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Category: biotech/medical – Page 1566

The researchers found that while equol production did not appear to impact levels of amyloid-beta deposited within the brain, it was associated with reduced white matter lesion volumes. Sekikawa’s team also discovered that high levels of isoflavones—soy nutrients that are metabolized into equol—had no effect on levels of white matter lesions or amyloid-beta when equol wasn’t produced.

According to Sekikawa, the ability to produce equol from soy isoflavones may be the key to unlocking protective health benefits from a soy-rich diet, and his team has previously shown that equol production is associated with a lower risk of heart disease. As heart disease is strongly associated with cognitive decline and dementia, equol production could help protect the aging brain as well as the heart.

A metabolite produced following consumption of dietary soy may decrease a key risk factor for dementia—with the help of the right bacteria, according to a new discovery led by researchers at the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health.

Their study, published today in the journal Alzheimer’s & Dementia: Translational Research & Clinical Interventions, reports that elderly Japanese men and women who produce equol—a metabolite of dietary soy created by certain types of gut bacteria—display lower levels of white matter lesions within the brain.

Continue reading “Bacterial metabolism of dietary soy may lower risk factor for dementia” | >

UCLA researchers have identified a compound that can reproduce the effect of exercise in muscle cells in mice. The findings are published in the journal Cell Reports Medicine.

Normally, muscles get stronger as they are used, thanks to a series of chemical signals inside . The newly identified compound activates those signals, which suggests that like it could eventually be used to treat people with limb girdle , a form of adolescent-onset muscular dystrophy.

When muscles aren’t worked regularly, they gradually atrophy. (The phenomenon is familiar to anyone who’s had a cast on their leg for several weeks.) Fortunately, for people with healthy muscles, that deterioration is reversible. Muscle use stimulates chemical messengers inside the muscle cells that increase muscle mass and strength.

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For the first time, scientists have created pigs, goats and cattle that can serve as viable “surrogate sires,” male animals that produce sperm carrying only the genetic traits of donor animals.

The advance, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on Sept. 14, could speed the spread of desirable characteristics in livestock and improve food production for a growing global population. It also would enable breeders in remote regions better access to genetic material of elite animals from other parts of the world and allow more precision breeding in animals such as goats where using is difficult.

“With this technology, we can get better dissemination of desirable traits and improve the efficiency of food production. This can have a major impact on addressing food insecurity around the world,” said Jon Oatley, a reproductive biologist with WSU’s College of Veterinary Medicine. “If we can tackle this genetically, then that means less water, less feed and fewer antibiotics we have to put into the animals.”

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The human eye does not work like a camera, contrary to common belief. Consider the following key factors:

1) Both the cornea and the lens COMBINE to give the focusing effect. Thus it is TWO lenses, not one that allow human vision. In fact the cornea is responsible for two-thirds or more of the focusing effect. The lens compounds that focusing, projecting it from past the pupil onto the curved retina at the back of the eye.

2) The eye corrects for CHROMATIC ABERATION by having a central pit, the FOVEA, where the blue cells are concentrated along the outer rim and the red cells concentrated in the center. Blue light focusses slightly closer to an objective lens and red light slightly further. Thus the red cells are concentrated further back, at the base of the pit, so that the human eye has a natural color correction without the need for complex color corrected lenses.

3) The retina is a curved “screen” at the back of the eye, allowing human vision to encompass an entire hemisphere of 180 degrees in the forwards direction. The retina is mostly rod cells except for at the central fovea, for seeing light but not color and detail, which is why it is easier to see faint objects through a telescope by using what astronomers call “averted vision,” not looking straight at it.

There are thus several factors in trying to use metamaterial lenses to create retinal projection, including:

1) Since the cornea is curved, a tailored curved contact metalens, instead of a flat metalens is ideal.

Continue reading “Metalens Retinal Projection Using The Eye’s Inherent Structure” | >

Rooftop solar, Covid and more large scale renewables push Australia’s main grid to record low levels of demand and emissions intensity, and the lowest prices in years.

The combined impact of growing rooftop solar and the Covid-19 pandemic – along with the continued influx of large scale wind and solar – has create a suite of new records in Australia’s electricity grids in the September quarter, sending demand, emissions and prices to new lows.

The latest Quarterly Energy Dynamics for the September quarter, compiled by the Australian Energy Market Operator, also noted record highs for wind and solar output, which along with falling gas prices and cut-price bidding by coal generators trying to stay competitive led to the lowest wholesale prices in more than five years, and in some cases, record low prices.

Importantly, the emissions intensity of Australia’s main grid also fell to a record low of 0.7 tonnes of Co2 equivalent – thanks to the big reduction in black coal output and the increase in renewables, and despite a rise in the dirtiest fuel source, brown coal.

Continue reading “Solar and Covid lead change as grid demand, prices and emissions tumble to record lows” | >

So now, there are AI doctors.

Machine learning is taking medical diagnosis by storm. From eye disease, breast and other cancers, to more amorphous neurological disorders, AI is routinely matching physician performance, if not beating them outright.

Yet how much can we take those results at face value? When it comes to life and death decisions, when can we put our full trust in enigmatic algorithms—“black boxes” that even their creators cannot fully explain or understand? The problem gets more complex as medical AI crosses multiple disciplines and developers, including both academic and industry powerhouses such as Google, Amazon, or Apple, with disparate incentives.

This week, the two sides battled it out in a heated duel in one of the most prestigious science journals, Nature. On one side are prominent AI researchers at the Princess Margaret Cancer Centre, University of Toronto, Stanford University, Johns Hopkins, Harvard, MIT, and others. On the other side is the titan Google Health.

Continue reading “Can We Trust AI Doctors? Google Health and Academics Battle It Out” | >

Restaurant owners say they have grown accustomed this year to constantly reinventing themselves to survive. Getting around Mother Nature as the U.S. heads toward winter may be their biggest challenge yet.

Sales from outdoor dining, reduced indoor dining, delivery, and takeout haven’t equaled what most restaurants expected to earn this year before the pandemic upended public life, some owners say. Adding heaters and other fixtures to draw diners to outdoor tables as the weather cools adds to the costs of sustaining a modest revenue stream.

But determined restaurant operators say they have no other choice. They say running at a loss while they have funds to do so—in the hope that the threat of the virus abates—is better than the challenges they would face after closing temporarily, such as finding reliable staff.

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This includes volunteering to test the new vaccine being developed by the Israeli Institute for Biological Research in Ness Ziona. Meet some of the heroes who are doing their bit for humanity.

The research center said it will begin the clinical trials phase of its COVID-19 vaccine in November and about one hundred Israelis aged 18–55 are expected to participate by the time the trials are over. The first phase will include three brave volunteers and will take place in Sheba Medical Center in Tel HaShomer and Hadassah Medical Center in Jerusalem.

As with any other clinical trials, participants will be divided into two groups: those who will receive the real vaccine and those who will receive a fake vaccine, also known as placebo.

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In a major breakthrough an international team of scientists, led by the University of Bristol, has potentially identified what makes SARS-CoV-2 highly infectious and able to spread rapidly in human cells. The findings, published in Science today [20 October] describe how the virus’s ability to infect human cells can be reduced by inhibitors that block a newly discovered interaction between virus and host, demonstrating a potential anti-viral treatment.

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