Category: 4. Health

  • Toothache from eating something cold? Blame these ancient fish

    Toothache from eating something cold? Blame these ancient fish

    Anyone who has ever squirmed through a dental cleaning can tell you how sensitive teeth can be. This sensitivity gives important feedback about temperature, pressure — and yes, pain — as we bite and chew our food. However, the sensitive parts inside the hard enamel first evolved for something quite different.

    New research from the University of Chicago shows that dentine, the inner layer of teeth that transmits sensory information to nerves inside the pulp, first evolved as sensory tissue…

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    News Source: www.sciencedaily.com

  • Common antidepressants could help the immune system fight cancer

    Common antidepressants could help the immune system fight cancer

    A widely used antidepressant drug could help the immune system fight cancer, according to a new UCLA research study.

    Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, or SSRIs, significantly enhanced the ability of T cells to fight cancer and suppressed tumor growth across a range of cancer types in both mouse and human tumor models, the study, published in Cell, found.

    “It turns out SSRIs don’t just make our brains happier; they also make our T cells happier — even while they’re fighting tumors,”…

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    News Source: www.sciencedaily.com

  • Newfound mechanism rewires cellular energy processing for drastic weight loss

    Newfound mechanism rewires cellular energy processing for drastic weight loss

    Mice genetically engineered to lack the ability to make the amino acid cysteine, and fed a cysteine-free diet, lost 30 percent of their body weight in just one week, a new study shows.

    Published online May 21 in Nature, the work found that cysteine depletion disrupts the normal metabolic pathways used by mammalian cells to convert food into energy, forcing the animals to rapidly burn fat stores in a futile attempt to meet energy demands.

    Led by researchers at NYU Grossman School of Medicine,…

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    News Source: www.sciencedaily.com

  • A new technology for extending the shelf life of produce

    A new technology for extending the shelf life of produce

    We’ve all felt the sting of guilt when fruit and vegetables go bad before we could eat them. Now, researchers from MIT and the Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology (SMART) have shown they can extend the shelf life of harvested plants by injecting them with melatonin using biodegradable microneedles.

    That’s a big deal because the problem of food waste goes way beyond our salads. More than 30 percent of the world’s food is lost after it’s harvested — enough to feed more than 1…

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    News Source: www.sciencedaily.com

  • Scientists design gene delivery systems for cells in the brain and spinal cord

    Scientists design gene delivery systems for cells in the brain and spinal cord

    Research teams funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) have created a versatile set of gene delivery systems that can reach different neural cell types in the human brain and spinal cord with exceptional accuracy. These delivery systems are a significant step toward future precise gene therapy to the brain that could safely control errant brain activity with high precision. In contrast, current therapies for brain disorders mostly treat only symptoms.

    The new delivery systems carry…

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    News Source: www.sciencedaily.com

  • Scientists reveal how energy is delivered into the cells major ‘shipping port’

    Scientists reveal how energy is delivered into the cells major ‘shipping port’

    A team of scientists has answered a long-standing question in cell biology, uncovering how the cell’s main energy currency, ATP, is transported into the endoplasmic reticulum (ER). Disrupted energy transport could affect diseases such as type 2 diabetes, cancer, and neurodegenerative disorders. The study, published in Nature, confirms that the transporter protein SLC35B1 is the key gateway for ATP entry into the ER.

    The research, led by David Drew, Professor of biochemistry at Stockholm…

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    News Source: www.sciencedaily.com

  • Hand2: positional code that allows axolotls to regrow limbs found

    Hand2: positional code that allows axolotls to regrow limbs found

    With its fascinating ability to regrow entire limbs and internal organs, the Mexican axolotl is the ideal model for studying regeneration. Scientists from the lab of Elly Tanaka at IMBA now found a factor that tells cells which part of the arm to regenerate — and used it to reprogram the identity of cells as they develop. This breakthrough for the regeneration research field has implications for tissue engineering, including in human tissues. The study was published in the journal Nature

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    News Source: www.sciencedaily.com

  • Live view: Stress-induced changes in generations of cancer cells

    Live view: Stress-induced changes in generations of cancer cells

    Cancer cells respond to stress with greater diversity. Drugs that affect DNA replication, or radiation that causes direct DNA damage, lead to increasingly diverse offspring over multiple cell generations. This increases the tumor’s genetic complexity and facilitates the development of resistance to therapy. UZH researchers have now investigated the emergence of cellular diversity in real time.

    Cells are the smallest units of life. But even within the same tissue or organ, they are not all…

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    News Source: www.sciencedaily.com

  • Clinical trial shows improvements for spinal cord injuries

    Clinical trial shows improvements for spinal cord injuries

    In a new clinical study, researchers from the Texas Biomedical Device Center (TxBDC) at The University of Texas at Dallas demonstrated unprecedented rates of recovery for spinal cord injuries.

    In this study, published in the journal Nature on May 21, individuals with incomplete spinal cord injury safely received a combination of stimulation of a nerve in the neck with progressive, individualized rehabilitation. This approach, called closed-loop vagus nerve stimulation (CLV), produced…

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    News Source: www.sciencedaily.com

  • How Marvel’s Thunderbolts Film Gets Mental Health and Messaging Right

    How Marvel’s Thunderbolts Film Gets Mental Health and Messaging Right

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    News Source: www.forbes.com