As powerful as the human brain is, once it’s damaged it can’t really recover completely. Now researchers at Penn State may have found a way to boost the brain’s regenerative abilities, using certain molecules to convert neighboring cells into new neurons. The technique could eventually lead to pills that treat brain injuries, stroke or Alzheimer’s disease.
Psychiatry as a field, meanwhile, quivers with theoretical uncertainty. It has not become a sub-speciality of neurology, as one might have expected if mental illness mapped directly to neural behaviour. And common genetic variations with large effects on mental disorders are elusive. The various incarnations of the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) have enabled diagnostic consistency and the objectification of mental illnesses. But the DSM has resulted in overlapping diagnoses, and contrived symptom-cluster checklists. At times, it impinges on the territory of healthy mental function. Allen Frances, chair of the task force that wrote the manual’s fourth edition in 1994, revolted against out-of-control mental diagnosis in his 2013 book DSM: Saving Normal.
Adrian Woolfson weighs up a study on the role of evolution in conditions such as depression and anxiety.
While testing of the probiotic supplements is currently confined to the lab, Peixoto envisions the treatment being administered on wild reefs. The probiotics could be sprayed from a plane, similar to how pesticides are spread over fields, or dropped like little bacterial bombs to target areas more specifically. Peixoto acknowledges the risk of trying to deliberately manipulate microbial ecosystems in the oceans, but believes the probiotics could be a viable long-term solution to coral reefs’ declining health.
When faced with high heat and disease, coral treated with microbial supplements fared better.
Both “The Wandering Earth” and “Crazy Alien” are adapted from works by Liu Cixin, the writer who has led a renaissance in science fiction here, becoming the first Chinese winner of the Hugo Award for the genre in 2015.
His novels are sprawling epics and deeply researched. That makes them plausible fantasies about humanity’s encounters with a dangerous universe. Translating them into movies would challenge any filmmaker, as the director of “The Wandering Earth,” Guo Fan, acknowledged during a screening in Beijing last week.
Science-fiction movies have been slow to catch on in China, but led by “The Wandering Earth,” a wave of new blockbusters might change that.
GoDaddy is trending longevity.✌️😊.
See how Lyn Slater, the Accidental Icon, challenges the modeling status quo, offering an urban, modern, intellectual aesthetic to women. And, she puts it all out there on a GoDaddy website. Make The World You Want: http://x.co/6ney6
Some people say “dress your age.”
Extreme cold can be our friend in other ways too!! Directed attacks on liver cancer and pancreatic cancer https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4716077/
Pancreatic carcinoma is a common cancer of the digestive system with a poor prognosis. It is characterized by insidious onset, rapid progression, a high degree of malignancy and early metastasis. At present, radical surgery is considered the only curative option for treatment, however, the majority of patients with pancreatic cancer are diagnosed too late to undergo surgery. The sensitivity of pancreatic cancer to chemotherapy or radiotherapy is also poor. As a result, there is no standard treatment for patients with advanced pancreatic cancer. Cryoablation is generally considered to be an effective palliative treatment for pancreatic cancer. It has the advantages of minimal invasion and improved targeting, and is potentially safe with less pain to the patients. It is especially suitable in patients with unresectable pancreatic cancer. However, our initial findings suggest that cryotherapy combined with 125-iodine seed implantation, immunotherapy or various other treatments for advanced pancreatic cancer can improve survival in patients with unresectable or metastatic pancreatic cancer. Although these findings require further in-depth study, the initial results are encouraging. This paper reviews the safety and efficacy of cryoablation, including combined approaches, in the treatment of pancreatic cancer.
Keywords: Pancreatic cancer, Cryoablation, Combination therapy, Cryoimmunotherapy.
Core tip: Pancreatic carcinoma is a devastating cancer of the digestive system. The majority of patients present too late to undergo radical surgery and there is no standard treatment for patients with advanced pancreatic cancer. Cryoablation is considered a palliative therapy in the treatment of pancreatic cancer; however, our results suggest that cryoablation may be an effective and safe treatment that can improve survival and quality of life in patients with unresectable or metastatic pancreatic cancer, particularly in combination with other modalities such as 125-iodine seed implantation and immunotherapy. As such, cryoablation may be a potential standard treatment for pancreatic cancer.
A new study may have uncovered a previously unknown way to fight melanoma, one of the most deadly forms of skin cancer. A team led by researchers at the Boston University School of Medicine has identified a gene that, when disrupted with a drug compound, can prevent melanoma from developing.
Scientists in Australia are looking at some pretty creative ways to tackle the Zika virus, which continues to pose a risk to millions across Africa, Asia and parts of the Americas. Following a trial last year where researchers were able to decimate disease-spreading mosquitos in the country’s north, scientists have now demonstrated an engineering technique that renders the biggest transmitter of the virus largely immune to it, raising hopes of a new way to control the spread of Zika and other mosquito-borne diseases.
