<ul class="summary-list"><li>Scientist Katalin Karikó struggled for years to convince colleagues that messenger <keyword id="130094" type="ORGANIZATION" weightage="60" keywordseo="RNA">RNA</keyword> could have disease-fighting applications in humans.</li><li>In 2005, she found a way to configure <keyword id="2667287" type="PERSON" weightage="60" keywordseo="mRNA">mRNA</keyword> so that it slipped past the body's natural defenses — a discovery that paved for the way for the world's first mRNA vaccines.</li><li>The COVID-19 vaccines from both Pfizer-BioNTech and <keyword id="4912868" type="PERSON" weightage="60" keywordseo="moderna">Moderna</keyword> rely on this technology.</li><li><keyword id="44612" type="CITY" weightage="60" keywordseo="Pfizer">Pfizer</keyword>'s vaccine was authorized Friday for emergency use in the US.</li></ul><p style="text-align: left;">When biochemist Katalin Karikó first entered the US with her husband and 2-year-old daughter, she had no cell phone or credit card. </p><p style="text-align: left;">"It was a one-way ticket," she told Business Insider. "We didn't know anybody."</p><p style="text-align: left;">It was 1985. The family was moving from Hungary to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, so Karikó could take a postdoctoral position at Temple University. They were only permitted to exchange $100, but Karikó found a workaround: She hid extra cash - £900 British pounds - in her daughter's teddy bear. The money had come from selling the family's car on the black market.</p><p style="text-align: left;">In a way, Karikó's entire career has been based on this kind of clever solution. In 2005, she discovered a way to configure messenger RNA - a molecule that kickstarts the production of proteins - so that it slipped past the body's natural defenses, unannounced. </p><p style="text-align: left;">That paved the way for what has recently turned out to be one of modern <keyword id="41551" type="ENTERTAINMENT" weightage="100" keywordseo="science">science</keyword>'s greatest achievements: the world's first mRNA vaccines.</p><p>Karikó, now 65, oversees mRNA protein replacement at <keyword id="3124139" type="PERSON" weightage="60" keywordseo="BioNTech">BioNTech</keyword>, a German biotech firm that developed a <keyword id="1754604" type="PERSON" weightage="60" keywordseo="coronavirus">coronavirus</keyword> vaccine in partnership with US pharma giant Pfizer. That vaccine has now been authorized in the UK, Canada, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, and the US. Karikó's work also inspired the founding of Moderna, the US biotech company developing a competing coronavirus shot.</p><p>Both vaccines use mRNA to deliver a coded message to the body that triggers an immune response. And so far, both have been found to be highly effective at preventing COVID-19: Pfizer and BioNTech's two-shot regimen was found to be 95% effective, while Moderna's was shown to be 94.5% effective. Moderna's vaccine could be approved in the US later this month.</p><p>Many scientists expect both vaccines' efficacy rates to go down a bit once they get administered to the general public, but the results so far have been far better than most experts anticipated.</p><p style="text-align: left;">For Karikó, though, the success came after a long fight.</p><h2>'Everybody rejected it'</h2><p>Karikó's first mRNA-therapy grant application was rejected in 1990, a year after she joined the faculty at the University of Pennsylvania. Then came more rejections, one after another.</p><p>"I kept writing and improving the approach - better RNA, better delivery," Karikó said. "I came up with applications and so on, tried to get to government funding, private funding from investors, but everybody rejected it."</p><div type="image" title="1989 Kariko " height="1164" width="1161" msid="79669389" hostid="261"></div>Karikó was demoted to an adjunct position in 1995. Around the same time, she was diagnosed with cancer. Her husband, meanwhile, was held up in Hungary due to a visa issue, and wound up staying away six months. <p>Still, Karikó kept pursuing her research.</p><p style="text-align: left;">Her studies of RNA built on the work of scientists at the University of Wisconsin and biotech company Vical Incorporated, who'd figured out how to manufacture mRNA so it would instruct living cells to make specific proteins. Those studies, conducted around 1990, laid the foundation for the future COVID-19 vaccines. </p><p style="text-align: left;">These new vaccines use a small piece of mRNA from the coronavirus genome to tell the body to produce the virus' spike protein. That's the part that helps the coronavirus attach to and invade cells, and it's what the immune system targets in its response. So when the body detects the protein's presence, it develops antibodies to neutralize it, resulting in protection against the virus.</p><p style="text-align: left;">Unlike more traditional shots, mRNA vaccines stimulate the production of killer T cells, which stop the coronavirus from replicating. The vaccines are also relatively easy and quick to produce, since they're made in test tubes or tanks rather than cultivated in cells.</p><div type="image" title="how mRNA vaccines work infographic" height="2534" width="1876" msid="79669391" hostid="261"></div><p>But in order to make a successful mRNA vaccine in the first place, Karikó had to overcome a major roadblock: the approach was triggering a dangerous immune response in mice. </p><h2>A prize-worthy discovery</h2><p>Karikó had found that when lab-made mRNA was injected on its own, the body would recognize it as a foreign invader and destroy it right away, before it could trigger the protein-making process. Studies in mice showed the process could even lead to an inflammatory response that would risk a patient's health. So researchers had to trick the body into believing that lab-made mRNA didn't pose a threat.</p><p>Karikó worked for years to find a solution. Her workdays usually started at 6:00 a.m., and she worked some weekends and holidays - even slept in the office occasionally. </p><p>"From outside, it seemed crazy, struggling, but I was happy in the lab," she said. "My husband always, even today, says, 'This is entertainment for you.' I don't say that I go to work. It is like play."</p><p>At the same time, Karikó was raising a future Olympic athlete. Her daughter, Susan Francia, won gold medals on the US rowing team in 2008 and 2012. Karikó's post at UPenn enabled her to send Susan to college there for a quarter of the regular tuition.</p><p>"I said, 'Never in my life could I afford that, so no matter what I have to stay on the job,'" Karikó said. </p><div type="image" title="kariko with daughter london.JPG" height="2842" width="2592" msid="79669392" hostid="261"></div><p>Then in 1997, Karikó met Drew Weissman, an immunologist who'd just joined the university. They got to chatting while sharing a photocopy machine, then began working together to address the mRNA immune-response problem.</p><p>The culprit turned out to be a single RNA building block, or nucleoside, called uridine. With a slight modification to that nucleoside, Karikó and Weissman were able to stop the dangerous reaction in mice. </p><p>When she realized it was working, Karikó said, "I just repeated my experiment because I thought I messed up." </p><p>But it wasn't a mistake - the pair <a href="https://www.pennmedicine.org/news/news-releases/2005/august/penn-study-finds-a-new-role">published the finding in 2005</a>. Some scientists now think that it's worthy of a Nobel Prize.</p><p>"If anyone asks me whom to vote for some day down the line, I would put them front and center," Derrick Rossi, a professor at Harvard Medical School, <a href="https://www.statnews.com/2020/11/10/the-story-of-mrna-how-a-once-dismissed-idea-became-a-leading-technology-in-the-covid-vaccine-race/">told STAT and The Boston Globe</a>. "That fundamental discovery is going to go into medicines that help the world."</p><h2>A novel delivery system </h2><p>Even after Karikó's discovery, researchers still had to figure out how to stop the body from breaking down mRNA too quickly for it to be effective.</p><p>"There's two parts that make mRNA a success," Robert Langer, a biomedical engineering professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a co-founder of Moderna, told Business Insider. "Developing better mRNAs and then developing better ways to deliver it."</p><p>Langer, too, faced pushback for discoveries that later proved key to mRNA vaccines. In 1976, he <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/263797a0">published a paper</a> showing that when nucleic acids like DNA and RNA were encased in various polymers, the polymers would release the acids without triggering an inflammatory response.</p><p>The paper received widespread criticism. People didn't believe the results.</p><p>"It was the first time anybody put nucleic acids into tiny particles and showed you could use them for delivery," Langer said. "The reason why people were so upset and thought it was wrong - they felt, 'How could a big molecule get out of a package?' It's like walking through a wall."</p><p>The technology, as it turns out, paved the way for groundbreaking drug delivery methods like the ones used to send chemotherapy to a tumor site. Current mRNA coronavirus vaccines similarly use a lipid molecule to help mRNA cross the cell membrane. </p><div type="image" title="robert langer" height="3714" width="5610" msid="79669394" hostid="261"></div><p>"Over the years, that's a lot of what I did is develop better and better drug delivery systems," Langer said. </p><p>In 2010, Rossi and fellow Harvard Medical School professor Timothy Springer approached Langer about forming a company based on mRNA therapy, inspired by Karikó and Weissman's work. Langer was in. </p><p>"I don't know that it was rocket science to figure out that it would be a big deal," he said.</p><p>The three scientists, along with cardiovascular scientist Kenneth Chien, co-founded Moderna - named after "modified RNA."</p><p>"One of the big obstacles for all these things has been the delivery part," Langer said. "That was the part I felt like I could make a difference in."</p><h2>A patent tug-of-war</h2><p>Karikó and Weissman filed a patent for their work shortly after their research was published. When the patent was originally submitted, Karikó's name was listed second. But she fought to get first billing. </p><p>"I said, 'No, it was my idea,'" she said. "I insisted - change it back."</p><p>Her insistence was, perhaps, a reaction to sexism she'd faced earlier in her career. Once, Karikó said, she was asked for the name of her supervisor while running her own lab. She was referred to as "Mrs." in an article in which her male colleagues were given the title "professor." Another article confused her as a postdoc in Weissman's lab. </p><p>"I don't work in anybody's lab," Karikó said. "I created my own field."</p><p>Armed with their patent, Karikó and Weissman formed an mRNA-based drug company called RNARx, but it didn't get far off the ground. In 2010, the University of Pennsylvania sold the exclusive license to Karikó and Weissman's patent to Gary Dahl, the head of a lab supply company called Cellscript.</p><p>Shortly after, Karikó was approached by Flagship Pioneering, the venture capital company backing Moderna. It was also interested in her license - but it was too late.</p><div type="image" title="A sign marks the headquarters of Moderna Therapeutics, which is developing a vaccine against the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), in Cambridge, Massachusetts, U.S., May 18, 2020.   REUTERS/Brian Snyder" height="3468" width="4569" msid="79669395" hostid="261"></div><p>Without access to the patent, Moderna was tasked with finding its own modified nucleoside that could replicate Karikó's results. The company <a href="https://www.nature.com/news/polopoly_fs/1.17674!/menu/main/topColumns/topLeftColumn/pdf/522026a.pdf?origin=ppub">received a patent</a> for that nucleoside, among others, in 2014.</p><p>As Langer put it: "All science is built on other science."</p><h2>The end of a decades-long journey</h2><p>Competition in the mRNA field continued to grow. By 2013, Moderna's research was gaining traction - the company <a href="https://www.astrazeneca.com/media-centre/press-releases/2013/astrazeneca-moderna-therapeutics-cardio-metabolic-diseases-cancer-treatment-21032013.html#!">received $240 million from the UK drug company AstraZeneca</a> to find, develop, and commercialize mRNA treatments for cardiometabolic diseases and cancer.</p><p>Karikó wanted a new way to enter the ring. After UPenn declined to promote her to a faculty role in 2013, she joined BioNTech as senior vice president. <a href="https://www.wired.co.uk/article/mrna-coronavirus-vaccine-pfizer-biontech">Karikó told Wired</a> that UPenn faculty said they'd "concluded that I was not of faculty quality."</p><p>"When I told them I was leaving, they laughed at me and said, 'BioNTech doesn't even have a website,'" she said.</p><p>In 2017, <a>Karikó</a>, along with several other researchers at BioNTech and the University of Pennsylvania, showed that an <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/nature21428">mRNA vaccine protected mice and monkeys</a> against the Zika virus.</p><p>That work required her to live in Germany, while her husband stayed in Philadelphia.</p><p>"I told him, 'I'll just go until the first person will be injected with modified RNA.' Then I said, 'You know, I want to see that person be cured,'" Karikó said. "Now I can come home."</p><p>Indeed, the Pfizer-BioNTech injection is the first mRNA vaccine ever authorized. Moderna's shot is poised to become the second. The company has never gotten a vaccine approved, though it had entered eight mRNA vaccines into clinical trials before the pandemic, including <a href="https://www.biospace.com/article/moderna-releases-phase-i-data-from-2-influenza-trials/">a flu vaccine</a>.</p><p>"When people are saying, 'There is no messenger RNA vaccine that's ever been,' it is very critical and very important to know that not because it failed," Karikó said. "It just didn't have time to be advanced by many people."</p><p>Neither she nor Langer were surprised when two mRNA vaccines proved successful at preventing COVID-19. </p><p>"It followed the path of things that we'd already done before," Langer said, adding, "it was a high likelihood that it would work, but there's nothing like seeing the data."</p><p>Like Karikó, Langer sees this vaccine as the culmination of his life's work.</p><p>"The other things I did were sort of the start of the journey," he said. "This is, for me, close to the end where you actually see a human validation, that something that you've contributed to is going to really change the world."</p><p>Yet even at a career high, both Langner and Karikó celebrated only modestly. After receiving the good <keyword id="6355005" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="news">news</keyword> about Moderna's vaccine trials, Langer said he spent his day like most others: talking to his students and Moderna employees on Zoom.</p><p>Karikó said she got the call about the Pfizer-BioNTech results the night before they were publicly announced. Afterward, she treated herself to a bag of chocolate-covered peanuts.</p><p>"I told my husband, I will eat the whole thing now," she said.</p>

BioNTech scientist Katalin Karikó risked her career to develop mRNA vaccines. Americans will start getting her coronavirus shot on Monday.

<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span>PhotoStock10/Shutterstock.com</span></p></div><p></p></div></div></p><ul><li><strong>A new kind of male birth control pill was recently tested in a month-long trial, and is moving forward into a three-month study - the next step in the FDA approval process.</strong></li><li><strong>The pill is taken once daily with a meal. </strong></li><li><strong>Some men who took it gained a few pounds, and some decreased their levels of "good" HDL cholesterol.</strong></li><li><strong>The experimental pill is at least five to 10 years away from coming to market. </strong></li></ul><p><br />For decades, men have had only two ways to actively avoid impregnating a partner: wear a condom (which are about <a href="https://www.plannedparenthood.org/learn/birth-control/condom/how-effective-are-condoms">85% effective</a>) or get a vasectomy. </p><p>But doctors Stephanie Page from the University of Washington and Christina Wang from <span>UCLA are testing a new drug for men that works a lot like "the pill" for women. They're hoping the once-daily hormone-suppressing pill might become a new option for preventing unwanted pregnancies.</span></p><p><span>"M</span>en actually are very interested in contraception," Page told Business Insider. "Between vasectomy and condoms, they do about 17% of the contracepting in the United States. They just don't have a lot of choices."</p><p><span>The experimental drug was recently tested in a <a href="https://www.endocrine.org/news-room/2018/dimethandrolone-undecanoate-shows-promise-as-a-male-birth-control-pill">one-month trial</a> involving 83 subjects. It's </span><span>called dimethandrolone undecanoate, or DMAU, and</span> works by suppressing male body's natural sex hormone (testosterone). In its current form, the pill lowers a man's testosterone levels to what they were in boyhood or lower, essentially like a chemical <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2725306/">castration</a>.</p><p>To balance out the effects of men's low testosterone levels while taking the drug, the patients were given a synthetic androgen, or male steroid hormone, to help them maintain their "male" characteristics. The artificial hormone is designed to mimic the role testosterone plays in non-sperm-related functions in the body, like sex drive, musculation, and hair growth.</p><p>When men stop taking the pill, their natural hormones should have a resurgence, and they'll be able to impregnate again. It's similar to the way hormonal birth control works in women. </p><p><span>Page and Wang are readying their drug for a three-month, FDA phase-2 trial that's set to start next month. </span>The pill <span>looks a bit like a fish oil capsule, and will be tested in men from 18 to 50 years old, with doses ranging from 200 to 400 milligrams a day.</span></p><p>Now that the researchers have seen that their pill can indeed lower men's testosterone, the longer study will assess how effectively the men's sperm count is annihilated by those lower testosterone levels.</p><h2><span>Why we don't have a male birth control pill yet </span></h2><p><span>"The pill" for women has been on the market for nearly 60 years. There are several reasons there's no male equivalent yet: part of the problem has been a lack of support from drug makers, but a more scientific challenge has been the mathematical reality that it's tougher to exterminate the millions of sperm that come out of men's bodies than the monthly egg or two that passes through a woman's reproductive system.</span></p><p><span>"Women only ovulate 1 or 2 eggs a month," Page said. "Men on the other hand, are making 1,000 sperm a second. So every time a man ejaculates, there's 15 to 100 million sperm."</span></p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span>Rich Pedroncelli/AP</span></p></div><p></p></div></div></p><p><span>Many prior attempts to create male birth control drugs have had problems with side effects too, especially with liver damage. Page and Wang think they've fixed that issue in their new pill, but </span>the initial one-month trial did raise concerns about other side effects.</p><p>Like a lot of women who take hormonal birth control, some men gained weight on the pill. Some put on a few pounds, some gained none, and one unlucky man gained nearly nine pounds in the one-month study. In general, the men also saw their levels of HDL cholesterol (considered the good kind) drop slightly.</p><h2>Pharmaceutical companies haven't bought into male birth control yet</h2><p><span>Page said that even in a best case scenario, a male birth control pill for consumers is still between five and 10 years away, since much larger-scale studies need to be done before the FDA would give a seal of approval. </span></p><p><span>The men's pill also needs to clear another major hurdle: a pharmaceutical company has to pay to make the drug. That's something other male birth-control makers have struggled with in the past. Last year, Indian biomedical engineer Sujoy Guha was ready to take <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2017-03-29/a-new-kind-of-male-birth-control-is-coming">injectable birth control gel</a> - in the form of a shot that men could slip into their scrotum - to market. But he couldn't get any big pharmaceutical companies to back the product, as <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2017-03-29/a-new-kind-of-male-birth-control-is-coming">Bloomberg reported</a>.</span><span></span></p><p><span>We don't yet know what challenges might arise if men were to use hormonal birth control long-term. But <a href="http://www.pbs.org/wnet/need-to-know/health/a-brief-history-of-the-birth-control-pill/480/">58 years</a> of hormonal birth control use in women suggest that it can come with serious risks. Taking the pill heightens a woman's <a href="https://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/causes-prevention/risk/hormones/oral-contraceptives-fact-sheet">risk of developing breast and cervical cancer,</a> increases her <a href="https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapsychiatry/fullarticle/2552796">risk of depression,</a> and can <a href="https://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/birth-control/in-depth/birth-control-pill/art-20045136?pg=2">cause her blood pressure to rise</a>. </span></p><p><span>That hasn't deterred roughly 16% of American women between the ages of 15-44 from taking the tablets every day, as <a href="https://www.guttmacher.org/fact-sheet/contraceptive-use-united-states">Guttmacher Institute</a> estimates. There's a reason they're willing to take on the risks.</span></p><p>"Pregnancy is still a life threatening condition," Page said. "The risks and the need for women is much greater."</p>    <div class="margin-top">        <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/most-effective-birth-control-according-gynecologist-2016-12">The most popular form of birth control isn't always the most effective - according to a gynecologist</a></h3>        <div>                    </div>    </div>

A male birth control pill that dramatically lowers testosterone levels is moving forward into a 3-month trial

<p><div class="image-container float_right" style="width:400px"><div class="image"></div><p class="source">Agence France Presse</p></div>Researchers have engineered artificial human ears that look and act like the real thing thanks to 3D printing, giving hope to patients missing all or part of their ears.</p>
<p>The new ears, practically identical to human ones, could provide the solution long sought by reconstructive surgeons to treat thousands of children born with the congenital deformity microtia, along with those who suffered ear loss to cancer or in an accident.</p>
<p>In a study published online in the PLOS ONE journal, Cornell biomedical engineers and Weill Cornell Medical College physicians said the flexible ears grew cartilage over three months to replace the collagen used to mold them.</p>
<p>"This is such a win-win for both <keyword id="44641" type="CITY" weightage="60" keywordseo="medicine">medicine</keyword> and basic science, demonstrating what we can achieve when we work together," said co-lead author Lawrence Bonassar, associate professor of biomedical engineering at Cornell.</p>
<p>Bonassar and his colleagues first constructed the ears with a digitized 3D image of a person's ear that served to build a mold of a solid ear using a 3D printer.</p>
<p>A high-density, injectable gel made of living cells helped fill the mold. Once the mold removed, cartilage was grown on the collagen.</p>
<p>And researchers praised the speed of the process, noting it takes half a day to build the mold, about a day to print it, 30 minutes to inject the gel and the ear can be removed just 15 minutes later.</p>
<p>"We trim the ear and then let it culture for several days in nourishing cell culture media before it is implanted," Bonassar said in a statement.</p>
<p>Microtia, when the external ear is not fully developed, occurs in about 1 to four per 10,000 births each year in the United States.</p>
<p>Although children born with the deformity often have an intact inner ear, they lose hearing due to the missing external structure.</p>
<p>Weill Cornell associate professor Jason Spector noted that physicians could reduce the chances of rejection by using human cells from the same patient to build the ear.</p>
<p>The best time to implant a bioengineered ear on a child would be around the age of five or six, when ears are at about 80 percent of their adult size.</p>
<p>Spector predicted that researchers could try the first human implant of a Cornell bioengineered ear in as little as three years.</p>
<p>Replacement ears are usually built using materials with a foam-like consistency, or using a patient's harvest rib. But the process is often painful, especially for children, as the ears rarely look natural or perform well.</p>
<div class="nc_footer">
<p>Copyright (2013) AFP. All rights reserved.</p>
</div>
<p></p>

Researchers Use 3D Printing To Grow Lifelike Human Ears

<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Populism#/media/File:Donald_Trump_(27150701414).jpg">Gage Skidmore / Wikimedia Commons</a></span></p></div><p></p></div></div>In a <a href="http://www.nature.com/news/how-scientists-reacted-to-the-us-election-results-1.20965" target="_blank">recent news story published by Nature.com</a> (the same company that produces the well-known science journal <a href="http://www.nature.com/news/how-scientists-reacted-to-the-us-election-results-1.20965" target="_blank">o</a>f the same name), Michael Lubell, the director of public affairs for the American Physical Society, called Donald Trump "the first anti-science president."</p><p>The story, which included public reactions from scientists around the world gathered from places like Twitter, featured more input from other researchers who appeared to share Lubell's concern.</p><p>"This is terrifying for science, research, education, and the future of our planet," tweeted María Escudero Escribano, a postdoc studying electrochemistry and and sustainable energy conversation at Stanford University in California. "I guess it's time for me to go back to Europe."</p><p>Trump has never explicitly said that he wants to reduce funding for science in the US. However, his lack of policy and planning for the scientific community - <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/donald-trumps-utterly-ridiculous-budget-plan/2016/02/19/b6300002-d72b-11e5-be55-2cc3c1e4b76b_story.html" target="_blank">paired with his apparently ridiculous budgeting</a> - could be a worry in itself. </p><p>Another concern that people in the research community have is Trump's apparent distain for the National Institutes of Health (NIH) - the federal agency that shells out billions for biomedical research. <a href="http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2015/10/donald-trump-has-big-plans-reform-nih" target="_blank">There's a famously quoted interview with Michael Savage</a> on a conservative radio show last year where Trump said: "I hear so much about the NIH, and it's terrible."</p><p>"I do breast cancer research for my PhD," tweeted Sarah Hengel, a graduate student at the University of Iowa in Iowa City. "Scared not only for my future but for the future of research and next years @NIH budget."</p><p>Without federal money, labs would crumble, because there simply aren't enough private donors to make up that amount of funding.</p><p>Also, with private donors, they can often expect to see something ground-breaking very quickly, and unfortunately science very seldom relies on eureka moments. It's more like building blocks, with every small step getting a little bit closer to understanding a disease or metabolic function. That's where cures and treatments come from. </p><h2>It's more about what Trump hasn't said than what he has.</h2><p>Trump has pledged to cut federal spending, but he hasn't offered much information about how this could affect technological and scientific advancement, or exactly how he plans to balance lowered taxes with more innovation.</p><p>Trump has said that the US "must have programs such as a viable space program and institutional research that serve as incubators to innovation and the advancement of science and engineering in a number of fields," but has also suggested that the massive tax cuts he has planned will reduce the amount of money available that funds these things.</p><p>He told ScienceDebate.org that while "there are increasing demands to curtail spending and to balance the federal budget, we must make the commitment to invest in science, engineering, healthcare and other areas that will make the lives of Americans better, safer and more prosperous," offering no way of balancing the two issues.</p><h2>Still, what Trump says and does are two different things.</h2><p>But just because Trump has said these things, it doesn't necessarily mean that he'll stop funding scientific research. As <a href="http://www.theverge.com/2016/11/10/13588306/trump-public-funding-science-research-nih-nsf-budgets" target="_blank">Jennifer Zeitzer, the director of legislative relations at the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology told The Verge</a>, he has remained a bit of a black box on the issue. </p><p>"The good news is we don't know what it means for public funding," she said. "And the bad news is we don't know what it means for public funding."</p><p>Trump hasn't exactly been a conventional candidate since his campaign began, so it's hard to predict what his moves will be in terms of research. In previous presidencies, Republicans have generally spent more on the NIH and National Science Foundation, while <a href="http://www.sciencepolicyjournal.org/uploads/5/4/3/4/5434385/pa8_kushi_s_manuscript_clean.pdf" target="_blank">Democratic leaders have increased spending on NASA, the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Transportation</a>.</p><p>However, this definitely doesn't mean Trump will follow suit. He could be swayed by Republicans around him, such as Mike Pence who doesn't believe in stem cell research or <a href="http://fortune.com/2016/07/15/mike-pence-donald-trump-science/" target="_blank">that evolution exists</a>, and who has said in the past that he <a href="http://uk.businessinsider.com/mike-pence-smoking-doesnt-kill-2016-11" target="_blank">doesn't believe smoking causes cancer</a>.</p><p>Trump could lean more towards the <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/meet-the-freedom-caucus-2015-10?pundits_only=0&amp;get_all_comments=1&amp;no_reply_filter=1&amp;IR=T" target="_blank">House Freedom Caucus</a>, who are a populist group of Republican lawmakers who want to decrease federal spending everywhere, or he could take advice from people like <a href="http://www.sciencecoalition.org/ar.php?id=24" target="_blank">Tennessee Senator Lamar Alexander</a> who has called for more funding for research. </p><p>The reality is that no-one really knows, and until Trump makes some announcements about what his presidency will mean for the future of American science funding, researchers will be left in the dark.</p>    <div class="margin-top">        <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/photo-series-reveals-true-proportions-huge-objects-2016-11">These size comparisons show the true scale of enormous things</a></h3>        <div>            <div>        <div class="ooyala-video-player" data-video-autoplay="false" data-video-id="c1eWVnNzE6EEyJweXWOcYHRM1Gff7evr" data-player-variable="ooyalapopvideo" id="ooyalaplayer_popvideo" style="width:1280px;height:720px"></div>        </div>        </div>            </div>

Researchers are calling Trump 'the first anti-science president'

<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span>Human Connectome Project, <keyword id="41551" type="ENTERTAINMENT" weightage="100" keywordseo="science">Science</keyword>, March 2012. </span></p><p class="caption">human brain connectome</p></div><p></p></div></div>Traits like IQ, memory, and the tendency to use drugs are related to the number of brain connections we have, according to a <a href="http://www.nature.com/articles/nn.4125.epdf?referrer_access_token=zyRqWEvwLoyHw3mauEEtYtRgN0jAjWel9jnR3ZoTv0M_voVoalChSl9FueP-EX-U_d38EBhh9xtRYkxeudxjRLbAbN5fXC07Hu3kFRKv8_2g9VWad2FO9r1E65FFHL2XRE7dWVXTHZMTLjimhm4QIfWUeNuLFhjK3sWfWmsgNpcsPC4VAwTVTJhrAHKhJnMGo0qnkS0o-2umF6jSKYvdNm_QJMA0YGFyXU-98T3yGZtwCHRuOgyf6dLGAZTui0Zo&amp;tracking_referrer=www.nature.com">new study</a>.</p><p>The researchers found that people with more traits the researchers classified as "positive," like high IQ, tended to have a greater number of brain connections than people with more traits the researchers classified as "negative," like high drug use.</p><p>But some say we should be cautious in how we interpret the findings. </p><p>It's impossible to know whether weaker brain connectivity is the cause or effect of negative traits, Marcus Raichle, a neuroscientist at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, <a href="http://www.nature.com/news/wiring-diagrams-link-lifestyle-to-brain-function-1.18442?WT.mc_id=TWT_NatureNews">told Nature News</a>. </p><p>The findings are the first results of a massive effort to map the connections between cells in the brains of more than 1,000 living people, known as the <a href="http://www.humanconnectomeproject.org/">Human Connectome Project</a>.</p><p class="p1"><span class="s1">Launched in 2010 at a cost of $40 million, the 5-year project aims to map all the connections within a healthy human brain, and make the data available to scientists studying brain disorders.</span></p><p class="p1"><span class="s1">University of Oxford biomedical engineer Stephen Smith and his colleagues studied 461 people enrolled in the Human Connectome Project. </span><span class="s1">The volunteers had their brains scanned in a functional MRI machine, which measures blood flow to active parts of the brain.</span></p><p class="p1"><span class="s1">The patterns they observed showed where parts of the brain were active and engaged, or "connected," at the same time.</span></p><p>The researchers compared these scans with characteristics like income, education level, and drug use, as well as cognitive measures like IQ and memory. They arranged the traits on a spectrum, with things like high IQ and more education on the "positive" end and things like low IQ and high drug use on the "negative" end.</p><p>The more "positive" traits people had, the more brain connections they found, and vice versa.</p><p>However, the brain wiring patterns linked to general intelligence were not the same as those for other kinds of intelligence, such as hand-eye coordination, some researchers noted. This suggests maybe we should reconsider <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/what-iq-tests-really-measure-2011-5">what IQ tests actually measure</a>, especially since many scientists think it's <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/iq-tests-are-nothing-more-than-a-myth-2012-12">not the most useful measure of intelligence</a>.<span></span></p><p>Interestingly, people who had recently <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/your-body-and-brain-on-marijuana-2015-4">used marijuana</a> tended to be on the more negative end of the brain connectivity spectrum, the researchers said. However, <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/smoking-pot-doesnt-shrink-the-brain-2015-8">the jury's still out</a> on how marijuana affects the brain.</p><p>The specific brain areas that contributed most to the findings were part of a circuit called the <a href="http://psych.colorado.edu/~hannaje/Publications_%26_CV_files/Buckner_et_al_ANYAS_2008.pdf">default mode network</a>, which is active when a person is focusing on internal thoughts instead of the outside world. </p><p>Scientists still debate exactly what this brain circuitry does, but <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19329570">previous research</a> has linked it to several higher-level brain functions. </p><p><a href="http://www.livescience.com/41205-people-with-more-friends-have-more-connected-brains.html">Other research</a> has suggested that people with large groups of friends and good social skills have more connected brains.</p><p>And this is only the beginning of human connectome studies. </p><p>The Human Connectome Project is now looking at genetic data from people in the study, including many pairs of identical and fraternal twins, to see how genetic and environmental influences are related to brain connectivity. Meanwhile, other groups are studying the brain connections of aging adults and developing babies.</p>    <div class="margin-top">        <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/science-laughter-funny-2015-8">Here's what goes on in your brain when you laugh</a></h3>        <div>            <div>        <div class="ooyala-video-player" data-video-autoplay="false" data-video-id="c5NzY5dzo84pMd0M3w59yVvnitrQKXT0" data-player-variable="ooyalapopvideo" id="ooyalaplayer_popvideo" style="width:1280px;height:720px"></div>        </div>        </div>            </div>

The first results of a massive brain study reveal something fascinating about smart, successful people

<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container"><div class="image"><p class="source">"<keyword id="87920" type="ENTERTAINMENT" weightage="60" keywordseo="Gravity">Gravity</keyword>" from Warner Bros.</p></div><p></p></div></p>
<p>The most famous part of Alfonso Cuarón's last directed movie, "<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Children-Men-Widescreen-Edition-DVD/dp/B000N6TX1I">Children Of Men</a>" (2006), is a <a href="http://vimeo.com/41218073">378-second long moving shot</a> (see 24:22 of linked video) that follows the protagonist through an intricately coordinated war zone.</p>
<p>I was about five minutes into his new movie, <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/gravity-reviews-go-see-it-2013-8">the incredibly well-reviewed "Gravity</a>," when it occurred to me that there hadn't been a single cut.</p>
<p>Had I read the film blogs for the past two years, I would have known that geeks and insiders were salivating over the 17-minute take that Cuarón had said would open his new movie. <a href="http://billdesowitz.com/gravity-at-5d-flux/">As executive producer Chris DeFaria told Bill Desowitz and others at a conference</a><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;">: "</span><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;">Alfonso had an idea that he wanted the shots to be incredibly long, and I said, 'How long?' And he said he wanted the first shot to be really long. And I said, 'You mean, 40 seconds?' 'No, 17 minutes.'"</span></p>
<p><span>Directed by Cuarón and cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki (also of "Children Of Men"), the shot is a masterpiece.</span></p>
<p><span>[Spoilers limited to the first 17 minutes.]</span></p>
<p>After some ominous text, the movie opens to a shot of earth from space. As it lingers on this tranquil view, signs of life emerge: faint radio chatter comes from different sides and objects drift into the frame, the Hubble Telescope and something spinning around it that we soon see is an astronaut in a jet pack.</p>
<p>The camera drifts weightlessly, following the fantastic<span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;"> movements of veteran astronaut Matt Kowlaski (<keyword id="11804" type="PERSON" weightage="60" keywordseo="George-Clooney">George Clooney</keyword>) in the jet pack and showing specialist Shariff (Paul Sharma) as he completes a repair and dances in space, while the two of them chat happily with mission control, before revealing bio-medical engineer Ryan Stone (<keyword id="53664" type="PERSON" weightage="60" keywordseo="sandra-bullock">Sandra Bullock</keyword>) clinging to the telescope and struggling to fix a component.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;"></span><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;">Suddenly, mission control tells them to abort the mission, that debris from a destroyed satellite that was supposed to miss them has destroyed more satellite, sending a deadly hail of missiles in their direction. </span><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;">Before they can return to their shuttle, the debris arrives. The camera watches a large object hurtle toward them and pass narrowly.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;">The camera pans to Kowlaski and the other astronauts as they try to evacuate, while debris hurtles past. </span><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;">Then something big smashes into the shuttle and sets it spinning, with Stone attached by a long component arm, and the camera, facing toward Earth, watches her spin. Then something else smashes into the shuttle and the arm breaks off, spinning wildly away from Earth and toward the retreating camera.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;">The camera focuses in on Stone and begins to move with her, showing her terrified face as she spins </span><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;">and the background cycles from Earth to space, while over the radio Kowlaski tells her to detach herself before she gets too far away; a</span><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;">nd then she detaches herself and is flung away from Earth.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;"></span><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;">The camera no longer moves with her as she tumbles into space, becoming smaller and smaller in the distance, before finally the film cuts to black.</span></p>
<p><span>During the opening, Kowlaski talks about how many minutes away he is from beating Anatoly Solovyev's record long spacewalk. Perhaps this obsession with time serves as an inside joke for a take that lasts longer than almost anything in mainstream cinema.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;">The take isn't long just for the sake of being long. </span><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;"><a href="http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/10/02/anatomy-of-a-scene-video-of-gravity/">As Cuarón told the New York Times</a>, "W</span><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;">e wanted to slowly immerse audiences into first the environment and then to immerse them into the action, and the ultimate goal of this whole experiment was for the audiences to feel as if they are a third character who is floating with our other two characters in space."</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 15px;">There is a beautiful arc to it too</span><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;">, beginning with a shot of earth and a mighty astronaut flying above it and ending with a shot of space and a helpless astronaut falling into it.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;">The rest of the movie is just as good, full of long takes, hypnotic zero-gravity action, perfect special effects, and great acting.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;">Here's a rudimentary explanation of how it was filmed</span><a href="http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/10/03/alfonso-cuaron-on-the-making-of-his-instant-sci-fi-classic-gravity.html"> from Marlow Stern at The Daily Beast</a><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;">:</span></p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;"><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;">[</span><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;">Cuarón and Lubezki]</span><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;"> came up with the idea of rotating lights around a stationary actor to make it appear as if he or she was moving around rapidly. They developed a 9-by-14-foot "light box," nicknamed "The Cage" and lined with six giant LED panels composed of, he says, "millions of lights," which surrounded the actors, who were held up by harnesses that appeared invisible on screen. Then they designed "a race track" outside The Cage where a car-manufacturing robot with a camera installed inside would race around it and pop its arm inside various openings, to recreate the effect of floating and spinning around in space. The background, meanwhile, was added in post-production.</span></p>
<p>The use of 3-D is also excellent, with Cuarón telling Stern: "Gravity"<span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;"> was designed for 3-D "from Day 1," and in the four and a half years of making the film, "about three and a half was for 3-D work."</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;">We highly recommend seeing the movie, </span><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;">naturally</span><a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/see-gravity-in-imax-3d-nyc-2013-10"> in 3-D on a big screen</a><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;">.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5em;">Meanwhile, here's an extended trailer of "Gravity" showing the last two minutes of the opening scene:</span></p>
<p></p>

The 17-Minute Take In 'Gravity' Is An Absolute Masterpiece

<p></p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image"></div><p></p></div></div>Theranos is at a major turning point. What it does next could be critical to its survival.<p>The company, which rose to fame with the promise of a new test that uses only a finger-prick's worth of blood, is struggling to restore faith in its leadership and technology.</p><p>On Wednesday, it announced a major management shakeup, and - more critically - it has promised to address the biggest cause of <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/science-of-elizabeth-holmes-theranos-2015-4">skepticism in the scientific community</a>: that it hasn't ever published any studies on the technology.</p><p>Theranos'&#xa0;problems came into focus in October, when the <a href="http://www.wsj.com/articles/theranos-has-struggled-with-blood-tests-1444881901">The Wall Street Journal</a> reported its tests weren't producing accurate results and the company was trying to cover it up. Theranos dismissed many of the&#xa0;claims in lengthy rebuttals online, but still hasn't answered the question of how the tests work or offered data to support its process.<br><br>Staying quiet has done little to&#xa0;help its cause. Since The Journal's report the company - which once fetched a $9 billion valuation - has lost out on a key deal, had one of its two labs shut down, and wound up under investigation by several government agencies. Its&#xa0;founder, 32-year-old Elizabeth Holmes, faces a two-year <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/14/business/theranos-elizabeth-holmes-proposed-ban.html?_r=0">ban from the blood-testing business</a>.&#xa0;</br></br></p><p>Some former employees have said that this caginess pervades the company's culture and even affects how staff are asked to conduct themselves in public. On LinkedIn, for example, many people deliberately do not identify Theranos as their employer, and one person told Business Insider about a list of words that employees were banned from using outside of the office.</p><p>The next few months for Theranos will be crucial. Late Wednesday, Theranos said its president and chief operating officer, Sunny Balwani, is <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/theranos-coo-and-president-sunny-balwani-to-retire-2016-5">retiring as part of a company-wide re-organization</a>. And by August,&#xa0;Theranos had already&#xa0;said, it will release <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/theranos-to-present-at-aacc-conference-2016-4">its&#xa0;scientific data</a> in a presentation, at which point the company will have to show whether its technology is as revolutionary as it seems.</p><h2 class="p2"><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_left"><div><div class="image"></div><p></p></div></div>Banned words</h2><p class="p2">Former employees who spoke with Business Insider, all on the condition of anonymity because of concerns about legal repercussions, describe a company where communication is lacking and collaboration is discouraged.</p><p>One who worked at the company for a short time four years ago, said secrecy existed even within different teams at Theranos.</p><p>"In my time, teams were not allowed to talk to other teams," the person said.</p><p>The secrecy sometimes reached extremes, in this person's view, as when now-former&#xa0;second-in-command&#xa0;Balwani, sent the staff a list of words not to be used in the outside world.</p><p>The list of banned words included references to basic lab technology like "centrifuge," used to separate fluids, and "pipette," a tool used to pick up and measure fluids.</p><p>There was "a general feeling of being constantly watched, analyzed, graded - bordering on mobbing," the former employee said.</p><p>Brooke Buchanan, Theranos' vice president of communications, called the&#xa0;former employee's claims"ridiculous." When it came to the banned words, Buchanan said, "<span style="font-weight: 400;">I can't imagine that would ever be the case."</span></p><p>Another illustration of the secretive nature can be seen in the LinkedIn profiles of many employees.</p><p>They describe their employer only as a "private biotechnology company" based in Palo Alto, California. One of the profiles includes a Theranos logo, despite the lack of any other identifying information. Business Insider confirmed that several of the other profiles belong to current or former Theranos employees.</p><p>Buchanan told Business Insider that the LinkedIn titles were not&#xa0;a part of a formal&#xa0;company policy.</p><p>Still, she said the company needs a sense of privacy to protect its research and development work from competitors, saying it's a standard practice in business.&#xa0;Theranos staff members who list the company publicly are in senior leadership roles or work as recruiters.</p><p></p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image"></div><p></p></div></div>"We're not the only ones," Buchanan said. "There other companies who like to keep that information private."<p>The secrecy has&#xa0;put the company at a major disadvantage, said Stuart Peterson, a senior partner at Artis Ventures. Artis funded <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/stemcentrx-acquired-by-abbvie-2016-4">cancer-treatment startup Stemcentrx</a>.</p><p>Peterson attributes some of Theranos' problems to its board - which includes Henry Kissinger and others with government and defense backgrounds - because it lacked the understanding of how to evaluate the data or push for the kind of disclosure that typically comes from healthcare companies. Only <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/theranos-board-of-directors-2015-10">two members</a> have any semblance of a medical background.</p><p>"It's crazy that there was nobody on that board that had the ability to do any due diligence," he said. "All the red flags are easier to spot now."</p><p>Theranos did finally <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/theranos-adds-members-to-scientific-and-medical-advisory-board-2016-4">create a medical advisory board</a> in April, with eight scientists from major universities and hospitals. The first (already completed) step was to approach the Theranos blood-testing technology independently, and now the board has to find ways to present the data to the scientific community.&#xa0;</p><h2>The complex <keyword id="41551" type="ENTERTAINMENT" weightage="100" keywordseo="science">science</keyword> of blood testing</h2><p></p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"></div><p></p></div></div>Blood testing can be a tricky science depending on what you're testing for. And Theranos has cast an incredibly wide net, offering more than 140 tests.<p>In November 2015, Meaghan Bond, a biomedical-engineering researcher at Rice University, helped <a href="http://ajcp.oxfordjournals.org/content/144/6/885.abstract">publish a study</a> that looked at test-result discrepancies from a tiny sample of blood - about six drops - sourced from a finger-prick test.</p><p>When it came to tests that looked at specific concentrations of white blood cells or platelets, Bond found that there was a big variation in counts among each blood drop, all of which were taken from the same finger. For example, in the same finger-prick worth of blood, one drop could suggest that your hemoglobin is too low, suggesting that you might have anemia, while another has you in a normal range.</p><p>As a result of these variations, Bond concluded that looking at a single drop of blood might not cut it as far as getting an accurate result goes. Instead, for complex tests like these, it might be better to stick to vials, she concluded.</p><p>But simpler blood tests could be a slightly different story, Bond told Business Insider. For a test like one for herpes - which merely confirms the presence of herpes virus antibodies - a single drop might work, she said.</p><p>The takeaway for Bond? We need to be careful with blood testing and be aware of how much of specific substances in the blood can vary from one test to another. "The study opens up a whole new world," she said.</p><p>That could drastically limit the applications for Theranos' testing approach, depending on what technology the company is using.</p><h2>Is Arizona the last stand?</h2><p>Theranos has been running blood tests since 2013, at one point serving as many as 46 locations where people can go to have their blood drawn (the majority of them are in Walgreens drugstores). Theranos calls them "wellness centers."</p><p>In Pennsylvania, all of Theranos' operations have been shuttered, and in California, where the company is headquartered, only one remains open.</p><p>But no fewer than 43 are still open in Arizona. Amid all the scrutiny, the company just opened a stand-alone location in Chandler, Arizona. It also has a still-functioning lab in Arizona, so if it is to mount a comeback, it very well could be from there.</p><p>The company's spokeswoman said it saw Arizona as a good location for a pilot program, in part because of the state's demographics, its business-friendly attitude, and the larger presence of those using Medicare and Medicaid services.</p><p>Last year, the state passed <a href="https://www.theranos.com/news/posts/theranos-founder-and-ceo-elizabeth-holmes-speaks-at-arizona-bill-signing">a bill that Theranos had pushed for</a>. It allows anyone to purchase a blood test without a doctor's approval. Holmes spoke at its signing, saying "every state should have a law like Arizona's."</p><p><div></div></p><p class="embed-spacer">Theranos' Arizona lab has not escaped regulatory scrutiny, even though it wasn't caught up in the CMS inspections and warnings that shuttered the lab in California. In April 2015, the <a href="http://www.azcentral.com/story/money/business/consumers/2015/11/27/arizona-inspectors-find-theranos-lab-issues/76021416/">Arizona Department of Health</a> performed a routine inspection of Theranos in which it found problems with the Arizona lab.</p><p>But the lab remains open, and Walgreens is sticking with Theranos, even as other partners haven't been willing to. Theranos lost a deal with Safeway, and insurer Capital BlueCross immediately halted testing out of a clinic in Pennsylvania and suspended its relationship with Theranos in January when the CMS findings were released, according to the insurer's spokeswoman.</p><p>A representative for Walgreens said it is honoring its agreements.</p><p>In doing so, the drug chain is giving Theranos one last toehold with which it can face consumers, and perhaps make Arizona the place where Theranos makes its last stand.</p>    <div class="margin-top">        <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/veinviewer-medical-device-2016-3">This medical device should make drawing blood a lot less painful </a></h3>        <div>            <div>        <div class="ooyala-video-player" data-video-autoplay="false" data-video-id="swMDVpMTE6SJ5n-XvdKmO31ngJXeEGVM" data-player-variable="ooyalapopvideo" id="ooyalaplayer_popvideo" style="width:1280px;height:720px"></div>        </div>        </div>            </div>

You Searched For "nature biomedical engineering" and got 11 results

BioNTech scientist Katalin Karikó risked her career to develop mRNA vaccines. Americans will start getting her coronavirus shot on Monday.

Aria Bendix

A male birth control pill that dramatically lowers testosterone levels is moving forward into a 3-month trial

Hilary Brueck

Researchers Use 3D Printing To Grow Lifelike Human Ears

Agence France Presse

Researchers are calling Trump 'the first anti-science president'

Lindsay Dodgson

The first results of a massive brain study reveal something fascinating about smart, successful people

Tanya Lewis

The 17-Minute Take In 'Gravity' Is An Absolute Masterpiece

Gus Lubin

Theranos is at a critical turning point - what it does next could determine the company's future

Lydia Ramsey

Scientists are skeptical about the secret blood test that has made Elizabeth Holmes a billionaire

Kevin Loria

GOOGLE'S $500 MILLION MAN: Meet The 'Weird' Guy Trying To Invent A New Computing Platform

JILLIAN D'ONFRO

Elon Musk says he'll colonize Mars - but the closest we've come was this grand experiment in the Arizona desert 25 years ago

Dave Mosher

Hacking your brain

The Economist