What could be the reason why, besides scratching the belly, scratching and stroking the ears is such a special experience for the dog? We’ll tell you!
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Muscle in Space Sheds Light on Ageing-Related Muscle Loss
Sarcopenia, which is a progressive and extensive decline in muscle mass and strength, is common with aging and estimated to affect up to 50% of people aged 80 and older. It can lead to disability and injuries from falls and is associated with a lower quality of life and an increased mortality. Apart from lifestyle changes, there is no current clinical treatment for sarcopenia.
Space flight with the associated absence of gravity and limited strain on muscles causes muscle weakness, a prominent feature of sarcopenia, within a short period of time, providing a time lapse view on age-related atrophy-associated changes in the muscle. This relatively short window of time in space provides a microgravity model for muscular aging and opens opportunities for studying sarcopenia, which normally takes decades to develop in patients on earth.
To understand the changes of muscle in microgravity, Siobhan Malany, Maddalena Parafati, and their team from the University of Florida, USA, engineered skeletal muscle microtissues from donor biopsies and launched them to the International Space Station (ISS) aboard SpaceX CRS-25. Their findings were published today in Stem Cell Reports. The microtissues were taken from both young, active donors and from aged, sedentary donors and cultured in an automated mini lab, which besides regular feeding and monitoring of cultures also enabled electrical stimulation to simulate exercise. On earth, the contraction strength of microtissues from young, active individuals was almost twice as much as the strength of tissues from older, sedentary individuals. After only two weeks in space, muscle strength trended to decline in the young tissues and was now more comparable to the strength of old tissues. A similar trend was seen for the muscle protein content, which was higher in young microtissues on earth compared to old microtissues but decreased in microgravity to levels measured in old tissues. Further, space flight changed gene expression, particularly in the younger microtissues and disturbed cellular processes related to normal muscle function. Interestingly, electrical stimulation could mitigate these changes in gene expression to some extent.
Two classes of FOXA1 mutations found to drive prostate cancer and therapy resistance
A new study from the University of Michigan Rogel Health Cancer Center, published in Science, sheds light on how two distinct classes of mutations in the FOXA1 gene—commonly altered in prostate cancer—drive tumor initiation formation and therapeutic resistance.
FOXA1, a key transcription factor that facilitates androgen receptor binding to DNA, is mutated in 10–40% of hormone-dependent prostate cancers. While common, the exact ways these mutations alter cancer cells have remained elusive—until now.
Rogel researchers, including Arul Chinnaiyan, M.D., Ph.D., S.P. Hicks Endowed Professor of Pathology and Urology, and Abhijit Parolia, Ph.D., Rogel Fellow and Assistant Professor of Pathology, used mouse models to understand the mechanisms underlying two major classes of FOXA1 mutations.
Dyson engineers boost strawberry yields by 250% in technology breakthrough
Dyson Farming’s 26-acre glasshouse in Lincolnshire is already home to 1,225,000 strawberry plants, which are grown all year round, to produce over 1,250 tonnes of high-quality British strawberries.
Dyson is always looking to maximise efficiency of the farms and the quality of their produce. The most recent development in the glasshouse is Dyson’s Hybrid Vertical Growing System, the trial of which has just finished. It exceeded all expectations, boosting yields by 250% whilst optimising the quality of the fruit.
The ‘mind-bending’ bionic arm powered by AI
I was born without lower arms and legs, so I’ve been around prosthetics of all shapes and sizes for as long as I can remember.
I’ve actively avoided those designed for upper arms for most of my adult life, so have never used a bionic hand before.
But when I visited a company in California, which is seeking to take the technology to the next level, I was intrigued enough to try one out — and the results were, frankly, mind-bending.
Prosthetic limbs have come a long way since the early days when they were fashioned out of wood, tin and leather.
Modern-day replacement arms and legs are made of silicone and carbon fibre, and increasingly they are bionic, meaning they have various electronically controlled moving parts to make them more useful to the user. (Feb 2024)
BBC Click reporter Paul Carter tries out a high-tech prosthetic promising a ‘full range of human motion’
New Frontier Aerospace tests 3D-printed rocket engine for future flight applications
New Frontier Aerospace says it has put its 3D-printed Mjölnir rocket engine through a series of successful hot-fire tests.
