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Stanford Research International (SRI) claims to have developed a new method for creating liquid transportaion fuels that will result in zero emissions during the manufacturing process and is also less expensive compared to other types of laternative fuels. Too good to be true? Well, this is not only good but also true!

Scientists in central Germany are working on a method with which they reckon they could diagnose Alzheimer's disease years before any symptoms are noticed - by looking up patients' noses.

During the past 15 years, the World Wide Web has created remarkable new methods for harnessing the creativity of people in groups, and in the process has created powerful business models that are reshaping our economy. As the Web has undermined old media and software companies, it has demonstrated the enormous power of a new approach, often referred to as Web 2.0. In a nutshell: the secret to the success of bellwethers like Google, Amazon, eBay, Craigslist, Wikipedia, Facebook, and Twitter is that each of these sites, in its own way, has learned to harness the power of its users to add value to-no, more than that, to co-create-its offerings.

This method may potentially be suitable for designing novel light sources resembling lasers that work in the x-ray range. Among other applications, they might allow building more powerful computer chips.

How do we relate human thought processes to measurable events in the brain? Mental chronometry, which has origins that date back more than a century, seeks to measure the time course of mental operations in the human nervous system [1]. From the late 1800s until 1950, the field was built almost entirely around a single method: measuring and comparing people's reaction times during simple cognitive tasks.

For 25 years, the ADC was a key center for published astronomy data, catalogs, and journal tables. The ADC made these data sets computer readable and developed new methods, tools, and techniques for their preparation and use.

ScienceDaily (May 9, 2011) - Mayo Clinic researchers have designed a new tool for identifying protein function from genetic code. A team led by Stephen Ekker, Ph.D., succeeded in switching individual genes off and on in zebrafish, then observing embryonic and juvenile development. The study appears in the journal Nature Methods.

Researchers in EPFL's Computer Vision Laboratory developed a computer-based modeling service that generates a 3D image from up to thousands of 2D shots, with all the processing done in the cloud. Since April, the EPFL startup Pix4D has been offering the modeling service with a fourth dimension: time. Now, individuals and small businesses looking for fast, cheap, large-scale 3D models can get them without investing in heavy processing, the company states. With Pix4D, users upload a series of photos of an object, and within 30 minutes they have a 3D image. The software defines "points of interest" from among the photos, or common points of high-contrast pixels. Next, the program pastes the images together seamlessly by matching up the points of interest. Much in the same way our two eyes work together to calculate depth, the software computes the distance and angle between two or more photos and lays the image over the model appropriately, creating a highly accurate 3D model that avoids the time intensive, "point by point" wireframe method. With Pix4D's 3D models, you can navigate in all directions as well as change the date on a timeline to see what a place looked like at different times of the year. The company is collaborating with several drone makers (including another EPFL startup,senseFly) to market their software as a package with senseFly's micro aerial vehicles, or autonomous drones. Pix4D's time element avoids waiting for Google to update its satellite data or for an expensive plane to fly by and take high-resolution photos. Farmers, for example, can now send relatively inexpensive flying drones into the air to take pictures as often as they like, allowing them to survey the evolution of their crops over large distances and long periods of time. And since the calculations are done on a cloud server, the client doesn't need a powerful computer of his or her own.

A new new brain imaging system that can identify a subject's simple thoughts may lead to clearer diagnoses for Alzheimer's disease or schizophrenia - as well as possibly paving the way for reading people's minds. Michael Greicius at Stanford University in California and colleagues used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to identify patterns of brain activity associated with different mental states. He asked 14 volunteers to do one of four tasks: sing songs silently to themselves; recall the events of the day; count backwards in threes; or simply relax. Participants were given a 10-minute period during which they had to do this. For the rest of that time they were free to think about whatever they liked. The participants' brains were scanned for the entire 10 minutes, and the patterns of connectivity associated with each task were teased out by computer algorithms that compared scans from several volunteers doing the same task. This differs from previous experiments, in which the subjects were required to perform mental activities at specific times and the scans were then compared with brain activity when they were at rest. Greicius reasons his method encourages "natural" brain activity more like that which occurs in normal thought.

Engineers at Stevens Institute of Technology have developed a technique to optically modulate the frequency of a laser beam and create a signal that is disrupted significantly less by environmental factors, says Dr. Rainer Martini. The research provides for enhanced optical communications, allowing mobile units not tied to fiber optic cable to communicate in the range of 100 GHz and beyond, the equivalent of 100 gigabytes of data per second. Eventually, the team hopes to extend the reach into the terahertz spectrum. The frequency or amplitude modulation of middle infrared quantum cascade lasers has been limited by electronics, which are barely capable of accepting frequencies of up to 10 GHz by switching a signal on and off.  Marini and his team have developed a method to optically induce fast amplitude modulation in a quantum cascade laser to control the laser's intensity. Their amplitude modulation system employed a second laser to modulate the amplitude of the middle infrared laser, using light to control light. The current detector is only capable of detecting frequencies up to 10 GHz, but Dr. Martini is confident that a new detector will make the system capable of much higher frequencies. With an optical system that is stable enough, satellites may one day convert to laser technology, resulting in a more mobile military and super-sensitive scanners, as well as faster Internet for the masses, says Martini. Ref.: "Optically induced fast wavelength modulation in a quantum cascade laser," Applied Physics Letters, July 7, 2010.

ScienceDaily (Apr. 4, 2011) - Scientists at the Vienna University of Technology (TU Vienna) have developed a method to steer waves on precisely defined trajectories, without any loss. This way, sound waves could be sent directly to a target, avoiding possible eavesdroppers.

Clinical Genomics Market By Test Type (Diagnostic, Genetic, Newborn Screening, Prenatal, Carrier Screening), Software, Method (Molecular, Chromosomal, Biochemical Tests), End User (Hospitals and Clinics) - Global Forecast to 2023

"Let me now express my position more clearly and systemically: philosophy of science can seek to generate scientific knowledge in places where science itself fails to do so; I call this the complementary function of philosophy of science, as opposed to its descriptive and prescriptive functions. I propose taking the philosophy of science as a field which investigates scientific questions that are not addressed in current specialist science - questions that could be addressed by scientists, but are excluded due to the necessities of specialization."