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Jul 21, 2019

Mesenchymal stem cells: a new trend for cell therapy

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, life extension

Mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs), the major stem cells for cell therapy, have been used in the clinic for approximately 10 years. From animal models to clinical trials, MSCs have afforded promise in the treatment of numerous diseases, mainly tissue injury and immune disorders. In this review, we summarize the recent opinions on methods, timing and cell sources for MSC administration in clinical applications, and provide an overview of mechanisms that are significant in MSC-mediated therapies. Although MSCs for cell therapy have been shown to be safe and effective, there are still challenges that need to be tackled before their wide application in the clinic.

Keywords: mesenchymal stem cell, cell therapy, tissue injury, degenerative disease, immune disorder, graft-versus-host disease, immunomodulation, trophic factor.

Stem cells are unspecialized cells with the ability to renew themselves for long periods without significant changes in their general properties. They can differentiate into various specialized cell types under certain physiological or experimental conditions. Cell therapy is a sub-type of regenerative medicine. Cell therapy based on stem cells describes the process of introducing stem cells into tissue to treat a disease with or without the addition of gene therapy. Hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) have been widely used for allogeneic cell therapy. The successful isolation of pluripotent embryonic stem (ES) cells from the inner cell mass of early embryos has provided a powerful tool for biological research. ES cells can give rise to almost all cell lineages and are the most promising cells for regenerative medicine.

Jul 21, 2019

Apollo 11’s journey to the moon, annotated

Posted by in category: space travel

50 years ago today, Apollo 11 landed on the moon. It took 4 days and an incredible mid-flight rotation to accomplish.

Jul 21, 2019

‘Flesh-eating’ bacteria: Here’s how you can avoid contracting necrotizing fasciitis

Posted by in category: biotech/medical

Across the U.S., there appears to be a rise in cases of people contracting ‘flesh-eating’ bacteria. Experts weigh in on the cause of the bacteria and what families can do to stay safe while enjoying the rest of summer vacation.

Jul 21, 2019

Earthquake info : M5.5 earthquake on Saturday, 20 July 2019 22:35 UTC / New Zealand

Posted by in category: futurism

Detailed earthquake information — overview map, magnitude, time, depth, information source, shake map, list of reports. Feature interactive map: submit / read I-felt-an-earthquake reports and links to further info.

Jul 21, 2019

This is what 50 years of human migration looks like

Posted by in category: futurism

Visualizing a half century of data helps us understand why people make the choice to leave and where they go.

Jul 21, 2019

Orange alert called as Ubinas volcano spews ash across southern Peru

Posted by in categories: food, government, health

The government has called a state of emergency in 12 districts across southern Peru as eruptions continue at Mt. Ubinas. Local governments are being overwhelmed particularly by health emergencies.

The eruptions of dense ash began before dawn on Friday, darkening nearby villages and spreading across four regions of Moquegua, Arequipa and Tacna. The Peruvian Geophysical Insitute, IGP, first issued a yellow alert but raised this to orange by noon as the eruptions increased. The ash will affect the health of inhabitants and also crops and grazing land, as winds spread the ash across the south and southeast of the region.

Emergency measures include immediate intervention of most government ministries, including Health, Agriculture, Transport and Environment. In earlier eruptions —most recently in 2013 and 2014— people from the villages close to the volcano had to be housed further away until the eruptions subsided.

Jul 21, 2019

We Tried $200 Bose Headphone Sunglasses

Posted by in category: futurism

Bose is known for its high-end speakers, but now it’s putting its tech into sunglasses.

Jul 21, 2019

DNA could store all of the world’s data in a single room

Posted by in category: biotech/medical

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Jul 21, 2019

What Is Neuromorphic Computing (Cognitive Computing)

Posted by in categories: futurism, robotics/AI

This video is the eleventh in a multi-part series discussing computing. In this video, we’ll be discussing what cognitive computing is and the impact it will have on the field of computing.

[0:28–5:09] Starting off we’ll discuss, what cognitive computing is, more specifically – the difference between current computing Von Neuman architecture and more biologically representative neuromorphic architecture and how these two paired together will yield massive performance and efficiency gains!

Continue reading “What Is Neuromorphic Computing (Cognitive Computing)” »

Jul 21, 2019

The First Complete Brain Wiring Diagram of Any Species Is Here

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, information science, robotics/AI, sex

For a humble, microscopic worm with only 302 neurons, C. elegans has had a lot of firsts. It was the first multicellular animal to have its whole genome sequenced. It was also the spark that lit the connectome fire—the revolutionary idea that mapping the entirety of connections among neurons will unveil secrets of our minds, memory, and consciousness. And if the connectomists are to be believed, a map of individual brains may be the blueprint that will one day hurtle AI into human-level intelligence, or reconstruct an entire human mind in digital form.

More than 30 years ago, a pioneering group of scientists painstakingly traced and reconstructed the roundworm’s neural wiring by hand. The “heroic” effort, unaided by modern computers and brain-mapping algorithms, resulted in the first connectome in 1986.

Yet the “mind of the worm” map had significant lapses. For one, it only focused on one sex, the hermaphrodite—a “female” equivalent that can self-fertilize. This makes it hard to tell which connections are universal for the species, and which are dependent on sex and reproduction. For another, because the effort relied entirely on human beings who get tired, bored, and mess up, the map wasn’t entirely accurate. Even with multiple rounds of subsequent refinements, errors could linger, which would royally screw up any interpretation of results using these maps.