Medical Benefits Of Silver Discovered

A study was published on June 19th by a team of researchers at Boston University regarding the benefits of using silver in antibiotics. While it has long been known that silver contains strong antimicrobial properties, scientists have only recently discovered that it’s able to turn normal antibiotics into antibiotics on steroids.It is now known that silver uses many chemical processes to stop bacteria from forming bonds, slow their metabolic rates, and disrupt homeostasis. These processes cause the bacteria to become weak and more susceptible to the power of antibiotics. Through multiple studies, the mixture of silver and antibiotics has been up to 1,000 times more effective in killing bacteria than antibiotics alone. Some critics warn that using silver may have potentially toxic side effects on its users, but scientists disagree, saying small non-toxic amounts increase the effectiveness of the antibiotic. This is a very exciting discovery for the medical world, with the possible uses and applications for this precious metal continuing to grow.

Growing Human-Animal Hybrids for Organs to Become Legal in Japan

Japanese government is about to give green light to scientists who look forward to growing human organs in animal bodies.
A team of researchers led by Hiromitsu Nakauchi of the University of Tokyo, managed to come up with a process for creating a "chimeric embryo" by introducing a human stem cell inside the body of an animal embryo (which in such cases is usually a pig).
This process will allow scientists to grow human-animal hybrid that can be used to grow human organs.
Scientists want to introduce the embryo in a female pig's womb. This will induce pregnancy and lead to the creation of a pig "equipped" human organs (for example, a pancreas or liver).
Inside the body of the pig organs would mature as it develops. After it is slaughtered scientists will harvest the chimera's organs and then transplant them.
Currently the creation of a chimeric embryo is considered legal, but implanting the embryo in an animal's womb is not. At the moment a Japanese regulatory body is analyzing all pros and cons to decide whether to permit planting chimeric embryos in animals or not.
Scientists believe that very soon such procedure will be legal.
(Via Physorg) Powered by www.scifidiscovery.blogspot.com

Monkey Mind Control Could Lead to Treatment for Paralyzed Patients

It's an unusual path, but promising therapy for paralyzed patients may come from the work of monkeys.

Researchers at Duke University conducted a study in which monkeys learned to control the movement of virtual arms by using just their brains. These findings could prove particularly useful for people who have sensory and motor deficiencies caused by spinal cord injuries or for those who are severely paralyzed.

"Bimanual movements in our daily activities – from typing on a keyboard to opening a can – are critically important," said Miguel Nicolelis, a professor of neurobiology at the Duke University School of Medicine and senior author of the study, in a statement. "Future brain-machine interfaces aimed at restoring mobility in humans will have to incorporate multiple limbs to greatly benefit severely paralyzed patients."

Brain-machine interfaces are systems that connect different regions of the brain to assistive devices that help restore patients' motor and sensory functions, the study said. Previous studies have developed brain-machine interfaces that control single prosthetic arms, but have not successfully used two at the same time.

According to the Christopher and Dana Reeve Foundation's Paralysis Resource Center, nearly 2 percent of the United States population, or about 5.6 million people, report currently living with some form of paralysis and 0.4 percent of the population, or about 1.3 million people, say they are paralyzed from a spinal cord injury.

People can become paralyzed from a number of different sources, including cerebral palsy, multiple sclerosis, a traumatic brain injury, a spinal cord injury or stroke, which is the leading cause of paralysis, according to the Reeve Foundation.

Nicholelis' research is significant because the monkeys in the study successfully controlled two virtual arms at once and their performance improved over time.

Via www.usnews.com

Bioengineered Body Parts: A move towards the creation of synthetic being...

It will be surprising that in the nearest future human could be a complete synthetic materials. On June 6th, a group of doctors at Duke University successfully implanted the first bioengineered blood vessel into a live patient. Though bioengineering has been advancing rapidly, this procedure was the first successful implant of any synthetically bioengineered body part.Implanted into a patient suffering from the end stages of kidney disease, the vein had been synthesized from donated human cells that were then developed on a scaffold. In order to prevent any antibodies in the patient from attacking the foreign vessel, the qualities that could trigger the attack were removed. The vein has proved more successful in tests than synthetic or animal-based implants because they are not prone to clotting and don’t pose risk of infection during the surgery.Incredibly, the veins are made of the same flexible materials that they’re connected to and even take on the properties of their cellular environment and other veins. With the success of this procedure, this emerging field has huge implications for further uses in the medical world. Soon, doctors hope to be bioengineering veins for heart disease and maybe even go on to bioengineer whole organs or body parts.

Low-voiced men love ’em and leave ’em, yet still attract more women: study

Low-voiced men have an edge in attracting women, even though women know they’re unlikely to stick around long, according to researchers.

The scientists found in a study that women were more attracted to men with masculine voices, at least for short-term relationships. Those men were also seen as more likely to cheat and unsuitable for a longer relat­ionship and marriage.

The study, published online in the journal Personality and Individual Differences, offers insight into the evolu­tion of the voice and how we choose our mates, there searchers said.

“The sound of some one’s voice can affect how we think of them,” explained lead author Jil lian O’ Connor, a post doctoral fellow at McMaster University in Canada. “Until now, it’s been unclear why women would like the voices of men who might cheat. But we found that the more women thought these men would cheat, the more they were attracted to them for a brief relationship when they are less worried about fidelity.”

For the study, 87 women listened to men’s voices that were manipulated electronically to sound high er or low­er, and then chose who they thought was more likely to cheat on their romantic partner.

Researchers also asked the participants to choose the voice they thought was more attractive for a long-term versus a short-term relationship.

“From an evolutionary perspective, these perceptions of future sexual infidelity may be adaptive,” that is, they may have been useful for human an cestors whose reproductive behavior shaped our species, said Mc Mas ter’s David Fein berg, who collaborated with O’ Con nor.

“The consequences of infidelity are very high whether it is emotional or financial and this research sug gests that humans have evolved as a protection mechanism to avoid long-term partners who may cheat,” he said.


Courtesy of McMaster University
and World Science staff

Your brain cells may be capable of outliving you

Some brain cells of mam mals can long out live the an i mal to which they orig i nally be longed, if trans planted in to a dif fer ent brain, new re search sug gests.
Some brain cells of mam mals can long out live the an i mal to which they orig i nally be longed, if trans planted in to a dif fer ent brain, new re search sug gests.

The find ings are raising scientists’ hopes that if they find a way to greatly in crease hu man life span, brain cells will co op erate by work ing long er accord ing ly.

In mam mals, neu rons, the main type of in forma t ion-processing brain cells, can last a whole life span in the ab­sence of brain dis ease. But it has been un clear wheth er neu rons have a max i mum life span, si m i lar to oth er types of cells in the body which, un like neu rons, nor mally can rep li cate.

To find out, Lo ren zo Ma grassi of the Uni vers ity of Pa via in Italy and col leagues trans planted pre cur sor neu rons from the de vel op ing mouse in to rat em bryos. They used a strain of rat that can live on av er age nearly twice as long as the do nor mouse strain. The cells came from, and were trans planted to, a part of the brain known as the cer e bel lum.

The trans planted cells de vel oped in to nor mal neu rons that made them selves at home in the rat brains, though they re tained a mouse-like size and shape, the re search ers said. More o ver, these cells sur vived for as long as their rat hosts, or up to 36 months, roughly twice as long as the av er age life span of the do nor mice.

The find ings sug gest that the life span of the trans planted neu rons is not ge net ic ally fixed and may have been de ter mined by the rat brain “mi croen vi ron ment,” Ma grassi and col leagues wrote. They re ported their find ings in this week’s early on line is sue of the jour nal Pro ceed ings of the Na tio n al Aca de my of Sci en ces.

The re sults, they added, al so sug gest that in creas ing longe vity—a hall mark of tech no log ic ally ad vanced so ci­eties—won’t nec es sarily sad dle longer-lived peo ple with a prob lem of many dy ing brain cells.

“Our re sults sug gest that neu ronal sur viv al and ag ing are co in ci den t but sep a ra ble pro cess es,” they wrote. This in creases “our hope that ex tend ing or gan is mal life span by di e tary, be hav ior al, and phar ma co logic in ter ven­tions will not nec es sarily re sult in a neu ronally de plet ed brain.”
The find ings are raising scientists’ hopes that if they find a way to greatly in crease hu man life span, brain cells will co op erate by work ing long er accord ing ly.
Some brain cells of mam mals can long out live the an i mal to which they orig i nally be longed, if trans planted in to a dif fer ent brain, new re search sug gests.

The find ings are raising scientists’ hopes that if they find a way to greatly in crease hu man life span, brain cells will co op erate by work ing long er accord ing ly.

In mam mals, neu rons, the main type of in forma t ion-processing brain cells, can last a whole life span in the ab­sence of brain dis ease. But it has been un clear wheth er neu rons have a max i mum life span, si m i lar to oth er types of cells in the body which, un like neu rons, nor mally can rep li cate.

To find out, Lo ren zo Ma grassi of the Uni vers ity of Pa via in Italy and col leagues trans planted pre cur sor neu rons from the de vel op ing mouse in to rat em bryos. They used a strain of rat that can live on av er age nearly twice as long as the do nor mouse strain. The cells came from, and were trans planted to, a part of the brain known as the cer e bel lum.

The trans planted cells de vel oped in to nor mal neu rons that made them selves at home in the rat brains, though they re tained a mouse-like size and shape, the re search ers said. More o ver, these cells sur vived for as long as their rat hosts, or up to 36 months, roughly twice as long as the av er age life span of the do nor mice.

The find ings sug gest that the life span of the trans planted neu rons is not ge net ic ally fixed and may have been de ter mined by the rat brain “mi croen vi ron ment,” Ma grassi and col leagues wrote. They re ported their find ings in this week’s early on line is sue of the jour nal Pro ceed ings of the Na tio n al Aca de my of Sci en ces.

The re sults, they added, al so sug gest that in creas ing longe vity—a hall mark of tech no log ic ally ad vanced so ci­eties—won’t nec es sarily sad dle longer-lived peo ple with a prob lem of many dy ing brain cells.

“Our re sults sug gest that neu ronal sur viv al and ag ing are co in ci den t but sep a ra ble pro cess es,” they wrote. This in creases “our hope that ex tend ing or gan is mal life span by di e tary, be hav ior al, and phar ma co logic in ter ven­tions will not nec es sarily re sult in a neu ronally de plet ed brain.”
In mam mals, neu rons, the main type of in forma t ion-processing brain cells, can last a whole life span in the ab­sence of brain dis ease. But it has been un clear wheth er neu rons have a max i mum life span, si m i lar to oth er types of cells in the body which, un like neu rons, nor mally can rep li cate.

To find out, Lo ren zo Ma grassi of the Uni vers ity of Pa via in Italy and col leagues trans planted pre cur sor neu rons from the de vel op ing mouse in to rat em bryos. They used a strain of rat that can live on av er age nearly twice as long as the do nor mouse strain. The cells came from, and were trans planted to, a part of the brain known as the cer e bel lum.

The trans planted cells de vel oped in to nor mal neu rons that made them selves at home in the rat brains, though they re tained a mouse-like size and shape, the re search ers said. More o ver, these cells sur vived for as long as their rat hosts, or up to 36 months, roughly twice as long as the av er age life span of the do nor mice.

The find ings sug gest that the life span of the trans planted neu rons is not ge net ic ally fixed and may have been de ter mined by the rat brain “mi croen vi ron ment,” Ma grassi and col leagues wrote. They re ported their find ings in this week’s early on line is sue of the jour nal Pro ceed ings of the Na tio n al Aca de my of Sci en ces.

The re sults, they added, al so sug gest that in creas ing longe vity—a hall mark of tech no log ic ally ad vanced so ci­eties—won’t nec es sarily sad dle longer-lived peo ple with a prob lem of many dy ing brain cells.

“Our re sults sug gest that neu ronal sur viv al and ag ing are co in ci den t but sep a ra ble pro cess es,” they wrote. This in creases “our hope that ex tend ing or gan is mal life span by di e tary, be hav ior al, and phar ma co logic in ter ven­tions will not nec es sarily re sult in a neu ronally de plet ed brain.”

Courtesy of PNAS and world of Science

Alternative Fuel Microbes

Imagine a world where high-efficiency, low-cost alternative fuels were as easy to obtain as the oxygen in the air around us. Well, thanks to the collaboration of the US Department of Energy and a team of researchers at Duke University, we might have a microorganism that can make this dream a reality. Recent years have seen great strides in the area of alternative fuels (like ethanol from corn and sugar cane). Unfortunately, these methods have proven inefficient and given rise to a lot of criticism like cutting into the food and land supply. Recently, scientists have been able to come up with electrofuels that are designed to harness solar energy without cutting into the food, water, or land supplies as most of the existing alternative fuels do.In addition to its low energy need, tiny microbes can efficiently and effectively synthesize these electrofuels in a lab. These electrofuel microbes have been isolated and found living in non-photosynthetic bacteria. Using the electrons in the soil as food, the microbes eat up the energy to produce butanol when exposed to electricity and carbon dioxide. Using this knowledge, scientists extract the genes to complete this photosynthesis substitute and inject them into lab-grown bacteria allowing them to produce butanol in large amounts. Butanol is now being seen as the better alternative to both ethanol and gasoline for a variety of reasons. As a much larger molecule, butanol has a larger energy-carrying capacity than ethanol and doesn’t absorb water, so it can be placed directly in the gas tanks of any car and transported through the existing gasoline pipelines. These butanol microbes are very promising for the future of alternative fuels.