Bioprinting is becoming more sophisticated daily. Students from Munich, Germany, hacked an Ultimaker 2+ to 3D print biomaterials even more efficient. Without a doubt, the yearly iGEM challenge is one of the yearly highlights for students in the field of biology, biochemistry, and biotechnology.
Embryonic neural stem cells transplanted into damaged areas of the visual cortex of adult mice were able to differentiate into pyramidal cells — forming normal synaptic connections, responding to visual stimuli, and integrating into neural networks — researchers at LMU Munich, the Max Planck Institute for Neurobiology in Martinsried and the Helmholtz Zentrum München have demonstrated.
The adult human brain has very little ability to compensate for nerve-cell loss, so biomedical researchers and clinicians are exploring the possibility of using transplanted nerve cells to replace neurons that have been irreparably damaged as a result of trauma or disease, leading to a lifelong neurological deficit.
What’s the Latest?
When Francis Crick, the English scientist who helped discover the structure of DNA, died in 2004, he and a colleague were in the midst of researching the potential existence of an on-off switch for consciousness located somewhere deep within the brain. Crick’s hypothesis likened the proposed switch to an orchestra conductor “to bind all of our different external and internal perceptions together.” Researchers at George Washington University in Washington DC believe they may have found Crick’s conductor. As it happens, it’s located in the exact part of the brain Crick had initially guessed: the claustrum.
What’s the Big Idea?
In Brief:
Artificial intelligence (AI) is about more than just the promise of a robot butler — it can actually save lives. AI’s contribution to the healthcare industry and in medical research could be hugely significant. IBM sees that and wants Watson, its AI technology, at the forefront of this development.
Why governments have been concerned around SynBio including CRISPR.
# Scientists # Dinosaurs – Scientists Bringing Dinosaurs Back to Life : The Jurassic Park film franchise is one of the most popular ever made but no one actually wants to bring dinosaurs back. Right? We’ve all seen the movies. The outcome is never a positive one. However, scientists continue to defy the realm of possibilities.
SCIENTISTS FIND FOSSILIZED BRAIN; DINOSAURS MAKE A COMEBACK
Scientists have just found what they believe to be the first fossilized brain tissue ever found from a dinosaur. They found the rock looking object in East Sussex, England by a fossil hunter in 2004. Using technology and the great tools of science, researchers performed some tests on it. Inside the fossil, they found blood vessels, capillaries, and tissue from the cortex.
Less than 10 years.
In Brief:
Nice!!!! Plus, we must keep in mind advances are accelerating like never before because tech industry is helping us knock out 2 things under each program due to the new usage of synthetic bio in systems and hardware. Example, DNA storage, MSFT’s work in other Synbio is also streamlined to find a cure for diabetes, Google and its own Synbio work is also inherently able to be used to help find a cure for cancer, etc.
In Brief:
The team of NASA, the American Society of Mechanical Engineering (ASME), and online educational platform Future Engineers has been a lot of fun to follow over the last year. Their collaborative 3D Printing in Space Challenges have resulted in some amazing, ingenious inventions from children as young as five years old, all aimed at improving the daily lives of astronauts now and in the future, on the International Space Station and, one day, on Mars.
The winners of the last challenge, the Think Outside the Box Challenge, were announced a few weeks ago, and now the three organizations have announced the fifth challenge in the series. This time, it’s geared directly towards a future Mars mission. The Mars Medical Challenge asks participants to create a digital 3D model of a medical or dental item that an astronaut could use on a three-year mission to Mars.
Exercise is a good idea if you want to live long enough to see new technologies arrive that could change how we age.
A fair amount of interesting research on the topic of exercise and aging passes by every month. Most is not really worth commenting on here, other than to reinforce the point that there is a very, very large body of evidence to link regular exercise with improved long-term health and reduced mortality. Since I did note a few items worth reading recently, I thought I’d bundle them together for today’s post as just such a reminder. In human studies the evidence for exercise tends to be a matter of correlation more often than causation, but the corresponding animal studies, in which researchers can put individuals into groups by level of exercise and observe the results across the life span of a cohort, leave no doubt as to the benefits provided by regular exercise. The results over the long term remain better than anything a basically healthy individual can obtain from medical science today, say to say, though that statement won’t be true for many more years given the progress being made towards rejuvenation therapies. You can’t exercise your way to ensuring a life span of 100 years, it isn’t that large of an effect, but the benefits that can be realized are available, reliable, and free. It makes sense to take advantage of them.
The high level summary of the present research community consensus on the health benefits of exercise is that it, like many things in health and medicine, appears to have a U-shaped dose-response curve with the 80/20 point somewhere around about or a little above the standard recommendations for half an hour to an hour a day of moderate aerobic exercise. While elite athletes are shown to live a few years longer than the rest of us, it remains unclear as to whether that is due to the large amount of physical exercise or due to the fact that more robust people — who would live longer anyway — tend to have a better shot at succeeding in the world of professional athletics. At the other end of the dose-response curve, the growing use of accelerometers in studies has demonstrated that even modest levels of exercise, such as infrequent gardening or cleaning or walking, have noticeable correlations with health and mortality.
The research group behind an effort to synthesize a human genome this week released more information about its plans, including a draft white paper with a timeline of how the research might go.
It’s the latest step in the ambitious project, originally named “Human Genome Project-Write,” which came to light after a May meeting to discuss the building of large genomes from off-the-shelf parts.
Within a year, the international group will select one small-scale research project to kick off the effort, and start a “major effort to engage with representative members of the public,” according to the draft road map. By year five, it will “shift into high gear” and start tackling the creation of entire genomes — maybe human or maybe not, depending on feedback.
