Maria Lucimar Pereira must be packing some serious longevity genes. Though she certainly doesn't look it, tomorrow the indigenous Amazonian will be celebrating her 121st birthday, making her the new world-record holder for the oldest living person — by a staggering six years. More »
It’s fairly well-established that the children of older mothers are more likely to have genetic defects than those of their younger counterparts. Now we have some of the first solid evidence that older dads could carry a risk as well. More »
The Earth was a very different place 3.5 billion years ago. In the absence of oxygen, many scientists believe Earth’s earliest ecosystems survived on sulphur, but researchers have long been unable to find any proof of this hypothesis, in the form of fossilized microbial life. More »
For years, radiometric dating of lunar rock samples has suggested that the formation of the Moon occurred roughly 4.57 billion years ago — around the same time as the birth of the solar system itself. More »
TrES-2b is a Jupiter-sized planet located about 750 light-years from Earth. It reflects just 1% of the sunlight that reaches it, making it essentially one vast black sphere. In fact, it’s darker than just about any substance found on Earth. We’ve never observed anything remotely like this before. More »
Some things are just more terrifying in high definition. Watch as a pack of mosquitoes gorge themselves on human blood, then go vomit in your trashcan. More »
File this new TV show under “best thing ever.” John Noble (who plays Fringe’s mad scientist, Walter Bishop) is hosting a new series that explores “real-life stories of the dark side of science.” Watch the first trailer now! More »
Earlier today, the Sun fired the biggest solar flare we’ve seen thus far in our current solar cycle. With an X-ray magnitude of X6.9, this flare was three times larger than the previous titleholder, a X2.2 from mid-February. More »
For men in heterosexual relationships, time out with the guys can be important. Now, research suggests that it may be better for the guys’ sex lives if their female partners don’t tag along. A recent study conducted by researchers at the University of Chicago and Cornell University shows that when a woman forms relationships with her partner’s male friends that are as strong or stronger than his own, the man is significantly more likely to suffer from erectile dysfunction. More »
Continue reading NASA finds DNA components in meteorites, says they originated in space (video)
NASA finds DNA components in meteorites, says they originated in space (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 09 Aug 2011 06:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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![Click here to read Are scientific discoveries inspiring "Alien Fever" at the box office?](http://cache.io9.com/assets/images/8/2011/08/small_dchasafever_01.jpg "Click here to read Are scientific discoveries inspiring "Alien Fever" at the box office?")
Hollywood has been pumping out a prodigious amount of movies about aliens in recent years, and the public has been eating them up. But just why is it that we can’t get enough of extraterrestrial life? More »
On March 11, 2011, a magnitude 9.0 earthquake rumbled the northeast coast of Japan at a depth of 15.2 miles. The resulting tsunami destroyed everything nearby, but most people thought it never affected other areas. Until now. More »
Getting tested for STDs used to mean a doctor’s visit, vials of blood, and days, weeks, or even months of anxiously waiting for results. mChip aims to change all that, while simultaneously ridding your brain of viable excuses not to get tested. It works as such: one drop of blood goes on the microfluidics-based optical chip, 15 minutes pass, and boom, the AmEx-sized device will confirm whether or not you have syphilis and / or HIV. The bantam gizmo is practically foolproof, as reading the results doesn’t require any human interpretation whatsoever. Plus, it’s cheap — cheaper than a coffee at Starbucks. One dollar cheap. Researchers at Columbia University claim the mChip has a 100 percent detection rate, although there’s a four to six percent chance of getting a false positive — a stat similar to traditional lab tests. As you’d likely expect, there’s hope that the inexpensive mChip will help testing efforts in places like Africa to detect HIV before it turns into AIDS. Next stop: the self-service pharmacy at CVS?
$1 chip tests for HIV in 15 minutes flat, fits in your wallet originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 04 Aug 2011 07:32:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Orgasms are supposed to be the goal of most sexual activity. Sex without one would be like watching a space opera with no giant starship battle at the end, right? But it turns out that not everybody really cares that much about the Big O all the time, because other parts of sex are giving them pleasure. More »
New research out of UC Irvine shows that children born to women who experience unusual levels of psychological or social stress during pregnancy are more likely to show signs of accelerated aging than other children. More »
Many simpler forms of life on this planet, including some of our earliest ancestors, don’t have proper brains. Instead they have networks of neurons that fire in response to stimuli, triggering reactions. Scientists from Caltech have actually figured out how to create such a primitive pre-brain using strands of DNA. Researchers, led by Lulu Qian, strung together DNA molecules to create bio-mechanical circuits. By sequencing the four bases of our genetic code in a particular way, they were able to program it to respond differently to various inputs. To prove their success the team quizzed the organic circuit, essentially playing 20 questions, feeding it clues to the identity of a particular scientist using more DNA strands. The artificial neural network nailed answer every time. Check out the PR and pair of videos that dig a little deeper into the experiment after the break.
Continue reading DNA-based artificial neural network is a primitive brain in a test tube (video)
DNA-based artificial neural network is a primitive brain in a test tube (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 30 Jul 2011 16:36:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
We think of cancer as a disease, a form of runaway cell growth within an organism. But we might not have realized what cancers really are: separate, brand new parasitic species that evolve from and prey upon their human hosts. More »
