Man recovers from paralysis by a cell transplant

He can walk!

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  It took long enough for 38 year old Darek Fidyka, a Polish man, to walk again. It’s been two years since he had the cell transplant surgery in 2012 and now he can walk. Darek was paralyzed from the chest down after a knife attack in 2010, caused by an 8mm gap in his spinal cord. In about two years of rehabilitation and programs to help him regain some ability in his legs, it was obvious they didn’t work and his condition just didn’t improve. The cell surgery that was successful on him was developed by scientists at University College London, UCL. Surgeons at Wroclaw University led by Dr. Pawel Tabakow performed the treatment. The idea was developed by Geof Raisman, surgeons took olfactory ensheathing cells (OECs) from Fidyka’s nose and transplanted them to the ends of the spinal cord gap and then used nerve tissue from his ankle to act as a bridge for spinal nerves to grow on. OECs were used because the cells regrew nerve cells in the nose when they become damaged, letting people to regain their sense of smell.

 Now they say they only have one patient, and a lot more work needs to be done for the procedure to be further developed, but they have a working start, and it’s very much a breakthrough in medical science that will be looked closely at by thousands of paralyzed spinal cord injury patients. I think the research will be very successful in the future, the patient described regaining his ability to move his legs to being reborn again, it worked and I know it will work again on other patients. I find it wonderful science has gone so far and when medical science help people rather the opposite, it brings hope to those who’ve really given up.

http://www.cnn.com/2014/10/23/health/paralysis-cell-transplant/

Water on Saturn's Moon

Mimas Our Icy Friend

         

     On Thursday October 16th, scientists at CAPE CANAVERAL Fla. (Reuters) said "Saturn's battered moon Mimas may have a thin global ocean buried miles beneath its icy surface, raising the prospect of another "life-friendly" habitat in the solar system" 

  There are two possible explanations for why the Icy 400-mile diameter moon Mimas wobbles as it orbits Saturn. One reason could be that Mimas has an underground ocean, and the other is that Mimas's core is shaped like a rugby-ball. 

 According to the journal of Science, researchers wrote “The ocean hypothesis sounds unlikely because … Mimas’ heavily cratered surface has shown no evidence of liquid water, thermal heating or geological activities.”   It can be likely however because when Mimas moves closer and farther from Saturn as it orbits, can cause enough friction from it's gravitation pull to heat ice on the moon and form an ocean. Mimas then can sustain the ocean by continual eccentric orbiting, and eventually create a suitable habitat for life on it. 

 The other theory is that Mimas and the rest Saturn's moon Enceladus, Tethys, Dione and Rhea, formed from a collection of rocks circling close to Saturn. Gravitational forces from Saturn then would sculpt Mimas's core into an oblong rugby-ball shape, that then was covered in ice.

  I've always fantasized about living on Saturn; but now that I think of it, living near it might be better. Saturn isn't exactly fully solid like it's moon Mimas, and there would be a better view of Saturn and it's beautiful rings. It would be great if in the future when we figure out how to space travel faster and better, Mimas has it's own ecosystem safe enough for us to live on. I think Mimas does have an underground ocean, because I don't think it's uncommon. Mars has been reported to have water on it's surface before, and even clouds. As time passes the Sun gets warmer and the planets closer to the Sun get warmer, eventually a lot of planets and moons will warm. I know seeing it happen wouldn't be possible in our lifetime, and neither Mars of Mimas would be habitable but it can be a possibility for future generations. They could to live on Mars and near Saturn on Mimas or visit them as vacation spots. The two choices Douglas Quaid in Total Recall had for a vacation were Saturn and Mars, I love how the movie isn't too far off.  

http://newsdaily.com/2014/10/saturn-moon-may-have-life-friendly-underground-ocean-scientists/#ciEQvK6flkrZ5ZCT.99

Nobel Prizes in Sciences

2014's Nobel Prizes for Physics, Chemistry, and Physiology or Medicine

 Well lets just talk about my favorite in detail, the Nobel Prize in Chemistry:

Press release from nobelprize.org; on October 8th, 2014 The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry to Eric Betzig, Stefan W. Hell, and William E. Moerner "for the development of super-resolved fluorescence microscopy". 

 Now what does super-resolved fluorescence microscopy mean?, well it's a microscope gone nano, but it isn't a regular optical light microscope which we use to see samples to only as little at 200 nanometers as a big blurry blob, it's a kind of electron microscope called the STED microscope and it can see closer than 0.2 nanometers, micrometers or 0.2 millionths of a meter however you call the unit, in really nice high resolution. The difference between normal electron microscopes and the STED microscope is that the STED can see living cells and organisms by making molecules fluoresce under a laser beam.

 (Overall how it works from nobelprize.org) 1.In a STED microscope, an annular laser beam quenches all fluorescence except that in a nanometre-sized volume. 2.The laser beams scan over the sample. Since scientists know exactly where the beam hits the sample, they can use that information to render the image at a much higher resolution. 3.The final image gets a resolution that is much better than 0.2 micrometre.

 Now scientists can have a greater understanding of how diseases develop and can now monitor the interplay between individual molecules inside cells.

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     "They can see how molecules create synapses between nerve cells in the brain; they can track proteins involved in Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s and Huntington’s diseases as they aggregate; they follow individual proteins in fertilized eggs as these divide into embryos." 

 I think this microscope will one day help cure Parkinson's, Alzheimer's and Huntington's disease, it doesn't seem impossible if they made this beauty. Maybe IBM's brain-inspired microchip can use information gathered from it by looking at how a human brain's neuron cells at work. I think real worthy artificial intelligence with self consciousness truly isn't far along, I even think we can create artificial human life since it's possible to make working artificial brain tissue.  I think we can play god, and reach for beyond the stars one day, mankind is getting there, the future is definitely happening. 

 The Nobel Prize in Physics 2014 was awarded jointly to Isamu Akasaki, Hiroshi Amano and Shuji Nakamura "for the invention of efficient blue light-emitting diodes which has enabled bright and energy-saving white light sources".

The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2014 was divided, one half awarded to John O'Keefe, the other half jointly to May-Britt Moser and Edvard I. Moser "for their discoveries of cells that constitute a positioning system in the brain".

Mice and Man

Planet of the Mice

  So to those who don't get this reference ^ watch Planet of the Apes first, and read on. 

  Scientists have figured out how to use "humanized" versions of genes on mice, to make them learn quicker. This gene is called Foxp2, known to control the activity of other genes, and has also been linked to the development of human speech and language. They changed two key amino acids in mice DNA to equivalent to changing two "letters" of it's genetic code, in order to make the gene more similar to human Foxp2. The gene alters the striatum in the brain which is responsible for speech and language, but also two forms of learning; by consciousness called declarative learning, and non-consciousness called procedural learning. In the series of maze experiments the scientists did, mice with the humanized gene learned stimulus-response associations more rapidly than regular mice undergoing the same learning tests. Parts of the striatum were also found to respond differently with the mice by testing the levels of messenger chemicals in the brain (dopamine), gene activity patterns and the synaptic plasticity, the changes of strength in brain connections. This study shows "how genetic changes might have adapted the nervous system" to language and speech, said scientists Ann Graybiel and her colleagues in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

  

Of course there were some issues raised like in the classic sci-fi movie Planet of the Apes did. Scientists asked ethical questions posed by mixing human and animal genes like Foxp2, because they might come across the issue of confronting whether an animal with some human genes deserves human rights. So it's official, I think it's possible apes can have "humanized" genes and talk and think like humans, in Planet of the Apes. It can happen one day, I already know a couple of trained chimpanzees can talk, and understand commands, but if they get altered genes, then our species have close cousins. If we also give them cooked food and teach them how to cook, that will also apparently give them bigger brains, because 200 million years ago we learned how to cook food and so gained more nutrition from it. I'd love a future with an intelligent inter-species community, where real lizard woman, and Chubacas can roam the streets. Maybe mice will one day take over the galaxy like in Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

(Week 1:10/3/14)

http://www.world-science.net/exclusives/140915_foxp2.htm

http://www.world-science.net/exclusives/121022_cooking.htm

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