For a moment, I thought that maybe they had invented a robot that could splice RNA! Turns out the "nanoparticles" are organic in nature, albeit modified to deliver RNA proteins to specific cells. Still impressive.
To be fair there's a decent chance that any nanoscale mechanics will involve a chunk of carbon due to the sheer nature of the variety of chemical bonds it can form.
edited 12th May '14 11:42:06 PM by KnightofLsama
One of my professor's told us how he used siRNA fed to shrimp (I think) to fight a bacterial infection in the shrimp farms, instead of using pesticides.
RNA Interference is a huge thing in many way.
edited 13th May '14 5:46:03 AM by 3of4
"You can reply to this Message!"Crossposting from the Medical Thread
Man, that graphene stuff just gets cooler by the day. When are we going to make things out of it?
Oh really when?Cross-posting from the Space thread, where I'm replying to a complaint that the US seems to contribute most of the funding for international science projects:
...
As for science in general, again, the US contributes much less than many other countries if you relate expenditure and output to the size of each country's population or economy. It is simply the vast size of the US economy, as well as the tendency of US-based media to exclude everything non-American, that makes it look as if the US is alone in leading every field of science. If you look at international publications or comparisons of the scientific output of various countries that you notice that many European countries and Japan and South Korea put more effort into advancing science than the US.
Since the US has a population of 318 million, it is of course next to impossible for other countries to compete if you don't compare everything to the population of each country.
The EU as a whole probably does much more for science globally than the US, but our research, to the extent that individual countries get credit for it, is always reported as the work of that particular country, so of course it's going to be dwarfed by the massive US.
Now, I don't mean to imply that the US does very little - obviously it does a lot. This World Bank map of the percentage of each country's DGP that is invested in R&D shows the US as comparable to France (but behind countries like South Korea, Japan, and Finland) so it's not the case that the US doesn't invest in R&D. It's just that it gets overrepresented in media, especially in the US.
(I saw a post somewhere in these Fora where someone complained that nobody but the US is contributing to medical science, and that clearly is an indication that that particular poster - I don't remember who it was - doesn't read any international science publications, even those meant for the general public. If they did they'd know that countries like France, Germany, Japan, and Canada are far ahead of the US in some fields of medicine. This sort of thing is why I think US-based news and other media don't give proportional attention to innovation from other countries than the US.)
It seems that the US spends more than half of its federal R&D budget on the defence industry◊ - so if we're looking for general science spending I think it's very unlikely that the US actually spends more (in proportion to its economy and population) than just about any European country. That would mean that the US would have to seriously increase its civilian science spending to catch up to the rest of the West.
High-speed solar winds increase lightning strikes on Earth
New radar images uncover remarkable features below the surface of the Moon
'Standard candles' illuminate the far side of the Milky Way
Nanowire bridging transistors open way to next-generation electronics
Manmade artificial shark skin boosts swimming
@demarquis From what little I know at the nanoscale the border between organic and inorganic can get...fuzzy.
Trump delenda estJupiter's Great Red Spot is smaller than ever seen before
Mice with multiple sclerosis-like condition walk again after human stem cell treatment
Bioprinting 3-D liver-like device to detoxify blood
Giant telescope tackles orbit and size of exoplanet
How octopuses don't tie themselves in knots
First test of pluripotent stem cell therapy in monkeys is successful
So many good science things. I don't even know were to start gushing about it
Oh really when?New class of industrial polymers discovered
Tricking the uncertainty principle
I'm drowning in science articles!
Just kidding, thanks rmctagg09 for finding all these articles.
You're welcome.
Oil searchers discover and record deep-sea graveyard off Angola coast
Quantum correlations make you never fail a test again
Carnegie Mellon prototype shows interface value of smartwatch
Spiders spin possible solution to 'sticky' problems
Caught in the act: Study probes evolution of California insect
First 'heavy mouse' leads to first lab-grown tissue mapped from atomic life
edited 16th May '14 8:34:08 PM by rmctagg09
Eating a Vanilluxe will give you frostbite. Because we didn't have enough ways to blame our parents for how we turned out?
Scientific evidence by itself doesn't have opinions. Only the people collecting and interpreting it can have one.
Besides, it's not a new finding that parent behaviour has effects on the offspring.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
Man's best friend shares similar 'albino' gene
RNA carried by new nanoparticles can silence genes in many organs, could be deployed to treat cancer
Rare byproduct of marine bacteria kills cancer cells by snipping their DNA
Eating a Vanilluxe will give you frostbite.