Tag: science

Human-induced stem cells from Seattle now in space

Scientists are taking a deeper dive into the impacts of micro-gravity on the human body. Seattle’s Allen Institute is playing a key role in this experiment.

This particular mission,” Allen Institute for Cell Science scientist Brock Roberts said, “will provide yet another test for the fundamental capability of these stem cells.”

On Monday morning, SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket, carrying the Dragon Spacecraft with four Axiom-2 crewmembers inside, docked at the International Space Station (ISS). Also on that flight are human-induced pluripotent stem cells produced by scientists at the Allen Institute. This is the first time cells from the Allen Institute have traveled to space.

The Axiom-2 crew members will spend eight days at the ISS. The four astronauts will conduct scientific experiments, which include observing the effects of micro-gravity on cell growth and development.

The stem cells are capable of many amazing things they can differentiate into many different tissues,” Roberts said. “They can proliferate indefinitely without changing their fundamental character, but we don’t know a lot about their ability to exist and preform all of those fascinating phenomenon in space, we we will find out about that.”

The stem-cell study is part of a series of NASA-funded experiments led by researchers at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles.

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This Soft Robot Unfurls Inside the Skull 

An octopus-like soft robot can unfurl itself inside the skull on top of the brain, a new study finds. The novel gadget may lead to minimally invasive ways to investigate the brain and implant brain-computer interfaces, researchers say.

In order to analyze the brain after traumatic injuries, help treat disorders such as seizures, and embed brain-computer interfaces, scientists at times lay grids of electrodes onto the surface of the brain. These electrocorticography grids can capture higher-quality recordings of brain signals than electroencephalography data gathered by electrodes on the scalp, but are also less invasive than probes stuck into the brain.

However, placing electrocorticography grids onto the brain typically involves creating openings in the skull at least as large as these arrays, leaving holes up to 100 square centimeters. These surgical operations may result in severe complications, such as inflammation and scarring.

Now scientists have developed a new soft robot they can place into the skull through a tiny hole. In experiments on a minipig, they showed the device could unfold like a ship in a bottle to deploy an electrocorticography grid 4 centimeters wide, all of it fitting into a space only roughly 1 millimeter wide. This “enabled the implant to navigate through the narrow gap between the skull and the brain,” says study senior author Stéphanie Lacour, a neural engineer and director of the Federal Polytechnic School of Lausanne’s Neuro-X Institute in Switzerland.

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Babies who have DNA from 3 different people born in the U.K.

Britain’s fertility regulator on Wednesday confirmed the births of the U.K.’s first babies created using an experimental technique combining DNA from three people, an effort to prevent the children from inheriting rare genetic diseases.

The Human Fertilization and Embryology Authority said fewer than five babies have been born this way in the U.K. but did not provide further details to protect the families’ identities. The news was first reported by the Guardian newspaper.

In 2015, the U.K. became the first country to adopt legislation regulating methods to help prevent women with faulty mitochondria — the energy source in a cell — from passing defects on to their babies. The world’s first baby born using the technique was reported in the U.S. in 2016.

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Science recently uncovered these 5 fascinating facts about psychedelic substances

Scientists are interested in studying psychedelic substances because they have the potential to alter perception, cognition, and mood in ways that may be beneficial for treating a variety of mental health conditions. Some studies suggest that certain psychedelics may have therapeutic effects for conditions such as depression, anxiety, PTSD, addiction, and end-of-life anxiety.

The most commonly studied psychedelic drugs include psilocybin (the active compound found in “magic” mushrooms), lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD, also known simply as “acid”), dimethyltryptamine (or DMT, a naturally occurring psychedelic compound found in many plants and animals), and 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine (known as MDMA or molly, a synthetic drug that produces both psychedelic and stimulant effects).

Below are five recent scientific discoveries related to psychedelic substances and their therapeutic potential.

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18 Spectacularly Wrong Prophecies from the First Earth Day

In the May 2000 issue of Reason Magazine, award-winning science correspondent Ronald Bailey wrote an excellent article titled “Earth Day, Then and Now” to provide some historical perspective on the 30th anniversary of Earth Day. In that article, Bailey noted that around the time of the first Earth Day, and in the years following, there was a “torrent of apocalyptic predictions” and many of those predictions were featured in his Reason article.

Well, it’s now the 46th anniversary of Earth Day, and a good time to ask the question again that Bailey asked 16 years ago: How accurate were the predictions made around the time of the first Earth Day in 1970? The answer: “The prophets of doom were not simply wrong, but spectacularly wrong,” according to Bailey.

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Scientific Consensus – A Manufactured Construct

In a recent interview, famed astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson was challenged on his scientific views about COVID-19 and he said “I’m only interested in consensus” – words that would have Nicholas Copernicus and Galileo Galilei rolling in their graves.

The appeal to “scientific consensus” is fraught with problems, just like “The science is settled” and “Trust the science” and other authoritarian tropes that have dominated the pandemic.

A widely accepted theory, such as the theory of evolution, depends on a consensus being reached among the scientific community, but it must be achieved without censorship or reprisal.

As Aaron Kheriaty, a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, recently said:

Science is an ongoing search for truth & such truth has little to do with consensus. Every major scientific advance involves challenges to a consensus. Those who defend scientific consensus rather than specific experimental findings are not defending science but partisanship.

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Just 0.3% of Scientists agree Humanity is causing Climate Change; NOT 97% as falsely spread by the UN

You have likely heard that 97% of scientists agree on human-driven climate change. You may also have heard that those who don’t buy into the climate-apocalypse mantra are “science deniers.” The truth is that a whole lot more than 3% of scientists are sceptical of the party line on climate. A whole lot more.

The many scientists, engineers and energy experts that comprise the CO2 Coalition are often asked something along the lines of: “So you believe in climate change, then?” Our answer? “Yes, of course we do: it has been happening for hundreds of millions of years.” It is important to ask the right questions. The question is not, “Is climate change happening?” The real question of serious importance is, “Is climate change now driven primarily by human actions? That question should be followed up by “is our changing climate beneficial or harmful to ecosystems and humanity?”

There are some scientific truths that are quantifiable and easily proven, and with which, I am confident, at least 97% of scientists agree. Here are two:

  1. Carbon dioxide concentration has been increasing in recent years.
  2. Temperatures, as measured by thermometers and satellites, have been generally increasing in fits and starts for more than 150 years.

What is impossible to quantify is the actual percentage of warming that is attributable to increased anthropogenic (human-caused) CO2. There is no scientific evidence or method that can determine how much of the warming we’ve had since 1900 that was directly caused by us.

We know that temperature has varied greatly over the millennia. We also know that for virtually all of that time, global warming and cooling were driven entirely by natural forces, which did not cease to operate at the beginning of the 20th century.

The claim that most modern warming is attributable to human activities is scientifically insupportable. The truth is that we do not know. We need to be able to separate what we do know from that which is only conjecture.

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Was Freud Afraid of the Occult?

During a visit to Vienna in 1909, Jung had a conversation with Freud about the new study of parapsychology. Freud dismissed the whole subject as nonsense, something Jung, who had had ample experience of it, could not accept. As the conversation grew heated, Jung, who wanted to keep relations with Freud cordial, found it difficult to hold back his feelings. After all, he had been chosen by Freud to inherit his throne, and he had great respect, even love for his mentor. But Jung also had his own genius and ambitions and found it difficult to toe the party line. Now, as he looked at Freud he felt his diaphragm glow, as if it was becoming red-hot. Suddenly a loud bang exploded in Freud’s bookcase, and both men jumped up, afraid it would fall on them. Jung said to Freud “There, that is an example of a so-called catalytic exteriorisation phenomenon,” Jung’s long-winded circumlocution for a poltergeist or “noisy spirit.” Freud retorted “Bosh!” Jung shook his head and predicted that another bang would soon follow. When it did, Freud looked at Jung “aghast,” and from that moment on was mistrustful of him. Jung said the way Freud looked at him it was “as if I had done something against him.”

Not long after this, again in Vienna, Jung again visited Freud, and he later recalled a peculiar conversation they had, during which Freud asked Jung to promise that he would never abandon the sexual theory of the origin of neurosis. Freud told Jung that they must make “a dogma of it, an unshakeable bulwark.” Jung said that Freud spoke in the tones in which a father would ask his son to promise that he would go to church every Sunday. When Jung asked Freud why they had to affirm the sexual theory so vigorously, and against what they had to make it a bulwark, Freud replied “against the black tide of mud of occultism.” By this time Jung knew that he could never assert the sexual theory with the same finality as Freud did. He already had reservations about it but had kept them to himself. This request to collaborate with him on erecting a dogma was a sign that these reservations would soon have to come out. As we know, they did.

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On the need for metaphysics in psychedelic therapy and research

The essential proposal of this text is that psychedelic-induced metaphysical experiences should be integrated and evaluated with recourse to metaphysics. It will be argued that there is a potential extra benefit to patients in psychedelic-assisted therapy if they are provided with an optional, additional, and intelligible schema and discussion of metaphysical options at the integrative phase of the therapy. This schema (the “Metaphysics Matrix”) and a new Metaphysics Matrix Questionnaire (“MMQ”) stemming therefrom will be presented, the latter of which can also be used as an alternative or additional tool for quantitative measurement of psychedelic experience in trials. Metaphysics is not mysticism, despite some overlap; and certainly not all psychedelic experience is metaphysical or mystical—all three terms will be defined and contrasted. Thereafter psychedelic therapy will be presented and analysed in order to reveal the missing place for metaphysics. Metaphysics, with epistemology (theory of knowledge) and axiology (ethics and aesthetics), is a defining branch of Philosophy. Metaphysics, in contrast to mysticism, is considered to be based on argument rather than pure revelation. Thus, in psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy one sees here the potential bridge between reason-based philosophy and practical therapy—or, more broadly, with psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy there is the potential and mutually beneficial fusion of philosophy with practical science.

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Drinking Tap Water Containing Lithium While Pregnant Could Raise Autism Risk For Children

Pregnant women who drink tap water containing high levels of lithium are more likely to have children with autism, a new study warns. Researchers analyzed data from Denmark and found that mothers-to-be drinking water with the highest lithium levels were almost 50 percent more likely to have autistic children.

The team from UCLA found that the higher the lithium levels in the water supply, the more likely women were to give birth to babies with autism. Study authors warn that lithium levels in water could become more widespread in the near future due to lithium battery use and disposal in landfills — which could lead to an increase in developmental disabilities such as autism.

Researchers say this is one of the first ever studies to identify naturally-occurring lithium in water as a potential risk factor for autism. The team studied data collected from Denmark over 16 years, between 1997 and 2013. They chose to use the Danish data due to the country having the lowest consumption of bottled water in Europe, meaning most of the population drinks tap water.

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