Questionnaire may help predict autism at 1 year

A quick and simple questionnaire given to parents during a regular checkup in a pediatrician's office may help detect autism in children as young as 1 year old, a new study suggests.


The 24-item questionnaire, which assesses a child's ability to communicate with eye contact, sounds, and gestures, may steer infants who show early signs of autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) into appropriate treatment at earlier ages, the researchers say.

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Healing Blindness in Mice

Viruses can deliver light-sensitive proteins to specific cells in the retinas of blind mice, allowing rudimentary vision, according to new research. Although previous studies have shown that the light-sensitive proteins can be beneficial, the delivery methods were not practical for humans. The viral-delivery method is similar to ones already used in human gene therapy.

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Sleep-deprived brains turn themselves off

Researchers know that sleep deprivation makes people and animals less functional. Now a team of researchers in Wisconsin and Italy has found that in rats kept awake past their bed times, their brains begin to turn themselves off, neuron by neuron, though the rat is still awake.

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Neurological Basis for Embarrassment

Recording people belting out an old Motown tune and then asking them to listen to their own singing without the accompanying music seems like an unusually cruel form of punishment. But for a team of scientists at the University of California, San Francisco and University of California, Berkeley, this exact Karaoke experiment has revealed what part of the brain is essential for embarrassment.

The twist to the experiment was that most of the subjects had neurodegenerative diseases, which helped scientists identify a thumb-sized bit of tissue in the right hemisphere of the front part of the brain called the “pregenual anterior cingulate cortex” as integral to embarrassment.

Knowing that people lose their ability to be embarrassed and which part of the brain governs that ability may suggest ways to help diagnose people with certain neurodegenerative diseases earlier.


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Control your laptop with your eye gaze

A camera over the screen is a standard feature for laptops. But only Lenovo's new model has a pair of cameras below its display to track the movements of a user's eyes. The prototype laptop can be controlled with eye motions, reducing the need to use the mouse and making it faster to navigate through information such as maps or menus.

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Better Bioimaging with a Liquid Lens

A new handheld probe uses near-infrared light and a liquid lens to create sharp three-dimensional images of lesions beneath the skin, in a few seconds. The device, allows doctors to peer two millimeters below the skin's surface to see, in particular, whether the cells beneath a mole show signs of being cancerous. If proved reliable, the probe could sharply reduce the number of biopsies that are necessary.

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Wearable Scanner Opens New Frontier in Neuroscience

A tiny wearable /mobile PET (Positron Emission Tomography) scanner has been used to track chemical activity in the brains of unrestrained animals for the first time. By revealing neurological circuitry as the subjects perform normal tasks, researchers say, the technology could greatly broaden the understanding of learning, addiction, depression, and other conditions.

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Computers Get in Touch with Your Emotions

Computers could be a lot more useful if they paid attention to how you felt. With the emergence of new tools that can measure a person's biological state, computer interfaces are starting to do exactly that: take users' feelings into account.

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The Healing Power of Light

A new polymer material that can repeatedly heal itself at room temperature when exposed to ultraviolet light presents the tantalizing possibility of products that can repair themselves when damaged. Possibilities include self-healing medical implants, cars, or even airplane parts.

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Kinect Creators Making PC Controller

PrimeSense, the privately held Israeli company that licensed core Kinect technology to Microsoft, announced that it is teaming up with PC and peripheral maker Asus to create a similar device for the PC.

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