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A rare set of semi-identical twins – only the second set ever reported in the world – have been identified in Australia.

The now 4-year-old boy and girl from Brisbane share all of their mother’s DNA but only a part of their father’s DNA, making them identical on their mother’s side but fraternal on their father’s, a statement detailing the discovery said.

This was also the first time semi-identical twins have been identified during pregnancy, according to a case report recently published in the New England Journal of Medicine.

Continue reading “Rare ‘semi-identical’ twins discovered during Australian woman’s pregnancy” »

A popular gene editing technique may produce lots of unintended changes to DNA, but the good news is we now have a better way of finding such errors.

This recent development should speed brain emulation and help bring more deep learning closer to the device.

Whetstone is a program for instituting Spiking Neural Networks for Artificial Intelligence. It was created by Sandia National Laboratories and is available as Open Source Code. The most modern vers…

In order to remain healthy and functional, cells have a number of maintenance systems that help them to dispose of metabolic waste and unwanted proteins. Autophagy is perhaps the best-known example of how cells purge their waste, and another is the ubiquitin-proteasome system (UPS). Researchers are working on ways to boost the activity of the UPS to improve cellular health.

The ubiquitin-proteasome system

During normal cellular function, proteins being constructed in the cell can sometimes become misfolded and start to accumulate over time, which can cause the cell to become dysfunctional and encourage diseases such as Alzheimer’s to develop as the system gums up with bent and broken proteins.

Continue reading “Boosting Cellular Housekeeping with Exercise and Fasting” »

It’s something straight out of a Marvel comic book: giving test subjects the ability to see infrared light, similarly to how night-vision goggles work — but without the awkward and bulky apparatus.

Scientists at the University of Science and Technology of China injected tiny nanoparticles that bind to the retina into the eyeballs of test mice, granting them what the researchers called “super vision.”

Michelle Khine is a professor of biomedical engineering at the University of California, Irvine. Nine months ago, her newborn son was hospitalized for complications during childbirth and was admitted to the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU). While in the NICU, her son was connected to several machines that were supplying oxygen and monitoring his breathing.

A biomedical engineering research team from the University of California has developed a new wearable respiratory sensor to monitor children with chronic pulmonary conditions. The design was built with inspiration from a favorite childhood toy, Shrinky Dinks.

Unlike other nations, China’s space ambitions are centered on wealth creation through a space-based economy.

Welcome to the sixth edition of our new newsletter, DeepSpace! Each Tuesday, I’ll be taking a deep-dive into the most exciting developments in commercial space, from satellites and rockets to everything in between. If you’d like to receive DeepSpace and all of our newsletters and membership benefits, you can become a member for as little as $3/month here. Just […].

System hides cold ions from cooling laser, allowing hot ions to be selectively cooled.