#Old rat brains rejuvenated and new neurons grown by asthma drug IT as good as new. An asthma drug has rejuvenated rat brains,
making old rats perform as well as young ones in tests of memory and cognition. Our brains slowly degenerate as we age.
Typically, we lose the ability to make new neurons. And age-related inflammation of the brain is implicated in many brain disorders.
To tackle both problems in one go, Ludwig Aigner at Paracelsus Medical University Salzburg in Austria and his colleagues targeted a set of receptors in the brain that, when activated,
trigger inflammation. These receptors are thought also to be involved in the birth of neurons. A drug called montelukast (Singulair), regularly prescribed for asthma and allergic rhinitis, blocks these receptors,
so Aigner and his colleagues tested it on young and old rats. The team used oral doses equivalent to those taken by people with asthma.
The older animals were 20 months old perhaps between 65 and 75 in human years.
The younger rats were 4 months old roughly the equivalent of 17 human years. The animals were fed the drug daily for six weeks,
The rats took part in a range of learning and memory tests. One of these involved the rats being placed in a pool of water with a hidden escape platform.
though, old animals performed as well as their younger companions. e restored learning and memory 100 per cent,
says James Nicoll, a neuropathologist at the University of Southampton, UK. Aigner agrees he will start by testing the drug in people with Parkinson disease,
he says p
#AI tool scours all the science on the web to find new knowledge It the proverbial needle in a haystack.
The more information there is online, the easier it is to overlook the most important. Now an automated tool has been set the Herculean task of mining every science paper it can find online to help researchers come up with new ideas.
Semantic Scholar, which launches today from the Seattle-based Allen Institute for Artificial intelligence (AI2), can automatically read, digest
and categorise findings from the estimated 2 million scientific papers published each year. Up to half of these papers are never read by more than three people.
The system aims to identify previously overlooked connections and information. ur vision is of a scientist apprentice giving researchers a very powerful way to analyse what going on in their field,
says Oren Etzioni, director of AI2. f youe a medical researcher, you could ask hat the latest on these drug interactions?
Or even a query in natural language like, hat are papers saying about middle-aged women with diabetes and this particular drug?'
'The system works by crawling the web for publicly available scientific papers, then scanning the text and images within them.
By identifying citations and references in the text, Semantic Scholar can work out which are the most influential or controversial papers.
or technique that they could use, in a medical case, to save somebody life. AI2 is not the only organisation intent on digitising
Last year, a system using IBM Watson AI technology, called The Knowledge Integration Toolkit (Knit),
IBM says Knit is automated now fully to work without human oversight. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) in the US is also working on technology
codenamed Big Mechanism, to read all the scientific papers on certain types of cancer and use that knowledge to identify potential treatments.
Kenneth Forbus of Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, is confident that services like this will prove useful in the future. achines that help us filter could increase the rate at
which we find, if not diamonds in the rough, then at least useful nuggets, says Forbus. ne might miss something,
but professors already routinely use graduate students and colleagues for the same service, so the risks are understood well.
Semantic Scholar is focusing on computer science papers. It will then gradually expand its scope to include biology,
physics and the remaining hard sciences, learning from how users interact with software as it goes. e have very specific goals along the way for semantic intensity how deep into a paper our system can get to see what it about,
says Etzioni. ltimately, perhaps a human scientist doesn have to read it at all. m
#Octopus Genome Offers Insights Into One Of Ocean's Cleverest Oddballs Scientists have sequenced just the first genome of an octopus,
and it was no trivial task.""The octopus has a very large genome. It's nearly the size of the human genome,
"says Carrie Albertin, a biologist at the University of Chicago. As technology to sequence DNA has gotten faster and cheaper,
scientists have unraveled the genes of all kinds of creatures. But until now, no one had done an octopus despite their obvious appeal as one of the weirdest animals On earth.
After all, these critters can regrow lost arms! Change the color of their skin! They can unleash a cloud of ink
And after a team at the University of Chicago started sequencing a particular octopus species,
Wednesday, in the journal Nature, they report on the genetic code of Octopus bimaculoides aka the California two-spot octopus.
For example, scientists had thought the octopus genome got so big because at some point the whole genome just copied itself.
But no, says Albertin.""As we started to dig into the data, we were seeing more and more signs that there was no duplication."
"What's more, they saw a massive expansion in a family of genes that's involved in setting up brain circuits.
"We were surprised really as we were poking through the octopus genome to see that there were just 150 or 160 of these genes,
because scientists are busy working on those genomes too g
#Genetically Modified Yeast Yields Narcotics, Raises Regulation Questions When bioengineer Christina Smolke started her own research lab,
she was only 29-years-old. But that didn't stop her from setting colossal goals.
what many considered to be a holy grail in bioengineering: yeast that can literally brew narcotic drugs.
Achieving that, she knew, could open the door to the quick development of better medications of all sorts."
"When we started this work, you know, there were people and experts in the field who said this was impossible,
that it would never be done"Smolke says. Now, just a decade later, she has done officially it.
You would have to drink thousands of liters of the"brew"to get one dose of hydrocodone,
these modified yeast strains should make it much easier and cheaper to manufacture new painkilling medicine
"We can leverage this technology to reduce some of the narcotics'side effects, or make medications that are less addictive,
Still, the genetically modified yeast strains have triggered a heated debate about how to regulate these organisms and the possibility of"home-brewing morphine.""
""We're just talking fermentation and brewing here,"says Kenneth Oye, who studies technology policy at the Massachusetts institute of technology,
and says he's concerned.""This is not a technology that's difficult to handle.""Oye's worry is that the genetically modified yeast could,
Home-brewing, Oye says, could put more drugs on the street.""Unfortunately, one of the implications, in my judgment, is that addicts would have easier access to something that threatens health in very serious ways,
"he says.""We are not talking marijuana here.""Oye acknowledges and emphasizes that the problem of slapdash,
Those microbes produce tiny quantities of narcotic, and only do it under highly-controlled conditions not in your average garage.
At DEA headquarters in Washington, D c.,special agent Eduardo Chavez says he shares some of Oye's concerns about using yeast for home-brewing.
increase their profits all on the backs of people who are addicted to opiates.""So the DEA is treating these yeast like they do any organism that makes a controlled substance such as poppies.
#Your Pill Is Printing: FDA Approves First 3-D-Printed Drug In a first, the Food and Drug Administration has given approval to a drug that is produced on a 3-D printer.
The pill, produced by Aprecia Pharmaceuticals, treats seizures. It's expected to hit the market in the first quarter of 2016.
and is designed to treat seizures in people suffering from epilepsy. It's a new version of a seizure medication that's been on the market for years."
"The new tablets are manufactured using 3-D printing, which creates objects by very precisely spewing out one layer of a substance on top of another. 3-D printing is being used to make all sorts of things these days."
"The FDA had approved previously medical devices made with 3-D printing. The company that makes Spritam says the 3-D-printed version of the drug allows it to dissolve more quickly,
which makes it easier to swallow.""Another benefit of the process, says Aprecia, the drug's maker, is that it allows a high drug load up to 1,
Aprecia says it based its printing platform on technology that originated at the Massachusetts institute of technology o
#Engineers Make Narcotics With Yeast. Is Home-brewed Heroin Next? When bioengineer Christina Smolke started her own research lab,
she was only 29-years-old. But that didn't stop her from setting colossal goals.
what many considered to be a holy grail in bioengineering: yeast that can literally brew narcotic drugs.
Achieving that, she knew, could open the door to the quick development of better medications of all sorts."
"When we started this work, you know, there were people and experts in the field who said this was impossible,
that it would never be done"Smolke says. Now, just a decade later, she has done officially it.
You would have to drink thousands of liters of the"brew"to get one dose of hydrocodone,
these modified yeast strains should make it much easier and cheaper to manufacture new painkilling medicine
"We can leverage this technology to reduce some of the narcotics'side effects, or make medications that are less addictive,
where there's a terrible shortage of pain medicine, Smolke says. Still, the genetically modified yeast strains have triggered a heated debate about how to regulate these organisms and the possibility of"home-brewing morphine.""
""We're just talking fermentation and brewing here,"says Kenneth Oye, who studies technology policy at the Massachusetts institute of technology,
and says he's concerned.""This is not a technology that's difficult to handle.""Oye's worry is that the genetically modified yeast could,
one day, be grown at home and used to turn sugar into heroin which is made easily from morphine or thebaine.
Home-brewing, Oye says, could put more drugs on the street.""Unfortunately, one of the implications, in my judgment, is that addicts would have easier access to something that threatens health in very serious ways,
"he says.""We are not talking marijuana here.""Oye acknowledges and emphasizes that the problem of slapdash,
Those microbes produce tiny quantities of narcotic, and only do it under highly-controlled conditions not in your average garage.
At DEA headquarters in Washington, D c.,special agent Eduardo Chavez says he shares some of Oye's concerns about using yeast for home-brewing.
increase their profits all on the backs of people who are addicted to opiates.""So the DEA is treating these yeast like they do any organism that makes a controlled substance such as poppies.
Or maybe the latest cooking gadget for zesting lemons. Or, perhaps, it's a secret weapon for X-men superhero Wolverine.
But look again. Doctors in Spain say this is the world's first 3-D-printed rib cage,
made entirely from titanium. And they've already implanted the device into the chest of a 54-year-old cancer patient.
The man lost his sternum and pieces of four ribs when doctors removed a large tumor.
The perforated center section of the implant is the prosthetic sternum. Four thin rods on the left mimic ribs.
They're thin and flexible so they can bend during breathing. The eight clamps on either side attach the implant to bone.
Screws hold the clamps in place. Surgeons at Salamanca University Hospital reported the man's case
and how they made the prosthesis last month in the European Journal of Cardio-Thoracic Surgery.
Engineers at Anatomics in Melbourne, Australia, custom-designed the device using CT SCANS of the man's chest.
They manufactured the implant with a $1. 3 million metal printer at a government-run lab. The printer uses an electron beam to melt titanium powder,
says engineer Alex Kingsbury, who helped make the titanium rib cage at the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation.
The printer then paints each layer of the device one on top of another.""As each layer is fused,
"But for complex and customized implants, the cost to print them is more affordable and the time to produce it is shorter than with traditional manufacturing,"Crystal Ladiges,
a spokesperson for CSIROS wrote in an email to Shots. As metallic printers become more common,
she wrote, so will printed 3-D implants. Surgeons typically use a combination of flat plates,
bars and mesh to build an artificial rib cage and sternum for patients. The 3-D printing technology allowed the surgeons to create an implant that"fitted like glove"in the man's chest, Dr. Jose Aranda
of Salamanca University Hospital, said in a statement. He and his colleagues hope the better fit will mean fewer complications in the long run.
But the surgical team admits that such a complex prosthesis is probably helpful only for extreme cases,
when extensive reconstruction of the sternum and rib cage are needed e
#4-D laser printing: holograms and beyond Novel tech that manipulates light has applications beyond holograms,
from studying alien worlds to making cellphones more energy efficient In 2010, Michael Escuti received funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to study
and make novel hologram technologies. He created a tool that did much more. The technology is a new way to manipulate light,
with applications from studying alien worlds to making cellphones more energy efficient.""Not long after we received the NSF funding,
we were able to create something called the direct-write laser scanner (DWLS), which allows us to create nearly perfect geometric phase holograms,
"says Escuti, an engineer at North carolina State university.""They look like flat, semi-translucent plates, but they give us unprecedented control over the behavior of light.
We can use them to make more efficient displays for mobile devices, sensors with greater resolution,
the DWLS"prints"using an ultraviolet laser on a super-thin film--only about 50 nanometers thick.
The film is made of a photoreactive polymer that responds to both the intensity and the polarization of the light.
When the DWLS is done printing, a much thicker layer of liquid crystal is applied, amplifying the pattern on the underlying thin film.
To understand how the DWLS works, you have to understand that it doesn't have an inkjet--it prints light,
just like a regular printer. And it can also vary the intensity of the light.
or pixels--unless they are desired actually. This prevents light from"leaking"out of the pattern
And that search brought him to a team of astronomers at Leiden University including Frans Snik, Matthew Kenworthy,
Down to earth applications In addition to astronomy, the DWLS has found use in creating geometric phase holograms for use in mobile displays, holographic imaging,
and in partnership with fellow NC State faculty member Michael Kudenov on projects supported by the National institutes of health, the Department of energy and the Department of defense.
For example, Escuti's university startup company, Imagineoptix Corporation, has created technologies ranging from an ultra-efficient pocket projector the size of a few quarters to components for active photonic hardware supporting internet traffic."
and phase-contrast X-ray tomography has been developed by physicists from Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics and the TU München,
Using light-generated radiation combined with phase-contrast X-ray tomography, the scientists visualized ultrafine details of a fly measuring just a few millimeters.
The work was reported recently in Nature Communications Until now, such radiation could only be produced in expensive ring accelerators measuring several kilometers across.
By contrast, the laser-driven system in combination with phase-contrast X-ray tomography only requires a university laboratory to view soft tissues.
The new imaging method could make future medical applications more cost-effective and space-efficient than is possible with today technologies.
A laser-driven plasma wave accelerates and wiggles electrons, giving rise to a brilliant kev X-ray emission. his so-called betatron radiation is emitted in a collimated beam with excellent spatial coherence and remarkable spectral stability.
Fine details When the physicists Professors Stefan Karsch and Franz Pfeiffer illuminate a tiny fly with X-rays, the resulting image captures even the finest hairs on the wings of the insect.
scientists coupled their technique for generating X-rays from laser pulses with phase-contrast X-ray tomography to visualize tissues in organisms.
First, the laser pulse ploughs through a plasma consisting of positively charged atomic cores and their electrons like a ship through water, producing a wake of oscillating electrons.
This electron wave creates a trailing wave-shaped electric field structure on which the electrons surf and by
which were assembled then to form a 3d data set. Due to the shortness of the X-ray pulses, this technique may be used in future to freeze ultrafast processes on the femtosecond time scale e g. in molecules
The researchers say that their technology is articularly interesting for medical applications as it can distinguish between differences in tissue density.
Cancer tissue, for example, is less dense than healthy tissue. The method therefore opens up the prospect of detecting tumors that are less than 1mm in diameter in an early stage of growth before they spread through the body
and exert their lethal effect. For this purpose however, researchers must shorten the wavelength of the X-rays even further
#Single molecule detector reveals biomolecule secrets Supersensitive detection systems are an important element of today's life sciences.
and determining the amount of biomolecules, in order to be able to diagnose diseases earlier, to find new active ingredients faster and more reliably,
to prove the presence of environmental pollutants, or to control the quality of biological processes. Now the Fraunhofer FIT, based in Sankt Augustin,
Germany, has developed what it is calling a Single Molecule Detection Machine, which is designed for the analysis of ultra-small amounts of nucleic acid.
The developers say the system can be used to identify biomarkers that are early indicators of a disease
or can predict the response to a therapy. The Fraunhofer FIT will make the first public demonstration of the system alongside its ZETA imaging software that is used in drug research at the forthcoming BIOTECHNICA expo in Hanover, Germany, between October 6 8, 2015.
ZETA imaging software has been developed specifically for the High Content Analysis of live cell imaging data, in
which cells are monitored and recorded over their full life cycle. Due to its open interfaces, ZETA can easily be integrated with complete High Content Analysis workflows
but it can also generate a wide range of information about the type and behavior of the marked biomolecules.
and to turn it into an algorithm. The resulting process now lets us generate the information we need about the molecule faster
Harald Mathis, head of the Biomos group at the Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Information technology FIT
roughly the amount of water contained in 1. 2 Olympic swimming pools. One cubic millimeter of this water would be enough to carry out the test.
To determine distributions of lengths of strands precisely the researchers developed an Open Micro-Electrophoresis Chip (OMEC)
This chip allows the separation of molecules for analysis at the single molecule level m
#Activated glass chip creates widest wavelength range Scientists from University of Twente research institute MESA+(Twente,
Netherlands) have managed now to equip low-loss light chips with new ctive functionalities such as generating,
The MESA+chip can create a very wide light spectrum spanning blue to infrared (470 to 2130nm.
By doing so the developers say they have made light chip with the largest frequency range ever The scientists explain the advantages of their development thus:
The MESA+researchers have for a long time been looking for methods to generate the broadest possible light spectrum on a chip.
The Twente scientists have managed now successfully to create a light chip with what they are calling he broadest light spectrum ever The chip achieves a bandwidth of 495thz,
which is more than 50%wider than the previous record. According to research leader Prof. Dr Klaus Boller this broad spectrum demonstrates the potential of the technology.
These materials have the lowest optic losses on a chip and are, therefore, already extremely relevant.
What's more, the fabrication matches the standard processes in the chip industry, making it suitable for mass production.
the researchers shone laser light into a waveguide, made of silicon nitride, a glass-like material, embedded in regular glass (silicon dioxide).
The shape and construction of the waveguide ensures that the laser light generates new wavelengths as it passes through;
in this case from 4thz to a emarkable495thz. Prof. Boller added, ne of the key challenges of the research was ensuring that the silicon nitride did not crack during the manufacture of the waveguides.
However, with our new fabrication technique, we have managed to create a structure, which at 800 nanometers, is thick enough.
The spectrum created by this chip is not constant, but comprises about 12 million peaks that lie at exactly the same distance from each other.
Because of this, the spectrum looks like a hair comb; which is why such spectra are called a requency comb Frequency combs,
and GPS equipment. The research was performed by scientists from the Laser Physics and Nonlinear Optics department of UT research institute MESA+(within the strategic research direction Applied Nanophotonics) in collaboration with the Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität (WWU) Münster and the companies Lionix and Xio Photonics.
e have shown ultra-broadband on-chip supercontinuum generation in CMOS-compatible Si3n4 waveguides. When pumped at a center wavelength of 1064nm with pulses of 115 fs duration,
and comprises a spectral bandwidth of more than 495 THZ. his is, to our knowledge, the widest supercontinuum ever generated on a chip.
The visible to infrared coverage, extending throughout most of the transparency range of Si3n4 and Sio2, appears to be highly attractive for applications such as for self-referencing optical frequency combs on a chip or widely tunable light sources for label-free microscopy and imaging in life sciences. m
#German-UK research yields permanent optical data storage chip A partnership between scientists at Karlsruhe Institute of technology,
and the universities of Münster, also Germany, and Oxford and Exeter, both UK, has developed the first all-optical permanent on-chip memory.
Phase-change materials that change their optical properties depending on the arrangement of their constituent atoms allow for the storage of several bits in a single cell.
The work is described in the latest issue of Nature Photonics. While optical fibers have long been used for the transmission of data with light, inside a computer
data are processed almost invariably and stored electronically. But electronic exchange of data between processors and the memory limits the speed of modern computers.
To overcome this so-called Von neumann bottleneck, it is not sufficient to optically connect memory and processor,
as the optical signals have to be converted into electric signals again. Therefore scientists have been seeking methods to carry out all-optical calculations and data storage.
The KIT-led team have developed now the first all-optical, nonvolatile on-chip memory. Professor Wolfram Pernice explained,
ptical bits can be written at frequencies of up to a gigahertz. This allows for extremely quick data storage by our all-photonic memory.
Pernice headed a working group of the KIT Institute of Nanotechnology and recently moved to the University of Münster.
Professor Harish Bhaskaran of Oxford university added, he memory we have developed is compatible not only with conventional optical fiber data transmission,
but also with the latest optical processors. The new memory can store data for decades even
when the power is off. Its capacity to store many bits in a single cell measuring just 1nm across featuring a multilevel memory is a highly attractive format.
Multilayered storage Instead of the usual binary information values of 0 and 1, several other states can be stored in an element,
which can also make autonomous calculations. This is due to the presence of so-called phase change materials, which are novel materials that change their optical properties depending on the arrangement of the atoms.
Phase change materials can change in very short periods of time between crystalline (regular) and amorphous (irregular) states.
For the memory, the scientists used the phase change material Ge2sb2te5 (ST. The change from crystalline to amorphous (data storing phase)
and from amorphous to crystalline (data-erasing) is initiated by ultrashort light pulses. For reading back the data, weak light pulses are used.
The scientists conclude that permanent all-optical on-chip memories could onsiderably increase future performance of computers while reducing their energy consumption.
Together with all-optical connections they could reduce latencies delays. Significantly, energy-intensive conversion of optical signals into electronic signals and vice versa would no longer be required.
The Nature Photonics paper states, y using optical near-field effects, we realize bit storage of up to eight levels in a single device that readily switches between intermediate states.
Our on-chip memory cells feature single-shot readout and switching energies as low as 13. 4pj at speeds approaching 1ghz.
We show that individual memory elements can be addressed using a wavelength-multiplexing scheme. Our multilevel, multi-bit devices provide a pathway towards eliminating the Von neumann bottleneck
and portend a new paradigm in all-photonic memory and nonconventional computing. e
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