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Protein Lets Brain Repair Damage from Multiple Sclerosis, Other Disorders A protein that helps build the brain in infants and children may aid efforts to restore damage from multiple sclerosis (MS) and other neurodegenerative diseases, researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have found. In a mouse model of MS, researchers found that the protein, CXCR4, is essential for repairing myelin, a protective sheath that covers nerve cell branches. MS and other disorders damage myelin, and this damage is linked to loss of the branches inside the myelin. “In MS patients, myelin repair occurs inconsistently for reasons that aren’t clear,” says senior author Robyn Klein, MD, PhD, associate professor of medicine and of neurobiology. “Understanding the nature of that problem is a priority because when myelin isn’t repaired, the chances that an MS flare-up will inflict lasting harm seem to increase.” The findings appear online in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. ScienceDaily 6/7/10 http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/ 2010/06/100607192727.htm __________________________________
Harnessing the Immune System’s Diagnostic Power An inexpensive system for earlier disease diagnosis could save innumerable lives. It would also have a profound impact on the nation’s healthcare industry, currently buckling under the strain of spiraling costs. Now Dr. Bart Legutki, a researcher at the Biodesign Institute at Arizona State University has pioneered a method for profiling the immune system, using clues provided by antibody activity to track an individual’s state of health. The work was done in collaboration with Dr. Stephen Albert Johnston, director of the Institute’s Center for Innovations in Medicine. The new technique, known as immunosignaturing, could provide rapid, pre-symptomatic diagnosis for a broad range of ailments, from infectious diseases to chronic afflictions to varied forms of cancer, offering the best hope for successful www.alcor.org
treatment. Immunosignaturing also shows potential as a low-cost alternative for vaccine evaluation, currently a lengthy and expensive undertaking. As Legutki explains, the immune system is exquisitely sensitive to any alterations in an individual’s state of health resulting from infection or disease, registering these changes through subtle fluctuations in antibody activity. ScienceDaily 6/8/10 http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/ 2010/06/100608101015.htm __________________________________
Freezing “to Death” and Living to Tell About It How is it that some people who apparently freeze to death, with no heart rate or respiration for extended periods, can be brought back to life with no long-term negative health consequences? New findings from the laboratory of cell biologist Mark B. Roth, Ph.D., of Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, may help explain the mechanics behind this widely documented phenomenon. Reporting online ahead of the July 1 print issue of Molecular Biology of the Cell, Roth, a member of the Hutchinson Center’s Basic Sciences Division, and colleagues show that two widely divergent model organisms – yeast and nematodes, or garden worms – can survive hypothermia, or potentially lethal cold, if they are first put into a state of suspended animation by means of anoxia, or extreme oxygen deprivation. Roth and colleagues found that under normal conditions, yeast and nematode embryos cannot survive extreme cold. After 24 hours of exposure to temperatures just above freezing, 99 percent of the creatures expire. In contrast, if the organisms are first deprived of oxygen and thus enter a state of anoxia-induced suspended animation, 66 percent of the yeast and 97 percent of the nematode embryos will survive the cold. ScienceDaily 6/11/10 http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/ 2010/06/100610171714.htm __________________________________
Cryonics/Third Quarter 2010
Tastes Like Chicken: The Quest for Fake Meat This spring, scientists at the University of Missouri announced that after more than a decade of research, they had created the first soy product that not only can be flavored to taste like chicken but also breaks apart in your mouth the way chicken does: not too soft, not too hard, but with that ineffable chew of real flesh. When you pull apart the Missouri invention, it disjoins the way chicken does, with a few random strands of “meat” hanging loosely. The vegetarian world is buzzing about the breakthrough in Missouri. “Along with ham, chicken has always been the holy grail,” says Seth Tibbott, 59, the creator of Tofurky and the dean of soy-meat inventors. Tibbott’s Oregon-based Turtle Island Foods has become famous for its surprisingly fullflavored fake turkey. But Tibbott says efforts to create a credible fake chicken have foundered because of chicken’s unique lean texture and its delicate flavor. (“Turkey has a gamier flavor,” he says, “and it’s easier to match stronger flavors.”) Time 6/14/10 http://www.time.com/time/magazine/ article/0,9171,1993883,00.html __________________________________
Highly Efficient Solar Cells Could Result from Quantum Dot Research Conventional solar cell efficiency could be increased from the current limit of 30 percent to more than 60 percent, suggests new research on semiconductor nanocrystals, or quantum dots, led by chemist Xiaoyang Zhu at The University of Texas at Austin. Zhu and his colleagues report their results in this week’s Science. The scientists have discovered a method to capture the higher energy sunlight that is lost as heat in conventional solar cells. The maximum efficiency of the silicon solar cell in use today is about 31 percent. That’s because much of the energy from sunlight hitting a solar cell is too high to be turned into usable electricity. That energy, in the form of so-called “hot electrons,” is lost as heat. If the higher energy sunlight, or more specifically the hot electrons, could be captured, solar-to-electric power conversion efficiency could be 21