New research has found a way to power spacecraft with lasers generated using solar energy alone.
Sometimes pain is a necessary warning signal; for example, if we touch something very hot and it burns, we know to move our hand away. But chronic pain can destroy a person’s quality of life, and it can be extremely challenging to get relief. Some researchers have been searching for ways to deactivate pain receptors, so the body no longer feels the neural signals of chronic pain. Using mouse models of acute inflammatory pain, scientists have shown that it is possible to deactivate pain receptors with genetic engineering tools. The work has been reported in Cell.
“What we have developed is potentially a gene therapy approach for chronic pain,” said senior study author Bryan L. Roth, MD, PhD, a distinguished professor at the University of North Carolina (UNC) School of Medicine, among other appointments. “The idea is that we could deliver this chemogenetic tool through a virus to the neurons that sense the pain. Then, you could just take an inert pill and turn those neurons off, and the pain will literally disappear.”
What causes autism? It isn’t vaccines, studies show. Here are some possibilities that researchers are exploring.
There is no one factor that causes autism — or explains its growing prevalence. Researchers are seeking explanations for the surge. Here are some possibilities.
Researchers with the Advanced Science Research Center at the CUNY Graduate Center (CUNY ASRC) have unveiled a critical mechanism that links cellular stress in the brain to the progression of Alzheimer’s disease (AD).
The study, published in the journal Neuron, highlights microglia, the brain’s primary immune cells, as central players in both the protective and harmful responses associated with the disease.
Microglia, often dubbed the brain’s first responders, are now recognized as a significant causal cell type in Alzheimer’s pathology. However, these cells play a double-edged role: some protect brain health, while others worsen neurodegeneration.
Whenever a sink overflows, the flooding is usually caused by a blockage that has built up in the drains. Similarly, as we age, our bodies are flooded by aging, or senescent cells, which have stopped dividing but, instead of dying, remain active and build up in body tissues. Recent studies have shown that getting rid of these cells might delay age-related diseases, reduce inflammation and extend lives. Despite the great potential, however, there is currently no drug that can target these cells directly and efficiently.
Now, Weizmann Institute of Science researchers suggest an alternative approach. In a new study published in Nature Cell Biology, they reveal that senescent cells build up in the body by clogging up the immune system, thereby preventing their own removal.
The scientists demonstrated in mice how to unclog this blockage using immunotherapy, the new generation of treatments that is revolutionizing cancer therapy. These findings could pave the way for innovative treatment of age-related diseases and other chronic disorders.
The direct fusion drive could cut travel to Saturn’s moon Titan to just 2 years. Here is some key information for you to watch before deciding to read the whole article. Thanks for visiting us!
Fusion Power for Fast Space Travel
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Here’s one definition of science: it’s essentially an iterative process of building models with ever-greater explanatory power.
A model is just an approximation or simplification of how we think the world works. In the past, these models could be very simple, as simple in fact as a mathematical formula. But over time, they have evolved and scientists have built increasingly sophisticated simulations of the world as new data has become available.
A computer model of the Earth’s climate can show us temperatures will rise as we continue to release greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. Models can also predict how infectious disease will spread in a population, for example.
Anyone who has dealt with ants in the kitchen knows that ants are highly social creatures; it’s rare to see one alone. Humans are social creatures too, even if some of us enjoy solitude. Ants and humans are also the only creatures in nature that consistently cooperate while transporting large loads that greatly exceed their own dimensions.
Prof. Ofer Feinerman and his team at the Weizmann Institute of Science have used this shared trait to conduct a fascinating evolutionary competition that asks the question: Who will be better at maneuvering a large load through a maze? The surprising results, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, shed new light on group decision making, as well as on the pros and cons of cooperation versus going it alone.
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The manic pace of sharing, storing, securing, and serving data has a manic price—power consumption. To counter this, Virginia Tech mathematicians are leveraging algebraic geometry to target the inefficiencies of data centers.
“We as individuals generate tons of data all the time, not to mention what large companies are producing,” said Gretchen Matthews, mathematics professor and director of the Southwest Virginia node of the Commonwealth Cyber Initiative. “Backing up that data can mean replicating and storing twice or three times as much information if we don’t consider smart alternatives.”
Instead of energy-intensive data replication, Matthews and Hiram Lopez, assistant professor of mathematics, explored using certain algebraic structures to break the information into pieces and spread it out among servers in close proximity to each other. When one server goes down, the algorithm can poll the neighboring servers until it recovers the missing data.
