Circa 2021
Vaccines are made in batches, but some researchers want to overhaul that system to make the manufacturing continuous, efficient, and democratic.
Category: biotech/medical – Page 1,312
đł!!!!!
In a milestone that could turn sci-fi into fact, the first U.S. clinical trial of a brain implant that returns the power of communication to severely paralyzed people has begun. | In a milestone that could turn sci-fi into fact, the first U.S. clinical trial of a brain implant that returns the powerâŠ
Brain-computer interfaces have become a practical (if limited) reality in the US. Synchron says it has become the first in the country to implant a BCI in a human patient. Doctors in New Yorkâs Mount Sinai West implanted the companyâs Stentrode in the motor cortex of a participant in Synchronâs COMMAND trial, which aims to gauge the usefulness and safety of BCIs for providing hands-free device control to people with severe paralysis. Ideally, technology like Stentrode will offer independence to people who want to email, text and otherwise handle digital tasks that others take for granted.
Surgeons installed the implant using an endovascular procedure that avoids the intrusiveness of open-brain surgery by going through the jugular vein. The operation went âextremely wellâ and let the patient return home 48 hours later, according to Synchron. An ongoing Australian trial has also proven successful so far, with four patients still safe a year after receiving their implants.
It may take a long time before doctors can offer Synchronâs BCIs to patients. The company received FDA approval for human trials in July 2021, and itâs still expanding the COMMAND trial as of this writing. Still, the US procedure represents a significant step toward greater autonomy for people with paralysis. It also represents a competitive victory â Elon Muskâs Neuralink has yet to receive FDA permission for its own implant.
Summary: Researchers have created a new blueprint that outlines how embryonic stem cells from mice become sensory interneurons and identified a method for producing sensory interneurons in a lab setting. If the results can be replicated in human stem cells, researchers say the findings could contribute to the development of therapies to restore sensation to those suffering nerve damage and spinal cord injury.
Source: UCLA
Researchers at the Eli and Edythe Broad Center of Regenerative Medicine and Stem Cell Research at UCLA have developed a first-of-its-kind roadmap detailing how stem cells become sensory interneurons â the cells that enable sensations like touch, pain and itch.
Genomes contain regions between protein-coding genes that produce lengthy RNA molecules that never give rise to a protein. These long intergenic non-coding RNAs (lincRNAs) are thought to have important functions, such as regulating responses to environmental change. However, a paucity of well-annotated lincRNA data, especially for crop plants, has precluded a deeper understanding of their roles.
Up until now, there have been no systematic genome-wide studies that both confirmed DNA sequences that produce lincRNAs and proposed functions for those lincRNAs. Plus, data are reported differently across studies, making direct comparisons among them difficult.
These barriers inspired researchers at the Boyce Thompson Institute to take a comprehensive look at the identity, production and function of lincRNAs in four species in the mustard family, including the model organism Arabidopsis thaliana, and Brassica rapa, a species that produces boy choy, turnips and other food crops.
We live in an increasingly connected world, a fact underscored by the swift spread of the coronavirus around the globe. Underlying this connectivity are complex networksâglobal air transportation, the internet, power grids, financial systems and ecological networks, to name just a few. The need to ensure the proper functioning of these systems also is increasing, but control is difficult.
Now a Northwestern University research team has discovered a ubiquitous property of a complex network and developed a novel computational method that is the first to systematically exploit that property to control the whole network using only local information. The method considers the computational time and information communication costs to produce the optimal choice.
The same connections that provide functionality in networks also can serve as conduits for the propagation of failures and instabilities. In such dynamic networks, gathering and processing all the information necessary to make a better decision can take too much time. The goal is to diagnose a problem and take action before it leads to a system-wide issue. This may mean having less information but being timely.
So, I think I uncovered a treasure. The Killing Star by Charles Pellegrino and George Zebrowski was originally published 1995 and it paints a dark and seemingly plausible depiction of humanityâs potential future. This book is about several things genetic engineering and cloning, itâs about the destructive power of fanaticism, Itâs about the over confidence and hubris of humanity, and that gets really hammered home in this book with all itâs references to the titanic, which has for a very long time been thought of as one of the greatest symbols of human hubris, itâs about AI, and when it goes to far, itâs about our over dependence on technology, itâs about humanityâs indefinite survival outside of earth, and most importantly, itâs about the devastating annihilation of the vast majority of the human race.
Join Dune Club!
https://twitter.com/DanikaXIX/status/1540394079069999106
Music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=63UR4xLiUNo.
Cover art: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/L3YP2w.
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Scientists have demonstrated that a brain-penetrating candidate drug currently in development as a cancer therapy can promote regeneration of damaged nerves after spinal trauma.
The research used cell and animal models to show that when taken orally the candidate drug, known as AZD1390, can block the response to 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 personâs 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).
