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Category: biotech/medical – Page 1154

The application of mechanic forces to the cell nucleus affects the transport of proteins through the nuclear membrane, an action that controls cellular processes and could play a key role in several diseases such as cancer. These findings draw a new scenario for understanding how the mechanic forces drive the progression of cancer and open the doors to the design of potential innovative techniques—both diagnostic and therapeutic. This is the conclusion of a study published in the journal Nature Cell Biology led by lecturer Pere Roca-Cusachs, from the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences of the University of Barcelona, the Institute of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology of the UB (IN2UB) and the Institute for Bioengineering of Catalonia (IBEC).

The cells in the body receive mechanical stimuli from their environment and respond accordingly regarding decisions on how and when to grow, move and differentiate. The process is known as mechanotransduction and it is critically important for the cell function and for human health.

The study reveals that the direct application of force to the can affect the spatial organization of the DNA and the activity of nuclear proteins, among other functions. When invade the organs and metastasis appears, these create physical forces that are transmitted to the .

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Holes help make sponges and English muffins useful (and, in the case of the latter, delicious). Without holes, they wouldn’t be flexible enough to bend into small crevices, or to sop up the perfect amount of jam and butter.

In a new study, University of Chicago scientists find that holes can also improve technology, including . Published in Nature Materials, the paper describes an entirely new way to make a solar cell: by etching holes in the top layer to make it porous. The innovation could form the basis for a less-invasive pacemaker, or similar medical devices. It could be paired with a small light source to reduce the size of the bulky batteries that are currently implanted along with today’s pacemakers.

“We hope this opens many possibilities for further improvements in this field,” said Aleksander Prominski, the first author on the paper.

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A major campaign of domino-toppling simulations yields new insights into the effects of friction.

Despite the apparent simplicity of toppling dominoes, physicists still don’t have a complete model of the phenomenon. But new numerical simulations get a step closer by untangling the influence of two types of friction—one between neighboring dominoes and the other between each domino and the surface beneath it [1]. The researchers found that, in some cases, these two friction coefficients play competing roles in determining the speed of the domino cascade. They also found that one of the coefficients behaves similar to friction in granular systems such as piles of sand or pharmaceutical pills, suggesting that the domino simulations may provide insights into other situations where friction is important.

A YouTube video by engineer Destin Sandlin (on his channel Smarter Every Day) inspired David Cantor of Montreal Polytechnic and Kajetan Wojtacki of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw to study dominoes. Sandlin recorded a series of domino toppling experiments with a high-speed camera and quickly discovered just how complex the problem is. He determined that the wave of falling dominoes moves slightly faster on felt than on a slippery hardwood floor. He also saw surprising anomalies, such as cases where the train of toppling dominoes would abruptly stop.

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No one should think we are over COVID.

WASHINGTON — Federal health officials warned on Wednesday that a third of Americans live in areas where the threat of Covid-19 is now so high that they should consider wearing a mask in indoor public settings. They cited new data showing a substantial jump in both the spread of the coronavirus and hospitalizations over the past week.

Dr. Rochelle P. Walensky, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said that the seven-day average of hospital admissions from Covid rose 19 percent over the previous week. About 3,000 people a day were being admitted with Covid, she said, although death rates, a lagging indicator, remained low.

More than 32 percent of Americans now live in counties with medium to high levels of virus transmission, compared with about 24 percent the previous week. Dr. Walensky said that local leaders and individuals in those regions should adopt — or at least consider — prevention strategies, such as masking in indoor public settings and more frequent testing.

Continue reading “Biden Health Officials Warn of Substantial Increase in Virus Cases” | >

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Papers referenced in the video:
Glycine supplementation extends lifespan of male and female mice.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30916479/

Ergothioneine exhibits longevity-extension effect in Drosophila melanogaster via regulation of cholinergic neurotransmission, tyrosine metabolism, and fatty acid oxidation.

Continue reading “Bile Acids: The Next Frontier In Longevity?” | >

By making remarkable breakthroughs in a number of fields, unlocking new approaches to science, and accelerating the pace of science and innovation.

In 2020, Google’s AI team DeepMind announced that its algorithm, AlphaFold, had solved the protein-folding problem. At first, this stunning breakthrough was met with excitement from most, with scientists always ready to test a new tool, and amusement by some. After all, wasn’t this the same company whose algorithm AlphaGo had defeated the world champion in the Chinese strategy game Go, just a few years before? Mastering a game more complex than chess, difficult as that is, felt trivial compared to the protein-folding problem. But AlphaFold proved its scientific mettle by sweeping an annual competition in which teams of biologists guess the structure of proteins based only on their genetic code. The algorithm far outpaced its human rivals, posting scores that predicted the final shape within an angstrom, the width of a single atom. Soon after, AlphaFold passed its first real-world test by correctly predicting the shape of the SARS-CoV-2 ‘spike’ protein, the virus’ conspicuous membrane receptor that is targeted by vaccines.

The success of AlphaFold soon became impossible to ignore, and scientists began trying out the algorithm in their labs. By 2021 Science magazine crowned an open-source version of AlphaFold the “Method of the Year.” Biochemist and Editor-in-Chief H. Holden Thorp of the journal Science wrote in an editorial, “The breakthrough in protein-folding is one of the greatest ever in terms of both the scientific achievement and the enabling of future research.” Today, AlphaFold’s predictions are so accurate that the protein-folding problem is considered solved after more than 70 years of searching. And while the protein-folding problem may be the highest profile achievement of AI in science to date, artificial intelligence is quietly making discoveries in a number of scientific fields.

By turbocharging the discovery process and providing scientists with new investigative tools, AI is also transforming how science is done. The technology upgrades research mainstays like microscopes and genome sequencers 0, adding new technical capacities to the instruments and making them more powerful. AI-powered drug design and gravity wave detectors offer scientists new tools to probe and control the natural world. Off the lab bench, AI can also deploy advanced simulation capabilities and reasoning systems to develop real-world models and test hypotheses using them. With manifold impacts stretching the length of the scientific method, AI is ushering in a scientific revolution through groundbreaking discoveries, novel techniques and augmented tools, and automated methods that advance the speed and accuracy of the scientific process.

Continue reading “AI is Ushering In a New Scientific Revolution” | >