Specialized cells in the lining of the gut may provide a key to preventing an infectious brain disease caused by misfolded proteins. Don't Miss: Syphilis: An Old Disease Returns with a New Drug Resistance We can easily imagine white blood cells attacking foreign germs in th ...more
Black Mirror, Netflix's technology-horror anthology, never fails to provide thought-provoking entertainment centered around emerging and futuristic technologies, and the third season's second episode, "Playtest," delves deep into the worlds of mixed, augmented, and virtual rea ...more
The latest iPhone update introduces big features like Live Activities and Clean Energy Charging, but those aren't the only things you'll notice different on iOS 16.1. If you build your own shortcuts in the Shortcuts app, there are a few things you'll definitely want to know ab ...more
Earlier this week, we told you about the new DreamGlass augmented reality headset from Dreamworld, a company started by a former Meta executive. The device looks great, and the features sound good, but is it worth your hard-earned cash? I recently took it for a brief spin to f ...more
It may sound like deja vu, but neural interface startup CTRL-labs has closed a $28 million funding round led by GV, Google's funding arm, for technology that reads user's nerve signals to interpret hand gestures. That's because GV, along with Lux Capital, led a $28 million fu ...more
The mention of Zika can strike fear in the hearts of pregnant women. With infections increasing around the world, including in the US, researchers are fighting the clock to figure out how the virus can have such horrific effects in some people. Don't Miss: A Zika Outbreak Pr ...more
A group of researchers from Stanford University and Princeton University has put together the largest RGB-D video dataset to date with over 1,500 scans of over 700 different locations across the world, for a total of 2.5 million views. This dataset, called ScanNet, has been s ...more
Publicly, things have been pretty quiet over at Meta, the augmented reality headset and software startup based in Silicon Valley. But that doesn't mean that the company doesn't have a few strong opinions about the state of AR in 2018. In a recent TED talk, one of the company' ...more
Nvidia has emerged as the indisputable leader in chips for Level 3 and even more advanced driverless applications, catching some of the world's largest semiconductor makers and automotive suppliers by surprise. After the car industry figured out that AI-piloted vehicles were ...more
If you've read any health news in the past year or so, you've probably been bombarded with headlines announcing that frequent sitters face certain death, even when you're just relaxing and watching TV at home. From increased health risks and added laziness, sitting is becomin ...more
Andre was enjoying the carefree life of a 12-year-old with his friends, riding his bike and playing sports, like all kids that age. Schoolwork wasn't hard for him, and his grades showed that. Then, the headaches began. He lost vision in one eye, symptoms that drove his famil ...more
Foodborne infections often occur through the contamination of equipment, food-prep tools, and unsanitary surfaces. A recent report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reminds us that breast pump parts are part of the food-delivery chain — and they can bec ...more
The culprit probably wasn't what doctors were expecting when a 57-year-old man in Hong Kong came to the hospital. The patient was admitted to the intensive care unit in critical condition. A clue to the cause of the infection would lie in the man's profession—he was a butcher. ...more
Have you ever fallen victim to a clever Jedi mind trick? Don't worry. It happens. There are evolutionary reasons as to why our brains sometimes give into the oldest tricks in the book. Fortunately, the more you understand the tricks of a salesman, the easier it is to avoid the ...more
The reveal of Magic Leap One: Creator Edition brought with it some insight into the path the device took from prototype to "final" design. By comparing notes with the Rolling Stone article on Magic Leap with other reports on comparable milestones, we get a clearer picture of ...more
When you have an infection, a doctor prescribes antibiotics to make the bacteria that causes it disappear. Sounds like a good idea, but the disappearance of microorganisms that have inhabited humans for millennia could be driving rising numbers of serious illness and debilitat ...more
Alzheimer's disease — an irreversible, progressive brain disorder — is the sixth leading cause of death in the US and more than afflicts 5 million Americans. As if those numbers aren't scary enough, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention expect that number to nearly tr ...more
The beauty of southern Europe won't protect it from invasions of disease-carrying ticks and mosquitoes—in fact, the Mediterranean climate and landscape may be part of the reason the bloodsuckers are expanding there, bringing unique and terrifying diseases in their wake. Arthr ...more
Many of us experience highly emotional "freakouts", so to speak, more often than we'd like. Weather you experience them personally, or via your loved ones, it can be very difficult to think rationally during an episode, and for some people it can take quite a while to calm dow ...more
Neuroscience (live!) resumes its 50 hour slicing session 8:00 am PST this morning. According to Gizmodo, "Studying Henry Gustav Molaison, more commonly known as Patient H.M., and his memory impairments has revolutionized our understanding of human memory organization. Resear ...more
In yesterday's tidbit, we learned that across the planet women seek material wealth in their mates. This stems from our hunter-gather past in which females depended on male hunters to provide them and their children the meat necessary to support their large brains. Women beco ...more
Apple News. Facebook. Twitter. Reddit. LinkedIn. These are just a few of the apps you probably have on your iPhone or iPad that keep you up to date on today's events. Unfortunately, they can also cause information overload. But a new viral speed-reading tool thinks it can help ...more
A deadly type of brain tumor and Zika-related brain damage in developing fetuses are devastating brain conditions that, at first glance, may seem unrelated. However, thanks to new research, their paths seem to cross in a way that could benefit patients. A new study has shown t ...more
Prion diseases are a group of infectious brain diseases that causes extensive tissue damage, resulting in sponge-like spaces in brain tissue. Prions include Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in humans, bovine spongiform encephalopathy (often called mad cow disease), and chronic wastin ...more
Kuru is called the shaking disease, its name derived from the Fore word for "to shake." Caused by an organism that infects the part of the brain that controls coordination, people afflicted with kuru shake uncontrollably. First, there is headache and joint pain, then shaking, ...more
In recent years, Hollywood has taken a shine to hackers, with hackers appearing in almost every heist or mystery movie now. This can be both good and bad for our profession. As we know, whichever way Hollywood decides to depict our profession is how most people will perceive i ...more
Just because a problem is small or superficial doesn't mean it can't annoy the living crap out of you. Others may think you're overreacting, or even have the audacity to roll their eyes, but you're in your own personal hell. First-world problems, white whines—call it whatever ...more
Japanese artist Motoi Yamamoto's medium of choice is none other than your simple household table salt, fragile and completely ephemeral. Yamamoto creates beautiful installations with the medium, salt being a strong symbol in Japanese death culture (as well as several other cul ...more
When arch-skeptic Michael Shermer has you in his crosshairs, the act is over. Criss Angel has been debunked on WonderHowTo many times before. But this disclosure of the famous spoon bend is unlike the others. Spoonbending is the signature move of paranormal evangelists like U ...more
Lack of appetite often signals a cold or flu. Eating can be the last thing we want to do when we have a sore throat or are too fatigued or achy to even get out of bed. When hungry, we don't feel as strong as when we are well fed—and we more than likely aren't as strong. The s ...more
The year was 1947. Scientists had isolated a virus from a pyrexial rhesus monkey in Uganda and named it after the forest where the monkey lived — Zika. Then, a little more than a year ago, in the fall of 2015, health officials in Brazil reported a sharp increase in the number ...more
Ever since Skynet took over the world in the Terminator film franchise, a large segment of the world's population has feared artificial intelligence. One new film wants to inspire the same fear over augmented reality. Don't Miss: Keanu Reeves Does AR Kung Fu in New Sci-Fi Fi ...more
One of the masters of science fiction, Neal Stephenson, may be on staff at Magic Leap, but that doesn't mean he can't take a moment to visit the halls of competitor Microsoft, the maker of the HoloLens. The author is currently promoting his new book Fall; or, Dodge in Hell, a ...more
Despite mounting scientific evidence that viruses can cause changes in learning and memory, the reasons have remained elusive. In a new study, scientists reported finding that viruses affect the immune system in a way that results in loss of connections between nerve cells in ...more
Streptococcus and staphylococcus bacteria produce toxins that can cause toxic shock syndrome. Originally associated with infections related to tampon use, today more than half of the infections are due to other types of infection. Skin infections, burns, and surgical sites ca ...more
Wound infections don't usually enter the blood and become systemic, spreading the infection throughout our bodies, and there's a good reason for that: Our bodies actively work to prevent it, according to research that discovered a new use for a protein first discovered decades ...more
Tuesday gave us what I am dubbing a "patent dump." Can you blame me? The U.S. Patent Office released 56 patents from Apple. 56! Among them, there are patents confirming Apple is working on embedded Touch ID, edge-to-edge displays, and a 3D camera system (surprise, surprise). S ...more
Electrical impulses course through our heart and keep it beating. That's why a jolt from an automated external defibrillator can boost it back into action if the beating stops. But new research says there may be more to keeping a heart beating than just electrical impulses. T ...more
An advance in the race to stop birth defects caused by Zika-infected mothers has been made by a team of researchers from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York. They have identified the process Zika uses to gain entry into the placenta, and published their findings ...more
A baby with severe Zika-related birth defects was born in San Diego County this week, prompting officials to urge pregnant women to avoid disease hotspots. The infant's mother contracted the disease during a trip to a foreign country where the virus is widespread. The birth m ...more
We live in a marvelous age, a time where technology is driving us forward as a species at a rapid pace, and tech-driven miracles are becoming more and more commonplace. While the human race may not be focused on building the largest wonders of the world, as it once was in hist ...more
We're already glimpsing the future when we look at mixed reality through a headset, but is the real evolution of this technology something that will exist as part of our bodies? As intense as that may sound, TechCrunch's Jay Donovan offers compelling reasons why it's not such ...more
When you're trapped at your desk before a jumble of data just waiting to be categorized, or zoning out during an important meeting, your mind wanders and, chances are, you feel a little guilty because of it. Yet you shouldn't try to reign in that distracted thinking. Instead, ...more
Video: . Video: . Video: . Video: . Video: . Video: . Just because you're drawing a cartoon version of your zombie, doesn't mean you should forget your anatomy and do a rush job. Take your time. Practice anatomy. This is very important for regular human characters and zom ...more
Waiting for school to start? Have you been practicing reading in the meantime? Here's our most honest and effective "cheat" to help you out. We were procrastinators, too. Reading fast will save you hours of eye strain and days of lamenting the length of every book you read. P ...more
Some people believe that art makes artists immortal, and now one of the best known performance artists on the planet is working on taking that immortality into the realm of augmented reality. Marina Abramovic is using volumetric capture technology, along with the Magic Leap O ...more
Occasionally, a not-so-great movie also does something so right that you have to forgive some of its sins and give it a little love. Such is the case with the latest film from Keanu Reeves, Replicas, which takes a HoloLens-style device and gives us a look at how future researc ...more
Between acquisitions, hirings, patent applications, and insider reports, all signs point to Apple building a smartglasses product that could ship as soon as 2020, but the company has not officially confirmed such plans. Apple currently has 21 open positions that mention augme ...more
RED has apparrantly been blowing minds with the revolutionary technology inside its upcoming Hydrogen One. Like the Razer Phone in late 2017, most of the cool tech lives inside its screen — which, also like the Razer Phone, is unlike any other on the market today. RED, too, is ...more
The Audi A8 may be short on the wow factor as the industry's first Level 3 car, but Audi has revealed some interesting details about one stand-out feature underneath the hood: the car's ability to self-pilot itself at stop signs and lights. Indeed, when the A8 goes on sale th ...more
More than one in ten people in the US have type 2 diabetes — that's over 29 million people. It's characterized by excessive sugar (glucose) in the blood due to the development of resistance to insulin, the hormone that normally metabolizes glucose. Deposits of folded and clum ...more
Growing evidence suggests that neurodegenerative diseases like Parkinson's may develop in part due to environmental factors, including infections that can cause inflammation in the nervous system. New research from investigators from Jude Children's Research Hospital and Thoma ...more
A new medical development is going to change the way many of us look at getting the flu vaccine. A painless flu vaccine skin patch is making needles and vials a thing of the past. Researchers from the Georgia Institute of Technology and Emory University have shown that a flu v ...more
As summer heats up, new maps from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) gives us our best guess at where Zika-carrying mosquitoes could be hanging out this year in the US. The Zika virus is a potentially serious virus carried by mosquitoes. As of June 2017, the ...more
Yogurt is more than an excellent source of protein, calcium, and gut-healthy probiotic bacteria. A protein isolated from probiotic lactobacillus bacteria in yogurt is capable of inhibiting drug-resistant bacteria. Rachelle Allen-McFarlane, a doctoral candidate at Howard Unive ...more
Dangerous to humans and dogs, Rocky Mountain Fever, along with several other tickborne infections, is on the rise. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the incidence of Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever (RMSF) has been increasing for decades. Overall, ...more
When just floating peacefully in the water with their brood mates, the Culex mosquito larvae in the image above does not look very frightening. But in their adult form, they are the prime vector for spreading West Nile virus — a sometimes mild, sometimes fatal disease. Part o ...more
How can bacteria that lives in the throat of 10%–35% of people—without causing an infection—cause life-threatening meningitis and sepsis in others? A new study published in the journal PLOS Pathogens by scientists from Stockholm University in Sweden, led by Sara Sigurlásdótti ...more
There could be a fresh outbreak of the Zika virus in the Americas as the weather heats up and the mosquito population blooms. Last year in February, the disease was declared a "public health emergency of international concern" by the World Health Organization, and the United ...more
An outbreak of anthrax from contaminated meat in Tanzania sickened dozens of people and moves the danger of this deadly bacteria back into focus. Naturally occurring in animals and the soil, Bacillus anthracis is a rugged bacteria that has a protective outer shell, called a s ...more