Articles from December 2021

A small railway town in southern England could go down in history as the place where nuclear fusion kicked off. The reaction process – which would generate vast amounts of low-carbon energy – has evaded scientists for decades, but a private company in Didcot, Oxfordshire says it’s now a question of if, not when.

Tokamak Energy is firing its nuclear reactor up to 50 million degrees celsius – almost twice the core temperature of the sun. By shooting 140,000 amps of electricity into a cloud of hydrogen gas, the team are trying to force hydrogen atoms to fuse, thereby creating helium. These fusion forces are the same ones that power the sun. While there’s no danger that Didcot could become the new centre of the solar system, the industrial estate could spark the start of a cheap, clean energy supply.

“We will crack it,” CEO Chris Kelsall told the BBC on a recent trip, “the answer is out there right now with Mother Nature as we speak. What we have to do is find that key and unlock the safe to that solution. It will be found.”

Having ramped the temperature up to mind-boggling degrees, the experiment’s next step is to see if nuclear fusion can produce more energy than it uses. In case it rings alarm bells to anyone in the vicinity, nuclear fusion is very different from nuclear fission and its associated disasters. The process occurs inside a ‘tokamak’ – a device which uses a powerful magnetic field to contain the swirling cloud of hydrogen gas. This stops the superheated plasma from touching the edge of the vessel, as it would otherwise melt anything it comes into contact with. If anything goes wrong inside a fusion reactor, the device just stops – so there’s no risk of this astronomical heat being unleashed.

The plasma has to be heated to 10 times the temperature of the sun to get it going, and is capable of fusing two hydrogen nuclei into a helium nucleus. Nuclear fission, on the other hand, is the dangerous kind. This creates energy by splitting one ‘heavy’ atom (typically uranium) into two. This breakdown generates a large amount of radioactive waste in the process, which remains hazardous for years. Fusion cannot produce a runaway chain reaction, like the one that happened at Chernobyl in 1986, so no exclusion zone is needed around Milton Park, Didcot, where the reactor is based. Laura Hussey, an editor who works minutes away at a publishing office on the business park, says she is “really encouraged to hear how safe it is and really happy to see this big investment in clean energy.”

Source: https://www.euronews.com/

How does our brain know that “this” follows “that”? Two people meet, fall in love and live happily ever after—or sometimes not. The sequencing of events that takes place in our head—with one thing coming after another—may have something to do with so-called time cells recently discovered in the human hippocampus. The research provides evidence for how our brain knows the start and end of memories despite time gaps in the middle. As these studies continue, the work could lead to strategies for memory restoration or enhancement.

The research has focused on “episodic memory,” the ability to remember the “what, where and when” of a past experience, such as the recollection of what you did when you woke up today. It is part of an ongoing effort to identify how the organ creates such memories. A team led by Leila Reddy, a neuroscience researcher at the French National Center for Scientific Research, sought to understand how human neurons in the hippocampus represent temporal information during a sequence of learning steps to demystify the functioning of time cells in the brain. In a study published this summer in the Journal of Neuroscience, Reddy and her colleagues found that, to organize distinct moments of experience, human time cells fire at successive moments during each task. The study provided further confirmation that time cells reside in the hippocampus, a key memory processing center. They switch on as events unfold, providing a record of the flow of time in an experience. “These neurons could play an important role in how memories are represented in the brain,” Reddy says. “Understanding the mechanisms for encoding time and memory will be an important area of research.”

Hippocampi, one in each brain hemisphere

Matthew Self, a co-author of the study and a senior researcher in the department of vision and cognition at the Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience, emphasizes the importance of these hippocampal time cells’ role in encoding experiences into memory. “When we recall a memory, we are able to remember not only what happened to us but also where we were and when it happened to us,” he says. “We think that time cells may be the underlying basis for encoding when something happened.”

While researchers have known about the existence of time cells in rodent brains for decades, they were first identified in the human brain late last year by researchers at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center and their colleagues. To better understand these cells, Reddy and her team examined the hippocampal activity of patients with epilepsy who had electrodes implanted in their brain to evaluate a possible treatment for their condition. The subjects agreed to participate in two different experiments after their surgery.

“During the surgery, the electrodes are inserted through small holes of around two millimeters in the skull. These holes are sealed until the patients recover from the surgery and are monitored for up to two weeks with the electrodes in place in an epilepsy monitoring unit, or EMU,” Self says. “We record the hippocampal neuronal activity while the patients are performing tasks in the EMU for a period of about one week after the surgery.”

In the first experiment, the study participants were presented with a sequence of five to seven pictures of different people or scenes in a predetermined order that was repeated multiple times. A given image, say of a flower, was shown for 1.5 seconds, followed by a half-second pause and then another image—a dog, for instance. In a random 20 percent of the image intervals throughout the sessions, the parade of pictures stopped, and participants had to decide which of two images was the next correct one in the sequence before continuing. The researchers discovered that, over the course of 60 repetitions of the entire sequence, all of the time-sensitive neurons fired at specific moments in intervals between quizzes, no matter which image was shown.

Source: https://www.scientificamerican.com/

Research headed by scientists at the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research (NIDCR) has shown how blocking the function of the blood clotting protein, fibrin, prevents bone loss from periodontal (gum) disease in mice. Drawing on animal and human data, the study—headed by NIDCR investigators Niki Moutsopoulos, DDS, PhD, and Thomas Bugge, PhD, found that build-up of fibrin triggers an overactive immune response that damages the gums and underlying bone. The results suggest that suppressing abnormal fibrin activity could hold promise for preventing or treating periodontal disease, as well as other inflammatory disorders—including arthritis and multiple sclerosis—that are marked by fibrin buildup.

”Severe periodontal disease can lead to tooth loss and remains a barrier to productivity and quality of life for far too many Americans, especially those lacking adequate access to dental care,” said NIDCR director Rena D’Souza, DDS, PhD. “By providing the most comprehensive picture yet of the underlying mechanisms of periodontal disease, this study brings us closer to more effective methods for prevention and treatment.”

Periodontal disease is a bacterial infection of the tissues supporting the teeth. The condition affects nearly half of people in the United States who are over the age 30, and 70% of those who are 65 years and older. In its early stages, periodontal disease causes redness and swelling (inflammation) of the gums. In advanced stages, called periodontitis, the underlying bone becomes damaged, leading to tooth loss. While scientists have known that periodontitis is driven in part by an exaggerated immune cell response, until now, it was unclear what triggered the response, and how it caused tissue and bone damage.

Moutsopoulos, Bugge, and colleagues reported their findings in Science, in a paper titled, “Fibrin is a critical regulator of neutrophil effector function at the oral mucosal barrier.”

Source: https://www.genengnews.com/

A revolutionary tool designed to broaden our understanding of human anatomy has for the first time provided scientists with a cellular-level look at lungs damaged by COVID-19. In healthy lungs, the blood vessel system that oxygenates the blood is separate from the system that feeds the lung tissue itself. But in some severe respiratory illnesses, such as pneumonia, pressures caused by the infection can lead blood vessels in the heart and lungs to expand and grow, sometimes cutting through the body and forming channels between parts of the pulmonary system that shouldn’t be connected. Similarly, COVID-19 infections can create the same types of abnormal channels. The channels give unoxygenated blood coming into the lungs an alternate exit ramp, allowing it to essentially skip the line and shoot back into the body without picking up any oxygen molecules first. Scientists believed that this could be a cause of the low blood oxygen levels sometimes experienced by COVID-19 patients, a condition known as hypoxemia.

“Blood vessel growth is a very controlled process,” said Claire Walsh, a medical engineer at University College London and the first author of the imaging study, published in the journal Nature Methods. “It should be in this lovely tree-like branching structure. And you look at the COVID lungs, and you can just see it’s in these big clumps of really dense vessels all over the place, so that it just looks … wrong.”

Walsh’s team, which included clinicians from Germany and France, has procured sharper-than-ever images of these warped structures, thanks to an imaging technique known as HiP-CT, or Hierarchical Phase-Contrast Tomography, which allows them to zoom in on any body part with 100 times the resolution of a traditional CT scan. Although the technique can only be used to capture images of samples removed from a body and preserved in a way that minimizes interference (rather than of organs that are still part of a living person), in pairing it with the world’s brightest X-rays at the European Synchrotron particle accelerator, the researchers hope to build a visual database of not only lungs infected with COVID-19, but other, healthy organs throughout the body.

Source: https://www.insidescience.org/

Viagra could be a useful treatment against Alzheimer’s disease, according to a US study. Alzheimer’s disease, the most common form of age-related dementia, affects hundreds of millions of people worldwide. Despite mounting numbers of cases, however, there is currently no effective treatment.

Using a large gene-mapping network, researchers at the Cleveland Clinic integrated genetic and other data to determine which of more than 1,600 Food and Drug Administration-approved drugs could be an effective treatment for Alzheimer’s disease. They gave higher scores to drugs that target both amyloid and tau – two hallmarks of Alzheimer’s – compared with drugs that targeted just one or the other.

US scientists say users of sildenafil – the generic name for Viagra – are 69% less likely to develop the form of dementia than non-users

“Sildenafil, which has been shown to significantly improve cognition and memory in preclinical models, presented as the best drug candidate,” said Dr Feixiong Cheng, the study lead.

Researchers then used a database of claims from more than 7 million people in the US to examine the relationship between sildenafil and Alzheimer’s disease outcomes by comparing sildenafil users to non-users.

They found sildenafil users were 69% less likely to develop Alzheimer’s disease than non-sildenafil users after six years of follow-up. To further explore the drug’s potential effect on Alzheimer’s disease, researchers developed a lab model that showed that sildenafil increased brain cell growth and targeted tau proteins, offering insights into how it might influence disease-related brain changes. Cheng cautioned that the study does not demonstrate a causal relationship between sildenafil and Alzhemer’s disease. Randomised clinical trials involving both sexes with a placebo control were needed to determine sildenafil’s efficacy, he said.

Dr Ivan Koychev, a senior clinical researcher at the University of Oxford, who was not involved in the study, said it was “an exciting development” because “it points to a specific drug which may offer a new approach to treating the condition”.

Prof Tara Spires-Jones, deputy director of the Centre for Discovery Brain Sciences at the University of Edinburgh, said there were several important limitations to consider. “While these data are interesting scientifically, based on this study, I would not rush out to start taking sildenafil as a prevention for Alzheimer’s disease.”

Dr Susan Kohlhaas, director of research at Alzheimer’s Research UK, said: “Being able to repurpose a drug already licensed for other health conditions could help speed up the drug discovery process and bring about life-changing dementia treatments sooner. “Importantly, this research doesn’t prove that sildenafil is responsible for reducing dementia risk, or that it slows or stops the disease. The only way to test this would be in a large-scale clinical trial measuring sildenafil effect against the usual standard of care.”

The findings were published in Nature Aging.

Source: https://www.theguardian.com/

Omicron is associated with a two-thirds reduction in the risk of Covid-19 hospitalisation. The preliminary studies — one paper from Scotland and the other from England — were cautiously welcomed by experts, who nonetheless stressed that any advantage in milder outcomes could still be negated by the new strain’s heightened infectiousness, which may still lead to more overall severe cases.

“We’re saying that this is qualified good news — qualified because these are early observations, they are statistically significant, and we are showing a reduced risk of hospitalisations,” Jim McMenamin, a co-author of the Scottish research, told reporters on a call.

The Scottish paper examined Covid cases recorded in November and December, and grouped them by cases caused by Delta against those caused by Omicron. It found that “Omicron is associated with a two-thirds reduction in the risk of Covid-19 hospitalisation when compared to Delta,” while also showing that a booster vaccine offered substantial additional protection against symptomatic infection.

https://www.france24.com/

When it comes to robots, bigger isn’t always better. Someday, a swarm of insect-sized robots might pollinate a field of crops or search for survivors amid the rubble of a collapsed building. MIT researchers have demonstrated diminutive drones that can zip around with bug-like agility and resilience, which could eventually perform these tasks. The soft actuators that propel these microrobots are very durable, but they require much higher voltages than similarly-sized rigid actuators. The featherweight robots can’t carry the necessary power electronics that would allow them fly on their own. Now, these researchers have pioneered a fabrication technique that enables them to build soft actuators that operate with 75 percent lower voltage than current versions while carrying 80 percent more payload. These soft actuators are like artificial muscles that rapidly flap the robot’s wings.

This new fabrication technique produces artificial muscles with fewer defects, which dramatically extends the lifespan of the components and increases the robot’s performance and payload.

“This opens up a lot of opportunity in the future for us to transition to putting power electronics on the microrobot. People tend to think that soft robots are not as capable as rigid robots. We demonstrate that this robot, weighing less than a gram, flies for the longest time with the smallest error during a hovering flight. The take-home message is that soft robots can exceed the performance of rigid robots,” says Kevin Chen, who is the D. Reid Weedon, Jr. ’41 assistant professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, the head of the Soft and Micro Robotics Laboratory in the Research Laboratory of Electronics (RLE), and the senior author of the paper.

Source: https://news.mit.edu/

An experimental HIV vaccine that uses the same technology as the COVID-19 mRNA vaccines from Moderna and Pfizer is showing promising results in both monkeys and mice. A press release from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) explained that monkeys who received a multiple doses of the experimental vaccine had their chances of contracting an HIV-like virus lowered by 79%.

Scientists have spent decades struggling to create an HIV vaccine due to the speed at which the virus mutates and its remarkable ability to evade the immune system. Dr. Anthony Fauci, president of NIAID, leader of the United States’ battle against COVID-19, and a co-author of this HIV vaccine study published in Nature Medicine, expressed optimism about the progress made by the mRNA technology.

“Despite nearly four decades of effort by the global research community, an effective vaccine to prevent HIV remains an elusive goal,” Fauci said. “This experimental mRNA vaccine combines several features that may overcome shortcomings of other experimental HIV vaccines and thus represents a promising approach.”

The trial involved a series of booster shots in macaques over the course of an entire year. The authors explained that not only did the trial yield a positive immune response, but also that “the vaccine was well tolerated with only mild adverse events after each inoculation,” with the most common side effect being loss of appetite.

Now the researchers are working on refining the process so less rounds of shots are needed, as they noted in Nature Medicine that “a vaccination regimen encompassing seven or more sequential immunizations would be difficult to implement in humans.” The study’s leader Dr. Paolo Lusso, said that if the team is successful at reducing the number of boosters in a safe and effective way, they will then move on to a phase 1 trial of the vaccine in adult humans.

Source: https://www.lgbtqnation.com/

Elon Musk said Neuralink, a brain-interface technology company he co-founded, is hoping to start implanting its microchips in humans next year. In a live broadcast interview at The Wall Street Journal CEO Council Summit on Monday, Musk announced that Neuralink hopes to start implanting chips in 2022. Musk went on to say that they’ve been testing Neuralink in monkeys and confirmed that it’s ‘very safe and reliable‘. He also clarified that the Neuralink brain chip can easily be removed.

“We hope to have this in our first humans – which will be people that have severe spinal cord injuries like tetraplegics, quadriplegics – next year, pending FDA approval,” Musk said.

According to him, Neuralink has substantially higher standards than what the FDA usually requires when implanting the chips. In 2019, Musk hoped to begin human trials by late 2020, but it got delayed. Earlier this year, in February, he said Neuralink would start implanting the chip in people by the end of 2021. This time, it seems Musk is overly confident that the trials will certainly kick off in 2022.

Meanwhile, another brain-interface company, Synchron, will also start its human trials in July 2022 and have already been approved by the FDA.

Source: https://www.techtimes.com/

SpaceX is embarking on a bold new adventure: making rocket fuel out of thin air. “SpaceX is starting a program to take CO2 out of atmosphere & turn it into rocket fuel,” CEO Elon Musk tweeted on Monday. “Please join if interested.” Such a process — using in-situ resources to generate fuel — could have great implications during our transition to becoming interplanetary, according to Musk.

“Will also be important for Mars,” he added in a follow-up tweet.

It’s particularly a pertinent topic for SpaceX’s operations, given that its workhorse Falcon 9 rocket emits plenty of CO2 when it launches. And it’s not quite as far fetched as it sounds. Using a new technique called “direct air capture” (DAC), SpaceX could suck in thousands of tons of carbon dioxide to turn it into a source of fuel, Bloomberg reports.

Iceland recently started operations at the world’s largest DAC plant, sucking up to 4,400 tons of CO2 a year. The news comes after Musk announced a $100 million prize to come up with carbon removal technologies earlier this year. The goal is to pull 1,000 tons of CO2 out of the atmosphere annually — and eventually scaling up the operation dramatically.

“I think this is one of those things that is going to take a while to figure out what the right solution is,” Musk explained back in April. “And especially to figure out what the best economics are for CO2 removal.” “Right now we’ve only got one planet,” Musk said at the time. “Even a 0.1 percent chance of disaster — why run that risk? That’s crazy!”

Source: https://futurism.com/