Category Biology/Biotechnology

Scientists have succeeded in developing a piece of hardware which could pave the way for creating computers resembling the human brain. They produced a chip containing a network of artificial neurons that works with light and can imitate neurons and their synapses. This network is able to ‘learn’ information and use this as a basis for computing. The approach could be used later in many different fields for evaluating patterns in large quantities of data.

The researchers were able to demonstrate, that such an optical neurosynaptic network...

A newly confirmed link with insulin resistance may radically change the way fibromyalgia and related forms of chronic pain are identified and managed. Researchers led by a team from The University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston were able to dramatically reduce the pain of fibromyalgia patients with medication that targeted insulin resistance.

This discovery could dramatically alter the way that chronic pain can be identified and managed. Dr. Miguel Pappolla, UTMB professor of neurology, said that although the discovery is very preliminary, it may lead to a revolutionary shift on how fibromyalgia and related forms of chronic pain are treated...

Researchers discover certain skin-related stem cells could help in treating neurogenerative diseases. Neurodegenerative diseases like multiple sclerosis (MS) affect millions of people worldwide and occur when parts of the nervous system lose function over time...

Researchers at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (HU) have found a way to transform skin cells into the 3 major stem cell types that comprise early-stage embryos. The work (in mouse cells) has significant implications for modelling embryonic disease and placental dysfunctions, as well as paving the way to create whole embryos from skin cells.

As published in Cell Stem Cell, Dr. Yossi Buganim of HU’s Department of Developmental Biology and Cancer Research and his team discovered a set of genes capable of transforming murine skin cells into all three of the cell types that comprise the early embryo: the embryo itself, the placenta and the extra-embryonic tissues, such as the umbilical cord...