“It’s dangerous to directly correlate things like, ‘This is a brain!’” Gimzewski told ZDNet. “It’s exhibiting electrical characteristics which are very similar to a functional MRI of brains, similar to the electric characteristics of neuronal cultures, and also EEG patterns.”
READ MORE: Neuromorphic computing and the brain that wouldn’t die [ZDNet]
More on brain-like circuitry: Brain-Based Circuitry Just Made Artificial Intelligence A Whole Lot Faster.
A rare set of semi-identical twins – only the second set ever reported in the world – have been identified in Australia.
The now 4-year-old boy and girl from Brisbane share all of their mother’s DNA but only a part of their father’s DNA, making them identical on their mother’s side but fraternal on their father’s, a statement detailing the discovery said.
This was also the first time semi-identical twins have been identified during pregnancy, according to a case report recently published in the New England Journal of Medicine.
In order to remain healthy and functional, cells have a number of maintenance systems that help them to dispose of metabolic waste and unwanted proteins. Autophagy is perhaps the best-known example of how cells purge their waste, and another is the ubiquitin-proteasome system (UPS). Researchers are working on ways to boost the activity of the UPS to improve cellular health.
The ubiquitin-proteasome system
During normal cellular function, proteins being constructed in the cell can sometimes become misfolded and start to accumulate over time, which can cause the cell to become dysfunctional and encourage diseases such as Alzheimer’s to develop as the system gums up with bent and broken proteins.
Michelle Khine is a professor of biomedical engineering at the University of California, Irvine. Nine months ago, her newborn son was hospitalized for complications during childbirth and was admitted to the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU). While in the NICU, her son was connected to several machines that were supplying oxygen and monitoring his breathing.
A biomedical engineering research team from the University of California has developed a new wearable respiratory sensor to monitor children with chronic pulmonary conditions. The design was built with inspiration from a favorite childhood toy, Shrinky Dinks.
Your genome literally identifies you, but researchers and genetic firms keep saying that DNA data is anonymous. It’s a privacy scandal waiting to happen.
By Chelsea Whyte
EVERY person in the world is issued with a unique code before they are even born. Governments, insurance firms and indeed pretty much anyone can use this code to catalogue us throughout our entire lives. This isn’t a sci-fi dystopia – it is just genetics.
Besides that, everyone living much, much longer would cause many other problems. Where do the children of these centenarians live?
Until workable life-preserving technology is available, immortality enthusiasts are also obsessed with staying healthy – some fast on certain days, others watch calories, most exercise – so they are around long enough to benefit from emerging anti-aging science.
In 2019, the quest for everlasting life is, largely, though not always, more scientific. Funded by Silicon Valley elites, researchers believe they are closer than ever to tweaking the human body so that we can finally live forever (or quite a bit longer), even as some worry about pseudoscience in the sector.
Scientists and entrepreneurs are working on a range of techniques, from attempting to stop cells aging, to the practice of injecting young blood into old people – a process denounced as quackery by the Federal Drug Administration this week.
What is less known is that a more problematic source of DNA damage is normal cellular processes such as DNA replication. These cannot be avoided because they are inevitably in action every time cells divide. The scale of this problem is best illustrated by realizing that our bodies are made up by successive divisions of trillions of cells, all originating from a single fertilized egg. Every day, a quarter of a trillion cells in the adult human body continue to divide to replenish old or damaged tissue. Amongst the multitude of DNA damage incurred during each such cell division process, the most dangerous are those that can be passed on from mother cells to newly born daughter cells. This inherited DNA damage is the true ‘enemy within’ that cannot be simply avoided by changing one’s lifestyle.
Researchers from the University of Copenhagen have identified a specific mechanism that protects our cells from natural DNA errors — an ‘enemy within’ — which could permanently damage our genetic code and lead to diseases such as cancer. The study has just been published in one of the most influential scientific journals, Nature Cell Biology.
Researchers from the University of Copenhagen have discovered a mechanism that gives human cells a chance to stop piling up mutations cells replicate and divide in the body. The discovery could prove to be very useful in the development of new treatments against diseases caused by changes in human DNA such as cancer.
To limit harmful changes in the genetic code that may lead to potential diseases, the cells in our body rely on a natural defense mechanism. The new study shows how specialized proteins engulf and protect the damaged DNA and ‘escort’ it until the damage can be repaired. The researchers discovered that this process relies on precise timing and meticulous control inside the cells.