Tech

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Researchers are developing instruments and methods for measuring the ages of rocks encountered during space missions to the Moon or other planets. Many of the techniques used to date rocks on Earth are not practical in spaceflight, but a technique called laser ablation resonance ionization mass spectrometry can avoid the need for sophisticated sample preparation.

10 percent of health care providers write an antibiotic prescription for nearly every patient (95 percent or more) who walks in with a cold, bronchitis or other acute respiratory infection (ARI), according to a new Centers for Disease Control and Prevention-supported study published in the Annals of Internal Medicine and led by the Veterans Affairs Salt Lake City Health Care System and the University of Utah. The figure is at one end of a spectrum showing the remarkable variation in how providers use antibiotics.

Titanium and gold are usually not magnetic and cannot be magnets – unless you combine them just so. Scientists at Rice University did so and discovered what is a first of its kind: an itinerant antiferromagnetic metal -- TiAu -- made from nonmagnetic constituent elements.

Research from North Carolina State University shows that lightweight composite metal foams are effective at blocking X-rays, gamma rays and neutron radiation, and are capable of absorbing the energy of high impact collisions. The finding means the metal foams hold promise for use in nuclear safety, space exploration and medical technology applications.

Artificial intelligence (AI) has given rise to machines that can match humans at chess, rival them in the stock market, and aid them in the clinic. But researchers' ultimate goal is to create a well-rounded, human-like computer program -- an aspiration that raises many questions and poses a wide range of challenges. In Science magazine, researchers discuss recent progress in AI, along with its potential implications for humankind.