Extra brain cells may be key to autism › News in Science (ABC Science) News in Science Wednesday, 9 November 2011 Julie SteenhuysenABC/Reuters Autism clue Children with autism appear to have too many cells in a key area of the brain needed for communication and emotional development, say US researchers. They say their findings help explain why young children with autism often develop brains that are larger than normal. Dr Eric Courchesne, of the University of California San Diego Autism Center of Excellence, and colleagues, report their findings today in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
Autism is a spectrum of disorders ranging from a profound inability to communicate and mental retardation to relatively mild symptoms such as with Asperger's syndrome. The new study suggests the condition starts in the womb because brain cells in this area known as the prefrontal cortex typically develop during the second trimester of pregnancy. His team was first in 2003 to link rapid growth in head circumference in the first year of birth with autism. Visible Proofs: Forensic Views of the Body: Galleries: Technologies. Bone Marrow Transplant Can Cure Sickle Cell Disease, Children's Hospital Study Suggests.
A unique approach to bone marrow transplantation pioneered in part by a Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh of UPMC physician has proven to be the only safe and effective cure for sickle cell disease, according to a new study. Lakshmanan Krishnamurti, MD, a pediatric hematologist/oncologist at Children's Hospital, helped pioneer a form of bone marrow transplantation which relies on reduced-intensity conditioning (RIC). RIC regimens are less toxic to patients and therefore can be offered to patients with severe sickle cell disease because they eliminate life-threatening side effects generally associated with bone marrow transplantation. In a study published in the November issue of the journal Biology of Blood and Marrow Transplantation, Dr. Krishnamurti and colleagues report that six of seven sickle cell patients who received RIC bone marrow transplants in the last decade now have donor marrow and are free from symptoms of their sickle cell disease.
Dr. Sweat and blood: why mosquitoes pick and choose between humans - Times Online. Keith Barry does brain magic. A step toward a saliva test for cancer. A new saliva test can measure the amount of potential carcinogens stuck to a person's DNA -- interfering with the action of genes involved in health and disease -- and could lead to a commercial test to help determine risks for cancer and other diseases, scientists reported here today during the 242nd National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society (ACS). "The test measures the amount of damaged DNA in a person's body," said Professor Hauh-Jyun Candy Chen, Ph.D., who led the research team.
"This is very important because such damaged DNA — we call this 'DNA adducts' — is a biomarker that may help doctors diagnose diseases, monitor how effective a treatment is and also recommend things high-risk patients can do to reduce the chances of actually getting a disease," said Chen. The research team is at National Chung Cheng University (NCCU) in Taiwan. "We tried urine and blood and found these adducts. Then we turned our attention to saliva. 10 Cutest Animals in The World. The Human Protein Atlas. Intravenous virus eyed as possible cancer treatment - Health. Scientists from the Ottawa Hospital Research Institute have succeeded in delivering a virus intravenously that only attacks cancer tumours and doesn't harm healthy tissues, according to a new study in the scientific journal Nature. Dr. John Bell, a senior scientist at OHRI and senior co-author of the study, said the investigators were trying to demonstrate that it is possible to deliver such a virus intravenously in people.
Previously, it had only been done in animals. Ultimately, the goal is to use viruses as a cancer treatment, likely in combination with chemotherapy. "In this study, the way we designed the virus is that it can only grow in cancers and cannot grow in any normal tissues," Bell said. The study involved 23 patients (seven from Ottawa Hospital) who had advanced cancers that had spread to multiple organs. Bell said those kinds of therapies are desirable because of the restrictions of current forms of treatment. Dr. Methods and results. Forget the ice chest, this donor heart comes warm and still beating in a box. If you think about it, it’s strange that we keep to-be-transplanted human hearts in the same thing that we keep our Coronas in when we head to the beach. There must be a better way than sticking the heart on ice and flying it to its recipient. The heart can only be kept on ice for about six hours, so private jets, helicopters, and ambulances have to rush the heart to its recipient as fast as they can.
However, TransMedics has created what it calls a self-contained Organ Care System. Unlike normal transplantats which involves a donor heart being stopped, put on ice, and then transported in a cooler, the new strategy transports the still warm and beating heart in a box. The technology takes the organ out of the donor, and puts it on a platform where it continues to pump the donor blood into the heart while maintaining it in a near physiologic state in a warm, beating state during the transport.
The OCS also monitors the heart to see how it’s functioning during transport. Scientists sequence Black Death bacteria DNA, admit they were wrong. The bacteria behind the Black Death has a very unusual history. Its ancestor is an unassuming soil bacterium and the current strains of Yersinia pestis still infects thousands of people annually, but no longer cause the suite of horrifying symptoms associated with the medieval plagues. The radical differences between the two versions, in fact, led some to suggest that we have been blaming the wrong bacteria.
Now, researchers have obtained DNA from some of London's plague victims and confirmed that Y. pestis appears to be to blame. But the sequences also suggest that the strains of bacteria we see today may be different from the ones that rampaged through Europe. What transformed soil bacteria into a human pathogen?
The DNA came from 53 bones and 46 teeth from the East Smithfield, a mass burial site in London that dates to the first appearance of the Black Death in Europe, from 1347-1351. For the most part, the sequence is similar to that found in modern strains of the bacteria. Blood Vessels: Capillaries. Unlike the arteries and veins, capillaries are very thin and fragile. The capillaries are actually only one epithelial cell thick. They are so thin that blood cells can only pass through them in single file.
The exchange of oxygen and carbon dioxide takes place through the thin capillary wall. The red blood cells inside the capillary release their oxygen which passes through the wall and into the surrounding tissue. The tissue releases its waste products, like carbon dioxide, which passes through the wall and into the red blood cells. Arteries and veins run parallel throughout the body with a web-like network of capillaries, embedded in tissue, connecting them. Capillaries are also involved in the body's release of excess heat. YourGenome.org.
General Pathology. 10 Vestigial Traits You Didn't Know You Had. §. Scientists unveil tools for rewriting the code of life. MIT and Harvard researchers have developed technologies that could be used to rewrite the genetic code of a living cell, allowing them to make large-scale edits to the cell’s genome. Such technology could enable scientists to design cells that build proteins not found in nature, or engineer bacteria that are resistant to any type of viral infection. The technology, described in the July 15 issue of Science, can overwrite specific DNA sequences throughout the genome, similar to the find-and-replace function in word-processing programs.
Using this approach, the researchers can make hundreds of targeted edits to the genome of E. coli, apparently without disrupting the cells’ function. “We did get some skepticism from biologists early on,” says Peter Carr, senior research staff at MIT’s Lincoln Laboratory (and formerly of the MIT Media Lab), who is one of the paper’s lead authors. DNA consists of long strings of “letters” that code for specific amino acids. ‘Plug and play’ Nucleus Medical Media: Medical Video, Animation & Illustration. Need-To-Know Facts About Overactive Bladder. Mutated DNA Causes No-Fingerprint Disease. Almost every person is born with fingerprints, and everyone's are unique. But people with a rare disease known as adermatoglyphia do not have fingerprints from birth. Affecting only four known extended families worldwide, the condition is also called immigration-delay disease, since a lack of fingerprints makes it difficult for people to cross international borders.
In an effort to find the cause of the disease, dermatologist Eli Sprecher sequenced the DNA of 16 members of one family with adermatoglyphia in Switzerland . Seven had normal fingerprints, and the other nine did not. The larger SMARCAD1 is expressed throughout the body, but the smaller form acts only on the skin . Being born without fingerprints doesn't occur simply because one gene has been turned on or off, Sprecher said. That mutation is also the first link in a long chain of events that ultimately affects fingerprint development in the womb. (See skin pictures .) American Journal of Human Genetics. Visible Proofs: Forensic Views of the Body: Galleries: Media: Autopsy. WARNING: Some people may find images from actual postmortem dissections disturbing.
Viewer discretion advised. Videos on this page require either QuickTime Player or Windows Media Player. Postmortem dissection, or autopsy, was among the first scientific methods to be used in the investigation of violent or suspicious death. Autopsy remains the core practice of forensic medicine. Beginning an autopsy New York University Medical Center, The Forensic Autopsy (New York, 1978). View with QuickTime: Low Quality | High Quality View with Windows Media Player: Low Quality | High QualityRead the transcript Dissecting and analyzing the body parts University of Calgary and the Office of the Alberta Attorney General, Investigating Sudden Death, vol. 1(Alberta, Canada, 1978–80).
View with QuickTime: Low Quality | High Quality View with Windows Media Player: Low Quality | High QualityRead the transcript. 49 Fascinating YouTube Videos to Learn About the Human Body. As any doctor, nurse practitioner or other health care professional knows, the body is an interesting system. In many ways, it’s like a machine, with many complex parts. There is a lot to learn about the body and how it works, as well as how its different systems interact to create a larger system. Here are 49 interesting YouTube videos that can help you learn about the human body: Brain Your brain directs the rest of the body’s functions.
How the Body Works: The Regions of the Brain: An interesting look at the different regions of the brain, and what they are responsible for.Brain Anatomy Function: How brain works? Nervous System The nervous system brings messages from the brain to all over the body. How the Body Works: The Anatomy of the Central Nervous System: Find out how the nervous system is set up, and how it works.How the Body Works: Anatomy of Nerve: The nervous system is made up of thousands of nerves. Muscles Skeleton Circulatory and Respiratory Systems Other Systems. Etymology of Neuroscience Terms.
Focus on Brain Disorders. Superhuman: the Incredible Savant Brain.