Drawing on the expertise of the blind, a University of Toronto professor is “teaching” electronic devices how to navigate using surrounding sounds.

“The goal was to build a system that mimics the acoustic navigation abilities of blind people,” says Professor Parham Aarabi of the Edward S. Rogers Sr. Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. He has developed a method by which a device fitted with as few as two microphones can combine the information from sounds around it to locate

British astronomers, together with Australian and American colleagues, have used the 3.9m Anglo-Australian Telescope [AAT] in New South Wales, Australia to discover a new planet outside our Solar System – the 100th to be detected. The discovery, which is part of a search for solar systems that resemble our own, will be announced today (Tuesday) at a conference on “The origin of life” in Graz, Austria. This takes the total number of planets found outside our solar system to 100, and scientists are now

Scientists may soon have a better idea of the potential effects of global warming thanks to the work of Tony O’Hagan, Professor of Statistics at the University of Sheffield.

Scientists already know that global warming will have consequences for the earth but are unsure how mild or severe these effects may be, due to the inaccuracies in their prediction models. Professor O’Hagan’s method will allow scientists to better determine these inaccuracies and has major significance in the world of

Researchers at Stanford University Medical Center have devised a way to sneak DNA into skin cells taken from people with a potentially deadly genetic skin disorder. These modified cells later formed normal, healthy skin when transplanted onto the skin of mice. The technique, published in the advance online publication of the October issue of the journal Nature Medicine, marks the first time researchers have stably replaced the mutated gene in this disease and introduces a new gene therapy technique t

Discovery could lead to the identification of other cancer-preventing compounds

Using gene chip technology, researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health have identified the blueprint of genes and enzymes in the body that enable sulforaphane, a compound found in broccoli and other vegetables, to prevent cancer and remove toxins from cells. The discovery was made using a “gene chip” that allows researchers to monitor the complex interactions of thousands of protein

Scientists in the Center for Human Genomics at Wake Forest University School of Medicine and Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions have discovered a gene that “may play an important role in prostate cancer susceptibility in both African-American men and men of European descent.”

The 31-member team reports in the October issue of Nature Genetics that mutations in the MSR1 (for Macrophage Scavenger Receptor 1) gene were found in 4.4 percent of Caucasians who had prostate cancer, compared to 0.8 p