Rabia Nusrat, an environmental engineering student, Global UGRAD alumni, in her final year at University of Engineering and Technology, UET, Lahore, Pakistan and the first ideaXme public interviewer, interviews Shayan Sohail Sarwar, Forbes 30 Under 30 Asia Innovator and Chief Technology Officer PakVitae.
PakVitae:
In a recent study conducted in mice, researchers became one step closer to that understanding, discovering that exercise actually strengthens the brain’s resilience to stress. Exercise helps animals cope with stress by enabling an uptick in a crucial neural protein called galanin, the study suggests. This process influences stress levels, food consumption, cognition, and mood.
Leveraging this finding, researchers were able to genetically tweak even sedentary mice’s levels of galanin, shifts that lowered their anxious response to stress.
The study’s authors explain that this study helps pin down the biological mechanisms driving exercise’s positive effects on stress. While further human experiments are needed to confirm these findings, the researchers have practical advice for people looking to get these benefits: perform regular, aerobic exercise.
We also discovered that our protein is located at the plasma membrane, the boundary between the inside and outside of a cell. This is critical. We are putting stock in the idea that this transporter moves sucrose from the outside of cells and into the phloem. To perform this function, its location on the plasma membrane is a must.
MSU-DOE Plant Research Laboratory (PRL) scientists have characterized a sucrose transporter protein found in common beans. The recently discovered protein could help us understand how beans tolerate hot temperatures. The transporter, called PvSUT1.1, is reported in the journal Plant Direct.
During photosynthesis, bean leaves capture carbon dioxide from the air and convert it into sugars that fuel their growth and development. Most species transport these sugars throughout the plant in the form of sucrose.
Continue reading “Newly discovered sugar transporter might help beans tolerate hot temperatures” »
It was at this webcast that Musk unveiled the latest version of his company NeuraLink’s latest prototype, the Link VO.9 — a chip that would allow humans to control devices with their brains.
Musk said this could eventually help cure people with conditions like memory loss, hearing loss, paralysis, blindness, brain damage, depression and anxiety.
Viewers of the webcast met Gertrude, a pig that had the chip implanted in her brain two months ago. A graph shown onscreen showed the waves inside Gertrude’s brain, which fired when her brain communicated with her snout while she was eating.
Scientists led by Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (NTU Singapore) have developed a novel method of using fruit peel waste to extract and reuse precious metals from spent lithium-ion batteries in order to create new batteries.
The team demonstrated their concept using orange peel, which recovered precious metals from battery waste efficiently. They then made functional batteries from these recovered metals, creating minimal waste in the process.
The scientists say that their waste-to-resource approach tackles both food waste and electronics waste, supporting the development of a circular economy with zero waste, in which resources are kept in use for as long as possible. An estimated 1.3 billion tonnes of food waste and 50 million tonnes of e-waste are generated globally each year.
Sixty feet beneath the surface of the Caribbean Sea, aquanaut Fabien Cousteau and industrial designer Yves Béhar are envisioning the world’s largest underwater research station and habitat.
The pair have unveiled Fabien Cousteau’s Proteus, a 4,000-square-foot modular lab that will sit under the water off the coast of Curaçao, providing a home to scientists and researchers from across the world studying the ocean — from the effects of climate change and new marine life to medicinal breakthroughs.
Designed as a two-story circular structure grounded to the ocean floor on stilts, Proteus’ protruding pods contain laboratories, personal quarters, medical bays and a moon pool where divers can access the ocean floor. Powered by wind and solar energy, and ocean thermal energy conversion, the structure will also feature the first underwater greenhouse for growing food, as well as a video production facility.
O,.o circa 2019.
PARIS (Reuters) — A Paris zoo showcased a mysterious new organism on Wednesday, dubbed the “blob”, a yellowish unicellular small living being which looks like a fungus but acts like an animal.
This newest exhibit of the Paris Zoological Park, which goes on display to the public on Saturday, has no mouth, no stomach, no eyes, yet it can detect food and digest it.
Continue reading “Paris zoo unveils the ‘blob’, an organism with no brain but 720 sexes” »
Both shocking and intriguing for the possibilities of gynogenesis reproduction in which sperm is used from one creature to fertilize an egg, but its DNA is ignored.
A team of researchers working at Hungary’s National Agricultural Research and Innovation Centre, Research Institute for Fisheries and Aquaculture, has accidentally bred a new kind of fish—dubbed the sturddlefish by some observers, it is a cross between an American Paddlefish and a Russian Sturgeon. In their paper published in the journal Genes, the group describes accidentally breeding the fish and what they learned by doing so.
In the past, scientists and others have bred animals from different species for various reasons, from research to utility—mules (crossed between donkeys and horses) are considered to have beneficial traits from both animals, and ligers (a cross between lions and tigers) have helped researchers understand their respective genetic backgrounds. In this new effort, the researchers claim that they were not trying to create a new type of fish, they were instead attempting to apply gynogenesis (a type of reproduction in which sperm is used from one creature to fertilize an egg, but its DNA is ignored) using American paddlefish and Russian sturgeon. To their surprise, the eggs produced fish that grew to adults.
Continue reading “Researchers accidentally breed sturddlefish” »
One of, if not the oldest visible form of life, to which we owe much of our original Oxygen rich environment, these Stromatolites are under threat.
Agriculture has threatened an area holding an exceptional array of microbes.
Continue reading “Watch: Threatened pools in Mexican desert hold clues to early life” »
Our kidneys are crucial for keeping us alive and healthy. A sort of chemical computer that keeps our blood chemistry stable—whether we’re eating a sugary birthday cake or a vitamin-filled salad—they prevent waste buildup, stabilize our electrolyte levels, and produce hormones to regulate our blood pressure and make red blood cells.
Kidneys clean our blood using nephrons, which are essentially filters that let fluid and waste products through while blocking blood cells, proteins, and minerals. The latter get reintegrated into the blood, and the former leave the body in urine.
Scientists have struggled to come up with viable treatments for kidney disease and renal failure, and their complexity means kidneys are incredibly hard to synthetically recreate; each kidney contains around one million intricately-structured nephrons.
