It may not be to quite the same level achieved by Victor Frankenstein, but work by a team from the University of Edinburgh is likely to have significant real-world implications in the field of regenerative medicine. For the first time, the team has successfully regenerated a living organ in mice, not by using a jolt of electricity, but by manipulating DNA.

The organ in question was the thymus, which is located next to the … Read More → "World-first regeneration of a living organ"

Although we’ve known about the gambler’s fallacy for quite some time, scientists are now finding evidence that this fallacy involves the part of our brain known as the insula. In addition to gambling, the inusla is thought to play a role in self-awareness, emotions, and addictions.

Scientists conducted a series of gambling studies (published in PNAS) with patients who suffer from injuries to … Read More → "Brain damage can make people immune to the gambler’s fallacy"

If the fungal spore outbreak in The Last of Us scared the hell out of you, you’ll be doubly terrified to know that there are actual parasites in nature that can turn animals and plants into zombies. In fact, a group of scientists from the John Innes Centre in the UK just figured out how certain parasitic bacteria called phytoplasma turn their plant host into … Read More → "Scientists discover the secret behind zombie plants"

Computer-generated models are starting to let researchers and students peer into the body without needing a real human stretched out before them. Virtual dissection tables have been built at places like Stanford and the University of Calgary. Now, University of Michigancomputer scientists and biologists have taken the technology another step forward, using projectors, joysticks and 3-D equipment to build a floating holographic human that users can dissect, manipulate, and put back together … Read More → "Train for surgery using immersive 3D holograms of corpses"

… Read More → "The Nerdy Engineer"

Did you know that the same kind of punched cards control both the jaunty tunes of old timey organs and the warp and weft of a certain kind of textile loom? Glithero, aka British designer Tim Simpson and Dutch designer Sarah van Gameren, bridged the gap for a cool a medium mash-up—and managed to weave music.

In order to realize the& … Read More → "These scarves are woven music, made with patterns from organ punchcards"

When we last heard about the modular snake robot designed by Carnegie Mellon University robotics professor Howie Choset, it had been used to explore an abandoned nuclear power plant. Now, however, a new line of robots based on it are set to explore something a little more confined – the human body.

Known as the Flex System, the surgical version of the snake robot was developed by Choset and … Read More → "Surgical robot snakes its way down the throat"

[Yesterday] at Microsoft’s Think Next symposium in Tel Aviv, Israeli startup StoreDot has demonstrated the prototype of a nanodot-based smartphone battery it claims can fully charge in just under 30 seconds. With the company having plans for mass production, this technology could change the way we interact with portable electronics, and perhaps even help realize the dream of a fast-charging electric car.
via Read More → "Nanodot-based smartphone battery that recharges in 30 seconds"

After the release of Windows XP in 2001 and for a few years that followed, Internet Explorer 6 was the biggest, most important browser in the world. And for longer, it has been the buggy browser that’s overstayed its welcome. Microsoft announced it would support IE6 through April of this year back in 2009, and today (along with XP and Office 2003) is the last day Microsoft … Read More → "The most hated browser in the world is finally dead"

… Read More → "Rebel toy company launches new quest to turn princesses into engineers"