The more researchers look, the more multifaceted the risk factors appear — and the more we learn about how the brain works and develops.
Category: neuroscience – Page 1,061
Light-based, 15-second scan aims to replace painful mammograms
Up to 50% of women skip potentially life-saving mammograms often because the procedure can cause extreme discomfort and pain. Now researchers have developed a painless, light-based, non-radioactive, 15-second procedure that could revolutionize breast cancer screening and save lives.
Although early detection of breast cancer can significantly increase survival, the radioactive X-ray that requires painful squeezing of the breast to get a good picture is an event that women do not look forward to. Now Caltech researcher Lihong Wang, Ph.D., Bren Professor of Medical and Electrical Engineering, and his colleagues are using their expertise in imaging tissues with light and sound to address this problem. Their development of a revolutionary breast scanning system known as photoacoustic computed tomography (PACT) is reported in the June issue of Nature Communications.2
“The technique developed by Wang and his colleagues combines light and sound to peer noninvasively into tissues without the radioactivity of an X-ray,” explained Behrouz Shabestari, Ph.D., director of the Program in Optical Imaging at the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering, which funded the study. “PACT is also superior to MRI, which is expensive and sometimes requires the injection of contrast agents, commonly gadolinium. Gadolinium cannot be used in individuals with kidney disease and has recently been shown to accumulate in the bones and brain with unknown long-term effects.”
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Transparent architecture
ETH spin-off Archilyse promises nothing less than the “world’s most comprehensive architecture analysis” on its website. The young entrepreneurs are attracting a lot of interest in the real estate sector.
Is a four-room apartment family-friendly or more suitable for a couple? How can office space be optimally divided so that its users feel comfortable? Archilyse helps to answer these kinds of questions. Based on address information, floor plans and 3D models, the ETH spin-off’s platform delivers various simulations and analyses of a property and makes them available to project developers, architects and real estate companies via an interface.
“A young family, for example, might be interested in the soundproofing between the children’s rooms and the living room, whether you can see the play area from the living room and whether the children’s rooms are bright enough to not impair the children’s cognitive abilities,” explains Archilyse founder Matthias Standfest.
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Pig brains partially revived after death
US scientists have partially revived pig brains four hours after the animals were slaughtered.
The findings could fuel debate about the barrier between life and death, and provide a new way of researching diseases like Alzheimer’s.
The study showed the death of brain cells could be halted and that some connections in the brain were restored.
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Scientists restore some functions in a pig’s BRAIN hours after it died
Scientists bring some functions in a pig’s BRAIN ‘back to life’ — four hours after the farm animal died„.
Scientists have been able to partially revive the brains of decapitated pigs that died four hours earlier in a groundbreaking study.
Experts used tubes that pumped a chemical mixture designed to mimic blood into the decapitated heads of 32 pigs to restore circulation and cellular activity.
Echoing Mary Shelley’s classic novel Frankenstein, billions of neurons began acting normally and the deaths of other cells was reduced over the course of six hours.
Program: Happy to announce Prof. Julie K. Andersen at the Buck Institute for Research on Aging in Novato as a speaker for the 2019 Undoing Aging Conference
“Julie has been associated with SENS since its earliest days: she participated in the first workshop that I organised to discuss it, in 2000, and she was a co-author on the first SENS paper in 2002. We’re delighted to be funding her laboratory at the Buck Institute to explore new ways of eliminating neurofibrillary tangles from neurons of Alzheimer’s sufferers, and at UA2019 we will hear about their initial progress.” says Aubrey de Grey.
https://www.undoing-aging.org/news/dr-julie-k-andersen-to-sp…Qq6fZbArkM #