University of Massachusetts Medical School (UMMS)

Scientists plan to fight insect pests by turning their own hormones against them An international research project funded by the EU’s Horizon 2020 program will develop new pest control methods that neither cause environmental pollution nor harm beneficial insects. The economic cost of agricultural pests is extremely difficult to estimate, but biological threats such as

Study Reveals Importance Of Timing For Cellular Signals, Suggests Possible Tactic For Cancer Therapeutics Magic tricks work because they take advantage of the brain’s sensory assumptions, tricking audiences into seeing phantoms or overlooking sleights of hand. Now a team of UC San Francisco researchers has discovered that even brainless single-celled yeast have sensory biases that

System uses RFID tags to home in on targets; could benefit robotic manufacturing, collaborative drones, and other applications. A novel system developed at MIT uses RFID tags to help robots home in on moving objects with unprecedented speed and accuracy. The system could enable greater collaboration and precision by robots working on packaging and assembly,

An easy way to explore random projects on Kickstarter Kickstumbler is an experimental site by Hype Machine Labs that encourages users to discover random Kickstarter projects, using an interface similar to StumbleUpon. Kickstarter is the coolest new thing on the web that we know. When not making Hype Machine, we’ve been obsessively browsing and funding

Image via CrunchBase Twitter, which has flourished thanks to tools built by outside developers, is taking more of those tools under its own wing. In a move that is sure to rattle its developers, Twitter has agreed to acquire Atebits, the start-up that makes the Tweetie apps for using Twitter on Mac computers and iPhones.

Researchers isolated a molecule that may be under-produced in the guts of patients Researchers at the Weizmann Institute of Science have shown in mice that intestinal microbes, collectively termed the gut microbiome, may affect the course of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease. As reported today in Nature,progression of an ALS-like disease

‘We’re not taking away the arthritis, just the arthritis pain’ Pain medicine specialists at Rush have helped develop, and are among the first in the country to provide, a noninvasive treatment for knee arthritis that uses cooled radio energy to target and interrupt pain signals. Known as “Coolief,” the procedure can provide several months of relief

A recent study by researchers at North Carolina State University and the Montreal Clinical Research Institute (IRCM) finds that “moral enhancement technologies” – which are discussed as ways of improving human behavior – are neither feasible nor wise, based on an assessment of existing research into these technologies. The idea behind moral enhancement technologies is

New design could dramatically cut energy waste in electric vehicles, data centers, and the power grid. Power electronics, which do things like modify voltages or convert between direct and alternating current, are everywhere. They’re in the power bricks we use to charge our portable devices; they’re in the battery packs of electric cars; and they’re