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Category: biotech/medical – Page 2181

Biotech is the solution to tackle the environmental impact of meat and the fertilizer shortage.

The world has focused first on energy in its effort to stop greenhouse gas emissions, but former Energy Secretary Steven Chu puts agriculture at the top of his list of climate challenges—particularly animal agriculture.

The Nobel Prize winning physicist surveyed the world’s carbon-polluting industries in a lecture at the University of Chicago, and he started with meat and dairy.

“If cattle and dairy cows were a country, they would have more greenhouse gas emissions than the entire EU 28,” said Chu, who recently assumed the presidency of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Continue reading “Meat And Agriculture Are Worse For The Climate Than Power Generation, Steven Chu Says” | >

It’s the kind of diverse, multidisciplinary community, Chinese scientists say, that is crucial to doing great research but is often lacking in labs. “The goals of the Materials Genome Initiative in the States and in China are the same: to produce better materials more quickly that cost less. It’s very important we collaborate with overseas scientists because the materials genome is a new topic. We need to figure out the best path together,” says Zhang.

Researchers are reaping the benefits of carefully built programmes and a surge in funding.

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Cancer cells are generally much more metabolically active than healthy cells, so some insight into a cancer cell’s behavior and type can be gathered by analyzing its metabolic activity. But getting an accurate assessment of metabolic activity has proven difficult. Several methods, including position emission tomography (or PET) scans, fluorescent dyes, and contrast agents have been used, but each is limited it is usefulness.

Researchers combine PAM and OCR to more quickly measure cancer-cell metabolisms.

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We recently attended the Undoing Aging Conference in Berlin and had the opportunity to interview Professor Vittorio Sebastiano of Turn. Bio, a company developing partial cellular reprogramming techniques to reverse cellular aging.

As we age, our cells experience changes to their epigenetic markers, and this, in turn, changes gene expression, which is proposed to be a primary reason we age. Recently, there has been considerable interest in resetting these epigenetic markers to reverse cellular aging; induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC) creation uses similar techniques.

However, unlike iPSCs, which are totally reprogrammed back to a developmental state and can become any other cell type in the body, the goal of partial cellular reprogramming is to reset the epigenetic aging markers in the cells without erasing cell identity. Researchers believe that exposing aged cells to reprogramming factors only for a very short time may be enough to reset cellular aging without causing the cells to forget their current roles.

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Following is a transcript of the video.

The truth is, you’re going to die. We all are. That’s because unlike whooping cough or strep throat, death has no cure. But thanks to the latest medical breakthroughs we’re closer than ever to finding one. In fact, some experts predict that we’ll be able to live up to 20% longer over the next 100 years. That means children today might live until they’re 145 years old. And what about immortality? Well, even that’s not out of the question.

History is littered with unusual attempts to defy death. In 1920, for example, a Russian scientist thought he could prolong life by sewing a piece of monkey testicle to a human’s. And even more shockingly, the idea caught on. At least 300 people underwent the procedure. Ouch.

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Agree or Disagree?

According to two papers published in Cell on January 11, 2018, the making of memories and the processes of learning resemble, of all things, a viral infection. It works like this: The shells that transport information between neurons are assembled by a gene called Arc. Experiments conducted by two research teams revealed that the Arc protein that forms a shell, functions much like a Gag, a gene that transports a virus’s genetic material between cells during an infection. For example, the retrovirus HIV uses a Gag in exactly this manner.

Scientific American:

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DAILY DOSE | A new cutting-edge cancer treatment has been developed in one of the innovation capitals of the world — Israel. How does it work and why is some of the medical community eagerly awaiting to use it? Accelerated Evolution Biotechnologies CEO Ilan Morad discusses with host Ayman Sikseck.

Story:

Has a cure for cancer finally been found? Maybe, and it may have born right here in Israel.

An Israeli team of scientists is developing an anti-cancer drug that will target several mutations in cancer cells using a combination of several-cancer directed peptides.

Continue reading “Israeli Company’s New Cutting-Edge Cancer Treatment” | >

Gravity Falls

This wasn’t the first time Gravity has wowed observers with its Iron Man-esque Jet Suit, which features jets mounted to each of a wearer’s arms. The company even let a CNBC journalist take it for a test flight last year.

In spite of the wow factor, though, one of Williamson’s aids clarified that Gravity’s suit — which costs an imposing $440,000 — isn’t ready for combat yet.

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