Blood vessels that cross-connect adjacent arterial trees regulate blood flow to the brain in stroke patients. Researchers at the University of Zurich have now shown that these vessels prevent brain hemorrhage following treatment to remove blood clots. They play a crucial role in the recovery of stroke patients. Ischemic strokes are a major health burden. They occur when a blood vessel that supplies the brain becomes blocked, impairing blood flow to the brain. As a result, brain tissue suffers from…

Discovery using lab and animal models could provide an alternative for older, sicker patients who do not qualify for stem cell transplants. Scientists at City of Hope, one of the largest cancer research and treatment organizations in the United States, have devised an innovative approach to target and destroy hard-to-kill leukemia stem cells. The journal Blood published the preclinical findings today. By overcoming challenges, such as drug resistance and treatment relapse common to patients with acute myeloid leukemia (AML), the…

There is no doubt that water is significant. Without it, life would never have begun, let alone continue today – not to mention its role in the environment itself, with oceans covering over 70% of Earth. But despite its ubiquity, liquid water features some electronic intricacies that have long puzzled scientists in chemistry, physics, and technology. For example, the electron affinity, i.e. the energy stabilization undergone by a free electron when captured by water, has remained poorly characterized from an…

Interdisciplinary Research Team from the University of Jena Develops Meta-Surface that Can Be Switched with Light. A material coating, whose light refraction properties can be precisely switched between different states, has been developed by an interdisciplinary research team from the Chemistry and Physics departments at the University of Jena. The team, led by Felix Schacher, Sarah Walden, Purushottam Poudel, and Isabelle Staude, combined polymers that react to light with so-called meta-surfaces. This innovation has led to the creation of new…

Researchers use deep brain stimulation to localize disrupted neural pathways. When certain connections in the brain do not function correctly, disorders such as Parkinson’s disease, dystonia, obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), and Tourette’s syndrome may result. Targeted stimulation of specific areas in the brain can help alleviate symptoms. To pinpoint the exact therapeutic target areas of the brain, a team led by researchers from Charité – Universitätsmedizin and Brigham and Women’s Hospital analyzed data from patients across the globe who had undergone…

In living cells, a vast number of transient events occur simultaneously, each of them important for a given cell in carrying out its function. The faithful recording of these transient activities is a prerequisite for a molecular understanding of life, yet obtaining such recordings is extremely challenging. Scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Medical Research in Heidelberg and their collaboration partners have created a novel technology that allows cellular events to be recorded through chemical labeling with fluorescent dyes…

Bats live in a world of sounds. They use vocalizations both to communicate with their conspecifics and for navigation. For the latter, they emit sounds in the ultrasonic range, which echo and enable them to create an “image” of their surroundings. Neuroscientists at Goethe University Frankfurt have now discovered how Seba’s short-tailed bat, a species native to South America, manages to filter out important signals from ambient sound and especially to distinguish between echolocation and communication calls. Seba’s short-tailed bat…

Immune system: B cells teach T cells which targets must not be attacked. Immune cells must learn not to attack the body itself. A team of researchers from the Technical University of Munich (TUM) and the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich (LMU) has discovered a previously unknown mechanism behind this: other immune cells, the B cells, contribute to the “training” of the T cells in the thymus gland. If this process fails, autoimmune diseases can develop. In children and adolescents,…

New Model Identifies Potential Therapeutic Target. Scientists at the University of Zurich have developed an innovative neural cell culture model, shedding light on the intricate mechanisms underlying neurodegeneration. Their research pinpointed a misbehaving protein as a promising therapeutic target in the treatment of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and frontotemporal dementia (FTD). Neurodegenerative diseases cause some of the neurons in our brains to die, resulting in different symptoms depending on the brain region affected. In amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), neurons in…

Max Planck Researchers find new targets for improving biocatalysts. Nitrogenases are considered promising candidates for the sustainable enzymatic production of ammonia and carbon compounds. Unfortunately, one bottleneck in this complex process, the supply of electrons to the enzymes, has remained a mystery until now. Now a team at the Max Planck Institute for Terrestrial Microbiology in Marburg has discovered two essential electron carriers which play a key role in determining the performance of iron (Fe) nitrogenase, thus opening up new…

Testing method can analyze blood samples twice as quickly as other techniques. University of Waterloo researchers have developed a new blood testing method that can detect potent opioids much faster than traditional approaches and potentially save lives. The method, the latest effort by Waterloo researchers and entrepreneurs to lead health innovation in Canada, can simultaneously analyze 96 blood samples that could contain opioids such as fentanyl in under three minutes – twice as quickly as other techniques. “The difference between…

Researchers from Carnegie Mellon University, the University Hospital Bonn and the University of Bonn have created an open-source platform known as A-SOiD that can learn and predict user-defined behaviors, just from video. The results of the study have now been published in the journal “Nature Methods”. “This technique works great at learning classifications for a variety of animal and human behaviors,” said Eric Yttri, Eberly Family Associate Professor of Biological Sciences at Carnegie Mellon. “This would not only work on…

New findings on the link between myotonic dystrophy 2 and autoimmune diseases. Researchers at the University Hospitals of Dresden and Bonn of the DFG Transregio 237 and from the Cluster of Excellence ImmunoSensation2 at the University of Bonn have made progress clarifying why patients with myotonic dystrophy 2 have a higher tendency to develop autoimmune diseases. Their goal is to understand the development of the disease, and their research has provided new, potential therapeutic targets. The results of the study…

A new analysis method can detect pathogens in blood samples faster and more accurately than blood cultures, which are the current state of the art for infection diagnosis. The new method, called digital DNA melting analysis, can produce results in under six hours, whereas culture typically requires 15 hours to several days, depending on the pathogen.  Not only is this method faster than blood cultures, it’s also significantly less likely to generate false positives compared to other emerging DNA detection-based…

Longstanding challenges in biomedical research such as monitoring brain chemistry and tracking the spread of drugs through the body require much smaller and more precise sensors. A new nanoscale sensor that can monitor areas 1,000 times smaller than current technology and can track subtle changes in the chemical content of biological tissue with sub-second resolution, greatly outperforming standard technologies. The device, developed by researchers at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, is silicon-based and takes advantage of techniques developed for microelectronics manufacturing. The small device…

Saarbrücken-based research project on new drugs against infectious diseases receives support from Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Tuberculosis and malaria are among the deadliest infectious diseases worldwide and are increasingly spreading, not least due to climate change. In both cases, antimicrobial resistance renders established active substances ineffective. To ensure that effective drugs are still available in the future, researchers at the Helmholtz Institute for Pharmaceutical Research Saarland (HIPS) are working together with Evotec, a leading company for drug research and…