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Research findings may help to better characterize aspects of altered brain activity, development and disease. Credit: OHSU

Every person has a distinct pattern of functional brain connectivity known as a connectotype, or brain fingerprint. A new study conducted at OHSU in Portland, Oregon, concludes that while individually unique, each connectotype demonstrates both familial and heritable relationships. The results published today in Network Neuroscience. “Similar to DNA, specific brain systems and connectivity patterns are passed down from adults to their children,” said the study’s principal investigator Damien Fair, Ph.D., P.A.-C., associate professor of behavioral neuroscience and psychiatry, OHSU School of Medicine...

Organoiridium Photosensitizers Induce Specific Oxidative Attack on Proteins within Cancer Cells

Cancer cells can be targeted and destroyed with the metal from the asteroid that caused the extinction of the dinosaurs, according to new research by an international collaboration between the University of Warwick and Sun Yat-Sen University in China. Researchers have demonstrated that iridium – the world’s second densest metal – can be used to kill cancer cells by filling them with deadly version of oxygen, without harming healthy tissue.

The researchers created a compound of iridium and organic material, which can be directly targeted towards cancerous cells, transferring energy to the cells to turn the oxygen (O2) inside them into singlet oxygen, which is poisonous and kills the cell – withou...

A NASA team scanned these terrestrial rock samples, all measuring two to four inches in diameter, to investigate possibilities for future in-space use of non-destructive evaluation techniques. The two rock samples on the bottom are from Earth’s newest volcanic island in the Kingdom of Tonga; the sample on the upper left from kilometers deep contains large green olivine crystals and came from Oahu in Hawaii. The sample on the upper right is a 3.7-million-year old impact melt breccia from the Elgygytgyn impact crater in Siberia. Credit: NASA/W. Hrybyk

A diagnostic tool, similar in theory to those used by the medical profession to non-invasively image internal organs, bones, soft tissue, and blood vessels, could be equally effective at “triaging” extraterrestrial rocks and other samples befor...