Updated: 2012-01-31 00:13:16
: , : . Subscribe Today Renew Give a Gift Archives Customer Service Facebook Twitter Newsletter SEARCH Health Medicine Mind Brain Technology Space Human Origins Living World Environment Physics Math Video Photos Podcast RSS NCBI ROFL : Probably the most horrifying scientific lecture . ever NCBI ROFL : Mirror , mirror on my Facebook wall : effects of exposure to Facebook on . self-esteem It’s Facebook week on NCBI ROFL All this week we’ll be featuring papers about everyone’s favorite social networking site . Enjoy Contrasting hypotheses were posed to test the effect of Facebook exposure on self-esteem . Objective Self-Awareness OSA from social psychology and the Hyperpersonal Model from computer-mediated communication were used to argue that Facebook would either diminish or enhance
Updated: 2012-01-30 14:53:43
Via ScienceDaily: researchers "are seeking to restore complete cardiac function with the help of artificial cardiac tissue. They have succeeded in loading cardiac muscle cells onto a three-dimensional scaffold, created using the silk produced by a tropical silkworm. Of all the body's organs, the human heart is probably the one most primed for performance and efficiency. Decade after decade, it continues to pump blood around our bodies. However, this performance optimisation comes at a high price: over the course of evolution, almost all of the body's own regeneration mechanisms in the heart have become deactivated. ... In their attempt to...
Updated: 2012-01-30 14:39:50
An open access paper: "The amount of fat mass of an organism is emerging as key determinant in longevity. Too little or too much fat is associated with early mortality in rodents and humans, whereas leanness, intermediate with respect to these two extremes is associated with relative longevity, possibly reflecting an optimal amount of fat. ... Calorie restriction results in leanness, which is linked to metabolic conditions that favor longevity. We show here that deficiency of the triglyceride synthesis enzyme acyl CoA:diacylglycerol acyltransferase 1 (DGAT1), which promotes leanness, also extends longevity without limiting food intake. Female DGAT1-deficient mice were protected...
Updated: 2012-01-29 04:35:32
A National Academy of Sciences panel has recommended a four-part research effort focused on preventing and managing any potential health and environmental risks of nanomaterials.
Updated: 2012-01-28 04:16:04
Science recently hosted a live chat event with researchers Aubrey de Grey and S. Jay Olshansky, public figures who have debated their views on longevity science a number of times over the last seven years or so. The logs and viewer comments from the event remain available for those interested in viewing the discussion, but note that it takes a little while for the widget containing them to load. Live Chat: The Science of Antiaging Jennifer Couzin-Frankel: And here's a question from Roy: Does the paper titled "Clearance of p16 positive senescent cells delays ageing-associate disorder" published in Nature January,...
Updated: 2012-01-27 14:02:23
From the Independent: "It is one of medicine's mysteries: what has caused Britain's plummeting rate of heart disease over the last decade? Deaths from heart attacks have halved since 2002 and no one is quite sure why. Similar changes have occurred in countries around the world but the death rate in England, especially, has fallen further and faster than almost anywhere. ... The researchers looked at 840,000 men and women in England who had suffered a total of 861,000 heart attacks between 2002 and 2010. Overall, the death rates fell by 50 per cent in men and 53 per cent...
Updated: 2012-01-27 13:21:48
Here is an open access PDF format mini-review on what is known of growth hormone and aging - that less of it is generally better: "A recent report of virtually complete protection from diabetes and cancer in a population of people with hereditary dwarfism revived interest in elucidating the relationships between growth, adult body size, age-related disease and longevity. In many species, smaller individuals outlive those that are larger and a similar relationship was shown in studies of various human populations. Adult body size is strongly dependent on the actions of growth hormone (GH) and the absence of GH or...
Updated: 2012-01-26 14:00:35
Here is another example of work on creating patient-specific cells to order, one of the necessary building block technologies needed for an industry that constructs organs and other larger masses of tissue in the body: researchers have "discovered a method of generating different types of vascular smooth muscle cells (SMCs) - the cells which make up the walls of blood vessels - using cells from patients' skin. ... Cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death in the world. These deaths are mainly caused by the hardening and subsequent blockage of blood vessels due to the accumulation of fatty materials,...
Updated: 2012-01-26 13:16:20
The principle use of stem cells in the near future is actually research, not therapy - generating diseased cells to order will lower the cost of better understanding the mechanisms of disease and age-related conditions. For example: "scientists have, for the first time, created stem cell-derived, in vitro models of sporadic and hereditary Alzheimer's disease (AD), using induced pluripotent stem cells from patients with the much-dreaded neurodegenerative disorder. ... It's a first step. These aren't perfect models. They're proof of concept. But now we know how to make them. It requires extraordinary care and diligence, really rigorous quality controls to...
Updated: 2012-01-26 01:51:48
This year's Buck Symposium, an event hosted by the Buck Institute for Research on Aging, will be held on March 1st. The Institute is very much a part of the mainstream of biogerontology, wherein frank talk of extending human life span is rare, and the public relations tends to focus on age-related diseases and length of healthy life within the current human life span: At the Buck Institute, world-class scientists work in a uniquely collaborative environment to understand how normal aging contributes to the development of conditions specifically associated with getting older such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease, cancer, stroke,...
Updated: 2012-01-25 13:27:15
An interview with a researcher: "Advances in the study of stem cells have fueled hopes that someday, via regenerative medicine, doctors could restore aging people's hearts, livers, brains and other organs and tissues to a more youthful state. A key to reaching this goal - to be able to provide stem cells that will differentiate into other types of cells a patient needs - appears to lie in understanding 'epigenetics,' which involves chemical marks stapled onto DNA and its surrounding protein husk by specialized enzyme complexes inside a cell's nucleus. These markings produce long-lasting changes in genes' activity levels within...
Updated: 2012-01-23 17:35:49
Human life after advanced nanotechnology has been developed will be fundamentally different from life up until that point.
Updated: 2012-01-09 00:55:02
Institute for Evidence Based Cryonics Skip to content Home About Organization What is cryonics Evidence Based Cryonics Scientists’ Open Letter on Cryonics Mailing Lists Sitemap The 2011 Calorie Restriction Society Conference Annotated bibliography of cryoprotectant toxicity Posted on January 8, 2012 by Aschwin de Wolf Introduction Cryoprotectant toxicity should be distinguished from other mechanisms of cryopreservation injury such as chilling injury injury produced by too low temperatures as such and cold shock  injury produced by rapid cooling Cryoprotectant toxicity itself can again be divided into general cryoprotectant toxicity and specific cryoprotectant toxicity General cryoprotectant toxicity involves concentration water substitution effects of cryoprotectants and specific
Updated: 2011-12-30 20:51:56
A four-step unidirectional molecular motor driven by light and temperature changes catalyzes different chemical reactions at different steps of its rotary cycle.
Updated: 2011-12-29 21:27:44
A tutorial review available after free registration presents a theory-based exploration of the difficulty in moving from simple molecular switches to arrays of artificial molecular machines capable to doing substantial, useful external work.
