Technology & Society
Cnet reports that “Engineers at Kansas State University have developed a radio with sensors and microprocessors that can transmit data and is self-sufficient when it comes to power. The device, called by the engineers an “energy-harvesting radio,” is essentially a
This week, the House Energy and Commerce Committee released a report accusing Kevin Martin, the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, of being deceptive and opaque in his management of the agency’s affairs. That a politician would pull such moves
This bit of data was re-posted from Parade magazine on the GRG mailing list today. The numbers are of course projected to grow. How many people in this country are 100 or older? At the time of the last census,
According to this news story, “An Indian woman has given birth to her first child at the age of 70 after receiving fertility treatment.” Let’s hope she lives to at least 90 so her child will have some time to
From MIT Tech Review: “Many believe that lasers should be used not just to create wounds but to mend them too. Abraham Katzir, a physicist at Tel Aviv University, has a system that may just do the trick and is
This, from BusinessWeek, is no surprise to those of us living in Silicon Valley. “a November 2008 study by Robert W. Fairlie, a professor at the University of California at Santa Cruz, gives the strongest evidence to date that critics
From Cnet news: “Professor Kishan Dholakia and Dr. Frank Gunn-Moore–both of the University of St. Andrews in Scotland–say the “light saber” could be used routinely on cancer patients within the next five years. The method would allow chemotherapy drugs to
From the UK’s Daily Mail: “Scientists believe that ‘heavy water’ enriched with a rare form of hydrogen could add as much as 10 years to life. Foods, from steak to eggs, could also be modified to allow us to eat
This is great news, particularly since the American population is aging and cancer tends to strike older people at higher rates. From Reuters: “Cancer rates have dropped for the first time in the United States and previous declines in cancer
According to the Arizona Republic, “The chairman of Eli Lilly & Co. said the future of the pharmaceutical industry rests not with blockbuster drugs but with targeted therapies that work for smaller groups of people based on their biological makeup.”
For the longest time, scientists haven’t had tools at their disposal to measure biological (as opposed to simple chronological) age. They finally found some doing research on worms and plan more studies as well. This is a big deal as
From Scientific American: “A new study shows that the cancer drugs imatinib (also known as Gleevec by Novartis) and sunitinib (Sutent, made by Pfizer) halt diabetes in mice. A team from the University of California, San Francisco and Berkeley-based drug
From the TimesOnline: “A woman has been given a new section of windpipe created from her own stem cells in an operation that could revolutionise surgery. Claudia Castillo, 30, who lives in Barcelona, has become the first person to be
Japanese consumers are known to be ardent gadget lovers, but that doesn’t mean that technology development is thriving in Japan. In fact, the country has been surprisingly inhospitable to entrepreneurs, as I recently discovered when I traveled to Tokyo for
From Bloomberg News: “Doctors may someday slow or reverse the aging process with drugs that stimulate the body to repair itself as a result of research undertaken by Pfizer Inc. Pfizer, the world’s largest drugmaker, will spend $100 million during
This is a great article by Joe Nocera of the New York Times on the effectiveness of bringing a business mindset to disease research. He interviews Michael J. Fox and Andy Grove on how the best ways to run a
According to Cnet News: “Philips Research is out with a new intelligent camera pill that can be electronically preprogrammed to deliver targeted doses of medicine to patients with digestive disorders such as Crohn’s disease, colitis, and colon cancer. The device
It’s been called the “rapture of the nerds,” but such derision didn’t stop an estimated 500 enthusiasts from showing up to the Singularity Institute’s conference in San Jose, Calif., last weekend to discuss the possibility of artificial intelligence overtaking that
From Financial Times: “A Sheffield company has launched a “virtual rat” computer programme, which it claims will mimic drug trials on animals. Simcyp, spun out of Sheffield University, has specialised for the past seven years in creating virtual populations, essentially
Chipmaker Intel said this week that despite its record US$10.2 billion in revenue for the third quarter, the company is worried that the global economic crisis will affect future performance. Despite such a general malaise across the industry, however, there