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Category: biotech/medical – Page 1,513

Many people with high blood pressure may take a drug that worsens it, says study

Nearly 1 in 5 people with hypertension may be unintentionally taking a drug for another condition that causes their blood pressure to climb even higher, a new study suggests.

Left untreated or undertreated, high will increase your risk for , stroke, kidney disease and vision problems by damaging . Lifestyle changes such as weight loss, restricting salt intake, and/or can help move your blood numbers back into the normal range. But asking your doctor whether any drugs you are taking for other conditions might be pushing those numbers up is worth the effort, the researchers said.

“The risk of [drugs] raising blood pressure may be simply overlooked, particularly for patients using these additional medications for many years,” said study author Dr. Timothy Anderson. He is a clinician investigator and an assistant professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School in Boston.

The Big Question: Is the World of Work Forever Changed?

Their answers have been edited and condensed.

This article is part of a series called Turning Points, in which writers explore what critical moments from this year might mean for the year ahead. You can read more by visiting the Turning Points series page.

During the life-changing Covid-19 pandemic, millions of people were fortunate enough to work from home during lockdowns, while others were called upon to put themselves at physical risk to keep cities and economies from collapsing. As the world re-emerges from Covid, we are seeing renewed attention in the workplace to issues of social injustice, economic inequality, corporate social responsibility, and diversity and inclusion.

Earlier this year, we asked a small group of leaders in various professions: Is the world of work forever changed?

VLA reveals double-helix structure in massive galaxy’s jet

Astronomers using the National Science Foundation’s Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA) have shown that a jet of material propelled from the core of a giant galaxy is channeled by a corkscrew-shaped magnetic field out to nearly 3,300 light-years from the galaxy’s central supermassive black hole. That is much farther than such a magnetic field previously had been detected in a galactic jet.

“By making high-quality VLA images at several different radio wavelengths of the galaxy Messier 87 (M87), we were able to reveal the 3-dimensional structure of the in this jet for the first time,” said Alice Pasetto of the National Autonomous University of Mexico, leader of the team. “The material in this jet traces a double helix, similar to the structure of DNA,” she added.

M87 is a giant elliptical galaxy about 55 million light-years from Earth. A some 6.5 billion times more massive than the Sun lurks at the center of M87. That black hole is the first one ever to be imaged—an achievement done with the world-wide Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) collaboration and announced in 2019. Earlier this year, new EHT images traced the magnetic field in the vicinity of the black hole event horizon.

Blood from marathoner mice boosts brain function in their couch-potato counterparts

Physical exercise is great for a mouse’s brain, and for yours. Numerous studies conducted in mice, humans and laboratory glassware have made this clear. Now, a new study shows it’s possible to transfer the brain benefits enjoyed by marathon-running mice to their couch-potato peers.

Stanford School of Medicine researchers have shown that blood from young adult mice that are getting lots of exercise benefits the brains of same-aged, sedentary mice. A single protein in the blood of exercising mice seems largely responsible for that benefit.

The discovery could open the door to treatments that—by taming inflammation in people who don’t get much exercise—lower their risk of neurodegenerative disease or slow its progression.

A COVID vaccine grown in plants measures up

A Canadian biotech firm is reporting positive results from a large study of its COVID-19 vaccine. What makes it unusual is that the key ingredient of the vaccine is grown in plants. Medicago has already developed an experimental flu vaccine in Nicotiana benthamian, a plant related to tobacco. When the pandemic struck, the company decided to try to make a COVID-19 vaccine.

Now it appears those efforts have succeeded. “This is an incredible moment for Medicago and for novel vaccine platforms,” Medicago CEO and President Takashi Nagao said in a statement.

A COVID-19 vaccine from a Canadian biotech firm has been found effective at preventing moderate to severe disease. It could soon become the first plant-based vaccine authorized for human use.

Unusual ‘Quadruple Helix’ Structure in DNA May Be Behind Rare Aging Syndrome

The double-helix structure has practically become synonymous with DNA, but it isn’t the only way long strands of genetic information squeeze themselves into a tight space.

When a double-strand of DNA doubles back on itself or attaches to another double-strand, it can actually create a quadruple-stranded knot, known as a G-quadruplex.

Scientists first discovered these ‘double-double-helixes’ in living human cells in 2013, and in the years since, these knots have been found in high concentrations in cancerous cells.

Technique enables real-time rendering of scenes in 3D

Humans are pretty good at looking at a single two-dimensional image and understanding the full three-dimensional scene that it captures. Artificial intelligence agents are not.

Yet a machine that needs to interact with objects in the world—like a robot designed to harvest crops or assist with surgery—must be able to infer properties about a 3D from observations of the 2D images it’s trained on.

While scientists have had success using neural networks to infer representations of 3D scenes from images, these machine learning methods aren’t fast enough to make them feasible for many real-world applications.

New Imaging Method Visualizes Blood Flow in the Brain Down to a Single Blood Cell

Researchers from the Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology and Saratov State University have come up with an inexpensive method for visualizing blood flow in the brain. The new technique is so precise it discerns the motions of individual red blood cells — all without the use of toxic dyeing agents or expensive genetic engineering. The study was published in The European Physical Journal Plus.

To understand more about how the brain’s blood supply works, researchers map its blood vessel networks. The resulting visualizations can rely on a variety of methods. One highly precise technique involves injecting fluorescent dyes into the blood flow and detecting the infrared light they emit. The problem with dyes is they are toxic and also may distort mapping results by affecting the vessels. Alternatively, researchers employ genetically modified animals, whose interior lining of blood vessels is engineered to give off light with no foreign substances involved. Both methods are very expensive, though.

Researchers from Skoltech and Saratov State University have devised an inexpensive method for visualizing even the smallest capillaries in the brain. The method — which integrates optical microscopy and image processing — is dye-free and very fine-grained, owing to its ability to detect each and every red blood cell travelling along a blood vessel. Since the number of RBCs in capillaries is not that high, every cell counts, so this is an important advantage over other methods, including dye-free ones.

New Harvard institute to study natural, artificial intelligence

Harvard University on Tuesday launched the Kempner Institute for the Study of Natural and Artificial Intelligence, a new University-wide initiative standing at the intersection of neuroscience and artificial intelligence, seeking fundamental principles that underlie both human and machine intelligence. The fruits of discoveries will flow in both directions, enhancing understanding of how humans think, perceive the world around them, make decisions, and learn, thereby advancing the rapidly evolving field of AI.

The institute will be funded by a $500 million gift from Priscilla Chan and Mark Zuckerberg, which was announced Tuesday by the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative. The gift will support 10 new faculty appointments, significant new computing infrastructure, and resources to allow students to flow between labs in pursuit of ideas and knowledge. The institute’s name honors Zuckerberg’s mother, Karen Kempner Zuckerberg, and her parents — Zuckerberg’s grandparents — Sidney and Gertrude Kempner. Chan and Zuckerberg have given generously to Harvard in the past, supporting students, faculty, and researchers in a range of areas, including around public service, literacy, and cures.

“The Kempner Institute at Harvard represents a remarkable opportunity to bring together approaches and expertise in biological and cognitive science with machine learning, statistics, and computer science to make real progress in understanding how the human brain works to improve how we address disease, create new therapies, and advance our understanding of the human body and the world more broadly,” said President Larry Bacow.