Researchers at the University of Liverpool and University College London (UCL) have shown a new way to use a single molecule as a magnetic field sensor.

A complex interplay of molecular components governs almost all aspects of biological sciences - healthy organism development, disease progression, and drug efficacy are all dependent on the way life's molecules interact in the body. Understanding these bio-molecular interactions is critical for the discovery of new, more effective therapeutics and diagnostics to treat cancer and other diseases, but currently requires scientists to have access to expensive and elaborate laboratory equipment.

"Hi, Reddit. I'm Bill Gates..." Like Elon Musk, like Larry Ellison, like Larry Page, certain names draw immense numbers wanting to know what's on their mind, from barbecue-sauce tastes to actual work. A five-line comment earlier this week from Bill Gates about what he is doing sparked a pile of technology sites attempting to connect dots. "One project I am working on with Microsoft is the Personal Agent which will remember everything and help you go back and find things and help you pick what things to pay attention to," he said on the Ask Me Anything in Reddit. "The idea that you have to find applications and pick them and they each are trying to tell you what is new is just not the efficient model - the agent will help solve this. It will work across all your devices," he said. Sites posted stories promptly, wondering how the project might be related to present-day Cortana, which is the voice-controlled virtual assistant that ru! ns on the Windows Phone platform and will arrive on the desktop with Windows 10 (now appearing in a technical preview version).

There's a lot to like about Windows 10, the next version of Microsoft's flagship operating system. But the tech giant has also worryingly left unanswered a lot of important questions about the software.

A computer mouse that doubles as a scanner. A coating that keeps gadgets safe and dry even in the event of a spill. And a smartphone that rotates like a cat midair to avoid landing on its pretty glass face.

German automaker BMW says it has fixed a security flaw that made 2.2 million of its vehicles vulnerable to break-ins.

Every undergraduate computer-science major takes a course on data structures, which describes different ways of organizing data in a computer's memory. Every data structure has its own advantages: Some are good for fast retrieval, some for efficient search, some for quick insertions and deletions, and so on.

Facebook Inc. is putting profit before its users' privacy with its latest terms and conditions, according to a European Parliament lawmaker who's overseeing amendments to EU data-protection laws.

The efficient production of both biofuel and animal feed from one crop is now possible, and can be done on a farm without the need for off-site processes. The research, published in the open access journal Biotechnology for Biofuels, demonstrates the practical potential of an alternative to fossil fuels that does not compete with food resources.

Philipp Mattheis knew his gaming app was addictive when he realised he kept checking his phone—hooked by the brightly-coloured reminders telling him to play again or risk falling from the triple-figure level he had reached.

Google has turned into a stock market laggard as the shift to mobile devices has lowered the Internet search leader's digital ad prices and the company's expensive investments in far-out technology has trimmed its profit margins.

Amazon.com Inc.'s fourth-quarter earnings roundly beat analyst expectations, sending the Seattle e-commerce giant's stock soaring 11 percent in premarket trading Friday. Here's a closer look at what investors applauded and hope continues.

On Jan. 27, Google announced that it would be expanding its fiber-optic network, Google Fiber, into four new metropolitan areas: Raleigh-Durham, Charlotte, Atlanta and Nashville. So what?

Researchers in Norway have succeeded in getting bacteria to power a fuel cell. The "fuel" used is wastewater, and the products of the process are purified water droplets and electricity.

Checking social networks is a morning ritual for many, and when that routine is disrupted – as it was recently when Facebook's servers went down – its absence can come as a surprise. But what also becomes apparent is that when the world's most popular social network is inaccessible, so too are many thousands of websites that rely upon Facebook services.

Engineers from Trinity College Dublin have developed a first-of-its-kind 3-dimensional infrared (IR) heat detector called 'The Herschel'. It will function by mapping the presence and distribution of IR energy – which has been dubbed 'invisible sunshine' – with unprecedented detail.

With the abundance of wind in the Great North, one might think that harnessing it would be a breeze. But that isn't the case. Fortunately, a Ryerson researcher has found a way to address the major challenges related to wind power.

The US government is getting more than $41 billion from an auction of wireless spectrum, highlighting surging demand for new devices that connect to the Internet, officials said Friday.

US rap star Jay Z will make a $56-million foray into the music streaming business by taking over the Norwegian service Wimp, its shareholders confirmed Friday.

Like legions of hyperactive butlers, many of the brainy gadgets being developed for the Internet of Things will anticipate our needs and make choices for us - without being told what to do - marking a momentous transformation in our relationship with machines.

Online lodging operator Airbnb is expanding its efforts to collect local taxes, responding to complaints that it competes unfairly with the hotel sector.

A Justice Department inspector general report is disputing allegations by former CBS News correspondent Sharyl Attkisson that the federal government secretly monitored her personal computer.

Making a city or district energy smart is, first and foremost, an exercise in good planning. However, such green planning tools are still in their infancy. The trouble is that every city is different, every district unique. To replicate best practices for use in other context, it is important to develop models that can help better assess the actual source of energy savings. Scientists in Sweden have just started compiling such a virtual model, designed to calculate the energy saving potential of a district.

For the first time ever, an EPFL laboratory has carried out a complete energy analysis of a straw house, from planting the grass to the destruction of the materials. The results are based on the specific case of an administrative building in the city of Lausanne, ECO-46.

A space scientist at the University of Leicester, in collaboration with the New Zealand Defence Technology Agency and DMC International Imaging, has been trialling a concept for using satellite imagery to significantly improve the chances of locating ships and planes, such as the missing Malaysian flight MH370, lost at sea.

A drug already approved for treating other diseases may be useful as a treatment for cerebral malaria, according to researchers at Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health. They discovered a novel link between food intake during the early stages of infection and the outcome of the disease, identifying two molecular pathways that could serve as new targets for treatment.

(Medical Xpress)—Women tend to become addicted to drugs and relapse faster than men, though the biological reasons are not completely clear. Now, investigators at the Nathan Kline Institute for Psychiatric Research and Weill Cornell Medical College have discovered that high levels of estrogen may lead to a unique kind of learning that could explain why women are more susceptible to addiction.

(Medical Xpress)—Researchers working at Institut Pasteur in France have found that the Ebola virus is mutating "a lot" causing concern in the African countries where the virus has killed over eight thousand people in just several months time. In speaking with the press, they report that multiple mutations of the virus have been observed, though it is still not clear what advantage it has given the virus, if any. They also reported that they have seen many cases of people infected with the virus that did not exhibit any symptoms, which might suggest that at least one of the mutations in the virus has led to infections that are less traumatic to their victim, but which are also likely more easily spread.

Craigslist's entry into a market results in a 15.9 percent increase in reported HIV cases, according to research from the University of Minnesota published in the December issue of MIS Quarterly. When mapped at the national level, more than 6,000 HIV cases annually and treatment costs estimated between $62 million and $65.3 million can be linked to the popular website.

Drugs for HIV have become adept at suppressing infection, but they still can't eliminate it. That's because the medication in these pills doesn't touch the virus' hidden reserves, which lie dormant within infected white blood cells. Unlock the secrets of this pool of latent virus, scientists believe, and it may become possible to cure - not just control - HIV.

A novel, bacteria-repelling coating material that could increase the success of medical implants has been created by researchers.

More than a third of children in England are overweight/obese, finds a 20 year study of electronic health records, published online in Archives of Disease in Childhood.

Repeated blows to the head sustained during serial boxing or martial arts tournaments are linked to smaller volumes of certain parts of the brain and slower processing speeds, reveals research published online in the British Journal of Sports Medicine.

If you're one of the world's 1.3 billion regular Facebook users, you'll know the feeling of being consumed by your news feed.

Working memory, how we actively hold and manipulate information in our mind, is a cognitive skill used on a daily basis.  How effectively working memory performs, however, is not as universal as one may think.  In an open access article published in the Journal of Cognition and Development titled "Working Memory Differences Between Children Living in Rural and Urban Poverty", author Michele Tine investigated whether working memory of children living in rural poverty is distinct from the working memory profiles of children in urban poverty.  Both verbal and visuospatial tests were given to discern how memory deficits compared.

In his State of the Union address, President Obama announced a new precision medicine initiative to work on finding a cure for cancer and other diseases. Howard L. Kaufman, a leading immunotherapy expert from Rutgers Cancer Institute of New Jersey recently shared his thoughts in the Journal of Clinical Oncology on the progress doctors have made in precision immunology – a type of precision medicine that involves creating a profile of a patient's immune system to fight disease. Kaufman, associate director for clinical science and chief surgical officer at the Cancer Institute, answered some questions from Rutgers Today on the future of the precision medicine field.

Though set "a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away," it isn't hard to see in the Star Wars films a vision of our own not so distant future. But Anthony Jones, a physician with a long background in health care technology development, sees the Star Wars vision of medicine's future as sheer fantasy. Specifically, he is struck by the dearth of doctors – at least human ones. "In Star Wars," he says, "there are no people practicing medicine. Caring for patients seems to have been taken over by machines."

Copy number variations (deletions or duplications of large chunks of the genome) are a major cause of birth defects, intellectual disability, autism spectrum disorder and other developmental disorders. Still, geneticists can definitively say how a CNV, once discovered in someone's DNA, leads to one of these conditions in just a fraction of cases.

Holding out the promise of major medical breakthroughs, President Barack Obama on Friday called on Congress to approve spending in medical research that tailors treatment to an individual's genes.

University of Sydney researchers are launching a world-first study to see if it's possible to detect whether a baby will go on to stutter in later life - well before they start to talk.

A mosquito-borne virus that has spread to the Caribbean and Central and South America and has caused isolated infections in Florida often causes joint pain and swelling similar to that seen in patients with rheumatoid arthritis.  

Smoking while pregnant causes chemical changes to the DNA of a foetus detectable from as early as 12 weeks and may predispose children born to smokers to a range of health conditions which last throughout life, new research by Scottish academics has revealed.

Detecting a decline in certain sensory functions may become the future of preventing Alzheimer's disease (AD), with research showing smell testing and retinal imaging to be strong predictors of dementia risk.

Using whole genomic sequencing, scientists from RIKEN in Japan have for the first time demonstrated the profound effect that chronic hepatitis infection and inflammation can have on the genetic mutations found in tumors of the liver, potentially paving the way to a better understanding of the mechanisms through which these chronic infections can lead to cancer. Primary liver cancer is the third leading cause of cancer death worldwide, and recent studies have shown that particularly in Asia, infection with either hepatitis B or C is often associated with such cancers.

Studies of stress and its effects on health have typically focused on the worries of an individual: money, love, health, work. But what about stress shared by two people in a romantic relationship?

If you're gearing up for a big Super Bowl bash, you might want to consult the best food-handling practices before preparing that feast. New research from Kansas State University finds that most home chefs drop the ball on food safety.

A Rochester woman who was born with sickle-cell anemia has been cured of the disease after a bone marrow transplant at the University of Rochester Medical Center.

The conflicts in Syria and Iraq are straining public health systems and public health efforts meant to prevent and detect the spread of infectious diseases. This is generating a "perfect storm" of conditions for outbreaks. Among the infections raising concern is Middle East Respiratory Syndrome, caused by a type of coronavirus, which emerged in 2012.

Research led by Nicolas Bazan, MD, PhD, Boyd Professor, Ernest C. and Yvette C. Villere Chair of Retinal Degeneration Research, and Director of the Neuroscience Center of Excellence at LSU Health New Orleans, has discovered gene interactions that determine whether cells live or die in such conditions as age-related macular degeneration and ischemic stroke. These common molecular mechanisms in vision and brain integrity can prevent blindness and also promote recovery from a stroke. The paper is published online in Cell Death & Differentiation, a Nature journal.

Scientists based at the University of Helsinki, Finland, have discovered a 'hidden' mechanism which could explain why some cancer therapies which aim to block tumour blood vessel growth are failing cancer trials.

Scientists have identified a biological clock that provides vital clues about how long a person is likely to live.

Waiting times in hospital emergency departments could be cut with the introduction of Lean Management and Six Sigma techniques according to new research.

Newly discovered genetic variations linked to autism spectrum disorder (ASD) disrupt the function of the dopamine transporter, suggesting that altered dopamine signaling contributes to this common developmental condition, according to a Vanderbilt University-led research team.

This is one of the findings of a study by Dr Mindi Foster, Wilfrid Laurier University, Canada that is published today, Friday 30 January 2015, in the British Journal of Social Psychology. The study was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

(HealthDay)—The United States has seen more cases of measles in January than it usually does in an entire year, federal health officials said Thursday.

(HealthDay)—In a finding that won't surprise many parents, a new government analysis shows that teens and young adults are the most likely to show up in a hospital ER with injuries suffered in a motor vehicle accident.

(HealthDay)—Although the overall rate of colon cancer has fallen in recent decades, new research suggests that over the last 20 years the disease has been increasing among young and early middle-aged American adults.

Mobile devices are everywhere and children are using them more frequently at young ages. The impact these mobile devices are having on the development and behavior of children is still relatively unknown. In a commentary in the journal Pediatrics, researchers review the many types of interactive media available today and raise important questions regarding their use as educational tools, as well as their potential detrimental role in stunting the development of important tools for self-regulation.

Investigators at Nationwide Children's Hospital have developed an analysis "pipeline" that slashes the time it takes to search a person's genome for disease-causing variations from weeks to hours. An article describing the ultra-fast, highly scalable software was published in the latest issue of Genome Biology.

Two new fluorescent dyes attracted to cancer cells may help neurosurgeons more accurately localize and completely resect brain tumors, suggests a study in the February issue of Neurosurgery, official journal of the Congress of Neurological Surgeons.

If you have ever "googled" illness symptoms and possible treatments, you are not alone. A national Pew Research Center survey indicated that 72 percent of adults searched the Internet for health information in the past year. But, how reliable is that information and what are the ethical implications?

UT Southwestern Medical Center scientists have identified a strong link between the most aggressive type of breast cancer and a gene that regulates the body's natural cellular recycling process, called autophagy.

A Spanish hospital has successfully used stem cells culled from healthy donors to treat seven heart attack victims, in what officials said was a world first.

Embattled milk producers in the U.S. launched a social media campaign this week to rebuild public confidence in the health benefits of their product.

Some new evidence this is a particularly bad flu season: Flu-related hospitalizations of the elderly are the highest since the government started tracking that statistic nine years ago.

Amid the measles outbreak stemming from California, the White House is telling parents that science indicates they should vaccinate their children.

(HealthDay)—Implementation of a national screening program in the Netherlands increased the prenatal detection rate of congenital heart disease (CHD), according to a study published online Jan. 27 in BJOG: An International Journal of Obstetrics & Gynaecology.

(HealthDay)—Scientists are working to find new ways to treat pancreatic cancer, one of the deadliest types of cancer in the United States.

Moffitt Cancer Center researchers have found that breast and lung cancer patients who have low levels of a protein called tristetraprolin (TTP) have more aggressive tumors and a poorer prognosis than those with high levels of the protein. Their study was published in the Dec. 26 issue of PLoS One.

The husband of a Canadian who was diagnosed earlier this week with bird flu after returning from a trip to China has also tested positive for the virus, health officials said Friday.

Pancreatic cancer is one of the deadliest forms of the disease. The American Cancer Society's most recent estimates for 2014 show that over 46,000 people will be diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and more than 39,000 will die from it. Now, research led by Timothy J. Yen, PhD, Professor at Fox Chase Cancer Center, reveals that one reason this deadly form of cancer can be so challenging to treat is because its cells have found a way to sidestep chemotherapy. They hijack the vitamin D receptor, normally associated with bone health, and re-purposed it to repair the damage caused by chemotherapy. The findings, which will be published in the January 3 issue of the journal Cell Cycle, raise hopes that doctors will one day find a way to turn this process against the tumor and help chemotherapy do its job.

Federal health regulators have approved an attention deficit disorder drug for a new use: A first-of-its kind treatment for binge-eating disorder.

Singapore's parliament has enacted a universal health insurance scheme with nearly $3.0 billion in subsidies to help the elderly and lower-income people, as it responds to demands for better social safety nets.

A unique study which has followed 300 young people from age five since 2000, has received backing for a third phase which will see it become the first study of its kind in the world to track the same group from childhood to adulthood.

From the time he was about 8 years old, Shahab Maslehati had been well aware that his chest was sunken. It had become more pronounced in adolescence, a time when, as he put it, "you're naturally self-conscious about everything." But it hadn't affected his high-school basketball career or his life in general into his early to mid-twenties. He graduated from Colorado State University in 2006 and took a job with the Farm Credit Administration in Denver, where he's worked ever since.

Researchers at the UPM are testing new wearable sensor networks and mobile phone applications to monitor and manage patients with Parkinson's disease.

Adolescent idiopathic scoliosis (AIS) affects 2 to 3% of children aged between 10 and 16. It is more common in girls than in boys (with a ratio of 10-1). Besides the obvious physical signs derived from the visible spinal deformity, AIS can cause psychological and emotional problems (low self-esteem, poor body image, etc.) that significantly reduce patients' quality of life.

Drugmaker Abbvie posted better-than-expected adjusted results for the fourth quarter on Friday due to double-digit growth of its blockbuster anti-inflammatory drug Humira.

More than three-fourths US neurosurgeons practice some form of defensive medicine—performing additional tests and procedures out of fear of malpractice lawsuits, reports a special article in the February issue of Neurosurgery, official journal of the Congress of Neurological Surgeons.

Sun Pharmaceuticals will sell the rights to one generic drug as part of its purchase of competitor Ranbaxy Laboratories, U.S. antitrust regulators said Friday.

Jamaica's Senate on Friday started debating a bill that would decriminalize possession of small amounts of pot and establish a licensing agency to regulate a lawful medical marijuana industry on the island where the drug has long been pervasive but prohibited.

If you can't find the ideal material, then design a new one.

One of the major drawbacks of carbon-fueled battery cells is the intrinsic presence of CO2, which impedes CO oxidation and, therefore, lowers the energy density of the cell. In the journal Angewandte Chemie, researchers at Nanjing Tech University and Curtin University in Perth describe a novel dual-phase ion-conducting ceramic membrane that is absolutely gas-tight but highly permeable for CO2. Integrated in a solid-oxide fuel cell (SOFC) with solid carbon as an energy carrier, it enables efficient removal of CO2 resulting in enhanced power density of the electrochemical cell.

Chemists at the University of Bristol, in collaboration with colleagues at the Central Laser Facility at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (RAL) and Heriot-Watt University (HWU), can now follow chemical reactions in liquids with unprecedented, atomically resolved detail on sub-picosecond timescales (1 picosecond = 10-12s) – matching the time intervals between molecular collisions.

To understand diseases like Parkinson's, the tiniest of puzzles may hold big answers. That's why a team including scientists from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have determined how two potentially key pieces of the Parkinson's puzzle fit together, in an effort to reveal how the still poorly understood illness develops and affects its victims.

The most popular next-generation solar cells under development may have a problem – the top layer is full of tiny pinholes, researchers at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University in Japan have found.

A study by RIKEN researchers has revealed an important coping mechanism employed by enteric bacteria that allows them to thrive in environments with and without oxygen. The findings could help develop ways to control both harmful and beneficial bacteria in the human gut.

The world's museums exhibit collections of precious artefacts from thousands of years ago. Very often it is the case that not much is known about how those ancient artefacts were created. There is a number of limitations to investigate them as traditional sampling techniques risk damaging the materials. In the search for non-invasive methods, a group of scientists have combined three different techniques to analyse copper alloy figurines. They wanted to know how the figurines were crafted, their composition, and how they are deteriorating.