‘Natural Killer’ Cells could halt Parkinson’s Progression

‘Natural killer’ cells could halt Parkinson’s progression
March 12, 2020
by Charlene Betourney
Left, imaging of healthy neurons from mouse brain. Right, imaging of damaged neurons by PD protein clumps. (Images courtesy of the Lee Lab)

Researchers at the University of Georgia’s Regenerative Bioscience Center and their colleagues have found that “natural killer” white blood cells could guard against the cascade of cellular changes that lead to Parkinson’s disease and help stop its progression.

Natural killer (NK) cells are white blood cells that can kill tumors without being “told” from the body to do so...

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Fish Scales could make Wearable Electronics more Sustainable

This film derived from fish scales could someday be used in flexible electronic devices.
Credit:: Adapted from ACS Nano 2020, DOI: 10.1021/acsnano.9b09880

Flexible temporary electronic displays may one day make it possible to sport a glowing tattoo or check a reading, like that of a stopwatch, directly on the skin. In its current form, however, this technology generally depends on plastic. New research in ACS Nano describes a way to make these displays, which would likely be discarded after a single use, more environmentally friendly using a plentiful and biodegradable resource: fish scales.

Within such displays, electricity-conducting and light-emitting components are layered onto a transparent film...

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Black Hole team discovers path to Razor-sharp Black Hole Images

George Wong (UIUC) and Michael Johnson (CfA)The image of a black hole has a bright ring of emission surrounding a “shadow” cast by the black hole. This ring is composed of a stack of increasingly sharp subrings that correspond to the number of orbits that photons took around the black hole before reaching the observer.

A team of researchers have published new calculations that predict a striking and intricate substructure within black hole images from extreme gravitational light bending. Last April, the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) sparked international excitement when it unveiled the first image of a black hole...

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New Coronavirus Stable for Hours on Surfaces

This scanning electron microscope image shows SARS-CoV-2 (yellow)—also known as 2019-nCoV, the virus that causes COVID-19—isolated from a patient in the U.S., emerging from the surface of cells (blue/pink) cultured in the lab.
Credit: NIAID RML

SARS-CoV-2 stability similar to original SARS virus. The virus that causes coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is stable for several hours to days in aerosols and on surfaces, according to a new study from National Institutes of Health, CDC, UCLA and Princeton University scientists in The New England Journal of Medicine.

The scientists found that severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) was detectable in aerosols for up to 3hrs , up to 4hours on copper, up to the24hours on cardboard and up to 2d to 3d on plastic and s...

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