ScienceBlog.com

Artificial intelligence (AI) being used at the European Space Operations Centre is giving a powerful boost to ESA’s Mars Express as it searches for signs of past or present life on the Red Planet.

The number of items we can remember actively in our conscious mind, without the help of repetition or memory aids, is only four, according to a story in LiveScience.

Research organizations from around the world announced today they are launching the International Cancer Genome Consortium (ICGC), a collaboration designed to generate high-quality genomic data on up to 50 types of cancer through efforts projected to take up to a decade.

For long journeys into deep space, such as to Pioneer 10 and 11 rocket journeys, scientists will have to take into consideration, the new corrected gain in mass, (and therefore gravitational attraction) caused by the force of the rocket engines and Jupiter’s gravity, during its acceleration, into their calculations.

What is happiness? What is depression?
What is friendship? What is hatred?
What is conscience? What is evil?
What is life? What is death?
Over thousands of years, we human beings have not found the consensus answer.
We, the spoiled babies, have torn up the increasingly weak mother: the earth.

Ah, babies, it is time to lift up your heads, look at the wide and deep universe,
and trace down the blood lineage of your mother:
It is the bending hands of Milky Way — the spiral arms – that hug Earth.
It is the broad chest of Milky Way — the galactic disk – that shields the sun,

Are your hands and your chest related? Yes, there is your heart!
Are the Milky Way’s hands and chest related? Yes, that is the meaning of the whole universe!
It provides the answer to all your questions.

Patients in therapy to overcome addictions have a new arena to test their coping skills—the virtual world.

The overall amputation rate in northern Illinois is declining due to improved care for diabetes and peripheral vascular disease, new research shows. But not everyone is reaping the benefits.

Metastasis, the spread of cancer throughout the body, can be explained by the fusion of a cancer cell with a white blood cell in the original tumor, according to Yale School of Medicine researchers, who say that this single event can set the stage for cancer’s migration to other parts of the body.

Google has created an algorithm called “VisualRank,” which promises to return search results for images based on the content of the images rather than the text associated with it, reports the New York Times.

The DOE’s Brookhaven National Laboratory is researching Salvia divinorum – also known as “salvia,” a Mexican mint plant that can be smoked in the form of dried leaves or serum – and has found that the drug’s behavior in the brains of primates mimics the extremely fast and brief “high” observed in humans.

Whether you live in a cardboard box or a luxurious mansion, whether you subsist on homegrown vegetables or wolf down imported steaks, whether you’re a jet-setter or a sedentary retiree, anyone who lives in the U.S. contributes more than twice as much greenhouse gas to the atmosphere as the global average, an MIT class has estimated.

Endangered North Atlantic right whales are safer along Massachusetts Bay’s busy shipping lanes this spring, thanks to a new system of smart buoys.

Scientists for the first time have used gene therapy to dramatically improve sight in people with a rare form of blindness, a development experts called a major advance for the experimental technique.

It is well-known that infants learn their native languages with incredible ease. I just came across a passage that puts this into particularly striking context:

What began as an informal presentation by a clinical linguist to a group of philosophers, has led to some surprising discoveries about the communicative language abilities of people with autism.

Diabetes before motherhood more than doubled in six years among teenage and adult women, according to a Kaiser Permanente study published in the May issue of Diabetes Care.

Children who attend day care or play groups have about a 30% lower risk of developing the most common type of childhood leukaemia than those who do not, according to a new analysis of studies investigating the link.

Vienna, Austria, 28 April 2008: According to an analysis carried out by Lifescience-online, due to it’s AFFITOME technology AFFiRiS GmbH could become a major player in the global pharmaceutical industry. After looking at data from a total of 67 European biotech companies, the study picked out the five firms with the most innovative approaches to therapy and most intensive R&D activities for closer analysis. AFFiRiS GmbH came top of this shortlist.