New research reveals how a tiny chemical mark on RNA helps wire the brain during development.
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Parkinson’s drug reduces symptoms in treatment-resistant depression, clinical trial finds
A drug used for Parkinson’s disease has been shown to be effective in reducing the symptoms of difficult to treat depression, according to a study led by the University of Oxford.
In the largest clinical trial to date, pramipexole was found to be substantially more effective than a placebo at reducing the symptoms of treatment-resistant depression (TRD) over the course of nearly a year, when added to ongoing antidepressant medication.
The trial, published in The Lancet Psychiatry, included 150 patients with treatment-resistant depression, with equal numbers receiving 48 weeks of pramipexole or a placebo, alongside ongoing antidepressant medication.
Highly Scalable, Wearable Surface‐Enhanced Raman Spectroscopy
The last two decades have witnessed a dramatic growth of wearable sensor technology, mainly represented by flexible, stretchable, on-skin electronic sensors that provide rich information of the wearer’s health conditions and surroundings. A recent breakthrough in the field is the development of wearable chemical sensors based on surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) that can detect molecular fingerprints universally, sensitively, and noninvasively. However, while their sensing properties are excellent, these sensors are not scalable for widespread use beyond small-scale human health monitoring due to their cumbersome fabrication process and limited multifunctional sensing capabilities. Here, a highly scalable, wearable SERS sensor is demonstrated based on an easy-to-fabricate, low-cost, ultrathin, flexible, stretchable, adhesive, and biointegratable gold nanomesh. It can be fabricated in any shape and worn on virtually any surface for label-free, large-scale, in situ sensing of diverse analytes from low to high concentrations (10–106 × 10−9 m). To show the practical utility of the wearable SERS sensor, the sensor is tested for the detection of sweat biomarkers, drugs of abuse, and microplastics. This wearable SERS sensor represents a significant step toward the generalizability and practicality of wearable sensing technology.
Physicists Catch Light in ‘Imaginary Time’ in Scientific First
For the first time, researchers have seen how light behaves during a mysterious phenomenon called ‘imaginary time’
When you shine light through almost any transparent material, the gridlock of electromagnetic fields that make up the atomic alleys and side streets will add a significant amount of time to each photon’s commute.
This delay can tell physicists a lot about how light scatters, revealing details about the matrix of material the photons must navigate. Yet until now, one trick up the theorist’s sleeve for measuring light’s journey – invoking imaginary time – has not been fully understood in practical terms.