Gadolinium tagged posts

Scientists at King’s College London have discovered a new cause for asthma that sparks hope for treatment that could prevent the life-threatening disease.

Most current asthma treatments stem from the idea that it is an inflammatory disease. Yet, the life-threatening feature of asthma is the attack or the constriction of airways, making breathing difficult. The new study, published in Science, shows for the first time that many features of an asthma attack—inflammation, mucus secretion, and damage to the airway barrier that prevents infections—result from this mechanical constriction in a mouse model.

The findings suggest that blocking a process that normally causes epithelial cell death could prevent the damage, inflammation, and mucus that result from an asthma attack.

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Scientists stand on a platform at the world’s largest underground neutrino detector Super Kamiokande located 1km underneath the mountain in central Japan. Credit: Copyright : Kavli Institute for the Physics and Mathematics of the Universe

An international team in Japan is getting ready to power up a 50,000-ton neutrino detector by adding a single metal, which will turn it into the world’s first detector capable of analysing exploding stars beyond the immediate neighbourhood of the Milky Way. Neutrinos are relics from supernovae,. They are so tiny and interact so weakly that every second, trillions of them manage to pass through human bodies without anyone noticing. Studying them can reveal details about how stars in the universe, like our sun, work.

The problem is that all supernova neutri...