cans without Bisphenol A (BPA) liners.

Mild hypothermia in deceased organ donors significantly reduces delayed graft function in kidney transplant recipients when compared to normal body temperature, according to UC San Francisco researchers and collaborators, a finding that could lead to an increase in the availability of kidneys for transplant.

Their study appears in the July 30 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.

Five men with complete motor paralysis were able to voluntarily generate step-like movements thanks to a new strategy that non-invasively delivers electrical stimulation to their spinal cords, according to a new study funded in part by the National Institutes of Health. The strategy, called transcutaneous stimulation, delivers electrical current to the spinal cord by way of electrodes strategically placed on the skin of the lower back.

Loxo Oncology, Inc. and The University of Colorado Cancer Center today announced the publication of a research brief describing the first patient with a tropomyosin receptor kinase (TRK) fusion cancer enrolled in the Phase 1 dose escalation trial of LOXO-101, the only selective TRK inhibitor in clinical development. Additional contributors to the paper include the Knight Cancer Institute at Oregon Health & Science University and Foundation Medicine, Inc. (Nasdaq:FMI).

Researchers have developed an ultrafast light-emitting device that can flip on and off 90 billion times a second and could form the basis of optical computing.

At its most basic level, your smart phone's battery is powering billions of transistors using electrons to flip on and off billions of times per second. But if microchips could use photons instead of electrons to process and transmit data, computers could operate even faster.

EU's grid connected cumulative capacity in 2014 reached 129 GW, meeting 8% of European electricity demand, equivalent to the combined annual consumption of Belgium, the Netherlands, Greece and Ireland. According to a JRC report, the impressive growth of the industry will allow at least 12% electricity share by 2020, a significant contribution to the goal of the European energy and climate package of 20% share of energy from renewable sources.

A class of hormonal drugs called aromatase inhibitors substantially reduce the risk of death in postmenopausal women with the most common type of breast cancer, a major study of more than 30,000 women shows.

The research underlines the importance of aromatase inhibitors in the treatment of oestrogen receptor (ER)-positive breast cancer - and shows they reduce risk of death by significantly more than the older hormonal treatment tamoxifen.

John Leonard's group in the MIT Department of Mechanical Engineering specializes in SLAM, or simultaneous localization and mapping, the technique whereby mobile autonomous robots map their environments and determine their locations.

Last week, at the Robotics Science and Systems conference, members of Leonard's group presented a new paper demonstrating how SLAM can be used to improve object-recognition systems, which will be a vital component of future robots that have to manipulate the objects around them in arbitrary ways.

If anybody is still laboring under the mistaken belief that anything online can remain private and secure, this week should have seen them finally admit defeat. In the US, UCLA Health reported that 4.5 million health records had been compromised. UCLA Health runs four hospitals and 150 offices in Southern California, based at the University of California and Los Angeles.

Brain scans of war veterans with posttraumatic stress disorder have led researchers to an area of the prefrontal cortex that appears to be a good predictor of response to treatment with SSRIs--the first-line drug treatment for PTSD.

The findings, which came out online June 26, 2015, in the journal Neuropsychopharmacology, are hopeful news amid a new national push toward "precision medicine," in which doctors will tailor drug regimens and other treatments based on patients' individual gene profiles or other factors. President Obama announced the initiative earlier this year.

A type of drug used to treat diabetes may reduce the risk of developing Parkinson's disease, according to a new study published in PLOS Medicine.

The research, led by the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, found that diabetes patients taking glitazone antidiabetes drugs (either rosiglitazone or pioglitazone) had a 28% lower incidence of Parkinson's disease than people taking other treatments for diabetes who had never taken glitazones.