VirtualBody

The brainiest creatures share a secret - an odd kind of brain cell involved in emotions and empathy that may have accidentally made us conscious

Even more amazing example of medical advancements and the use of 3d technology to express them. 

Amazing video showing how medical technology has advanced to repair sporting injuires. Fascinating use of 3d and immersive technology to bring it to life

We now know that the oft-repeated "your brain only runs on glucose!" is wrong. I've mentioned it before, and anyone who's taken the time to get fat-adapted on a low-carb Primal eating plan intuitively knows that your brain doesn't need piles of glucose to work, because, well, they're using their brain to read this sentence

Writing in Source Code for Biology and Medicine, a trio of bioinformaticians presents a satire on working in the field that outlines how not to succeed. "By scrupulously following these guidelines one can be sure to regress at a highly satisfactory rate," the authors write. While written in sarcasm, these humorous how-tos - "make sure the output of your application is unreadable, unparseable, and does not comply to any known standards," for example - speak to the challenges of successfully navigating a career in the burgeoning field.

In an intensive, seven-month experiment during which 21 overweight men and women had their diets strictly controlled down to each last morsel, researchers showed that a traditional low-fat diet seemed to make the metabolism more sluggish than a high-protein one during the most difficult part of weight loss: keeping fat off once it's shed.

The Special Issue on Mind Uploading (Vol. 4, issue 1, June 2012) of the International Journal of Machine Consciousness, just released, "constitutes a significant milestone in the history of mind uploading research: the first-ever collection of scientific and philosophical papers on the theme of mind uploading," as Ben Goertzel and Matthew Ikle' note in the Introduction to this issue.

In elite sports, being the most talented is no longer enough; top athletes also have to ensure they are the better prepared.They understand that their only sustainable advantage is to learn and improve faster than their opponents. The technology used by performance analysts allows them to measure every force, dissect every movement and time every action with absolute precision. That feedback allows athletes to find areas for improvement and aids the learning of new skills.

This is an updated version of an article that I published in 2009. Alas in the 3 years or so that have passed since I wrote it, little seems to have changed beyond the fact that the crisis in the pharmaceutical industry has deepened to the point that even the biggest companies in the sector are starting to question whether their current business model is sustainable.

The last time your doctor asked how much you exercise, did you tell the truth? Do you even really know the truth-not just how many visits to the gym you've made this month, but how many hours you sit or how many calories you burn in a day? What if your doctor had already received the information from a tiny device built into your cell phone, wallet, or undershirt? Sonny Vu believes a device like this could fundamentally change health care. "You can't just lie to your doctor-it's all there, recorded," he says. "You cut right to the chase rather than having to tease out all that information."

This is circuitry with a real twist that's able to monitor and deliver electrical impulses into living tissue. Elastic electronics are made of tiny, wavy silicon structures containing circuits that are thinner than a human hair, and bend and stretch with the body. "As the skin moves and deforms, the circuit can follow those deformations in a completely noninvasive way," says Rogers. He hopes elastic electronics will open a door to a whole range of what he calls "bio-integrated" medical devices.

Ward Round is an exciting new medical learning experience where you are placed in the role of the doctor to solve clinical medical mysteries against the clock. Test your medical knowledge and improve your clinical deductive skills through varied cases, spread across nine specialties, to become the ultimate diagnostician.

"When faced with a difficult question, we often answer an easier one instead, usually without noticing the substitution," writes Kahneman.

In a major discovery, biologists at Tufts University were able to cause tissue to grow a new organ by simply altering the membrane voltage gradients of cells: they caused tadpoles to grow eyes outside of the head area.

Using this 3D body suit, they are able to shoot 3D motion capture right out of the lab. More details about this suit - known as MVN BIOMECH from Xsens, this 3D human kinematic, camera-less measurement system will come integrated with small tracking sensors that are placed on the joints. All the sensors on the suit will comprise of a trio of components: an accelerometer, magnetometers and a gyroscope, working in tandem to deliver information on each of the joints, body segments between the joints and the 3D movements. Currently, a project is being developed to see how nurses are able to lift patients safely into a hospital bed without having to strain themselves.

The goal of NCHA research is to identify biological factors that determine good health at old age. NCHA integrates scientific disciplines, technological innovations and biomedical research in the largest collection of world-renowned human cohort studies. Rooted in the EU, NCHA has become a global player by large collaborative efforts with excellent scientific output. Activities in NCHA involve genetic en genomic discoveries all the way down to human intervention studies.

Beautiful, multi-coloured images of neurones in mice brains.

Keeping you mind really is about use it or lose it.  Langer had already shown that memory loss-a problem often blamed on aging-could be reversed by giving elderly people more reasons to remember facts; when success was rewarded with small gifts, or when researchers made efforts to create personal relationships with their subjects, elderly memory performance improved. she and Yale colleague Judith Rodin found that simply giving nursing-home residents plants to take care of, as well as control over certain decisions-where they would meet guests, what activities to do-not only improved their subjects' psychological and physical health, but also their longevity: a year and a half later, fewer of those residents had died. What she found, however, surprised even her own team of researchers.

We are retroviruses. Something I've thought for a while but here is a discussion explaining just how true that might be. 

ScienceDaily (Mar. 11, 2010) - The hippocampus, a part of the brain essential for memory, has long been known to "replay" recently experienced events. Previously, replay was believed to be a simple process of reviewing recent experiences in order to help consolidate them into long-term memory. However, researchers have discovered that the replay function of the hippocampus is actually a much more complex, cognitive process.