castanyes blaves

A new drug which shows promise as a treatment for Alzheimer's disease has been developed by UK scientists.

The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences reports the drug, CPHPC, removes a protein thought to play a key role in Alzheimer's from the blood.

Tests at the University College London found the protein also disappeared from the brains of five Alzheimer's patients given the drug for three months.

Longer and larger scale clinical studies are now being planned.

Study leader Dr Mike Modo, from the Institute of Psychiatry at King's College London, said: "This works really well because the stem cell-loaded particles can be injected through a very fine needle and then adopt the precise shape of the cavity.

"In this process the cells fill the cavity and can make connections with other cells, which helps to establish the tissue."

He said over a few days they were able to see cells migrating along the scaffold particles and forming a primitive brain tissue that interacts with the host brain.

The Atacama desert lies on the western edge of South America, covering much of northern Chile and parts of Argentina. It is the closest one can get to Mars while remaining grounded on Earth. High atop the Socompa volcano on the Eastern edge of the Atacama desert, the atmosphere is thin, the ultraviolet radiation is intense, and the climate is dry. Nevertheless, the improbable has been found: life. Near the rim of the 19,850-foot-high Socompa volcano, researchers from the University of Colorado at Boulder's Alpine Microbial Observatory found a thriving, complex microbial community that appears to be supported by gases emanating from volcanic vents around the rim.

The Atacama desert is the driest place on Earth. Weather stations in the Antofagasta region of Chile average one millimeter of precipitation per year, and a number of weather stations in the Atacama have never recorded rainfall throughout their entire operational life. The extreme climate there is often compared to the surface of Mars. It is believed to be so similar that a Science article, published in 2003, used it in an attempt to re-create the experiments that Viking One and Two performed on the Martian surface. It is also a proving ground for equipment that NASA plans to send to Mars one day. Given the geologic similarities, the discovery of life in such a hostile place suggests that life could exist elsewhere as well.

So this is actually old-ish news, but I saw this press release about paper published last year describing the ability of the fungus Gliocladium roseum to naturally synthesizes diesel compounds. The paper from Gary Strobel @Montana State and collaborators describes that G. roseum produces volatile hydrocarbon on cellulose media. Extracts from the host plant (Eucryphia cordifolia) were also able to support growth of the fungus alone. This production of products have been dubbed “myco-diesel”. G. roseum is an endophyte of E. cordifolia I wonder what kinds of advantages it might provide for the fungus or the plant to produce these hydrocarbons.

I wonder if it is better to focus on these organisms that have already evolved a way to make these hydrocarbons directly from cellulose rather than the multistep process of making easy to process sugars from different starting plant materials and then ethanol or other hydrocarbons from yeast or bacteria growing on that sugar. Growth rates, amenability to grow in bioreactors, etc certainly are considerations in building production systems, but I wonder whether these kind of finding represent inroads to solving our problems or if they are peripheral to the current bioengineering approaches that are underway.

Some of the earlier press releases I had missed it seems:

* Rainforest fungus makes diesel
* Diesel Fuel From a Tree Fungus?
* NPR
* Google news

G. A. Strobel, B. Knighton, K. Kluck, Y. Ren, T. Livinghouse, M. Griffin, D. Spakowicz, J. Sears (2008). The production of myco-diesel hydrocarbons and their derivatives by the endophytic fungus Gliocladium roseum (NRRL 50072) Microbiology, 154 (11), 3319-3328 DOI: 10.1099/mic.0.2008/022186-0

Texting is likely to be an important part of a child's learning development, she thinks.

"The more exposure you have to the written word the more literate you become and we tend to get better at things that we do for fun," she said.

The study found no evidence of a detrimental effect of text speak on conventional spelling.

"What we think of as misspellings, don't really break the rules of language and children have a sophisticated understanding of the appropriate use of words," she said.

Other reports have produced similar results. Research from the University of Toronto into how teenagers use instant messaging found that instant messaging had a positive effect on their command of language.

It's not a permanent cure, but as long as they go on taking a daily dose they should maintain their tolerance