Battling Blood Cells

A new treatment for leukaemia has revolutionised medical ideas, which could change modern treatments against cancers into safer and more effective cures.

Symptoms of Leukaemia

For those of you who don’t know, leukaemia is a form of cancer that origins in the bone marrow and causes an excessive amount of a special type of white blood cell called B-cells.

This new possible cure targets T-cells, another form of white blood cells, whose main function is to produce phagocytes that ‘eat’ the harmful organisms that attack the body. What the researchers have been trying to do is to inject a harmless virus into the T-cells, which then changes its genes to target and destroy a unique molecule that is only found in the surface of B-cells. This way, the B-cells are destroyed, decreasing its numbers and therefore curing this disease.

Now, you may be asking: But won’t this mean that all the B-cells will be killed, weakening the immune system? Well, the answer is no. Not all of the T-cells will be changed genetically, and when those that have been die, they will be substituted naturally by the body to act as they have doing all their life. And the B-cells will also be produced again, though in a much more healthy quantity, as the leukaemia will have been totally cured.

It has been tried on humans already, which extremely positive results. In 5 patients, the leukaemia was cured altogether, 4 of tem in 8 weeks and 1 in only 8 days!

Unluckily, 2 of these 5 patients died, one from a blood clot and the other of a relapse.

Orange ribbon use to represent fight against leukaemia

However, with these generally encouraging results, a new test is being prepared with 50 patients this time, which will hopefully fully

demonstrate the beneficial consequences of this treatment and allow it to be used much more often.

But the potential of this treatment doesn’t stop at curing leukaemia. Other cancers, such as prostate cancer, could be cured, but instead of

targeting at one unique molecule, they would target at pairs of molecules. This has been tried in mice already and has shown surprisingly positive results.

Source:

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21729104.100-gene-therapy-cures-leukaemia-in-eight-days.html

 

Meteor Marvel

The night of the 15^th of February, the asteroid 2012 DA14 broke the record of the closest approach any asteroid has had with the planet Earth. It came closer than many of the satellites set by humans.

This object is known to be half the size of a football field, 45m approximately, becoming also the largest object that moves so close to the Earth and its atmosphere. Its composition is yet unknown, but scientists at NASA are trying to find out based on pictures taken during its orbit next to our planet.

Its closeness and its size have caused many scientists to consider the idea of it colliding with our planet. An object that size would not extinct the human race, but it would cause several natural disasters and could flatten loads of kilometers of trees. Luckily for us, astronomers have found the asteroid won’t come that near to us, and will continue its path without disturbing us in the future.

Because of the Earth’s gravity, the celestial object changed its orbit significantly, making it’s return to our planet take more time. Still, its next

2012DA14′s route compared

visit will be in 2046, another 15 of February. But the next time, it won’t be coming that close to the Earth. It’s orbit will be separated from us in a

distance of one million miles, which is four time the distance between the Earth and the moon.

Such sight was visible to everyone using binoculars between 19:00 and 23:00 hours, due to its size and its proximity.

This asteroid in particular is particularly important for me, because it was discovered a year ago in a project lead by the Astronomical Observatory of Mallorca, where I come from.

This laboratory, although small, is one of the most efficient observatories in the world when detecting asteroids. It is only surpassed by the NASA laboratory in this topic.

 

Sources:

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn23169-asteroid-to-give-earth-a-record-close-shave-on-friday.html

http://www.elmundo.es/blogs/elmundo/cosmos/2013/02/05/un-asteroide-muy-cercano-2012-da14.html

Seven Days of Science

Last month, the twelfth ‘Science Week’ took place in all of Spain’s communities, each of them with a different but amazing science topic. It was mainly coordinated by the FECYT (Spanish Foundation for Science and Technology) and the Spainsh government.

This great project was first celebrated in the year 2000, and since then its popularity has increased non-stop. It was created to make science more popular and innovative in society, and up until now, its goal has been achieved. Due to its success, many universities and museums have added their strengths to this organization to help in this special event.

During the week, the actual activities carried out depend on the community, but the common ones were conferences, workshops, practical demonstrations, contests, and even talks with students and professionals.

To try and attract even more people, each community chose a different aspect of science, and transformed it to be easily understood by the public.

Here are some of the most interesting ones:

• Madrid – Centered this week on music and the brain, robots and videogames
• Valencia – Created workshops that taught its visitants about mathematics
• Zaragoza – Set up different conferences about the energy
• Sevilla – The use of telescopes and astronomy
• Islas Baleares – The study of the brain activity while eating chocolate

For more information about this event, visit:

http://www.semanadelaciencia.es/

Noble Prize in Fun

The Ig Nobel Prizes (an American parody to the Nobel Prizes) are given every year to the most curious, different and even crazy scientific discoveries.

Awarded in Harvard, they were made to show the funny side of science, and to get more people interested in technology, mathematics, and science in general.

This year, the prizes were granted to:

• Physics: To the creators of ‘The Ponytail Shape Equation’ for calculating the forces that make the ponytail’s shape.
• Medicine: To the French scientists who advised doctors how to perform a colonoscopy minimizing the chances the patient will explode.
• Literature: To the US Government General Accountability Office for giving out a report about a report that explains the preparation of a report about the report of a report about reports.
• Neuroscience: To the brain researchers who detected brain activity in a dead salmon; but ended up being a technical error.
• Acoustics: To the creators of the SpeechJammer, a machine that repeats the words you say only slightly delayed to confuse the speaker.
• Chemistry: To the scientists who figured out why people’s hair in a certain Swedish town had turned green.
• Fluid Dynamic: The researchers that studied how coffee spills when a person walks while carrying a cup of coffee.
• Anatomy: The scientists who discovered chimpanzee can recognise each other by a photograph of their backside.

Last of all, my sincere congratulations to the winners, and the committee, for making these hilarious prizes take place, and helping society take interest in science.

Sources:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-19667664

http://www.elmundo.es/elmundo/2011/09/30/ciencia/1317375656.html

Switching ON the junk

Scientists from all around the world may soon be able to read the genetics version of the book of life, detailing everything from the human genetics and DNA structure.

These exciting news start in 2003, when the American research facility, the National Human Genome Research Institute, created the Encyclopedia of DNA Elements (ENCODE for short) a project to find out all they could about the human DNA sequence.

In 2007, the results of the ENCODE were published, listing pages and pages of all the codes of DNA and finding out that about 98.8% of our DNA doesn’t do anything, adopting the name of junk DNA.

Since then, the research has been increased, and very fascinating details have been discovered. Just recently, they have found out that 19% of our DNA, codes for an RNA, that may work as a switch to turn on and off different genes on different parts of the body. The mechanism is still not clear, as not all of it is understood. For example, biologists have yet to comprehend why most of these switches are spread out over the genome, and not just near the gene they control.

Though this discovery is a milestone in genetics, it’s not the end of the story. It has still much to teach us, and researches have still yet to be made to uncover all the secrets lying in the complex structure of our DNA.

Sources:

http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/shortsharpscience/2012/09/global-project-reveals-what-ou.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2012/sep/05/genes-genome-junk-dna-encode

God Damn It! We Found The Goddamn Particle: Part 2

Last 4^thof July 2012 the final piece of the puzzle was discovered. The Higgs Boson was seen at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN,

completing all the elementary particles in the Standard Model of particle physics.

Higgs Boson experiment in the LHC

The announcement was made at CERN’s auditorium in Switzerland. The conference was

held the same day the Conference on High Energy Physics in Australia, were physicists from all around the world listened attentively as director general of CERN Rolf Heuer announced the discovery of the most wanted particle in the world.

After almost 50 years since its prediction, the Higgs boson’s existence was confirmed by two separate experiments: the CMS and the ATLAS. They were both able to see the Higgs, with a mass of 125 to 126 GeV (gigaelectronvolts), the mass predicted by Peter Higgs. The finding was not announced until it had a confidence level of 5 sigma (or 4.9, to be exact) which means there is less than 1 in a million chance the Higgs boson was not really the Higgs boson. With these statistics, scientists felt confident to proclaim they had discovered a new particle.

Though this particle completes the Standard Model, physicists still have lots of work to do. First, they need to analyse the Higgs boson and study its properties, which may not be as predicted and give a few surprises to scientists all around the world.

If the Standard Model is complete and its predictions are all correct, there is still some investigation needed. The model, although it covers most forces in the Universe, it can’t explain gravity, or even dark matter (which makes up to 85% of the universe) or dark energy (responsible fort the accelerating expansion of the universe).

However, we still have to give our most sincere congratulations to the teams at CERN for being able to discover the Higgs boson, the God particle or whatever you want to call it.

Sources:

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn22014-celebrations-as-higgs-boson-is-finally-discovered.html

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-18702455

God Damn It! We Found The Goddamn Particle: Part 1

As you probably already know, these last few weeks have been shaken by the discovery of the Higgs Boson. But, you may ask, what is the Higgs Boson?

The Higgs Boson is the quantum of the Higgs Field, which means it’s the smallest amount of the field you can get. It’s like saying an electron is the quantum of an electric field.  It was the last elementary particle of the Standard Model to be discovered, and it gives the key to complete such Model.

Although its not been identified since the late 20^thCentury, it plays a major role in the process of giving mass to particles. Without this boson, particles would all behave mass less, and would wonder around at the speed of light, like photons.

To keep it simple, the Higgs Boson and Field make particles interact with them and give ‘heavy’ particles mass. If, however, the particle hasn’t got mass, like photons, this particle will flow right through the Higgs Field, remaining unchanged.

The Higgs Boson was named after Peter Higgs, as his theories of the Higgs Mechanism predicted the existence of this boson and some of its characteristics.

There’s been lots of discussions about who predicted its existence as 3 groups of people published very similar ideas at the same time. However, Higgs was the only one to predict some of its theoretical properties.

In the media, this particle has also been called The Goddamn Particle, Lederman’s first option for the book: The God particle: If the Universe is the Answer, what is the question? as the Higgs Boson was so damn hard to find. In the end the boson was called The God Particle, as the publisher thought it was more commercial.

The Standard Model with the Higgs Boson in it

 

Sources:

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn22006-higgs-fever-your-guide-to-the-mostwanted-particle.html?page=1

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/blog/2012/jul/04/higgs-boson-discovered-live-coverage-cern

Death for CMV

A cytomegalovirus (CMV) cell

For many years, the cytomegalovirus (CMV for short) has infected between 50 and 80 percent of the population in the USA, UK and Australia, and in some parts of Africa, the number of infected is even higher.

This herpes virus can cause a faster cognitive decline, a poorer physical health, blindness, more chances of dying of a cardiovascular disease and can even shorten the life of the victim up to 5 years, the same amount that smoking and drinking alcohol can reduce.

 

What’s important of this disease is the way in which it attacks the immune system.

With more common viruses, the immune system sends T-cells (lymphocytes) to recognise and remember them, so if they attack in the future, they will be able to produce antibodies before the virus really infects the organism.

With CMV, the immune system works the same way, but the virus itself tricks the T-cells so instead of remembering it, the body trains more cells to make T-cells, shortening the supply of untrained cells, which, altogether decreases the immune system’s life expectancy and leaves the body more defenceless against other infections.

Researchers are now divided about how to treat this infection.

On one hand, some scientists want to give the diseased people a treatment consisting of anti-viral drugs to avoid loosing lifetime.

Experiments were carried out in mice were successful with this treatment: they infected some mice with the cytomegalovirus, and whilst the ones without the treatment lost many of their untrained cells, the ones with the treatment had a healthy number of untrained cells in their immune system.

This treatment method is soon going to be introduced to people over 65, the target people of the investigation.

The other scientists working in this virus want to stop the disease before the infection occurs, so they are trying to create a vaccine.

They believe it is much easier for the patient to have a vaccine than to follow a treatment for months and even years. However, their solution is not that easy to carry out. They will also need to know how the virus infects people, to block the entrance of the virus and make a vaccine. To do this, they carried out experiments on mice too, the results of this showing the virus enters the body through the nose.

Further investigation will take place to try to produce an efficient vaccine.

Sources:

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21428702.000-stealthy-virus-that-robs-years-of-life-could-be-beaten.html

Rebelious Metamaterial

Researchers in Northern University in Evanston, Illinois, have created a new type of metamaterial with an outstanding quality: negative compressibility, which means the material compresses when stretched and expands when pushed.

For those who don’t know, a metamaterial is a synthetic material with a special structure that allows it to have different characteristics to those of natural materials.

This is not the first time a metamaterial with these properties has been built, but it’s the most successful one. Previous attempts to form this stable metamaterial have been carried out, but they had to have very specific vibrations, whilst this new type just needs a steady fore.

To make such a unique material, scientists have created a design to make such special characteristics take place.

It consists of s row of 4 particles with attraction between each other. The two inner particles have a weak attraction force, so any slight force (like pulling the material) breaks the bond. But when this happens, the outer particles attract more to each other, so the material actually compresses.

Vice versa, if the material is squeezed the two inner particles create another bond, repel, and cause the material to expand

This type of metamaterial has many uses, which could go from making cushions that expand when you sit on them to protective cats on military vehicles, so if a something hit the car or tank, the metamaterial will push it back and reduce some of the effect.

However, this material is not the only famous metamaterial that has been made. A few months ago, scientists developed the so called ‘invisibility cloak’, made of silver nanowires in porous aluminium oxide, which could deviate light rays and make objects behind the material invisible.

But, what both have in common, is that the general population won’t be able to buy them, as they still need to be improved and will only be used for the government and the army.

If you haven’t understood quite clearly the internal model of this material, you can see the diagram created by Zachary Nicolau and Adilson Motter (the designers of this material):

 

Source Used:

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn21839-impossible-material-would-stretch-when-compressed.html

A Robotic Dream

Finally, an era were robots can help disabled people to fulfil their dreams has arrived.

This incredible news come from Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, USA, where, thanks to an aspirin sized set of electrodes implanted in her brain, the amazing 58 year old Cathy Hutchinson with a stroke that paralysed most of her brain and lost her use of the limbs, was able to drink alone again.

The experiment consisted in implanting a small device in the person’s motor cortex (which is the part of the brain that controls movement in the body) and connect this to some computers. These computers were able to receive the patient’s neurological signals, match them to their corresponding movement order, and send this information to other computers which accomplished all the tasks.

One of the tests was to make the two other volunteers (the woman and a 66 year old man) reach out, with the robotic arm, a foam sphere, and grab it. The results were really good: one of them got the ball in 46% of all the attempts and the other a 62%.

Another test, the most famous one as it demonstrated how this new project can help our society, was the experiment in which the woman took part. The robot arm was supposed to move according to the Hutchinson’s orders, and grab a cup of coffee, move it to her mouth so she could drink from the straw, and leave it back in the table again.

For this, the scientists told her to imagine she was moving the robot arm, which caused neuronal signals the computers were able to detect and transform into orders the robot arm carried out.

The inventor of BrainGate, the technology used in this experiment, John Donoghue, explains how happy the woman was after completing the experiment and how you could see her brilliant smile when she knew she could do some things finally by herself.

This invention can’t only stop here, and other projects to develop this idea are already being carried out.

For example, scientists can see how this creation can be attached to wheelchairs and other devices to help assist the disabled.

Also, although this looks more into the future, Leigh Hochberg, the leader of this , says these studies can help create a technology so that people with paralysis or amputations can recover

This outstanding experiment was not only an important scientific breakthrough, but it also made a woman that has been in silence for 15 years able to ‘move’ by herself and even drink only using her mind.

Sources Used:

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21428654.100-braincontrolled-arm-could-beat-paralysis.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/17/science/bodies-inert-they-moved-a-robot-with-their-minds.html?_r=1

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-18087949