The research, by Osaka University, is early but raises the prospect of male couples may someday have their own biological children.
Category: biological – Page 88
Studying the relationship between the arrangement of water molecules incorporated into layered materials like clays and the arrangement of ions within these materials has been a difficult experiment to conduct.
However, researchers have now succeeded in observing these interactions for the first time by utilizing a technique commonly used for measuring extremely small masses and molecular interactions at the nanoscale.
The nanoscale refers to a length scale that is extremely small, typically on the order of nanometers (nm), which is one billionth of a meter. At this scale, materials and systems exhibit unique properties and behaviors that are different from those observed at larger length scales. The prefix “nano-” is derived from the Greek word “nanos,” which means “dwarf” or “very small.” Nanoscale phenomena are relevant to many fields, including materials science, chemistry, biology, and physics.
Regeneration, Resuscitation & Biothreat Countermeasures — Commander Dr. Jean-Paul Chretien, MD, Ph.D., Program Manager, Biological Technology Office, DARPA
Commander Dr. Jean-Paul Chretien, MD, Ph.D. (https://www.darpa.mil/staff/cdr-jean-paul-chretien) is a Program Manager in the Biological Technology Office at DARPA, where his research interests include disease and injury prevention, operational medicine, and biothreat countermeasures. He is also responsible for running the DARPA Triage Challenge (https://triagechallenge.darpa.mil/).
Prior to coming to DARPA, CDR Dr. Chretien led the Pandemic Warning Team at the Defense Intelligence Agency’s National Center for Medical Intelligence, and as a naval medical officer, his previous assignments include senior policy advisor for biodefense in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy; team lead for Innovation & Evaluation at the Armed Forces Health Surveillance Branch; and director of force health protection for U.S. and NATO forces in southwestern Afghanistan.
A proud mentor to nine graduate students and Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education (ORISE) fellows, CDR Dr. Chretien received the Rising Star Award from the American College of Preventive Medicine, Best Publication of the Year Award from the International Society for Disease Surveillance, and Skelton Award for Public Service from the Harry S. Truman Scholarship Foundation. He has published over 50 peer-reviewed journal articles and 10 book chapters.
CDR Dr. Chretien earned a Bachelor of Science degree in political science from the United States Naval Academy, Master of Health Science in biostatistics and Doctor of Philosophy in genetic epidemiology degrees from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, and a Doctor of Medicine degree from the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. He completed his residency in general preventive medicine at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research and fellowship in health sciences informatics at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.
Here’s another thing I have changed my mind on. Well, sort of. I used to make fun of “vitalism” and trade insults with my favorite archenemy Dale Carrico. Now I must repent or at least add important qualifications.
Vitalism is currently defined by Wikipedia as “the belief that living organisms are fundamentally different from non-living entities because they contain some non-physical element or are governed by different principles than are inanimate things.”
If we eliminate a few words from this definition we are left with a statement that I don’t disagree with:
Summary: Utilizing a classic neural network, researchers have created a new artificial intelligence model based on recent biological findings that shows improved memory performance.
Source: OIST
Computer models are an important tool for studying how the brain makes and stores memories and other types of complex information. But creating such models is a tricky business. Somehow, a symphony of signals – both biochemical and electrical – and a tangle of connections between neurons and other cell types creates the hardware for memories to take hold. Yet because neuroscientists don’t fully understand the underlying biology of the brain, encoding the process into a computer model in order to study it further has been a challenge.
Summary: Bumblebees are able to learn to solve puzzles by watching more experienced bees complete a task. This new behavioral preference then spreads throughout the entire colony. The bees that learned from others became more adept and began to prefer the learned solution over alternatives.
Source: PLOS
Bumblebees learn to solve a puzzle by watching more experienced bees, and this behavioral preference then spreads through the colony, according to a study published March 7th in the open access journal PLOS Biology by Alice Dorothy Bridges and colleagues at Queen Mary University of London, UK.
Computer models are an important tool for studying how the brain makes and stores memories and other types of complex information. But creating such models is a tricky business. Somehow, a symphony of signals—both biochemical and electrical—and a tangle of connections between neurons and other cell types creates the hardware for memories to take hold. Yet because neuroscientists don’t fully understand the underlying biology of the brain, encoding the process into a computer model in order to study it further has been a challenge.
Now, researchers at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology (OIST) have altered a commonly used computer model of memory called a Hopfield network in a way that improves performance by taking inspiration from biology. They found that not only does the new network better reflect how neurons and other cells wire up in the brain, it can also hold dramatically more memories.
The complexity added to the network is what makes it more realistic, says Thomas Burns, a Ph.D. student in the group of Professor Tomoki Fukai, who heads OIST’s Neural Coding and Brain Computing Unit. “Why would biology have all this complexity? Memory capacity might be a reason,” Mr. Burns says.
As COVID has demonstrated, when pathogens are moving through the population, we adjust, limiting interactions, even isolating, and generally changing the way we associate with one other. Humans are not alone. New research from Harvard scientists provides some insight into how pathogens change animal social behaviors.
“Extreme environmental conditions have a very strong influence on all animals,” said Yun Zhang, a professor in the Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology. But while this behavior has been seen in animals from simple fruit flies all the way up to primates, researchers have not understood what happens inside an individual animal’s brain that leads to infection-induced changes in social behavior.
In their new paper, published in Nature, Zhang and colleagues studied the small roundworm C. elegans, which exists in nature with two sexes: hermaphrodites that produce both eggs and sperm, and males. Under normal conditions, the hermaphrodites are loners, preferring to self-reproduce over mating with males. However, Zhang’s team found that the hermaphrodite worms infected by a pathogenic strain of the bacterium Pseudomonas aeruginosa became more interested in one another and increased their mating with males.
Rational Virology Research For Human Health & Pandemic Prevention — Dr. Felicia Goodrum Sterling, Ph.D. Professor, Department of Immunobiology, The University of Arizona.
Dr. Felicia Goodrum, Ph.D. (https://profiles.arizona.edu/person/fgoodrum) is Interim Associate Department Head and Professor of Immunobiology, as well as Professor, BIO5 Institute, Cellular and Molecular Medicine, Molecular and Cellular Biology, Cancer Biology And Genetics Graduate Interdisciplinary Programs, at the University of Arizona.
Dr. Goodrum earned her Ph.D. from Wake Forest University School of Medicine studying cell cycle restrictions to adenovirus replication and then trained as a postdoctoral fellow at Princeton University in the laboratory of Dr. Thomas Shenk studying human cytomegalovirus latency.
Dr. Goodrum joined the faculty at the University of Arizona in 2006, and her long-standing research focus is to understand the molecular virus-host interactions important to human cytomegalovirus (CMV) latency and persistence in the host. She has focused on identifying viral and host determinants mediating the switch between latent and replicative states. The goal of her research program is to define the mechanistic underpinnings of HCMV latency and reactivation to lay the foundation for clinical interventions to control CMV disease in all settings.
Dr. Goodrum is the recipient of the Howard Temin Award from the National Cancer Institute, the Pew Scholar in Biomedical Sciences Award, and the Presidential Award for Early Career Scientists and Engineers.
The Neuroscience of Creativity, Perception, and Confirmation Bias.
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To ensure your survival, your brain evolved to avoid one thing: uncertainty. As neuroscientist Beau Lotto points out, if your ancestors wondered for too long whether that noise was a predator or not, you wouldn’t be here right now. Our brains are geared to make fast assumptions, and questioning them in many cases quite literally equates to death. No wonder we’re so hardwired for confirmation bias. No wonder we’d rather stick to the status quo than risk the uncertainty of a better political model, a fairer financial system, or a healthier relationship pattern. But here’s the catch: as our brains evolved toward certainty, we simultaneously evolved away from creativity—that’s no coincidence; creativity starts with a question, with uncertainty, not with a cut and dried answer. To be creative, we have to unlearn millions of years of evolution. Creativity asks us to do that which is hardest: to question our assumptions, to doubt what we believe to be true. That is the only way to see differently. And if you think creativity is a chaotic and wild force, think again, says Beau Lotto. It just looks that way from the outside. The brain cannot make great leaps, it can only move linearly through mental possibilities. When a creative person forges a connection between two things that are, to your mind, so far apart, that’s a case of high-level logic. They have moved through steps that are invisible to you, perhaps because they are more open-minded and well-practiced in questioning their assumptions. Creativity, it seems, is another (highly sophisticated) form of logic. Beau Lotto is the author of Deviate: The Science of Seeing Differently.
BEAU LOTTO:
Beau Lotto is a professor of neuroscience, previously at University College London and now at the University of London, and a Visiting Scholar at New York University.
His work focuses on the biological, computational and psychological mechanisms of perception. He has conducted and presented research on human and bumblebee perception and behavior for more than 25 years, and his interest in education, business and the arts has led him into entrepreneurship and engaging the public with science.
In 2001, Beau founded the Lab of Misfits, a neuro-design studio that was resident for two years at London’s Science Museum and most recently at Viacom in New York. The lab’s experimental studio approach aims to deepen our understanding of human nature, advance personal and social well-being through research that places the public at the centre of the process of discovery, and create unique programmes of engagement that span the boundaries between people, disciplines and institutions. Originally from Seattle, with degrees from UC Berkeley and Edinburgh Medical School, he now lives in Oxford and New York.