#Prosthetic hand restores sense of touch in 28-year-old A 28-year-old paraly sed man in the US has become the first person to"feel"physical sensa ions through a prosthetic
hand di rectly connected to his brain, US de ence researchers have claimed. Paralysed for more than a deca de due to a spinal cord injury,
the man could even identify which me chanical finger was being gently to uched, researchers said.
The advance, made possible by neural technologies developed un der US Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency's Revolutionising Prosthetics points to a future in
which paralysed people will not on y be able to manipulate objects by sending signals from their brain to devices,
but also be able to sense precisely what those devices are to uching.""By wiring a sense of touch rom a mechanical hand directly in o the brain,
this work shows the po ential for seamless bio-technologi cal restoration of near-natural unction,
"said DARPA programme manager Justin Sanchez. Electrode arrays were placed onto the man's sensory cortex, the brain region responsible for identi ying tactile sensations such as pressure.
In addition, the team pla ced arrays on his motor cortex, the part of the brain that directs body movements.
The mechanical hand contains sophisticated torque sensors that can detect when pressure is being applied to any of its fingers,
In a first, an Indian American researcher from Salk Institute for Biological Studies in California has developed a new way to selectively activate brain,
additional tool to manipulate neurons and other cells in the body,"informed,"Sreekanth Chalasani, assistant professor in Salk's molecular neurobiology laboratory.
The new method-which uses the same type of waves used in medical sonograms-may have advantages over the light-based approach-known as optogenetics-particularly
when it comes to adapting the technology to human therapeutics. In optogenetics, researchers add light-sensitive channel proteins to neurons they wish to study.
By shining a focused laser on the cells, they can selectively open these channels, either activating or silencing the target neurons.
"In contrast to light, low-frequency ultrasound can travel through the body without any scattering, "he noted."
whether this could work in a mammalian brain, "Chalasani pointed out. His group has begun already testing the approach in mice."
"When we make the leap into therapies for humans, I think we have shot a better with noninvasive sonogenetics approaches than with optogenetics,
"he emphasised in a paper appeared in the journal Nature Communications. Chalasani obtained his Phd from University of Pennsylvania.
He then did his postdoctoral research in the laboratory of Dr Cori Bargmann at the Rockefeller University in New york k
#French start-up develops in-vitro human sperm A French start-up working with a government lab said it has developed in-vitro human sperm,
The research team developed a bioreactor using a viscous fluid made partly of substances found in the walls of mushrooms
Young men with cancer could be helped by the process s
#From reel to real: Potter-style invisibility cloak a reality now WASHINGTON: Scientists have developed a Harry Potterstyle ultra-thin invisibility cloak that can conform to the shape of tiny objects
Working with brick-like blocks of gold nanoantennas, the researchers fashioned a"skin cloak"barely 80 nanometres in thickness,
wrapped around a 3d object about the size of a few biological cells and arbitrarily shaped with multiple bumps and dents.
or off simply by switching the polarization of the nanoantennas.""This is the first time a 3d object of arbitrary shape has been cloaked from visible light,
#Protein system can detect viral infection, kill cancer cells MIT engineers have developed a modular system of proteins that can detect a particular DNA sequence in a cell
"said Shimyn Slomovic, a postdoc at Massachusetts institute of technology's Institute of Medical Engineering and Science (IMES) and the paper's lead author."
The researchers can programme the system to produce proteins that alert immune cells to fight the infection, instead of GFP."
#Paraplegic man walks using only his brain power A brain-to-computer echnology that can translate thoughts into leg movements has enab ed a man paralysed from the waist down by a spinal cord injury to become the first such
doctors n Southern California reported on Wednesday. The slow, halting first steps of the 28-year-old paraplegic were documented in a preliminary study published in The british-based Journal of Neuroengineering and Rehabilitation,
along with a Youtube video. The feat was accomplished using a system allowing the brain o bypass the injured spinal cord
and instead send messages through a computer algorithm to elec rodes placed around the patient's knees to trigger controlled eg muscle movements.
Researchers at the University of California, Irvine, say the outcome marks a promising but incremental achievement in the development of brain-computer interfaces that may one day help stroke
and spinal injury victims regain some mobility. Dr An Do, a study co-author, said clinical applications were many years away.
Results of the UC Irvine research still need to be replicated in other pa ients and greatly refined.
Nevertheless, the study proved it possible"to restore intuitive, brain-controlled walking after a complete spinal cord injury,"said biomedical engineer Zoran Nenadic,
who led the research. The steps taken a year ago by the experiment's subject
former graduate student Adam Fritz, who injured his back in a motorcycle accident, appear modest as seen in the video.
though his weight was supported partially by an overhead suspension harness and a walker he grasped to keep his body upright,
#Paraplegic man walks using only his brain power A brain-to-computer technology that can translate thoughts into leg movements has enabled a man paralysed from the waist down by a spinal cord injury to become the first such patient to walk without the use of robotics,
doctors in Southern California reported on Wednesday. The slow, halting first steps of the 28-year-old paraplegic were documented in a preliminary study published in The british-based Journal of Neuroengineering and Rehabilitation,
along with a Youtube video. The feat was accomplished using a system allowing the brain to bypass the injured spinal cord
and instead send messages through a computer algorithm to electrodes placed around the patient's knees to trigger controlled leg muscle movements.
Researchers at the University of California, Irvine, say the outcome marks a promising but incremental achievement in the development of brain-computer interfaces that may one day help stroke
and spinal injury victims regain some mobility. Dr An Do, a study co-author, said clinical applications were many years away.
Results of the UC Irvine research still need to be replicated in other patients and greatly refined.
Nevertheless, study proved it possible"to restore intuitive, brain-controlled walking after a complete spinal cord injury,"said biomedical engineer Zoran Nenadic,
who led the research. The steps taken a year ago by the experiment's subject
former graduate student Adam Fritz, who injured his back in a motorcycle accident, appear modest as seen in the video.
though his weight was supported partially by an overhead suspension harness and a walker he grasped to keep his body upright,
#New chip-based technology to detect Ebola virus Researchers have developed a chip-based technology that can be integrated into a portable instrument for use in field situations where rapid,
accurate detection of Ebola infections is needed to control outbreaks. Laboratory tests using preparations of Ebola virus
The current gold standard for Ebola virus detection relies on a method called polymerase chain reaction (PCR) to amplify the virus's genetic material for detection.
Because PCR works on DNA molecules and Ebola is an RNA VIRUS the reverse transcriptase enzyme is used to make DNA copies of the VIRAL RNA prior to PCR amplification and detection."
"said senior author Holger Schmidt, professor of Optoelectronics at University of California, Santa cruz.""We're detecting the nucleic acids directly,
Adding a"preconcentration"step during sample processing on the microfluidic chip extended the limit of detection well beyond that achieved by other chip-based approaches,
Schmidt's lab at UC Santa cruz worked with researchers at Brigham Young University and UC Berkeley to develop the system.
Virologists at Texas Biomedical Research Institute in San antonio prepared the viral samples for testing. The system combined a microfluidic chip for sample preparation and an optofluidic chip for optical detection.
The microfluidic chip was made of a silicon-based polymer, polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS), and had microvalves and fluidic channels to transport the sample between nodes for various sample preparation steps.
The targeted molecules-in this case, Ebola virus RNA-were isolated by binding to a matching sequence of synthetic DNA (called an oligonucleotide) attached to magnetic microbeads.
nontarget biomolecules were washed off, and the bound targets were released then by heating, labelled with fluorescent markers,
and transferred to the optofluidic chip for optical detection. The study was published in the journal Scientific Reports s
"said Alfred S Mcewen, a professor of planetary geology at the University of Arizona and the principal investigator of images from a high-resolution camera on Nasa's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.
Lujendra Ojha, a graduate student at the Georgia Institute of technology, turned to another instrument on the orbiter that identifies types of molecules by
and it looks like a beautiful swimming pool, "Mckay said.""But the water has got nothing.""Earthly life adapts to many hostile environments,
but Don juan Pond is lifeless. Others are not so certain. David E Stillman, a scientist at the Southwest Research Institute's space studies department in Boulder, Colorado, said water for the streaks might be different in different regions.
which requires electronics and systems that can withstand the heat of baking, adds to the cost
and complicates the design. In selecting the landing site for the 2020 rover, the space agency is ruling out places that might be habitable,
which is actually the larva of a beetle, eats Styrofoam and other forms of polystyrene,
Microorganisms in the worms'guts biodegrade the plastic in the process. This first ever finding holds out hope for a world that is being swamped by plastic.
These findings, published studies in Environmental science and Technology, are authored co by Wei-Min Wu, a senior research engineer in the Department of Civil and Environmental engineering at Stanford."
"Our findings have opened a new door to solve the global plastic pollution problem, "Wu said. The world produced nearly 300 million tonnes of plastic according to 2013 data published by the Worldwatch Institute.
In Europe, 26 percent, or 6. 6 million tons, of the post-consumer plastic produced in 2012 was recycled,
while 36 percent was incinerated for energy generation. The remaining 38 percent of post-consumer plastics in Europe went to landfills.
In the United states, only 9 percent of post-consumer plastic (2. 8 million tons) was recycled in 2012.
The remaining 32 million tons was discarded. The new discovery is the first to provide detailed evidence of bacterial degradation of plastic in an animal's gut.
Understanding how bacteria within mealworms carry out this feat could potentially enable new options for safe management of plastic waste."
"There's a possibility of really important research coming out of bizarre places, "said Craig Criddle,
a professor of civil and environmental engineering who supervises plastics research by Wu and others at Stanford."
"Sometimes, science surprises us. This is a shock.""In the lab, 100 mealworms ate between 34 and 39 milligrams of Styrofoam-about the weight of a small pill-per day.
The worms converted about half of the Styrofoam into carbon dioxide, as they would with any food source.
Within 24 hours, they excreted the bulk of the remaining plastic as biodegraded fragments that look similar to tiny rabbit droppings.
Mealworms fed a steady diet of Styrofoam were as healthy as those eating a normal diet,
Wu said, and their waste appeared to be safe to use as soil for crops.
Researchers, including Wu, have shown in earlier research that waxworms, the larvae of Indian mealmoths, have microorganisms in their guts that can biodegrade polyethylene,
a plastic used in filmy products such as trash bags. The new research on mealworms is significant,
however, because Styrofoam was thought to have been non-biodegradable and more problematic for the environment. Researchers led by Criddle,
a senior fellow at the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment, are collaborating on ongoing studies with the project leader
and papers'lead author, Jun Yang of Beihang University in China, and other Chinese researchers.
Together, they plan to study whether microorganisms within mealworms and other insects can biodegrade plastics such as polypropylene (used in products ranging from textiles to automotive components),
microbeads (tiny bits used as exfoliants) and bioplastics (derived from renewable biomass sources such as corn or biogas methane).
As part of a"cradle-to-cradle"approach, the researchers will explore the fate of these materials
when consumed by small animals, which are consumed, in turn by other animals s
#Plastic eating worms could save the world A tiny worm, which is actually the larva of a beetle, eats Styrofoam and other forms of polystyrene,
a Stanford university researcher has found. Microorganisms in the worms'guts biodegrade the plastic in the process.
This first ever finding holds out hope for a world that is being swamped by plastic. These findings, published studies in Environmental science and Technology, are authored co by Wei-Min Wu,
a senior research engineer in the Department of Civil and Environmental engineering at Stanford.""Our findings have opened a new door to solve the global plastic pollution problem,
"Wu said. The world produced nearly 300 million tonnes of plastic according to 2013 data published by the Worldwatch Institute.
In Europe, 26 percent, or 6. 6 million tons, of the post-consumer plastic produced in 2012 was recycled,
while 36 percent was incinerated for energy generation. The remaining 38 percent of post-consumer plastics in Europe went to landfills.
In the United states, only 9 percent of post-consumer plastic (2. 8 million tons) was recycled in 2012.
The remaining 32 million tons was discarded. The new discovery is the first to provide detailed evidence of bacterial degradation of plastic in an animal's gut.
Understanding how bacteria within mealworms carry out this feat could potentially enable new options for safe management of plastic waste."
"There's a possibility of really important research coming out of bizarre places, "said Craig Criddle,
a professor of civil and environmental engineering who supervises plastics research by Wu and others at Stanford."
"Sometimes, science surprises us. This is a shock.""In the lab, 100 mealworms ate between 34 and 39 milligrams of Styrofoam-about the weight of a small pill-per day.
The worms converted about half of the Styrofoam into carbon dioxide, as they would with any food source.
Within 24 hours, they excreted the bulk of the remaining plastic as biodegraded fragments that look similar to tiny rabbit droppings.
Mealworms fed a steady diet of Styrofoam were as healthy as those eating a normal diet,
Wu said, and their waste appeared to be safe to use as soil for crops.
Researchers, including Wu, have shown in earlier research that waxworms, the larvae of Indian mealmoths, have microorganisms in their guts that can biodegrade polyethylene,
a plastic used in filmy products such as trash bags. The new research on mealworms is significant,
however, because Styrofoam was thought to have been non-biodegradable and more problematic for the environment. Researchers led by Criddle,
a senior fellow at the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment, are collaborating on ongoing studies with the project leader
and papers'lead author, Jun Yang of Beihang University in China, and other Chinese researchers.
Together, they plan to study whether microorganisms within mealworms and other insects can biodegrade plastics such as polypropylene (used in products ranging from textiles to automotive components),
microbeads (tiny bits used as exfoliants) and bioplastics (derived from renewable biomass sources such as corn or biogas methane).
As part of a"cradle-to-cradle"approach, the researchers will explore the fate of these materials
when consumed by small animals, which are consumed, in turn by other animals s
#UV LIGHT-enabled catheter to fix holes in heart without operation WASHINGTON: Researchers have designed a specialised catheter for fixing holes in the heart using a biodegradable adhesive
and patch, eliminating the need for open heart surgery. Pedro delnido, contributing author on the study, said,
"This method also avoids suturing into the heart tissue, because we're just gluing something to it,
"said delnido. Catheterisations are preferable to open heart surgery because they don't require stopping the heart,
putting the patient on bypass, and cutting into the heart. Their newly designed catheter device utilises UV LIGHT technology,
and can be used to place the patch in a beating heart. The catheter is inserted through a vein in the neck or groin and directed to the defect within the heart.
Once in place the clinician opens two positioning balloons: one around the front end of the catheter,
and one on the other side of the heart wall. The clinician then deploys the patch and turns on the catheter's UV LIGHT.
The light reflects off of the balloon's interior and activates the patch's adhesive coating.
As the glue cures, pressure from the positioning balloons on either side of the patch help secure it in place.
Finally, both balloons are deflated and the catheter is withdrawn. Over time, normal tissue growth resumes s
#Two-step therapy for breast tumour shows promise Disabling a cancer-causing pathway and administering an immune-molecule-based'mop-up'therapy can eradicate a type of breast tumour in mice,
according to researchers who said that the treatment could slash the amount of chemotherapies required in humans to half."
"This line of research is important to future therapy for Her2-positive breast cancers because it defines a way to make the current treatment better
and to use less amount of cancer drugs such as Herceptin by an ordered combination use with before interferon-gamma,
which is also a clinically used drug, "said co-author Hongtao Zhang, from the Perelman School of medicine at the University of Pennsylvania in US.
Anti-erbb2/neu monoclonal antibodies (mabs) alone are only effective in 30 per cent of breast cancer patients carrying the amplified target and cost about USD 100
000 a year, researchers said. Currently, this antibody treatment must be combined with chemotherapy to increase the proportion of patients it helps.
The major take-away from this study is that treatment with herceptin or lapatanib followed by interferon-gamma dramatically improves tumour eradication in the mice,
said senior author Mark Greene, professor at Perelman School of medicine. This one-two punch renders the tumours highly sensitive to chemotherapy,
which is needed to make the targeted therapy work. This therapy, when translated for use in humans,
would be beneficial in reducing toxicity because the amount of antibody could be decreased by two-thirds and the amount of chemotherapy by at least half.
This in turn reduces the cost of treatment so that individuals previously not able to afford targeted therapy will be able to do so."
"All of the therapeutic agents used in this preclinical study are approved and we expect to try ordered therapy plus interferon in clinical trials soon,
"Greene said. Interferon-gamma is a small protein called a cytokine normally produced by T cells as part of the immune response.
It is a well-known cytokine to immunologists but is used not by oncologists so much because of other side effects.
It works by rendering the tumour cells more susceptible to Her-2 inhibitors so that tumour cells are killed effectively.
In addition, this combination therapy also augments host tumour immunity which can be a good advantage for this therapy,
researchers said. In a series of experiments in breast cancer cell lines and transgenic mice that develop breast cancer as adults,
the team found that interferon-gamma on its own had no effect on tumours. Treatment of the tumours with anti-erbb2/neu mabs followed by interferon-gamma led to a considerable inhibition of tumour growth
and reduction of tumour size in the mice when the therapy is combined with a typical chemotherapeutic agent.
The study was published in the journal Cell Reports s
#Ancient Mars had long-lasting lakes, rivers: Nasa Mars harboured long-lasting lakes and water streams about 3. 8 to 3. 3 billion years ago,
boosting the odds that life may have existed once on the Red planet, scientists, including one of Indian-origin,
have found. Using data from the Curiosity rover, Nasa's Mars science laboratory/Curiosity team has determined that, long ago,
water helped deposit sediment into Gale crater, where the rover landed more than three years ago. The sediment deposited as layers that formed the foundation for Mount Sharp,
the mountain found in the middle of the crater today.""Observations from the rover suggest that a series of long-lived streams
The findings build upon previous work that suggested there were ancient lakes on Mars, and add to the unfolding story of a wet Mars, both past and present.
we're seeing finely laminated mudstones in abundance that look like lake deposits, "he said. The mudstone indicates the presence of bodies of standing water in the form of lakes that remained for long periods of time,
possibly repeatedly expanding and contracting during hundreds to millions of years. These lakes deposited the sediment that eventually formed the lower portion of the mountain.
A miniature satellite sent in the space aboard an Atlas v rocket from the Vandenberg Air force base in California on October 8 is working fine,
The Optical Communications and Sensor Demonstration (OCSD) Cubesat spacecraft is in orbit and operational, said Nasa and The Aerospace Corporation of El Segundo, California on Monday.
"By improving the communication capability of small spacecraft to support data-intensive science missions, OCSD will advance the potential to become a more viable option for mission planners,
Cubesats also allow an inexpensive means to engage students in all phases of satellite development, operation and exploitation through real-world, hands-on research and development experience.
The Cubesat will evaluate the ability to point a small satellite accurately as it demonstrates data transfer by laser at rates of up to 200 mb per second--a factor of 100 increase over current high-end Cubesat communications systems.
#Cure for cancer might accidentally have been found, and it could be malaria Scientists might have made accidentally a huge step forward in the search for a cure for cancer discovering unexpectedly that a malaria protein could be an effective weapon against the disease.
Danish researchers were hunting for a way of protecting pregnant women from malaria, which can cause huge problems
because it attacks the placenta. But they found at the same time that armed malaria proteins can attack cancer, too an approach
which could be a step towards curing the disease. that can then bury into cancer cells and release the toxin,
killing them off. The scientists have found that in both cases the malaria protein attaches itself to the same carbohydrate.
It is the similarities between those two things that the cure could exploit. The carbohydrate ensures that the placenta grows quickly.
and a tumor,"said Ali Salanti from University of Copenhagen.""The placenta is an organ,
which within a few months grows from only few cells into an organ weighing approx. two pounds,
and it provides the embryo with oxygen and nourishment in a relatively foreign environment. In a manner of speaking, tumors do much the same,
they grow aggressively in a relatively foreign environment.""The process has already been tested in cells and on mice with cancer,
with the findings described in a new article for the journal Cancer cell. Scientists hope that they can begin testing the discovery on humans in the next four years.
The biggest questions are whether it'll work in the human body, and if the human body can tolerate the doses needed without developing side effects,
because the protein appears to only attach itself to a carbohydrate that is only found in the placenta and in cancer tumors in humans."
"In the tests on mice, the animals were implanted with three different types of human cancers.
It reduced non-Hodgkin's lymphoma tumours to about a quarter of their size, got rid of protstate cancer entirely in two of six mice
and kept alive five out of six mice that had metastatic bone cancer compared to a control group all of
which died.""We have separated the malaria protein, which attaches itself to the carbohydrate and then added a toxin,
"said Mads Daugaard, a cancer researcher at Canada's University of British columbia and one of the scientists that worked on the research."
"By conducting tests on mice, we have been able to show that the combination of protein
#Blood cancer develops from prior blood disorder Researchers have discovered how an incurable type of blood cancer develops from an often symptomless prior blood disorder.
and ways to identify those most at risk of developing the cancer. All patients diagnosed with myeloma,
a cancer of the blood-producing bone marrow, first develop a relatively benign condition called'monoclonal gammopathy of undetermined significance'or MGUS."
"Our findings show that very few changes are required for a MGUS patient to progress to myeloma as we now know virtually all patients with myeloma evolve from MGUS,
"said lead researcher Daniel Tennant from University of Birmingham in England.""A drug that interferes with these initial metabolic changes could make very effective treatment for myeloma,
so this is a very exciting discovery, "Tennant explained. MGUS is fairly common in the older population
and only progresses to cancer in approximately one in 100 cases. However, currently there is no way of accurately predicting which patients with MGUS are likely to go on to get myeloma.
It specifically affects antibody-producing white blood cells found in the bone marrow, called plasma cells. For the study, the researchers compared the cellular chemistry of bone marrow
and blood samples taken from patients with myeloma, patients with MGUS and healthy volunteers. Surprisingly, the researchers found that the metabolic activity of the bone marrow of patients with MGUS was significantly different to plasma from healthy volunteers,
but there were very few differences at all between the MGUS and myeloma samples. The research team found over 200 products of metabolism differed between the healthy volunteers
and patients with MGUS or myeloma, compared to just 26 differences between MGUS patients and myeloma patients.
The findings suggest that the biggest metabolic changes occur with the development of the symptomless condition MGUS and not with the later progression to myeloma.
The researchers believe that these small changes could drive the key shifts in the bone marrow required to support myeloma growth.
The study was published in Blood Cancer Journal l
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