Spout in the handset – The Hubble Telescope turns 32 years old. Celebrate it with a picture of a galaxy cluster.

Today it is 32 years since NASA’s space telescope Hubble Space Telescope was launched into space and it is noticed as usual with an image […]

The post Spout in the handset – The Hubble Telescope turns 32 years old. Celebrate it with a picture of a galaxy cluster. appeared first on Gamingsym.

【最新版】認知症になりやすい「意外なクスリ」を実名公開する…！睡眠薬や、ぜんそく薬も（週刊現代） @moneygendai

一度なってしまったらもう治らず、坂を転げ落ちるように認知機能が衰えていくと思われがちなアルツハイマー病だが、じつは猛スピードで新薬の開発が進んでいる。『アルツハイマー病は「治らない病気」ではなくなる…日本の「最新薬」でわかった凄い治療法』ではその最新の研究を追った。 しかし一方では、服用によって逆…

めまい、混乱、言葉が出ない…コロナは軽症でも認知力低下の恐れ

2022年3月17日付けで医学誌「Alzheimer’s & Dementia」に発表された、これまでの研究結果を総括した分析によると、新型コロナ患者は健康な人と比べ、注意、記憶、実行機能のテストにおいて有意に劣ることが示されている。フランス、パリ大学ラリボワジエール病院の神経科医ジャック・ユゴン氏は、脳が自然に治るかどうか…

Investigation of the Private Copy Compensation completed. Proposed to be administered by a new authority in the future.

The investigation into the so-called Private Copy Compensation that started in 2020 is now complete. It is about the compensation that electronics retailers or manufacturers […]

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The Large Hadron Collider is smashing protons again after a three-year hiatus

The Large Hadron Collider, the particle accelerator that enabled the discovery of the Higgs boson, is back in action after over three years in hiatus. CERN shut the accelerator down for maintenance and upgrade work that was extended due to delays caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. Now, it’s ready to smash particles for various research projects throughout its third run that’s scheduled to last until 2026. In fact, two beams of protons had already circulated in opposite directions around the 27-kilometer collider as of April 22nd at 12:16 CEST (6:16AM Eastern Time). 

It’s just a start, however: The beams contained a relatively small number of protons and circulated at 450 billion electronvolts. The LHC team will ramp up the energy and intensity of the beams until the accelerator can perform collisions at a record energy of 13.6 trillion electronvolts.

Mike Lamont, CERN’s Director for Accelerators and Technology, said:

“The machines and facilities underwent major upgrades during the second long shutdown of CERN’s accelerator complex. The LHC itself has undergone an extensive consolidation programme and will now operate at an even higher energy and, thanks to major improvements in the injector complex, it will deliver significantly more data to the upgraded LHC experiments.”

Research teams using the accelerator for their studies are expecting to be able to perform a lot more collisions — one, in particular, is expecting a 50 times increase — thanks to the upgrade. The more powerful LHC will allow scientists to study the Higgs boson more closely and to resume their hunt for a particle that proves the existence of dark matter with a more capable tool at hand. 

At the moment, dark matter is but a hypothetical form of matter that’s believed to be five times more prevalent than its ordinary counterpart. It’s invisible, doesn’t reflect or emit light, and all attempts at looking for it have so far been unsuccessful. LHC researchers have narrowed down the regions where the particle may be hidden, though, and the upgraded accelerator could bring us closer to its discovery. To note, CERN previously approved plans to build a more powerful $23 billion super-collider that’s 100 km in circumference, but its construction isn’t expected to begin until 2038. 

Massive DNA study of human cancers offers new clues about their causes

A team of UK scientists has analyzed the complete genetic makeup of 12,000 tumors from NHS patients and discovered 58 new mutations that provide clues about their potential causes. The team, composed of scientists from Cambridge University Hospitals and the University of Cambridge, used data from the 100,000 Genomes Project. That’s a British initiative to sequence the whole genomes of patients with cancers and rare diseases. 

Team leader Professor Serena Nik-Zainal said this is the largest study of its kind and that the vast amount of data her team worked with allowed them to detect patterns in the genetic alterations or “mutational signatures” found in the tumors. By comparing their results with other studies, they were able to confirm that 58 of the mutational signatures they found were previously unknown. Some of them are pretty common, while some are rare.

“The reason it is important to identify mutational signatures is because they are like fingerprints at a crime scene — they help to pinpoint cancer culprits,” Nik-Zainal explained. Some signatures could show that past exposure to environmental causes such as smoking or UV light had triggered the cancer, while others could have treatment implications. They could, for instance, pinpoint genetic abnormalities that could be targeted by specific drugs. 

Professor Matt Brown, chief scientific officer of Genomics England said: “Mutational signatures are an example of using the full potential of [whole genome sequencing]. We hope to use the mutational clues seen in this study and apply them back into our patient population, with the ultimate aim of improving diagnosis and management of cancer patients.”

In addition to conducting DNA analysis and publishing its results in Science, the team also developed an algorithm called FitMS that will give clinicians easy access to the new information they discovered. FitMS looks for both common and rare signatures in the results of a patient’s whole genome sequencing test. Doctors can use the algorithm to find out if their patients exhibit any of the newly discovered mutations for a more accurate diagnosis and for personalized treatments.