Lifeboat Foundation

In a world first, doctors in Sweden say they’ve wired a prosthetic hand directly into a woman’s nerves, allowing her to move its fingers with her mind and even feel tactile sensations.

The hand is an enormous step up from existing prostheses, which often rely on electrodes placed on the outside of the skin — and it could herald a future in which robotic devices interface seamlessly with our bodies.

Last month, researchers at Johan Auwerx’s lab at the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) had looked at the connections between RNA-binding proteins and aging. RNA binding proteins (RBPs) play an important part in post-transcriptional control by binding to mRNAfter binding, RBPs can aid in the processing of pre-mRNA as well as mRNA stability, transport and translation [1].

Mitochondria

Upon screening aged animals for RBPs, researchers at the EPFL noticed increased activity of Pumilio2 (PUM2), which can lower the production of some proteins. It does this by binding to specific mRNAs (based on recognition sites) so that it can repress the translation of those mRNAs into proteins.

In the early 1990s, I was lucky enough to get some time on a 60 MeV linear accelerator as part of an undergraduate lab course. Having had this experience, I can feel for the scientists at CERN who have had to make do with their current 13 TeV accelerator, which only manages energies some 200,000 times larger. So, I read with great interest when they announced the publication of the initial design concept for the Future Circular Collider (FCC), which promises collisions nearly an order of magnitude more energetic. The plan, which has been in the works since 2014, includes three proposals for accelerators which would succeed CERN’s current big iron, the LHC.

Want to know what’s on the horizon in high-energy physics?

Take a form of uranium that shouldn’t be magnetic, mix it with antimony and cool it down, and you get a new kind of magnet that could speed up computers.

Taking very small amounts of psychedelic substances on a regular basis – called ‘microdosing’ – may improve psychological and cognitive functioning, but the effects do not exactly match users’ expectations, a new study from Macquarie University suggests.

Microdosing of substances like LSD and psilocybin (found in magic mushrooms) has had a recent surge in popularity, with proponents claiming wide-ranging benefits, including enhanced productivity, concentration, creativity, mood and wellbeing, all without the typical ‘high’ of psychedelics.

This is the first published longitudinal study to test these claims, in which researchers recruited 98 ‘microdosers’ from online forums and tracked their experiences over a six-week period.

Continue reading “Drug microdosing effects may not measure up to big expectations” »

For most of us, receiving junk mail is an annoyance. For Sydney woman Lisa Hayes, it’s a thrill.

She was born completely blind and has never known what it’s like to scan through the items in unsolicited catalogues that get stuffed into her letter box. That was until last September when she received a small device that clips onto a pair of glasses and uses sophisticated artificial intelligence technology to recognise faces and read text for her.

Continue reading “‘The breakthrough of the 21st century as far as I’m concerned’” »

A new U of T study suggests that globally we’re growing more of the same kinds of crops, and this presents major challenges for agricultural sustainability on a global scale.

The study, done by an international team of researchers led by U of T assistant professor Adam Martin, used data from the U.N.’s Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) to look at which crops were grown where on large-scale industrial farmlands from 1961 to 2014.

They found that within regions crop diversity has actually increased — in North America for example, 93 different crops are now grown compared to 80 back in the 1960s. The problem, Martin says, is that on a global scale we’re now seeing more of the same kinds of crops being grown on much larger scales.

The thing you never knew you needed.

Specific brain networks are at work when we are conscious. New results can help distinguish truly unconscious patients from those who have some degree of consciousness.