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Am J Med Sci. 2014 Mar;347:178–82. doi: 10.1097/MAJ.0b013e318287c79c.

BACKGROUND: To investigate the efficacy and indications of zolpidem, a nonbenzodiazepine hypnotic, inducing arousal in vegetative state patients after brain injury.

METHODS: One hundred sixty-five patients were divided into 4 groups, according to area of brain damage and injury mechanism. All patients’ brains were imaged by Tc-ECD single-photon emission computerized tomography (SPECT), before and 1 hour after treatment with 10 mg of zolpidem. Simultaneously, 3 quantitative indicators of brain function and damage were obtained using cerebral state monitor. Thirty-eight patients withdrew from the study after the first zolpidem dose. The remaining 127 patients received a daily dose of 10 mg of zolpidem for 1 week and were monitored again at the end of this week.

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This week on The #GSPodcast Stephen Knight talks to microbiologist João Pedro de Magalhães (@jpsenescence) about Cryonics. They discuss the fear of dying, the science behind freezing humans, the implications for religion, technological advancements in the field and much, much more!

Support the podcast at http://www.patreon.com/gspellchecker

Also available on iTunes, Stitcher, YouTube & Spotify.

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Dr. Hadiyah-Nicole Green is one of fewer than 100 black female physicists in the country, and the recent winner of $1.1 million grant to further develop a technology she’s pioneered that uses laser-activated nanoparticles to treat cancer.

Green, who lost her parents young, was raised by her aunt and uncle. While still at school, her aunt died from cancer, and three months later her uncle was diagnosed with cancer, too. Green went on to earn her degree in physics at Alabama A&M University, being crowned Homecoming Queen while she was at it, before going on full scholarship to University of Alabama in Birmingham to earn her Masters and Ph.D. There Green would become the first to work out how to deliver nanoparticles into cancer cells exclusively, so that a laser could be used to remove them, and then successfully carry out her treatment on living animals.

As she takes on her growing responsibilities, Green still makes time to speak at schools, Boys & Girls Clubs and other youth events. “Young black girls don’t see those role models (scientists) as often as they see Beyonce or Nicki Minaj,” says Green. “It’s important to know that our brains are capable of more.”

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A tardigrade that had been frozen solid for more than 30 years has been brought back to life by researchers in Japan, and has gone on to produce 14 healthy babies. That’s record-smashing stuff right there, because before this tough little water bear came back to life, the world record for reviving a frozen tardigrade was nine years.

The researchers also thawed out an egg that was collected and frozen with the tardigrade in 1983, and not only did a healthy baby hatch from it six days later, but it went on to successfully produce offspring of its own.

Just a few months after scientists debated the unprecedented amount of foreign DNA that is or isn’t looped up into the tardigrade genome, and the discovery that they turn into ‘bioglass’ when they desiccate, a team from the National Institute of Polar Research in Japan has managed to bring a frozen Antarctic tardigrade (Acutuncus antarcticus) back to life with its reproductive organs fully intact.

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A team of researchers affiliated with several institutions in South Korea and one in Switzerland has demonstrated that it is possible to use magnetically actuated microrobots to deliver stem cells to targeted tissue. In their paper published in the journal Science Robotics, the group describes creating the tiny bots and how well they worked when tested.

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