Science and research

Our body tissue, not to mention diseases, each have their own unique "fingerprint," which can in turn be examined to diagnose various health issues at very early stages.

Now, researchers at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland say that after a decade of work they've developed a new MRI (magnetic resonance imagining) technique that can scan for those diseases very quickly. In just 12 seconds, for instance, it may be possible to differentiate white from gray matter in cerebrospinal fluid in the brain; in a matter of minutes, a full-body scan would provide far more data, making diagnostics considerably easier and less expensive than today's scans.… Read more

The Rheobatrachus silus frog has been extinct since 1983. This unusual Australian creature was known for swallowing its eggs and then releasing the young from its mouth. That's way too awesome to just let the animal be resigned to the biological history books.

Australian researchers have spent five years conducting experiments using somatic-cell nuclear transfer, a technique for creating a cloned embryo. Appropriately enough, it's called the Lazarus Project. The scientists took donor eggs from a related frog and replaced the nuclei with dead nuclei from the extinct frog. Some of the eggs then began to grow.… Read more

Stonehenge has long been one of the world's most mysterious monuments. The massive rock circle has given up a few of its secrets to a digital scanning project led by historical-preservation organization English Heritage with an assist from the York Archaeological Trust. The 3D laser-scanning data collected last year has unveiled 72 hidden ax-head carvings in the surface of the stone.

Stonehenge was given a complete 3D-scanning treatment, generating 850 gigabytes of data. Archeologists put software from Bentley Systems to work to analyze the data. The resulting data crunching showed 72 carvings depicting Bronze Age tools that had been hiding from the naked eye for thousands of years. Almost all show ax heads, but one is likely a dagger.… Read more

Shortly before midnight on a recent business trip to Detroit, a 40-year-old man sent his wife the following text messages over the course of two minutes:

"Oh baby your"

"I am happy."

"I am out of it, just woke up, can't make sense, I can't even type, call if ur awake, love you."

Concerned, his wife had him go to a hospital the next morning, where a routine bed test -- including assessment of fluency of speech, reading, writing, and comprehension -- indicated he was fine. The doctors did note a very slight slackness on one side of his face. Then they handed him a smartphone and asked him to type, "The doctor needs a new BlackBerry."

He texted, "Tjhe Doctor nddds a new bb," looked it over, and concluded that his message contained no errors. (He was also, it seems, unable to crack any BlackBerry jokes.)… Read more

It's looking more likely that a particle CERN physicists discovered last year is the Higgs boson, researchers said today.

They cautioned it's not yet certain the particle is in fact the so-called "God particle" that can help explain how masses in the universe were formed. But this morning the leaders of the experiments running through the giant Large Hadron Collider said the analysis of more data -- two and a half times more, to be precise -- shows that the "new particle is looking more and more like a Higgs boson."

An electrical engineer at Stanford has led the effort to develop an endoscope that is not only as thin as a human hair but also boasts a resolution four times better than existing ultrathin models. The "micro-endoscope" could lead to far less invasive bio-imaging, making it easier and safer to peer inside living organs and tissue to, say, study the brain and detect cancer.

The researchers, led by Joseph Kahn at the Stanford School of Engineering, report in the journal Optics Express and the Optical Society of America's Spotlight in Optics that the prototype can resolve objects … Read more

Oddly enough, fish and wildlife officers in the dry, desert state of Arizona confiscate a fair number of alligators each year. Unfortunate alligator Mr. Stubbs was one of those captured critters when he was brought to the Phoenix Herpetological Society back in 2005. He arrived minus a very important body part: his tail.

Tailless Mr. Stubbs had to learn how to swim by paddling with his front feet, something that probably caused all the other alligators to snicker at him behind his back. More recently, the society and CORE Institute, a center specializing in orthopedic care for people, banded together to craft a new prosthetic tail for the gator.… Read more

AUSTIN, Texas -- The future of 3D printing, a technology that's rapidly maturing and enabling a wide variety of people and companies to rapidly design and create physical products, is very bright.

That was the conclusion of a panel of experts who spoke at SXSW yesterday: while there are certainly limitations to the technology, the opportunities that 3D printing offers everyone from garage entrepreneurs to large corporations will be be plentiful, and often economically advantageous.

Today, the technology is already considered one of the hottest around, but during the talk -- which was moderated by CNET's Rich Brown … Read more

Doctors have already replaced a patient's jaw with a 3D-printed titanium implant, so why not part of a skull? Earlier this week, 75 percent of an American patient's skull was surgically replaced with a custom-made implant produced by a 3D printer from Oxford Performance Materials.

The full name of the implant is the OsteoFab Patient Specific Cranial Device. The implant is made from PEKK biomedical polymer and printed using CAD files developed to fit each person. The world of skulls is not one-size-fits-all. Much like an expensive pair of bespoke shoes, these skull implants are unique to the individual.… Read more