"four big discoveries"

[donsu]

http://www.seedmagazine.com/news/2006/08/best_week_ever.php


Between Pluto, stem cells, dark matter and long-term potentiation, last week brought a slew of scientific discoveries, reminding us why we love this stuff.

-snip-

One finding explains exactly what happens in the brain when our world gets rearranged. It's a mechanism called long-term potentiation (LTP), the process by which neurons form lasting connections. Though LTP had been observed in response to electrical stimulation since the 1960s, and theorists had believed it was integral to learning even prior to that, it wasn't until this week that neuroscientists proved it has a direct role in the formation of new memories and associations. A team from MIT's Picower Institute for Learning and Memory revealed that by marking rats' synapses with biochemical probes and tracking the rats' synaptic transmissions, they could watch LTP in action as the rats learned to avoid uncomfortable electric shocks.

-snip-

To settle the issue, astronomers had to cull dark matter from illuminated matter, and they selected two colliding galaxy clusters as their laboratory. Observing the play of gravity and momentum in the impact, the scientists found that even as friction slowed down the clusters' hot gas, some invisible mass—probably dark matter—barreled ahead alongside the galaxies themselves.

The conclusion: Gravity is not pulling any punches. Dark matter is as real as anything we can see with our telescopes. All that remains is to figure out exactly what it is.

-snip-

Meanwhile, back on Earth, stem cell researchers are working at the intersection of morality, ethics, and hope. Scientists at the biotechnology firm Advanced Cell Technology developed a procedure by which a single cell can be plucked from an embryo of only eight cells—without destroying a nascent life—and used to create a new stem cell line.

-snip-

Yet this new technique underscores the incredible power of those few components that brought us into being, cells that can become a life of their own, grant a second chance to the already living, or—we can now hope—both.

-snip-

But I like to think that, just as scientists are constantly re-sculpting the fundamental understanding of our world, our minds are capable of rearranging themselves again and again in response to new information—that the hum of discovery goes on long after high school and special relativity, and that we will have many more weeks like this, when our universe, brains and bodies are revealed to be more fantastic than we could have believed just seven days before.
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read the whole article for a full understanding of the 'discoveries'

isn't science wonderful!

[notadmblnd]

1. and don't forget the cancer breakthrough

nt

[bananas]

2. What cancer breakthrough? nt

[notadmblnd]

3. this one

overnment scientists saved two men dying of melanoma by genetically altering their own white blood cells to attack their tumors -- deemed the first major success in battling cancer with gene therapy.

The approach remains highly experimental, requiring years of additional research.
"Clearly this is a first step," cautioned Dr. Len Lichtenfeld of the American Cancer Society. "We have to be very cautious about not raising hopes too much."
Nevertheless, "it is exciting," he added. "It certainly is a proof of concept that this approach will work."
"It's one of the first documented, effective cases of cancer gene therapy working," added Dr. Patrick Hwu, melanoma chairman at the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, who once worked with the NCI team.
The NCI's Dr. Steven Rosenberg has long led the tantalizing research field of how the body's immune system might be harnessed to fight cancer. White blood cells called T-lymphocytes hunt down germs and other foreign tissue. Unfortunately, cancerous cells look a lot like healthy cells, making it hard for those T-cells to spot a problem.
By 2002, Dr. Rosenberg had made a breakthrough when he found small numbers of cancer-fighting T-cells inside some patients with advanced melanoma. He literally pulled those cells out of their blood and grew billions more of them in laboratory dishes, enough to have a chance at overwhelming a tumor. By suppressing the patients' normal immune system to make room for the extra T-cells and then pumping them into the patients? bodies, about half significantly improve.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20060831-010615-5533r.htm

[poverlay]

4. 2 cancer breakthroughs. Here's a little publicized one:

Healthy cells have a built-in process which means they commit suicide if something is wrong, a process which fails in cancer cells.

The University of Illinois team created a synthetic molecule which caused cancer cells to self-destruct.
(snip)

Here's the link:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/5284850.stm