Category Biology/Biotechnology

Novel spinal therapy/delivery approach prevented disease onset in neurodegenerative ALS disease model in adult mice and blocked progression in animals already showing disease symptoms.

Writing in Nature Medicine, an international team headed by researchers at University of California San Diego School of Medicine describe a new way to effectively deliver a gene-silencing vector to adult amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) mice, resulting in long-term suppression of the degenerative motor neuron disorder if treatment vector is delivered prior to disease onset, and blockage of disease progression in adult animals if ...

Study found protons led to two-thirds reduction in unplanned hospitalizations. Proton therapy leads to significantly lower risk of side effects severe enough to lead to unplanned hospitalizations for cancer patients when compared with traditional radiation, while cure rates between the two groups are almost identical...

Emerging fluctuation-based functionalities are expected to open a way to novel memory device technology. An international joint research team led by NIMS succeeded in fabricating a neuromorphic network composed of numerous metallic nanowires. Using this network, the team was able to generate electrical characteristics similar to those associated with higher order brain functions unique to humans, such as memorization, learning, forgetting, becoming alert and returning to calm. The team then clarified the mechanisms that induced these electrical characteristics.

Does scientific evidence support the claims made for these diets? In a review article published in the Dec. 26 issue of The New England Journal of Medicine, Johns Hopkins Medicine neuroscientist Mark Mattson, Ph.D., concludes that intermittent fasting does.

Mattson, who has studied the health impact of intermittent fasting for 25 years, and adopted it himself about 20 years ago, writes that “intermittent fasting could be part of a healthy lifestyle.” A professor of neuroscience at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Mattson says his new article is intended to help clarify the science and clinical applications of intermittent fasting in ways that may help physicians guide patients who want to try it.

Intermittent fasting diets, he says, fall generally into two catego...