Scientists are still wrestling with how love works. Photo courtesy of Flickr user Hamed Masoumi

It should probably tell us something that the most frequently asked question on Google last year was “What is love?” Clearly, most of us are clueless on the matter; otherwise we wouldn’t be turning to algorithms for an explanation.

Which explains why scientific research on love continues unabated. We want answers.

So, on the eve of Valentine’s Day, here are 10 recent studies or surveys trying to make sense of matters of the heart.

1) You light up my brain: Researchers at Brown University in Rhode Island say that based on brain scans, they may be able to predict if a relationship will last. The scientists did MRIs on 12 people who said they were passionately in love, then repeated the process three years later. In the six people whose relationships lasted, the scans showed that the part of the brain that produces emotional responses to visual beauty was particularly active when they were shown a picture of their partners. But those same six had lower levels of activity in the pleasure center of the brain tied to addiction when they looked at the photo.

2) Yeah, but what did it do for their sinuses?: Scientists continue to ponder the effect of oxytocin, the so-called “love hormone” produced by the pituitary gland. One of more recent studies, at the University of Zurich, found that while men generally withdraw during conflict with their mates, those who inhaled an oxytocin nasal spray smiled more, made eye contact and generally communicated better during disagreements.

3) What you see is what you don’t get: A new study by sociologist Elizabeth McClintock at the University of Notre Dame concluded that highly attractive women are more likely to seek exclusive relationships than purely sexual ones, and also that, for women, the number of sexual partners decreases as their physical attractiveness increases.

4) Okay, now let’s try a salsa beat: Meanwhile, at the University of California, Davis, scientists studying the physical behavior of couples in relationships found that when they were sitting near each other–but without speaking or touching–their breathing patterns and heartbeats often matched up. The researchers also discovered that the women tended to adjust their behavior to their partners more often.

5) So yes, putting the toilet seat down is an act of love: A professor at the University of Rochester who’s been studying newlywed couples for the past several years says members of married couples who do small acts of compassion and thoughtfulness for each other usually have happier relationships. Researchers Harry Reis also found that men more often said that they had put their partner’s wishes ahead of their own.

6) As they say in the relationships biz, it’s complicated: According to a study soon to be published in the journal Psychological Science, people like to believe that their way of life–whether they’re single or in a couple–is the best choice for everyone. The researchers also found that when it came to Valentine’s Day, people believed that their friends would be happier if they were in the same situation as they were–in other words, people in a couple thought their single friends would enjoy themselves more on Valentine’s Day if they were in a relationship, while singles thought their coupled friends would have a better time if they were single.

7) Thanks for not sharing: And apparently it’s not such a good idea to make big displays of affection on Facebook. So say researchers at the University of Kansas who discovered that people don’t like their partners sharing their feelings about their relationships with the Facebook universe. Participants in the study said they felt less intimacy with their partners if they went public with how they felt about their loved one.

8) Another reason not to do windows: Here’s one to stir up debate. According to a research team of American and Spanish scientists, men who share in the housework have sex with their wives less often than men in “traditional” marriages where the women handle all of the household chores. This runs counter to previous studies which concluded that married men had more sex in exchange for helping around the house. In the recent study, married couples reported having more sex if the women did the cooking, cleaning and shopping and the men did the gardening, electrics and plumbing, took car of the car and paid the bills.

9) Road trip!: A survey of more than 1,000 American adults found that couples that travel together have better sexual relationships than those that don’t. Almost two-thirds of those surveyed recently by the U.S. Travel Association said that a weekend vacation was more likely to spark up their relationship than a gift. And almost 30 percent said their sex life actually improved after traveling together.

10) Which is why you don’t take dogs on vacations: On the other hand, dogs may not be so good for your sex life. About 73 percent of dog owners who answered another survey said their pets get jealous when they show physical affection toward their partners. And it probably doesn’t help that almost as many of those surveyed said their dog sleeps with them in bed.

Video bonus: It’s really not that hard to write a bad love song. The Axis of Awesome lays it all out for you.

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An app that finds your keys. Or the cat. Photo courtesy of Stick-N-Find

Within the next week or so, the year-end reviews will start rolling out like strips of prize tickets in a games arcade.

Most will revisit events that we’ll all remember, albeit some we’d rather forget. My own list is a little different. I want to look back at ideas that haven’t received a lot of attention, but struck me as being particularly clever and ripe with potential. Chances are you haven’t heard of many of them. But chances also are you will.

Here’s Part 1 of my list of a dozen ideas whose time is about to come:

1) Sadly, it does not say, “You’re getting warmer.”: Are you flummoxed by how often you lose things–your keys, your TV remote, your glasses. Have I got an invention for you. It’s called Stick-N-Find and it works like this.

You attach one of the Bluetooth-powered stickers to whatever object you’re tired of losing, then download the Stick-N-Find smartphone app. The app will tell you how far away you are from the missing item–it has a range of 100 feet–and you can set off a buzzer in the sticker. If you’re in the dark, you can trigger a blinking red light. Where has this been all my life?

2) Will it do nails? It may be a while before we see it in action, but Dyson, the British company that makes those high-powered Airblade hand dryers, has filed a patent for a tap that would wash your hands with water, then dry them without you having to move an inch. Put your hands under the tap and sensors release water. Move them slightly so that they’re under two connected tubes and warm, dry air shoots out. You’re wet, you’re dry, you’re outta there.

3) All hail plastic: Using nanotechnology, a team of researchers at Wake Forest University has developed a plastic material that glows like a soft white light when an electric current is run through it. Its inventors say it’s as efficient as an LED light and twice as efficient as a fluorescent bulb. But what makes it so innovative is that because it’s plastic, it can be made into any shape. Imagine a soft glowing ceiling panel replacing those hideous fluorescent lights above your head.

4) And all hail fewer jerks on planes: Gemma Jensen used to be a flight attendant for Virgin Atlantic so she has seen more than her share of airline passengers doing the jerk. I’m talking about that moment during long flights when just as you’re starting to nod off, your head tips forward. End of snooze.

So Jensen has invented the J-Pillow. It’s a step up from the familiar U-shaped pillow that keeps your head from falling from side to side, but can’t stop it from dropping forward. Her pillow comes with a “J-hook” that goes around the neck and under a person’s chin. Doctors seem to like it because it keeps your spine aligned while you’re sleeping on a plane. Which explains why a panel just chose it Great Britain’s Best Consumer Invention of 2012.

5) Cause that’s how they roll: Two former MIT students have designed a camera that bounces and rolls. Who needs a bouncing camera, you ask? How about firefighters who have to see inside a building or a swat team looking for hostages? That’s what Francisco Aguilar and Dave Young had in mind when they invented their ball-shaped device outfitted with six wide-angle cameras packed inside a rubber casing.

The idea is that first responders could toss it into a space they need to survey. Its cameras could snap pictures every second as it rolls, then send them wirelessly to a smartphone where they would be stitched together to provide a 360-degree view.

6) Can I make Kit Kat bars in that thing?: There’s nothing new about 3D printers, but Virginia Tech’s College of Engineering has come up with a novel way to give its students access to the nifty replicating devices. It has set up something it calls DreamVendor, which it has described as a “vending machine with infinite inventory.” What it is is a station of four 3D printers where engineering students can load in their designs and wait for the printers to do their magic. It’s free for the students, but it’s not hard to imagine some entrepreneur refining the idea of vending machines that print stuff.

Video bonus: And under the category of an idea whose time is still coming, there’s the LuminAR lamp system invented in MIT’s Media Lab a few years ago. Still being refined, it allows you to screw a LuminAR device–it’s combo projector/camera/wireless computer–into a standard light socket and turn your desk into an interactive surface. See for yourself.

Read The Best Inventions of 2012 You Haven’t Heard of Yet (Part 2) here.

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Know the enemy: Cancer cells at work. Image courtesy of the National Cancer Institute

As we come to the end of Breast Cancer Awareness Month, I’ve learned that sometimes you can have too much awareness. A friend died of breast cancer last week and the truth is I didn’t want to hear much more about it.

On second thought, though, maybe it helps to look cancer in the eyes and show that it’s not the monster it can seem to be, that slowly progress continues to be made in moving toward a cure. My friend Trish used to say, “Take that, cancer!” in those times when it seemed that she was winning the battle.

So here’s a “Take that, cancer!” list, 10 ways in which scientists have come one step closer to taming the beast.

1) It’s important to stop cancer cells from talking to each other: That’s what a recent paper written by researchers from Johns Hopkins, Tel Aviv University and Rice University argues. They contend that we need to recognize that tumor cells are a lot smarter and more collaborative than long thought and the key to fighting them is to learn how to interrupt their conversations.

2) And it helps to be able to see inside them: A new MRI technology, being developed at the University of California at San Francisco, could give physicians a better idea of whether or not a particular treatment for tumors is working.

3) Green tea could help fight cancer: A study of breast cancer patients found that those who received a regular treatment of green tea extract had significantly lower tumor growth than those women who didn’t. Scientists said chemicals in green tea called polyphenols appear to inhibit two proteins that promote tumor cell growth and migration. The extract may help prostate cancer patients.

4) So might multivitamins: A clinical trial that followed nearly 15,000 male doctors for more than a decade determined that those who took a multivitamin every day were 8 percent less likely to develop cancer than those who received a placebo. Cancer experts point out, however, that it’s a less effective strategy than a healthy diet, exercise and not smoking.

5) And fasting could make chemo more effective: A study published earlier this year from the University of Southern California at Davis reported that mice that were given only water for two days before chemotherapy treatments experienced more shrinkage of tumors than mice that stayed on their usual diets. The researchers suggested that fasting appears to protect normal cells from chemo’s toxic effects by causing them to focus on internal maintenance instead of growing and reproduction.

6) Could a smart bra replace mammograms?: That’s what testing by a Nevada company named First Warning Systems suggests. It has designed a bra with sensors that measure tiny temperature changes that occur as blood vessels grow and feed tumors. The company says that in three clinical trials involving 650 women, the bra was able to detect the beginnings of tumors as many as six years before imaging would have. The bra could be available in Europe next year and in the U.S. in 2014, pending FDA approval.

7) And could a simple blood test predict breast cancer risk?: According to a team of Boston researchers who analyzed the results of a long-running study, women with high levels of three hormones were more likely to develop breast cancer. If the research is confirmed, it could mean that women could be tested for the hormones every 10 to 20 years to assess their cancer risk.

8) There’s an explanation for the obesity-cancer link: Scientists have long known that obese patients with cancer often have a poorer chance of survival than those at a healthier weight. New research may explain why. A report in the journal Cancer Research suggests that fatty tissue, known as white adipose tissue, contains cells that, once in a tumor, can become part of blood vessels that foster tumor growth.

9) There may be a way to counter “chemo brain”: A clinical study published in Breast Cancer Research and Treatment concluded that women who suffer from “chemo brain,” –cognitive problems that occur during and after cancer treatment–can improve their memory and their mental health through computerized brain training.

10) Finally, could magnets be an answer?: The research is still preliminary, but South Korean scientists are reporting success in using tiny magnets to cause tumor cells to self-destruct. The magnetic therapy, used so far on living fish and bowel cancer cells, involves creating tiny iron nanoparticles attached to anti-bodies produced by the body’s immune system, When they bind to tumor cells and a magnetic field is applied, the molecules can trigger a ”destroy” signal.

Video bonus: Yes, it’s possible to be funny about breast cancer. All it takes is to have a few bare-chested hunks give women a little advice.

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A color show in Oregon. Photo courtesy of Flickr user Ian Sane

It’s the time of year when trees refuse to be ignored. Behold our fabulous hues, ponder our falling leaves, they goad us. And many of us do pay attention for a bit, only to lose interest when the show is over.

We know the cycle will begin again next spring and peak again in the fall, trees being one of the truer things in modern life. I mean, what’s more reliable than an oak?

But scientists will tell you that, like the oceans, the world’s trees are going through some serious changes, and not in a good way.

A dry run

Consider the impact of the drought that’s been desiccating America’s Southwest. Two weeks ago, the Texas A&M Forest Service issued a damage report: More than 300 million trees died in Texas forests alone as a result of the 2011 drought. It killed another 5.6 million trees in Texas cities.

Then last week a study published in Nature Climate Change concluded that if current climate trends continue, forests in the Southwest will die out at an accelerating rate. And not just from rising temperatures and lack of rain, but also from invasions of tree-eating pests and more destructive forest fires, also tied to climate change.

For instance, by analyzing forest fire data from satellites for the past 30 years in parallel with data on tree ring growth over the same period, the researchers were able to see a “strong and exponential” relationship between droughts and the number of acres of forests wiped out by wildfires.

Notes A. Park Williams, a scientist at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico and lead author of the study: “This suggests that if drought intensifies, we can expect forests not only to grow more slowly, but also to die more quickly.”

Computer models suggest that for 80 percent of the years in the second half of the 21st century, America’s Southwest will suffer through what the study describes as “mega-drought.”

In the spirit of giving trees more than a seasonal glance, here are 10 other things scientists have learned about them this year.

1) Forest fires have become more intense and harder to control. One big factor is the rising frequency of what are known as “blowdowns.” With violent storms with strong winds occurring more often, whole sections of forests are toppling over, creating, in essence, giant campfires awaiting a spark.

2) And the death of forests could double the number of big floods. A study at the University of British Columbia concluded that faster snow melts due to fewer trees creating shade will not only increase the size of floods, but could also make the really big ones happen more often.

3) Sick trees could be boosting greenhouse gas levels. Scientists at Yale University found that diseased trees can carry very high levels of methane, one of the more potent greenhouse gases. Although they appear healthy, many old trees–between 80 and 100 years old–are being hollowed out by a fungal infection that slowly eats through the trunk, creating a nice home for methane-producing microorganisms.

4) On a brighter note, palm trees once grew in Antarctica. Okay, it was 53 million years ago, back when Antarctica was still connected to Australia, but researchers drilling deep beneath the sea floor off the eastern coast of the now-frozen continent, found pollen grains from palm and macadamia trees. Scientists estimate that back then, high summer temperatures there could reach the upper 70s.

5) A handful of trees can tell the rainfall history of the Amazon. Based on measurements of oxygen isotopes trapped within the rings of only eight cedar trees in Bolivia, scientists at the University of Leeds in Great Britain say they can tell how much it has rained over the entire Amazon basin during the past century.

6) NASA technology could help save trees that look risky. The space agency is using high-tech cameras to create 3-D images of trees, a process that will help experts get a better idea of where a tree is likely to crack and how it might come down. Ideally, this could help save trees that arborists now would probably cut down.

7) Will it be smarter to grow smaller trees? Scientists at Oregon State University think so. They believe it will make sense to grow genetically-modified “semi-dwarf” trees in the future to make them better suited for drier climates and as a source of bioenergy.

8) Slow down on the maple syrup. The U.S. Forest Service says that climate change is likely to diminish production of maple syrup later this century. The reason? Habitats suitable for maple trees are expected to shrink.

9) Fossilized forests could come back to life. Forests in the Canadian Arctic that last were alive more than 2.5 million years ago could be revitalized by climate change, according to a University of Montreal scientist. Alexandre Guertin-Pasquier says that, according to climate change forecasts, temperatures could rise to levels similar to when willow, pine and spruce trees thrived in now snow-covered places such as Bylot Island.

10) Good trees make good neighbors? Studies in three American cities–Baltimore, Philadelphia and Portland, Ore.–concluded that urban neighborhoods with more trees tend to have lower crime rates. While no researcher would go so far as to say that trees reduce crime, they did find a “very strong association” between more tree canopy and less crime.

Video bonus: In case you think I’ve spent way too much time talking about trees, sit back and watch a year in the life of forest go by in two minutes.

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A rally round the flag in Washington. Photo courtesy of Flickr user theqspeaks

With the first presidential debate scheduled for Wednesday night, we’re about to hit the whitewater of the campaign, the time when any slip, any rock beneath the surface, can turn the boat over.

And though it doesn’t seem possible, the political advertising will shift into an even higher gear. Last week alone Barack Obama, Mitt Romney and outside political groups spent an estimated $55 million to drum their messages into the minds of voters.

But whose minds might they be? Must be the undecideds–that 2 to 8 percent of American voters who remain uncommitted and, it turns out, are largely uninformed.

It couldn’t be the rest of us, right? We’ve made up our minds, we know what we believe, right?

Change is good?

Well, maybe so. But perhaps not as much as you think. A new study of moral attitudes by a team of Swedish researchers would seem to suggest that our minds are considerably more changeable than we imagine.

Here’s how the study worked: Subjects were asked to take a survey on a number of issues for which people are likely to have strong moral positions–such as whether government surveillance of e-mail and the Internet should be allowed, to protect against terrorism. Or if helping illegal aliens avoid being sent back to their home countries was commendable or deplorable.

Once they assigned a number to each statement reflecting their level of agreement or disagreement, the participants turned to a second page of the survey attached to a clipboard. And in doing so, they unwittingly mimicked an old magic trick. The section of the first page containing the original statements lifted off the page, thanks to glue on the back of the clipboard. In its place was a collection of statements that seemed identical to the ones on the first list, but now each espoused the direct opposite position of the original. For instance, a stance deemed commendable in the first list was now described as deplorable.

On the other hand

The numerical values selected by those surveyed remained the same, but now they were in response to the other side of a moral issue. When the participants were asked to explain their responses, almost 70 percent of them didn’t realize they had performed one fine flip-flop.

Okay, let’s cut them some slack. It’s easy to miss the change in one word, even if a statement said the exact opposite of what they had responded to. But here’s where it gets interesting. More than half, about 53 percent, actually offered arguments in favor of positions that just minutes before they had indicated they opposed.

I know what you’re thinking–you’d never do that. Maybe you wouldn’t. But the best conclusion the researchers could draw was that many of us just might not be as locked into our beliefs as we like to think.

Me, my bias, and I

If you want to see how flexible your political principles can be, consider downloading a plug-in developed at the University of Michigan called The Balancer. It’s designed to track your online reading habits and then calculate your political bias.

Researcher Sean Munson created The Balancer because, as he told NBC News’ Alan Boyle, he wanted to see if “having real-time feedback about your online news reading habits affects the balance of the news that you read.”

By matching your Web activity to a list of 10,000 news sources and blogs–each with a ranking on the political spectrum–The Balancer, through a button on your browser bar, lets you know how unbalanced your choices are. Depending on where you get your info, a stick figure will be shown overloaded with either conservative-red blocks or liberal-blue ones.

The plug-in, which works only on the Google Chrome browser, also suggests websites to visit if you don’t want your stick figure to tilt too much to one side.

Says Munson, who was surprised at the degree of his own bias: “Even self-discovery is a valuable outcome, just being aware of your own behavior. If you do agree that you should be reading the other side, or at least aware of the dialogue in each camp, you can use it as a goal: Can I be more balanced this week than I was last week?”

Stalking the vote

Here’s more recent research on what shapes and sometimes changes our political beliefs:

• That does not compute A study published last month in Psychological Science in the Public Interest found that people are reluctant to correct misinformation in their memories if it fits in with their political beliefs.
• You like who?: According to a survey by the Pew Research Center, almost 40 percent of people on social networking sites say they’ve been surprised by the political leanings of some of their friends. Two-thirds say they don’t bother to respond to political posts from friends with whom they don’t agree.
• Facebook made me do it: A message on Facebook on the day of the 2010 congressional elections may have been responsible for an additional 340,000 Americans voting, concludes a study published in the journal Nature. They were most influenced, say researchers, by messages that their closest friends had clicked an “I voted” button.
• No, my parents made me do it: Research published recently in Trends in Genetics, based on the political beliefs of twins, suggests that your genetic makeup can influence your stance on issues such as abortion, unemployment and the death penalty, though children tend not to express those opinions until they leave home.
• It’s my party and I’ll lie if I want to: A study at Washington State University posits that a “belief gap” has replaced the “education gap” in American politics. Positions on many issues–and how much someone knows about an issue–no longer are largely determined by how much education someone has, but rather with what party they identify.
• Funny how that happens: Late-night comedy shows, such as “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart” and “The Colbert Report” can actually spur political discussions among friends, according to a new study at the University of Michigan.

Video bonus: In case you missed it, check out out the “Saturday Night Live” take on undecided voters.

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Brain research is now part of the daily news. Image courtesy of National Institute of Mental Health

We know so much more about our brains than we once did. Some would suggest too much.

Because neuroscience, once a subject confined to academia and research labs, now belongs to all of us. Every day, it seems, there’s a story in the mainstream media about a study providing fresh insights on how our brain functions or what we do to make it perform better or worse. Scientists can caution all they want that this is a maddeningly complex subject, but in our search to understand why we do the things we do, we more often look for overly simple answers deep inside our heads.

So we tend to take quite seriously any neurological evidence that would seem to explain behavior. Just yesterday, in fact, the journal Science published a study which found that judges–not juries, but judges–presented with a hypothetical case gave lighter sentences to a man convicted of a vicious beating if his file included a statement from a neurobiologist that he had a genetic predisposition to violent behavior.

Most neuroscientists aren’t happy that brain scans are now routinely used to help convicted murderers try to avoid death sentences. The science isn’t that clearcut, they’ll argue. And they’re right.

But the more we learn about the brain, the more captivated we become. This is where science gets personal, where it helps us make sense of ourselves. These days you don’t hear many people say, “The devil made me do it.” More likely they’ll blame their amygdala.

Brain salad

To get a sense of how much brain science is weaving into our daily lives, here are 10 studies published in just the past month:

1) Never gonna give you up: A new study suggests that hoarding is a brain disorder all its own. It long had been characterized as a variant of obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD). But no more. When hoarders in the study were asked to keep or destroy an object belonging to them–in this case junk mail–the region of their brains associated with decision-making became unusually active. That’s a different part of the brain than what’s usually activated with OCD.

2) Send grandpa a vat of chocolate: Here’s yet another reason chocolate is awesome. Italian researchers have found that a cocoa drink rich in flavanols–the antidioxidants found in chocolate–can help sharpen the brains of people with memory problems. The antidioxidants are believed to protect brain cells and improve blood flow.

3) But make sure he lays off the microwave popcorn: According to another study, this one at the University of Minnesota, the chemical that provides the fake butter taste in microwave popcorn may actually speed up the mental decline of Alzheimer’s disease. The chemical, diacetyl, can lead to the same kind of clumping of beta-amyloid proteins in the brain that causes Alzheimer’s.

4) Why the nose is king of the face: When you have a bad head cold or allergy and your nose is stuffed up, your brain kicks into gear to make sure your sense of smell snaps back to normal as soon as your health does. The brain isn’t able to do that with other senses–when sight is lost temporarily, for instance, it takes much longer for it to be restored.

5) Teenage wasteland: New research concludes brain scans may help predict if a teenager will become a problem drinker. Experts say the findings suggest that heavy drinking may affect young people’s brains right at the time when they need to be working efficiently.

6) And while we’re on the bottle: Alcoholism apparently affects women’s brains differently than it does men’s. A team of researchers in Boston found that heavy drinking over a number of years destroys white brain matter in a different part of the brain for women than it does for men. They also found that women’s brains recover more quickly when they quit drinking than men’s do.

7) Pep talk is cheap: No matter how good your intentions may be, you won’t necessarily help someone by giving him or her encouragement before they make a big decision. In fact, according to a study at Queen Mary University in London, when people received either positive or negative feedback about their performance on complex decision-making tasks, they made worse decisions. Put simply, it’s too much information for their brain to process under stress. So just keep quiet.

8) Thinking small: New research has confirmed that stress and depression actually makes your brain smaller. Yale scientists found that deactivation of a single genetic switch can instigate a cascading loss of brain connections and that’s more likely to happen in brains of depressed people.

9) At last, something good about migraines: As painful and debilitating as they can be, migraines do not cause the kind of cognitive decline that often leads to dementia or Alzheimer’s. That’s according to a new study at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, which gathered data gathered from more than 6,300 women.

10) Who knew brains packed a punch?: And finally, research suggests that the punching power of karate black belts has more to do with how their brain functions than how strong their bodies are. The key, says scientists at Imperial College London, is the fine tuning of neural connections in the cerebellum, allowing them to synchronize their arm and trunk movements more precisely.

Video bonus: Dr. Charles Limb is a surgeon. He’s also a musician. So it probably was inevitable that he wanted to find out how the brain works during improvisation. He shares what he learned about the science of creativity in this TED talk.

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Meet the Domino, a little chip that can diagnose your health. Photo courtesy of University of Alberta

Let’s start by agreeing that nanotechnology is magical science. Most of us know that it’s about scientists operating at a molecular level. Many of us understand that it usually involves the tiniest of “machines” assembling themselves through chemical interactions. But when researchers start talking about creating molecule-sized robots that can repair cells inside our bodies, they’ve moved so far beyond my comprehension that I’m reduced to blubbering, “Sounds good…keep ‘em coming.”

One thing even I can understand, though, is how profoundly nanotech can transform medicine and health care–whether it’s cell-sniffing nanobots that can seek and destroy cancer cells with no collateral damage or replace abnormal genes with normal ones or help broken bones heal faster.

Other nano-driven medical advances, while not as dramatic as detonating chemo bombs inside tumors may actually be more far-reaching in that they transform something as basic as how disease is diagnosed. Take two inventions announced last week.

The first, called Domino, is a small plastic chip that can perform 20 different genetic tests from a single drop of blood. It was created by a team at the University of Alberta in Edmonton and it works like this:

The blood flows into 20 separate tiny compartments, each filled with a gel. Then the chip gets put into a small portable lab about the size of a toaster where a molecular test is run on each compartment. From that one drop of blood, the doctor can determine if the patient has breast cancer and if so, whether she is resistant to cancer drugs. Or it can determine if she has malaria, even what type of malaria.

The second innovation, developed at UCLA, combines nanotechnology, a cell phone and Google Maps to create a device that reads Rapid Diagnostic Tests–strips that change color if there’s infection–with much more precision than a human can out in the field. The strips are inserted into the device, a reader that clips on to a smart phone. Then the phone’s camera, working with a mobile app, converts the strip into a digital image.

From that, the app determines if the results of the test–for HIV or malaria or TB, for example–are positive or negative. And here’s where Google Maps comes in. If positive, the device wirelessly transmits the results to a map that tracks the spread of diseases around the world.

What these nanotests mean for most of us, ultimately, is an end to those long, and often stressful waits for results to come back from the lab. Increasingly, doctors will be able to do DNA and other diagnostic testing right in their offices, with results available within the hour. Plus, $100 lab tests could end up costing only a dollar or two.

Not that these mini-labs are brand new. Harvard professor George Whitesides, for one, has been working on “diagnostic stamps” for several years now. But these “labs on a chip” have become such a popular field of research that there’s now a website called simply “Lab-on-a-Chip”, which reports on the latest developments. Most, however, are still in the trial stage.

“Lab tests are fine,” says David Alton, one of Domino’s creators. “But we need to show that it works. We need to show the results from a thousand tests. Then people start saying `OK, this is real.”

Then there’s the dark side

Of course, as with any cutting edge science, questions arise about how the wizardry of nanotechnology could go wicked. As useful as they can be, nanoscale forms of materials like silver, carbon, zinc and aluminum can be ingested, inhaled and perhaps, absorbed through the skin. No one’s sure how harmful that may be. About two weeks ago, the FDA issued a draft of guidelines suggesting that companies using nanoparticles in food or cosmetics may have to do extra tests to show the products are safe.

And just last week a paper by Kathleen Eggleson, a scientist at Notre Dame, raised the novel kind of ethical dilemma nanotechnology can stir up. She notes that in an effort to fight infections in hospitals, medical supply companies have taken to coating nearly everything–door knobs, bed rails, sheets, curtains–with nano-sized particles of silver, a material known for blocking the spread of microbes.

But, as Eggleson points out, the vast majority of bacteria and other microorganisms are actually neutral, or even beneficial. Some bacteria, for instance, are needed to maintain necessary levels of nitrogen in the air; others help us digest food.

So covering every surface with tiny flecks of silver, she argues, could end up doing more harm than good.

Yes, even in a world we can’t see, life is complicated.

Where the small things are

Here are other recent nanotech developments. These are outside the world of medicine.

• Stop squeezing the fruit!:An MIT chemistry professor has developed a way to attach tiny sensors to boxes that, when scanned, will reveal how ripe the food is inside.
• And it beats rock and scissors: A scientist in Genoa, Italy has found a process for making paper waterproof, magnetic and antibacterial.
• When a nanotree falls, does it make a sound?: Engineers at the University of California at San Diego are building a forest of tiny nanowire trees with the goal of capturing solar energy and converting it to hydrogen fuel.
• But they only pick up nature shows: A Utah company has devised a way to spray nanoparticles on trees and turn them into high-powered antenna.

Video bonus: The National Cancer Institute makes its case for how nanotechnology could be the cancer-fighting weapon we’ve been waiting for.

The BodyMedia Armband is yet another tool to help you track your health with personalized data.

Someday, probably sooner than we think, much of our lives will be recorded by sensors. Whether it’s armbands tracking our heartbeats or dashboards monitoring our driving or smart phones pinpointing where we are at all times, we, as defined by our preferences and habits, are becoming part of the staggering swirl of data already out there in cyberspace.

With so much personal information now in play, a lot of people are nervous about who owns it and what they’ll do with it. As they should be. But there’s also the question of how to make sense of it all. Can all this seemingly random data be reconfigured into patterns that not only do the obvious–allow businesses to zero in on customers–but also help deal with ridiculously complex matters, such as slashing health care costs or forecasting the stock market?

Consider the possibilities in health care. In the past, anyone analyzing who gets ill and why had to rely on data skewed heavily toward sick people–statistics from hospitals, info from doctors. But now, with more and more healthy people collecting daily stats on everything from their blood pressure to their calorie consumption to how many hours of REM sleep they get a night, there’s potentially a  trove of new health data that could reshape what experts analyze. As Shamus Husheer, CEO of the British firm Cambridge Temperature Concepts, told the Wall Street Journal, “You can compare sleep patterns from normal people with, say, pain sufferers. If you don’t know what normal sleep looks like, how do you tease out the data?”

In Austin, Texas, Seton Health Care is using Watson–that’s right, the IBM supercomputer that humiliated its human competitors on “Jeopardy!” last year–to comb through tons of patient information with the goal of helping hospitals identify behavior that drives up costs.  For instance, Watson is now focusing on patients with congestive heart failure, but it’s looking at much more than what appears on patients’ charts, such as doctors’ notes. And it’s finding that factors that wouldn’t ordinarily show up in medical analysis–like patients not having transportation to get to a doctor for checkups–can be a big reason for repeat trips to the ER, which of course, is the sort of thing that sends health care costs through the roof.

Twitter tells all

Now that we have both tools to crunch so much data and so much data to crunch, it makes finding patterns that predict the future less daunting.  “We’re finally in a position where people volunteer information about their specific activities, often their location, who they’re with, what they’re doing, how they feel about what they’re doing, what they’re talking about,” Indiana University professor Johan Bollen told the Boston Globe. ”We’ve never had data like that before, at least not at that level of granularity.”

There are outfits that analyze Twitter traffic for financial services companies and even a hedge fund in London that uses a secret Twitter-based formula to make investment decisions.

Bollen is such a believer that he says he’s found a correlation between the level of anxiety expressed on Twitter and the performance of the stock market. Seriously. Based on his analysis, when there’s a high level of anxiety of Twitter, three days later, the stock market goes down.

So remember, keep your tweets sweet.

We’ll be watching you

Here are just a few of the new ways sensors are tapping into our daily lives:

• The beat goes on: A North Carolina startup has created earbuds with sensors that monitor your heart rate and other biometric data.
• Smarty pants: Soon American soldiers could be wearing underwear that tracks their respiration, heart rate, body posture and skin temperature and relays the info back to a central system.
• Another reason to watch your weight: A Japanese engineering professor has developed an ultra-sensitive sheet that fits over the driver’s seat and, by reading the contours of your butt, can determine if you’re one of the car’s approved drivers.
• Some like it hot, some don’t: Thanks to researchers at MIT, you may one day wear a wristband that allows you to control the temperature and lighting in your part of the office.
• And now, a pill for your pills: Later this year a smart pill with sensors that track if people are using their medications correctly will go on the market in the United Kingdom.
• Your clothes just called: Apple has received a patent for a system through which your running shoes or your clothing will send suggestions to your iPhone about how you can improve your workout.

Video bonus: Check out how OmniTouch can turn your hand, or any other flat surface, into a touch screen.

What can eye-tracking teach us? Image courtesy of Flickr user Michele Catania

Tracking the eye movements of people as they peruse an item or advertisement or web page has long been a staple of marketers. The goal, of course, is to see where their eyes move and where they linger and then devise ways to get them to linger longer. It’s always felt a little creepy to me.

So it curbed my inner curmudgeon to read recently about research showing you can learn a few things about someone by watching where they’re looking. For instance, a study published in Cognition magazine this month suggests that who a person is relates to how they move their eyes. In this case, the scientists found that people they identified as more “curious”–based on their answers to survey questions–also were more likely to be the ones whose eyes moved freely around photos they were asked to view. Their eyes, it seemed, were true to their curious nature.

Not impresssed? Okay, how about this: Another study done a a few years ago  by psychologists Elizabeth Grant and Michael Spivey found that people whose eyes tended to focus on a particular part of a diagram were most likely to solve a problem–in this case how to use a laser to destroy a tumor in a patient’s stomach. Then, after the researchers highlighted that section of the diagram, twice as many people figured out how to do it. By having their eyes directed to the right place, their brains were able to gather the information they needed.

But what if you tracked the eye movements of an expert, say a surgeon, and then used that as a teaching tool? That’s exactly what researchers at the University of Exeter in Great Britain did last year. First, they recorded where and for how long the eyes of an experienced surgeon were fixed during a simulated surgery.  Then novice surgeons were trained to mimic those eye movements. Those who mastered the technique were able to learn technical surgical skills much more quickly–and were less stressed–than those who didn’t use it as part of their training.

Wonder if this would work on teenage drivers. (See below).

Power gazing

Judging from the reports from last week’s Consumer Electronics Show (CES), reviewers weren’t exactly dazzled by most of the thousands of gizmos and gadgets on display.  But one demo that did seem to fire off some sparks featured a system called Gaze from the Swedish company Tobii Technology.

Gaze uses a web cam to track your eyes and essentially turn them into a cursor. It works like this:  To calibrate your eyes, you first look at an application on the screen, then tap the touch pad to launch it. Infrared lights illuminate your pupils, then two cameras take rapid-fire photos and use them to make 3-D models of your eyes that can follow their movement.

Once your eyes take over, you no longer have to physically scroll  down a page. Just move your eyes down the screen and the text rolls up in response. Or you can scroll horizontally through photos, again just by shifting your eyes.  And then there are the video game possibilites. The demo at CES allowed you to blast asteroids out of the sky simply by staring at them.

I am retina, hear me roar.

The eyes have it

Here are more things scientists are learning by looking into people’s eyes:

• Read my lips: “Go to sleep”: Researchers at Florida Atlantic University say that starting at six months of age, babies learn to talk by gazing at your lips instead of your eyes.
• Puppy love: A study published in the latest issue of Current Biology concludes that dogs play close attention to our eye movements and they’re more responsive if you first make eye contact.
• Could it be because they’re teenagers?: Scientists at Montana State University received 1 $500,000 grant from the National Science Foundation to use eye-tracking sensors to help determine why young drivers have a hard time recognizing traffic hazards.
• Eye spy: A device called an EyeBrain tracker is being tested in France to see if it can help diagnose early symptoms of Parkinson’s disease.
• Don’t judge a friend by his cover: An eye-tracking study of the new Facebook Timeline found, among other things, that while people noticed the big cover photos first, they spent more time looking at the smaller profile photos.  Oh, and also more people noticed the ads in the new format.

Video Bonus: See for yourself how to play Asteroids with your eyes.

Boston Dynamic's Big Dog robot would carry supplies in the battlefield.

A week or so ago I asked my 20-year-old son why there was so much hype around the latest shootapalooza game, “Call of Duty, MW3.”

“You have no idea,” he said.

He was right. Within a day of its release last Tuesday, Activision sold 6.5 million games in North America and the U.K., prompting the company to declare the first-day take of $400 million as the “biggest entertainment launch of all time,” bigger than the openings of Star Wars and Lord of the Rings.

For the uninitiated, the MW stands for Modern Warfare, although it’s more like World War II with 21st century weapons. The battlegrounds are mainly European cities—London, Paris, Berlin—although it also does provide an opportunity to blast away at Wall Street. In some ways, “MW3″ isn’t all that much like modern warfare—the enemy is the Russian army, not tribesmen hiding in the mountains. And while the game allows players to use drones, they don’t do collateral damage.

Don’t overthink this, I told myself, it’s only a game. But then, the day after the “MW3″ launch, I read a piece in the Washington Post by Amy Fraher, a retired U.S. Navy commander, in which she contended that the most critical asset of military leaders of the future won’t be technical skills, but rather emotional intelligence.

Personally, I can’t imagine Gen. George Patton telling anyone, “I feel your pain.” But Fraher’s point is that as both the makeup of the U.S. military and the situations in which it operates become more complex and nuanced, what a leader really will need is old-fashioned social skills.

Dealing with terror

That’s not to say the Defense Department will stop investing billions in fresh firepower  (although looming budget cuts could slice into weapons programs.) But much of the innovative thinking coming out of the Pentagon has to do with helping soldiers deal with the ugliness and unpredictability of modern terror tactics.

In a recent article in National Defense Magazine, “10 Technologies the Military Needs for the Next War,” there’s little mention of weapons. Instead the list focuses on such things as robot pack mules that would relieve soldiers of lugging food, ammo and heavy batteries, high-speed mobile broadband anywhere and—yes, gamers—non-lethal weapons, to reduce civilian casualties.

Nor is it surprising that the military is putting a lot of energy into finding  more effective ways to detect roadside bombs, terribly harmful and destructive devices whose threat it didn’t fully anticipate before invading Iraq. Among the bomb-spotting options are a laser being developed at Michigan State and a sensing device using terahertz radiation.  And just last week the Defense Department said it was in the market for a long-distance paintball gun that could shoot suspicious objects with bomb-detecting paint.

The other deadly threat in Iraq and Afghanistan have been snipers. One promising defense being developed by a Hawaii firm is a device called FLASH, which uses infrared sensors and high-speed processors to pinpoint not only where shots are coming from, but also what kind of weapon is firing them.

National Defense Magazine didn’t mince words. “Innovation is not helpful if it’s not assisting troops at war,” the article said. “As many senior Pentagon officials have noted, an 80-percent solution that can be available in months is better than a perfect outcome that could takes years or decades to achieve.”

Here are other inventions that could be in the military’s future:

•  You and your bright idea: The Defense Department has been relying more and more on crowdsourcing—holding online competitions, with prizes, to encourage outsiders to solve problems. The latest success story is something called the “Vehicle Stopper.” Proposed by a retired mechanical engineer in Peru, it’s a remote-controlled vehicle that can chase down a fleeing car and then deploy an airbag under it and bring it to a halt.
• This is a job for PETMAN: The latest invention from Boston Dynamics, which has already supplied the military with several robot models, is a two-legged, six-foot-tall machine called PETMAN. That’s stands for Protection Ensemble Test Mannequin, and it’s main role would be to test uniforms and headgear designed to protect soldiers from chemical weapons.
• When Humvees fly: The Defense Department wants someone to build a four-seat, off-road vehicle that flies like a helicopter.
• Spy network: To speed up the process for getting spy satellites airborne, the Pentagon is looking to develop airplanes that can launch them into orbit.

Bonus video: Okay, not everything is a good idea. Hungry Beast rolls out some of the “stupidest military inventions in history.”