By isolating and reprogramming brain cells with dementia-causing genetic mutations, a team at JAX offers a powerful new research tool.
Understanding how we use our brain to make decisions is a daunting task, given our brain’s extensive webs of neural wiring and circuitry. Now, JAX researchers Erik Bloss and Kourtney Graham are using a surprising tool to investigate goal-directed behaviors: the rabies virus.
Neuroscientists from St. Petersburg University, led by Professor Allan V. Kalueff, in collaboration with an international team of IT specialists, have become the first in the world to apply the artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms to phenotype zebrafish psychoactive drug responses. They managed to train AI to determine—by fish response—which psychotropic agents were used in the experiment.
The research findings are published in the journal Progress in Neuro-Psychopharmacology and Biological Psychiatry.
The zebrafish (Danio rerio) is a freshwater bony fish that is presently the second-most (after mice) used model organism in biomedical research. The advantages for utilizing zebrafish as a model biological system are numerous, including low maintenance costs and high genetic and physiological similarity to humans. Zebrafish share 70% of genes with us. Furthermore, the simplicity of the zebrafish nervous system enables researchers to achieve more explicit and accurate results, as compared to studies with more complex organisms.
A new study, led by researchers from the University of California, Irvine, identifies a reason for why older adults are significantly more susceptible.
Small clinical trial suggests new, simple twist on cell therapies for cancer.
In a remarkable development, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) ‘holoported’ the first human being into space late last year. Holoportation is the process through which a three dimensional holographic representation of an individual is created, in a combination of a ‘hologram’ and ‘teleportation’. NASA revealed the development late last week, as it announced that it had transported flight surgeon Dr. Josef Schmid, mixed and virtual reality firm AEXA Aerospance’s chief executive officer Dr. Fernando De La Pena Llaca and others to the International Space Station (ISS) during October 2021 while the ISS was orbiting the Earth at an altitude of 250 miles above the Earth’s surface.
NASA Uses Microsoft’s Hololens Konnect Camera To Create Live Hologram of Flight Surgeon In Space
The event place last year when NASA’s Crew 2 astronauts were present on the ISS. The astronauts took to the skies in April last year and returned in November, soon after Dr. Schmid and others were holoportated to the orbiting space laboratory.
At the Technical University of Denmark (DTU), a team of researchers have developed a new kind of 3D printer whose technology combines a CT scanner and light. By reversing the principle of CT scanning, they could create all types of parts in record time from different polymer resins and play on their hardness. They would thus be able to reproduce the appearance of blood vessels or muscle tissue.
Today’s CT scans allow us to make slice images of our body parts and to visualize tissues of different densities. This X-ray machine is therefore used in the medical sector to establish a diagnosis. In this case, it was used to design a new, faster resin 3D printer.
The Force was strong in him. One of Enzo Romero’s favorite activities is playing the guitar, which he effortlessly does with his bright blue hand. Initially, it used to hurt, as he used his handless right arm to press down on chords. But now, with fingers on the end, he can play music painlessly.
Star Wars: Episode V The Empire Strikes Back, marketed as simply The Empire Strikes Back, is a 1980 film directed by Irvin Kershner and written by Leigh Brackett and Lawrence Kasdan from a story by George Lucas. It is the second part of the Star Wars original trilogy.
A chip-based infection model developed by researchers in Jena, Germany, enables live microscopic observation of damage to lung tissue caused by the invasive fungal infection aspergillosis. The team developed algorithms to track the spread of fungal hyphae as well as the response of immune cells. The development is based on a “lung-on-chip” model also developed in Jena and can help reduce the number of animal experiments. The results were presented in the journal Biomaterials.
Aspergillosis is a mold infection caused by Aspergillus fumigatus, which often affects the lungs. The disease can be fatal, especially in immunocompromised individuals. In these cases, invasive aspergillosis usually occurs with fungal hyphae invading blood vessels. So far, there are only a few active substances that can combat such fungal infections. “That’s why it was so important for us to be able to represent this invasive growth in a model,” says Marie von Lilienfeld-Toal, who co-led the study. The internist is a professor at the Department of Internal Medicine II at Jena University Hospital and conducts research at the Leibniz Institute for Natural Product Research and Infection Biology—Hans Knöll Institute (Leibniz-HKI) in Jena, Germany.
The new aspergillosis infection model should help to better observe both the growth of the fungus and the reaction of the immune system and to find possible new approaches for therapies. In addition, new active substances can be tested. The expertise for this is available in Jena: Organ chips have long been developed at the university hospital. The startup Dynamic42, which manufactures the lung chips used in the study, was founded there. First author Mai Hoang also joined the company after completing her doctorate.
When cities transform into a colorful world of lights as darkness falls, it’s often only possible to estimate their contours, which depending on the perspective can draw the attention to key details or trivia. In fluorescence microscopy, biological cells are marked with fluorescent dyes and excited to luminesce in specific areas by optical switches– like a city at night. However, this light is usually too faint for small, rapid objects, or even goes out after a while. This is known as fluorescence bleaching.
Now, a new approach developed by Prof. Dr. Alexander Rohrbach and his team in the Laboratory for Bio-and Nano-Photonics at the University of Freiburg has found a way to make the smallest objects clearly visible without fluorescence. In this way, cellular structures or virus-sized particles can be observed 100 to 1,000 times longer, ten to 100-times faster and with almost doubled resolution than with fluorescence microscopy. While fluorescence microscopy records what you might call “night-time images” of structures, ROCS microscopy takes “day-time images”—opposites that can complement each other excellently. Rohrbach and his colleagues describe various applications of the technology in the latest issue of Nature Communications.
Very good news, if unsurprising.
We already have multiple viable avenues of reducing — or eliminating altogether — this particularly pernicious form of remorseless biological entropy.
So good news… UNLESS you’re one of those people who think death is what MAKES life somehow MEANINGFUL, or that living for thousands of years or more would be BORING.
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