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Archive for the ‘biotech/medical’ category: Page 1399

Apr 6, 2021

Doctors Have Reported an Extremely Rare Case of a Person Who Urinates Alcohol

Posted by in category: biotech/medical

A woman in Pittsburgh has become the first documented case in a living person of an unusual medical condition where alcohol naturally brews in the bladder from the fermentation of yeast.

The condition, which researchers propose to call either ‘bladder fermentation syndrome’ or ‘urinary auto-brewery syndrome’, is similar to another incredibly rare condition, auto-brewery syndrome, where simply ingesting carbohydrates can be enough to make you inebriated, even without consuming any alcohol via regular means.

In the case, doctors became aware of what seems to be a related syndrome, after attending upon a 61-year-old patient who presented with liver damage and poorly controlled diabetes.

Apr 6, 2021

Rise of the ‘robo-plants’, as scientists fuse nature with tech

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, food, mobile phones

Remote-controlled Venus flytrap “robo-plants” and crops that tell farmers when they are hit by disease could become reality after scientists developed a high-tech system for communicating with vegetation.

Researchers in Singapore linked up plants to electrodes capable of monitoring the weak electrical pulses naturally emitted by the greenery.

The scientists used the technology to trigger a Venus flytrap to snap its jaws shut at the push of a button on a .

Apr 6, 2021

Brain Cells Decide on Their Own When to Release Pleasure Hormone

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, chemistry, neuroscience

Summary: Dopamine neurons largely rely on their own discharge to determine release rates of the hormone, researchers report.

Source: NYU Langone.

In addition to smoothing out wrinkles, researchers have found that the drug Botox can reveal the inner workings of the brain. A new study used it to show that feedback from individual nerve cells controls the release of dopamine, a chemical messenger involved in motivation, memory, and movement.

Apr 6, 2021

First Infection of Human Cells During Spaceflight Analyzed

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, health

“Before we began this study, we had extensive data showing that spaceflight completely reprogrammed Salmonella at every level to become a better pathogen,”


Astronauts face many challenges to their health, due to the exceptional conditions of spaceflight. Among these are a variety of infectious microbes that can attack their suppressed immune systems.

Now, in the first study of its kind, Cheryl Nickerson, lead author Jennifer Barrila, and their colleagues describe the infection of human cells by the intestinal pathogen Salmonella Typhimurium during spaceflight. They show how the microgravity environment of spaceflight changes the molecular profile of human intestinal cells and how these expression patterns are further changed in response to infection. In another first, the researchers were also able to detect molecular changes in the bacterial pathogen while inside the infected host cells.

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Apr 6, 2021

CRISPR-Chip advance streamlines genetic testing for medical diagnostics and research

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, computing, genetics

Klas Moser.

What Musk is doing beside realizing his own dreams is inspiring thousands of young bright kids to keep on studying to realize their own dreams and I am sure that this is exactly what we humans need to create a better world on Earth as well.

This whol… See More.

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Apr 6, 2021

A Genetic Link Between Face and Brain Shape

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, genetics, neuroscience

Concretely: even with advanced technologies, it is impossible to predict someone’s behaviour based on their facial features. Peter Claes continues, Our results confirm that there is no genetic evidence for a link between someone’s face and that individual’s behaviour. Therefore, we explicitly dissociate ourselves from pseudoscientific claims to the contrary.


Claes said, To be able to analyse the MRI scans, we had to measure the brains shown on the scans. Our specific focus was on variations in the folded external surface of the brain – the typical ‘walnut shape’. We then went on to link the data from the image analyses to the available genetic information. This way, we identified 472 genomic locations that have an impact on the shape of our brain. 351 of these locations have never been reported before. To our surprise, we found that as many as 76 genomic locations predictive of the brain shape had previously already been found to be linked to the face shape. This makes the genetic link between face and brain shape a convincing one.

The team also found evidence that genetic signals that influence both brain and face shape are enriched in the regions of the genome that regulate gene activity during embryogenesis, either in facial progenitor cells or in the developing brain.

Apr 5, 2021

Cancer Mortality Among People Living in Areas With Various Levels of Natural Background Radiation

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, health

There are many places on the earth, where natural background radiation exposures are elevated significantly above about 2.5 mSv/year. The studies of health effects on populations living in such places are crucially important for understanding the impact of low doses of ionizing radiation. This article critically reviews some recent representative literature that addresses the likelihood of radiation-induced cancer and early childhood death in regions with high natural background radiation. The comparative and Bayesian analysis of the published data shows that the linear no-threshold hypothesis does not likely explain the results of these recent studies, whereas they favor the model of threshold or hormesis. Neither cancers nor early childhood deaths positively correlate with dose rates in regions with elevated natural background radiation.

Keywords: natural radiation, background radiation, HBRA, HNBR, low radiation, cancer, hormesis.

Apr 5, 2021

Scientists connect human brain to computer wirelessly for first time ever

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, computing, neuroscience

The first wireless commands to a computer have been demonstrated in a breakthrough for people with paralysis.

The system is able to transmit brain signals at “single-neuron resolution and in full broadband fidelity”, say researchers at Brown University in the US.

A clinical trial of the BrainGate technology involved a small transmitter that connects to a person’s brain motor cortex.

Apr 5, 2021

Antiaging Has to Cure Frailty or It Does Not Work

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, life extension

If we look at the mortality tables, it can explain why reversing aging damage reversal has to work very well for people to live very long lives.

Let us imagine that we are able to reverse aging damage so that someone is 65 or older has the same amount of aging as someone who is 65. This means for an average American man, then half of those people will still be dead by the time they have reached 95 years of age. This is because 1.6% of them are dying every year in the 65-year-old condition. Also, only 80% of them have survived from birth to the age of 65.

Asian American women in New Jersey live to a life expectancy of 93. Half of them reach the age of 93. Antiaging that reverses the aging damage every year for men so that they never get worse physically than when they are 65, get them to a life expectancy that is just beyond what Asian American women in New Jersey already achieve.

Apr 5, 2021

Gene Changes Linked to Severe Repetitive Behaviors Seen in Autism, Schizophrenia, and Drug Addiction

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, health, neuroscience

“Our new data suggest that the upregulation of Neuregulin-responsive genes in animals with severely repetitive behaviors reflects gene changes in the striosomal neurons that control the release of dopamine,” Crittenden explains. “Dopamine can directly impact whether an animal repeats an action or explores new actions, so our study highlights a potential role for a striosomal circuit in controlling action-selection in health and in neuropsychiatric disease.”


Graybiel lab identifies genes linked to abnormal repetitive behaviors often seen in models of addiction and schizophrenia.

Extreme repetitive behaviors such as hand-flapping, body-rocking, skin-picking, and sniffing are common to a number of brain disorders including autism, schizophrenia, Huntington’s disease, and drug addiction. These behaviors, termed stereotypies, are also apparent in animal models of drug addiction and autism.

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