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Category: biotech/medical – Page 1000

The neurohormone oxytocin is well-known for promoting social bonds and generating pleasurable feelings, for example from art, exercise, or sex. But the hormone has many other functions, such as the regulation of lactation and uterine contractions in females, and the regulation of ejaculation, sperm transport, and testosterone production in males.

Now, researchers from Michigan State University show that in zebrafish and human cell cultures, oxytocin has yet another unsuspected function: It stimulates derived from the heart’s outer layer (epicardium) to migrate into its middle layer (myocardium) and there develop into cardiomyocytes, that generate heart contractions. This discovery could one day be used to promote the regeneration of the human heart after a . The results are published in Frontiers in Cell and Developmental Biology.

“Here we show that oxytocin, a neuropeptide also known as the love hormone, is capable of activating heart repair mechanisms in injured hearts in zebrafish and human cell cultures, opening the door to potential new therapies for heart regeneration in humans,” said Dr. Aitor Aguirre, an assistant professor at the Department of Biomedical Engineering of Michigan State University, and the study’s senior author.

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PHILADELPHIA (CBS) — A newly approved permanent contact lens is growing in popularity, it’s a new alternative for LASIK. No more fumbling with contacts or glasses, now there’s an FDA-approved lens that stays in place, and people say it’s life-changing.

This is the newest implantable contact lens, called EVO.

“It’s absolutely mind-blowing,” patient Rusell Joy said.

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Sometimes, it can be hard to follow dietary recommendations despite new dieting ideas and trends.

Everyone’s dietary needs are different, which means that diets often need to be diverse and tailored based on individual needs and health risks.

A recent study published in Gastroenterology looked at diets high in fermentable fiber in mice and their associated risk for developing liver cancer.

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Few human injuries are as catastrophic as those to the spine. An accident, disease or act of violence affecting the spine can result in poor function – even paralysis – almost anywhere in the body.

The spinal column is enormously complex, with limited capacity for regeneration and any health implications are usually long-term and chronic.

While there is no known way to repair a spinal cord injury (SCI), scientists may be on the cusp of some important breakthroughs. New approaches are being taken to reverse the nerve damage, with some researchers attempting to reshape the architecture of the spinal cord using materials engineered in the laboratory.

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A physicist’s do-it-yourself art project makes vibrant images with a pair of polarizers and carefully placed layers of transparent tape.

When the COVID-19 pandemic shut down universities and offices across the world in spring 2020, finding new hobbies to stave off fear (and boredom) became paramount. While some took up cross-stitch or a new stretching routine, Aaron Slepkov, a photonics researcher at the University of Trent in Peterborough, Canada, turned to a physics-inspired art form called polage to occupy his time.

Polage, or polarization-filtered coloration, as Slepkov calls it, is a kind of collage that uses polarizers and thin films to create brightly colored artworks that transform depending on how you look at them. This metamorphosis is made possible by birefringence, an optical property of certain materials that changes the polarization state of transmitted light. Examples of birefringent materials include ice, calcite crystals, cellophane film, and transparent tape.

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This year’s Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences has a strong physical sciences element. The prize was divided between six individuals. Demis Hassabis and John Jumper of the London-based AI company DeepMind were awarded a third of the prize for developing AlphaFold, a machine-learning algorithm that can accurately predict the 3D structure of proteins from just the amino-acid sequence of their polypeptide chain. Emmanuel Mignot of Stanford University School of Medicine and Masashi Yanagisawa of the University of Tsukuba, Japan, were awarded for their work on the sleeping disorder narcolepsy.

The remainder of the prize went to Clifford Brangwynne of Princeton University and Anthony Hyman of the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics in Germany for discovering that the molecular machinery within a cell—proteins and RNA—organizes by phase separating into liquid droplets. This phase separation process has since been shown to be involved in several basic cellular functions, including gene expression, protein synthesis and storage, and stress responses.

The award for Brangwynne and Hyman shows “the transformative role that the physics of soft matter and the physics of polymers can play in cell biology,” says Rohit Pappu, a biophysicist and bioengineer at Washington University in St. Louis. “[The discovery] could only have happened the way it did: a creative young physicist working with an imaginative cell biologist in an ecosystem where boundaries were always being pushed at the intersection of multiple disciplines.”

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A new cancer therapy that uses a modified herpes virus to attack tumor cells showed promise in early clinical trials abroad.

The drug, called RP2, completely obliterated one patient’s oral cancer. The 39-year-old told the BBC that he had cancer of the salivary glands, which continued to grow despite attempts at treatment.

He was preparing for the end of his life when he learned about the experimental drug, which was available through a phase one safety trial at the Institute of Cancer Research in the UK.

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Dogs are amazing, and we all know it.

Dogs do a lot for us. They sniff out diseases, lead those who are blind or visually impaired, and search for humans in disaster areas. And it would come as no surprise if we told you that they could detect stress through humans’ sweat and breath, as well.

Researchers from Queen’s University, Belfast, collected sweat and breath samples of 36 participants before and after they handled a tense mental arithmetic task.

Queen’s University Belfast.

Continue reading “It’s official: Dogs can sniff out stress on humans’ breath and sweat” | >

Including decaffeinated and instant ones.

A new study conducted by Australian scientists suggests that consuming two to three cups of decaffeinated, ground, and instant coffee can lower the risk of developing cardiovascular disease and dying early.

“In this large, observational study, ground, instant, and decaffeinated coffee were associated with equivalent reductions in the incidence of cardiovascular disease and death from cardiovascular disease or any cause,” says study author Professor Peter Kistler of the Baker Heart and Diabetes Research Institute in a media release.

“The results suggest that mild to moderate intake of ground, instant, and decaffeinated coffee should be considered part of a healthy lifestyle.”

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Continue reading “Drinking 2 to 3 cups of coffee per day could have a surprising effect on longevity” | >