emergentfutures:

“Lab on a chip” can accurately measure male fertility

 The chip is designed for simple, one-off use, and measures sperm concentration as it flows past electrode bridges in a small liquid-filled channel. The equipment is sensitive enough to distinguish white blood cells — another indicator of sperm quality — as well as count the number of motile and non-motile sperm

Full Story: Springwise

prostheticknowledge:

Mimicking the brain, in silicon (via MIT News)

New computer chip models how neurons communicate with each other at synapses:

For decades, scientists have dreamed of building computer systems that could replicate the human brain’s talent for learning new tasks.

MIT researchers have now taken a major step toward that goal by designing a computer chip that mimics how the brain’s neurons adapt in response to new information. This phenomenon, known as plasticity, is believed to underlie many brain functions, including learning and memory.

With about 400 transistors, the silicon chip can simulate the activity of a single brain synapse — a connection between two neurons that allows information to flow from one to the other. The researchers anticipate this chip will help neuroscientists learn much more about how the brain works, and could also be used in neural prosthetic devices such as artificial retinas, says Chi-Sang Poon, a principal research scientist in the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology.

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mabelmoments:

These are skeletons of victims of the Black Death from East Smithfield, London. Scientists have extracted fragments of bubonic plague DNA from their teeth. Fragments of 700-year-old DNA from the bug responsible for the Black Death have been pulled from the teeth of four plague victims buried in east London. Scientists used the degraded strands to reconstruct the entire genetic code of the deadly bacterium. It is the first time experts have succeeded in drafting the genome of an ancient pathogen, or disease-causing agent. The researchers found that a specific strain of the plague bug Yersinia pestis caused the pandemic that killed 100 million Europeans - between 30% and 50% of the total population - in just five years between 1347 and 1351. Picture: Museum of London Archaeology /PA