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Feb 18, 2019

Advancing therapy

Posted by in category: biotech/medical

Despite rapid advances in targeted therapies for cancer, tumors commonly develop resistance to treatment. When resistance emerges, tumor cells continue to grow unchecked, despite all attempts to slow cancer progression. While mutations in cancer cells significantly affect drug sensitivity, it is increasingly recognized that ecological interactions between cells can also play a role.

Jacob Scott, MD, DPhil, a physician-scientist at Cleveland Clinic, is interested in learning how develop and maintain drug resistance from an eco-evolutionary perspective. He studies the evolutionary strategies that cells employ to survive even in the harshest of conditions. One area of focus of his laboratory is to examine the dynamics of sensitive versus and how they affect one another’s growth under the selective pressure of anti-cancer therapies.

“Rather than searching for a ‘silver bullet’ to wipe out all , which is unlikely, we are focused on preventing the resistant cells from taking over—from ‘winning’ every time,” Dr. Scott said. “If we can achieve this goal, we can effectively make cancer a chronic condition.”

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Feb 18, 2019

Neuromelanin-sensitive MRI identified as a potential biomarker for psychosis

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, health, neuroscience

Researchers have shown that a type of magnetic resonance imaging—called neuromelanin-sensitive MRI (NM-MRI)—is a potential biomarker for psychosis. NM-MRI signal was found to be a marker of dopamine function in people with schizophrenia and an indicator of the severity of psychotic symptoms in people with this mental illness. The study, funded by the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), part of the National Institutes of Health, appears in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science.

“Disturbances affecting the are associated with a host of mental and neurological disorders, such as schizophrenia and Parkinson’s disease,” said Joshua A. Gordon, M.D., Ph.D., director of NIMH. “Because of the role dopamine plays in these disorders, the ability to measure dopamine activity is critical for furthering our understanding of these disorders, including how to best diagnose and treat them.”

Neuromelanin is a dark pigment created within dopamine neurons of the midbrain—particularly in the substantia nigra, a brain area that plays a role in reward and movement. Neuromelanin accumulates over the lifespan and is only cleared away from cells following cell death, as occurs in neurodegenerative disorders such as Parkinson’s disease. Researchers have found that NM-MRI signal is lower in the substantia nigra of people with Parkinson’s disease, reflecting the cell death that occurs in these patients.

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Feb 18, 2019

Super Moon? Snow Moon? Full moon? Whatever you call it, a lunar spectacle is coming Monday night/Tuesday morning

Posted by in category: space

Whether you call it full, snow or super, the biggest, brightest moon of the year is coming to a sky near you Monday night/Tuesday morning.

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Feb 18, 2019

British woman is first in the world to undergo gene therapy for most common form of blindness

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, life extension

A British woman has become the first person in the world to undergo gene therapy for the most common cause of sight loss.

Surgeons at the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford inserted a synthetic gene into the left eye of Janet Osborne, 80, who suffers from age-related macular degeneration (AMD).

Around 600,000 people in the UK are affected by AMD, which affects the central part of a patient’s vision with gaps or ‘smudges’, making everyday activities like reading and recognising faces difficult.

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Feb 18, 2019

How quantum dots supercharge farming, medicine and solar, too

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, food, quantum physics

Circa 2018


From medical to agricultural to solar, quantum dots have uses far beyond the humble TV.

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Feb 18, 2019

Here’s a Simple Thing We Can Do to Cancel Out Years of CO2 Emissions

Posted by in categories: climatology, space, sustainability

An ambitious new analysis of the world’s forests found that there’s space to plant 1.2 trillion new trees — a number that would absorb more carbon than human emissions.

According to the new data, ETH Zurich researcher Thomas Crowther told The Independent, trees are “our most powerful weapon in the fight against climate change.”

Crowther told The Independent that the new analysis, which he presented at a conference this weekend, suggests that a worldwide tree-planting spree would have a greater impact on the planet’s environment than building wind turbines or vegetarian diets — an effort, he says, that could cancel a decade of greenhouse emissions.

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Feb 18, 2019

A call for a theoretical framework to address replication crisis facing the psychological sciences

Posted by in category: economics

A pair of researchers from the London School of Economics and Political Science and Harvard University has published a Perspective piece in the journal Nature Human Behavior suggesting a possible solution to the replication crisis facing the psychological sciences. Michael Muthukrishna and Joseph Henrich believe the answer lies in convincing researchers to start working within a theoretical framework.

Most experts would agree that human psychology is a difficult problem. Why do people do the things they do? Why do groups behave one way or another? No one really knows the answers to such questions, though psychology and sociology researchers have been carrying out experiments for many years. In more recent times, such research has questioned because so few studies have been replicated by others. Even when research teams attempt to do so, they produce different results. This has resulted in what has come to be known as a replication crisis. In their paper, Muthukrishna and Henrich suggest solving the crisis requires researchers in the field to begin conducting experiments the way they are done with other sciences—by using a theoretical framework, or even multiple frameworks. They note that doing so would reduce the number of questions that can be asked regarding a given behavior—without such a framework, they add, there is no limit.

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Feb 18, 2019

Discovering a New Form of Communication in the Brain

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, engineering, neuroscience

Summary: Researchers have identified a previously unknown form of neural communication. They report the findings could help better the understanding of neural activity associated with specific brain processing and neurological disorders.

Source: Case Western Reserve University.

Biomedical engineering researchers at Case Western Reserve University say they have identified a previously unidentified form of neural communication, a discovery that could help scientists better understand neural activity surrounding specific brain processes and brain disorders.

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Feb 18, 2019

Liz Parrish : Gene therapy advancements | BioViva | People Unlimited

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, education, life extension

Liz talking about Rutgers, Integrated Health Systems, anti-aging vaccine(couple of years of gathering data), $75,000 single organ treatment, and potential for very affordable whole body treatment. Q&A at 32 minutes.


Liz Parrish | BioViva, presents at People Unlimited’s Ageless Education, about Gene Therapy Advancements.

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Feb 18, 2019

Watch a Harpoon Attached to a Satellite Spear a Piece of Space Debris

Posted by in category: space

The test is actually the RemoveDEBRIS satellite’s second trick: in September, it successfully deployed a spider-like web that was meant to grab space junk out of the sky.

The team at the University of Surrey is now preparing for its third and final test: RemoveDEBRIS will inflate a sail that will slowly drag it into Earth’s atmosphere where it will burn up and be destroyed.

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