Comment

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on March 8, 2021 at 12:18pm

Researchers have captured the first detailed images of newborn babies’ lungs as they take their first breaths.

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on March 8, 2021 at 10:48am

Artificial ‘brain’ reveals why we can’t always believe our eyes

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on March 8, 2021 at 10:18am

Astrocytes derived from patients with bipolar disorder malfunction

Brain cells called astrocytes derived from the induced pluripotent stem cells of patients with bipolar disorder offer suboptimal support for neuronal activity. In a paper in the journal Stem Cell Reports, researchers show that this malfunction can be traced to an inflammation-promoting molecule called interleukin-6 (IL-6), which is secreted by astrocytes. The results highlight the potential role of astrocyte-mediated inflammatory signaling in the psychiatric disease, although further investigation is needed.

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on March 8, 2021 at 10:05am

Scientists discover why blood type may matter for COVID infection

A new study provides further evidence that people with certain blood types may be more likely to contract COVID-19.

Specifically, it found that the new coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) is particularly attracted to the blood group A antigen found on respiratory cells.

The researchers focused on a protein on the surface of the SARS-CoV-2 virus called the receptor binding domain (RBD), which is the part of the virus that attaches to the host cells. That makes it an important target for scientists trying to learn how the virus infects people.

In this laboratory study, the team assessed how the SARS-CoV-2 RBD interacted with respiratory and red blood cells in A, B and O blood types.

The results showed that the SARS-CoV-2 RBD had a strong preference for binding to blood group A found on respiratory cells, but had no preference for blood group A red blood cells, or other blood groups found on respiratory or red cells.

The SARS-CoV-2 RBD's preference to recognize and attach to the blood type A antigen found in the lungs of people with blood type A may provide insight into the potential link between blood group A and COVID-19 infection, according to the authors of the study. It was published March 3 in the journal Blood Advances.

https://ashpublications.org/bloodadvances/article/5/5/1305/475250/T...

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2021-03-scientists-blood-covid-infec...

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on March 8, 2021 at 9:17am

Scientists read 300-year-old letters without opening them

The letters had been folded using a mysterious technique.

Unopened letters more than 300 years old that were folded using mysterious techniques have now been read for the first time without opening them, a new study finds.

For centuries, before mass-produced envelopes started proliferating in the 1830s, most letters across the globe were sent using letterlocking, a method of folding letters to become their own envelopes. These intricate techniques also often served to help recipients detect if mail had been tampered with.

For example, during research in the Vatican Secret Archives, conservator Jana Dambrogio at the MIT Libraries unearthed Renaissance letters with odd slits and sliced-off corners. She discovered these were signs these documents were originally locked with a slice of paper slid through a slit and closed with a wax seal. Such letters could not be opened without ripping the paper, which would reveal to intended recipients if someone else had read the letters first.

After studying 250,000 historical letters, Dambrogio and her colleagues devised the first system to categorize letterlocking techniques, a kind of periodic table based on how these strategies creased sheets. "Letterlocking is a 10,000-year-old technology -- as long as people have tried to build security into their correspondences, you've had letterlocking, from cuneiform tablets all the way to bitcoin paper wallets.

Until now, scientists could only read these "letterpackets" by cutting them open, often damaging the documents. Although such work naturally focused on the letter's contents, this came at the cost of research into letterlocking itself, about which much remains unknown. "These folding sequences, they're just like a sneeze -- they're ephemeral. The minute you open them, you lose evidence of them.

Now scientists have devised a way to both read letterlocked texts without opening them and reconstruct the complex folds, tucks and slits used to secure them. 

The scientists investigated the Brienne Collection, a postmaster's trunk holding more than 3,000 undelivered letters, including 577 letterpackets that were never opened. The letters were sent from all over Europe to The Hague between 1680 and 1706, the era that saw the Salem witch trials unfold, Newton reveal his laws of motion and gravitation, and Louis XIV move his court to Versailles.

The researchers first analyzed four letterpackets with high-resolution X-ray scans to generate 3D models of the documents. Next, they used a new computational algorithm to identify and separate different layers of the folded letters and recognize text written on them. Finally, the algorithm virtually unfolded the letters, not only making the writing visible, but also recording the crease patterns so the researchers could re-create the letterlocking process step by step.

This new strategy helped the scientists read unopened letterlocked text for the first time. 

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-21326-w

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on March 7, 2021 at 8:32am

Eyeless roundworms sense color
Roundworms don't have eyes or the light-absorbing molecules required to see. Yet, new research shows they can somehow sense color. The study, published on March 5 in the journal Science, suggests worms use this ability to assess the risk of feasting on potentially dangerous bacteria that secrete blue toxins. The researchers pinpointed two genes that contribute to this spectral sensitivity and are conserved across many organisms, including humans.
So a 1 mm tiny worm, Caenorhabditis elegans, with neither eyes nor the molecular machinery used by eyes to detect colors can identify and avoid a toxic bacterium based, in part, on its blue color! They can smell, taste, sense touch, react to temperature, and even escape or change their feeding patterns in response to bright, blue light.

https://news.mit.edu/2021/eyeless-roundworms-sense-color-0304

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on March 6, 2021 at 12:21pm

This is a fact!

Many women complain that they 're not being considered or overlooked for awards and prizes including the Nobel prize (1) in science just because of their gender. I recently found an interesting thing. I got a national award for science communication. During the award giving ceremony, Indian science and Tech secretary told us an interesting story.

Department of Science and Technology, India, gives prizes for the best PhD write up to train and make the budding scientists better at science communication. This year, they removed the names before sending the articles for assessment. And magic, magic, magic, magic. All the prize winners are women! Not even a single man got it.

What did we learn from it? Patriarchal mindsets are definitely impeding womens' chances of winning awards and prizes in science! Once you change the situation where there is no way to learn for the judge whether the person who is being judged is male or female, there is a better chance for women to win!

Footnotes:

1. Why more women don’t win Nobel prizes in science

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on March 6, 2021 at 11:12am

An intelligent soft material that curls under pressure or expands when stretched

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on March 6, 2021 at 10:20am

'Fungal ghosts' protect skin, fabric from toxins, radiation

The idea of creating selectively porous materials has captured the attention of chemists for decades. Now, new research from Northwestern University shows that fungi may have been doing exactly this for millions of years.

When scientists set out to synthesize melanin that would mimic that which was formed by certain fungi known to inhabit unusual, hostile environments including spaceships, dishwashers and even Chernobyl, they did not initially expect the materials would prove highly porous— a property that enables the material to store and capture molecules.

 Journal of the American Chemical Society 

https://phys.org/news/2021-03-fungal-ghosts-skin-fabric-toxins.html...

Comment by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa on March 6, 2021 at 8:02am

Researchers discover new way to halt excessive inflammation

Researchers have discovered a new way to 'put the brakes' on excessive inflammation by regulating a type of white blood cell that is critical for our immune system. The discovery has the potential to protect the body from unchecked damage caused by inflammatory diseases.

Excessive inflammation is a prominent feature of many diseases such as multiple sclerosis, arthritis and inflammatory bowel diseases.

When immune cells (white blood cells) in our body called macrophages are exposed to potent infectious agents, powerful inflammatory proteins known as cytokines are produced to fight the invading infection. However, if these cytokine levels get out of control, significant tissue damage can occur.

The researchers have found that a protein called Arginase-2 works through the energy source of macrophage cells, known as mitochondria, to limit inflammation. Specifically they have shown for the first time that Arginase-2 is critical for decreasing a potent inflammatory cytokine called IL-1.

This discovery could allow researchers to develop new treatments that target the Arginase-2 protein and protect the body from unchecked damage caused by inflammatory diseases.

Nature Communications (2021). DOI: 10.1038/s41467-021-21617-2

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2021-03-halt-excessive-inflammation....

• ‹ Previous
• 1
• …
• 727
• 728
• 729
• 730
• 731
• …
• 1147
• Next ›
• Page