A new form of drug drastically improves survival rates of pre-menopausal women with the most common type of breast cancer, researchers said on Saturday, citing the results of an international clinical trial. The findings, presented at the annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology in Chicago, showed…
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Study: Cell-for-Cell, a Human Body is 57 Percent Microbes and Other Non-Human Organisms
by Elizabeth Lee New discoveries about what is inside the body are making scientists rethink what makes a person human and what makes people sick or healthy. Less than half of the cells in the body are human. The rest belong to microorganisms that affect the health, mood and whether…
Read MoreScientists See Evidence of Underground Lake System on Mars
Scientists say images of craters taken by European and American space probes show there likely once was a planet-wide system of underground lakes on Mars. Data collected by NASA and ESA probes orbiting the red planet provide the first geological evidence for an ancient Martian groundwater system, according to a…
Read MoreCommentary: The Case for 5G and the Sprint/T-Mobile Merger
by Robert Romano At the Feb. 13 hearing of the U.S. House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Communications and Technology, the proposed merger of T-Mobile U.S., Inc. and Sprint Corporation was considered by members of Congress, with T-Mobile CEO John Legere and Sprint Executive Chairman Marcelo Claure testifying. By the far…
Read MoreNASA Makes Space History with Distant Fly-By
Just 33 minutes into the New Year, NASA’s New Horizons probe made space exploration history, flying by the most distant body ever visited by a spacecraft from earth. The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, which built and operates the spacecraft, said Tuesday it had “zipped past” the object known…
Read MoreWorld’s Most Popular Dinosaur Transforms at Chicago’s Field Museum
by Kane Farabaugh You don’t often get a second chance to make a first impression, unless, of course, you’re one of the world’s most popular dinosaurs. “It’s a different profile, a much more impressive profile in many ways, a pretty scary large animal, as opposed to a lighter, swifter…
Read MoreNew Research Pushes Back the Discovery of Cacao – the Basis of Chocolate – By More Than a Millennium
New research strengthens the case that people used the chocolate ingredient cacao in South America 5,400 years ago, underscoring the seed’s radical transformation into today’s Twix bars and M&M candies. Tests indicate traces of cacao on artifacts from an archaeological site in Ecuador, according to a study published Monday. That’s…
Read MoreWhy Mesh Networks Are the Future of Free Internet Access
by Sam Bocetta From an early age, the adage “Don’t put all your eggs in one basket” has been drilled into our psyches and ingrained in our culture. Diversification, in all of its many forms, has become a cornerstone of American economic philosophy and a guiding principle we follow…
Read MoreGoogle, Microsoft, Facebook And Twitter Reveal ‘Data Transfer’ Partnership
by Eric Leiberman Google, Microsoft, Twitter and Facebook are teaming up to provide users with the capability of transferring data across platforms and services, the latter two social media giants announced Friday morning. After heightened concerns over data utilization (even exploitation and manipulation), companies appear to be trying to…
Read MoreBill Gates Backs $30 Million Push for Early Alzheimer’s Diagnostics
Reuters Billionaire Bill Gates and Estée Lauder Cos chairman emeritus Leonard Lauder on Tuesday said they will award $30 million over three years to encourage development of new tests for early detection of Alzheimer’s disease. For Microsoft co-founder Gates, launch of the Diagnostics Accelerator program follows an announcement in November of a…
Read MoreDr. Bradford Smith, NASA’s ‘Tour Guide for Voyager,’ Missions Dies at 86
Bradford Smith, a NASA astronomer who acted as planetary tour guide to the public with his interpretations of stunning images beamed back from Voyager missions, has died. Smith’s wife, Diane McGregor, said he died Tuesday at his home in Santa Fe, New Mexico, of complications from myasthenia gravis, an autoimmune…
Read MoreRobots Will Continue to ‘Take Jobs,’ and Humans Will Continue to Create More
by Joseph Sunde Given the breakneck pace of improvements in automation and artificial intelligence, fears about job loss and human obsolescence continue to consume the cultural imagination. The question looms: What is the future of human work in a technological age? Innovators such as Elon Musk and Bill Gates have done their share…
Read MoreInsecticide Ban, Not Global Warming, Is More Likely the Cause of Disease-Carrying Insect Outbreaks
by James D. Agresti and Rachel McCutcheon Politico claims that deadly insect-borne diseases are “on the rise” in the U.S. due to “warming global temperatures.” Although disease-carrying insect populations have increased greatly over the past several decades, there is no reliable evidence that climate change is the reason. Instead, the surge…
Read MoreResearch Indicates Spiders Use Electric Fields to Take Flight
by Sadie Witkowski Since the 1800s, scientists have marveled at how spiders can take flight using their webbing. Charles Darwin remarked on the behavior when tiny spiders landed on the HMS Beagle, trailing lines of silk. He thought the arachnids might be using heat-generated updrafts to take to the sky, but…
Read MorePresident Trump Announces Next-Generation ‘Space Force’ as an Independent Service Branch
Vowing to reclaim U.S. leadership in space, President Donald Trump announced Monday he is directing the Pentagon to create a new “Space Force” as an independent service branch aimed at ensuring American supremacy in space. Trump envisioned a bright future for the U.S. space program, pledging to revive the country’s…
Read MoreScientists Have Created a ‘Flux Capacitor’ That Could Unlock New Dimensions to Communications, Quantum Computing
by Thomas Stace The technology that allowed Marty McFly to travel back in time in the 1985 movie Back to the Future was the mythical flux capacitor, designed by inventor Doc Brown. We’ve now developed our own kind of flux capacitor, as detailed recently in Physical Review Letters. While we can’t send…
Read MoreAdvances in Exoskeleton Technology Could Help Some Walk Again
An accident, a stroke, or a disease can leave someone paralyzed and unable to walk. That happens to more than 15 million people around the world each year. But new technological advances and physical therapy could help some of them walk again. Among the most promising is the use of…
Read MoreBehind Closed Doors: What the Piltdown Man Hoax from 1912 Can Teach Science Today
by Samuel Redman In 1912, Charles Dawson, an amateur archaeologist in England, claimed he’d made one of the most important fossil discoveries ever. Ultimately, however, his “Piltdown Man” proved to be a hoax. By cleverly pairing a human skull with an orangutan’s jaw – stained to match and give the…
Read MoreMalware Discovered Pre-Installed On Android Devices Including Chinese Company ZTE
by Kyle Perisic An anti-virus company has discovered malware comes pre-installed on Android phones, including on ZTE phones — a Chinese phone company with ties to the Chinese government. “Thousands of users are affected” by the ad-related malware, or adware, according to Avast, the Czech anti-virus company, in its…
Read MoreArchaeologists Discover New Geoglyphs Near Nazca Lines in Peru
Reuters Archaeologists using drones have discovered more than 25 geoglyphs etched into a swath of coastal desert in southern Peru near the Nazca Lines, a culture ministry official said Monday. Most of the newly found geoglyphs, which include figures of a killer whale and a woman dancing, appear to…
Read MoreJury: Samsung Owes Apple $539M for Copying iPhone
A jury has decided Samsung must pay Apple $539 million in damages for illegally copying some of the iPhone’s features to lure people into buying its competing products. The verdict reached Thursday is the latest twist in a legal battle that began in 2011. Apple contends Samsung wouldn’t have emerged…
Read MoreIdentity Politics Is Now Undermining Science
by Michael Liccione The prestige of science in our culture is well-earned. That scientists discover truths (or at least serviceable approximations to truths) is undeniable. The evidence for that is how successfully scientific findings have been applied for centuries as technology, which has improved life greatly for countless people. Sound…
Read MoreTrump Issues Commercial Space Policy Directive on Eve of Anniversary of JFK’s Space Program Speech
by Ginny Montalbano President Donald Trump on Thursday signed a space policy directive, calling for “updating and refocusing” those policies in a bid to promote innovation and modernize American commercial space policy. The White House said the move “reforms America’s commercial space regulatory framework, ensuring our place as a leader in space…
Read MoreBredesen-Backed Company Silicon Ranch Has History of Ethics Issues
If Tennessee voters send former Democratic Gov. Phil Bredesen to the U.S. Senate this fall then Bredesen will step down as chair Silicon Ranch, a company he founded that has ethics problems. Silicon Ranch Corporation helps finance the construction of solar arrays. According to the Tennessean, Silicon Ranch owns or…
Read MoreInventors of Augmented Reality and Dental Polymers Among This Year’s Americans Honored by the National Inventors Hall of Fame
by Julie Taboh Edison did it. Eastman did it. And so did Steve Jobs. They invented products that changed our lives. But for every well-known inventor there are many other, less recognizable individuals whose innovative products have greatly impacted our world. Fifteen of those trailblazing men and women —…
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