Nanotechnology: The Art of Molecular Carpet-Weaving

Stable two-dimensional networks of organic molecules are important components in various nanotechnology processes. However, producing these networks, which are only one atom thick, in high quality and with the greatest possible stability currently still poses a great challenge. Scientists from the Excellence Cluster Nanosystems Initiative Munich (NIM) have now successfully created just such networks made of boron acid molecules. The current issue of the scientific journal ACSnano reports on their results.  Scanning electron microscopy image with a superimposed molecular model [Credit: TUM] Even the costliest oriental carpets have small mistakes. It is said that pious carpet-weavers deliberately include tiny mistakes in their fine...

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Exercise cuts bowel cancer risk

Researchers at the University of Western Australia (UWA) and the Western Australian Institute for Medical Research (WAIMR) have found people who engage in vigorous physical activity may be protected against types of colorectal cancer.  The study, published in the Cancer Causes Control journal, used a Western Australian cohort.   Researchers examined 870 participants who had bowel cancer and a control group of 996 who did not have the disease.  Study participants were asked to answer questions about their recreational physical activity, lifestyle, diet, medication and occupation.  UWA PhD student Terry Boyle, also supported by the Lions Cancer Institute, says the study confirms previous research that shows the most...

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Extracellular Matrix Could Lead to Advances in Regenerative Medicine

NPL scientists have created a functional model of the native extracellular matrix which provides structural support to cells to aid growth and proliferation and could lead to advances in regenerative medicine.  Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM) image of the designed extracellular matrix [Credit: National Physical Laboratory] The extracellular matrix (ECM) provides the physical and chemical conditions that enable the development of all biological tissues. It is a complex nano-to-microscale structure made up of protein fibres and serves as a dynamic substrate that supports tissue repair and regeneration.  Human-made structures designed to mimic and replace the native matrix in damaged or diseased tissues are highly sought after to...

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New Synthetic Molecules Treat Autoimmune Disease in Mice

A team of Weizmann Institute scientists has turned the tables on an autoimmune disease. In such diseases, including Crohn's and rheumatoid arthritis, the immune system mistakenly attacks the body's tissues. But the scientists managed to trick the immune systems of mice into targeting one of the body's players in autoimmune processes, an enzyme known as MMP9. The results of their research recently appeared in Nature Medicine.  Left: Natural control mechanism blocks the enzyme's zinc active site. Right: Novel antibody works as effectively as the natural control mechanism [Credit: Weizmann Institute of Science] Prof. Irit Sagi of the Biological Regulation Department and her research group have spent years looking for ways to home in...

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Computers implanted in brain could help paralyzed

It sounds like science fiction, but scientists around the world are getting tantalizingly close to building the mind-controlled prosthetic arms, computer cursors and mechanical wheelchairs of the future.  Cochlear implants work under the same premise as brain devices being developed [Credit: Kendra Luck/The Chronicle] Researchers already have implanted devices into primate brains that let them reach for objects with robotic arms. They've made sensors that attach to a human brain and allow paralyzed people to control a cursor by thinking about it.  In the coming decades, scientists say, the field of neural prosthetics - of inventing and building devices that harness brain activity for computerized movement - is going to revolutionize...

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Diet, nutrient levels linked to cognitive ability, brain shrinkage

New research has found that elderly people with higher levels of several vitamins and omega 3 fatty acids in their blood had better performance on mental acuity tests and less of the brain shrinkage typical of Alzheimer's disease – while "junk food" diets produced just the opposite result.  The study was among the first of its type to specifically measure a wide range of blood nutrient levels instead of basing findings on less precise data such as food questionnaires, and found positive effects of high levels of vitamins B, C, D, E and the healthy oils most commonly found in fish.  The research was done by scientists from the Oregon Health and Science University in Portland, Ore., and the Linus Pauling Institute at Oregon State...

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The benefits of meditation

Studies have shown that meditating regularly can help relieve symptoms in people who suffer from chronic pain, but the neural mechanisms underlying the relief were unclear. Now, MIT and Harvard researchers have found a possible explanation for this phenomenon.  In a study published online April 21 in the journal Brain Research Bulletin, the researchers found that people trained to meditate over an eight-week period were better able to control a specific type of brain waves called alpha rhythms.  “These activity patterns are thought to minimize distractions, to diminish the likelihood stimuli will grab your attention,” says Christopher Moore, an MIT neuroscientist and senior author of the paper. “Our data indicate that meditation...

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Mutation in gene critical for human development linked to arrhythmia

Arrhythmia is a potentially life-threatening problem with the rate or rhythm of the heartbeat, causing it to go too fast, too slow or to beat irregularly. Arrhythmia affects millions of people worldwide.  The cardiac conduction system (CCS) regulates the rate and rhythm of the heart. It is a group of specialized cells in the walls of the heart. These cells control the heart rate by sending electrical signals from the sinoatrial node in the heart's right atrium (upper chamber) to the ventricles (lower chambers), causing them to contract and pump blood.  The biologic and genetic mechanisms controlling the formation and function of the CCS are not well understood, but new research with mice shows that altered function of a gene...

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Scientists succeed in making the spinal cord transparent

In the event of the spinal cord injury, the long nerve cell filaments, the axons, may become severed. For quite some time now, scientists have been investigating whether these axons can be stimulated to regenerate. Such growth takes place on a scale of only a few millimetres. To date, changes like this could be determined only by cutting the tissue in question into wafer-thin slices and examining these under a microscope.  A spinal cord as if made of glass: The new method enables scientists to see nerve cell in the intact cellular network Credit:© MPI of Neurobiology / Erturk] However, the two-dimensional sections provide only an inaccurate picture of the spatial distribution and progression of the cells. Together with an international...

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Sea snails help scientists explore a possible way to enhance memory

Efforts to help people with learning impairments are being aided by a species of sea snail known as Aplysia californica. The mollusk, which is used by researchers to study the brain, has much in common with other species including humans. Research involving the snail has contributed to the understanding of learning and memory.  At The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth), neuroscientists used this animal model to test an innovative learning strategy designed to help improve the brain's memory and the results were encouraging. It could ultimately benefit people who have impairments resulting from aging, stroke, traumatic brain injury or congenital cognitive impairments.  The proof-of-principle study...

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A new way of approaching the early detection of Alzheimer's disease

One of our genes is apolipoprotein E (APOE), which often appears with a variation which nobody would want to have: APOEε4, the main genetic risk factor for sporadic Alzheimer's disease (the most common form in which this disorder manifests itself and which is caused by a combination of hereditary and environmental factors).  It is estimated that at least 40% of the sporadic patients affected by this disease are carriers of APOEε4, but this also means that much more still remains to be studied. The researcher at the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU) Xabier Elcoroaristizabal has opened up a channel for making a start by analysing candidate genes which, always in combination with APOEε4, could help to explain more cases.  His...

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Scientists pioneer new method for watching proteins fold

A protein's function depends on both the chains of molecules it is made of and the way those chains are folded. And while figuring out the former is relatively easy, the latter represents a huge challenge with serious implications because many diseases are the result of misfolded proteins. Now, a team of chemists at the University of Pennsylvania has devised a way to watch proteins fold in "real-time," which could lead to a better understanding of protein folding and misfolding in general.  The research was conducted by Feng Gai, professor in the Department of Chemistry in the School of Arts and Sciences, along with graduate students Arnaldo Serrano, also of Chemistry, and Robert Culik of the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular...

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Understanding the mechanical biology of life's bonds

When he was 10 years old, Julio Fernandez took a correspondence course in electronics and earned a certificate for putting together a doorbell. Today, the Columbia professor of biological sciences builds and takes apart proteins, the building blocks of the body which, when they bond improperly, may cause disease.  Traditionally, scientists study proteins in a test tube, a method that Fernandez believes does not offer an accurate enough picture of complex body biochemistry. “In a test tube how would you know what’s happening to something that requires mechanical force to extend and relax?” he says, referring to the stretching and contracting that happens to proteins when they bond with one another in the body. “You have to study proteins...

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Drugs used to overcome cancer may also combat antibiotic resistance

Drugs used to overcome cancer may also combat antibiotic resistance, finds a new study led by Gerry Wright, scientific director of the Michael G. DeGroote Institute for Infectious Disease Research at McMaster University.  "Our study found that certain proteins, called kinases, that confer antibiotic resistance are structurally related to proteins important in cancer," says Wright about the study published in Chemistry & Biology.  "The pharmaceutical sector has made a big investment in targeting these proteins, so there are a lot of compounds and drugs out there that, although they were designed to overcome cancer, they can in fact be looked at with fresh eyes and maybe repurposed to address the problem of antibiotic resistance."  The...

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New insights into nanoparticles and dividing cells

What happens when living cells take up nanoparticles, those tiny entities that could offer new ways of delivering drugs into the body? A new study from researchers at UCD has tracked the progress of nanoparticles as cells divide, and their findings - which were published recently in Nature Nanotechnology - will help us better understand how different tissues in the body process a dose of nanoparticles.  “Nanoparticles are engineered materials that we are producing, and what is very interesting about them is that they have a size that is in the nanometre range, so they are a bit bigger than proteins,” says Dr. Anna Salvati, a post-doctoral researcher at UCD School of Chemistry & Chemical Biology. “Their size allows them to interact...

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What Are Emotion Expressions For?

That cartoon scary face – wide eyes, ready to run – may have helped our primate ancestors survive in a dangerous wild, according to the authors of an article published in Current Directions in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. The authors present a way that fear and other facial expressions might have evolved and then come to signal a person’s feelings to the people around him.  The basic idea, according to Azim F. Shariff of the University of Oregon, is that the specific facial expressions associated with each particular emotion evolved for some reason. Shariff cowrote the paper with Jessica L. Tracy of the University of British Columbia. So fear helps respond to threat, and the squinched-up...

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How the brain cell works

University of Miami biology professor Akira Chiba is leading a multidisciplinary team to develop the first systematic survey of protein interactions within brain cells. The team is aiming to reconstruct genome-wide in situ protein-protein interaction networks (isPIN) within the neurons of a multicellular organism. Preliminary data were presented at the American Society for Cell Biology annual meeting, December 3 through 7, 2011, in Denver, Colorado.  At the core of the new imaging technology is the phenomenon known as FRET that occurs only when two fluorescently tagged molecules come within the distance of eight nanometer or less. Detecting the FRET serves as a proxy for the two proteins X and Y associating with each other within a...

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