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More than 99% of drug trials for Alzheimer's disease during the past decade have failed

More than 99% of drug trials for Alzheimer's disease during the past decade have failed | Amazing Science |

There is an urgent need to increase the number of potential therapies being investigated, say US scientists. Only one new medicine has been approved since 2004, they report in the journal Alzheimer's Research & Therapy.

The drug failure rate is troubling and higher than for other diseases such as cancer, says Alzheimer's Research UKDr Jeffrey Cummings, of the Cleveland Clinic Lou Ruvo Center for Brain Health, in Las Vegas, and colleagues, examined a public website that records clinical trials.

Between 2002 and 2012, they found 99.6% of trials of drugs aimed at preventing, curing or improving the symptoms of Alzheimer's had failed or been discontinued. This compares with a failure rate of 81% for cancer drugs.

The failure rate was "especially troubling" given the rising numbers of people with dementia, said Dr Simon Ridley, of Alzheimer's Research UK. "The authors of the study highlight a worrying decline in the number of clinical trials for Alzheimer's treatments in more recent years," he said.

Sandy Spencer's curator insight, July 6, 2014 9:37 AM

This is so discouraging. I know everyone has high hopes of a cure or at least something to slow it down. But our wait goes on--

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$1.2 Billion Human Brain Project Is Underway

$1.2 Billion Human Brain Project Is Underway | Amazing Science |

The HBP is a €1.2 billion worth and 10 years long global project that will give us a deeper and more meaningful understanding of how the human brain operates. It is comprised of 130 research institutions throughout Europe and coordinated through the Ecole polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne (EFPL) in Switzerland (1).

Experimental mapping of the brain turned out to be a dead end, given that it takes 20,000 experiments to map just one neural circuit and that our brain consists of 100 billion neurons and 100 trillion synapses. The HBP came up with a better solution by building the first human brain model. These are neuromorphic computing systems which use the same basic principles of computation and cognitive architectures as the brain (1, 2, 3, 4).

The plan is to determine fundamental principles of how neurons are connected and use those principles to construct statistical simulations. A simulation model will then predict how the certain parts of the brain, for which we have none or little experimental information, are wired and then compare the results with real biological data. In other words, the idea is to find some underlying principle that governs brain’s morphology and reverse-engineer the human brain with the help of supercomputers (1, 2, 3).

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CR7 was not alone—Many super bright galaxies in the early universe

CR7 was not alone—Many super bright galaxies in the early universe | Amazing Science |

Astronomers have identified a family of incredible galaxies that could shed further light on the transformation of the early Universe known as the 'epoch of reionisation'. Dr David Sobral of Lancaster University will present their results on Monday 27 June at the National Astronomy Meeting in Nottingham.

About 150 million years after the Big Bang, some 13 billion years ago, the Universe was completely opaque to high energy ultraviolet light, with neutral hydrogen gas blocking its passage. Astronomers have long realised that this situation ended in the so-called 'epoch of reionisation', where ultraviolet light from the earliest stars broke open neutral hydrogen atoms, and could start to travel freely through the cosmos. This reionisation period marks a key transition between the relatively simple early cosmos, with normal matter made up of hydrogen and helium, and the universe as we see it today: transparent on large scales and filled with heavier elements.

In 2015 Sobral led a team that found the first example of a spectacularly bright galaxy within the epoch of reionisation, named Cosmos Redshift 7 or CR7, which may harbour first generation stars. The team also discovered a similar galaxy, MASOSA, which, together with Himiko, discovered by a Japanese team, hinted at a larger population of similar objects, perhaps made up of the earliest stars and/or black holes.

Using the Subaru and Keck telescopes on Hawaii, and the Very Large Telescope in Chile, Sobral and his team, along with a group in the US, have now found more examples of this population. All of the newly found galaxies seem to have a large bubble of ionised gas around them. Sobral comments: "Stars and black holes in the earliest, brightest galaxies must have pumped out so much ultraviolet light that they quickly broke up hydrogen atoms in the surrounding universe. The fainter galaxies seem to have stayed shrouded from view for a lot longer. Even when they eventually become visible, they show evidence of plenty of opaque material still in place around them."

Via Mariaschnee
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Future physicians 'become' Alfred, a 74-year-old patient, using virtual reality

Future physicians 'become' Alfred, a 74-year-old patient, using virtual reality | Amazing Science |

He's speaking to you, but you can't hear him clearly. There's a large black smudge where his face should be, so you're unable to really read his lips. What he's saying is important, so you lean in. But you're frustrated as you struggle to understand what's going on.

You're experiencing life through the eyes of a 74-year-old patient named Alfred -- seven minutes in the shoes of an elderly man whose audiovisual impairments are misdiagnosed as cognitive ones -- and a story that students across many disciplines have worked together to create. A virtual reality experience transforms the user into a 74-year-old named Alfred in order to see his perspective as a medical patient.

"We're trying to portray different kinds of medical conditions, sensory changes from the first-person perspective of a patient," said Carrie Shaw, a master's student in biomedical visualization and content creator of the case study titled, "We Are Alfred." The project was the focus of Shaw's research this year. It won first place in the Art/Design/Humanities & Social Sciences Category among graduate student projects at the UIC Research Forum, as well as the Vesalius Trust Scholarship Award. Their goal was to craft an interactive, experiential product that could be used for curriculum in geriatrics -- the health and care of elderly people -- because of predicted growth in future U.S. aging populations and a disconnect between patients and the students or doctors who treat them.

"Medical students are usually in their early 20s and not experiencing those kinds of challenges yet, so we decided to create something that would give them the experience of what it might be like to go through the aging process," Shaw said.

Users experience that with some headphones and the Oculus Rift Development Kit 2, a headset that can immerse them into a 360-degree virtual reality experience. The headset also includes a Leap Motion device that tracks and projects user's hands in the story to make them feel like they're Alfred. Becoming Alfred helps users empathize with and better understand elderly patients.

"The project is focusing on comfort," said Eric Swirsky, clinical assistant professor of biomedical and health information sciences and a faculty adviser for the project. "It's not curing, it's not curative, it's not even treatment-oriented. It's about comforting and understanding where the patient is so that you can be with him."

The group started with Alfred .5, the first iteration of the project. The prototype had a completely virtual environment. But after tests, trials, discussion and input from expert geriatricians, the second iteration was refocused to include graphic elements, real people and live scenes -- a redesigned interactive cinema on an almost zero-dollar budget.

"Interactive cinema is a kind of marriage of directing for film and directing for theater because you're directing a 360-degree space where the user has the freedom to look wherever they want," said the film's director, Ryan Lebar, a student collaborator from the University of North Carolina School of the Arts.

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The top 10 emerging technologies of 2016 | KurzweilAI

The top 10 emerging technologies of 2016 | KurzweilAI | Amazing Science |

The top 10 technologies that made 2016's list are:

PDF report

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The ultimate discovery power of the gene chip is coming to nanotechnology

The ultimate discovery power of the gene chip is coming to nanotechnology | Amazing Science |

“As scientists, we’ve only just begun to investigate what materials can be made on the nanoscale,” said Northwestern’s Chad A. Mirkin, a world leader in nanotechnology research and its application, who led the study. “Screening a million potentially useful nanoparticles, for example, could take several lifetimes. Once optimized, our tool will enable researchers to pick the winner much faster than conventional methods. We have the ultimate discovery tool.”

Combinatorial libraries of nanoparticles - more than half never existed on Earth.

Using a Northwestern technique that deposits materials on a surface, Mirkin and his team figured out how to make combinatorial libraries of nanoparticles in a controlled way. (A combinatorial library is a collection of systematically varied structures encoded at specific sites on a surface.) Their study was published today (June 24) by the journal Science.

“The ability to make libraries of nanoparticles will open a new field of nanocombinatorics, where size — on a scale that matters — and composition become tunable parameters,” Mirkin said. “This is a powerful approach to discovery science.”

Mirkin is the George B. Rathmann Professor of Chemistry in the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences and founding director of Northwestern’s International Institute for Nanotechnology.

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Scientists Find Explanation for Sounds of Northern Lights

Scientists Find Explanation for Sounds of Northern Lights | Amazing Science |
The popping and crackling sounds associated with Aurora borealis (or the Northern Lights) are born when the related geomagnetic storm activates the charges that have accumulated in the atmosphere’s inversion layer causing them to discharge, according to researchers at Aalto University, Finland.

In 2012, Prof. Unto K. Laine of Aalto University and co-authors proved that the source of auroral sounds is located close to the ground at an altitude of approximately 230 feet (70 m).

Now, by combining their measurements with the temperature profiles measured by the Finnish Meteorological Institute, the researchers have found an explanation for the mechanism that creates the sounds.

“Temperatures generally drops the higher the altitude. However, when temperatures are well below 32 degrees Fahrenheit (0 degrees Celsius) and, generally in clear and calm weather conditions during the evening and night, the cold is near the surface and the air is warmer higher up,” Prof. Laine said. “This warm air does not mix, instead rising up towards a colder layer carrying negative charges from the ground.”

“The inversion layer forms a kind of lid hindering the vertical movements of the charges. The colder air above it is charged positively.”

“Finally, a geomagnetic storm causes the accumulated charges to discharge with sparks that create measurable magnetic pulses and sounds.”

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A.I. Downs Expert Human Fighter Pilot In Dogfights

A.I. Downs Expert Human Fighter Pilot In Dogfights | Amazing Science |

In the military world, fighter pilots have long been described as the best of the best. As Tom Wolfe famously wrote, only those with the "right stuff" can handle the job. Now, it seems, the right stuff may no longer be the sole purview of human pilots.

A pilot A.I. developed by a doctoral graduate from the University of Cincinnati has shown that it can not only beat other A.I.s, but also a professional fighter pilot with decades of experience. In a series of flight combat simulations, the A.I. successfully evaded retired U.S. Air Force Colonel Gene "Geno" Lee, and shot him down every time. Lee called it "the most aggressive, responsive, dynamic and credible A.I. I've seen to date."

And "Geno" is no slouch. He's a former Air Force Battle Manager and adversary tactics instructor. He's controlled or flown in thousands of air-to-air intercepts as mission commander or pilot. In short, the guy knows what he's doing. Plus he's been fighting A.I. opponents in flight simulators for decades. But he says this one is different. "I was surprised at how aware and reactive it was. It seemed to be aware of my intentions and reacting instantly to my changes in flight and my missile deployment. It knew how to defeat the shot I was taking. It moved instantly between defensive and offensive actions as needed."

The A.I., dubbed ALPHA, was developed by Psibernetix, a company founded by University of Cincinnati doctoral graduate Nick Ernest, in collaboration with the Air Force Research Laboratory. According to the developers, ALPHA was specifically designed for research purposes in simulated air-combat missions.

The secret to ALPHA's superhuman flying skills is a decision-making system called a genetic fuzzy tree, a subtype of fuzzy logic algorithms. The system approaches complex problems much like a human would, says Ernest, breaking the larger task into smaller subtasks, which include high-level tactics, firing, evasion, and defensiveness. By considering only the most relevant variables, it can make complex decisions with extreme speed. As a result, the A.I. can calculate the best maneuvers in a complex, dynamic environment, over 250 times faster than its human opponent can blink.

After hour-long combat missions against ALPHA, Lee says, "I go home feeling washed out. I'm tired, drained and mentally exhausted. AI has superhuman reflexes and there is no way to win. This may be artificial intelligence, but it represents a real challenge."

The results of the dogfight simulations are published in the Journal of Defense Management.

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Google Has A List Of The A.I. Behaviors That Would Scare It Most

Google Has A List Of The A.I. Behaviors That Would Scare It Most | Amazing Science |

Google is one of the companies at the forefront of robotics and artificial intelligence research, and being in that position means they have the most to worry about. The idea of a robot takeover may still be an abstract, science fictional concept to us, but Google has actually compiled a list of behaviors that would cause them great concern, both for efficiency and safety in the future.

Via Ben van Lier
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Saturn moon Enceladus’ ice shell likely thinner than expected

Saturn moon Enceladus’ ice shell likely thinner than expected | Amazing Science |
A vast ocean of water beneath the icy crust of Saturn’s moon Enceladus may be more accessible than previously thought, according to new research. A new study has revealed that near the moon’s poles, the ice covering Enceladus could be just two kilometers (one mile) thick—the thinnest known ice shell of any ocean-covered moon. The discovery not only changes scientists’ understanding of Enceladus’ structure, but also makes the moon a more appealing target for future exploration, according to the study’s authors.

Until recently, scientists saw Jupiter’s moon Europa as the moon most likely to yield new understanding into worlds with ice-covered oceans, according to Gabriel Tobie, a planetary scientist at the Laboratory of Planetology and Geodynamics of CNRS, the University of Nantes, and the University of Angers in Nantes, France and co-author of the new study.

Estimates of Europa’s ice shell thickness range from just a few kilometers to over 10 kilometers to over 20 kilometers (12 miles) thick. By comparison, Enceladus’ ice was previously thought to be 20 to 60 kilometers (12 to 37 miles) thick. But the new study suggests that at its south pole, Enceladus’ ice is less than five kilometers (three miles) thick, and possibly as little as two.

The thinness of the ice opens up future mission possibilities, according to authors of the new study published inGeophysical Research Letters, a journal of the American Geophysical Union. With ice this thin, an orbiting probe could use radar to see what lies beneath the moon’s shell. Though substantial engineering challenges would have to be solved first, scientists could even land a probe on the moon itself to drill down through the ice and sample the water below, Tobie said. Other scientists have proposed that ocean-covered moons like Europa could harbor life, and getting a look at Enceladus’ oceans could help us understand whether life could exist there, according to the authors.

The study yielded a second unexpected result: Enceladus’ core is likely much hotter than previously thought. Ice acts as an insulator, keeping the planet’s global oceans warm, but a thinner ice shell holds less heat. To maintain the same amount of water in the global oceans, with a thinner ice shell, Enceladus’ rocky core would have to generate much more heat than previously thought, according to the authors.

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Seeds of ancient black holes could be revealed by gravitational wave pattern

Seeds of ancient black holes could be revealed by gravitational wave pattern | Amazing Science |

The research is being presented today (Monday, June 27, 2016) at the Royal Astronomical Society's National Astronomy Meeting in Nottingham, UK. It was funded by the Science and Technology Facilities Council, the European Research Council and the Belgian Interuniversity Attraction Poles Programme.

The study combined simulations from the EAGLE project - which aims to create a realistic simulation of the known Universe inside a computer - with a model to calculate gravitational wave signals.

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Hairs, feathers and scales have a lot in common

Hairs, feathers and scales have a lot in common | Amazing Science |

In 2015, a team from Yale University (USA) published an article showing that scales, hairs and feathers share molecular signatures during their development. These results fueled an old debate between two schools. One defends that these molecular signatures suggest a common evolutionary origin of skin appendages, whereas the other proposes that the same genes are re-used for developing different skin appendages.

Now, Nicolas Di-Poï and Michel C. Milinkovitch at the Department of Genetics and Evolution of the UNIGE Faculty of Science and at the SIB put this long controversy to rest by demonstrating that scales in reptiles develop from a placode with all the anatomical and molecular signatures of avian and mammalian placodes. The two scientists finely observed and analysed the skin morphological and molecular characteristics during embryonic development in crocodiles, snakes and lizards. 'Our study not only provides new molecular data that complement the work of the American team but also reveals key microanatomical facts, explains Michel Milinkovitch. Indeed, we have identified in reptiles new molecular signatures that are identical to those observed during the development of hairs and feathers, as well as the presence of the same anatomical placode as in mammals and birds. This indicates that the three types of skin appendages are homologous: the reptilian scales, the avian feathers and the mammalian hairs, despite their very different final shapes, evolved from the scales of their reptilian common ancestor.'

During their new study, the researchers from UNIGE and SIB also investigated the bearded dragon, a species of lizard that comes in three variants. The first is the normal wild-type form. The second has scales of reduced size because it bears one copy of a natural genetic mutation. The third has two copies of the mutation ... and lacks all scales. By comparing the genome of these three variants, Di-Poï and Milinkovitch have discovered the gene affected by this mutation. 'We identified that the peculiar look of these naked lizards is due to the disruption of the ectodysplasin-A (EDA), a gene whose mutations in humans and mice are known to generate substantial abnormalities in the development of teeth, glands, nails and hairs', says Michel Milinkovitch. The Swiss researchers have demonstrated that, when EDA is malfunctioning in lizards, they fail to develop a proper scale placode, exactly as mammals or birds affected with similar mutations in that same gene cannot develop proper hairs or feathers placodes. These data all coherently indicate the common ancestry between scales, feathers and hairs.

The next challenge for the Swiss team, and many other researchers around the world, is to decipher the fine mechanisms explaining the diversity of forms of skin appendages. How has the ancestral scaly skin given rise to the very different morphologies of scales, feathers and hairs, as well as the astonishing variety of forms that these appendages can take? These future studies will hopefully fine-tune our understanding of the physical and molecular mechanisms generating the complexity and the diversity of life during evolution.

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Nucleus of Barium-144 is Surprisingly Pear Shaped

Nucleus of Barium-144 is Surprisingly Pear Shaped | Amazing Science |
Experiments confirm that the barium-144 nucleus is pear shaped and hint that this asymmetry is more pronounced than previously thought.

Most nuclei are round or slightly squashed, like a football. But in certain nuclei, protons and neutrons arrange in a more pear-shaped configuration. Only a handful of these distorted nuclei have been seen in experiments. Now, researchers have confirmed that barium-144 (144Ba) is a member of this exclusive club. Moreover, it may be more distorted than theorists expected, a finding that could challenge current nuclear structure models.

The most direct test of whether a nucleus is pear shaped is to look for so-called octupole transitions between nuclear states, which are suppressed in more symmetric nuclei. Using this method, researchers have confirmed that radium-224, radium-226, and a few other heavy nuclei are pear shaped. For decades, theorists have predicted that 144Ba , a relatively light nucleus, should also be asymmetric. But until now, there were no techniques that allowed a sufficient number of the short-lived barium isotopes to be prepared and studied before they decayed.

A team of scientists from the US, the UK, and France used Argonne National Lab’s CARIBU fission source and ATLAS accelerator to prepare a beam of 144Ba, which they collided with a lead foil to kick the nuclei into excited states. By analyzing the spectrum of gamma rays emitted by the nuclei, the researchers found that the strengths of several octupole transitions—and hence the distortion—were more than twice the values predicted by nuclear structure models. The finding might mean that these models need to be revised. But it’s too soon to say because the experimental uncertainty in the measured distortion is still large.

This research is published in Physical Review Letters.

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Termites figured out farming 25 million years before people did

Termites figured out farming 25 million years before people did | Amazing Science |

Scientists discovered an ancient fungus garden grown by termites millions of years ago.

The fossil structures bore every hallmark of a prehistoric farm: Crops were arranged according to an intricate, complex plan. Material for harvesting littered the ground. Analysis revealed that the crop was a species that only grows when cultivated.

This was agriculture — but underground and on a micro scale. At 25 million years old, it was also far more ancient than anything constructed by humans; Homo sapiens didn't even exist yet.

Instead, the farmers who tilled these ancient plots were termites. And their harvest was fungus. The fossilized termite gardens, uncovered from exposed cliff sides in the Rukwa Rift Basin of southwestern Tanzania, are the oldest physical evidence of farming on Earth, scientists report in the journal PLOS One this week.

"It captures a record of the evolutionary coupling of termites and fungus ... and allows us to trace back the antiquity of this symbiotic relationship," lead author Eric Roberts, a geologist at James Cook University in Australia, wrote in an email. "The new fossils help us to calibrate our evolutionary clocks and use them to better understand when this symbiosis first developed, which we now think was probably around 31 million years ago."

Across Africa, the massive, edible "termite mushrooms" grown by these tiny insects are famous. But European scientists didn't realize the significance of what was happening inside termite colonies until the mid-20th century. When researchers dissected towering termite mounds, which contain dozens of interlocking chambers and can grow taller than a person, they saw that the insects weren't just eating the fungus that grew alongside them — they were cultivating it.

Via Neelima Sinha
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Huge helium discovery 'a life-saving find'

Huge helium discovery 'a life-saving find' | Amazing Science |

Their research shows that volcanic activity provides the intense heat necessary to release the gas from ancient, helium-bearing rocks. Within the Tanzanian East African Rift Valley, volcanoes have released helium from ancient deep rocks and have trapped this helium in shallower gas fields. The research is being presented by Durham University PhD student Diveena Danabalan at the Goldschmidt geochemistry conference in Yokohama, Japan.

Prof. Chris Ballentine, Department of Earth Sciences, University of Oxford, said: "We sampled helium gas (and nitrogen) just bubbling out of the ground in the Tanzanian East African Rift valley. By combining our understanding of helium geochemistry with seismic images of gas trapping structures, independent experts have calculated a probable resource of 54 Billion Cubic Feet (BCf) in just one part of the rift valley. This is enough to fill over 1.2 million medical MRI scanners. To put this discovery into perspective, global consumption of helium is about 8 BCf per year and the United States Federal Helium Reserve, which is the world's largest supplier, has a current reserve of just 24.2 BCf. Total known reserves in the USA are around 153 BCf. This is a game changer for the future security of society's helium needs and similar finds in the future may not be far away."

Via Mariaschnee
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Could a space-based solar farm become a reality by 2040?

Could a space-based solar farm become a reality by 2040? | Amazing Science |

It was just over 40 years ago that the concept of a solar power satellite (SPS) first emerged. American scientist and aerospace engineer Dr. Peter Glaser won a patent for a broadcast system using a one-square kilometer antenna to channel power via microwaves to a receiver on the ground. The advantage of such a system, and space-based solar power in general, is that it harnesses the unobstructed output of the sun, unlike land-based solar systems which are affected by the weather and Earth's day/night cycle.

While Glaser's proposal never got off the ground, it did inspire further investigation of the potential of space-based solar power by various government departments and institutions. In 2008, a company called Space Energy conducted a long-range wireless power transmission test using a microwave beam between two Hawaiian islands, a distance of 148 km (91.96 mi). The result was a power yield of 1/1000th of one percent on the receiving end, raising questions over whether the technique could be employed over the much larger distance between a satellite in geosynchronous Earth orbit (GEO) and a ground station.

Writing in IEEE Spectrum, Professor Emeritus at JAXA, Susumi Sasaki, argues that this experiment failed largely due to the dense atmosphere disturbing the microwaves' phases as a result of the horizontal transmission. In detailing the agency's proposal he emphasized that in a space-based system the microwaves only need to pass through this dense atmosphere for the last few kilometers of their journey. This, along with new designs for the solar power satellites and anticipated advances in technology over the coming decades, gives JAXA confidence that it can eventually achieve an effective wireless transmission of solar energy over the necessary 36,000 km (22,500 miles) from GEO.

JAXA is working on two concepts. The simpler one involves a huge square panel that measures 2 km (1.24 mi) per side. The top surface would be covered with photovoltaic elements, with transmission antennas on the bottom side. A small bus housing controls and communication systems would be tethered to the panel via 10 km (6.2 mi) long wires. A limitation with this design is that the orientation of the panel is fixed, meaning that as the Earth and the satellite spin, the amount of sunlight the panel receives will vary, impacting its ability to generate power.

Via Tania Gammage
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When it comes to brown dwarfs, “how far away?” is a key question

When it comes to brown dwarfs, “how far away?” is a key question | Amazing Science |

The intrinsic brightness of brown dwarfs, particularly cool brown dwarfs, is poorly known, but this key parameter can only be determined once an object’s distance has been measured.

An ongoing planet-hunting survey run by Carnegie co-authors Alycia Weinberger, Alan Boss, Ian Thompson, Sandy Keiser, and others has yielded the distances to 134 low mass stars and brown dwarfs, of which 38 had not been previously measured. “Accurate distances are the foundation upon which we can determine the physical properties and luminosities of brown dwarfs and low mass stars,” Weinberger said.

The team built a special instrument for precisely measuring the locations of stars over time, the CAPSCam—the Carnegie Astrometric Planet Search Camera—and they use it at the DuPont Telescope at our Las Campanas Observatory in Chile.

“There is still so much about brown dwarfs that remains unknown,” explained Weinberger. “As we learn more about them, it could improve our knowledge about the star formation process and possibly also refine our understanding of the distribution of matter in the universe, since it seems that there are far more brown dwarfs than initially thought.” The study revealed some other useful distance measurements in addition to the brown dwarf discoveries.

The team used the motion of two stars and compared them to others in two different stellar groups to confirm the age of the two stars age, between 30 and 50 million years old for one and 100 million years old for the other. This is because distance measurements can tell researchers about the location of a star in 3-D, not just the star’s position in 2-D on the sky, and let them measure the star’s velocity. Finding groups of young stars moving together lets astronomers study them in aggregate and better estimate how old they are and learn about their evolution.

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Garage Biotech: New drugs using only a computer, the internet and free online data | Amazing Science |

Professor Butte, students, and research staff have found a range of different ways of using this data to look for new drugs. In one approach, they have constructed a map of how the genetic profiles of people with particular diseases are related to each other. In particular, to look for diseases with very similar genetic profiles. Having done that, they noticed that the genetic profile of people with heart conditions were very closely related to that of the much rarer condition of muscular dystrophy. What this potentially suggested was that drugs that work for one condition could potentially work in the other. This process of discovering other uses of drugs, called “drug repositioning”, is not new.

Drugs like Viagra were originally used for treatment of cardiovascular conditions. The difference is that Viagra’s repositioned use resulted from the observation of side-effects in patients taking the drug for its original intended purpose.

Professor Butte on the other hand is using “Big Data” and computers to show that given the close relationship in the genetic profile of two diseases, the potential cross-over effect of drugs working for one condition working in another.

Still in the garage, the next step from discovering a potential drug is to test if it actually works in an experimental setting on animals. Here again, Professor Butte has turned to the internet and sites like Assay Depot. This is a site, structured like Amazon, from which a researcher can order an experiment to be carried out to test a drug on a range of animal models. It is literally a case of choosing the experiment type you want, adding it to a shopping cart, paying by credit card and getting the experimental results mailed back in a few weeks time. “Shoppers” are given the choice of laboratory they want to use, including a choice of which country the lab is based.

Once a new use for a drug has been shown to work in an animal model, the next step would be to test the drug in humans, get approval for the use of the drug for that condition and then finally take the drug to market.

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Elephantnose fish has no cortex but intelligently switches between senses

Elephantnose fish has no cortex but intelligently switches between senses | Amazing Science |
The elephantnose fish was in an aquarium connected to two different chambers; the animal could choose. Behind openings to the chambers there were differently shaped objects: a sphere or a cuboid. The fish learned to steer toward one of these objects by being rewarded with insect larvae. Subsequently, it searched for this object again, to obtain the reward again. When does the fish use a particular sense? To answer this question, the researchers repeated the experiments in absolute darkness. Now the fish could rely only on its electrical sense. As shown by images taken with an infrared camera, it was able to recognize the object only at short distances. With the light on the fish was most successful, because it was able to use its eyes and the electrical sense for the different distances. To find out when the fish used its eyes alone, the researchers made the objects invisible to the electrical sense. Now, the sphere and cuboid to be discriminated had the same electrical characteristics as the water.
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Gaseous - dark - metallic liquid: Probing giant planets’ hydrogen layers

Gaseous - dark - metallic liquid: Probing giant planets’ hydrogen layers | Amazing Science |

Hydrogen is the most-abundant element in the universe. It's also the simplest--sporting only a single electron in each atom. But that simplicity is deceptive, because there is still so much we have to learn about hydrogen.

One of the biggest unknowns is its transformation under the extreme pressures and temperatures found in the interiors of giant planets, where it is squeezed until it becomes liquid metal, capable of conducting electricity. New work published in Physical Review Letters by Carnegie's Alexander Goncharov and University of Edinburgh's Stewart McWilliams measures the conditions under which hydrogen undergoes this transition in the lab and finds an intermediate state between gas and metal, which they're calling "dark hydrogen."

On the surface of giant planets like Jupiter, hydrogen is a gas. But between this gaseous surface and the liquid metal hydrogen in the planet's core lies a layer of dark hydrogen, according to findings gleaned from the team's lab mimicry. Using a laser-heated diamond anvil cell to create the conditions likely to be found in gas giant planetary interiors, the team probed the physics of hydrogen under a range of pressures from 10,000 to 1.5 million times normal atmospheric pressure and up to 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit. They discovered this unexpected intermediate phase, which does not reflect or transmit visible light, but does transmit infrared radiation, or heat.

"This observation would explain how heat can easily escape from gas giant planets like Saturn," explained Goncharov. They also found that this intermediate dark hydrogen is somewhat metallic, meaning it can conduct an electric current, albeit poorly. This means that it could play a role in the process by which churning metallic hydrogen in gas giant planetary cores produces a magnetic field around these bodies, in the same way that the motion of liquid iron in Earth's core created and sustains our own magnetic field.

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DOT and FAA Finalize Rules for Drones

DOT and FAA Finalize Rules for Drones | Amazing Science |

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Proof-Reading Capability of RTX Polymerase Corrects Errors While Copying RNA

Proof-Reading Capability of RTX Polymerase Corrects Errors While Copying RNA | Amazing Science |

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Smart glass goes from clear to opaque and back again – 27 million times | Amazing Science |
A smart material that switches back and forth between transparent and opaque could be installed in buildings or automobiles, potentially reducing energy bills by avoiding the need for costly air conditioning.

Imagine a glass skyscraper in which all of the windows could go from clear to opaque at the flick of a switch, allowing occupants to regulate the amount of sunlight coming through the windows without having to rely on costly air conditioning or other artificial methods of temperature control.

Researchers at the University of Cambridge have developed a type of 'smart' glass that switches back and forth between transparent and opaque, while using very low amounts of energy. The material, known as Smectic A composites, could be used in buildings, automotive or display applications.

Working with industrial partners including Dow Corning, the Cambridge researchers have been developing 'Smectic A' composites over the past two decades. The team, based at the Centre for Advanced Photonics and Electronics (CAPE), has made samples of Smectic A based glass, and is also able to produce it on a roll-to-roll process so that it can be printed onto plastic. It can be switched back and forth from transparent to opaque millions of times, and can be kept in either state for as long as the user wants.

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Quantum computer makes first high-energy physics simulation

Quantum computer makes first high-energy physics simulation | Amazing Science |
The technique would help address problems that classical computers can't handle.

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New evidence that sperm whales form clans with diverse cultures, languages

New evidence that sperm whales form clans with diverse cultures, languages | Amazing Science |

Sperm whales share something fundamental with humans. Both of our species form groups with unique languages and traditions known as "cultures." A new study of sperm whale groups in the Caribbean suggests that these animals are shaped profoundly by their culture, which governs everything from hunting patterns to babysitting techniques. Whale researcher Shane Gero, who has spent thousands of hours with sperm whales, says that whale culture leads to behaviors that are "uncoupled from natural selection."

Sperm whale society is very complicated, and every whale belongs to multiple social groups. Individuals spend most of their time in small family units, and multiple families converge to form larger groups. All the groups who share a dialect form a clan, and members of a clan may be so widely dispersed that they never meet one another even though they speak the same language. Families are made up of adult females and calves, while adult males tend to roam widely between clans and sometimes even swim from one ocean basin to the other. But even these general social structures vary a lot between oceans.

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Making Computers Reason and Learn by Analogy

Making Computers Reason and Learn by Analogy | Amazing Science |

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I am experience intermittent frame stuttering with my SLI GTX 580s on Windows 8. The frame rate is smooth 90% of the time but will randomly hang and stutter every few minutes. I am on the latest drivers and have D3 installed on an SSD with an i7-2700k and 16gb of RAM.

If I disable SLI, everything runs smoothly. I have tried with vsync on and off and have the same effect.