Researchers at the University of Chicago and the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory have imaged an entire mouse brain across five orders of magnitude of resolution, a step which researchers say will better connect existing imaging approaches and uncover new details about the structure of the brain.
The advance, which was published on June 9 in NeuroImage, will allow scientists to connect biomarkers at the microscopic and macroscopic level. It leveraged existing advanced X-ray microscopy techniques at the Advanced Photon Source (APS), a DOE Office of Science User Facility at Argonne, to bridge the gap between MRI and electron microscopy imaging, providing a viable pipeline for multiscale whole brain imaging within the same brain.
“Argonne had this extremely powerful X-ray microscope, and it hadn’t been used for brain mapping yet, so we decided to try it out.” — Assistant Professor Bobby Kasthuri
Argonne researchers across the laboratory complex are using AI to design better materials and processes, safeguard the nation’s power grid, accelerate medical treatments, automate traditional research, and drive discovery.
Armed with some of the world’s brightest minds and best computing resources, Argonne is at the forefront of AI research, playing an integral role in applying innovative AI methods to solve problems and change lives.
He has not been able to speak since 2003, when he was paralyzed at age 20 by a severe stroke after a terrible car crash.
Now, in a scientific milestone, researchers have tapped into the speech areas of his brain — allowing him to produce comprehensible words and sentences simply by trying to say them. When the man, known by his nickname, Pancho, tries to speak, electrodes implanted in his brain transmit signals to a computer that displays his intended words on the screen.
His first recognizable sentence, researchers said, was, “My family is outside.”
What are Soft Robots?Soft robots are largely made of readily malleable matter, such as fluids, gels, and elastomers, which may match specific materials in a process known as compliance matching. The idea of compliance matching states that materials that make contact with one other should have similar mechanical stiffness in order to transfer internal load uniformly and reduce interfacial tensile stress. This principle, nevertheless, does not applicable to rigid robots (E=109Pa) engaging with soft materials (E=102-106Pa), causing serious damage or mechanical immobility. These kinds of interactions with soft materials are common, for example, with natural skin, muscular tissue, and sensitive interior organs, but also with creatures, artificial predictor variables of biological functions, and so on. Because of this huge disparity in mechanical compliance, it’s simple to assume that stiff robots are unsuitable, if not hazardous, for close human engagement.
Investigating the relationship between diet, gut bacteria and systemic inflammation, a team of Stanford University researchers has found just a few weeks of following a diet rich in fermented foods can lead to improvements in microbiome diversity and reductions in inflammatory biomarkers.
The new research pitted a high-fiber diet against a diet with lots of fermented food. Thirty-six healthy adults were recruited and randomly assigned one of the two diets for 10 weeks.
“We wanted to conduct a proof-of-concept study that could test whether microbiota-targeted food could be an avenue for combatting the overwhelming rise in chronic inflammatory diseases,” explains Christopher Gardner, co-senior author on the new study.
Investing in the convergence of bioelectrics & biologics for regeneration & healing — howard J. leonhardt, founder, leonhardt ventures.
Howard Leonhardt is the Founder of Leonhardt Ventures, the world’s first Innovation Accelerator focused on the convergence of bioelectrics & biologics for organ regeneration and tissue healing.
Howard is an accomplished inventor and serial entrepreneur, with 21 U.S. patents, over 100 patent claims for products for treating cardiovascular disease, and has over 40 new patent claims pending. His TALENT (Taheri-Leonhardt) stent graft, developed in the early 1990′s, holds a leading world market share for repairing aortic aneurysms without surgery.
Howard’s inventions to date have been involved in treated over 500000 patients in 60 countries.
Howard is co-leader of Startup California and Founder and Chairman of The California Stock Exchange TM (Cal-X) preparing to be the first social good impact stock exchange currently operating the Cal-X 30 Social Good Impact fund. He founded Cal-X Crowdfund Connect, a crowdfunding campaign management company, and Cal-X Stars Business Accelerator, Inc., a business incubator and accelerator focused on cardiovascular life sciences and social good impact innovations.
There are 30 regenerative med-tech and regenerative economy startups in his current portfolio. His Leonhardt Ventures angels network has raised and put to work over US$145 million in 32 companies to date, including those developing the first implantable programmable and re-fillable stem cell pump, brain, eye, and aorta regeneration technologies, and number of other organ regeneration spin offs from his patented core technologies.
Howard Leonhardt serves as state spokesperson in California for the JOBS ACT and Crowdfunding for Startup California and has given over 40 speeches on the subject. He has operated Leonhardt’s Launchpads NorCal at the University of Northern California Science & Technology Innovation Center in Rohnert Park, CA since 2008 and recently opened Leonhardt’s Launchpads Utah in Salt Lake City just off the campus of the University of Utah. He has served on the Board of Directors of the University of Northern California, a private biomedical engineering school, since 1999.
NAD Coenzymes, Metabolic Stress, And Novel Preventative And Therapeutic Interventions — Dr. Charles Brenner, Ph.D., City of Hope.
Dr. Charles Brenner Ph.D. is the Alfred E Mann Family Foundation Chair in Diabetes and Cancer Metabolism, and Professor and Chair of the Department of Diabetes & Cancer Metabolism, at the City of Hope Comprehensive Cancer Center (https://www.cityofhope.org/faculty/charles-brenner).
With his Ph.D. in Cancer Biology from Stanford University, Dr. Brenner’s laboratory focuses on disturbances in nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD), the central catalyst of metabolism, in diseases and conditions of metabolic stress (https://www.cityofhope.org/charles-brenner-lab).
Among his most significant discoveries, Dr. Brenner identified nicotinamide riboside (NR) as a vitamin precursor of NAD, as well as a quantitative metabolomic technology that allowed him to discover that the NAD system is disturbed by many diseases and conditions of metabolic stress, including diabetes and cancer.
Specifically, Dr. Brenner and colleagues have found that in animal models of fatty liver, type 2 diabetes, diabetic and chemotherapeutic neuropathy, central brain injury, heart failure, postpartum and coronavirus infection, the NAD system is disturbed and that in these models, provision of nicotinamide riboside is highly protective.
Dr. Brenner also led the team that conducted the first clinical trial of nicotinamide riboside establishing safe oral availability and has participated in trials establishing safety and potential activities of nicotinamide riboside in clearance of liver fat and depression of common markers of inflammation.
Dr. Brenner continues to research how the NAD system is disregulated as a function of postpartum, coronavirus infection, inflammatory conditions, diabesity and specific malignancies, with the dual goals of defining mechanisms of biological regulation and developing safe preventative and therapeutic interventions for people.
Dr. Brenner’s work over the years been funded by numerous agencies including the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society, the March of Dimes, the Burroughs Wellcome Fund, the Beckman Foundation, the Lung Cancer Research Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, and the National Science Foundation.
Health Innovation Investment For The Future Generations — Dr. Aboubacar Kampo, MD, MPH — Director of Health Programs — UNICEF.
Dr. Aboubacar Kampo, MD, MPH is the Director of Health Programs at UNICEF (UN Headquarters) where he provides strategic leadership, management support and overall direction to UNICEF’s global health program.
UNICEF, also known as the United Nations Children’s Emergency Fund, is a United Nations agency responsible for providing humanitarian and developmental aid to children worldwide. The agency is among the most widespread and recognizable social welfare organizations in the world, with a presence in 192 countries and territories. UNICEF’s activities include providing immunizations and disease prevention, administering treatment for children and mothers with HIV, enhancing childhood and maternal nutrition, improving sanitation, promoting education, and providing emergency relief in response to disasters.
With over 20 years of experience in development aid and humanitarian assistance, Dr. Kampo has worked as a physician/surgeon in hospitals and clinics in rural and urban areas in Africa and Asia and has over 14 years’ experience in senior management position as Country Director, Senior Global Health Advisor, and Chief of Health and Nutrition with International NGOs and United Nations’ Agencies.
Dr. Kampo is a Medical Doctor and Public Health Specialist, passionate about using innovations to address real life community challenges and bridge the gap between communities and stakeholders.
Dr. Kampo had his Medical degree from University of Mali, an MPH (Epidemilogy and Complex Emergency) at Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine, and is certified in Health Economics from London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, U. of London.
Most of the tests that doctors use to diagnose cancer — such as mammography, colonoscopy, and CT scans — are based on imaging. More recently, researchers have also developed molecular diagnostics that can detect specific cancer-associated molecules that circulate in bodily fluids like blood or urine.
MIT engineers have now created a new diagnostic nanoparticle that combines both of these features: It can reveal the presence of cancerous proteins through a urine test, and it functions as an imaging agent, pinpointing the tumor location. In principle, this diagnostic could be used to detect cancer anywhere in the body, including tumors that have metastasized from their original locations.
“This is a really broad sensor intended to respond to both primary tumors and their metastases. It can trigger a urinary signal and also allow us to visualize where the tumors are,” says Sangeeta Bhatia, the John and Dorothy Wilson Professor of Health Sciences and Technology and Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at MIT and a member of MIT’s Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research and Institute for Medical Engineering and Science.
Viruses that infect bacteria may drive the evolution of drug-resistant superbugs by inserting their genes into the bacterial DNA, a new study suggests.
The bacteria-attacking viruses, called phages, act as parasites in that they depend on their hosts for survival. The viral parasites often kill off their microbial hosts after infiltrating their DNA, said senior study author Vaughn Cooper, director of the Center for Evolutionary Biology and Medicine at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. But sometimes, the phages slip into the bacterial genome and then lay low, making sneaky changes to the bacterium’s behavior, Cooper said.
