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Category: biotech/medical – Page 1,324

Scientists Uncover the Biological Causes of Social Withdrawal

Researchers find multiple important biomarkers in people with Hikikomori (pathological social withdrawal), and they demonstrate their potential for predicting the severity of the disorder.

Key blood biomarkers for the pathological social withdrawal disorder called Hikikomori have been discovered by researchers at Kyushu University. The team’s research enabled them to distinguish between healthy people and hikikomori sufferers, as well as to gauge the severity of the disease.

Hikikomori is a condition in which people isolate themselves from society and family for a time longer than six months, according to the Ministry of Health, Labour, and Welfare of Japan. Hikikomori, also called “pathological social withdrawal,” is said to affect over a million individuals in Japan as of 2022. Although it has traditionally been thought of as a syndrome specific to the Japanese culture, evidence over the past few decades has shown that it is increasingly becoming a global phenomenon. Some fear that the COVID-19.

Monkeypox Updates: Transmission, Symptoms, and Treatment

With the 2020 Covid lockdowns still fresh in our minds, the recent outbreak of monkeypox in the United States has many people on edge. But what is monkeypox? How significant is this outbreak? Will it get worse? How can you prepare? These are alarming questions that people across the world are asking right now, and here we hope to answer at least a few of them.

Monkeypox is a member of the orthopoxvirus genus, the same genus that also houses the variola virus that causes smallpox. While the name suggests the virus originated in monkeys, this is misleading. It is more likely that rodents and small mammals are the origin of this zoonotic disease, with the source of a 2003 outbreak coming from prairie dogs.

While monkeypox was first discovered in 1958, there are indications it has experienced changes in the last few years that allow it to be more transmissible between humans. The recent global monkeypox outbreak was first detected in May 2022, and has since reached over 6,000 confirmed cases in the United States, and over 21,000 cases worldwide, resulting in the World Health Organization recently declaring a global health emergency.

Synthetic embryos grown from stem cells don’t need sperm or eggs

Researchers have created synthetic mouse embryos out of stem cells, removing the need for sperm, eggs and even a womb. They were then grown to almost half the entire gestation period, at which point they had all of the organ progenitors, including a beating heart. The tech could eventually be used to grow organs for transplant.

The new study, from researchers at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel, built on two branches of the team’s previous research. The first involved reprogramming stem cells into a “naive” state that allows them to differentiate into all other cells, including other stem cells. The other work focused on developing a device that could grow embryos more effectively outside of the womb.

By combining the two techniques, the team has now grown some of the most advanced synthetic mouse embryos to date. They started with naive mouse stem cells, which had been cultured in a Petri dish for several years prior. These were separated into three groups that would play key roles in the embryo development.

Researchers 3D print high-performance nanostructured alloy that’s both ultrastrong and ductile

Researchers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and the Georgia Institute of Technology have 3D printed a dual-phase, nanostructured high-entropy alloy that exceeds the strength and ductility of other state-of-the-art additively manufactured materials, which could lead to higher-performance components for applications in aerospace, medicine, energy and transportation.

The work, led by Wen Chen, assistant professor of mechanical and industrial engineering at UMass, and Ting Zhu, professor of mechanical engineering at Georgia Tech, is published by the journal Nature (“Strong yet ductile nanolamellar high-entropy alloys by additive manufacturing”).

Wen Chen, assistant professor of mechanical and industrial engineering at UMass Amherst, stands in front of images of 3D printed high-entropy alloy components (heatsink fan and octect lattice, left) and a cross-sectional electron backscatter diffraction inverse-pole figure map demonstrating a randomly oriented nanolamella microstructure (right). (Image: UMass Amherst)

A month on ‘Mars’: Preparing to visit the Red Planet … on Earth

Many Mars-like features make Devon Island possibly the best Red Planet analog on Earth.

On Monday (Aug. 1), a group of eight researchers and their associates headed north to the high Arctic to spend a month at the Haughton-Mars Project (HMP) base on Devon Island, about 15 degrees south of the North Pole. The group includes the founder of the base and expedition leader, Dr. Pascal Lee, a group of researchers from MIT’s Haystack Observatory, other researchers and support staff, and me, the sole media representative.

This will be the return of the HMP team to the base since 2019 due to COVID-19 restrictions, and its condition is uncertain — weather and polar bears (opens in new tab) can wreak havoc with the structures and support equipment. Generators and ATVs on-site have gone through multiple freeze/thaw cycles, and increasingly hungry polar bears may have slashed their way into some of the lightly constructed habitats — they’ve tried before. While satellite images don’t show any extensive damage, success is far from certain.

RNA diversity in human tissues mapped with emerging sequencing technology

Research on RNA diversity in human tissues, led by scientists from the New York Genome Center and the Broad Institute, is described in a recent study published in Nature. When the genetic code is transcribed to RNA, one gene typically produces several different forms of RNA molecules, or transcripts, with different functions. While this phenomenon has been known for decades, the catalog of human transcripts has remained incomplete.

“Equipped with the latest sequencing technology, we were able to read segments of over one thousand nucleotides, compared to less than one hundred with standard approaches,” describes Dr. Beryl Cummings, one of the leaders of the project and formerly a postdoctoral fellow at the Broad Institute. “Importantly, we were able to do this at scale of over 80 samples from many tissues, which led to discovery of tens of thousands of novel transcripts,” she adds.

The researchers used their data to characterize how genetic and environmental differences can manifest in differences in the transcriptome. “Genetic differences between individuals can affect how genes are regulated. We were able to describe with a finer resolution than before how transcript structures are affected. This helps to understand molecular underpinnings of variants that contribute to disease risk,” explains Dr. Dafni Glinos from the New York Genome Center and co-first author of the study.

An engineering breakthrough using DNA could unlock the quantum computing revolution

Scientists from the University of Virginia School of Medicine and collaborators used the building blocks of life to potentially revolutionize electronics.

The scientists utilized DNA to guide a chemical reaction that would overcome the barrier to Little’s superconductor, which was once thought to be “insurmountable”, a press statement reveals.

California declares a state of emergency over monkeypox outbreak, following New York and Illinois

😳!

Newsom said the emergency declaration would help support the state’s vaccination efforts. Demand for the vaccines has outstripped supply as infections rise. Staff at sexual health clinics and other sites have struggled to keep up with the influx of people seeking the shots.

California is mobilizing personnel from its Emergency Medical Services to help administer the vaccines. Newsom said the state is working across all levels of government to slow the spread through testing, contract tracing and community outreach.

California’s declaration comes after Illinois declared a public health emergency earlier Monday. New York declared a state disaster emergency in response to the outbreak late Friday.