Lifeboat Foundation

Varietal purity is the most important quality parameter of maize seeds, which has direct and prominent influence on the output and quality of maize. For the first time, to our knowledge, we present a new kind of terahertz (THz) scanning imaging technology for identification of maize seeds. Terahertz images of DNA samples are obtained by point-by-point scanning imaging technology. Inspection and identification of specific kinds of seeds are realized successfully by using the method of component pattern analysis. In this method, what we need are only data of image and absorption spectral information of samples; no specific features of samples are required. This technology provides a new approach for the detection and identification in biology and it can also be extended to poison inspection.

Cryosurgery is usually used for skin tumors. However, some internal tumors can be treated this way as well. The surgery involves the use of liquid nitrogen.

Here’s some good news as we head into cold and flu season: Scientists may have found the cure for the common cold.

“Our grandmas have always been asking us, ‘If you’re so smart, why haven’t you come up with a cure for the common cold?” one of the study’s co-authors, Jan Carette, PhD, associate professor of microbiology and immunology at Stanford University School of Medicine, said in a statement.

No offense to Grandma, but there’s a reason finding a cure for the common cold, which affects millions of Americans each year, has been so elusive. There isn’t just one virus that’s behind the infection. Many different respiratory viruses can bring on the common cold, but most are caused by rhinovirus infections. There are approximately 160 known types of rhinovirus, which, as Stanford noted in a news release, explains why getting a cold doesn’t make you immune to picking up another one a month later.

Sept. 18 (UPI) — When it comes to controlling early symptoms of type 2 diabetes, two drugs are better than one, a new study says.

Prescribing metformin and vildagliptin to people newly diagnosed with type 2 diabetes reduced their long-term blood sugar levels more than single-drug therapy, according to findings published Wednesday in The Lancet. The patients also had lower rates of treatment failure than those who only used Metformin, the current first-line drug used by new type 2 diabetics.

“The findings of VERIFY support and emphasize the importance of achieving and maintaining early glycaemic control,” the authors wrote.

Meet the Harvard genetics genius who says we can stop growing old today – even without futuristic drugs.

In regenerative medicine, scientists aim to significantly advance techniques that can control stem cell lineage commitment. For example, mechanical stimulation of mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) at the nanoscale can activate mechanotransduction pathways to stimulate osteogenesis (bone development) in 2-D and 3D culture. Such work can revolutionize bone graft procedures by creating graft material from autologous or allogenic sources of MSCs without chemically inducing the phenomenon. Due to increasing biomedical interest in such mechanical stimulation of cells for clinical use, both researchers and clinicians require a scalable bioreactor system to provide consistently reproducible results. In a new study now published on Scientific Reports, Paul Campsie and a team of multidisciplinary researchers at the departments of biomedical engineering, computing, physics, and molecular, cell and systems biology engineered a new bioreactor system to meet the existing requirements.

The new instrument contained a vibration plate for bioreactions, calibrated and optimized for nanometer vibrations at 1 kHz, a power supply unit to generate a 30 nm vibration amplitude and custom six-well cultureware for cell growth. The cultureware contained magnetic inserts to attach to the bioreactor’s magnetic vibration plate. They assessed osteogenic protein expression to confirm the differentiation of MSCs after initial biological experiments within the system. Campsie et al. conducted atomic force microscopy (AFM) of the 3D gel constructs to verify that strain hardening of the gel did not occur during vibrational stimulation. The results confirmed cell differentiation to be the result of nano-vibrational stimulations provided by the bioreactor alone.

The increasing incidence of skeletal injuries due to age-related conditions such as osteoporosis and osteoarthritis is a metric of the depleting quality of human life. The development of treatments for increased bone density or fracture healing are prime targets for the regenerative potential of mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs). Researchers have demonstrated controlled osteogenesis (development of bones) of MSCs via mechanical stimulation using several methods, including passive and active strategies. Passive methods typically alter the substrate topography to influence the cell adhesion profile, while active methods include exposure to varied forces from external sources.

Researchers at Hefei University of Technology in China and various universities in Japan have recently developed a unique emotion sensing system that can recognize people’s emotions based on their body gestures. They presented this new AI- powered system, called EmoSense, in a paper pre-published on arXiv.

“In our daily life, we can clearly realize that body gestures contain rich mood expressions for emotion recognition,” Yantong Wang, one of the researchers who carried out the study, told TechXplore. “Meanwhile, we can also find out that human body gestures affect wireless signals via shadowing and multi-path effects when we use antennas to detect behavior. Such signal effects usually form unique patterns or fingerprints in the temporal-frequency domain for different gestures.”

Wang and his colleagues observed that human body gestures can affect wireless signals, producing characteristic patterns that could be used for emotion recognition. This inspired them to develop a system that can identify these patterns, recognizing people’s emotions based on their physical movements.

In a study this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, an international team of researchers describe how a cancer-linked version of the protein mitoNEET can close the primary gateways in the outer surface of mitochondria, the “power plants” that supply cells with chemical energy. These gateways, or “voltage-dependent anion channels” (VDACs), normally open and close to allow the passage of metabolites and other small molecules between mitochondria and the rest of the cell.

“The VDAC channel transports all types of metabolites between the cytosol and the mitochondria,” said study co-author José Onuchic, a physicist and co-director of Rice University’s Center for Theoretical Biological Physics (CTBP). “Dysfunction of this channel is involved in many diseases including cancer and fatty liver disease.”

Researchers have identified a link between traumatic brain injury and intestinal changes. A new study reports the intestinal changes may contribute to increased risk of developing infections and could worsen brain damage in TBI patients.