Category Biology/Biotechnology

Engineers at the University of Maryland (UMD) have created a new multi-material 3D nanoprinting technique that was featured on the inside front cover of the July 21 issue of Lab on a Chip.

The team’s new technique—capable of printing tiny multi-material structures a fraction of the size of a human hair—offers researchers a faster, cheaper, and more accurate means to 3D print these highly complex structures because the process uses a very simple molding process that is widely used in most microfluidics labs.

To demonstrate their new approach, the researchers 3D nanoprinted a variety of mu...

Herbs, including cilantro, have long been used as folk remedies. Herbs, including cilantro, have a long history of use as folk medicine anticonvulsants. Until now, many of the underlying mechanisms of how the herbs worked remained unknown. In a new study, researchers uncovered the molecular action that enables cilantro to effectively delay certain seizures common in epilepsy and other diseases.

The study, published in FASEB Journal, explains the molecular action of cilantro (Coriandrum sativum) as a highly potent KCNQ channel activator. This new understanding may lead to improvements in therapeutics and the development of more efficacious drugs.

Medical consensus once supported daily use of low dose aspirin to prevent heart attack and stroke in people at increased risk for cardiovascular disease (CVD). But in 2018, three major clinical trials cast doubt on that conventional wisdom, finding few benefits and consistent bleeding risks associated with daily aspirin use...

By keeping the brain in sync, these long-hypothesized but never-found neurons help rodents to detect subtle sensations. By measuring the fast electrical spikes of individual neurons in the touch region of the brain, Brown University neuroscientists have discovered a new type of cell that keeps time so regularly that it may serve as the brain’s long-hypothesized clock or metronome.

This type of neuron spikes rhythmically, and in a synchronized manner, independent of external sensations, said Chris Moore, a professor of neuroscience at Brown and the associate director of the Carney Institute for Brain Science...