Within seconds of the withdrawal of life support, two of the patients exhibited a surge of neurophysiological activity characterized by changes in several different brain wave “bands,” at both the local and global levels. Freethink.
Researchers found a surge of neurophysiological activity in the dying human brain, including in regions associated with conscious processing.
In 1,895, Wilhelm Röntgen discovered X-rays and used them to image the bones in his wife’s hand, kicking off a revolutionary diagnostic tool for medicine. Now two of NASA’s X-ray space telescopes have combined their imaging powers to unveil the magnetic field “bones” of a remarkable hand-shaped structure in space. Together, these telescopes reveal the behavior of a dead collapsed star that lives on through plumes of particles of energized matter and antimatter.
Around 1,500 years ago, a giant star in our galaxy ran out of nuclear fuel to burn. When this happened, the star collapsed onto itself and formed an extremely dense object called a neutron star.
Rotating neutron stars with strong magnetic fields, or pulsars, provide laboratories for extreme physics, with conditions that cannot be replicated on Earth. Young pulsars can create jets of matter and antimatter moving away from the poles of the pulsar, along with an intense wind, forming a “pulsar wind nebula.”
Colorectal cancer screening is widely recommended for adults ages 45 to 75 with an average risk of developing the disease. However, many people don’t realize that the benefits of screening for this type of cancer aren’t always the same for older adults.
“While many clinicians simply follow guideline recommendations for colon cancer screening in adults within this age range, this isn’t always the best approach,” said Sameer Saini, M.D., M.S., who is a gastroenterologist at both Michigan Medicine and the Lieutenant Colonel Charles S. Kettles VA Medical Center and is as a health services researcher at the University of Michigan Institute for Healthcare Policy and Innovation and the Ann Arbor VA Center for Clinical Management Research, or CCMR.
“As individuals get older, they often acquire health problems that can lead to potential harm when coupled with endoscopy. While guidelines recommend a personalized approach to screening in average risk individuals between ages 76 and 85, there are no such recommendations for older adults who are younger than age 76—individuals who we commonly see in our clinics.”
A new study is finding that greener neighborhoods protect telomeres which prevent aging on a genetic level.
The role of telomeres in aging
Telomeres are repetitive sequences of DNA found at the ends of chromosomes that play a crucial role in preserving the integrity and stability of the genetic material within a cell.
As cells divide and their telomeres become progressively shorter, they eventually reach a critical point where they can no longer divide. This state is known as cellular senescence, and it is associated with aging and age-related diseases.
Researchers at the UAB and ICMAB have succeeded in bringing wireless technology to the fundamental level of magnetic devices. The emergence and control of magnetic properties in cobalt nitride layers (initially non-magnetic) by voltage, without connecting the sample to electrical wiring, represents a paradigm shift that can facilitate the creation of magnetic nanorobots for biomedicine and computing systems where basic information management processes do not require wiring.
The study was recently published in the latest issue of Nature Communications.
Electronic devices rely on manipulating the electrical and magnetic properties of components, whether for computing or storing information, among other processes. Controlling magnetism using voltage instead of electric currents has become a very important control method to improve energy efficiency in many devices, since currents heat up circuits. In recent years, much research has been carried out to implement protocols for applying voltages to carry out this control, but always through electrical connections directly on the materials.
Particle accelerators are crucial tools in a wide variety of areas in industry, research and the medical sector. The space these machines require ranges from a few square meters to large research centers. Using lasers to accelerate electrons within a photonic nanostructure constitutes a microscopic alternative with the potential of generating significantly lower costs and making devices considerably less bulky.
Until now, no substantial energy gains were demonstrated. In other words, it has not been shown that electrons really have increased in speed significantly. A team of laser physicists at Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU) has now succeeded in demonstrating the first nanophotonic electron accelerator —at the same time as colleagues from Stanford University. The researchers from FAU have now published their findings in the journal Nature.
When people hear “particle accelerator,” most will probably think of the Large Hadron Collider in Geneva, the approximately 27 kilometer long ring-shaped tunnel which researchers from around the globe used to conduct research into unknown elementary particles. Such huge particle accelerators are the exception, however. We are more likely to encounter them in other places in our day to day lives, for example in medical imaging procedures or during radiation to treat tumors.
The naked mole rat won’t win any beauty contests, but it could possibly win in the talent category. Its superpower: fighting the aging process to live several times longer than other animals its size, in a state of youthful vigor.
It’s believed that naked mole rats experience all the normal processes of wear and tear over their lifespan, but that they’re exceptionally good at repairing the damage from oxygen free radicals and the DNA errors that accumulate over time. Even though they possess genes that make them vulnerable to cancer, they rarely develop the disease, or any other age-related disease, for that matter. Naked mole rats are known to live for over 40 years without any signs of aging, whereas mice live on average about two years and are highly prone to cancer.
Now, these remarkable animals may be able to share their superpower with other species. In August, a study provided what may be the first proof-of-principle that genetic material transferred from one species can increase both longevity and healthspan in a recipient animal.
Exercise offers benefits for those with type 1 diabetes, but needs careful blood glucose management. Anaerobic & aerobic exercise cause different responses-optimize nutrition, insulin dosing & monitoring to reach target ranges & reduce dysglycemia risk.
Type 1 diabetes mellitus is an autoimmune disease caused by affected individuals’ autoimmune response to their own pancreatic beta-cell. It affects millions of people worldwide. Exercise has numerous health and social benefits for patients with type 1 diabetes mellitus; however, careful management of blood glucose is crucial to minimize the risk of hypoglycemia and hyperglycemia. Anaerobic and aerobic exercises cause different glycemic responses during and after exercise, each of which will affect athletes’ ability to reach their target blood glucose ranges. The optimization of the patient’s macronutrient consumption, especially carbohydrates, the dosage of basal and short-acting insulin, and the frequent monitoring of blood glucose, will enable athletes to perform at peak levels while reducing their risk of dysglycemia. Despite best efforts, hypoglycemia can occur.
Startup Twin Health is developing a program that uses sensor data to construct a replica of a person’s metabolism and then simulate virtual interventions on the body. The simulations suggest non-drug recommendations that help reverse metabolic disorders such as diabetes.
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A team of scientists at UC San Francisco reported a way to leverage cancers’ unique metabolic profile to ensure that drugs only target cancer cells: Freethink.
To make matters worse, cancer cells sometimes only die when patients take relatively high doses of a drug. This is because cancer’s metabolism is often greater in cancer cells than in normal cells. For instance, some cancer cells have more MEK enzyme — meaning more cobimetinib is required to stop these cells from replicating. Unfortunately, the doses cancer patients receive often closely approach or even exceed the levels at which the drug causes toxicities in healthy tissues.
Cancer cells hoard iron at a far greater rate than healthy cells, according to previous studies. Although the reason for this remains unclear, the UCSF team realized this could be leveraged to increase the specificity of cancer drugs. If a cancer drug, such as cobimetinib, were only activated in the iron-rich environment of a cancer cell, the drug would be inert when it interacts with healthy cells. It’s something like a two-factor authentication system for cancer drugs.
To test this, the scientist synthesized an iron-activated (IA) cobimetinib that only blocks MEK in an iron-rich environment. The experimental drug inhibited tumor growth as efficiently as standard cobimetinib, but it spared healthy cells. Using a mouse-lung cancer model, mice receiving either IA-cobimetinib or standard cobimetinib had fewer lung lesions and showed prolonged overall survival compared to vehicle-treated mice. When the scientists evaluated IA-cobimetinib’s effect on healthy human retinal and skin cells, they found the healthy tissue was about 10-fold less sensitive than cancer cells to IA-cobimetinib.
