• Woman Receives First 3D-Printed Jawbone Transplant | 80beats

    Updated: 2012-02-08 16:48:50
    Subscribe Today Renew Give a Gift Archives Customer Service Facebook Twitter Newsletter SEARCH Health Medicine Mind Brain Technology Space Human Origins Living World Environment Physics Math Video Photos Podcast RSS It’s a Small and Wonderful World : Stunning Images of Science Under the Microscope Woman Receives First 3D-Printed Jawbone Transplant An 83-year-old woman operated on last summer was the first person to receive an entire 3D-printed jaw transplant her Belgian doctors announced Monday . The woman’s own lower jaw was riddled with infection , and given her age , and the fact that reconstructive surgery would have been a long and painful process , her doctors decided to have a new jaw specially manufactured for her . The replacement jaw is made out of titanium , assembled in

  • Speeding Up the Repair of Broken Bone

    Updated: 2012-02-08 13:10:34
    News of "fracture putty," an evolution in the use of scaffold material for bone regeneration: recent studies "show promise to significantly shorten the healing time and revolutionize the course of fracture treatment. ... Healing of critical-size defects is a major challenge to the orthopedic research community. Large-bone defects must be stabilized and necessitate technologies that induce rapid bone formation in order to replace the missing tissue and allow the individual to return to rapid function. To date, no single material can suffice. ... In our experiences with large animal models, following the guidelines established by our animal care and use...

  • In Flies, a Prion-Like Protein Helps Maintain Long-Term Memories | 80beats

    Updated: 2012-02-08 13:08:56
    , Subscribe Today Renew Give a Gift Archives Customer Service Facebook Twitter Newsletter SEARCH Health Medicine Mind Brain Technology Space Human Origins Living World Environment Physics Math Video Photos Podcast RSS Watch Ants Sip Grenadine , Spheres of Algae Spin , and Other Small-Scale Spectacles in These Movies It’s a Small and Wonderful World : Stunning Images of Science Under the Microscope In Flies , a Prion-Like Protein Helps Maintain Long-Term Memories What’s the News : When prions or amyloids make the news , it’s usually because they cause  mad cow disease or  Alzheimer’s prions after all , cause any proteins they touch to become as misfolded as they are , and amyloids which are large clumps of wadded-together proteins , can jam the workings of . cells But a new study in Cell

  • NCBI ROFL: How dogs navigate to catch frisbees. | Discoblog

    Updated: 2012-02-08 00:00:12
    : . Subscribe Today Renew Give a Gift Archives Customer Service Facebook Twitter Newsletter SEARCH Health Medicine Mind Brain Technology Space Human Origins Living World Environment Physics Math Video Photos Podcast RSS Black Box Bot Soaks Up Heat , Then Follows You Around and Keeps You Warm NCBI ROFL : How dogs navigate to catch . frisbees Using micro-video cameras attached to the heads of 2 dogs , we examined their optical behavior while catching Frisbees . Our findings reveal that dogs use the same viewer-based navigational heuristics previously found with baseball players i.e . maintaining the target along a linear optical trajectory , LOT , with optical speed constancy On trials in which the Frisbee dramatically changed direction , the dog maintained an LOT with speed constancy until

  • More on Exercise and Muscle Stem Cells

    Updated: 2012-02-07 13:21:44
    As you might imagine, exercise affects the behavior of muscle stem cells: "researchers determined that an adult stem cell present in muscle is responsive to exercise, a discovery that may provide a link between exercise and muscle health. The findings could lead to new therapeutic techniques using these cells to rehabilitate injured muscle and prevent or restore muscle loss with age. Mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) in skeletal muscle have been known to be important for muscle repair. ... Since exercise can induce some injury as part of the remodeling process following mechanical strain, we wondered if MSC accumulation was a...

  • SENS5 Video: Collective Advantages of Life Extension

    Updated: 2012-02-07 01:56:47
    As I mentioned the other day, there are more economic benefits to enhanced human longevity than just the obvious ones. Some of these benefits emerge from systematic changes in the interactions and relationships that make up society: the willingness to consider longer time horizons changes the way in which people value all sorts of things, both in the present and for the future. If fifty years from now is someone else's problem in your eyes, you are unlikely to be a good steward of fifty-year bonds - but if you are going to be alive, vocal and very much in...

  • Directing Stem Cells to Enhance Bone Strength

    Updated: 2012-02-06 14:36:27
    Osteoporosis is a pervasive issue in the old, and potential methods for reversing its effects are welcome: scientists have "developed a novel technique to enhance bone growth by using a molecule which, when injected into the bloodstream, directs the body's stem cells to travel to the surface of bones. Once these cells are guided to the bone surface by this molecule, the stem cells differentiate into bone-forming cells and synthesize proteins to enhance bone growth. ... There are many stem cells, even in elderly people, but they do not readily migrate to bone. Finding a molecule that attaches to stem...

  • Some Cells Last as Long as We Do - and Perhaps So Do Some of the Proteins Within Those Cells

    Updated: 2012-02-04 01:15:53
    It is not unreasonable to regard a cell as a machine that is constantly rebuilding itself - organelles and protein machinery are constantly torn down and replaced. It is also not unreasonable to regard tissue as a collection of cells that is constantly rebuilding itself: cells destroy themselves or are destroyed by watchdog systems, and new cells are created to replace them. This sort of thing happens rapidly indeed in some parts of the body, such as the blood and stomach lining, but there are portions of your nervous system where cells will never be replaced under normal circumstances -...

  • NCBI ROFL: The science of Facebook relationship status: It’s complicated. | Discoblog

    Updated: 2012-02-03 23:28:16
    : : . Subscribe Today Renew Give a Gift Archives Customer Service Facebook Twitter Newsletter SEARCH Health Medicine Mind Brain Technology Space Human Origins Living World Environment Physics Math Video Photos Podcast RSS Tweet Us Not Into Temptaton . OK , Just This . Once How to Turn a Cockroach into a Mobile , and Kind of Gross , Fuel Cell NCBI ROFL : The science of Facebook relationship status : It’s . complicated It’s Facebook week on NCBI ROFL All this week we’ll be featuring papers about everyone’s favorite social networking site . Enjoy Are We Facebook Official Implications of Dating Partners’ Facebook Use and Profiles for Intimate Relationship . Satisfaction Extending previous research on positive and negative correlates of Facebook use for individuals’ outcomes , this study

  • Rapid Repair of Severed Nerves Demonstrated in Rats

    Updated: 2012-02-03 13:58:40
    An advance in the methodologies of nerve repair: "scientists believe a new procedure to repair severed nerves could result in patients recovering in days or weeks, rather than months or years. The team used a cellular mechanism similar to that used by many invertebrates to repair damage to nerve axons. ... We have developed a procedure which can repair severed nerves within minutes so that the behavior they control can be partially restored within days and often largely restored within two to four weeks. If further developed in clinical trials this approach would be a great advance on current procedures...

  • Investigating Sodium Channels in the Aging Brain

    Updated: 2012-02-02 13:34:37
    Researches find another way in which the brain declines with age: "New findings [reveal] a novel mechanism through which the brain may become more reluctant to function as we grow older. ... researchers examined the brain's electrical activity by making recordings of electrical signals in single cells of the hippocampus, a structure with a crucial role in cognitive function. In this way they characterised what is known as "neuronal excitability" - this is a descriptor of how easy it is to produce brief, but very large, electrical signals called action potentials; these occur in practically all nerve cells and are...

  • DNA motor navigates network of DNA tracks

    Updated: 2012-01-31 18:16:40
    Scientists at Kyoto University and the University of Oxford have combined DNA origami and DNA motors to take another step toward programmed artificial molecular assembly lines.

  • Panel recommends research to manage health and environmental risks of nanomaterials

    Updated: 2012-01-29 04:35:32
    A National Academy of Sciences panel has recommended a four-part research effort focused on preventing and managing any potential health and environmental risks of nanomaterials.

  • Foresight co-founder among panelists discussing role of technology in human existence

    Updated: 2012-01-23 17:35:49
    Human life after advanced nanotechnology has been developed will be fundamentally different from life up until that point.

  • Annotated bibliography of cryoprotectant toxicity

    Updated: 2012-01-09 00:55:02
    Institute for Evidence Based Cryonics Skip to content Home About Organization What is cryonics Evidence Based Cryonics Scientists’ Open Letter on Cryonics Mailing Lists Sitemap The 2011 Calorie Restriction Society Conference Annotated bibliography of cryoprotectant toxicity Posted on January 8, 2012 by Aschwin de Wolf Introduction Cryoprotectant toxicity should be distinguished from other mechanisms of cryopreservation injury such as chilling injury injury produced by too low temperatures as such and cold shock   injury produced by rapid cooling Cryoprotectant toxicity itself can again be divided into general cryoprotectant toxicity and specific cryoprotectant toxicity General cryoprotectant toxicity involves concentration water substitution effects of cryoprotectants and specific

  • Artificial molecular motor controls molecular transformation

    Updated: 2011-12-30 20:51:56
    A four-step unidirectional molecular motor driven by light and temperature changes catalyzes different chemical reactions at different steps of its rotary cycle.

  • Arrays of artificial molecular machines could lead to atomically precise nanotechnology

    Updated: 2011-12-29 21:27:44
    A tutorial review available after free registration presents a theory-based exploration of the difficulty in moving from simple molecular switches to arrays of artificial molecular machines capable to doing substantial, useful external work.

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