PSA and PSMA kinetics after PSMA-guided prostate SBRT with focal boost. Can the marker and uptake kinetics inform us of the good, the bad and the ugly? Read about it in the RedJournal @vedangmurthy @drmaneesh_singh @docpriyamvada @RadOncTMC
To evaluate PSA and PSMA kinetics following PSMA-PET and MR guided stereotactic body radiotherapy (SBRT) and short-term androgen deprivation therapy (ADT) with dominant intraprostatic lesion (DIL) boost in localised prostate cancer.
Among its numerous health benefits, physical activity reduces the risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease. A new study on mice now dives into the specific mechanisms and proteins that allow exercise to protect our brains.
Scientists had previously determined that physical activity increases a protein called glycosylphosphatidylinositol-specific phospholipase D1 in the blood of mice, and that this protein is associated with good brain health.
That protein – more succinctly referred to as GPLD1 – strengthens the barrier that guards the brain against all sorts of unwelcome visitors within our blood, protecting against inflammation and subsequent cognitive decline.
Here, Chuan Qin & team use complementary models in experimental ischemic stroke, showing early post-stroke stages in which microglia recruit B cells into ischemic lesions through MIF/CD74/CXCR4, while later stage post-stroke effects involve interferon signaling in B cells that drives neuroinflammation and brain injury:
The image shows B lymphocytes (Green) in mouse dura tissue colocalizing with CD31+ blood vessels (Red).
1Department of Neurology, Tongji Hospital, Tongji Medical College and State Key Laboratory for Diagnosis and Treatment of Severe Zoonotic Infectious Diseases;
2Key Laboratory of Vascular Aging, Ministry of Education, Tongji Hospital of Tongji Medical College; and.
3Hubei Key Laboratory of Neural Injury and Functional Reconstruction, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, Hubei, China.
Neocortical expansion driven by basal progenitors.
The emergence of indirect neurogenesis, driven by highly proliferative basal progenitors, contributed to the significant enlargement of the mammalian neocortex during brain evolution.
In recent years, several human-specific genes and enhancers have been described that differentially affect the biology of progenitor cells and potentially contribute to the increased neocortical complexity and disease-susceptibility of the human brain.
Emerging research is uncovering multiple pathways that disrupt basal progenitor biology, emphasizing these pathways’ involvement not only in classical neurogenesis-related disorders such as microcephaly but also in neurodevelopmental conditions traditionally linked to impairments in neuronal connectivity. sciencenewshighlights ScienceMission https://sciencemission.com/Basal-progenitors
The diversification and expansion of distinct progenitor cell subtypes during embryogenesis are essential to form the sophisticated brain structures present in vertebrates. In particular, the emergence of highly proliferative basal progenitors contributed to the evolutionary enlargement of the mammalian neocortex. Basal progenitors are at the center of indirect neurogenesis and can be divided into two main subtypes: the classical TBR2-positive intermediate progenitor cells and the outer radial glial cells, which are especially abundant in gyrencephalic species. While the function of some transcriptomic regulators is conserved across the mammalian clade, recent studies have identified human-specific genes and enhancers that uniquely affect progenitor biology, possibly driving the increased neocortical complexity and disease-susceptibility of the human brain.
The search for materials that can conduct electricity at room temperature without losing energy is one of the greatest and most consequential challenges of modern physics: loss-free power transmission, more efficient motors and generators, more powerful quantum computers, cheaper MRI devices. Hardly any other material discovery has the potential to change so many areas of technology and everyday life at the same time.
An international research team, with the participation of Christoph Heil from the Institute of Theoretical and Computational Physics at Graz University of Technology (TU Graz) is now presenting a systematic approach to finding such materials. In a perspective article in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a strategy paper that assesses the current state of research and sets out future directions, the 16 authors state that there are no fundamental physical laws that rule out superconductivity at ambient temperature.
Controlling light with light is a long-sought goal for computing and communication technologies. Achieving this capability would allow optical signals to be processed without converting them into electrical signals, potentially enabling faster and more energy-efficient devices. In recent years, researchers have begun exploring an unexpected platform for this purpose: soft matter.
Soft-matter photonics investigates how materials such as liquids, liquid crystals, gels, and polymers can self-organize into structures that manipulate light. Unlike conventional solid-state photonic components, which require precise nanofabrication, soft materials can spontaneously form functional optical geometries. Some soft materials also exhibit nonlinear optical behavior. For example, through the Kerr effect, their refractive index can change in response to intense light, enabling one beam to influence another and allowing ultrafast optical switching on picosecond timescales.
As reported in Advanced Photonics, an international team of researchers introduced a different approach: a nanosecond optical switch based on resonant stimulated-emission depletion (STED) in a liquid crystal cavity. Rather than relying on refractive index changes, this method manipulates the stored optical energy inside a resonant structure.
For the first time, physicists have demonstrated that a material’s superconductivity can be altered by coupling it to an in-built, light-confining cavity. In experiments published in Nature, a team led by Itai Keren at Columbia University show how quantum properties can be deliberately engineered by bonding carefully chosen materials together—without applying any external light, pressure, or magnetic field.
As researchers have probed the quantum behavior of solids in ever greater detail, they have uncovered a wealth of so-called “emergent” properties, which arise from intricate interactions between electrons, quantum spins, and localized vibrations of a crystal lattice. Phenomena including superconductivity, magnetism, and charge ordering all emerge from these kinds of collective effects—all richer and more complex than the sum of their microscopic parts.
Building on this principle, physicists are increasingly exploring whether materials could be designed with specific emergent behaviors built directly into their structures. Rather than tuning a compound after it is made, the goal here is to engineer its quantum environment from the outset.
Researchers in the US have demonstrated how quantum entanglement could be used to detect optical signals from astronomical sources at the single-photon level. Published in Nature, a team led by Pieter-Jan Stas at Harvard University showed how extremely weak light signals could be detected across a fiber link spanning more than 1.5 km—possibly paving the way for optical telescopes with unprecedented resolution.
Interferometry is often used in astronomy to produce high-resolution images of distant objects. By combining light collected across networks of spatially separated detectors, the technique can achieve resolutions comparable to those of a single telescope with a diameter equivalent to the distance between them. In continent-spanning networks like the Event Horizon Telescope, it was used to create the first direct image of a black hole (Messier 87) in 2019.
In physics, the mesoscale lies between the microscopic and the macroscopic. It is not just the domain of tiny living creatures like small larvae, shrimp, and jellyfish, but also where physics equations become extreme. While the macroscopic realm is governed by inertia and the microscopic by viscosity, the mesoscale is both and neither, requiring a new set of physics to describe it.
Now, physicists at Aalto University’s Department of Applied Physics have discovered how organisms swim in the mesoscale mix of viscosity and inertia. The study was recently published in the journal Communications Physics.
Led by Assistant Professor Matilda Backholm, the multidisciplinary team found the key to efficient swimming in this realm is not just moving faster or growing bigger, but a phenomenon of non-reciprocal motion known as time reversal symmetry breaking. The results help fill a knowledge gap in fundamental physics and could pave the way for applications such as mesorobotics; tiny robots injected inside a patient’s body for drug delivery or carrying out medical procedures.