Posted: 8/29/2015
- New drug protects against the deadly effects of nuclear radiation 24 hours after exposure ("a single injection of the investigative peptide drug TP508 given 24 hours after a potentially-lethal exposure to radiation appears to significantly increase survival and delay mortality in mice by counteracting damage to the gastrointestinal system.")
- Company in Canada gets U.S. patent for space elevator (“Now a Canadian company, Thoth Technology in Ontario, has a patent for a space elevator to access space. It would reach 20km (12 miles) above the planet. Its engineers said the technology could save more than 30 percent of the fuel of a conventional rocket— spacecraft and people could be lifted to a level in the atmosphere requiring less force to launch. As GCR (Global Construction Review) News described it, this is a freestanding space tower concept, held rigid by pressurized gas. In Fast Company, Charlie Sorrel had some thoughts on this: " The patent does say that the elevator could be scaled to reach 200km ...”)
- Research team creates a superfluid in a record-high magnetic field (Hopefully, this will lead to better energy generation. “The magnetic field is a synthetic magnetic field, generated using laser beams, and is 100 times stronger than that of the world's strongest magnets. Within this magnetic field, the researchers could keep a gas superfluid for a tenth of a second ...”)
- Hacked Molecular Machine Could Pump Out Custom Chemicals Bioengineers have successfully engineered the ribosome, paving the way for synthetic cells (“The researchers used a strand of RNA to tether the large and the small subunit together, toiling for months to get the length and location of the link just right so that the machine could still function. … The team screened its tethered ribosomes in Escherichia coli cells that lacked functioning RNA, and eventually found engineered ribosomes that worked well enough to support some growth, albeit slow.”)
- Team Makes Strides in Therapy Preventing Addiction Relapse by Erasing Drug-Associated Memories (“Now, scientists from the Florida campus of The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) have made a discovery that brings them closer to a new therapy based on selectively erasing these dangerous and tenacious drug-associated memories. … The new study, published this week online ahead of print by the journal Molecular Psychiatry, demonstrates the effectiveness of a single injection of an early drug candidate called blebbistatin in preventing relapse in animal models of methamphetamine addiction.
The new study builds on previous work in Miller’s lab. In 2013, the team made the surprising discovery that drug-associated memories could be selectively erased by targeting actin, the protein that provides the structural scaffold supporting memories in the brain. However, the therapeutic potential of the finding seemed limited by the problem that actin is critically important throughout the body—taking a pill that generally inhibits actin, even once, would likely be fatal.
In the new study, Miller and her colleagues report a major advance—the discovery of a safe route to selectively targeting brain actin through nonmuscle myosin II (NMII), a molecular motor that supports memory formation.”) - Horses capable of humanlike facial expressions (“Using these data, they then created a coding system for each individual facial movement—just as other researchers have done for humans and several other species. Horses, it turns out, can make 17 discrete facial movements, whereas cats make 21, dogs make 16, and chimpanzees 13. With the arch of an eyebrow or the curl of a lip, humans can convey some 27 emotions”)
- Severe stress creates more healthy fat (“Extreme stress—like the kind that accompanies large third-degree burns—can make the body turn ordinary fat cells into super–calorie-burning brown fat, scientists report. Their observation is the first to confirm that the human body can convert white fat into “healthy” brown fat, and it may eventually lead to drugs that can accomplish the conversion. … Most fat in mammals is a type called white adipose (fat) tissue, yet small animals and newborn humans have large amounts of brown fat, which is loaded with energy-burning mitochondria that cause it to use more calories and produce more heat than white fat. Until recently, scientists believed that in people, this brown fat disappeared after infancy. But in 2009, researchers showed that adult humans also have brown fat at the base of their necks, raising the possibility that drugs could help people produce more of it to combat obesity, diabetes, and high cholesterol. … Although the white-fat-turned-brown-fat cells weren’t as efficient as regular brown fat, there were enough of them to burn an average of 263 extra calories each day in burn patients, without any change in exercise or diet. ”)
- Tapeworms may be good for your brain (“In fact, one type [of tapeworm] appears to protect against memory loss in rats.”)
- Frequent spicy food consumption linked with longer life (“Fresh and dried chili peppers were the most commonly used spices reported by the Chinese study population. Capsaicin and other bioactive ingredients in chili peppers have been found in previous studies to have anti-obesity, antioxidant, anti-inflammation, and anticancer properties, but the authors caution that more research is needed to determine if there is a direct link between these ingredients and lowered risk of death.”)
- “CARBON SINK” DETECTED UNDERNEATH WORLD’S DESERTS (Global warming is a hoax! “Massive aquifers underneath deserts could hold more carbon than all the plants on land, according to the new research. … The new study suggests some of this carbon may be disappearing underneath the world’s deserts – a process exacerbated by irrigation. Scientists examining the flow of water through a Chinese desert found that carbon from the atmosphere is being absorbed by crops, released into the soil and transported underground in groundwater—a process that picked up when farming entered the region 2,000 years ago. Underground aquifers store the dissolved carbon deep below the desert where it can’t escape back to the atmosphere, according to the new study. The new study estimates that because of agriculture roughly 14 times more carbon than previously thought could be entering these underground desert aquifers every year. ”
- Building a Single-molecule Transistor from Scratch (“An international team of researchers has demonstrated for the first time that a single molecule can operate as a field-effect transistor when surrounded by charged atoms that operate as the gate.”)
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