- How to Make a Cognitive Neuroprosthetic
Enhancing the flow of information through the brain could be crucial to making neuroprosthetics practical.
The abilities to learn, remember, evaluate, and decide are central to who we are and how we live. Damage to or dysfunction of the brain circuitry that supports these functions can be devastating, leading to Alzheimer’s, schizophrenia, PTSD, or many other disorders. Current treatments, which are drug-based or behavioral, have limited efficacy in treating these problems. There is a pressing need for something more effective.
- First Quantum-Enhanced Images of a Living Cell
Biologists have used “squeezed light” to create the first images of a living cell that beat the diffraction limit
- Can Artificial Retinas Restore Natural Sight?
Artificial retinas give the blind only the barest sense of what’s visible, but researchers are working hard to improve that.
Elias Konstantopoulos gets spotty glimpses of the world each day for about four hours, or for however long he leaves his Argus II retina prosthesis turned on. The 74-year-old Maryland resident lost his sight from a progressive retinal disease over 30 years ago, but is able to perceive some things when he turns on the bionic vision system.
- Can Carbon Capture Clean Up Canada’s Oil Sands?
Alberta will serve as a test bed for large-scale carbon capture and sequestration.
Canada is betting that carbon capture and storage (CCS), a technology that is fairly well understood but unproven at the scale needed to significantly decrease greenhouse gas emissions, can reduce the environmental footprint associated with making fuel from oil sands—its fastest-growing source of greenhouse-gas emissions. (See “Alberta’s Oil Sands Heat Up.”)
- Even Without Accounting Gimmicks, Electric-Car Maker Tesla is Now Profitable
To stay profitable, Tesla needs to keep cutting costs and selling more cars.
As expected, Tesla Motors, the maker of the luxury Model S electric sedan, announced today that it was profitable for the first time in its ten-year history. During the first quarter of 2013 it had profits of $11 million. Total revenues were $562 million.
- Yet Another Alzheimer’s Treatment Fails in Large Trial
A mixed-antibody treatment does not protect patients from cognitive decline.
More bad news from drugmakers trying to develop treatments for Alzheimer’s disease: Yesterday, Baxter announced that its mixed-antibody therapy failed to reduce cognitive decline in patients with mild to moderate Alzheimer’s disease. As I reported back in July 2012, the company saw positive results in a small four-patient trial of the treatment. None of these patients showed any cognitive decline, leading some experts to hope that the disease can be stopped or slowed (see “Study Suggests Alzheimer’s Disease Can be Stabilized”). But when Baxter tested its potential treatment—a complex mixture of antibodies harvested from healthy donated blood—in nearly 100-times as many Alzheimer’s patients, the company did not find a rate of decline slower than patients given a placebo.
- Preventing Migraines with a New Kind of Antibody
A biopharmaceutical company will know this year whether an antibody produced using a unique technique can prevent chronic migraines.
For many who suffer from chronic migraines, nothing can reliably prevent or dull the debilitating headaches that may strike as often as every other day.
- Want to See What it's Like to Wear Google Glass?
You can’t wear Google Glass–yet–but you can get a glimpse of what it will look like.
If, like most of us peons, you haven’t gotten a chance to try out Google Glass, there’s now a way to get a sense of what it’s like to take it–and its virtual display–for a spin.
- D-Wave’s Quantum Computer Goes to the Races, Wins
Tests suggest that a CIA-backed quantum computing technology can be very powerful for some kinds of problems.
When I visited D-Wave last year I saw some spectacular hardware and heard of significant backing for the company (see “The CIA and Jeff Bezos Bet On Quantum Computing”). But no one was able to show me results from pitting one of D-Wave’s unusual computers directly against a conventional one to prove how much faster they could be.
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