Author: nh@dmin

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Microplastic particles now in human organs

They added particles to 47 samples of lung, liver, spleen and kidney tissue obtained from a tissue bank established to study neurodegenerative diseases. Their results showed that the microplastics could be detected in every sample.

The scientists, whose work is being presented at a meeting of the American Chemical Society on Monday, said their technique would enable other researchers to determine contamination levels in human organs around the world.

“We never want to be alarmist, but it is concerning that these non-biodegradable materials that are present everywhere [may] enter and accumulate in human tissues, and we don’t know the possible health effects,” said Varun Kelkar of Arizona State University, part of the research team.

Microplastics are those less than 5mm in diameter and nanoplastics have a diameter of less than 0.001mm. Both form largely from the abrasion of larger pieces of plastic dumped into the environment. Research in wildlife and laboratory animals has linked exposure to tiny plastics to infertility, inflammation and cancer.

Article on The Guardian.

 

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Our thinking follows quantum laws

We are talking about thought, not biology: this study does not say that the brain and its billions of neurons are a quantum physical system, but that our thinking, the way we treat information, the way we learn and make choices, follows a quantum logic.

It’s been a few years since the idea made its way, but never before has it been supported by such robust evidence: an international team has just confirmed, with brain imaging in support, that our thinking follows quantum laws.

Read full article on Science et Vie.

 

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Microdosing LSD for Alzheimer’s proves safe in early human trial


New results have been published from one of the first placebo-controlled clinical trials investigating the effects of microdosing Lysergic Acid Diethylamide (LSD). This Phase 1 trial is the first step in testing whether these kinds of psychedelic microdose methods could be useful as a therapeutic approach for treating Alzheimer’s disease, and while the early data doesn’t identify significant cognitive benefits in microdosing, it certainly demonstrates the method is safe enough to proceed to larger efficacy trials.

Read full article on NewAtlas.

 

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Human placed in suspended animation for the first time

Doctors have placed humans in suspended animation for the first time, as part of a trial in the US that aims to make it possible to fix traumatic injuries that would otherwise cause death.

The technique, officially called emergency preservation and resuscitation (EPR), is being carried out on people who arrive at the University of Maryland Medical Centre in Baltimore with an acute trauma – such as a gunshot or stab wound – and have had a cardiac arrest. Their heart will have stopped beating and they will have lost more than half their blood. There are only minutes to operate, with a less than 5 per cent chance that they would normally survive.

Read full article on NewScientist

 

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Google AI beats experienced human players at StarCraft II


An artificial intelligence (AI) known as AlphaStar — which was built by Google’s AI firm DeepMind — achieved a grandmaster rating after it was unleashed on the game’s European servers, placing within the top 0.15% of the region’s 90,000 players.

StarCraft II’s complexity poses immense challenges to AIs. Unlike chess, StarCraft II has hundreds of ‘pieces’ — soldiers in the factions’ armies — that move simultaneously in real time, not in an orderly, turn-based fashion. Whereas a chess piece has a limited number of legal moves, AlphaStar has 1026 actions to choose from at any moment. And StarCraft II, unlike chess, is a game of imperfect information — players often cannot see what their opponent is doing. This makes it unpredictable.

Read article in “Nature“.

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1st center devoted to researching psychedelic drugs in the U.S.

The university is launching a Center for Psychedelic and Consciousness Research within John Hopkins Medicine. It’s believed to be the first of its kind in the U.S. and the largest research center of its kind in the world, according to the school.

“Johns Hopkins is deeply committed to exploring innovative treatments for our patients,” said Paul B. Rothman, dean of the medical faculty at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, in a statement. “Our scientists have shown that psychedelics have real potential as medicine, and this new center will help us explore that potential.”

Read article on CNN.

 

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Scientists rise up against statistical significance

Finally a positive evolution in the mentality of scientists, towards more openness?

How do statistics so often lead scientists to deny differences that those not educated in statistics can plainly see? For several generations, researchers have been warned that a statistically non-significant result does not ‘prove’ the null hypothesis (the hypothesis that there is no difference between groups or no effect of a treatment on some measured outcome). Nor do statistically significant results ‘prove’ some other hypothesis. Such misconceptions have famously warped the literature with overstated claims and, less famously, led to claims of conflicts between studies where none exists.

Read full article in “Nature“

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Once more, new evidence about Parkinson and guts

The human body naturally forms a protein called alpha-synuclein which is found, among other places, in the brain in the endings of nerve cells. However, misfolded forms of this protein that clump together are linked to damage to nerve cells, a deterioration of the dopamine system and the development of problems with movement and speech – hallmarks of Parkinson’s disease.

The latest findings, which are based on studies in mice, back up a long-held theory that abnormally folded alpha-synuclein may start off in the gut and then spread to the brain via the vagus nerve – a bundle of fibres that starts in the brainstem and transports signals to and from many of the body’s organs, including the gut.

Full article on the Guardian

 

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Cats know their names – but don’t really care!

“Cats are just as good as dogs at learning — they’re just not as keen to show their owners what they’ve learnt,” says John Bradshaw, a biologist at the University of Bristol, UK, who specializes in human–animal interactions.

The study took advantage of a technique known as ‘habituation–dishabituation’, commonly used in animal-behaviour studies. Atsuko Saito, a cognitive biologist at the University of Tokyo, and her colleagues visited 11 households with pet cats (Felis catus) and asked the owner to read a list of four nouns to their pet. These words were of the same length and rhythm as the cat’s name.

Full article on “nature“.