Comfortable brace incorporates both sensors and actuators to restore roughly 70% of the active range of motion. A novel neck brace, which supports the neck during its natural motion, was designed by Columbia engineers. This is the first device shown to dramatically assist patients suffering from Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) in holding their heads and actively supporting them during range of motion. This advance would result in improved quality of life for patients, not only in improving eye contact during conversation, but also in facilitating the use of eyes as a joystick to control movements on a computer, much as scientist Stephen Hawkins famously did.

A team of engineers and neurologists led by Sunil Agrawal, professor of mecha...

The discovery of the previously unknown mutation could lead to routine testing of individuals with a strong family history of pancreatic cancer to determine if they carry the mutation, occurring in the gene known as RABL3. Scientists studying a highly cancer-prone family have identified a rare, inherited gene mutation that dramatically raises the lifetime risk of pancreatic and other cancers.

The discovery of the previously unknown mutation, reported in Nature Genetics by investigators from Dana-Farber/Brigham and Women’s Cancer Center, could lead to routine testing of individuals with a strong family history of pancreatic cancer to determine if they carry the mutation, occurring in the gene known as RABL3...

Neutron stars are not only the most dense objects in the Universe, but they rotate very fast and regularly. Until they don’t. Occasionally these neutron stars start to spin faster, caused by portions of the inside of the star moving outwards. It’s called a “glitch” and it provides astronomers a brief insight into what lies within these mysterious objects.

In a paper published today in the journal, Nature Astronomy, a team from Monash University, the ARC Centre of Excellence for Gravitational Wave Discovery (OzGrav), McGill University in Canada, and the University of Tasmania, studied the Vela Pulsar, a neutron star in the southern sky, that is 1,000 light years away.

According to the paper’s ...

Recent research shows that our planet may have been pummeled with asteroids long before some scientists had previously thought. Welcome to the early solar system. Just after the planets formed more than 4.5 billion years ago, our cosmic neighborhood was a chaotic place. Waves of comets, asteroids and even proto-planets streamed toward the inner solar system, with some crashing into Earth on their way.

Now, a team led by University of Colorado Boulder geologist Stephen Mojzsis has laid out a new timeline for this violent period in our planet’s history...