George Church, a professor of genetics at Harvard Medical School and an organizer of the proposed project, said there had been a misunderstanding. The project was not aimed at creating people, just cells, and would not be restricted to human genomes, he said. Rather it would aim to improve the ability to synthesize DNA in general, which could be applied to various animals, plants and microbes.
The project poses ethical issues about whether humans could be created without parents.
One of the hurdles of realizing the promise of nanoparticles is that scientists can’t view where they go or how the nanoparticles interact with structures once they are inside of the body. A new technique that involves injecting an acrylamide hydrogel into organs and tissues removed from mice allows researchers to image nanoparticles more than 25 times deeper than is possible with current methods, to a depth of more than 1 millimeter. Lipids are what cause tissues to look opaque. By using the hydrogel to bind all of the molecules together except for lipids, which washed away easily, the team, led by Warren C. W. Chan, were able to make the tissues look transparent but remain intact. The work, published in ACS Nano, may help researchers be able to tell if therapy-loaded nanoparticles are delivering the cargo to the desired destination. Check out the video below.
ExclusiveTechnologies.
Nice!!!!
Develop microscopic vehicles that can carry anti-cancer drug molecules to affected cells
Indian scientists are closing in on a breakthrough in cancer treatment that will see a variety of cancers being cured using just a series of injections without side-effects on the body, that is characteristic of chemotherapy. The new technology has the potential to completely bypass chemotherapy.
A team of scientists from the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) in Bengaluru are on the verge of developing just such a non-invasive technique to deal with cancers.
Making Holographic Apps more secured and efficient.
Since its birth, holograms have been extensively used to serve security systems and related purposes. The making of a hologram, dissecting it to pieces and again rejoining the blocks involves a steady orientation of lenses which encodes the information with depth perception that could be deciphered later according to requirement.
It’s hard to imagine a 21st century city running smooth without an immense use of holograms, small or big sized 2D cards with 3D engraved pictures that are present in credit cards, grocery objects, books, biomedical devices and in other objects requiring retrievable information to be stored.
In terms of concealing product information, these sticker based fancy stuffs were up to the mark, until technology escalated beyond imagination. Even a previously measured safe encryption suffered from threat and these tools became fragile. Researchers initialized various approaches to hit the safest and complex path, among which nanotechnology had an answer in store for them. A research team from the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences had recently forced polarization to concise holograms, comprising of tiny light-polarization sensitive nanostructures to generate numerous ones depending upon the polarization configuration of light.
A team led by scientists at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) has reported a research trifecta. They discovered a new vulnerable site on HIV for a vaccine to target, a broadly neutralizing antibody that binds to that target site, and how the antibody stops the virus from infecting a cell. The study was led by scientists at the Vaccine Research Center (VRC) of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, part of NIH.
The new target is a part of HIV called the fusion peptide, a string of eight amino acids that helps the virus fuse with a cell to infect it. The fusion peptide has a much simpler structure than other sites on the virus that HIV vaccine scientists have studied.
The scientists first examined the blood of an HIV-infected person to explore its ability to stop the virus from infecting cells. The blood was good at neutralizing HIV but did not target any of the vulnerable spots on the virus where broadly neutralizing HIV antibodies (bnAbs) were known to bind.
Interesting…
Odd, but definitely interesting.
For a long time it has been thought that all eukaryotes — organisms in which the DNA is enclosed in a membrane including almost all life we can see — had to contain mitochondria.
Known as the “power house” of the cell, these little subunits within the cell provide the organisms with energy and were thus thought to be essential.
But it now seems that actually they might not be that essential, as researchers describe the first eukaryote known that lacks mitochondria.
A RUSSIAN man who has a debilitating illness has volunteered to become the first person to undergo a head transplant – but experts say the side effects of the procedure could be worse than death.
Valery Spiridonov, 30, suffers from Werdnig-Hoffmann disease, a rare form of spinal muscular atrophy.
The controversial operation will involve cooling his head to around 12 degrees Celsius, cutting it from his body and connecting it to the donated body of a brain-dead person.
Dr. Greg Irving, a Clinical Lecturer from the University of Cambridge, recently authored a research project on the potential impact of blockchain technology on scientific research. While the use is not novel in principle, it underscores the very reason blockchain was created.
Why Scientific Research?
Irving, and rightfully so, says that in order to truly trust scientific research the reader’s must know that the content and subsequent conclusions of the research has maintained its integrity throughout editing and publishing. The author references “outcome switching, data dredging, and selective publication” as just a some of the potential pitfalls that can result in bastardized research. How then can researchers increase the trust that their research is has not been tampered with? In response Irving writes.
Holograms are a ubiquitous part of our lives. They are in our wallets—protecting credit cards, cash and driver’s licenses from fraud—in grocery store scanners and biomedical devices.
Even though holographic technology has been around for decades, researchers still struggle to make compact holograms more efficient, complex and secure.
Researchers at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences have programmed polarization into compact holograms. These holograms use nanostructures that are sensitive to polarization (the direction in which light vibrates) to produce different images depending on the polarization of incident light. This advancement, which works across the spectrum of light, may improvement anti-fraud holograms as well as those used in entertainment displays.
Check out LEAF President Keith Comito explain the origin of Lifespan.io and why crowdfunding research to extend healthy lifespan is both important and exciting.
Our current campaign is here: https://www.lifespan.io/campaigns/the-major-mouse-testing-program/ and there will be more to follow soon! Connect with us on social media and subcribe on YouTube to stay informed. #CrowdfundTheCure #LifespanIO
LEAF President Keith Comito explains the origin of Lifespan.io — a crowdfunding platform specifically for biomedical research aimed at extending healthy human lifespan. Learn more, and help us Crowdfund the Cure for Aging: https://www.lifespan.io
