Science-is-magical - Science Is Magic

Graphene-spiked Silly Putty picks up human pulse

'G-putty' is so sensitive that it can track even the steps of a small spider.

A dash of graphene can transform the stretchy goo known as Silly Putty into a pressure sensor able to monitor a human pulse or even track the dainty steps of a small spider1.

The material, dubbed G-putty, could be developed into a device that continuously monitors blood pressure, its inventors hope. It also demonstrates a form of self-repair that may herald smarter graphene composites.

Since graphene was first isolated in 2004, researchers have added these atom-thin sheets of carbon to a panoply of different materials, hoping to create composites that benefit from its superlative strength and electrical conductivity. But there have been surprisingly few attempts to blend it with ‘viscoelastic’ materials such as Silly Putty, which behaves as both an elastic solid and a liquid. Leave a lump on top of a hole, for example, and it will slowly ooze through.

Conor Boland, a researcher working in Jonathan Coleman’s nanotechnology lab at Trinity College Dublin, wondered what would happen if he brought the two materials together. “I’d like to be able to say it was carefully planned, but it wasn’t,” laughs Coleman. “We’ve just got a tradition in my group of using household stuff in our science.” (In 2014, his team found that they could make graphene by blitzing graphite in a kitchen blender2).

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Absence of Serotonin Alters Development and Function of Brain Circuits

Researchers at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine have created the first complete model to describe the role that serotonin plays in brain development and structure. Serotonin, also called 5-hydroxytryptamine [5-HT], is an important neuromodulator of brain development and the structure and function of neuronal (nerve cell) circuits. The results were published in the current issue of The Journal of Neurophysiology online.

“Our goal in the project was to close the gap in knowledge that exists on role of serotonin in the brain cortex, particularly as it concerns brain circuitry, its electrical activity and function,” said Roberto Fernández Galán, PhD, Assistant Professor in the Department of Neurosciences at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine. “For the first time, we can provide a complete description of an animal model from genes to behavior—including at the level of neuronal network activity, which has been ignored in most studies to date.”

Dr. Galán and his team used high-density multi-electrode arrays in a mouse model of serotonin deficiency to record and analyze neuronal activity. The study supports the importance of the serotonin which is specified and maintained by a specific gene, the Pet-1 gene – for normal functioning of the neurons, synapses and networks in the cortex, as well as proper development of brain circuitry. Serotonin abnormalities have been linked to autism and epilepsy, depression and anxiety. By more fully elucidating the role of serotonin in the brain, this study may contribute to a better understanding of the development or treatment of these conditions.

“By looking at the circuit level of the brain, we now have new insight into how the brain becomes wired and sensitive to changing serotonin levels.” added Dr. Galán.

Baby Tortoises Show Up In The Galapagos For The First Time In Over A Century

 There hadn’t been one single baby tortoise sighting in more than a century on the Galapagos Island of Pinzon, until a small group of the tiny, shelled youngsters were spotted this year.

The recent births are helping to pull the critically endangered animals back from the brink of extinction after they were nearly laid to waste as a result of human activity.

This is huge news for a species that has been struggling to survive for a century, relying on humans raising young tortoises bred in captivity until they are large enough to not fall prey to rats and predators.

The Neuroscience of Drumming

According to new neuroscience research, rhythm is rooted in innate functions of the brain, mind, and consciousness. As human beings, we are innately rhythmic. Our relationship with rhythm begins in the womb. At twenty two days, a single (human embryo) cell jolts to life. This first beat awakens nearby cells and incredibly they all begin to beat in perfect unison. These beating cells divide and become our heart. This desire to beat in unison seemingly fuels our entire lives. Studies show that, regardless of musical training, we are innately able to perceive and recall elements of beat and rhythm.

It makes sense then that beat and rhythm are an important aspect in music therapy. Our brains are hard-wired to be able to entrain to a beat. Entrainment occurs when two or more frequencies come into step or in phase with each other. If you are walking down a street and you hear a song, you instinctively begin to step in sync to the beat of the song. This is actually an important area of current music therapy research. Our brain enables our motor system to naturally entrain to a rhythmic beat, allowing music therapists to target rehabilitating movements. Rhythm is a powerful gateway to well-being.

Neurologic Drum Therapy

Neuroscience research has demonstrated the therapeutic effects of rhythmic drumming. The reason rhythm is such a powerful tool is that it permeates the entire brain. Vision for example is in one part of the brain, speech another, but drumming accesses the whole brain. The sound of drumming generates dynamic neuronal connections in all parts of the brain even where there is significant damage or impairment such as in Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD). According to Michael Thaut, director of Colorado State University’s Center for Biomedical Research in Music, “Rhythmic cues can help retrain the brain after a stroke or other neurological impairment, as with Parkinson’s patients ….” The more connections that can be made within the brain, the more integrated our experiences become.

Studies indicate that drumming produces deeper self-awareness by inducing synchronous brain activity. The physical transmission of rhythmic energy to the brain synchronizes the two cerebral hemispheres. When the logical left hemisphere and the intuitive right hemisphere begin to pulsate in harmony, the inner guidance of intuitive knowing can then flow unimpeded into conscious awareness. The ability to access unconscious information through symbols and imagery facilitates psychological integration and a reintegration of self.

In his book, Shamanism: The Neural Ecology of Consciousness and Healing, Michael Winkelman reports that drumming also synchronizes the frontal and lower areas of the brain, integrating nonverbal information from lower brain structures into the frontal cortex, producing “feelings of insight, understanding, integration, certainty, conviction, and truth, which surpass ordinary understandings and tend to persist long after the experience, often providing foundational insights for religious and cultural traditions.”

It requires abstract thinking and the interconnection between symbols, concepts, and emotions to process unconscious information. The human adaptation to translate an inner experience into meaningful narrative is uniquely exploited by drumming. Rhythmic drumming targets memory, perception, and the complex emotions associated with symbols and concepts: the principal functions humans rely on to formulate belief. Because of this exploit, the result of the synchronous brain activity in humans is the spontaneous generation of meaningful information which is imprinted into memory. Drumming is an effective method for integrating subjective experience into both physical space and the cultural group.

The most famous satellites in history have ballooned to epic proportions.

Info Post #1: What is DNA?

This is the first of thirteen more in-depth write-ups I have planned out for this year. The list (which is not set in stone!) can be found here.

I decided to do these as a way to get more information out to the readers here without having to delve into one specific ask or series of questions. I can imagine that these might create more questions as I go, but I’m also hoping that they will provide a resource that readers can refer back to. The general idea is to allow the series to build up in complexity, and give everyone a better understanding of these topics!

What is DNA?

This first topic is going to be relatively short, because in a couple of weeks I am going to do “what is a gene”, which will get much longer and more complicated, but I wanted some set up about the physical structure of DNA.

You might have heard DNA described in a lot of different ways. Deoxyribonucleic acid. The building blocks of life. The blueprint of You. None of these are particularity inaccurate, but I don’t think that any of them are super great descriptors of what exactly DNA is, or how exactly it goes from existing in cells to encoding entire organisms (although I am going to talk about the actual encoding part in the future).

For now, we are going to start small. Let’s only look at the actual physical structure. Here we have a DNA molecule:

image from wikimedia commons here

So beautiful! (I might be biased, but DNA is my favourite molecule- it’s elegant in both design and function.)

This can be broken down into two main parts:

The phosphate-sugar backbone (all those P’s and O’s and light blue on the outside)

The nucleobases (adenine [A], thymine [T], cytosine [C], and guanine [G]- the purple, pink, yellow and green)

I will point out the hydrogen bonds in the middle as well. Note that cytosine and guanine have three bonds between them, and adenine and thymine only have two. These molecules always bond in this pattern (A bonds to T, and C to G). If you’ve heard DNA being described as “complementary”, this is why! If you find a C on one strand, you know that you will find a G on the other (this became very important for sequencing, but we will talk about that later).

The hydrogen bonds in the middle are quite important as well. If these molecules were bonded to each other directly, it would be basically impossible to open the strand to “read” the DNA. Instead, this can be done by breaking those hydrogen bonds, and then allowing them to reform. This does mean that a mutation is much more likely in a high A-T region rather than a high C-G on, simply because A-T only has two bonds, and C-G has three. As well, quite often before a gene is encoded, there’s a long stretch of TATA- repeated (these are cleverly called TATA-boxes), so that the strand can more easily be opened and the encoded gene read. More on that when I talk about what a gene is!

And that is honestly pretty much it for DNA (I say that in jest- there is a lot more, and this is the result of a few billion years of evolution!). It’s not a terribly complicated design, which is probably why it is so immensely biologically successful.

So, there we have it: a very, very quick rundown that is mostly to get some important features pointed out before I talk about what a gene is, and how DNA encodes them on January 31st. This is hardly comprehensive, but I will get more in-depth into the structure and features then, and I didn’t want to make that info post horrendously long. Thanks for reading!

How Printing a 3-D Skull Helped Save a Real One

What started as a stuffy-nose and mild cold symptoms for 15-year-old Parker Turchan led to a far more serious diagnosis: a rare type of tumor in his nose and sinuses that extended through his skull near his brain.

“He had always been a healthy kid, so we never imagined he had a tumor,” says Parker’s father, Karl. “We didn’t even know you could get a tumor in the back of your nose.”

The Portage, Michigan, high school sophomore was referred to the University of Michigan’s C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital, where doctors determined the tumor extended so deep that it was beyond what regular endoscopy could see.

The team members needed to get the best representation of the tumor’s extent to ensure that their surgical approach could successfully remove the entire mass

“Parker had an uncommon, large, high-stage tumor in a very challenging area,” says Mott pediatric head and neck surgeon David Zopf, M.D. “The tumor’s location and size had me question whether a minimally invasive approach would allow us to remove the tumor completely.”

To help answer that question, teams at Mott sought an innovative approach: crafting a 3-D replica of Parker’s skull.

The model, made of polylactic acid, helped simulate the coming operation on Parker by giving U-M surgeons “an exact replica of his craniofacial anatomy and a way to essentially touch the ‘tumor’ with our hands ahead of time,” Zopf says.

Just as important, it also allowed the team to counsel Parker and his family by offering them a look at what lurked within — and, with the test run successfully complete, what would lie ahead.

A ‘pretty impressive’ model

The rare and aggressive tumor in Parker’s nose is known as juvenile nasopharyngeal angiofibroma, a mass that grows in the back of the nasal cavity and predominantly affects young male teens. Mott sees a handful of cases each year.

In Parker’s case, the tumor had two large parts: one roughly the size of an egg and the other the size of a kiwi. The mass sat right in the center of the craniofacial skeleton below the brain and next to the nerves that control eye movement and vision.

“We were obviously concerned about the risks involved in this kind of procedure, which we knew could lead to a lot of blood loss and was sensitive because it was so close to the nerves in his face,” says Karl, who praised the 3-D methodology used to aid his son. “It was pretty impressive to see the model of Parker’s skull ahead of the surgery. We had no idea this was even possible.”

Zopf, working with Erin McKean, M.D., a U-M skull base surgeon, was able to completely remove the large tumor. Kyle VanKoevering, M.D., and Sajad Arabnejad, Ph.D., aided in model preparation.

Through preoperative embolization, the blood supply to the tumor was blocked off the day before surgery to decrease blood loss. A large portion of the tumor was then detached endoscopically and removed through the mouth. The remaining mass under the brain was taken out through the nose.

Doctors took pictures of Parker’s anatomy during the surgery and, later, compared it with pictures from the model. They were nearly identical.

“Words alone can’t express how thankful we are for Parker’s talented team of surgeons at Mott,” says his mother, Heidi. “Parker is back to his old self again.”

Powerful potential

Although medical application of the technology continues to gain attention, it isn’t entirely new. Zopf and Mott teams have used 3-D printing for almost five years.

Groundbreaking 3-D printed splints made at U-M have helped save the lives of babies with severe tracheobronchomalacia, which causes the windpipe to periodically collapse and prevents normal breathing. Mott has also used 3-D printing on a fetus to plan for a potentially complicated birth.  

“We are finding more and more uses for 3-D printing in medicine,” Zopf says. “It is proving to be a powerful tool that will allow for enhanced patient care.”

Based on success in patients such as Parker and continued collaboration, it’s a concept that appears poised to thrive.

“Because of the team approach we’ve established at the University of Michigan between otolaryngology and biomedical engineering, the printed models can be designed and rapidly produced at a very low cost,” Zopf says. “Michigan is one of only a few places in the nation and world that has the capacity to do this.”

For more posts like these, go to @mypsychology​