At the time of diagnosis, hundreds of mutations already exist in leukemia cells but new research has found they are a part of normal aging and are not related to cancer.
Even in healthy people, stem cells in the blood routinely accumulate new mutations over the course of a person’s lifetime. In many cases only two or three additional genetic changes are required to transform a normal blood cell already dotted with mutations into acute myeloid leukemia (AML).
There is a “
Carnival of Cosmology: Dark Energy”; here is my contribution: I will discuss the public acceptance of
dark energy (1), then I explain that dark energy is crazy but also that the crazy stuff is actually basic general relativity, so that if you refuse dark energy, the crack-pots are your team (2), and lastly, I explain that dark energy, as opposed to dark matter, is completely natural and obviously exists(3).
1) Perception: Nobel Prize for Einstein’s Greatest Blunder
Researchers have linked mutations in specific genes to each of the four recognized subtypes of medulloblastoma, the most common malignant brain tumor of children. The discovery provides doctors with potential biomarkers for guiding and individualizing treatment and reveals prospective therapeutic opportunities for countering this devastating malignancy.
Medulloblastomas occur in the cerebellum, the part of the brain that controls balance and other complex motor functions, and are treated with a combination of surgery, radiation and chemotherapy. Though overall survival hovers around 70 percent, most survivors are unable to live independently due to the lasting effects of both tumor and treatment.
Could a new bag squash a new bug?
A new medical bag designed to replace ‘outdated and unsafe’ portable medical bags could transform treatment around the world, says its manufacturer. A study found a third of its outdated predecessors carry the MRSA bug. In 2008, East Riding of Yorkshire (NHS ERY) introduced the first of its Neighbourhood Care Teams (NCT) to enable patients with long-term illnesses to receive treatment at home. NCTs now provide over 450,000 patient contacts each year.
Silicone and living cardiac muscle cells have been combined to form a freely swimming "jellyfish", proof of concept for reverse engineering a variety of muscular organs and simple life forms.
It also suggests a broader definition of what counts as synthetic life.
Study co-author Kevin Kit Parker previously demonstrated bioengineered constructs that can grip, pump, and even walk. He says the inspiration to mimic a jellyfish came out of frustration with the state of the cardiac field. Similar to the way a human heart moves blood throughout the body, jellyfish propel themselves through the water by pumping. In figuring out how to take apart and then rebuild the primary motor function of a jellyfish, the goal was to figure out how such pumps really worked.
A team of academics from the University of Southampton thinks they will top the rest of the English Fantasy Football League when the new football season kicks off next month in England.
By football, we mean Soccer to Americans. Sorry if we confusingly used the term for the game that actually uses feet and lets people who use their feet in the Hall of Fame.
Drug addicts are outraged by recent changes to the formula of frequently abused prescription painkiller OxyContin which makes it harder to inhale.
So they are taking their business to heroin.
For nearly three years, psychiatrists have been collecting information from patients entering treatment for drug abuse and more than 2,500 patients from 150 treatment centers in 39 states have answered survey questions about their drug use with a particular focus on the reformulation of OxyContin.
Surveys. Of drug addicts. Calibrate accordingly.
Have you noticed a huge increase in the price of pork chops or bacon or hot dogs?
Neither have I, despite the fact that sow gestation stalls, or crates or whatever you may call them in your neighborhood, are disappearing. The stalls are basically where pregnant sows are kept. Anti-science hippies who are always looking for ammunition in their war on human food contend big business uses these crates because they are, you know, eeeevil, but that isn't true. Long before Big Pork even existed farmers kept sows apart because they fight. And during pregnancy, if you screw with a female pig, you are asking to roll in the mud. The American Veterinary Medical Association says stalls are safer and therefore better than pens(1).
Brain activity is a complex cipher but researchers were recently able to 'decode' monkey thoughts and determine how the little primates were planning to approach the same task - before they moved a muscle.
Watching large groups of neurons doesn't reveal much but a group of scientists recently took it to another level; they demonstrated that multiple parameters can be embedded in the firing rate of a single neuron and that certain types of parameters are encoded only if they are needed to solve the task at hand. Interesting enough, but they also discovered that the population vectors could reveal different planning strategies.
They could, in effect, read the monkeys' minds.
The following text has been offered as a followup of the Higgs observation by the LHC experiments, which finds a signal at a mass compatible with the pre-discovery predictions made some time ago by Vladimir Khachatryan - ones which I published in this blog. - T.D.
Considerations following the Higgs boson discovery - Ashay Dharwadker
