Gamers playing the popular online puzzle game Foldit beat scientists, college students and computer algorithms in a contest to see who could identify a particular protein's shape. The study findings have implications for video game enthusiasts and classroom instruction, and showcase the positive impact citizen science can have on research.

The European Commission and the Human Brain Project (HBP) Coordinator, the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), have signed the first Specific Grant Agreement (SGA1), releasing EUR 89 million in funding retroactively from 1st April 2016 until the end of March 2018. The signature of SGA1 means that the HBP and the European Commision have agreed on the HBP Work Plan for these two years.

VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland has developed a mobile app and thumb-size device that help to prevent cerebral infarctions at an early stage, during asymptomatic atrial fibrillation. The mobile device, which detects arrhythmia (irregular heartbeat) has been tested with excellent results for around two years in real-life conditions in cooperation with Turku University Central Hospital.

The EU-funded CHIC project (Computational Horizons In Cancer: Developing Meta- and Hyper-Multiscale Models and Repositories for In Silico Oncology) proposes the development of clinical trial driven tools, services and secure infrastructure that will support the creation of multiscale cancer hypermodels (integrative models). The latter are defined as choreographies of component models, each one describing a biological process at a characteristic spatiotemporal scale, and of relation models/metamodels defining the relations across scales.

Among overweight or obese young adults, the addition of a wearable technology device (that provided feedback on physical activity) to a standard behavioral intervention resulted in less weight loss over 24 months, according to a study appearing in the September 20 issue of JAMA. Effective long-term treatments are needed to address the obesity epidemic. There is wide availability of commercial technologies for physical activity and diet.

As you relax and let your mind drift aimlessly, you might remember a pleasant vacation, an angry confrontation in traffic or maybe the loss of a loved one. And now a team of researchers at Duke University say they can see those various emotional states flickering across the human brain.

Motorists, passengers and pedestrians beware. A new report published online by JAMA Internal Medicine suggests the wildly popular augmented reality game Pokémon GO is distracting. John W. Ayers, Ph.D., M.A., of San Diego State University, California, and coauthors hunted through social media posts on Twitter and news stories in Google News to report on drivers distracted by the game and crashes potentially caused by players trying to collect Pokémon in real-world locations.