Life before computers
adminAn application was for employment
A program was a TV show
A cursor used profanity
A keyboard was a piano!Memory was something that you lost with age
A CD was a bank accountCompress was something you did to garbage
Not something you did to a file
And if you unzipped anything in public
You’d be in jail for awhile!Log on was adding wood to a fire
Hard drive was a long trip on the road
A mouse pad was where a mouse lived
And a backup happened to your commode!Cut - you did with a pocket knife
Paste you did with glue
A web was a spider’s home
And a virus was the flu!
by TechEntrance
| 3.7 (1 person) |
I’ll be gone for a while
adminHello fellow readers, you will not find new posts in the future due to final examinations commenced.
I might add a post or two once in a while, but that’s not for sure. Examination period is 1 month, so till then…the site is on hold.
Later peeps, and wait for the big blast!!
| 3.5 (1 person) |
Big Bucks, Big Pharma: Marketing Disease & Pushing Drugs
adminThis is so true. People take meds that they don’t need all the time.
| 3.7 (1 person) |
Baby Instructions
admin
| 3.8 (3 people) |
Obesity Problem in America
admin
Sad…
| 2.8 (1 person) |
Asthma Inhaler Misuse Widespread Among Anti-social Teens
admin
Nearly one out of four teens who use an asthma inhaler say their intent is to get high. Findings from a new University of Michigan study identified high levels of asthma inhaler misuse among anti-social youths, who displayed higher levels of distress and were more likely to abuse other substances.
| 3.5 (1 person) |
Teen develops sticky solution to flu
adminOTTAWA — A Canadian high school student has won an international science competition for her new molecule that binds to flu viruses, which may eventually be used to diagnose or prevent flu infections.
Maria Merziotis, 17, took first prize in the 2008 Sanofi-Aventis BioTalent Challenge, and will now go on to compete at the international BioGENEius Challenge in San Diego June 16-18.
Meanwhile, Health Canada is testing her research, and as a diagnostic tool it has already shown “encouraging results,” said the government agency in a statement.
Flu viruses cause illness by sticking to sialic acid (sialyllactose) present on the surface of human cells, and attacking the cells.
Merziotis synthesized a free floating form of sialic acid that acts as an alternative receptor for the virus.
She said it could be used “to detect what strain of influenza is responsible for a specific infection” or even “interfere with the infection process by administering the floating sialyllactose through injection, nasal spray or to the lungs with a pump.”
“The flu virus would attach to the artificial receptor rather than the human cell and infection would be prevented,” Merziotis said.
| 3.5 (1 person) |
Fluorescent nanoparticles serve as flashlights in living cells
adminBy using fluorescent ‘quantum dot’ nanoparticles, scientists of the University of Twente are able to combine two optical techniques -fluorescence and Raman microscopy- for better understanding of the processes in a single living cell.
Scientists from the University of Twente, The Netherlands, have successfully exploited the optical properties of fluorescent nanoparticles to broaden the scope of single-cell microscopy. By using nanoparticles, they succeeded in combining two different optical microscopy techniques on the same cell. This opens exciting new possibilities for cellular imaging. Henk-Jan van Manen and Cees Otto from the Biophysical Engineering Group of the MESA+ Institute for Nanotechnology describe their results in Nano Letters.
The ‘quantum dot’ nanoparticles used by Van Manen and Otto replace existing fluorescent labels that are employed to enable the cell’s biomolecules to light up under the microscope. While fluorescence microscopy continues to be instrumental in unraveling the intricate biological processes that take place inside living cells, it would be even more informative to combine it with the intracellular chemical analysis capabilities of vibrational spectroscopy techniques such as Raman microscopy. Common fluorescent labels are not suitable for this combination, however, because the much stronger fluorescence overshadows the intrinsic weak Raman signals coming from cells. By taking fluorescent quantum dots that emit light in a wavelength region that is well-separated from Raman signals, the Dutch researchers now show that fluorescence microscopy can indeed be combined with Raman microscopy on the same cell.
Vibrations inside cells
Techniques based on vibrational spectroscopy are able to detect the specific vibrations that occur inside the cell’s biomolecules (such as DNA, proteins, and lipids), making them very powerful tools for ‘chemical fingerprinting’ of cells. In contrast to fluorescence microscopy, vibrational spectroscopy does not require the biomolecules of interest to be labeled, which is a great advantage. The Biophysical Engineering Group at the University of Twente, headed by prof. Vinod Subramaniam, has pioneered the application of Raman spectroscopy to investigate the chemical make-up of single cells, and this group is now worldwide at the front of high-resolution chemical mapping of cells by Raman microscopy.
In their Nano Letters article, the researchers demonstrate two applications of the hybrid fluorescence Raman technique. By illuminating white blood cells with UV light at a wavelength of 413 nm, the Raman signal from an enzyme that is critical in the innate immune response can be detected and visualized across the cell. The fluorescence signal of quantum dot nanoparticles that have been ingested by the cells can be visualized separately. The second application employs light at a wavelength of 647 nm, which results in the separate detection of Raman signals from cellular proteins and lipids and the fluorescence signal from the nanoparticles.
Van Manen and Otto expect that the fluorescence Raman microscopy combination will provide exciting new possibilities: the nanoparticles might be coated on their surface with antibodies against, for example, marker proteins for cancer cells. In this way the quantum dots will serve as a torch for specific cells, which can subsequently be subjected to a detailed chemical analysis by using Raman microscopy.
The research described in the Nano Letters article was funded by the Landsteiner Foundation for Blood Transfusion Research (Amsterdam, The Netherlands) and the MESA+ Institute for Nanotechnology at the University of Twente.
| 2.5 |
When Statins Aren’t Enough: New Trial Drug Points To Better Management Of Coronary Heart Disease
adminScienceDaily (May 9, 2008) — Despite widespread use of cholesterol-lowering drugs, a significant number of cardiac patients continue to suffer heart attacks and stroke. Researchers theorize that high levels of an enzyme found in coronary plaques may be to blame, by making plaques more likely to rupture and block blood flow. The drug darapladib may offer a way to fight that risk, according to new research led by the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine.
Researchers at the Penn and several other international sites have found that the drug may be a useful adjunct to treatment with statin drugs. The new findings, published in a recent issue of the Journal of the American College of Cardiology, show that the drug safely and effectively lowers the activity of Lp-PLA2, an enzyme associated with inflammation activity and an increased risk for heart attack and stroke.
The trial results pave the way for an important addition to the drugs doctors use to treat heart disease, says the study’s lead author, Emile R. Mohler, MD, Director of Vascular Medicine and Associate Professor of Medicine at Penn.
“This is an exciting new area of medical treatment for cardiovascular disease,” Mohler says. “It is hoped that this drug will stabilize artery plaque and prevent heart attack and stroke.”
The drug was tested at three different dosage levels in about 1,000 patients with coronary heart disease already taking a cholesterol-lowering statin drug. Among patients taking 160 mg of darapladib each day during the 12-week study, blood tests revealed a decrease in two important circulating biomarkers, suggesting a possible reduction in systemic inflammatory burden.
While the drug doesn’t necessarily act to shrink the plaques that build inside coronary arteries and choke off blood supply to the heart, Mohler says the research suggests that darapladib may reduce plaque inflammation and therefore lower rates of clot formation and heart attacks among patients with coronary heart disease.
GlaxoSmithKline provided funding for the study. Mohler has no personal financial ties to the company.
| 2.5 |
New Link To Schizophrenia Discovered
adminScienceDaily (May 9, 2008) — Neuroscientists at Johns Hopkins have discovered that mice lacking an enzyme that contributes to Alzheimer disease exhibit a number of schizophrenia-like behaviors. The finding raises the possibility that this enzyme may participate in the development of schizophrenia and related psychiatric disorders and therefore may provide a new target for developing therapies.
The BACE1 enzyme, for beta-site amyloid precursor protein cleaving enzyme, generates the amyloid proteins that lead to Alzheimer’s disease. The research team years ago suspected that removing BACE1 might prevent Alzheimer.
“We knew at the time that in addition to amyloid precursor protein, BACE1 interacts with other proteins but we didn’t know how those interactions might affect behavior,” says Alena Savonenko, M.D., Ph.D., an assistant professor in neuropathology at Hopkins.
Reporting in the Proceedings of the National Academies of Sciences, the research team describes how mice lacking the BACE1 enzyme show deficits in social recognition among other behaviors classically linked to schizophrenia.
A normal mouse, when introduced to another mouse, shows a lot of interest the first time they meet. If the mice are separated then reintroduced, their interest drops because they remember having met before, a phenomenon the researchers call habituation. If they then introduce a completely different mouse, interest piques again at the newbie.
The researchers introduced mice lacking BACE1 to another mouse. The first time they met, the BACE1 mouse showed interest, the second time meeting the same mouse the BACE1 mouse showed less interest and even less interest the third time. The researchers then introduced the BACE1 mouse to a totally different mouse of a different strain and the BACE1 mouse showed no interest at all. “These mice were totally disinterested, normal mice just don’t behave like this,” says Savonenko.
Additionally, the researchers found that these BACE1-lacking mice also displayed many other schizophrenia-like traits. Most importantly, according to Savonenko, some of the deficits improved after treatment with the antipsychotic drug clozapine.
Because schizophrenia is a disorder likely caused by many different factors, Savonenko explains that BACE1 might contribute to an increased risk of schizophrenia in certain patients and the BACE1 mice will be a useful animal model. “We never thought we would see one mouse that closely mimics so many of the clinical features of schizophrenia,” says Alena Savonenko, M.D., Ph.D., an assistant professor of neuropathology at Hopkins. “This could be a really useful model to study and understand the molecular contributions to the disease.”
| 2.5 |
