Drug shows promise in reducing deadly brain swelling.
Scientists have developed a compound ZT-1a that targets a pathway that controls proteins that act as transporters of ions and water in and out of cells.
Baltimore, MD— They say a picture is worth 1,000 words. But what about a real-time window into the complexity of the gastrointestinal system?
A new research tool allowed biologists to watch in real time the cell renewal process that keeps gut tissue healthy, as well as the interactions between bacterial species that make up the microbiome. Their work, led by Lucy O’Brien and KC Huang of Stanford University and Carnegie’s Will Ludington, was recently published by PLOS Biology.
The system, dubbed Bellymount, allowed researchers to peer into the live tissue of the fruit fly gut and better understand the many complex, overlapping processes occurring there.
Higgs Boson Propulsion
Posted in particle physics
That then immediately leads me to ask — given the theoretical properties of the Higgs Boson, are there any proposed ideas for creating a propulsion mechanism from it?
If the Higgs field imparts mass, could it be used to cancel out mass, or lighten it somehow? Could an anti-Higgs field be created?
I’d once read about the possibility of next-generation muon-colliders, and how they could be turned into “Higgs factories”. Could such colliders conceivably be used for a conjectured Higgs propulsion system?
O.o circa 2016.
Keio J Med. 2016;65:21. doi: 10.2302/kjm.65–001-ABST.
Rapid growing cells like tumor cells need a vast amount of energy to match their high metabolic demand. Guanine triphosphate (GTP) is one of major cellular metabolites and served as a building block for RNA and DNA as well as an energy source to drive cellular activities such as intracellular trafficking, the cell migration and translation. However, how cancer cells regulate GTP energy levels to adapt for their high demand remain largely unknown yet. In addition, how cells detect GTP levels remains unknown. In this seminar, I will introduce our recent findings that uncover dramatic change of GTP metabolism in cancer cells and a GTP sensing kinase that regulate metabolism for tumorigenesis.(Presented at the 1918th Meeting, March 3, 2016).
In 2016, the European Space Agency announced a call for medium-size missions within their Cosmic Vision Program. In layman’s terms, “medium-size” means moderate-cost (less than 550 million euros, or $610 million) and low-risk, and this is achieved by keeping payloads small and by using proven, heritage technology for both spacecraft and payload. Alongside these common-sense conditions is a third and less tangible quality, that the project be scientifically robust. But when comparing excellent cases from vastly different fields, the merits of one scientific mission over another can seem subjective. It’s not enough to lament the dearth of data in said field, or to establish how a project will discover this or that, or even to show exactly how said “groundbreaking technology” will work. ESA wants a mission that will stir up an unprecedented level of excitement, support, and interest within the scientific community. Here is how they attempt to measure a project’s relevance.
“Each member state has a representative in the Science Programme Committee, and it’s their duty to define the content of the program,” said Luigi Colangeli, head of ESA’s Science Coordination Office. “Study groups work with the various proposals to arrive at something that is compatible with the boundary conditions, in this case, of a M-5, or medium-class mission. Right now, we are studying the evolution of the three missions. And then next year we will put together a peer review panel, who will analyze the three candidates and recommend the best selection to our Director of Science.”
Since the call went out four years ago, ESA have been whittling down proposals, from 25 at the beginning to only three now: Envision, Theseus, or SPICA. In February the EnVision conference took place at the National Centre for Space Studies (CNES) in Paris. EnVision is a low-altitude polar orbiter that is meant to perform high-resolution radar mapping, surface composition, and atmospheric studies of Venus. The purpose of the meeting was to call the Venus community to attention, because the clock is ticking. Consortium members, ESA representatives, and interested scientists from all over the world were in attendance.
Now This is a Real Life Transformer
Posted in futurism
LUXEMBOURG (Reuters) — Luxembourg abolished fares for trains, trams and buses on Saturday in what the government said was a bid to tackle road congestion and pollution, as well as supporting low earners.
The Deep Space Climate Observatory – a satellite that warns of incoming space storms that could knacker telecommunications on Earth – is up and running again after being shut down for eight months by a technical glitch.
Launched in 2015 aboard SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket, the bird, known as DSCOVR for short, was sent into orbit between the Earth and the Sun. Circling at a distance of about a million miles away from terra firma, satellite sports instruments designed to detect approaching geomagnetic storms, and alerts us before highly energetic particles from the solar wind pelt our planet.
As the coming genetic revolution plays out, we’ll still have sex for most of the same reasons we do today. But we’ll increasingly not do it to procreate.
Another rocket booster will be the application of gene editing technologies like CRISPR to edit the genomes of pre-implanted embryos or of the sperm and eggs used to create them. Just this week, Chinese researchers announced they had used CRISPR to edit the CCR5 gene in the pre-implanted embryos of a pair of Chinese twins to make them immune to HIV, the first ever case of gene editing humans and a harbinger of our genetically engineered future. The astounding complexity of the human genome will put limits on our ability to safely make too many simultaneous genetic changes to human embryos, but our ability and willingness to make these types of alterations to our future children will grow over time along with our knowledge and technological ability.
With so much at stake, prospective parents will increasingly have a stark choice when determining how to conceive their children. If they go the traditional route of sex, they will experience both the benign wisdom and unfathomable cruelty of nature. If they use IVF and increasingly informed embryo selection, they will eliminate most single gene mutation diseases and likely increase their children’s chances of living a longer and healthier life with more opportunity than their unenhanced peers. But the optimizing parents could also set up their children for misery if these children don’t particularly enjoy what they have been optimized to become or see themselves as some type of freakish consumer product with emotions.