Tag: science

1st synthetic mouse embryos — complete with beating hearts and brains — created with no sperm, eggs or womb

For the first time, scientists have created mouse embryos in the lab without using any eggs or sperm and watched them grow outside the womb. To achieve this feat, the researchers used only stem cells and a spinning device filled with shiny glass vials. 

The experiment is a “game changer,” Alfonso Martinez Arias, a developmental biologist at Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona who was not involved in the research, told The Washington Post(opens in new tab). 

“This is an important landmark in our understanding of how embryos build themselves,” he said.

The breakthrough experiment, described in a report published Monday (Aug. 1) in the journal Cell(opens in new tab), took place in a specially designed bioreactor that serves as an artificial womb for developing embryos. Within the device, embryos float in small beakers of nutrient-filled solution, and the beakers are all locked into a spinning cylinder that keeps them in constant motion. This movement simulates how blood and nutrients flow to the placenta. The device also replicates the atmospheric pressure of a mouse uterus, according to a statement(opens in new tab) from the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel, where the research was conducted.    

In a previous experiment, described in the journal Nature(opens in new tab) in 2021, the team used this bioreactor to grow natural mouse embryos, which reached day 11 of development in the device. “That really showed that mammalian embryos can grow outside the uterus — it’s not really patterning or sending signals to the embryo so much as providing nutritional support,” Jacob Hanna, an embryonic stem cell biologist at the Weizmann and senior author of both studies, told STAT News

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Researchers ‘revive’ organs in dead pigs, raising questions about life and death

Scientists have rebooted vital organs of dead pigs in an experiment bioethicists say may force a rethink of how the body dies, and that further blurs the boundaries between life and death.

Using a system dubbed “OrganEx” that uses special pumps and a cocktail of chemicals to restore oxygen and prevent cell death throughout the body, the Yale University team restored blood circulation and other cellular functions in multiple porcine organs an hour after the pigs’ deaths from cardiac arrest.

Electrical activity was restored in the heart, for instance. The muscle was contracting.

The study “reveals the underappreciated capacity for cellular recovery after prolonged whole-body warm ischemia (loss of blood circulation, and thus oxygen) in a large mammal,” the team r eports in the journal Nature .

The experiments also bolster findings from another Yale-led project three years ago that involved disembodied pigs’ brains. Using a similar perfusion system called BrainEx, researchers restored some functions in brains taken from pigs four hours after they were killed in a meatpacking plant.

That was an isolated organ. The team wondered, could they apply a similar approach on a whole-body scale?

Together, the research challenges old thinking that the body’s cells and organs begin to be irreversibly destroyed within minutes of the heart stopping. Instead, “cellular demise can be halted, and their state (can) be shifted towards recovery at molecular and cellular levels,” the Yale team writes in Nature.

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Scientists Say Loch Ness Monster Might Actually Be Real After New Fossil Discovery

According to scientists, the hypothesis that a so-called Loch Ness Monster could have existed in the Scottish Highlands may not be as absurd as previously thought.

A plesiosaur—a prehistoric reptile with a long, slender neck—may have previously been in Loch Ness, a Scottish lake, according to new research from the University of Bath published on July 21 in the journal Cretaceous Research. Based on their discoveries, they say that the legend of the Loch Ness monster might not actually be fictional.

The statement follows the discovery of plesiosaur fossils in a 100 million-year-old river system in Morocco’s Sahara Desert, suggesting that the reptiles may have lived in freshwater as well as seawater, contrary to earlier theories.

Similar to concerns about Big Foot, scientists have typically always condemned the idea that the Loch Ness monster might genuinely exist. The debunkers have frequently argued that plesiosaurs, which resemble the supposed creature’s popular depiction, could not exist in the freshwater lake because scientists thought they needed a saltwater environment to survive.

However, these new fossils indicate plesiosaurs could’ve actually existed where the legend of the Loch Ness Monster lives because they were found in a freshwater river. The paper suggests that plesiosaurs adapted to tolerate freshwater and that many may have spent the majority of their lives in it. 

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The Earth Just Started Spinning Faster Than Ever Before And Scientists Don’t Know Why

The Earth recently completed a rotation faster than ever before at 1.59 millisecond under 24 hours, and the consequences for how we keep time have experts around the world alarmed.

It could be the first time in world history that global clocks will have to be sped up.

“This would be required to keep civil time—which is based on the super-steady beat of atomic clocks—in step with solar time, which is based on the movement of the Sun across the sky,” Time and Date reported.

Scientists don’t know what is causing our planet to spin faster than ever before, but some experts fear it could be “devastating,” while others speculate the shorter days could be related to climate change, of course.

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Science leaders demand crackdown on medical research fraudsters after allegations that pivotal Alzheimer’s study contained manipulated data – giving false hope to families and slowing the development of effective treatments

Science leaders are demanding a crackdown on medical research fraudsters, warning that the worst offenders pose a threat to public health and should be handed prison sentences.

And they have also called for academic journals that publish dodgy data to be slapped with hefty fines if they fail to act swiftly when fakes are exposed.

The demands come after bombshell allegations that a pivotal study on the cause of Alzheimer’s disease contained manipulated results, potentially leading other scientists down a blind alley, hindering the development of effective treatments and giving false hope to patients and their families. 

It is just the latest in a string of revelations in recent months that have rocked the field of dementia research, and may see top neuroscientists face US government investigations, probes by financial authorities for misuse of public funds and deceiving shareholders, and criminal charges.

In one of the most egregious examples, allegedly falsified data led to patients on a trial risking the side effects of experimental drugs with no chance of seeing any benefit.

Some neuroscientists insist that, while deeply concerning, these problems are outweighed by the large amount of well-conducted research in the field. But others believe corruption will have significantly set back the search for an effective dementia treatment.

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‘Racist Trope’: Woke U.S. Scientist Changes Name Of ‘Asian Giant Hornet’ To Be Less Offensive To China

A woke American scientist got the name of the Asian giant hornet, commonly referred to as a “murder hornet,” changed this week in an apparent attempt to be less offensive to China.

The giant insects can decimate entire populations of honeybees, literally ripping their heads off, and their painful stings can be potentially be fatal to humans if they are allergic.

Asian giant hornets have recently been spotted in small numbers in the Pacific Northwest, where officials have rushed to exterminate them before they become a permanent fixture of local habitats in the U.S.

The Entomological Society of America (ESA) now demands that the insect be called the “Northern giant hornet” to avoid stigmas amid anti-Asian sentiment due to the coronavirus pandemic, which originated in China.

Chris Looney, an entomologist at the Washington State Department of Agriculture, admitted in his proposal to rename the Asian giant hornet that the invasive species is “native to parts of Asia” and that the name is “accurate.”

While Looney cited three different reasons for wanting to rename the insect, his top listed reason was stigma associated the name.

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Pulling Back the Curtain on Junk Science: How Climate Alarmists Manipulate the Presentation of Data

At the same time that ‘I haven’t a clue about science’ activist Greta Thunberg was preparing her overly dramatic “You have stolen my dreams, and my childhood, with your empty words. And yet I’m one of the lucky ones” speech for the United Nations whilst receiving praise for pulling millions of children out of school “for climate change,” life-long environmentalist Tony Heller was calmly making a video exposing the climate fraud.

Heller has higher education in geology, electrical engineering, computer science and geochemistry. You will be hard-pressed to find anyone with a broader career in science, education, environment and engineering. “Your computer/game consoles work, partly due to my efforts. By contrast, climate science doesn’t work, because it is done largely by dishonest, incompetent hacks who don’t follow or even understand any legitimate methodology,” he wrote.

On his website, Real Climate Science, is an article ‘The History of The Modern “Climate Change” Scam’ which includes images of the relevant documents to accompany each of the following statements, even though we have only included one such image:

In January 1972, the National Science Foundation held a meeting at Brown University to discuss ‘climatic change’ – which meant global cooling and which they said was of natural origin. Later that year, the participants sent a letter to President Nixon warning of a new ice age within a century. The White House ‘seized’ on the global cooling threat. NASA’s top climate experts predicted a new ice age by the year 2021. The US Military responded to the global cooling, which they said was causing ‘extreme weather’. Everything which now gets blamed on global warming was blamed on global cooling.”

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Researchers Grow Stem Cells Aboard International Space Station In New Study

Scientists are growing stem cells in space in an effort to discover new ways to produce large batches of certain stem cells to treat a variety of diseases.

Researchers from Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles are behind the program that delivered stem cells to the International Space Station (ISS) over the weekend on a supply trip delivery.

“By pushing the boundaries like this, it’s knowledge and it’s science and it’s learning,” said Clive Svendsen, executive director of Cedars-Sinai’s Regenerative Medicine Institute.

The project is the seventh of its type that has included stem cells sent to space from experiments by the U.S., China, and Italy. The efforts are attempting to overcome the difficulty of growing large quantities of stem cells under the Earth’s gravity by conducting efforts beyond the planet’s atmosphere.

“In zero G, there’s no force on the cells, so they can just grow in a different way,” Svendsen said.

The particular cells used in the Cedars-Sinai experiment are pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs). These materials are utilized by scientists for a variety of treatments, ranging from skin to blood cells.

“Human iPSCs are ideal for creating and testing potential treatments that can be tailored to an individual,” ISS National Laboratory explains regarding the mission.  “Microgravity may overcome some of the problems involved in the processes by which stem cells divide and become different types of cells, which could advance the manufacturing of iPSCs for the treatment of various diseases on Earth.”

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Japan Wants to Bring Artificial Gravity to the Moon

Interest in the Moon has been reignited recently, and Japan is looking to get in on the fun. Researchers and engineers from Kyoto University and the Kajima Corporation have released their joint proposal for a three-pronged approach to sustainable human life on the Moon and beyond.

The future of space exploration will likely include longer stays in low gravity environments, whether in orbit or on the surface of another planet. Problem is, long stays in space can wreak havoc on our physiology; recent research shows that astronauts can suffer a decade of bone loss during months in space, and that their bones never return to normal. Thankfully, researchers from Kyoto University and the Kajima Corporation are seeking to engineer a potential solution.

The proposal, announced in a press release last week, looks like something ripped straight from the pages of a sci-fi novel. The plan consists of three distinct elements, the first of which, called “The Glass,” aims to bring simulated gravity to the Moon and Mars through centrifugal force.

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Higgs Boson researchers mark 10 year anniversary with return to particle studies 

July 4th marks 10 years since scientists at CERN, the world’s largest research centre based near Geneva, announced the existence of the Higgs Boson. A team of 6000 researchers working with the world’s first atom splitter, the Large Hardron Collider.

The discovery of the long-sought for particle behind the origin of mass saw François Englert and Peter Higgs awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics. 45 years later after they proposed the theory, they cracked the practical side too. 

For this iconic anniversary, CERN has announced it will restart its Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the machine which studies the origins of matter, and the universe.

Halting the activity of LHC for three years, CERN took the time to upgrade it. On July 5th, For the third time in its history, the Large Hadron Collider, will restart to an unprecedented level of collision energy (13.6 trillion electronvolts).

Delphine Jacquet, an engineer in charge of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), explains the technicalities the team will carry out to continue the studies.

“We will put in a collision, for the first time, in the LHC, protons at an energy record of 6.8 tev per beam. At this energy the collision will be at 13.6 tera electron volts (tev), and this will be a very nice record for the experiment.”

Jacquet continues: “From this moment on, it will be the data taken from the experiment, for a long run of 3 years, hoping that we will have new discoveries and interesting things coming out from these collisions.”

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