The most powerful substance in the human brain for neuronal communication is glutamate. It is by far the most abundant, and it’s implicated in all kinds of operations. Among the most amazing is the slow restructuring of neural networks due to learning and memory acquisition, a process called synaptic plasticity. Glutamate is also of deep […]
Ocean pollution is widespread and getting worse, and when toxins in the oceans make landfall they imperil the health and well-being of more than 3 billion people, according to a new report by an international coalition of scientists led by Boston College’s Global Observatory on Pollution on Health and the Centre Scientifique de Monaco, supported […]
Certain oral antiseptics and mouthwashes may have the ability to inactivate human coronaviruses, according to a Penn State College of Medicine research study. The results indicate that some of these products might be useful for reducing the viral load, or amount of virus, in the mouth after infection and may help to reduce the spread […]
A team of researchers from the Institute of Neurosciences (UBneuro) and Institute of Complex Systems (UBICS) of the University of Barcelona has demonstrated that neurons can be generated from skin cells of a human donor using a cellular reprogramming technology. According to the obtained results, these neurons are able to integrate into human brain tissue […]
Each year, nearly 120 million units of donated blood flow from donor veins into storage bags at collection centers around the world. The fluid is packed, processed and reserved for later use. But once outside the body, stored red blood cells (RBCs) undergo continuous deterioration. By day 42 in most countries, the products are no […]
An immunomodulatory drug called fingolimod, which is approved for the treatment of multiple sclerosis, blocks human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection and transmission in human immune cells, according to a study published August 13 in the open-access journal PLOS Pathogens by Postdoctoral Fellow Rachel Resop and Assistant Professor Alberto Bosque of The George Washington University, and […]
A method known as CAR-T therapy has been used successfully in patients with blood cancers such as lymphoma and leukemia. It modifies a patient’s own T-cells by adding a piece of an antibody that recognizes unique features on the surface of cancer cells. In a new study, researchers report that they have dramatically broadened the […]
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is increasingly being used in medicine to support human expertise. However, the potential of these applications and the risks inherent in the interaction between human and artificial intelligence have not yet been thoroughly researched. The fear is often expressed that in future, as soon as AI is of sufficient quality, human expertise […]
“A new study of researchers at IMT School for Advanced Study Lucca demonstrates for the first time that the slow waves of NREM-sleep travel and propagate in the brain through ‘anatomical highways.’ The scientists have investigated in particular the role of the corpus callosum, the bundle of nervous fibers that connects the two brain emispheres, […]
A new, hair-sprouting dollop of human skin created in the lab might one day help prevent hair loss. Organoids are small, lab-grown cell groupings are designed to model real-world organs -in this case, skin. A paper published in Nature describes the hairy creation as the first hair-baring human skin organoid made with pluripotent stem cells, […]
