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    Brain Plasticity Restored in Adult Mice through Targeting Specific Nerve Cell Connections

    January 9, 2019, Categories  Health/Medical, Biology/Biotechnology


    Research in mice led by neuroscientists at Tufts University School of Medicine reveals a new molecular mechanism that is essential for brain maturation and may be used to restore plasticity in aged brains. The study focused on a subtype of inhibitory cell also found in people called Parvalbumin neurons (stained in blue) which exert significant power over the timing of the “critical period” for brain maturation. While previous studies had shown that the short-range synapses (green dots) on these neurons affected critical period opening in the brain’s visual cortex (which processes visual scenes), the new study shows that long-range synapses (red dots) on these neurons have a powerful control over critical period closure, despite their lower density in the brain...
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    Programming Light on a Chip

    January 9, 2019, Categories  Physics, Technology/Electronics

    A new integrated photonics platform that can store light and electrically control its frequency (or color) in an integrated circuit.
    Credit: Loncar Lab/HarvardSEAS

    Research opens doors in photonic quantum information processing, optical signal processing and microwave photonics. Researchers from the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) have developed a new integrated photonics platform that can store light and electrically control its frequency (or color) in an integrated circuit.

    The platform draws inspiration from atomic systems and could have a wide range of applications including photonic quantum information processing, optical signal processing, and microwave photonics...

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    New Materials could ‘Drive Wound Healing’ by harnessing natural healing methods

    January 9, 2019, Categories  Health/Medical, Biology/Biotechnology

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    Bioinspired aptamers enable the creation of synthetic mimics of the natural TGF‐β1 large latent complex (LLC).

    Materials are widely used to help heal wounds: Collagen sponges help treat burns and pressure sores, and scaffold-like implants are used to repair bones. However, the process of tissue repair changes over time, so scientists are developing biomaterials that interact with tissues as healing takes place.

    Now, Dr Ben Almquist and his team at Imperial College London have created a new molecule that could change the way traditional materials work with the body. Known as traction force-activated payloads (TrAPs), their method lets materials talk to the body’s natural repair systems to drive healing.

    The researchers say incorporating TrAPs into existing medical materials c...

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    TESS discovers its third new planet, with longest orbit yet

    January 9, 2019, Categories  Astronomy/Space


    • NASA’s TESS mission, which will survey the entire sky over the next two years, has already discovered three new exoplanets around nearby stars.
      Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, edited by MIT News

    Measurements indicate a dense, gaseous, ‘sub-Neptune’ world, three times the size of Earth. NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, TESS, has discovered a third small planet outside our solar system, scientists announced this week at the annual American Astronomical Society meeting in Seattle.

    The new planet, named HD 21749b, orbits a bright, nearby dwarf star about 53 light years away, in the constellation Reticulum, and appears to have the longest orbital period of the three planets so far identified by TESS...

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