1/23/2012 PERMALINK
Research shows that a vitamin D supplements may provide a simple and effective way to combat age-related eye diseases. Research carried out by a team from the Institute of Ophthalmology at University College London has found that vitamin D reduces the effects of ageing in mouse eyes and improves the vision of older mice significantly. Professor Glen Jeffery, who led the work, explains "In the back of the eyes of mammals, like mice and humans, is a layer of tissue called the retina. Cells in the retina detect light as it comes into the eyes and then send messages to the brain, which is how we see. This is a demanding job, and the retina actually requires proportionally more energy than any other tissue in the body, so it has to have a good supply of blood. However, with ageing the high energy demand produces debris and there is progressive inflammation even in normal animals. In humans this can result in a decline of up to 30% in the numbers of light receptive cells in the eye by the time we are 70 and so lead to poorer vision." The researchers found that when old mice were given vitamin D for just six weeks, inflammation was reduced, the debris partially removed, and tests showed that their vision was improved.
The researchers identified two changes taking place in the eyes of the mice that they think accounted for this improvement. Firstly, the number of potentially damaging cells, called macrophages, were reduced considerably in the eyes of the mice given vitamin D. Macrophages are an important component of our immune systems where they work to fight off infections. However in combating threats to the aged body they can sometimes bring about damage and inflammation. Giving mice vitamin D not only led to reduced numbers of macrophages in the eye, but also triggered the remaining macrophages to change to a different configuration. Rather than damaging the eye the researchers think that in their new configuration macrophages actively worked to reduce inflammation and clear up debris.
The second change the researchers saw in the eyes of mice given vitamin D was a reduction in deposits of a toxic molecule called amyloid beta that accumulates with age. Inflammation and the accumulation of amyloid beta are known to contribute, in humans, to an increased risk of age-related macular degeneration (AMD), the largest cause of blindness in people over 50 in the developed world. The researchers think that, based on their findings in mice, giving vitamin D supplements to people who are at risk of AMD might be a simple way of helping to prevent the disease.
Professor Jeffery said "When we gave older mice the vitamin D we found that deposits of amyloid beta were reduced in their eyes and the mice showed an associated improvement of vision. People might have heard of amyloid beta as being linked to Alzheimer's disease and new evidence suggests that vitamin D could have a role in reducing its build up in the brain. So, when we saw this effect in the eyes as well, we immediately wondered where else these deposits might be being reduced."

1/23/2012 PERMALINK
A wireless router for a brain/computer interface using light. The use of light to manipulate behavior by precisely controlling cells in the brain, called optogenetics, has been hailed as a breakthrough in biomedical science. But until now expensive, bulky lasers and a fiber-optic cable had to be attached to an animal brain, making study of cell manipulation in the context of an animal's normal behavior impossible. But a new company called Kendall Research has developed several prototype devices that are small and light and powered wirelessly, allowing mice and other small animals under study to move around freely. The company is also developing systems to control experiments automatically and remotely.

1/14/2012 PERMALINK
Breakthrough achieved in understanding molecular mechanism used by stem cells to repair damaged brain tissue. For years, researchers seeking new therapies for traumatic brain injury have been tantalized by the results of animal experiments with stem cells. In numerous studies, stem cell implantation has substantially improved brain function in experimental animals with brain trauma. But just how these improvements occur has remained a mystery.
Now, an important part of this puzzle has been pieced together by researchers at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston. In experiments with both laboratory rats and an apparatus that enabled them to simulate the impact of trauma on human neurons, they identified key molecular mechanisms by which implanted human neural stem cells — stem cells that are in the process of developing into neurons but have not yet taken their final form — aid recovery from traumatic axonal injury.
A significant component of traumatic brain injury, traumatic axonal injury involves damage to axons and dendrites, the filaments that extend out from the bodies of the neurons. The damage continues after the initial trauma, since the axons and dendrites respond to injury by withdrawing back to the bodies of the neurons.
"Axons and dendrites are the basis of neuron-to-neuron communication, and when they are lost, neuron function is lost," said UTMB professor Ping Wu, lead author of a paper on the research appearing in the Journal of Neurotrauma. "In this study, we found that our stem cell transplantation both prevents further axonal injury and promotes axonal regrowth, through a number of previously unknown molecular mechanisms."

1/12/2012 PERMALINK
Long term study finds significant age-related cognitive decline beings in your 40's. Few assessments of the effect of age on cognitive decline use data that spans over several years. This was the specific objective of the study led by researchers from Inserm and the University College London. As part of the Whitehall II cohort study, medical data was extracted for 5,198 men and 2,192 women, aged between 45 and 70 at the beginning of the study, monitored over a 10-year period. The cognitive functions of the participants were evaluated three times over this time. Individual tests were used to assess memory, vocabulary, reasoning and verbal fluency.
The results show that cognitive performance (apart from the vocabulary tests) declines with age and more rapidly so as the individual's age increases. The decline is significant in each age group. For example, during the period studied, reasoning scores decreased by 3.6% for men aged between 45 and 49, and 9.6% for those aged between 65 and 70. The corresponding figures for women stood at 3.6% and 7.4% respectively. The authors underline that evidence pointing to cognitive decline before the age of 60 has significant consequences.

1/11/2012 PERMALINK
New survey shows an average of 1.6 earth-sized planets in habitable zone around all the stars in our galaxy. Scientists find that there are billions of habitable planets out there. Six years of observations of millions of stars now show how common it is for stars to have planets in orbits around them. Using a method that is highly sensitive to planets that lie in a habitable zone around the host stars, astronomers, including members from the Niels Bohr Institute, have discovered that most of the Milky Way’s 100 billion stars have planets that are very similar to the Earth like planets in our own solar system – Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars, while planets like Jupiter and Saturn are more rare. "Our results show that planets orbiting around stars are more the rule than the exception. In a typical solar system approximately four planets have their orbits in the terrestrial zone, which is the distance from the star where you can find solid planets. On average, there are 1.6 planets in the area around the stars that corresponds to the area between Venus and Saturn" explains astronomer Uffe Gråe Jørgensen, head of the research group Astrophysics and Planetary Science at the Niels Bohr Institute at the University of Copenhagen.

1/11/2012 PERMALINK
Exercise Pill: researchers have discovered a natural hormone that has same beneficial effects as exercise on your body. The newly discovered hormone burns calories, improving insulin processing, and perhaps boosts muscle strength. It causes fat cells to transform from white fat—globules that serve as reservoirs for excess calories into brown fat, which generates heat.

12/29/2011 PERMALINK
Diet, nutrient levels linked to cognitive ability, brain shrinkage. New research has found that elderly people with higher levels of several vitamins and omega 3 fatty acids in their blood had better performance on mental acuity tests and less of the brain shrinkage typical of Alzheimer's disease – while "junk food" diets produced just the opposite result. The study was among the first of its type to specifically measure a wide range of blood nutrient levels instead of basing findings on less precise data such as food questionnaires, and found positive effects of high levels of vitamins B, C, D, E and the healthy oils most commonly found in fish. "This approach clearly shows the biological and neurological activity that's associated with actual nutrient levels, both good and bad," said Maret Traber, a principal investigator with the Linus Pauling Institute and co-author on the study.

12/23/2011 PERMALINK
App measures your hearing deficiencies and tweaks your smart phone to compensate. A new smart-phone app called ACEHearing can diagnose your hearing deficiencies and mod your device's output to better match your ability to hear. One of the developers, Andrew van Hasselt of the Chinese University of Hong Kong says their ultimate goal is to make this capability standard on all phones and other audio devices.

12/23/2011 PERMALINK
A prosthetic eye that hooks a camera right into the brain through the optic nerve. In a TEDMED talk, Sheila Nirenberg describes a breakthrough in restoring sight in people with certain kinds of blindness, by hooking into the optic nerve and sending signals from a camera direct to the brain.

12/21/2011 PERMALINK
Researchers find that CREB1 activates many genes linked to longevity and proper brain function. A team of Italian researchers at the Catholic University of Sacred Heart in Rome have discovered that a molecule called CREB1, which is triggered by "caloric restriction" (low caloric diet) in the brain of mice, activates many genes linked to longevity and to the proper functioning of the brain.

12/09/2011 PERMALINK
Modding cell communications can grow new organs. For the first time, scientists have altered natural bioelectrical communication among cells to directly specify the type of new organ to be created at a particular location within a vertebrate organism. Using genetic manipulation of membrane voltage in Xenopus (frog) embryos, biologists at Tufts University's School of Arts and Sciences were able to cause tadpoles to grow eyes outside of the head area. The researchers achieved most surprising results when they manipulated membrane voltage of cells in the tadpole's back and tail, well outside of where the eyes could normally form. "The hypothesis is that for every structure in the body there is a specific membrane voltage range that drives organogenesis," said Tufts post-doctoral fellow Vaibhav P. Pai Ph.D., first author of the paper, entitled "Transmembrane Voltage Potential Controls Embryonic Eye Patterning in Xenopus laevis." Pai noted, "These were cells in regions that were never thought to be able to form eyes. This suggests that cells from anywhere in the body can be driven to form an eye."

12/02/2011 PERMALINK
Can just a few bad memes wreck an entire civilization? The answer is yes! Our Cosmos is a dangerous and unforgiving neighborhood. Where the widespread adoption of just few bad memes by those in a few key sectors of a civilization, can result in the completely collapse of that civilization. Listen to this interview of Ann Barnhardt by James Puplava. She does not mince words. No political correctness here. This tour de force interview is a much needed slap in the face for every thinking person, to jar us out of our complacence. Because unless we immediately force the reform of the incredibly destructive meme sets that have been adopted by those running the financial and political sectors of our civilization. We are very likely to experience a catastrophic failure of our civilization.

11/30/2011 PERMALINK
Clinical trial for muscular dystrophy demonstrates safety of customized gene therapy. Researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill have shown that it is safe to cut and paste together different viruses in an effort to create the ultimate vehicle for gene therapy. In a phase I clinical trial, the investigators found no side effects from using a chimeric virus to deliver replacement genes for an essential muscle protein in patients with muscular dystrophy. "This trial demonstrates that gene therapy is no longer limited by the viruses we find in nature, and should usher in the next generation of viral delivery systems for human gene transfer," said senior study author R. Jude Samulski, PhD, professor of pharmacology and director of the Gene Therapy Center at UNC.

11/29/2011 PERMALINK
Scientists mod muscle cells into stem cell-like state to regenerate muscles in mice. A team of scientists from Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) and CellThera, a private company located in WPI's Life Sciences and Bioengineering Center, have regenerated functional muscle tissue in mice, opening the door for a new clinical therapy to treat people who suffer major muscle trauma.
The team used a novel protocol to coax mature human muscle cells into a stem cell-like state and grew those reprogrammed cells on biopolymer microthreads. The threads were placed in a wound created by surgically removing a large section of leg muscle from a mouse. Over time, the threads and cells restored near-normal function to the muscle, as reported in the paper "Restoration of Skeletal Muscle Defects with Adult Human Cells Delivered on Fibrin Microthreads", published in the current issue of the journal Tissue Engineering. Surprisingly, the microthreads, which were used simply as a scaffold to support the reprogrammed human cells, actually seemed to accelerate the regeneration process by recruiting progenitor mouse muscle cells, suggesting that they alone could become a therapeutic tool for treating major muscle trauma.

11/29/2011 PERMALINK
Auditory hair cell replacement and hearing improvement by Atoh1 gene therapy in deaf mammals. In the mammalian auditory system, sensory cell loss resulting from aging, ototoxic drugs, infections, overstimulation and other causes is irreversible and leads to permanent sensorineural hearing loss. To restore hearing, it is necessary to generate new functional hair cells. One potential way to regenerate hair cells is to induce a phenotypic transdifferentiation of nonsensory cells that remain in the deaf cochlea. Here we report that Atoh1, a gene also known as Math1 encoding a basic helix-loop-helix transcription factor and key regulator of hair cell development, induces regeneration of hair cells and substantially improves hearing thresholds in the mature deaf inner ear after delivery to nonsensory cells through adenovectors. This is the first demonstration of cellular and functional repair in the organ of Corti of a mature deaf mammal. The data suggest a new therapeutic approach based on expressing crucial developmental genes for cellular and functional restoration in the damaged auditory epithelium and other sensory systems.

11/21/2011 PERMALINK
Lab tweaked stem cells can produce neurons for direct brain to computer interface. In a major advance towards brain/machine interface, researchers have tweaked lab modded stem cells to produced neuronal communicators and successfully implanted them in mouse brains. The new study opens the door to the potential for clinicians to deploy light-based stimulation technology to manipulate transplanted tissue and cells. A new technology known as optogenetics, can use light, instead of electric current, to stimulate the activity of the neurons. Allow for a noninvasive communication connection with only engineered neurons, instead of embedded wires, handling the part of the connection inside the brain.

11/17/2011 PERMALINK
A tweak to your FOX proteins that may significantly extend your lifespan. What controls aging? Biochemist Cynthia Kenyon explains to the audience at TED her discovery that a simple genetic mutation associated with a FOX protein that controls gene expression can double the lifespan of a simple worm, C. Elegans. Tweaking the same protein in mice had the same effect, indicating that this genetic technique works in mammals and would probably work in humans.

11/15/2011 PERMALINK
A confederacy of dunces, the results of a failed meme set. The failed dogmas shared by most of the world's politicos, seem to be inexorably pushing our civilization out towards the 'worst possible' end of the spectrum of possible outcomes. From Europe this morning:

The draft law would allow the EU to temporarily ban companies such as Standard & Poor’s, Fitch and Moody’s from issuing ratings changes if regulators assess that such moves would exacerbate market volatility. The plan would give the European Securities and Markets Authority, the Paris-based financial markets regulator, the power to suspend for a limited period the ratings of certain countries that are receiving a bail-out programme.

I am hard pressed to think of a better strategy for destroying the last of the confidence bond investors have in European sovereign debt. Throughout this event, politicos haven't just been ineffective in their actions. Their failed dogmas have often caused them to take precisely the actions that will most acerbate the situation. The right meme set is the key to the survival and progress of our kind.

11/10/2011 PERMALINK
Tweaking a gene makes muscles twice as strong. A team of researchers at EPFL, the University of Lausanne and the Salk Institute created super strong, marathon mice and nematodes by reducing the function of a natural inhibitor, suggesting treatments for age-related or genetically caused muscle degeneration are within reach. It turns out that a tiny inhibitor may be responsible for how strong and powerful our muscles can be. By acting on a receptor (NCoR1), they were able to modulate the transcription of certain genes, creating a strain of mighty mice whose muscles were twice a strong as those of normal mice.

11/09/2011 PERMALINK
Researchers create a pituitary gland from scratch. Last spring, a research team at Japan's RIKEN Center for Developmental Biology created retina-like structures from cultured mouse embryonic stem cells. This week, in a breakthrough towards stem cell generation of replacements for any of your organs damaged by aging or disease. The same group reports that it's achieved an even more challenging feat of organ engineering, synthesizing a stem-cell-derived pituitary gland.