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“We showed that cholesterol is acting essentially as a signal in neurons that determines how much Aβ gets made—and thus it should be unsurprising that apoE, which carries the cholesterol to neurons, influences Alzheimer’s risk,” says study co-senior author Scott Hansen, PhD, an associate professor in the Department of Molecular Medicine at Scripps Research, Florida.

Summary: A new advanced imaging technique shows how cholesterol regulates the production of Alzheimer’s associated amyloid beta proteins in astrocytes.

Source: Scripps Research Institute

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These researchers recently published a study on VDAC2, a protein that helps regulate calcium signaling within heart cells. Blockage of the signals causes severe impairment of heart cell contraction, making it harder for the organ to push blood through the body.

Taking away this protein made heart function sharply decline in laboratory mice, eventually leading to their death, while reintroduction of VDAC2 reversed many of the effects of heart failure. An experimental drug called efsevin was able to produce similar effects in other mice with heart failure.

With the epidemic of heart failure exacerbating the pandemic of COVID-19, the discovery by University of Utah researchers in Salt Lake City of a protein in heart cells brings the potential for a method to improve heart function in patients.

Continue reading “University of Utah researchers may have found a way to fix a broken heart” »

Bionic arms used to cost $80,000. Now, a young engineer has lowered the cost by over 90%.

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This is interesting. 😃

A new discovery in rats shows that the brain responds differently in immersive virtual reality environments versus the real world. The finding could help scientists understand how the brain brings together sensory information from different sources to create a cohesive picture of the world around us. It could also pave the way for “virtual reality therapy” for learning and memory-related disorders ranging including ADHD, Autism, Alzheimer’s disease, epilepsy and depression.

Continue reading “Virtual reality boosts brain rhythms crucial for neuroplasticity, learning and memory” »

A team of researchers at Washington University School of Medicine have developed a deep learning model that is capable of classifying a brain tumor as one of six common types using a single 3D MRI scan, according to a study published in Radiology: Artificial Intelligence.

“This is the first study to address the most common intracranial tumors and to directly determine the tumor class or the absence of tumor from a 3D MRI volume,” said Satrajit Chakrabarty, M.S., a doctoral student under the direction of Aristeidis Sotiras, Ph.D., and Daniel Marcus, Ph.D., in Mallinckrodt Institute of Radiology’s Computational Imaging Lab at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, Missouri.

The six most common intracranial tumor types are high-grade glioma, low-grade glioma, brain metastases, meningioma, pituitary adenoma and acoustic neuroma. Each was documented through histopathology, which requires surgically removing tissue from the site of a suspected cancer and examining it under a microscope.

Widespread human SARS-CoV-2 infections combined with human-wildlife interactions create the potential for reverse zoonosis from humans to wildlife. We targeted white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) for serosurveillance based on evidence these deer have ACE2 receptors with high affinity for SARS-CoV-2, are permissive to infection, exhibit sustained viral shedding, can transmit to conspecifics, and can be abundant near urban centers. We evaluated 624 pre-and post-pandemic serum samples from wild deer from four U.S. states for SARS-CoV-2 exposure. Antibodies were detected in 152 samples (40%) from 2,021 using a surrogate virus neutralization test. A subset of samples was tested using a SARS-CoV-2 virus neutralization test with high concordance between tests. These data suggest white-tailed deer in the populations assessed have been exposed to SARS-CoV-2.

One-Sentence Summary Antibodies to SARS-CoV-2 were detected in 40% of wild white-tailed deer sampled from four U.S. states in 2021.

SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19 in humans, can infect multiple domestic and wild animal species (1 – 7). Thus, the possibility exists for the emergence of new animal reservoirs of SARS-CoV-2, each with unique potential to maintain, disseminate, and drive novel evolution of this virus. Of particular concern are wildlife species that are both abundant and live in close association with human populations (5).

Multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children (MIS-C) onsets in COVID-19 patients with manifestations similar to Kawasaki disease (KD). Here the author probe the peripheral blood transcriptome of MIS-C patients to find signatures related to natural killer (NK) cell activation and CD8+ T cell exhaustion that are shared with KD patients.

A new kind of neural interface system that coordinates the activity of hundreds of tiny brain sensors could one day deepen understanding of the brain and lead to new medical therapies.

Materials that change their properties in response to certain stimuli could come to occupy a valuable space in many fields, ranging from robotics, to medical care, to advanced aircraft. A new example of this type of shape-shifting technology is modeled on ancient chain mail armor, enabling it to swiftly switch from flexible to stiff thanks to carefully arranged interlocking particles.

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