The Philippines will experience this year’s longest night on December 22, with peak darkness slated around midnight, state weather bureau PAGASA said.
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This study involved 4,717 participants from two different community-based cohorts. A meta-analysis of both cohorts showed that elevated sCD14 was associated with a 12 percent increased risk of dementia as people got older. Higher levels of sCD14 were also associated with accelerated brain aging in both cohorts, a faster progression of age-related brain atrophy, and a more rapid decline of executive functions.
The authors sum up their findings: “sCD14 is an inflammatory marker related to brain atrophy, cognitive decline, and incident dementia.”
“Higher levels of sCD14 were associated with markers of brain aging and injury, such as total brain atrophy and a decline in executive functioning—the decision-making needed for many activities of daily life,” first author Matthew Pase, of the Florey Institute for Neuroscience and Mental Health in Melbourne, Australia, said in a news release.
The human immunodeficiency virus, or HIV, wages war in our bodies using a strategy evolved over millions of years that turns our own cellular machines against themselves. Despite massive strides in understanding the disease, there are still important gaps. For years, scientists at the University of Utah wished there was a way to visualize how the virus and its molecules interact with human cells in real time. So, a research group developed one.
Probiotic supplements and probiotic-rich foods have become popular natural treatments for a number of health conditions. This article reviews how probiotics may help treat diarrhea.
For the first time, a lab-grown mini brain has brain waves. Researchers can now launch new ways to study brain disorders. But the question of consciousness in the brain-like organoid could raise concern.
Since the end of the 19th century, physicists have known that the transfer of energy from one body to another is associated with entropy. It quickly became clear that this quantity is of fundamental importance, and so began its triumphant rise as a useful theoretical quantity in physics, chemistry and engineering. However, it is often very difficult to measure. Professor Dietmar Block and Frank Wieben of Kiel University (CAU) have now succeeded in measuring entropy in complex plasmas, as they reported recently in the renowned scientific journal Physical Review Letters. In a system of charged microparticles within this ionized gas, the researchers were able to measure all positions and velocities of the particles simultaneously. In this way, they were able to determine the entropy, as it was already described theoretically by the physicist Ludwig Boltzmann around 1880.
Surprising thermodynamic equilibrium in plasma
“With our experiments, we were able to prove that in the important model system of complex plasma, the thermodynamic fundamentals are fulfilled. What is surprising is that this applies to microparticles in a plasma, which is far away from thermodynamic equilibrium,” explains Ph.D. student Frank Wieben. In his experiments, he is able to adjust the thermal motion of the microparticles by means of a laser beam. Using video microscopy, he can observe the dynamic behaviour of the particles in real time, and determine the entropy from the information collected.
Scientists have developed a new gene-therapy technique by transforming human cells into mass producers of tiny nano-sized particles full of genetic material that has the potential to reverse disease processes.
Though the research was intended as a proof of concept, the experimental therapy slowed tumor growth and prolonged survival in mice with gliomas, which constitute about 80 percent of malignant brain tumors in humans.
The technique takes advantage of exosomes, fluid-filled sacs that cells release as a way to communicate with other cells.
Optogenetics, a tool for controlling neurons with light, has given neuroscientists the ability to flip brain cells on and off more or less at will, revolutionizing neuroscience.
Yet the technique faces a fundamental challenge: To study all but the outermost part of the brain, researchers need to implant fiber optics or other invasive devices to deliver light deep into the brain.
Now, in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Stanford researchers report that they’ve found a less invasive way to do so: injectable nanoparticles that convert sound waves, which can easily penetrate into the brain, into light.
Researchers at Baylor College of Medicine report today in the journal Neuron evidence that refutes the link between increased levels of herpes virus and Alzheimer’s disease. In addition, the researchers provide a new statistical and computational framework for the analysis of large-scale sequencing data.
About 50 million people worldwide are affected by Alzheimer’s disease, a type of progressive dementia that results in the loss of memory, cognitive abilities and verbal skills, and the numbers are growing rapidly. Currently available medications temporarily ease the symptoms or slow the rate of decline, which maximizes the time patients can live and function independently. However, there are no treatments to halt progression of Alzheimer’s disease.
“Like all types of dementia, Alzheimer’s disease is characterized by massive death of brain cells, the neurons. Identifying the reason why neurons begin and continue to die in the brains of Alzheimer’s disease patients is an active area of research,” said corresponding author Dr. Zhandong Liu, associate professor of pediatrics at Baylor and the Jan and Dan Duncan Neurological Research Institute at Texas Children’s Hospital.
