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Dec 27, 2018
Bacteria found in ancient Irish soil halts growth of superbugs—new hope for tackling antibiotic resistance
Posted by Genevieve Klien in category: biotech/medical
Professor Paul Dyson of Swansea University Medical School said:
“This new strain of bacteria is effective against 4 of the top 6 pathogens that are resistant to antibiotics, including MRSA. Our discovery is an important step forward in the fight against antibiotic resistance.
Our results show that folklore and traditional medicines are worth investigating in the search for new antibiotics. Scientists, historians and archaeologists can all have something to contribute to this task. It seems that part of the answer to this very modern problem might lie in the wisdom of the past.”
Dec 27, 2018
NASA wants you to celebrate New Years with its New Horizons space probe
Posted by Genevieve Klien in category: space
NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft has been speeding through space since early 2006 and it’s about to make what might be its most interesting flyby to date. After speeding past Jupiter and Pluto in the 12 years since its launch, the probe is about to have a very close encounter with a mysterious object in the outer Solar System called Ultima Thule. As luck would have it, it’s going to meet its target on New Year’s Day, and it’s a pretty big deal for NASA.
As we approach the probe’s arrival at Ultima Thule, NASA is announcing its schedule of events related to the probe’s flyby. The big show will begin on the afternoon of Monday, December 31st, and it’ll kick off three days of news and briefings that will give us our best look yet at an extremely distant Solar System object.
Dec 27, 2018
A Utah man pranked his parents by giving them a portrait of Obi-Wan Kenobi that looks like Jesus for Christmas
Posted by Michael Lance in category: entertainment
May the force be with you…
- A man named Ryan, who asked INSIDER to only use his first name, decided to prank his parents with a Christmas gift this year.
- He told them it was a portrait of Jesus, when really the painting he gave them was of Ewan McGregor’s character Obi-Wan Kenobi from the “Star Wars” films.
- When Ryan spoke to INSIDER, he had admitted the prank to his dad, but his mother still didn’t know the painting wasn’t of Jesus.
A Utah man gave his parents a portrait of Ewan McGregor as Obi-Wan Kenobi for Christmas, and his mother hung it on her wall thinking it was Jesus.
Ryan, who asked INSIDER to only use his first name, shared Click on photo to start video.
Dec 27, 2018
Breast Cancer Drugs May Help Treat Resistant Lung Cancers
Posted by Genevieve Klien in categories: biotech/medical, genetics
A class of drugs used to treat certain breast cancers could help fight lung cancers that have become resistant to targeted therapies, according to a study conducted in mice.
The study, published in the journal Cell Reports, found that lung tumours in mice caused by mutations in a gene called EGFR shrunk significantly when a protein called p110a was blocked.
Dec 27, 2018
Quantum Communication Just Took a Great Leap Forward
Posted by Alexandros El in categories: internet, quantum physics
Researchers in the field of quantum communication have recently made great strides, taking us closer to a perfectly secure method of communication.
For years, researchers struggled to find ways to amplify quantum signals, store large amounts of quantum data, and allow for more than two nodes in a quantum network. However, in the last two months, solutions to all three of these problems have been found using the bizarre properties of the quantum world, in particular quantum entanglement.
Now that these hurdles have been overcome, quantum networks and even a quantum internet seem like real possibilities.
Continue reading “Quantum Communication Just Took a Great Leap Forward” »
Dec 27, 2018
The Surprising Relativism of the Brain’s GPS
Posted by Xavier Rosseel in categories: biotech/medical, food, neuroscience
Physics grappled with the question of whether space is absolute or relative for centuries, before deciding in favor of relativity. But, it is only in recent years that the brain sciences have begun to discuss a parallel set of questions. For many years now, absolute space has ruled neuroscience. In the visual system, for example, it has long been assumed that there are two channels of information flow.4 The first is the “what” channel, carrying information about the identity of objects that an animal sees. The second is the “where” channel, containing information about the absolute position of these objects. It was believed that the “what” channel contained no positional information at all. However, recent work has shown that while no information about the absolute position of an object is present in this channel, there is relative position information.5,6 This relative positional information is likely to be very important for object recognition.
The first pieces of the brain’s “inner GPS” started coming to light in 1970. In the laboratories of University College London, John O’Keefe and his student Jonathan Dostrovsky recorded the electrical activity of neurons in the hippocampus of freely moving rats. They found a group of neurons that increased their activity only when a rat found itself in a particular location. They called them “place cells.”
Building on these early findings, O’Keefe and his colleague Lynn Nadel proposed that the hippocampus contains an invariant representation of space that does not depend on mood or desire. They called this representation the “cognitive map.” In their view, all of the brain’s place cells together represent the entirety of an animal’s environment, and whichever place cell is active indicates its current location. In other words, the hippocampus is like a GPS. It tells you where you are on a map and that map remains the same whether you are hungry and looking for food or sleepy and looking for a bed. O’Keefe and Nadel suggested that the absolute position represented in the hippocampal place cells provides a mental framework that can be used by an animal to find its way in any situation—be that to find food or a bed.
Continue reading “The Surprising Relativism of the Brain’s GPS” »
Dec 27, 2018
Israeli algae falafel wins first prize in feed-the-world contest
Posted by Genevieve Klien in category: futurism
Dec 27, 2018
Named ISDApp, from the Tagalog word “isda” meaning fish, the app sends useful information to fishermen such as real-time weather, sunrise and sunset, wind speed, and cloud coverage to plan their fishing activities using the NASA GLOBE Observer app, a data collection from citizen scientists around the world used in concert with NASA satellite data to identify or communicate information, and educate the public about planet Earth
Posted by Michael Lance in category: space
Dec 27, 2018
Nucleus-specific X-ray stain for 3D virtual histology
Posted by Genevieve Klien in categories: bioengineering, nanotechnology
Histology is used to identify structural details of tissue at the microscale in the pathology lab, but analyses remain two-dimensional (2D) as they are limited to the same plane. Nondestructive 3D technologies including X-ray micro and nano-computed tomography (nanoCT) have proven validity to understand anatomical structures, since they allow arbitrary viewing angles and 3D structural detail. However, low attenuation of soft tissue has hampered their application in the field of 3D virtual histology. In a recent study, now published on Scientific Reports, Mark Müller and colleagues at the Department of Physics and Bioengineering have developed a hematein-based X-ray staining method to specifically target cell nuclei, followed by demonstrations on a whole liver lobule of a mouse.