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These fundamental units of the brain and nervous system – composed of the cell body, the dendrites and the axon (a long, thin extension responsible for communicating with other cells) – receive sensory input from the external world, send motor commands to our muscles and for transform and relay the electrical signals at every step in between.

“Our novel method of creating ‘mini-brains’ opens the door to finding solutions for various neurological impairments”

Prof. Orit Shefi and doctoral student Reut Plen from the Kofkin Faculty of Engineering at Bar-Ilan University (BIU) have developed a novel technique to overcome this challenge using nanotechnology and magnetic manipulations – one of the most innovative approaches to creating neural networks. Their research was recently published in the peer-reviewed journal Advanced Functional Materials under the title “Bioengineering 3D Neural Networks Using Magnetic Manipulations.”

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While it may seem common knowledge that smoking is bad for your lungs, if and how ultrafine particles present in cigarette smoke impact the development and progression of lung cancer remains unclear. Working with animal models, researchers at Baylor College of Medicine sought to find how airborne ultrafine particles in smoke can change a host’s defense against lung cancer.

In a study published in the current edition of Science Advances, Dr. Cheng-Yen Chang, a postdoctoral fellow in Dr. Farrah Kheradmand’s lab in the Department of Medicine – Pulmonary at Baylor, and their team discovered that exposure to ultrafine particles alters the function of immune cells in the lungs, disabling their natural defense mechanism against tumors. They found that ultrafine particles change the cell’s primary energy source, creating new byproducts in the lungs. Accumulation of the new byproducts can decrease the host’s immune defense, allowing tumors to escape detection.

These particles are not just found in cigarette smoke; environmental and other natural fires also incompletely combust organic matter that generates ultrafine particles. Kheradmand and colleagues at Rice University had previously found that immune cells in the lungs of heavy smokers contain particles that they identified as nano-sized elemental carbon black.

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This article originally appeared on VICE Italy.

“After seeing my results, the doctor was surprised I hadn’t arrived on my hands and knees,” said Alice, who’s spent the past five years in treatment for hypothyroidism. The thyroid gland is a key organ regulating all kinds of functions in the body – meaning a defective thyroid can have a huge impact on your quality of life.

About 6 million people have thyroid disorders here in Italy and it’s estimated about 3.8 percent of the population of Europe is affected by some kind of thyroid dysfunction. But they often go unnoticed.

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For decades, the growth of artificial intelligence has fascinated scholars and scientists alike. Today, intelligent machines aid and streamline our lives, but the next fifty or a hundred years may yield even more powerful AI, which could elevate or transform our species. If humans do create sophisticated, super-intelligent machines, how will the growth of artificial intelligence affect the future of humanity?
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Although oxygen is now the most abundant element in our oceans and our atmosphere, comprising about 88.8 percent and 23.1 percent of the mass of the two, respectively, this wasn’t always the case. In actuality, the abundance of oxygen on Earth arose only 2.4 billion years ago thanks to the advent of photosynthesis, the process through which some of the first life-forms transformed sunlight into energy. It was only coincidence, scientists say, that one of the products of this process was oxygen. But it also would go on to completely transform the planet, creating the conditions for increasingly complex forms of life.

For all the importance of this so-called “Great Oxidation Event,” scientists have always wondered about the presence of oxygen on the planet prior to the emergence of photosynthesis.

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The formation of amyloid plaques in the brain is a hallmark of Alzheimer’s disease. But drugs designed to reduce accumulations of these plaques have so far yielded, at best, mixed results in clinical trials.

Yale researchers have found, however, that swelling caused by a byproduct of these plaques may be the true cause of the disease’s debilitating symptoms, they report Nov. 30 in the journal Nature. And they identified a biomarker that may help physicians better diagnose Alzheimer’s and provide a target for future therapies.

According to their findings, each formation of plaque can cause an accumulation of spheroid-shaped swellings along hundreds of axons — the thin cellular wires that connect the brain’s neurons — near amyloid plaque deposits. The swellings are caused by the gradual accumulation of organelles within cells known as lysosomes, which are known to digest cellular waste, researchers found. As the swellings enlarge, researchers say, they can blunt the transmission of normal electrical signals from one region of the brain to another.

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