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Feb 11, 2019

The biological basis of mental illness

Posted by in categories: biological, evolution, genetics, neuroscience

Psychiatry as a field, meanwhile, quivers with theoretical uncertainty. It has not become a sub-speciality of neurology, as one might have expected if mental illness mapped directly to neural behaviour. And common genetic variations with large effects on mental disorders are elusive. The various incarnations of the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) have enabled diagnostic consistency and the objectification of mental illnesses. But the DSM has resulted in overlapping diagnoses, and contrived symptom-cluster checklists. At times, it impinges on the territory of healthy mental function. Allen Frances, chair of the task force that wrote the manual’s fourth edition in 1994, revolted against out-of-control mental diagnosis in his 2013 book DSM: Saving Normal.


Adrian Woolfson weighs up a study on the role of evolution in conditions such as depression and anxiety.

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Feb 11, 2019

Giving Coral Reefs a Second Chance with Probiotics

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, health

While testing of the probiotic supplements is currently confined to the lab, Peixoto envisions the treatment being administered on wild reefs. The probiotics could be sprayed from a plane, similar to how pesticides are spread over fields, or dropped like little bacterial bombs to target areas more specifically. Peixoto acknowledges the risk of trying to deliberately manipulate microbial ecosystems in the oceans, but believes the probiotics could be a viable long-term solution to coral reefs’ declining health.


When faced with high heat and disease, coral treated with microbial supplements fared better.

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Feb 11, 2019

China’s Film Industry Finally Joins the Space Race

Posted by in category: entertainment

Both “The Wandering Earth” and “Crazy Alien” are adapted from works by Liu Cixin, the writer who has led a renaissance in science fiction here, becoming the first Chinese winner of the Hugo Award for the genre in 2015.

His novels are sprawling epics and deeply researched. That makes them plausible fantasies about humanity’s encounters with a dangerous universe. Translating them into movies would challenge any filmmaker, as the director of “The Wandering Earth,” Guo Fan, acknowledged during a screening in Beijing last week.


Science-fiction movies have been slow to catch on in China, but led by “The Wandering Earth,” a wave of new blockbusters might change that.

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Feb 10, 2019

Lyn Slater is Making the World She Wants – GoDaddy Commercial

Posted by in category: life extension

GoDaddy is trending longevity.✌️😊.


See how Lyn Slater, the Accidental Icon, challenges the modeling status quo, offering an urban, modern, intellectual aesthetic to women. And, she puts it all out there on a GoDaddy website. Make The World You Want: http://x.co/6ney6

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Feb 10, 2019

Advances in cryoablation for pancreatic cancer

Posted by in category: biotech/medical

Extreme cold can be our friend in other ways too!! Directed attacks on liver cancer and pancreatic cancer https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4716077/


Pancreatic carcinoma is a common cancer of the digestive system with a poor prognosis. It is characterized by insidious onset, rapid progression, a high degree of malignancy and early metastasis. At present, radical surgery is considered the only curative option for treatment, however, the majority of patients with pancreatic cancer are diagnosed too late to undergo surgery. The sensitivity of pancreatic cancer to chemotherapy or radiotherapy is also poor. As a result, there is no standard treatment for patients with advanced pancreatic cancer. Cryoablation is generally considered to be an effective palliative treatment for pancreatic cancer. It has the advantages of minimal invasion and improved targeting, and is potentially safe with less pain to the patients. It is especially suitable in patients with unresectable pancreatic cancer. However, our initial findings suggest that cryotherapy combined with 125-iodine seed implantation, immunotherapy or various other treatments for advanced pancreatic cancer can improve survival in patients with unresectable or metastatic pancreatic cancer. Although these findings require further in-depth study, the initial results are encouraging. This paper reviews the safety and efficacy of cryoablation, including combined approaches, in the treatment of pancreatic cancer.

Keywords: Pancreatic cancer, Cryoablation, Combination therapy, Cryoimmunotherapy.

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Feb 10, 2019

FDA grants breakthrough designation to wearable dialysis device

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, wearables

The portable, wearable peritoneal dialysis device by Singapore-based AWAK Technologies is intended for patients with end-stage renal disease as an alternative to long hours of connection to large dialysis machines.

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Feb 10, 2019

This tower is a massive battery and it’s fuelled by gravity

Posted by in categories: energy, sustainability

This tower is a massive battery — and it could help solve one of renewable energy’s biggest challenges.

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Feb 10, 2019

Deactivating a trigger protein could stop melanoma in its tracks

Posted by in category: biotech/medical

A new study may have uncovered a previously unknown way to fight melanoma, one of the most deadly forms of skin cancer. A team led by researchers at the Boston University School of Medicine has identified a gene that, when disrupted with a drug compound, can prevent melanoma from developing.

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Feb 10, 2019

Red-eyed mosquitoes engineered to break the chain of Zika virus transmission

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, engineering

Scientists in Australia are looking at some pretty creative ways to tackle the Zika virus, which continues to pose a risk to millions across Africa, Asia and parts of the Americas. Following a trial last year where researchers were able to decimate disease-spreading mosquitos in the country’s north, scientists have now demonstrated an engineering technique that renders the biggest transmitter of the virus largely immune to it, raising hopes of a new way to control the spread of Zika and other mosquito-borne diseases.

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Feb 10, 2019

Physicists Found a Brand-New Kind of Magnet Hiding in a Uranium Compound

Posted by in category: physics

This strange type of magnetism can form rapidly — and disappear just as quickly.

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