Harvard May Have Pinpointed The Source Of Human Consciousness

Different ways to achieve the same goal

via: Science, Critical Thinking and Skepticism

Why scientists are rooting for mushrooms

Mushrooms are the organisms that keep on giving. They grow and feed the soil by breaking down organic matter. For centuries, they’ve also been a staple in our diet. 

Recently, people have started taking a closer look at mushrooms, and more specifically, mycelium — the hidden root of mushrooms — as an engineering material to produce goods like surfboards, packaging materials, furniture and even architecture.

As far as natural materials go, there’s never been anything as versatile and cost-effective as fungi, says Sonia Travaglini, a doctoral candidate in mechanical engineering at UC Berkeley, who is collaborating with artist and mycologist Philip Ross to unlock the seemingly infinite potential of fungi.

Mycelium can grow into any shape or size (the largest in the world blankets an entire forest in Oregon). They can be engineered to be as hard and strong as wood or brick, as soft and squishy as foam, or even smooth and flexible, like fabric. 

Unlike other natural materials, mushrooms can rely on their recycling properties to break down organic matter so you can grow a lot of it very quickly and cheaply just by feeding it biodegradable waste. In as little as two weeks, you can cultivate a hunk of mushroom that’s brick-sized.

That mycelium actually takes in waste and carbon dioxide as it grows (one species of fungi even eats plastic trash) instead of expelling byproducts makes it far superior to other forms of production.

Plus, when you’re done with mushroom, you can compost it or break up the material to grow more mycelium from it.

“And, unlike forming synthetic materials, which have to be made while very hot or under pressure, all of which takes a lot of energy to create those conditions, mycology materials grow from mushrooms which grow in our normal habitat, so it’s much less energy-intensive,” said Travaglini.

In the lab, Travaglini and other researchers crush, compress, stretch, pull and bend mycelium to test the amount of force the material can tolerate.   

They found that mycelium is incredibly strong and can withstand a lot of compression and tension.

Most materials are only strong from one direction. But mycology materials are tough from all directions and can absorb a lot force without breaking. So it can withstand as much weight as a brick, but won’t shatter when you drop it or when it experiences a hard impact, said Travaglini. 

As one of the newer organisms receiving an application in biomimetics, a field of science that looks to imitate nature’s instinctive designs to find sustainable solutions and innovation, we might be getting merely a glimpse of what fungi is capable of.

“Mycology is still a whole new field of research, we’re still finding more questions and still really don’t know where it’s going to go, which makes it really exciting,” said Travaglini.

Image sources: Vice UK/Mazda & Pearson Prentice Hall

Who is more humble? The scientist who looks at the universe with an open mind and accepts whatever the universe has to teach us, or somebody who says everything in this book must be considered the literal truth and never mind the fallibility of all the human beings involved?

Carl Sagan

Neuroscientist captures an MRI of a mother and child

Professor Rebecca Saxe (MIT) has taken the first ever MR image of a mother and child. 

“This picture is an MR image of a mother and a child that I made in my lab at MIT. You might see it as sweet and touching… an image of universal love. We can’t see clothes or hairstyles or even skin colour. From what we do see, the biology and the brains, this could be any mother and child or even father and child at any time and place in history; having an experience that any human can recognise.

Or you might see it as disturbing, a reminder that our human bodies are much too fragile as houses for ourselves. MRI’s are usually medical images and often bad news. Each white spot in that picture is a blood vessel that could clog, each tiny fold of those brains could harbour a tumour. The baby’s brain maybe looks particularly vulnerable pressed against the soft thin shell of its skull.

I see those things, universal emotions and frightening fragility but I also see one of the most amazing transformations in biology.”

Quotes have been taken from a TEDx talk given by Professor Saxe explaining the story behind the above picture.

history meme (french edition) → 7 inventions/achievements (2/7) the first vaccine for rabies by Louis Pasteur & Émile Roux

“Pasteur had, in the early 1880s, a vaccine for rabies, but he was a chemist and not a licensed physician, and potentially liable if he injured or killed a human being. In early july 1885, Joseph Meister, a nine year-old-boy, had been badly mauled and bitten by a rabid dog (…). Pasteur injected young Meister with his rabies vaccine: the boy did not develop rabies and recovered fully from his injuries. Pasteur became a hero, and the Parisian Institue which came to be named in his honour, and of which he was the first director, became the global prototype bacteriological and immunological research institute. By demonstrating beyond doubt that many diseases were transmitted by bacteria and could be prevented from becoming active by pasteurization techniques, Pasteur indeed changed the course of history.” – G. L. Geison, The Private Science of Louis Pasteur.

Quote by #rosalindfranklin How do you make science a part of your life? What are you doing to fight for scientific literacy? More quotes and questions in my #ilovescience journal. #womeninscience #scientificliteracy

Swarms of magnetic bacteria could be used to deliver drugs to tumors 

Researchers funded in part by the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (NIBIB) have recently shown that magnetic bacteria are a promising vehicle for more efficiently delivering tumor-fighting drugs. They reported their results in the August 2016 issue of Nature Nanotechnology.

Ouajdi Felfoul, Mahmood Mohammadi, Samira Taherkhani, Dominic de Lanauze, Yong Zhong Xu, Dumitru Loghin, Sherief Essa, Sylwia Jancik, Daniel Houle, Michel Lafleur, Louis Gaboury, Maryam Tabrizian, Neila Kaou, Michael Atkin, Té Vuong, Gerald Batist, Nicole Beauchemin, Danuta Radzioch, Sylvain Martel. Magneto-aerotactic bacteria deliver drug-containing nanoliposomes to tumour hypoxic regions. Nature Nanotechnology, 2016; DOI: 10.1038/nnano.2016.137

Illustration showing magnetic bacteria delivering drugs to a tumor. Credit: NanoRobotics Laboratory, Polytechnique Montreal

Scientists just discovered we've been looking at cancer growth all wrong

This could change everything.

A new study has found evidence that brain tumours use fat as their preferred source of energy, bringing into question the decades-long assumption that sugar is their main fuel source.

If confirmed, this could fundamentally change the we treat cancer in the future, because until very recently, scientists have been focussing their efforts on ways to starve cancer cells of their sugar supply.

“For 60 years, we have believed all tumours rely on sugars for their energy source, and the brain relies on sugars for its energy source, so you certainly would think brain tumours would,” lead researcher Elizabeth Stoll, a neuroscientist from Newcastle University in the UK, told Ian Johnston at The Independent.

Read more…

Steve Gentleman, a neuropathologist, demonstrates the process of brain dissection and preservation for research.