Researchers at the University of Bristol have made a breakthrough in the development of “life-like” synthetic materials which are able to move by themselves like worms.
Scientists have been investigating a new class of materials called “active matter,” which could be used for various applications from drug delivery to self-healing materials.
Compared to inanimate matter—the sort of motionless materials we come across in our lives every day, such as plastic and wood—active matter can show fascinating life-like behavior.
Ripples, like ones produced by raindrops falling in a puddle, are also called capillary waves. Studied since antiquity, they have garnered considerable interest in modern science due to their ability to reveal information about the medium on which they travel. This makes them particularly valuable for studying soft and biological matter in microfluidic applications, which focus on how fluids behave in microscopic environments.
Now physicists and biomedical researchers from Aalto University’s Department of Neuroscience and Biomedical Engineering and Department of Applied Physics have unearthed new characteristics of capillary waves, setting a record for their speed while doing so.
The first step in this process is determining where in the brain the BCI should record from to decode someone’s intended speech.
Currently, BCI devices are only used on individuals with paralysis from ALS or stroke in the brainstem, which leaves them unable to move or communicate. In these patients, BCIs record signals from the frontal lobe. But Broca’s aphasia, which most often affects people after a stroke or brain tumor, results from damage to the frontal lobe of the brain, where speech production and parts of language are processed. So, to help patients with Broca’s aphasia, scientists would likely need to record signals from other areas of the brain.
Synthetic biologists from Yale successfully rewrote the genetic code of an organism—a novel genomically recoded organism (GRO) with a single stop codon—using a cellular platform they developed that enables the production of new classes of synthetic proteins. Researchers say these synthetic proteins offer the promise of innumerable medical and industrial applications that can benefit society and human health.
A new study published in the journal Nature describes the creation of the landmark GRO, known as “Ochre,” which fully compresses redundant (or “degenerate”) codons into a single codon. A codon is a sequence of three nucleotides in DNA
DNA, or deoxyribonucleic acid, is a molecule composed of two long strands of nucleotides that coil around each other to form a double helix. It is the hereditary material in humans and almost all other organisms that carries genetic instructions for development, functioning, growth, and reproduction. Nearly every cell in a person’s body has the same DNA. Most DNA is located in the cell nucleus (where it is called nuclear DNA), but a small amount of DNA can also be found in the mitochondria (where it is called mitochondrial DNA or mtDNA).
Alzheimer’s disease is a progressive neurological disorder that primarily affects older adults, leading to memory loss, cognitive decline, and behavioral changes. It is the most common cause of dementia. The disease is characterized by the buildup of amyloid plaques and tau tangles in the brain, which disrupt cell function and communication. There is currently no cure, and treatments focus on managing symptoms and improving quality of life.
A new study suggests that creativity maps onto a common brain circuit and that injury and neurological disease have the potential to unleash creativity. Researchers analyzed 857 participants across 36 fMRI brain imaging studies to identify a common brain circuit for creativity.
Join Nobel Laureate, Venki Ramakrishnan, to question whether mortality is an inevitable part of human existence.
Watch the Q&A here (exclusively for our Science Supporters): • Q&A: In search of immortality — with… Join this channel to get access to perks: / @theroyalinstitution.
This lecture was filmed on 9 April 2024 in association with Digital Science.
Buy Venki’s book ‘Why We Die: The New Science of Ageing and the Quest for Immortality’ here: https://geni.us/LgdVG3Y
The inevitability of death has haunted humanity throughout its history. Belief systems have risen throughout human civilisation to rationalise and console the concept of death, from the afterlife envisioned in Abrahamic religions to recurrent reincarnation in Eastern religions.
However, there is a growing sense of optimism in our contemporary era. Thanks to a stark revolution in biology, our understanding of the ageing process is progressing rapidly. This includes comprehending why some species have such a great lifespan compared to others and poses the question of whether we as a species could overcome the clutches of disease and live for more extraordinary lengths than ever thought possible.
An international team of physicists has successfully measured the size of a certain type of neutrino to a certain degree. In their paper published in the journal Nature, the group describes experiments they conducted that involved measuring the radioactive decay of the element beryllium.
Neutrinos are subatomic particles with a mass very close to zero. They also have a half-integral spin and rarely react with normal matter. To date, three kinds of neutrinos have been identified, each by association with an electron, muon or tau particle. Physicists have become more interested in neutrinos over the past several years because it is thought better understanding them may lead to a better understanding of why there is more matter than antimatter in the known universe.
One of the first questions that needs to be answered about neutrinos is their size. This is important because it allows building the right size and shape of neutrino detectors. Currently, they are very large, which allows for what is believed to be their largest possible theoretical size—several meters—though it is believed they are smaller. In this new effort, the research team conducted experiments with beryllium to measure the size of an electron-associated neutrino.
Three studies at the University of Zurich demonstrate that hypnosis alters activity in the large-scale functional networks of the brain. It also affects the neurochemical milieu of specific brain areas.
Hypnosis has so far been something of a black box from the scientific perspective. Up to now, we have not had the data to prove whether hypnosis really is an extraordinary state of human consciousness, or simply in the subject’s imagination. Yet it remains a topic of fascination for many.
A well-known women’s magazine recently dedicated an entire dossier to hypnosis. And now and again we’ll hear of a remarkable hypnosis success story. For example, in 2018 at the Hirslanden Klinik St. Anna in Lucerne, a 45-year-old man had a metal plate removed from his lower arm under hypnosis only, without any anesthetic or pain relief. Much to the amazement of the surgical team, the man did not experience any significant pain either during or after the operation, as the Swiss public broadcaster SRF Puls health magazine program reported on 17 September of that year.
If the coordination of DNA and RNA epigenetics gets thrown off, you may end up with too much or too little of a protein, Fuk suggested. “Now, a key protein will be expressed at a too high level,” he said.” This could be detrimental for a cell and contribute to tumorigenesis,” or the formation of tumors.
There are already approved therapies that inhibit the methylation of DNA, and there’s an early-phase clinical trial testing RNA methylation inhibition as a cancer treatment. Fuks and his team are testing the potential of combining these existing therapies to improve patients’ outcomes. Preliminary data from their laboratory studies hint this strategy could be useful for patients with leukemia.
