The program builds on previous research and uses a mathematical model to determine which letter the test subject was thinking about at the time of the scan. Researchers hope to refine this technology in the future in order to reconstruct memories or dreams.

This is Washoe, the first non-human to use sign language. When her caretaker Kat suffered a miscarriage, and Washoe was told that her baby had died, she signed "CRY", drawing a path down her cheek with her finger to mimic a tear. Chimpanzees don't shed tears, and Kat said this one sign told her more about Washoe's mental capabilities than all of her longer, grammatically perfect sentences.

It turns out that ants are capable of making career moves.

Computer tracking of ants shows that colonies have three main occupations: nursing the queen, cleaning, and foraging for food. Younger ants typically stay near the queen, but as they get older, they make the transition to foraging. This transition with regards to age was an exciting discovery, giving more insight into ant behavior.
 
Source: http://www.nature.com/news/tracking-whole-colonies-shows-ants-make-career-moves-1.12833 ...

Being a person that dislikes the smell or sight of blood, it makes me happy to read that a product that could prevent the leakage of blood has been created. The inventors call it "vetigel", but the "Band Aid of the Future" seems to be a better name. This product is a plant based adhesive that can heal wounds and clot blood within seconds. It has a great potential to revolutionize the Emergency Medicine field.

"The gel activates blood’s natural clotting process and is made with biocompatible components that can be absorbed directly into the body. By reassembling onto a wound site, VETIGEL mimics the body’s extracellular matrix and accelerates the production of fibrin, which enables the body to clot rapidly."

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Infection control experts at The Johns Hopkins Hospital have found that a combination of robot-like devices that disperse hydrogen peroxide vapor into the air and then detoxify the disinfecting chemical are highly effective at killing and preventing the spread of multiple-drug-resistant bacteria.


Of special note, researchers say, was that enhanced cleaning with the vapor reduced by 80 percent a patient's chances of becoming colonized by a particularly aggressive and hard-to-treat bacterium, vancomycin-resistant enterococci (VRE). ...

Scientists at University of St Andrews in Scotland and the Institute of Scientific Instruments (ISI) in the Czech Republic have designed a minute but completely functional tractor beam.

Reminiscent of Star Trek, they use a beam of light to draw objects towards the light source on a microscopic level.

A new estimate suggests 100 million sharks are slaughtered worldwide every year, numbers that are completely unsustainable according to researchers.

The majority of the time, the fin is the only part of the body used. The rest is simply thrown away.

Researchers at Yale School of Medicine, Harvard Medical School and the Broad Institute have identified a prime suspect in the mystery of an increased incidence of autoimmune diseases in the past few decades—dietary salt. In the paper, researchers showed that salt can induce and worsen pathogenic immune system responses in mice and that the response is regulated by genes already implicated in a variety of autoimmune diseases.