Cure of acute deafness after bang, shots or explosion appears possibleNews item | 21-09-2022 | 12:12There are plenty of preventive measures to prevent hearing damage, such as acute deafness, for example during the use of weapons. And yet things go wrong with some regularity. However, there is a method to limit the damage after noise trauma. This is done with hyperbaric oxygen therapy. The use of this treatment method for so-called noise trauma occurs worldwide, especially among soldiers. The 150th has now been treated in the Netherlands, most of which have had good results.Enlarge Image 3 soldiers with weapon and the attack, in rural area, at night.Acute deafness can occur during shooting, but also from fireworks, for example.“As long as you act quickly”, emphasizes captain-at-sea doctor Robert Weenink. “And I mean within 72 hours.”This anesthesiologist applies the therapy in the Amsterdam University Medical Center. Of course, not only soldiers benefit from this, but everyone who suffers from acute deafness from loud noise. This can also be the result of, for example, fireworks.Enlarge Image Burnt firecrackers in the street.Firecrackers can be disastrous for the hearing.Less damageThe fact that there is now a therapy is quite special. Not so long ago, deafness after noise trauma was actually a matter of bad luck. According to Weenink, there were medicines that helped something, but nothing else could be done about it. Until reports from abroad came to the attention of doctors at the Ministry of Defense. “Hyperbaric oxygen therapy could lead to less damage to hearing,” says Weenink. “Treatment with this was introduced for military personnel at the time.”Enlarge Image A recompression chamber, known from the diving world.A recompression chamber, known from the diving world.ciliaThe therapy is painless. The patient breathes 100% oxygen for 1.5 hours. This takes place in a recompression chamber known from the diving world, at a pressure that corresponds to a dive of 14 meters. During the 10 treatments required, the body receives a very large amount of oxygen, which also arrives in the inner ear and repairs damaged cilia.Enlarge Image A recompression chamber.The inside of a recompression chamber.By bang, shots or explosionOnly military personnel and police officers with significant hearing loss after noise trauma caused by a bang, shots or explosion are eligible for hyperbaric oxygen therapy. Weenink: “That is because less hearing loss usually recovers well without this treatment.” Unfortunately, people who now have permanent damage after prolonged exposure to noise are also not eligible. It’s really about the acute phase.Dutch ‘invention’Applying hyperbaric oxygen therapy is a Dutch ‘invention’. The Amsterdam surgeon Professor Ite Boerema was the founder of this treatment and has put it on the international map. The therapy is used to treat a variety of diseases, not specific to acute noise trauma. In the Netherlands, Defense is a forerunner in this field.

Source (Dutch): Genezing van acute doofheid na knal, schoten of ontploffing blijkt mogelijk

Source (Translate): Cure of acute deafness after bang, shots or explosion appears possible | News item | Defense.nl

[…] The Galleri test has been described as a potential “gamechanger” by NHS England, which is due to report results from a major trial involving 165,000 people next year. Doctors hope the test will save lives by detecting cancer early enough for surgery and treatment to be more effective, but the technology is still in development.

“I think what’s exciting about this new paradigm and concept is that many of these were cancers for which we do not have any standard screening,” Dr Deb Schrag, a senior researcher on the study at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York, told the European Society for Medical Oncology meeting in Paris on Sunday.

In the Pathfinder study, 6,621 adults aged 50 and over were offered the Galleri blood test. For 6,529 volunteers, the test was negative, but it flagged a potential cancer in 92.

Further tests confirmed solid tumours or blood cancer in 35 people, or 1.4% of the study group. The test spotted two cancers in a woman who had breast and endometrial tumours.

Beyond spotting the presence of disease, the test predicts where the cancer is, allowing doctors to fast-track the follow-up work needed to locate and confirm a cancer. “The signal of origin was very helpful in directing the type of work-up,” said Schrag. “When the blood test was positive, it typically took under three months to get the work-ups completed.”

The test identified 19 solid tumours in tissues such as the breast, liver, lung and colon, but it also spotted ovarian and pancreatic cancers, which are typically detected at a late stage and have poor survival rates.

The remaining cases were blood cancers. Out of the 36 cancers detected in total, 14 were early stage and 26 were forms of the disease not routinely screened for.

Further analyses found the blood test was negative for 99.1% of those who were cancer-free, meaning only a small proportion of healthy people wrongly received a positive result. About 38% of those who had a positive test turned out to have cancer.

Schrag said the test was not yet ready for population-wide screening and that people must continue with standard cancer screening while the technology is improved. “But this still suggests a glimpse of what the future may hold with a really very different approach to cancer screening,” she said.

[…]

Source: Blood test spots multiple cancers without clear symptoms, study finds

Researchers say they have cracked how air pollution leads to cancer, in a discovery that completely transforms our understanding of how tumours arise.

The team at the Francis Crick Institute in London showed that rather than causing damage, air pollution was waking up old damaged cells.

One of the world’s leading experts, Prof Charles Swanton, said the breakthrough marked a “new era”.

And it may now be possible to develop drugs that stop cancers forming.

The findings could explain how hundreds of cancer-causing substances act on the body.

The classical view of cancer starts with a healthy cell. It acquires more and more mutations in its genetic code, or DNA, until it reaches a tipping point. Then it becomes a cancer and grows uncontrollably.

[…]

• around one in every 600,000 cells in the lungs of a 50-year-old already contains potentially cancerous mutations
• These are acquired as we age but appear completely healthy until they are activated by the chemical alarm and become cancerous

Crucially, the researchers were able to stop cancers forming in mice exposed to air pollution by using a drug that blocks the alarm signal.

The results are a double breakthrough, both for understanding the impact of air pollution and the fundamentals of how we get cancer.

[…]

Source: Air pollution cancer breakthrough will rewrite the rules – BBC News

[…]

What is pyramid salt?

Pyramid salt crystals are made of the same stuff as regular salt. But these crystals look different because they formed in a different way.

In nature, these elusive crystals grow on the surface of quiet, undisturbed pools of salt water that evaporate under the hot sun.

Pyramid salt is more expensive than regular salt, because they taste saltier. Pyramid salt is hollow, and gram for gram, it dissolves in your mouth faster than regular salt. So the saltiness comes at your taste buds all at once.

Plus, they also look awesome.

Now, it’s easy to make regular salt crystals at home. Just leave a dish of salt water to evaporate, and you’ll get white powdery salt inside after a few hours.

However, it’s much harder to make pyramid salt.

True, you can buy them online. Maldon Sea Salt, for instance, contains crunchy pyramidal salt crystals. They are made by evaporating sea water in large heated pans, mimicking nature.

But that kind of salt is produced industrially, with special equipment and mineral rich seawater.

I’ve always wondered whether you could grow pyramids at home using a hot plate, a glass dish and some regular table salt.

It took over 100 experiments and some sleepless nights, but here are the results.

How to make pyramid salt crystals

This guide will consist of the following parts:

1. Materials
2. Preparing the salt solution
3. Growing the pyramid salt crystals
4. Harvesting the pyramid salt crystals
5. Storing the pyramid salt crystals
6. Tasting the pyramid salt crystals
7. 8 types of pyramid salt crystals
8. Some more information
9. Summary

Materials

To make pyramid salt crystals, you’ll need:

• A bag of salt
• Alum powder
• A stove/hot plate
• A heat resistant glass dish
• A pair of tweezers
• A thermometer (optional)

I have tried table salt, sea salt, and Himalayan rock salt, and they all work. Sea salt seems to give better results.

I’ve used both tap and deionized water. Both are fine.

Also, in this experiment, we’ll be heating some very concentrated salt water. This solution will damage metallic objects, so you can’t use a stainless steel pot.

Instead, I suggest using a heat resistant glass dish. The exact type doesn’t matter. You can use a Pyrex dish or an enameled cast iron pot, which won’t get corroded.

I used a glass casserole.

Preparing the salt solution

Dissolve 165 g of salt in 500 mL of hot water. If you want to make a bigger batch, just use the same ratio (e.g. 330 g of salt per 1 L of water).

Stir the solution gently until all of it dissolves.

Depending on whether the salt is dirty, you can choose to filter it. I filtered mine.

In my setup, I poured my filtered salt solution into a glass casserole sitting on top of a hot plate.

A hot plate is fine. But don’t put the glass dish directly on the gas stove – the glass might break due to strong, uneven heating, even though it is technically heat resistant. Use a water bath instead.

Growing the pyramid salt crystals

Now, heat the solution to 60-70°C and keep it there throughout the growing process.

When the solution warms up, convection currents start forming, causing the surface of the solution to swirl around.

This is bad news, because when our pyramids form, they will also move around the surface of the solution. And they will bump into each other, stick together and fall to the bottom of the dish.

The key is to add an ingredient called potassium alum. Alum calms the surface and helps the pyramids form. It is normally used in baking and pickling. You can find it at the grocery store, or buy it online.

Add 0.5 g of alum per 500 mL of salt solution. No need to measure – just drop a few pea-sized pieces of alum/two pinches of alum powder into the solution and let it dissolve.

Several minutes after the alum has dissolved, the surface of the solution should start to settle down. Check out this GIF:

I placed a cork on the surface of the solution to visualize the movement on the surface. Before adding alum, the cork swirled around. After adding alum, the cork was completely motionless.

Good. Now you just need to wait.

It takes about 30 minutes for the salt solution to reach saturation, which is the point where salt crystals start to form.

Eventually, small white squares will appear on the surface of the solution.

Those are baby pyramid salt crystals.

They’ll keep growing, and within 15 minutes they’ll look like this:

The crystals are actually upside down pyramids, suspended on the surface of the solution due to surface tension. It’s the same principle that lets some insects walk on water.

Here’s what they look like from the side:

As the pyramid salt crystals get heavier, they sink lower into the solution. But evaporation on the surface causes the base of the pyramids to grow outwards, widening it and forming a staircase pattern in the process.

Super cool.

Here’s a time lapse of the growing process over 1 hour:

As the pyramids get larger, they risk bumping into their neighbors.

Usually, it isn’t a big problem – unless your solution is too hot. If you heat it beyond 80°C, the pyramids quickly join together to form a layer of crust.

But even at 60°C, you shouldn’t leave them there, because they might get too heavy and fall to the bottom to the dish.

So it’s time to harvest the pyramids.

Harvesting the pyramid salt crystals

Using a pair of tweezers, carefully remove the pyramid that you want, and place it on a piece of tissue paper. The paper will soak up excess salt solution.

Before you remove the second pyramid, dip the tweezers in a cup of water. This step ensures that there are no powdery salt grains sticking to your tweezers – which will cause thousands of tiny crystals to form in the dish.

Then, dry the tweezers with a tissue, and remove your second pyramid. Rinse and repeat.

Instead of using tweezers, you can also use a sieve to scoop up those pyramids. Remember to dip the sieve in water after every run.

Wash your tweezers after every run to prevent powdery salt grains from forming.

You can keep doing this until the salt water starts to dry out. By this time, you should have quite a few pyramids.

And that’s it!

You’ve just made the fabled pyramid salt, also known as fleur de sel, flower of salt, at home.

If you want to make more pyramids, just add some water to the dish and wait for all the salt to re-dissolve. Then repeat the process. This time, you don’t need to add alum.

Re-dissolving the salt to make more pyramids.

Storing the pyramid salt crystals

Just store them like regular salt.

If you live somewhere humid, the crystals will absorb moisture from the air and get slightly wet. This will cause part of the pyramid’s base to dissolve.

It’s no big deal, but if you want to prevent this, store the pyramid salt crystals with a desiccant.

[…]

Summary

That’s all for now. I have been trying to grow pyramid salt crystals for a very long time, and I’m glad to share what I’ve learnt with you. Hopefully you found the guide useful.

Here’s a super short summary of what we’ve covered.

To grow pyramid salt crystals, you’ll need:

• A bag of salt
• Alum powder
• A stove/hot plate
• A heat resistant glass dish
• A pair of tweezers
• A thermometer (optional)

1. Dissolve 165 g salt per 500 mL of water.
2. Heat the solution to 60°C.
3. Add 0.5 g alum per 500 mL of solution.
4. Wait for pyramids to form.
5. Remove the pyramids with tweezers.
6. Dry and store them with a desiccant.
7. Enjoy your pyramid salt. […]

Source: How to Easily Make Your Own Pyramid Salt Crystals – Crystalverse

[…]

Typically, when you want to characterize a wave of light, you have to use different instruments to gather information, such as the intensity, wavelength and polarization state of the light. Those instruments are bulky and can occupy a significant area on an optical table,” said Dr. Fan Zhang, a corresponding author of the study and associate professor of physics in the School of Natural Sciences and Mathematics.

“Now we have a single device—just a tiny and thin chip—that can determine all these properties simultaneously in a very short time,” he said.

The device exploits the unique physical properties of a novel family of two-dimensional materials called moiré metamaterials. Zhang, a theoretical physicist, published a review article on these materials Feb. 2 in Nature.

The 2D materials have periodic structures and are atomically thin. If two layers of such a material are overlaid with a small rotational twist, a moiré pattern with an emergent, orders-of-magnitude larger periodicity can form. The resulting moiré metamaterial yields electronic properties that differ significantly from those exhibited by a single layer alone or by two naturally aligned layers.

The sensing device that Zhang and his colleagues chose to demonstrate their new idea incorporates two layers of relatively twisted, naturally occurring bilayer graphene, for a total of four atomic layers.

“The moiré metamaterial exhibits what’s called a bulk photovoltaic effect, which is unusual,” said Patrick Cheung, a physics doctoral student at UT Dallas and co-lead author of the study. “Normally, you have to apply a voltage bias to produce any current in a material. But here, there is no bias at all; we simply shine a light on the moiré metamaterial, and the light generates a current via this bulk photovoltaic effect. Both the magnitude and phase of the photovoltage are strongly dependent on the light intensity, wavelength and polarization state.”

By tuning the moiré metamaterial, the photovoltage generated by a given incoming light wave creates a 2D map that is unique to that wave—like a fingerprint—and from which the wave’s properties might be inferred, although doing so is challenging, Zhang said.

Researchers in Dr. Fengnian Xia’s lab at Yale University, who constructed and tested the device, placed two metal plates, or gates, on top and underneath the moiré metamaterial. The two gates allowed the researchers to tune the quantum geometric properties of the material to encode the infrared light waves’ properties into “fingerprints.”

The team then used a convolutional neural network—an artificial intelligence algorithm that is widely used for image recognition—to decode the fingerprints.

“We start with light for which we know the intensity, wavelength and polarization, shine it through the device and tune it in different ways to generate different fingerprints,” Cheung said. “After training the neural network with a data set of about 10,000 examples, the network is able to recognize the patterns associated with these fingerprints. Once it learns enough, it can characterize an unknown light.”

[…]

Source: Physicists invent intelligent quantum sensor of light waves

[…]

If you couldn’t get a COVID vaccine, or if you got it but are in the group of people who likely aren’t as well protected, you can get Evusheld for an extra layer of protection.

What is Evusheld?

Evusheld is considered “pre-exposure prophylaxis” for COVID, and is available for people who are moderately to severely immunocompromised. The CDC has guidelines about Evusheld here. Evusheld is given every 6 months.

The treatment consists of two injections of monoclonal antibodies, tixagevimab and cilgavimab. In other words, instead of triggering your body to produce its own antibodies, you’re being given some ready-made antibodies. You should still also get your COVID vaccine, if you’re able to.

Who can get Evusheld?

Evusheld is for people who are moderately or severely immunocompromised or who are unable to be fully vaccinated with one of the regular COVID vaccines (for example, if you had an allergic reaction to your first dose or if you know you are allergic to a component of the vaccine). You also need to be at least 12 years old and weigh at least 88 pounds.

[…]

Source: What Is Evusheld? COVID Protection for Immunocompromised People

[…]

Since the 1970s, scientists believed that diamonds might actually rain down toward the mostly slushy planets’ rocky interiors—a diamond rain, if you will.

In 2017, researchers in Germany and California found a way to replicate those planetary conditions, fabricating teeny tiny diamonds called nanodiamonds in the lab using polystyrene (aka Styrofoam). Five years later and they’re back at it again, this time using some good ol’ polyethylene terephthalate (PET), according to a study published on Friday in Science Advances. The research has implications not only for our understanding of space, but paves a path toward creating nanodiamonds that are used in a range of contexts out of waste plastic.

[…]

When Kraus and his colleagues first attempted making nanodiamonds with polystyrene—which contains the same elements of carbon and hydrogen found on Neptune and Uranus—they did so by bombarding the material with the Linac Coherent Light Source, a high-powered X-ray laser at the SLAC National Acceleratory Laboratory in California. This process rapidly heated the polystyrene to 5,000 Kelvin (around 8,540 degrees Fahrenheit) and compressed it by 150 gigapascals, similar to conditions found about 6,000 miles into the interior of the icy planets.

While the researchers were able to make the microscopic bling with two quick hits from the laser, they later realized one vital chemical ingredient was missing: oxygen. So they turned to PET, which has a good balance of not only carbon and hydrogen but also oxygen, making it a closer chemical proxy to the ice giants than polystyrene.

[…]

“We found that the presence of oxygen enhances diamond formation instead of preventing it, making ‘diamond rain’ inside those planets a more likely scenario,” said Kraus. “We [also] see that diamonds grow larger for higher pressures and with progressing time in the experiments.”

They were also able to squeeze out a lot of tiny diamonds from just one shot of X-ray, on the order of a few billion crystallites (or a few micrograms if you’re talking total weight).

[…]

“If industrial scaling of the formation process indeed works as discussed above, and nanodiamonds will be required in very large quantitates for certain processes, e.g., catalysis for light-induced CO2 reduction reactions helping to reduce global warming, this may indeed become a potential way to recycle large amounts of PET,”  said Kraus.

[…]

Source: Scientists Turn Plastic Into Diamonds In Breakthrough

[…]

China’s National Medical Products Administration approved CanSino’s Ad5-nCoV for emergency use as a booster vaccine, the company said in a statement to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange on Sunday.

The vaccine is a new version of CanSino’s one-shot Covid drug, the first in the world to undergo human testing in March 2020 and which has been used in China, Mexico, Pakistan, Malaysia and Hungary after being rolled out in February 2021. The inhaled version can stimulate cellular immunity and induce mucosal immunity to boost protection without intramuscular injection, CanSino said.

[…]

CanSino’s initial one-shot vaccine was found to be 66% effective in preventing Covid-19 symptoms and 91% effective against severe disease, but it trails vaccines from Sinovac Biotech Ltd. and state-owned Sinopharm Group Co. in use outside China. Those two companies account for most of the 770 million doses China has sent to the rest of the world.

The vaccine, which uses a modified cold-causing virus to expose the immune system to the coronavirus, is similar to those developed by AstraZeneca Plc and Johnson & Johnson.

Source: China Approves World’s First Covid Vaccine You Inhale – Bloomberg

The most common analytical method within population genetics is deeply flawed, according to a new study from Lund University in Sweden. This may have led to incorrect results and misconceptions about ethnicity and genetic relationships. The method has been used in hundreds of thousands of studies, affecting results within medical genetics and even commercial ancestry tests. The study is published in Scientific Reports.

[…]

The field of paleogenomics, where we want to learn about ancient peoples and individuals such as Copper age Europeans, heavily relies on PCA. PCA is used to create a genetic map that positions the unknown sample alongside known reference samples. Thus far, the unknown samples have been assumed to be related to whichever reference population they overlap or lie closest to on the map.

However, Elhaik discovered that the unknown sample could be made to lie close to virtually any reference population just by changing the numbers and types of the reference samples, generating practically endless historical versions, all mathematically “correct,” but only one may be biologically correct.

In the study, Elhaik has examined the twelve most common population genetic applications of PCA. He has used both simulated and real genetic data to show just how flexible PCA results can be. According to Elhaik, this flexibility means that conclusions based on PCA cannot be trusted since any change to the reference or test samples will produce different results.

Between 32,000 and 216,000 scientific articles in genetics alone have employed PCA for exploring and visualizing similarities and differences between individuals and populations and based their conclusions on these results.

[…]

More information: Eran Elhaik, Principal Component Analyses (PCA)-based findings in population genetic studies are highly biased and must be reevaluated, Scientific Reports (2022). DOI: 10.1038/s41598-022-14395-4

Journal information: Scientific Reports

Source: Study reveals flaws in popular genetic method

AI software capable of mapping tumor tissue more accurately to help surgeons treat and shrink prostate cancer using a laser-powered needle will soon be tested in real patients during clinical trials.

The National Cancer Institute estimated that approximately 12.6 percent of men will be diagnosed with prostate cancer at some point in their life. The risk for developing the disease rises over time for men over the age of 50. It’s one of the most curable forms of cancer, considering most cases are caught in the early stages due to regular screening tests.

Treatment for prostate cancer varies depending on the severity of the disease. Patients can undergo hormone therapy, chemotherapy, or surgery to remove tissue. Avenda Health, a medical startup founded in 2017, is developing a new type of treatment that is less invasive. The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) granted an investigational device exemption (IDE) to the company’s invention this week, meaning it can now be used in a clinical study.

Patients will need to have an MRI scan and a targeted fusion biopsy performed first. The data is processed by Avenda’s AI algorithms in its iQuest software to map where the cancerous cells are located within the prostate. Next, the computer vision-aided model will simulate where best to insert FocalPoint, a probe armed with a laser, to help surgeons treat the patient’s tumor. The heat from the laser gently heats the cancerous cells and kills them with goal of shrinking and removing the whole tumor.

MRI images where cancer is mapped using iQuest software before and after treatment. Image Credit: Avenda Health

“Historically, prostate cancer treatments of surgery or radiation impacts critical structures like the urethra and nerves which control sexual and urinary function,” Avenda’s CEO and co-founder Shyam Natarajan told The Register. “Our focal laser ablation system, FocalPoint, which is powered by our AI-driven cancer margin software, iQuest, specifically targets tumor tissue and avoids healthy tissue. This means patients no longer lose control over these functions that are so common with traditional treatments, so quality of life is significantly improved.”

The treatment is only effective for men diagnosed with intermediate risk of prostate cancer, a classification that describes tumors being confined within the prostate only. Patients are considered high risk in cases where the cancer has spread beyond the prostate.

“This is one of the benefits of the iQuest software. Not only can it map the cancer, but it also provides decision support for the physician as they determine the best course of treatment for an individual patient. Not every patient is going to be eligible for focal therapy, and it is important for the physician to distinguish between good focal therapy candidates and not.  iQuest provides useful insights for that decision making process,”  Natarajan said.

[…]

Source: AI laser probe for prostate cancer enters clinical trials • The Register

[…]

esearchers at the Rockefeller University, in New York, were baffled when mosquitoes were somehow still able to find people to bite after having an entire family of human odour-sensing proteins removed from their genome.

The team then examined odour receptors in the antennae of mosquitoes, which bind to chemicals floating around in the environment and signal to the brain via neurons.

“We assumed that mosquitoes would follow the central dogma of olfaction, which is that only one type of receptor is expressed in each neuron,” said Younger. “Instead, what we’ve seen is that different receptors can respond to different odours in the same neuron.”

This means losing one or more receptors does not affect the ability of mosquitoes to pick up on human smells. This backup system could have evolved as a survival mechanism, the researchers say.

“The mosquito Aedes aegypti is specialised to bite humans, and it is believed that they evolved to do that because humans are always close to fresh water and mosquitoes lay their eggs in fresh water. We are basically the perfect meal, so the drive to find humans is extremely strong,” said Younger.

Ultimately, the researchers say, understanding how the mosquito brain processes human odour could be used to intervene in biting behaviour and reduce the spread of mosquito-borne diseases, such as malaria, dengue and yellow fever.

[…]

Source: Scientists discover how mosquitoes can ‘sniff out’ humans | Animal behaviour | The Guardian

A new study corrects an important error in the 3D mathematical space developed by the Nobel Prize-winning physicist Erwin Schrödinger and others, and used by scientists and industry for more than 100 years to describe how your eye distinguishes one color from another. The research has the potential to boost scientific data visualizations, improve TVs and recalibrate the textile and paint industries.

[…]

“Our research shows that the current mathematical model of how the eye perceives color differences is incorrect. That model was suggested by Bernhard Riemann and developed by Hermann von Helmholtz and Erwin Schrödinger—all giants in mathematics and physics—and proving one of them wrong is pretty much the dream of a scientist,” said Bujack.

[…]

the team was surprised when they discovered they were the first to determine that the longstanding application of Riemannian geometry, which allows generalizing straight lines to curved surfaces, didn’t work.

To create industry standards, a precise mathematical model of perceived color space is needed. First attempts used Euclidean spaces—the familiar geometry taught in many high schools; more advanced models used Riemannian geometry. The models plot red, green and blue in the 3D space. Those are the colors registered most strongly by light-detecting cones on our retinas, and—not surprisingly—the colors that blend to create all the images on your RGB computer screen.

In the study, which blends psychology, biology and mathematics, Bujack and her colleagues discovered that using Riemannian geometry overestimates the perception of large color differences. That’s because people perceive a big difference in color to be less than the sum you would get if you added up small differences in color that lie between two widely separated shades.

Riemannian geometry cannot account for this effect.

“We didn’t expect this, and we don’t know the exact geometry of this new color space yet,” Bujack said. “We might be able to think of it normally but with an added dampening or weighing function that pulls long distances in, making them shorter. But we can’t prove it yet.”

Source: Math error: A new study overturns 100-year-old understanding of color perception

More information: Roxana Bujack et al, The non-Riemannian nature of perceptual color space, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2022). DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2119753119

[…] Here, we used the LIBRA-seq technology, which identified SARS-CoV-2 specific B cells via DNA-barcoding and subsequently single cell sequenced BCRs, to identify an antibody, SW186, which could neutralize major SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern, including Beta, Delta, and Omicron, as well as SARS-CoV-1. The cryo-EM structure of SW186 bound to the receptor-binding domain (RBD) of the viral spike protein showed that SW186 interacted with an epitope of the RBD that is not at the interface of its binding to the ACE2 receptor but highly conserved among SARS coronaviruses. This epitope encompasses a glycosylation site (N343) of the viral spike protein. Administration of SW186 in mice after they were infected with SARS-CoV-2 Alpha, Beta, or Delta variants reduced the viral loads in the lung. These results demonstrated that SW186 neutralizes diverse SARS coronaviruses by binding to a conserved RBD epitope, which could serve as a target for further antibody development.

[…]

Source: An antibody that neutralizes SARS-CoV-1 and SARS-CoV-2 by binding to a conserved spike epitope outside the receptor binding motif – Science Immunology

[…]

In a paper appearing today in Science, the engineers present the design for a new ultrasound sticker — a stamp-sized device that sticks to skin and can provide continuous ultrasound imaging of internal organs for 48 hours.

The researchers applied the stickers to volunteers and showed the devices produced live, high-resolution images of major blood vessels and deeper organs such as the heart, lungs, and stomach. The stickers maintained a strong adhesion and captured changes in underlying organs as volunteers performed various activities, including sitting, standing, jogging, and biking.

The current design requires connecting the stickers to instruments that translate the reflected sound waves into images. The researchers point out that even in their current form, the stickers could have immediate applications: For instance, the devices could be applied to patients in the hospital, similar to heart-monitoring EKG stickers, and could continuously image internal organs without requiring a technician to hold a probe in place for long periods of time.

If the devices can be made to operate wirelessly — a goal the team is currently working toward — the ultrasound stickers could be made into wearable imaging products that patients could take home from a doctor’s office or even buy at a pharmacy.

“We envision a few patches adhered to different locations on the body, and the patches would communicate with your cellphone, where AI algorithms would analyze the images on demand,” says the study’s senior author, Xuanhe Zhao, professor of mechanical engineering and civil and environmental engineering at MIT. “We believe we’ve opened a new era of wearable imaging: With a few patches on your body, you could see your internal organs.”

[…]

The MIT team’s new ultrasound sticker produces higher resolution images over a longer duration by pairing a stretchy adhesive layer with a rigid array of transducers. “This combination enables the device to conform to the skin while maintaining the relative location of transducers to generate clearer and more precise images.” Wang says.

The device’s adhesive layer is made from two thin layers of elastomer that encapsulate a middle layer of solid hydrogel, a mostly water-based material that easily transmits sound waves. Unlike traditional ultrasound gels, the MIT team’s hydrogel is elastic and stretchy.

“The elastomer prevents dehydration of hydrogel,” says Chen, an MIT postdoc. “Only when hydrogel is highly hydrated can acoustic waves penetrate effectively and give high-resolution imaging of internal organs.”

The bottom elastomer layer is designed to stick to skin, while the top layer adheres to a rigid array of transducers that the team also designed and fabricated. The entire ultrasound sticker measures about 2 square centimeters across, and 3 millimeters thick — about the area of a postage stamp.

The researchers ran the ultrasound sticker through a battery of tests with healthy volunteers, who wore the stickers on various parts of their bodies, including the neck, chest, abdomen, and arms. The stickers stayed attached to their skin, and produced clear images of underlying structures for up to 48 hours. During this time, volunteers performed a variety of activities in the lab, from sitting and standing, to jogging, biking, and lifting weights.

[…]

Source: MIT engineers develop stickers that can see inside the body | MIT News | Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Researchers are studying the electrical rhythms in plant cells.

Source: Rhythm in plant cells | FlowingData

Cyborg locust brains can help spot the telltale signs of human cancer in the lab, a new study has shown. The team behind the work hopes it could one day lead to an insect-based breath test that could be used in cancer screening, or inspire an artificial version that works in much the same way.

Other animals have been taught to spot signs that humans are sick. For example, dogs can be trained to detect when their owners’ blood sugar levels start to drop, or if they develop cancer, tuberculosis, or even covid.

In all cases, the animals are thought to be sensing chemicals that people emit through body odor or breath. The mix of chemicals can vary depending on a person’s metabolism, which is thought to change when we get sick. But dogs are expensive to train and look after. And making a device that mimics a dog’s nose has proved extremely difficult to do, says Debajit Saha, one of the scientists behind the latest work, which has not yet been peer-reviewed.

“These changes are almost in parts per trillion,” says Saha, a neural engineer at Michigan State University. This makes them hard to pick up even with state-of-the-art technologies, he adds. But animals have evolved to interpret such subtle changes in scents. So he and his colleagues decided to “hijack” an animal brain instead.

COURTESY OF THE RESEARCHERS

The researchers chose to work with locusts because these insects have been well studied in recent years. In a preliminary setup, they surgically exposed the brain of a living locust. Saha and his colleagues then inserted electrodes into lobes of the brain that receive signals from the insects’ antennae, which they use to sense odors.

The team also grew three different types of human oral cancer cells, as well as human mouth cells that were cancer-free. They used a device to capture gas emitted by each of the cell types, and delivered each of these to the locusts’ antennae.

The locusts’ brains responded to each of the cell types differently. The patterns of electrical activity recorded were so distinct that when the team puffed the gas from one cell type onto the antennae, they could correctly identify whether the cells were cancerous from the recording alone.

It is the first time a living insect brain has been tested as a tool to detect cancer, says Saha.

Natalie Plank, who is developing nanomaterial-based health sensors at Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand, thinks the work is “super cool.” “The potential of just being able to breathe on something and then know if you’re at risk for cancer … is really powerful,” she says.

In the experiment, the team took brain recordings from multiple locusts and combined their responses. It currently takes recordings from 40 neurons to get a clear signal, which means the system requires between six and 10 locust brains. But Saha hopes to use electrodes that can record from more neurons, which would allow him to get recordings from the brain of a single locust. He also hopes to be able to use the brain and antennae in a portable device, which could then be tested on real people.

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Saha says that locusts do not feel pain, so they don’t need anesthesia. But some research suggests that insects can sense and avoid things we might consider “painful” and might develop lasting sensitivity after an injury, similar to chronic pain. “The insect is dead in terms of its body function,” says Saha. “We are just keeping its brain alive.”

If the team can figure out which receptors on the insects’ antennae are the most important for detecting cancer, they might be able to create versions in the lab and use those instead, says Plank. In her own research, she uses lab-made proteins that mimic receptors in fruit flies. “Long term, there are different ways it might play out to become a mass screening technique,” she says.

Source: A locust’s brain has been hacked to sniff out human cancer | MIT Technology Review

Aiming to produce environmentally friendly alternatives to plastic food wrap and containers, a Rutgers scientist has developed a biodegradable, plant-based coating that can be sprayed on foods, guarding against pathogenic and spoilage microorganisms and transportation damage.

The scalable process could potentially reduce the adverse environmental impact of plastic food packaging as well as protect human health.

[…]

what we have come up with is a scalable technology, which enables us to turn biopolymers, which can be derived as part of a circular economy from food waste, into smart fibers that can wrap food directly. This is part of new generation, ‘smart’ and ‘green’ food packaging.”

The research was conducted in concert with scientists at Harvard University and funded by the Harvard-Nanyang Technological University/Singapore Sustainable Nanotechnology Initiative.

Their article, published in the science journal Nature Food, describes the new kind of packaging technology using the polysaccharide/biopolymer-based fibers. Like the webs cast by the Marvel comic book character Spider-Man, the stringy material can be spun from a heating device that resembles a hair dryer and “shrink-wrapped” over foods of various shapes and sizes, such as an avocado or a sirloin steak. The resulting material that encases food products is sturdy enough to protect bruising and contains antimicrobial agents to fight spoilage and pathogenic microorganisms such as E. coli and listeria.

The research paper includes a description of the technology called focused rotary jet spinning, a process by which the biopolymer is produced, and quantitative assessments showing the coating extended the shelf life of avocados by 50 percent. The coating can be rinsed off with water and degrades in soil within three days, according to the study.

[…]

The paper describes how the new fibers encapsulating the food are laced with naturally occurring antimicrobial ingredients—thyme oil, citric acid and nisin. Researchers in the Demokritou research team can program such smart materials to act as sensors, activating and destroying bacterial strains to ensure food will arrive untainted. This will address growing concern over food-borne illnesses as well as lower the incidence of food spoilage, Demokritou said.

[…]

More information: Huibin Chang et al, High-throughput coating with biodegradable antimicrobial pullulan fibres extends shelf life and reduces weight loss in an avocado model, Nature Food (2022). DOI: 10.1038/s43016-022-00523-w , www.nature.com/articles/s43016-022-00523-w

 

Yi Wang et al, Protecting foods with biopolymer fibres, Nature Food (2022). DOI: 10.1038/s43016-022-00519-6 , www.nature.com/articles/s43016-022-00519-6

Journal information: Nature Food

Source: Scientists develop antimicrobial, plant-based food wrap designed to replace plastic

USC scientists have found evidence that the Earth’s inner core oscillates, contradicting previously accepted models that suggested it consistently rotates at a faster rate than the planet’s surface.

Their study, published today in Science Advances, shows that the inner core changed direction in the six-year period from 1969–74, according to the analysis of seismic data. The scientists say their model of inner core movement also explains the variation in the length of day, which has been shown to oscillate persistently for the past several decades.

“From our findings, we can see the Earth’s surface shifts compared to its inner core, as people have asserted for 20 years,” said John E. Vidale, co-author of the study and Dean’s Professor of Earth Sciences at USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences. “However, our latest observations show that the inner core spun slightly slower from 1969–71 and then moved the other direction from 1971–74. We also note that the length of day grew and shrank as would be predicted.

“The coincidence of those two observations makes oscillation the likely interpretation.”

[…]

Utilizing data from the Large Aperture Seismic Array (LASA), a U.S. Air Force facility in Montana, researcher Wei Wang and Vidale found the inner core rotated slower than previously predicted, approximately 0.1 degrees per year. The study analyzed waves generated from Soviet underground nuclear bomb tests from 1971–74 in the Arctic archipelago Novaya Zemlya using a novel beamforming technique developed by Vidale.

The new findings emerged when Wang and Vidale applied the same methodology to a pair of earlier atomic tests beneath Amchitka Island at the tip of the Alaskan archipelago—Milrow in 1969 and Cannikin in 1971. Measuring the compressional waves resulting from the nuclear explosions, they discovered the inner core had reversed direction, sub-rotating at least a tenth of a degree per year.

[…]

The study does support the speculation that the inner core oscillates based on variations in the length of day—plus or minus 0.2 seconds over six years—and geomagnetic fields, both of which match the theory in both amplitude and phase. Vidale says the findings provide a compelling theory for many questions posed by the research community.

“The inner core is not fixed—it’s moving under our feet, and it seems to going back and forth a couple of kilometers every six years,” Vidale said. “One of the questions we tried to answer is, does the inner core progressively move or is it mostly locked compared to everything else in the long term? We’re trying to understand how the inner core formed and how it moves over time—this is an important step in better understanding this process.”

Source: The Earth moves far under our feet: A new study shows that the inner core oscillates

Scientists at Scripps Research have invented a way to image, across different tissues and with higher precision than ever before, where drugs bind to their targets in the body. The new method could become a routine tool in drug development.

Described in a paper in Cell on April 27, 2022, the new method, called CATCH, attaches fluorescent tags to drug molecules and uses chemical techniques to improve the fluorescent signal. The researchers demonstrated the method with several different experimental drugs, revealing where—even within individual cells—the drug molecules hit their targets.

[…]

The CATCH method involves the insertion of tiny chemical handles into drug molecules. These distinct chemical handles don’t react with anything else in the body, but do allow the addition of fluorescent tags after the drug molecules have bound to their targets. In part because human or animal tissue tends to diffuse and block the light from these fluorescent tags, Ye and his team combined the tagging process with a technique that makes tissue relatively transparent.

[…]

In other tests demonstrating the unprecedented precision and versatility of the new method, the scientists showed that they could combine drug-target imaging with separate fluorescent-tagging methods to reveal the cell types to which a drug binds. They also could distinguish drug-target engagement sites in different parts of neurons. Finally, they could see how modestly different doses of a drug often strikingly affect the degree of target engagement in different brain areas.

[…]

Source: New technique shows in detail where drug molecules hit their targets in the body

[…]

The origins of the technique stem from the 1990s, when researchers at the Roslin Institute just outside Edinburgh developed a method of turning an adult mammary gland cell taken from a sheep into an embryo. It led to the creation of Dolly the cloned sheep.

The Roslin team’s aim was not to create clones of sheep or indeed humans, but to use the technique to create so-called human embryonic stem cells. These, they hoped, could be grown into specific tissues, such as muscle, cartilage, and nerve cells to replace worn-out body parts.

The Dolly technique was made simpler in 2006 by Prof Shinya Yamanaka, then at Kyoto University. The new method, called IPS, involved adding chemicals to adult cells for around 50 days. This resulted in genetic changes that turned the adult cells into stem cells.

In both the Dolly and IPS techniques, the stem cells created need to be regrown into the cells and tissues the patient requires. This has proved difficult and despite decades of effort, the use of stem cells to treat diseases is currently extremely limited.

Prof Reik’s team used the IPS technique on 53-year-old skin cells. But they cut short the chemical bath from 50 days to around 12. Dr Dilgeet Gill was astonished to find that the cells had not turned into embryonic stem cells – but had rejuvenated into skin cells that looked and behaved as if they came from a 23-year old.

He said: “I remember the day I got the results back and I didn’t quite believe that some of the cells were 30 years younger than they were supposed to be. It was a very exciting day!”

The technique cannot immediately be translated to the clinic because the IPS method increases the risk of cancers. But Prof Reik was confident that now it was known that it is possible to rejuvenate cells, his team could find an alternative, safer method.

“The long-term aim is to extend the human health span, rather than the lifespan, so that people can get older in a healthier way,” he said.

Prof Reik says some of the first applications could be to develop medicines to rejuvenate skin in older people in parts of the body where they have been cut or burned – as a way to speed up healing. The researchers have demonstrated that this is possible in principle by showing that their rejuvenated skin cells move more quickly in experiments simulating a wound.

The next step is to see if the technology will work on other tissues such as muscle, liver and blood cells.

[…]

Source: Rejuvenation of woman’s skin could tackle diseases of ageing – BBC News

Scientists at Scripps Research have unveiled a new tissue-clearing method for rendering large biological samples transparent. The method makes it easier than ever for scientists to visualize and study healthy and disease-related biological processes occurring across multiple organ systems.

Described in a paper in Nature Methods on March 28, 2022, and dubbed HYBRiD, the new method combines elements of the two main prior approaches to tissue-clearing technology, and should be more practical and scalable than either for large-sample applications.

[…]

Tissue-clearing involves the use of solvents to remove molecules that make tissue opaque (such as fat), rendering the tissue optically transparent—while keeping most proteins and structures in place. Scientists commonly use genetically encoded or antibody-linked fluorescent beacons to mark active genes or other molecules of interest in a lab animal, and tissue-clearing in principle allows these beacons to be imaged all at once across the entire animal.

[…]

 

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The new method devised by Ye and his team uses a sequential combination of organic solvents and water-based detergents, and makes use of water-based hydrogels to protect those molecules within the tissue that need to be preserved. It often does not require the pumping of solvents through the sample.

“In many cases, you can just put the whole thing in a jar and keep it in a shaker on your benchtop until it’s done,” says co-first author Victoria Nudell, a research assistant in the Ye lab. “This makes it practical and scalable enough for routine use.”

The researchers demonstrated the ease and utility of their new method in a variety of applications. These included a collaboration with the laboratory of John Teijaro, Ph.D., associate professor of immunology and microbiology, to image SARS-CoV-2-infected cells in the whole chests of mice for the first time—a procedure whose simplicity, with the new method, enabled it to be done in a high-level biosafety facility where access to equipment is strictly limited.

[…]

Source: New method for making tissue transparent could speed the study of many diseases

Collecting satellite data for research is a group effort thanks to this app developed for Android users. Camaliot is a campaign funded by the European Space Agency, and its first project focuses on making smartphone owners around the world part of a project that can help improve weather forecasts by using your phone’s GPS receiver.

The Camaliot app works on devices running Android version 7.0 or later that support satellite navigation.

[…]

Researchers think that they can use satellite signals to get more information about the atmosphere. For example, the amount of water vapor in the atmosphere can affect how a satellite signal travels through the air to something like a phone.

The app gathers information to track signal strength, the distance between the satellite and the phone being used, and the satellite’s carrier phase, according to Camaliot’s FAQs. With enough data collected from around the world, researchers can theoretically combine that with existing weather readings to measure long-term water vapor trends. They hope to use that data to inform weather forecasting models with machine learning. They can also track changes in Earth’s ionosphere — the part of the atmosphere near space. Creating better ionospheric forecasts could be relevant in tracking space weather and could eventually make Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) more accurate by accounting for events like geomagnetic storms.

[…]

Here’s how you can begin using the Camaliot app on your Android phone after downloading it from Google Play:

1. Select “start logging” and place your phone in an area with a clear sky view to begin logging the data
2. Once you have measured to your liking, select “stop logging”
3. Then, upload your session to the server and repeat the process over time to collect more data. You can also delete your locally-stored log files at this step.

In addition to being able to view your own measurements against others accumulated over time, you can also see a leaderboard showing logging sessions done by other participants. Eventually, the information collected for the study will be available in a separate portal.

For registered users, their password, username, email address, and number of measurements will be stored in Camaliot’s database, but they won’t be used in post-study publications and products, according to Camaliot’s privacy policy. Specifically, Camaliot says that the need for extensive personal data is for scientific purposes and environmental monitoring and that its need for processing data is “necessary for the performance of a task carried out in the public interest, namely for the conduction of this scientific study.”

[…]

Source: Global science project links Android phones with satellites to improve weather forecasts – The Verge

Similar to a light switch, RNA switches (called riboswitches) determine which genes turn “on” and “off.” Although this may seem like a simple process, the inner workings of these switches have confounded biologists for decades.

Now researchers led by Northwestern University and the University at Albany discovered one part of RNA smoothly invades and displaces another part of the same RNA, enabling the structure to rapidly and dramatically change shape. Called “strand displacement,” this mechanism appears to switch genetic expression from “on” to “off.”

Using a simulation they launched last year, the researchers made this discovery by watching a slow-motion simulation of a riboswitch up close and in action. Affectionately called R2D2 (short for “reconstructing RNA dynamics from data”), the new simulation models RNA in three dimensions as it binds to a compound, communicates along its length and folds to turn a gene “on” or “off.”

[…]

“We have found this strand displacement mechanism occurring in other types of RNA molecules, indicating this might be a potential generality of RNA folding,” said Northwestern’s Julius B. Lucks, who co-led the study. “We are starting to find similarities among different types of RNA molecules, which could eventually lead to RNA design rules for folding and function.”

[…]

Although RNA folding takes place in the human body more than 10 quadrillion times per second—every time a gene is expressed in a cell—researchers know very little about the process. To help visualize and understand the mysterious yet crucial process, Lucks and Chen unveiled R2D2 last year, in a paper published in the journal Molecular Cell.

Employing a technology platform developed in Lucks’ lab, R2D2 captures data related to RNA folding as the RNA is being made. Then, it uses computational tools to mine and organize the data, revealing points where the RNA folds and what happens after it folds. Angela Yu, a former student of Lucks, inputted this data into computer models to generate accurate videos of the folding process.

“What’s so groundbreaking about the R2D2 approach…is that it combines experimental data on RNA folding at the nucleotide level with predictive algorithms at the atomic level to simulate RNA folding in ultra-slow motion,” said Dr. Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health, in his February 2021 blog. “While other computer simulations have been available for decades, they have lacked much-needed experimental data of this complex folding process to confirm their mathematical modeling.”

[…]

Source: Unprecedented videos show RNA switching ‘on’ and ‘off’