28109186
submission
Sven-Erik writes:
A $10m (£6.5m) prize is on offer to whoever can create a Star Trek-like medical "tricorder".
The Qualcomm Tricorder X Prize has challenged researchers to build a tool capable of capturing "key health metrics and diagnosing a set of 15 diseases".
28001750
submission
Sven-Erik writes:
The next Ice Age is due within 1,500 years, researchers calculate — but greenhouse gas emissions mean it will not happen then.
23923318
submission
Sven-Erik writes:
Could living things that evolved from metals be clunking about somewhere in the universe? Perhaps. In a lab in Glasgow, UK, one man is intent on proving that metal-based life is possible.
He has managed to build cell-like bubbles from giant metal-containing molecules and has given them some life-like properties. He now hopes to induce them to evolve into fully inorganic self-replicating entities.
"I am 100 per cent positive that we can get evolution to work outside organic biology," says Lee Cronin at the University of Glasgow. His building blocks are large "polyoxometalates" made of a range of metal atoms — most recently tungsten — linked to oxygen and phosphorus. By simply mixing them in solution, he can get them to self-assemble into cell-like spheres.
