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This page shows you the most recent publications within this specialty of the MedWorm directory.

Telomere Length: Cause of Aging or Marker of Aging?
Telomeres are repeating sequences of nucleic acids that cap the ends of chromosomes in the cell nucleus and stop actual gene-coding DNA from being chopped off when a cell divides. The mechanisms of DNA replication require extra leg room at the ends of the strand, a trailing sequence that is not copied over to the new strand under assembly - and the primary role of telomeres is to be the part that is dropped on the floor. A little of their length is thus lost with every cell division. This shortening acts as a clock to count cell divisions, and cells with very short telomeres stop replicating - they either enter cellular se...
Source: Fight Aging! - May 14, 2013 Category: Health Medicine and Bioethics Commentators Authors: Reason Tags: Medicine, Biotech, Research Source Type: blogs

PAML Invests in CellNetix, a Provider of Esoteric AP Services
PAML has invested in CellNetix, an esoteric anatomic pathology esoteric lab (see: Esoteric Anatomic Pathology Testing Is Goal of New Pact between PAML and CellNetix). Here are more details from this note in the Dark Daily: [The] agreement calls for both parties to collaborate in offering esoteric and reference anatomic pathology services nationally. It is an effort to align their clinical laboratory and anatomic pathology services to the evolving needs of hospitals, physicians and other providers....The two companies ...stated that they entered into an agreement to work together to form a “jointly owned national Esoteric...
Source: Lab Soft News - May 7, 2013 Category: Pathologists Authors: Bruce Friedman Tags: Clinical Lab Industry News Clinical Lab Testing Laboratory Industry Trends Surgical Pathology Source Type: blogs

Trying to sort out all the STEM and STEM related departments, graduate programs , at #UCDavis
Well, I was in a meeting yesterday for the UC Davis ADVANCE program. This program is an NSF funded project to improve presence of women and underrepresented minorities on the faculty in Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM). So I decided to see - how many departments at UC Davis might participate in such an initiative. And, well, wow. I knew there were a lot of STEM or STEM-related departments at UC Davis but I did not know there were this many. Here is a list I compiled of UC Davis STEM or STEM-related Departments. I included medical departments here since many people in such...
Source: The Tree of Life - April 27, 2013 Category: Medical Scientists Authors: Jonathan Eisen Source Type: blogs

Guest post: Kevin Carpenter on his new microbial photo exhibit at the Exploratorium in SF #SoCool
Special guest post from Kevin Carpenter who has microbe photos featured at the Exploratorium. One of my colleagues who does research on the microbes that live in the hindguts of lower termites once remarked that interesting organisms can be found in the most unusual of places. And the lower termite hindgut, by almost anyone’s estimation, is certainly an unusual place. It is also a fascinating place for anyone interested in biology, ecology, evolution, biochemistry, or beautiful natural forms and patterns. Since my undergraduate days in the early 90s, I have had a deep interest in the tree of life, especially eukaryote...
Source: The Tree of Life - April 24, 2013 Category: Medical Scientists Authors: Jonathan Eisen Source Type: blogs

Pseudoenzymes: Back From the Dead as Targets?
There's a possible new area for drug discovery that's coming from a very unexpected source: enzymes that don't do anything. About ten years ago, when the human genome was getting its first good combing-through, one of the first enzyme categories to get the full treatment were the kinases. But about ten per cent of them, on closer inspection, seemed to lack one or more key catalytic residues, leaving them with no known way to be active. They were dubbed (with much puzzlement) "pseudokinases", with their functions, if any, unknown. As time went on and sequences piled up, the same situation was found for a number of other en...
Source: In the Pipeline - April 23, 2013 Category: Chemists Tags: Biological News Source Type: blogs

Super-Enhancers in Cell Biology: ENCODE's Revenge?
I've linked to some very skeptical takes on the ENCODE project, the effort that supposedly identified 80% of our DNA sequence as functional to some degree. I should present some evidence for the other side, though, as it comes up, and some may have come up. Two recent papers in Cell tell the story. The first proposes "super-enhancers" as regulators of gene transcription. (Here's a brief summary of both). These are clusters of known enhancer sequences, which seem to recruit piles of transcription factors, and act differently from the single-enhancer model. The authors show evidence that these are involved in cell different...
Source: In the Pipeline - April 18, 2013 Category: Chemists Tags: Biological News Source Type: blogs

Two-Component Systems in Bacteria review
Excerpt from a book review of Two-Component Systems in Bacteria:"The literature on this area of research is remarkable and confusing for the non-specialist. This volume edited by Roy Gross and Dagmar Beier is a clear landmark. A top-class science, international team of authors presents in 18 chapters the latest developments in the field of two-component regulatory systems, from genetics through the biochemistry and cell biology to structural biology. I have read with great profit the excellently written and carefully edited contributions. I recommend this book to every student and senior scientist who is inte...
Source: Microbiology Blog: The weblog for microbiologists. - April 12, 2013 Category: Microbiology Tags: Microbiology Book Reviews Bacteriology Book Reviews Molecular Biology Book Reviews Environmental Microbiology Book Reviews Bacterial Regulation Publications Source Type: blogs

Henrietta Lacks (HeLa) genome sequence published then withdrawn
Earlier this month the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) published the DNA sequence of the genome of HeLa cells, the cell line that is widely used for research in virology, cell biology, and many other areas. This cell line was produced from a tumor taken from Henrietta Lacks in 1951. Unfortunately the EMBL did not receive permission from Ms. Lacks’ family to publish her genome sequence, and have withdrawn the information from public databases. The history of HeLa cells has been well chronicled in Johns Hopkins Magazine and by Rebecca Skloot in The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. In early 1951, Ms. Lac...
Source: virology blog - March 27, 2013 Category: Virology Authors: Vincent Racaniello Tags: Events Information DNA EMBL genome HeLa cells henrietta lacks Immortal Life patient data privacy rebecca skloot viral virology virus Source Type: blogs

What Is This Thing Called Neuroscience?
"It depends upon what the meaning of the word 'is' is." -President Bill Clinton, August 17, 1998image: Brain electrodes, by laimagendelmundoDr. Vaughan Bell at Mind Hacks wrote a terrific post on The history of the birth of neuroculture as a follow-up to his Observer piece on Folk Neuroscience. That article explained how neuro talk has invaded many aspects of everyday discourse. In the new post he briefly covers the history of modern neuroscience, a necessary prelude to contemporary neuroculture:Neuroscience itself is actually quite new. Although the brain, behaviour and the nervous system have been studied for millen...
Source: The Neurocritic - March 11, 2013 Category: Psychiatrists and Psychologists Authors: The Neurocritic Source Type: blogs

Welcome Back!
It's a warm, sunny day today. Spring is finally here, from the looks of things. That means it's time for a new beginning. On my way home from work last night, I stopped for a drink with an old friend of mine. When I say old... I've known this friend since we were kids. I can't remember a time when I didn't know him. We were joined by two of his other friends, who I was meeting for the first time. When I first meet people, and they ask what I do, my answer evokes either a blank look, a look of pity, or a lot of questions. Thankfully, this time I got questions. The two most common ques...
Source: Doctor David's Blog - March 9, 2013 Category: Oncologists Tags: Being a Pediatric Oncologist Patient Stories Source Type: blogs

Cleaning out the inbox
I've gotten a couple of press releases lately, which I usually ignore because I don't like to be told what to write about, if you know what I mean, but these I do commend to your attention.This Time Magazine article by Steven Brill has gotten some coverage in the blogosphere, but it won't hurt to link it here as well. The general idea is that hospitals and other health care provider institutions don't tell you ahead of time what prices they will charge, and a lot of those prices end up looking totally outrageous. They also vary enormously, and seemingly arbitrarily. Insurance companies, which you would think would have a l...
Source: Stayin' Alive - February 21, 2013 Category: Health Medicine and Bioethics Commentators Source Type: blogs

Role of Excisional lymph node biopsy, Core needle biopsy and FNAC in Lymphoma diagnosis
The newly developed and more sophisticated techniques for analysis of lymphoma cells have provided us with the tools necessary for precise classification of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Nonetheless, routine histologic studies remain the gold standard for diagnosis. Excisional Biopsy A well-processed hematoxylin and eosin (H&E) stained section of an excised lymph node is the mainstay of pathologic diagnosis. Most often, the diagnosis of difficult lesions relies heavily on a careful assessment of the underlying architecture. Lymphoma diagnoses are much less about cytologic detail and far more about altered archite...
Source: Oncopathology - January 29, 2013 Category: Pathologists Tags: FNAC lymph node biopsy lymphoma core boiopsy. Source Type: blogs

Bacterial Toxins
Thomas Proft presents a new book on Bacterial Toxins: Genetics, Cellular Biology and Practical Applications This timely volume serves as an update on the most important recent advances in the genetics, cellular biology and practical applications of the most important bacterial toxins. Written by internationally respected scientists from eight different countries, topics reviewed include: the molecular basis and risk factors for verotoxin pathogenesis; molecular mechanisms of Helicobacter pylori CagA translocation and function; structure and mechanisms of action of pore-forming toxins; bacterial enterotoxins as immunomodula...
Source: Microbiology Blog: The weblog for microbiologists. - January 25, 2013 Category: Microbiology Tags: Microbiology publications Bacteriology publications Molecular Biology publications Source Type: blogs

An Upgrade to the Pap Smear: PapGene (Interview)
More than 69,000 American women were diagnosed with endometrial or ovarian cancer this past year. When caught early, these diseases are generally very treatable. Yet, 23,000 women in the US and nearly 10 times that worldwide die each year in part because of late-stage detection.Named after Greek physician Georgios Papanikolaou, the Pap smear is a common screening test used to detect cancerous cells in the endocervical canal. Since its official introduction in the early 1940s, the Pap smear has reduced the incidence and mortality of cervical cancer in screened populations by an unbelievable 75 percent! Because of this, fema...
Source: Medgadget - January 16, 2013 Category: Technology Consultants Authors: Shiv Gaglani Tags: in the news... Medgadget Exclusive Ob/Gyn Source Type: blogs

When bone grows in your eye socket
There is a brutal story in Scientific American about a US woman who could not open her right eye as bone grew in her eye socket following a stem cell cosmetic treatment. In this case the doctors extracted mesenchymal stem cells—which can turn into bone, cartilage or fat, among other tissues—and injected those cells back into her face, especially around her eyes. During the face-lift her clinicians had also injected some dermal filler, which plastic surgeons have safely used for more than 20 years to reduce the appearance of wrinkles. The principal component of such fillers is calcium hydroxylapatite, a mineral with whi...
Source: ScienceRoll - January 7, 2013 Category: Geneticists and Genetics Commentators Authors: Dr. Bertalan Meskó Tags: Health Medicine Source Type: blogs

Squeezing Breast Cancer Cells Reverts Them to Normal
Cancer researchers have been using a myriad of techniques to attack tumor cells with varying success. Professor Mina Bissell of UC Berkeley and her team discovered that whether a cell becomes a cancer cell depends on the nature of its nearby environment.Following up on that work, in collaboration with Daniel Fletcher’s Berkeley lab, they showed that a bit of mechanical pressure applied to breast cancer tumor cells led them to revert to healthy breast tissue. The findings were presented this Monday at the annual meeting of the American Society for Cell Biology in San Francisco. The researchers also point out that th...
Source: Medgadget - December 19, 2012 Category: Technology Consultants Authors: Gene Ostrovsky Tags: in the news... Oncology Source Type: blogs

Squish the life out of them
This study was presented at the American Society for Cell Biology in San Francisco recently so it wasn't done by Dr Jekyll with Igor as an assistant in the dungeon basement of an Eastern European castle.Before you channel a mammogram machine gone bad, its done at the cell level.Venugopalan and collaborators grew malignant breast epithelial cells in a gelatin-like substance that had been injected into flexible silicone chambers. The flexible chambers allowed the researchers to apply a compressive force in the first stages of cell development.Over time, the compressed malignant cells grew into more organized, healthy-looking...
Source: Caroline's Breast Cancer Blog - December 18, 2012 Category: Cancer Tags: cancer treatment breast cancer cancer research Source Type: blogs

Patient-Specific Cells On Order Without Cloning
The Scientist is calling a service called MyCell offered by Cellular Dynamics International (CDI) one of the top ten innovations of 2012. With MyCell Services, a researcher can send in a blood sample of a patient and get back a cell type of choice. MyCell Services uses induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC) technology to reprogram the patient's cell back to a pluripotent state and from there CDI can differentiate those iPS cells into the cell type the researchers requests. From The Scientist:Now, Cellular Dynamics International (CDI) is utilizing that technology to offer, via the companys MyCell Services, iPSC lines from a...
Source: Mary Meets Dolly - December 10, 2012 Category: Geneticists and Genetics Commentators Tags: Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells Source Type: blogs

Exercise and the heart — keep it simple
Exercise is a white-hot topic. We must talk more. This comment on my Facebook page only strengthened my resolve to clarify things. Not to be flip, snarky (or for that matter even just plain dense) but part of me is asking what’s the point of this? It brings up far more questions than it answers. In the end, we race bikes (with all the attendant risks whatever they may be). What am I supposed to do with _this_?” I’m here to tell you that exercise is not confusing; it’s easy. You just can’t over-think it. The too much exercise issue: The now famous WSJ article, One Running Shoe in the Grave, finally succeed...
Source: Dr John M - December 6, 2012 Category: Cardiology Authors: Dr John Source Type: blogs

Case of the Week 235
This week's case is a bit challenging.The following objects were seen in a Papanicolaou-stained endocervical preparation by the screening cytologist and brought to the microbiology lab for identification. They measure approximately 8-10 micrometers in diameter. The woman is asymptomatic. (shown at 1000 times original magnification) Identification? (Source: Creepy Dreadful Wonderful Parasites)
Source: Creepy Dreadful Wonderful Parasites - December 3, 2012 Category: Pathologists Source Type: blogs

Investigating the Agelessness of Hydra
Hydra are one of the few ageless species, or at least a good candidate for such: researchers have watched populations age for years with no signs of increased mortality rates or declining pace of reproduction. One might view these creatures as an incremental step up from bacteria or yeast: multicellular animals that can reproduce asexually via budding, and which are extremely proficient at regeneration. One line of thought regarding the agelessness of hydra is that they simply consistently and relentlessly renew all the tissues in their body, which is accomplished by having very many stem cells that don't decline over tim...
Source: Fight Aging! - November 13, 2012 Category: Health Medicine and Bioethics Commentators Authors: Reason Tags: Medicine, Biotech, Research Source Type: blogs

New cell type developed for possible treatment of Alzheimer’s :: UC Irvine TODAY
UC Irvine researchers have created a new stem cell-derived cell type with unique promise for treating neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s. Dr. Edwin Monuki of UCI’s Sue & Bill Gross Stem Cell Research Center, developmental & cell biology graduate student Momoko Watanabe and colleagues developed these cells — called choroid plexus epithelial cells — from [...] (Source: Biosingularity)
Source: Biosingularity - November 11, 2012 Category: Medical Scientists Authors: Derya Tags: Biotechnology Source Type: blogs

Microbiology Conferences 2013
January 2013 January 09 - 09, 2013 SFAM Winter Meeting London, UK Further information January 12 - 13, 2013 Immunology of Fungal Infections Galveston, TX, USA Further information January 13 - 18, 2013 Immunology of Fungal Infections Galveston, TX, USA Further information January 19 - 20, 2013 Physical Virology Ventura, CA, USA Further information January 20 - 25, 2013 Physical Virology Ventura, CA, USA Further information January 20 - 25, 2013 Malaria New Orleans, Louisiana, USA Further information January 20 - 25, 2013 Genomics and Clinical Microbiology Hinxton, Cambridge, UK Further information January 26 - 27, 2013 Geob...
Source: Microbiology Blog: The weblog for microbiologists. - November 9, 2012 Category: Microbiology Tags: Microbiology Conferences Source Type: blogs

Fight Aging! Newsletter, November 5th 2012
This study demonstrates that - in the case of certain populations of brain cells - we now understand the cell biology and the mechanisms necessary to control cell division and generate an almost endless supply of cells." The study focuses on cells called glial progenitor cells (GPCs) that are found in the white matter of the human brain. These stem cells give rise to two cells found in the central nervous system: oligodendrocytes, which produce myelin, the fatty tissue that insulates the connections between cells; and astrocytes, cells that are critical to the health and signaling function of oligodendrocytes as well as ne...
Source: Fight Aging! - November 4, 2012 Category: Health Medicine and Bioethics Commentators Authors: Reason Tags: Newsletters Source Type: blogs

Creating Myelin-Producing Cells to Order
This study demonstrates that - in the case of certain populations of brain cells - we now understand the cell biology and the mechanisms necessary to control cell division and generate an almost endless supply of cells." The study focuses on cells called glial progenitor cells (GPCs) that are found in the white matter of the human brain. These stem cells give rise to two cells found in the central nervous system: oligodendrocytes, which produce myelin, the fatty tissue that insulates the connections between cells; and astrocytes, cells that are critical to the health and signaling function of oligodendrocytes as well as n...
Source: Fight Aging! - November 2, 2012 Category: Health Medicine and Bioethics Commentators Authors: Reason Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs

Considering Antagonistic Pleiotropy
Antagonistic pleiotropy describes a situation in which a gene provides both benefit and drawback under different circumstances. In evolutionary considerations of aging the usual context for this situation is that a gene is selected because it provides competitive advantages in youth, when reproduction is taking place, and then becomes harmful later in life when evolutionary pressure is much reduced. Here researchers take a measure of the prevalence of this phenomenon in yeast: The genes responsible for inherited diseases are clearly bad for us, so why hasn't evolution, over time, weeded them out and eliminated them from t...
Source: Fight Aging! - October 31, 2012 Category: Health Medicine and Bioethics Commentators Authors: Reason Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs

UC Merced Prof of Biostatistics
The University of California, Merced is a dynamic new university campus in Merced, California, which opened in September 2005 as the tenth campus of the University of California and the first American research university in the 21st century. In keeping with the mission of the University to provide teaching, research and public service of the highest quality, UC Merced offers research-centered and student-oriented educational opportunities at the undergraduate, master’s and doctoral levels through three academic schools: Engineering, Natural Sciences and Social Sciences/Humanities/Arts. http://jobs.ucmerced.edu/n/acad...
Source: Fungal Genomes and Comparative Genomics - October 12, 2012 Category: Geneticists and Genetics Commentators Authors: Jason Stajich Tags: jobs biostatistics california faculty job genomics Source Type: blogs

Stem Cell Niches For Immune Cells Decline With Aging
Every tissue in the body has its corresponding population of stem cells or other progenitor cells that renew and repair it. These cells reside in a stem cell niche, a specialized set of cells that form an environment to regulate and control stem cell behavior. As the research community learns more, it is becoming apparent that changes and damage in the stem cell niche contributes more to the decline of stem cell function with age than any damage to the stem cells themselves. Research along these lines tends to proceed cell type by cell type, however, and it's not always useful to generalize what is learned in muscle - per...
Source: Fight Aging! - October 8, 2012 Category: Health Medicine and Bioethics Commentators Authors: Reason Tags: Medicine, Biotech, Research Source Type: blogs

Reprogramming cells to be pluripotent
The Nobel Assembly at Karolinska Institutet has today decided to awardThe Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2012jointly toJohn B. Gurdon and Shinya Yamanakafor the discovery that mature cells can be reprogrammed to become pluripotentSummaryThe Nobel Prize recognizes two scientists who discovered that mature, specialised cells can be reprogrammed to become immature cells capable of developing into all tissues of the body. Their findings have revolutionised our understanding of how cells and organisms develop.John B. Gurdon discovered in 1962 that the specialisation of cells is reversible. In a classic experiment, h...
Source: The A and P Professor - October 8, 2012 Category: Professors and Educators Authors: Kevin Patton Source Type: blogs

Cytology Loses a Giant
A founding father of cytology and a leader in several prominent medical societies, Leopold G. Koss, MD, FASCP, passed away earlier this month, in New York. He was 92 and worked until the end of his life at Montefiore Medical Center and Albert Einstein...(read more) (Source: ADVANCE Discourse: Lab)
Source: ADVANCE Discourse: Lab - September 27, 2012 Category: Pathologists Authors: Kerri Penno Source Type: blogs

EMBL Chemical Biology: How Receptors Really Work
The latest talk is from Alanna Schepartz of Yale. I had a chance to ride in from the airport with her yesterday, and she gave me a brief preview of her talk, which is on transport of both molecules and information through the plasma membrane of cells. "Some molecules weren't paying attention when Lipinski's rules came down", she says (Lipinski himself was supposed to be here, but had to cancel at the last minute, BTW). The example here is the EGF receptor. We know a fair amount about the extracellular domain of this protein, and some about the intracellular part. But the "juxtamembrane" portion connecting the two is more ...
Source: In the Pipeline - September 27, 2012 Category: Chemists Tags: Chemical Biology Source Type: blogs

Free the Labels
When you talking assays, "label-free" is a magic phrase. The more thingies you have to stick onto your molecules or targets to see them, the less confidence you'll have that you're actually looking at the system the way you really wanted to see it: as if you weren't looking at it at all. And while we're not quite quantum mechanics, the observer effect is very real in molecular and cell biology - too many interesting techniques perturb the system in the process of reading out. And there are no perfect label-free assays, otherwise we'd all be using them. In vitro, NMR can tell you an awful lot, but it can require an awful l...
Source: In the Pipeline - September 26, 2012 Category: Chemists Tags: Drug Assays Source Type: blogs

Archived Cyto-econferences Available from ASC
Archived Cyto-econference Available Beyond Diagnostic Error! Tips for Avoiding the Medicolegal Morass in Cytopathology Everyone is aware of the medicolegal impact of a false negative Pap test, and cytologists implement quality assurance practices to minimize these errors. There are other... (Source: Digital Pathology Blog)
Source: Digital Pathology Blog - September 26, 2012 Category: Pathologists Authors: Kaps Source Type: blogs

Leopold Koss, MD Passes Away
Leopold G. Koss MD, passed away at his home in New York City, September 11, 2012. Born in Gdansk, Poland in 1920, Leo (as he was known to all who loved him) miraculously survived the Holocaust and became a refugee in Switzerland where he finished the medical studies he had started in Vienna before the War and continued in Brussels and Montpellier. When he arrived in New York in 1947 with his wife and baby son and $20 in his pocket, he spoke no English. Yet, with his prodigious intellect and devotion to science, he rose to the top of his field in his adopted country. He was a pioneer in the field of Cytopathology and was th...
Source: Digital Pathology Blog - September 15, 2012 Category: Pathologists Authors: Kaps Source Type: blogs

Hamamatsu - Redefining the art of whole-slide imaging
Virtual Microscopy / NanoZoomer - Products - NanoZoomer-XR Hassle-free Perfect scans at a touch of a button. After slides are loaded, running a batch of slides is virtually hands-free. Scanning profiles can be set up for multiple types and/or users. New viewer software, NDP.View2, speeds and simplifies slide viewing. Error-free Robust mechanics and optics keep the NanoZoomer error-free and stable. NanoZoomer-XR optimizes scanning conditions to ensure users get the best digital images whenever they scan. Blur-free Dynamic Pre-Focusing technology (patent pending) maintains a sharp focus on the...
Source: Digital Pathology Blog - September 11, 2012 Category: Pathologists Authors: Kaps Source Type: blogs

Does Brain Fitness Require Medicalization? Insights @ 2012 SharpBrains Virtual Summit
Discussion returned several times to the issue of the extent to which applied neuroscience should, or should not be, tied to the traditional disciplines and delivery models of healthcare. One aspect of this question is the increasing rejection of the often arbitrary categorical distinction between illness and wellness, a product of medicine’s historic focus on categorical diagnosis. This issue is playing out in many different ways, for both scientific and practical reasons. Within the scientific community it’s increasingly agreed that although diagnostic categories can be a useful tool, they can also distort our unders...
Source: SharpBrains - August 30, 2012 Category: Neurologists Authors: Dr. Philip Toman Tags: Cognitive Neuroscience Health & Wellness Technology big data brain brain health monitoring Brain-Fitness Brain-health Brain-Training Cognitive-functions dementia EEG healthcare medicalization mental-illness neuroplasticity Source Type: blogs

Does Brain Fitness Require Medicalization? Reflections @ 2012 SharpBrains Virtual Summit
Discussion returned several times to the issue of the extent to which applied neuroscience should, or should not be, tied to the traditional disciplines and delivery models of healthcare. One aspect of this question is the increasing rejection of the often arbitrary categorical distinction between illness and wellness, a product of medicine’s historic focus on categorical diagnosis. This issue is playing out in many different ways, for both scientific and practical reasons. Within the scientific community it’s increasingly agreed that although diagnostic categories can be a useful tool, they can also distort our unders...
Source: SharpBrains - August 30, 2012 Category: Neurologists Authors: Dr. Philip Toman Tags: Cognitive Neuroscience Health & Wellness Technology big data brain brain health monitoring Brain-Fitness Brain-health Brain-Training Cognitive-functions dementia EEG healthcare medicalization mental-illness neuroplasticity Source Type: blogs

Brehm Coalition to Shake Diabetes Research Up; Putting Science 2.0 into Action
At the beginning of this year (2012), I shared a New York Times article entitled "Cracking Open the Scientific Process" (see that article at http://nyti.ms/PjKZpS). That share seemed to encourage my friend Manny Hernandez (founder of the Diabetes Hands Foundation/TuDiabetes and EsTuDiabetes, catch his post HERE) to come out of his personal blogging hiatus.That New York Times article wrote about the 200th anniversary of the New England Journal of Medicine this year. However, although the traditional scientific process still works, it is agonizingly slow, hence it's not really cause for celebration. To use ...
Source: Scott's Web Log - August 27, 2012 Category: Diabetes Authors: Scott S Source Type: blogs

Brehm Coalition to Shake Diabetes Research Up; Putting Science 2.0 Put into Action
At the beginning of this year (2012), I shared a New York Times article entitled "Cracking Open the Scientific Process" (see that article at http://nyti.ms/PjKZpS). That share seemed to encourage my friend Manny Hernandez (founder of the Diabetes Hands Foundation/TuDiabetes and EsTuDiabetes) to come out of his personal blogging hiatus.That New York Times article wrote about the 200th anniversary of the New England Journal of Medicine this year. However, although the traditional scientific process still works, it is agonizingly slow, hence it's not really cause for celebration. To use an analogy, typing pa...
Source: Scott's Web Log - August 27, 2012 Category: Diabetes Authors: Scott S Source Type: blogs

Fight Aging! Newsletter, August 27th 2012
This study reports the therapeutic potential of AFS cell transplantation in stroke animals, possibly via enhancement of endogenous repair mechanisms." INVESTIGATING THE GENE NETWORK OF CALORIE RESTRICTION Thursday, August 23, 2012 http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2012/08/investigating-the-gene-network-of-calorie-restriction.php Research into the detailed mechanisms of calorie restriction continues apace: "Dietary restriction (DR), limiting nutrient intake from diet without causing malnutrition, delays the aging process and extends lifespan in multiple organisms. The conserved life-extending effect of DR suggests the inv...
Source: Fight Aging! - August 26, 2012 Category: Health Medicine and Bioethics Commentators Authors: Reason Tags: Newsletters Source Type: blogs

Nascent Brainmaking
Today I thought I'd point out an interesting article on a Japanese research group that works on tissue engineering of brain and eye structures. There is already considerable specialization in this young field: making headway in deciphering the chemical and gene expression instruction sets for cells and tissue growth is a massive undertaking, and it is different for every type of tissue in the body. There is enough here to keep a growing community of researchers busy for decades yet. Tissue engineering: The brainmaker Yoshiki Sasai, a stem-cell biologist at the RIKEN Center for Developmental Biology in Kobe, Japan, [has] ...
Source: Fight Aging! - August 22, 2012 Category: Health Medicine and Bioethics Commentators Authors: Reason Tags: Medicine, Biotech, Research Source Type: blogs

Police evacuate university campus
UPDATE: Roads are re-opening, suspicious package was not, apparently, a bomb. UPDATE: Jenny Rohn just updated us: “Apparently there is a suspicious package in the Whittington hospital A&E – avoid Archway station and environs if you can, all locked down. ” UPDATE: McDonald’s evacuated. Obviously, no food wasted by those abandoning their “meal”. UPDATE: @HornseyJournal Just updated us: “Rumours of bomb alert at or near Archway Tube station/Whittington Hospital now. Buildings nearby being evacuated. Police helicopter there.” Cell biologist Jenny Rohn just tweeted that ̶...
Source: Sciencebase Science Blog - August 14, 2012 Category: Medical Scientists Authors: David Bradley Tags: Science Source Type: blogs

Making Tumor Cells More Vigorous Through. . .Chemotherapy?
This study has found that noncancerous cells (which are also affected, to various degrees, by most chemotherapy agents) can secrete Wnt16B in response to treatment, and that this protein is taken up by nearby tumor cells. And that's not good. Here's the full paper, which looks at prostate cells. The secretion of the Wnt protein is mediated by NF-kappa-B in response to the DNA damage caused by many therapeutic agents, and it acts as a paracrine signal for the surrounding cells. And the resulting initiation of the Wnt pathway is bad news, because that's already been implicated in tumor cell biology. Here's the bad news slid...
Source: In the Pipeline - August 10, 2012 Category: Chemists Tags: Cancer Source Type: blogs

Zoom tool stitches together thousands of nanoscopic cell images
By Liat Clark Courtesy of WIRED.CO.UK 07 August 12 A team of molecular biologists has published a paper revealing how its "virtual nanoscopy" method creates detailed, high resolution images of cellular structures by "stitching" together thousands of electron microscope photos. Electron microscopes can magnify an image by up to 10 million times using beams of electrons. However, the tool can only be used to either capture a single, detailed image of part of a cell or, at a lower resolution, a less-detailed overview of the cell. There was no way, until now, to relate the one to the other and give a context...
Source: Digital Pathology Blog - August 8, 2012 Category: Pathologists Authors: Kaps Source Type: blogs

Fight Aging! Newsletter, August 6th 2012
In this study, we investigated the effects of age on β-cell function and autophagy in pancreatic islets of 4-month-old (young), 14-month-old (adult), and 24-month-old (old) male Wistar rats. We found that islet β-cell function decreased gradually with age. Protein expression of [autophagy markers] exhibited a marked decline in aged islets. The expression of Lamp-2, a good indicator of autophagic degradation rate, was significantly reduced in the islets of old rats, suggesting that autophagic degradation is decreased in the islets of aged rats. [Markers] of mitochondrial and nuclear DNA oxidative damage exhibited strong i...
Source: Fight Aging! - August 5, 2012 Category: Health Medicine and Bioethics Commentators Authors: Reason Tags: Newsletters Source Type: blogs

SENS Foundation Seeking Lysosomal Biology Team Lead
A research position is open at the SENS Foundation: "SENS Foundation is hiring for our research center located in Mountain View, CA. We are seeking a team lead for our LysoSENS group to work both on established projects and new independent lysosomal-based research geared towards the SENS mission ... Qualified candidates will have a Ph.D. in the chemical/biological sciences and at least 5 years of work experience that must include prior project management experience. Duties will include bench work, management of a small team of lab researchers, the preparation of grant proposals, internal and external progress reports, indi...
Source: Fight Aging! - August 1, 2012 Category: Health Medicine and Bioethics Commentators Authors: Reason Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs

The Dawn of Virtual Cell Biology? Researchers Create First Computer Model of an Organism
Investigators at Stanford University have created the world’s first complete computer model of an organism. Reported in the journal Cell, the team used data from more than 900 scientific manuscripts to incorporate every molecular interaction taking place in the life cycle of Mycoplasma genitalium, the world’s smallest free-living bacterium.Why is this such a profound development? To date, most experiments investigating the inner workings of the cell have relied on gene-knockout studies, which shed light on the inner workings of a single gene. However, according to Marcus Covert, assistant professor of bioe...
Source: Medgadget - July 24, 2012 Category: Technology Consultants Authors: Ravi Parikh Tags: in the news... Source Type: blogs

ASCP CheckSamples in Pathology Informatics Now Available
ASCP Pathology Informatics offers a dynamic solution for self-directed learning. As a multi-purpose tool, this program offers pathologists and laboratory professionals benefits from enabling self-assessment to fulfilling the American Board of Pathology’s (ABP) requirements for Maintenance of Certification as well as CME and CMLE. What's included: Informatics Online Pathology Case Reports (4 Cases, 1.0 hour each) Synoptic Reporting Generate consistent, complete, and standardized pathology reports. An accurate diagnosis with all pertinent information facilitates superior patient management, including reliable tumor st...
Source: Digital Pathology Blog - June 25, 2012 Category: Pathologists Authors: Kaps Source Type: blogs

Why bother with protein folding?
For those of you who use (or refer to) my textbooks, you may notice that I've been gradually adding more and more coverage of protein folding to most of them. My newest text (due out in March) adds a bit more to the story. Why bother? Isn't that way more than beginning students need to know for an A&P course preparing students for health careers?I submit that beginning A&P students should know a bit about protein folding. Knowing the very basic principles of protein folding help students visualize the complex shape of proteins. That, in turn, helps them understand that "it's all about shape" when trying...
Source: The A and P Professor - May 22, 2012 Category: Professors and Educators Authors: Kevin Patton Source Type: blogs