Mini human brains are being grown in labs all over the world. Soon, they could outthink neural networks.
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New tech adds phone tracking to license plate readers, associating devices with identifiable cars
License plate readers are widely used in the US. A new product marketed to police departments promises to add the ability to sense phones and other devices in passing cars.
NASA astronaut Mike Fincke leaves agency months after medical emergency in space
Longtime NASA astronaut Mike Fincke is stepping away from his role at the space agency. The news comes months after he experienced a medical emergency aboard the International Space Station, which forced a premature end to the journey for him and three crewmates.
Fincke’s last day at the space agency is Wednesday, NASA said in a news release.
Although he is leaving NASA, Fincke said he remains “deeply committed to the work of exploration.”
Have we already found the fountain of youth? — The Global Story, BBC World Service
Scientists are optimistic that existing drugs that could one day slow or reverse our ageing.
For centuries, people have pursued the dream of eternal youth. It might seem like the stuff of myth or science fiction, but researchers have been making fascinating progress in understanding what happens in our bodies as we age. There’s optimism that we might soon be able to use drugs to slow down or even reverse how we age, extending the number of years we live healthy, productive lives. What’s more, some of us might be taking these drugs already.
On today’s episode, Lucy Hockings speaks to Dr Andrew Steele, author of Ageless: The New Science of Getting Older Without Getting Old to find out whether we might drink from the fountain of youth in our lifetime.
00:00 Intro.
01:07 Questions about anti-ageing.
02:05 Cosmetic and cellular anti-ageing.
03:48 What is biological age?
05:51 What is ageing?
07:55 Is it a humanitarian crisis?
09:23 Lifespan and healthspan.
10:53 Can we slow down our ageing?
12:29 Is there a drug?
14:10 Therapies for ageing.
16:01 When could this happen?
17:10 Anti-ageing advice.
18:45 Outro.
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Discovering a new layer of control for a decades-old leukemia drug
For more than 70 years, the drug 6-thioguanine (6-TG) has been used to treat leukemia. Although its clinical effects have been studied extensively, scientists are still uncovering the molecular mechanisms that determine whether cells succumb to the drug or survive its attack.
Now, researchers at the CeMM Research Center for Molecular Medicine of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, together with collaborators at the University of Oxford, the Weizmann Institute of Science and the University of Dundee, have identified an unexpected player in this process: the protein NUDT5. Their paper is published in the journal Nature Communications.
The discovery builds directly on a recent breakthrough from the Kubicek and Huber laboratories. In that work, researchers showed that NUDT5 performs a critical cellular function independently of its enzymatic activity. Instead of acting primarily as a catalyst, NUDT5 was found to serve as a molecular scaffold that helps organize cellular metabolism. This unusual behavior has direct consequences for the action of the important cancer drug.
Prostate cancer: evading immunity, inspiring therapy
Mereu et al. present ESPACE, a single-cell multi-omic atlas of the human pancreas spanning fetal development, adulthood, and type 2 diabetes. Combining transcriptomics, chromatin accessibility, and spatial imaging, they uncover a rare population of plastic centroacinar cells and hidden diversity among hormone-producing islet cells, informing pancreas regeneration and disease.
Stellar stream beyond Milky Way offers new tool to map dark matter
In the image above, a faint trail of stars can be seen stretching across the galaxy. These structures, known as globular cluster stellar streams, are coherent stellar structures that retain a record of their dynamical history and can provide unique insights into the evolution of galaxies and the nature of dark matter.
Globular cluster stellar streams offer astronomers a unique opportunity to map otherwise invisible dark matter and study how it behaves. For many years, they have been difficult to observe because they are extremely faint. However, advances in large astronomical data sets and sophisticated analysis techniques have recently made stellar streams one of the most promising tools in galactic astronomy.
Now, Ph.D. student Julie Kiel Holm from the Niels Bohr Institute and associate professor Sarah Pearson from DTU Space, together with an international team of researchers, have made a discovery that has never been seen before. Their findings have just been published in Nature.
Glioblastoma isoform diversity mapping
Researchers have achieved a major breakthrough in brain cancer research by developing the most comprehensive map to date of isoform diversity in glioblastoma, the most common and aggressive form of brain cancer in adults. Using advanced long-read single-cell sequencing, the team uncovered thousands of previously unknown tumor-specific genetic isoforms that had remained invisible to conventional approaches. The discovery reveals a new source of potential therapeutic targets, including candidates that could be harnessed for future personalised cancer vaccines and immunotherapies. The findings were published in Nature Communications.
Glioblastoma is notoriously difficult to treat because tumor cells within the same patient can behave, grow and respond to treatment differently. Understanding this cellular diversity is essential for developing more effective therapies.
Every gene in the human body can produce slightly different versions of its genetic instructions, known as isoforms. These variations can profoundly influence cellular function and in cancer, may determine whether tumour cells are recognised by the immune system or evade detection. Until now, the technology used to study individual cancer cells could read only short fragments of genetic information, limiting researchers’ ability to study full-length isoforms in individual cells.
Potential language-specific brain network identified
The language network in your brain can be seen, even if you aren’t saying a word. For a study published in Nature Communications, researchers used data from more than 1,900 functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scans to find significant support for the existence of a language-specific network of neurons in the adult human brain. They could detect this network even when the people whose brains were scanned were at rest or performing a task unrelated to language, such as putting together a puzzle or listening to music.
“The human brain appears to have a network that’s selective and necessary for language, and we can find that network from the activity in the brain alone,” said Cory Shain, lead study author and assistant professor of linguistics at Stanford’s School of Humanities and Sciences. “The simple fact that a person’s brain activity is always going up and down lets us detect where this network is with high fidelity. It’s such an important and stable structure that we can find it no matter what someone is doing.”
Shain and co-author Evelina Fedorenko of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology found that much of the language network generally spans the left hemisphere and frontal and temporal regions of the brain, but the details of its structure are different for each individual. The study findings could help make a range of advances, including finding therapies for the communication problems caused by strokes or other brain injuries.