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Jul 16, 2020

RNA repair shows promise in reversing mutations underlying a neurological disorder

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, genetics

Scientists successfully edited RNA in a living animal in such a way that the repaired RNA then corrected a mutation in a protein that gives rise to a debilitating neurological disorder in people known as Rett syndrome.

The advance by researchers at Oregon Health & Science University publishes in the journal Cell Reports.

“This is the first example of using programmable RNA editing to repair a gene in mouse models of a neurological disease,” said senior author Gail Mandel, Ph.D., senior scientist in the OHSU Vollum Institute. “This gives us an approach that has some traction.”

Jul 16, 2020

How to map brain connections using DNA barcodes

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, robotics/AI

A new method developed at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) uses DNA sequencing to efficiently map long-range connections between different regions of the brain. The approach dramatically reduces the cost of mapping brain-wide connections compared to traditional microscopy-based methods.

Neuroscientists need anatomical maps to understand how information flows from one region of the to another. “Charting the cellular connections between different parts of the brain—the connectome—can help reveal how the nervous system processes information, as well as how faulty wiring contributes to and other disorders,” says Longwen Huang, a postdoctoral researcher in CSHL Professor Anthony Zador’s lab. Creating these maps has been expensive and time-consuming, demanding massive efforts that are out of reach for most research teams.

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Jul 16, 2020

NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope on Facebook Watch

Posted by in category: space

#HubbleClassic On January 19, 2015, Hubble captured a global map of Jupiter. This video was made from the observations.

Today, Jupiter is at opposition, meaning it shines in our sky all night long and is the closest to Earth that it’ll be all year.

#NASA #Hubble #classic #jupiter #planet #video #solarsystem #astronomy #space #science

Jul 16, 2020

Planet Parade: All The Planets Are Now Visible In The Night Sky And Here Is How To Watch Them

Posted by in categories: quantum physics, space

Admin and Founder of The Secrets of the Universe and former intern at Indian Institute of Astrophysics, Bangalore, I am a science student pursuing Master’s in Physics from India. I love to study and write about Stellar Astrophysics, Relativity & Quantum Mechanics.

Mercury.

Jul 16, 2020

NASA helicopter ‘Ingenuity’ will be ‘first aircraft on Mars’

Posted by in category: space

Great.


NASA is sending a small helicopter called Ingenuity with the Perseverance rover to Mars. It will be the first aircraft to fly in Mars if all goes well. [NASA has built a helicopter to explore Mars and it’s finally ready to launch](https://www.space.com/first-mars-helicopter-ready-to-launch.html)

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Jul 16, 2020

Moderna Advancing COVID-19 Vaccine into Phase III after Positive Initial Clinical Results

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, health

Moderna, Inc.’s COVID-19 vaccine candidate mRNA-1273 will advance to a 30,000-participant Phase III trial later this month, following publication of additional positive Phase I data from a study led by the National Institutes of Health (NIH)’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID).


Moderna said its closely-watched COVID-19 vaccine candidate mRNA-1273 will advance to a 30,000-participant Phase III trial later this month, following publication of additional positive Phase I data from a study led by the NIH’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID).

The Phase III “COVE” study (NCT04470427) is expected to begin registration at study centers nationwide beginning on July 21 with study initiation set for six days later. The primary endpoint of the randomized, 1:1 placebo-controlled trial will be the prevention of symptomatic COVID-19 disease. Key secondary endpoints include prevention of severe COVID-19 disease as defined by the need for hospitalization, and prevention of infection by SARS-CoV-2, Moderna said.

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Jul 15, 2020

Episode 1: Driving The Telescope (Hubble – Eye in the Sky miniseries)

Posted by in category: space

The first episode of “Hubble – Eye in the Sky” is here! 🎥

Have you ever wondered how a telescope in space is operated from down on Earth? Welcome to the Hubble control center. Find out how extraordinarily detailed observations are made with an orbiting space telescope, and get a look at Hubble’s on-the-ground replica that engineers and scientists use down here to fix problems up there.

For more on this video series, visit https://go.nasa.gov/3eveFO1.

Jul 15, 2020

Details on SpaceX Starlink beta emerge along with photos of user terminals

Posted by in category: internet

Starlink beta trials will start in Northern US and parts of Canada, new FAQ says.

Jul 15, 2020

Scientists find new link between delirium and brain energy disruption

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, neuroscience

Scientists from Trinity College Dublin have discovered a new link between impaired brain energy metabolism and delirium—a disorienting and distressing disorder particularly common in the elderly and one that is currently occurring in a large proportion of patients hospitalized with COVID-19 [15th of July 2020].

While much of the research was conducted in mice, additional work suggests overlapping mechanisms are at play in humans because cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) collected from patients suffering from delirium also contained tell-tale markers of altered brain glucose .

Collectively, the research, which has just been published in the Journal of Neuroscience, suggests that therapies focusing on brain energy metabolism may offer new routes to mitigating delirium.

Jul 15, 2020

Deep Dive Into Big Pharma AI Productivity: One Study Shaking The Pharmaceutical Industry

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, business, chemistry, health, information science, robotics/AI

No industry will be spared.


The pharmaceutical business is perhaps the only industry on the planet, where to get the product from idea to market the company needs to spend about a decade, several billion dollars, and there is about 90% chance of failure. It is very different from the IT business, where only the paranoid survive but a business where executives need to plan decades ahead and execute. So when the revolution in artificial intelligence fueled by credible advances in deep learning hit in 2013–2014, the pharmaceutical industry executives got interested but did not immediately jump on the bandwagon. Many pharmaceutical companies started investing heavily in internal data science R&D but without a coordinated strategy it looked more like re-branding exercise with the many heads of data science, digital, and AI in one organization and often in one department. And while some of the pharmaceutical companies invested in AI startups no sizable acquisitions were made to date. Most discussions with AI startups started with “show me a clinical asset in Phase III where you identified a target and generated a molecule using AI?” or “how are you different from a myriad of other AI startups?” often coming from the newly-minted heads of data science strategy who, in theory, need to know the market.

However, some of the pharmaceutical companies managed to demonstrate very impressive results in the individual segments of drug discovery and development. For example, around 2018 AstraZeneca started publishing in generative chemistry and by 2019 published several impressive papers that were noticed by the community. Several other pharmaceutical companies demonstrated impressive internal modules and Eli Lilly built an impressive AI-powered robotics lab in cooperation with a startup.

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