New wonder drug matches and kills all kinds of cancer — human testing starts 2014 Stanford researchers are on track to begin human trials of a potentially potent new weapon against cancer, and would-be participants are flooding in following the Post’s initial report on the discovery. The progress comes just two months after the groundbreaking study by Dr Irv Weissman, who developed an antibody that breaks down a cancer’s defense mechanisms in the body. A protein called CD47 tells the body not to “eat” the cancer, but the antibody developed by Dr Weissman blocks CD47 and frees up immune cells called macrophages — which can then engulf the deadly cells. The new research shows the miraculous macrophages effectively act as intelligence gatherers for the body, pointing out cancerous cells to cancer-fighting “killer T” cells. The T cells then “learn” to hunt down and attack the cancer, the researchers claim. The clinical implications of the process could be profound in the war on cancer. This turns them into a personalized cancer vaccine.
UCI, fellow chemists find a way to unboil eggs Irvine, Calif., Jan. 23, 2015 – UC Irvine and Australian chemists have figured out how to unboil egg whites – an innovation that could dramatically reduce costs for cancer treatments, food production and other segments of the $160 billion global biotechnology industry, according to findings published today in the journal ChemBioChem. “Yes, we have invented a way to unboil a hen egg,” said Gregory Weiss, UCI professor of chemistry and molecular biology & biochemistry. “In our paper, we describe a device for pulling apart tangled proteins and allowing them to refold. We start with egg whites boiled for 20 minutes at 90 degrees Celsius and return a key protein in the egg to working order.” Like many researchers, he has struggled to efficiently produce or recycle valuable molecular proteins that have a wide range of applications but which frequently “misfold” into structurally incorrect shapes when they are formed, rendering them useless.
7 Incredible Inventions by Teenage Wunderkinds When many of us were in our teens, work for science fairs comprised cut and paste displays on colorful presentation boards, and our hobbies weren't exactly about to change the world. But across the globe, teenagers with creative, scientific minds are already devising extraordinary devices, revolutionary materials and renewable technologies that might just change our planet for the greener. Click through to see some of their most incredible inventions - from bioplastics made from bananas to pee-powered energy generators and an ocean cleanup array to rid the world's oceans of waste. An Ocean Clean Up Array to Remove 7,250,000 Tons of Plastic From the World’s Oceans When we first covered Boyan Slat’s Ocean Cleanup Array it generated a phenomenal amount of excitement, as well as debate. A Way to Turn Plastic Waste into $78 Million of Biofuel 16-year-old Egyptian student Azza Abdel Hamid Faiad, meanwhile, was at work finding a way to make use of waste plastic.
Does DNA Emit Light? Dan Eden for viewzone.com An incredible story! I get lots of suggestions for stories, and I really appreciate them. But some of them are too good to be true. An example of this was a story of a giant human skeleton -- maybe 40 feet tall -- that was discovered by a Russian archaeological team. The story had photos and links accompanying it and looked promising. I had this same experience this week when I was sent an article where a Russian (again) scientist, Pjotr Garjajev, had managed to intercept communication from a DNA molecule in the form of ultraviolet photons -- light! But this was just the beginning. Dr. I tried to find a scientific journal that had this experiment. Fritz-Albert Popp thought he had discovered a cure for cancer. It was 1970, and Popp, a theoretical biophysicist at the University of Marburg in Germany, had been teaching radiology -- the interaction of electromagnetic (EM) radiation on biological systems. Why Ultra-violet light? Photorepair Light inside the body John B.
Flowers get an electrifying buzz out of visiting bees - life - 21 February 2013 Plants could turn out to be one of the more chatty organisms. Recent studies have shown they can communicate with a surprising range of cues. Now it turns out they could be sending out electrical signals, too. As they fly through the air, bees – like all insects – acquire a positive electric charge. To test the idea, the team created artificial flowers, filling some with sucrose and others with quinine, a substance bees don't feed on. "That was the first hint that had us jumping up and down in the lab," says Robert. Next, his team looked at whether the bees were influenced by the shape of a flower's electric field, which is determined by the flower's shape. Ruthless evolution The researchers don't know exactly what information is contained in the flowers' electrical signals, but they speculate that flowers could evolve different shaped fields in their competition to attract pollinators. Of course, there may be a few cheaters out there that won't budge a millivolt when visited, he says.
Human Cells have Electric Fields as Powerful as Lighting Bolts -A Galaxy Insight Using newly developed voltage-sensitive nanoparticles, researchers have found that the previously unknown electric fields inside of cells are as strong, or stronger, as those produced in lightning bolts. Previously, it has only been possible to measure electric fields across cell membranes, not within the main bulk of cells, so scientists didn't even know cells had an internal electric field. This discovery is a surprising twist for cell researchers. Scientists don't know what causes these incredibly strong fields or why they' are there. But now using new nanotools, such as voltage-sensitive dyes, they can start to measure them at least. Researchers believe they may be able to learn more about disease states, such as cancer, by studying these minute, but powerful electric fields. University of Michigan researchers led by chemistry professor Raoul Kopelman encapsulated voltage-sensitive dyes in polymer spheres just 30 nanometers in diameter. Posted by Rebecca Sato Related Galaxy posts:
Male and female brains wired differently, scans reveal | Science Scientists have drawn on nearly 1,000 brain scans to confirm what many had surely concluded long ago: that stark differences exist in the wiring of male and female brains. Maps of neural circuitry showed that on average women's brains were highly connected across the left and right hemispheres, in contrast to men's brains, where the connections were typically stronger between the front and back regions. Ragini Verma, a researcher at the University of Pennsylvania, said the greatest surprise was how much the findings supported old stereotypes, with men's brains apparently wired more for perception and co-ordinated actions, and women's for social skills and memory, making them better equipped for multitasking. "If you look at functional studies, the left of the brain is more for logical thinking, the right of the brain is for more intuitive thinking. So if there's a task that involves doing both of those things, it would seem that women are hardwired to do those better," Verma said.
Consciousness: Eight questions science must answer | Anil Seth | Science Consciousness is at once the most familiar and the most mysterious feature of our existence. A new science of consciousness is now revealing its biological basis. Once considered beyond the reach of science, the neural mechanisms of human consciousness are now being unravelled at a startling pace by neuroscientists and their colleagues. Here are eight key questions that neuroscientists are now addressing: 1. The brain contains about 90 billion neurons, and about a thousand times more connections between them. But consciousness isn't just about having a large number of neurons. Current hot topics include the role of the brain's densely connected frontal lobes, and the importance of information flow between regions rather than their activity per se. 2. A good way to study a phenomenon is to see what happens when it disappears. A key question now is how similar general anaesthesia is to other states of unconsciousness, such as dreamless sleep. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8.