The ForTra gGmbh for Research Transfer (subsidiary of the Else Kröner Fresenius Foundation) would like to invite to the 4th EKFS Translational Research Workshop on September 22 & 23, 2021 in Frankfurt/Main. At the workshop distinguished experts will discuss the important challenge “How to Improve Translational Medicine”. They will present possible solutions to increase the chances of biomedical products reaching the market and benefiting patients. Come and join us in Frankfurt to discuss the possibilities for empowering translational medicine and…

How the brain’s motor system can support vocabulary learning. The motor cortex is a brain region known to control the body’s voluntary movements. However, the team of neuroscientists have now shown that it can also help translating foreign language words into one’s native language.  Their study has been published recently in the renowned Journal of Neuroscience. The study Participants in the study learned foreign language words by performing semantically-related gestures over four days of training. After the training, the participants…

The National Institutes of Health has begun a clinical trial to assess the antibody response to an extra dose of an authorized or approved COVID-19 vaccine in people with autoimmune disease who did not respond to an original COVID-19 vaccine regimen. The trial also will investigate whether pausing immunosuppressive therapy for autoimmune disease improves the antibody response to an extra dose of a COVID-19 vaccine in this population. The Phase 2 trial is sponsored and funded by the National Institute…

UCLA study suggests researchers could analyze neurological disorders in a stem cell–derived model. Researchers at the Eli and Edythe Broad Center of Regenerative Medicine and Stem Cell Research at UCLA have developed brain organoids — 3D, brain-like structures grown from human stem cells — that show organized waves of activity similar to those found in living human brains. Then, while studying organoids grown from stem cells derived from patients with the neurological disorder Rett syndrome, the scientists were able to observe patterns…

Armed with a $26.5-million grant, a multi-institution collaboratory will tackle HIV in a new way. Over the last 40 years, HIV has shifted from a deadly and mysterious virus to one that can be controlled with daily drugs. But attempts to completely eliminate the virus from the bodies of people living with HIV, curing them for good, have failed. Now, with a $26.5-million grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), a multi-disciplinary group of researchers from institutions around the…

International study provides new insights into the basis of the marine ecosystem. All life starts at a small scale, also in the ocean. Microscopic organisms, phytoplankton, form an important basis for the entire marine ecosystem, which ultimately determines how fish stocks develop and how much atmospheric carbon dioxide is taken up by the ocean. In this respect, understanding the basis of the marine ecosystem is important for two elementary questions for the future of our human population: nutrition and climate….

Scientists uncover switching system used in information processing and memory. Findings Reveal Coordination Used to Avoid Neurological Clashes. A team of scientists has uncovered a system in the brain used in the processing of information and in the storing of memories–akin to how railroad switches control a train’s destination. The findings offer new insights into how the brain functions. “Researchers have sought to identify neural circuits that have specialized functions, but there are simply too many tasks the brain performs…

We fixate slightly away from the retinal optimum. When we fixate an object, its image does not appear at the place where photoreceptors are packed most densely. Instead, its position is shifted slightly nasally and upwards from the cellular peak. This is shown in a recent study conducted at the University of Bonn, published in the journal Current Biology. The researchers observed such offsets in both eyes of 20 healthy subjects, and speculate that the underlying fixation behavior improves overall…

International Study… The discovery is groundbreaking: Previously unknown viruses live in the subsurface of our planet; they infect unicellular microorganisms, the so-called Altiarchaea. The remarkable thing: They start the food chain in an ecosystem that is actually hidden from our eyes. An international team led by Professor Dr. Alexander J. Probst from the University of Duisburg-Essen (UDE) made the respective discovery. The results were published in the scientific journal “Nature Communications” *. Some Archaea live in the deep subsurface without…

Research Snapshot: Led by Justus Ndukaife, assistant professor of electrical engineering, Vanderbilt researchers are the first to introduce an approach for trapping and moving a nanomaterial known as a single colloidal nanodiamond with nitrogen-vacancy center using low power laser beam. The width of a single human hair is approximately 90,000 nanometers; nanodiamonds are less than 100 nanometers. These carbon-based materials are one of the few that can release the basic unit of all light—a single photon—a building block for future quantum…

A new study by a Swansea University academic has announced a new mathematical formula that will help engineers assess the point at which cellular materials, which are used a wide range of applications ranging from aerospace to the construction industry, will bend and buckle. Professor Sondipon Adhikari, of the College of Engineering has published his findings in the Proceedings of the Royal Society A. The study details a formula that can calculate the elastic instability of cellular material, in this…

When gravitational waves were first detected in 2015 by the advanced Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO), they sent a ripple through the scientific community, as they confirmed another of Einstein’s theories and marked the birth of gravitational wave astronomy. Five years later, numerous gravitational wave sources have been detected, including the first observation of two colliding neutron stars in gravitational and electromagnetic waves. As LIGO and its international partners continue to upgrade their detectors’ sensitivity to gravitational waves, they will…

The ability of mangroves to store large amounts of CO2 and other climate gases as organic material has sparked increasing interest in this ecosystem. But what must mangrove forests be like to be particularly effective as carbon stores? A new study in Nature Communications provides an answer to this question. High concentrations of CO2 in the atmosphere and the associated global warming are making us increasingly aware of how imperative it is to conserve our Earth’s carbon stores. The ability…

Kiriform structures harness buckling for stable, deployable structures. Deployable structures — objects that transition from a compact state to an expanded one — are used everywhere from backyards to Mars. But as anyone who has ever struggled to open an uncooperative folding chair knows, transforming two-dimensional forms into three-dimensional structures is sometimes a challenge. Now, researchers from the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) and the Harvard Graduate School of Design have developed a deployable…

Study uncovers stem cells’ ability to restore immunity and repair gut damage caused by HIV. In a groundbreaking study, a team of UC Davis researchers has discovered a special type of stem cell that can reduce the amount of the virus causing AIDS, boosting the body’s antiviral immunity and repairing and restoring the gut’s lymphoid follicles damaged by the simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV), the equivalent of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) in non-human primates. The study, published June 22 in…

Research led by Göttingen University shows constructing microscope improves children’s understanding. Microscopy is an essential tool in many fields of science and medicine. However, many groups have limited access to this technology due to its cost and fragility. Now, researchers from the Universities of Göttingen and Münster have succeeded in building a high-resolution microscope using nothing more than children’s plastic building bricks and affordable parts from a mobile phone. They then went on to show that children aged 9-13 had…