One step closer to an artificial nerve cell
... with this method is that all cell types in the vicinity of the electrode are activated, which gives undesired effects. Scientists have now used an electrically conducting plastic to create a new type of "delivery electrode" that instead releases the neurotransmitters that brain cells use to communicate natura...Winalite International Healthy Love Moon Sanitary Pads Takes World by Storm
...mental well-being by emitting negative ions (anions) during use. Canyon Lake, California (PRWEB) April 28, 2009 -- Ions are electrically charged atoms that can carry a positive or negative charge (anions). Anions are required to sustain life.They have strong absorption capability to abs...UT Southwestern researchers reveal how the brain processes important information
... Center at the Dallas Veterans Affairs Medical Center, and his research team isolated slices of the hippocampus region of the animals' brains and then electrically stimulated the cells. To simulate what happens in the brain in response to a memory-worthy event, they then exposed the cells to a selective dopamine-...Engineer: Computer learning, electrical stimulation offer hope for paralyzed
...ely high voltage to a designated muscle. That means that while the muscle may move, it can easily fatigue, becoming less responsive and sore. Also, electrically stimulated movements tend to be rough, without the degree of control and variation the subtle bends or twists that make all the difference in so much...New stretchable electrodes created to study stresses on cardiac cells
...g at Stanford, along with graduate students and other researchers at both universities. "What's special about this technology is that it allows you to electrically stimulate or monitor the cell population using electrodes while you are applying stress to the cells." Stretching the cell cultures causes mechanic...Stanford blood scanner detects even faint indicators of cancer
...magnetic signal in a blood serum sample stands out like a flare in the night sky. By tagging cancer proteins with tiny magnetic particles, rather than electrically charged or glowing particles as in other detectors, the new system can obtain a clearer signal from a smaller number of cancer proteins. At the hea...Cancer requires support from immune system to develop, UT Southwestern researchers report
...rs are complex structures that include many different types of cells, particularly Schwann cells, which provide a fatty coating that makes nerve cells electrically efficient, and mast cells. Because of their complexity, plexiform neurofibromas are difficult to remove surgically, and there is currently no cure ...'Hub' of fear memory formation identified in brain cells
...otein with a pulse of the psychiatric drug lithium and injecting a virus that could remove the gene for beta-catenin from brain cells. If mice are electrically shocked just after they hear a certain tone, they gradually learn to fear that tone, and they show that fear by freezing. To test beta-catenin's i...Device Blocking Stomach Nerve Signals Shows Promise in Obesity
...dures which reroute food and remove part of the stomach. "For this study, we wanted to get an initial assessment of whether blocking the vagus nerve electrically could cause obese patients to feel full after a normal-sized meal," Dr. Camilleri explains. "Patients were not put on any restricted diets or given co...St. Jude Finds 'Dancing' Hair Cells Are Key to Humans' Acute Hearing
...ation or overdose of drugs MEMPHIS, Tenn., May 7 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- St. Jude Children's Research Hospital investigators have found that an electrically powered amplification mechanism in the cochlea of the ear is critical to the acute hearing of humans and other mammals. The findings will enable bette...Shielded Paired Disc Electrodes
Description:...at insulates the recording lead wires from the damaging effects of 60-cycle interference. That means you get a cleaner, quieter signaleven in the most electrically hostile environment....UCLA stem cells scientists make electrically active motor neurons from iPS cells
Stem cells scientists at UCLA showed for the first time that human induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells can be differentiated into electrically active motor neurons, a discovery that may aid in studying and treating neurological disorders. Additionally, the motor neurons derived from the iPS c...Researchers design first model motor nerve system that's insulated and organized like the human body
...ower station relays along the myelin sheath. They chemically boost signals, allowing them to get across breaks in myelin, or from node to node, at the electrically charged nodes of Ranvier. Nerve malfunctions, called neuropathies, involve a breakdown in the way the brain sends and receives electric signals along...Flow of potassium into cells implicated in schizophrenia
...human brain, and neurons," added Weinberger. By regulating the flow of potassium ions into the cell, potassium channels control when neurons fire electrically discharge and release a chemical messenger that signals neighboring neurons in a circuit. This flow is regulated, in part, by activity of the chemical...Researchers generate functional neurons from somatic cells
... Stem Cells . This study is the first to use human iPS cells to generate electrically active motor neurons, a key hallmark of functional maturation that is essen...d that the iPS cells followed a normal developmental progression to mature, electrically active neurons. "It seems possible that disease-specific somatic cells ...New method monitors critical bacteria in wastewater treatment
...rites, which are further broken down by other bacteria into harmless nitrogen gas. Sensor data reveal how well the bacteria are absorbing ions, or electrically charged atoms and molecules, from the wastes. The "filtering flux sensor" measures ammonia and nitrite to reveal the ion flux, or how many ions are be...New 'smart' materials for the brain
... step forward in the search to find ways to "bypass" faulty brain wiring. The research shows that carbon nanotubes, which, like neurons, are highly electrically conductive, form extremely tight contacts with neuronal cell membranes. Unlike the metal electrodes that are currently used in research and clinical a...New holographic method could be used for lab-on-a-chip technologies
... a Chip and Microfluidics and Nanofluidics. The experimental device consists of two parallel electrodes made of indium tin oxide, a transparent and electrically conductive material. The parallel plates were spaced 50 micrometers, or millionths of a meter, apart, equivalent to two-thousandths of an inch or abou...Deprived of a sense of smell, worms live longer
...ormal. "Now we know what cells ethosuximide targets in C. elegans ," Kornfeld says. "It's likely that the drug prevents the nerve cells from being electrically active, but precisely how it does that is something we need to study further. We also want to find out how the effect on the neurons is translated int...American Chemical Society's Weekly PressPac -- Sept. 24, 2008
...rnal. In the new study, Rongjia Tao and colleagues describe development and testing of a new fuel economy booster. The small device consists of an electrically charged tube that can be attached to the fuel line of a car's engine near the fuel injector. The device creates an electric field that thins fuel, or ...Bilayer graphene gets a bandgap
... Wang. "Unfortunately chemical doping is difficult to control." Researchers then tried to tune the bilayer graphene bandgap by doping the substrate electrically instead of chemically, using a perpendicularly applied, continuously tunable electrical field. But when such a field is applied with a single gate (el...Scientists moving closer to 'artificial noses'
...em of nanostrings made of non-conducting material, where each string can be electrically excited separately. Thousands of these strings can be produced on a small c...nter. Following this physical principle, the nanostrings, which are made of electrically non-conducting silicon nitride, are excited to resonate when exposed to an ...MIT virus battery could power cars, electronic devices
...ial. Because the viruses recognize and bind specifically to certain materials (carbon nanotubes in this case), each iron phosphate nanowire can be electrically "wired" to conducting carbon nanotube networks. Electrons can travel along the carbon nanotube networks, percolating throughout the electrodes to the ...MIT: 'Nanostitching' could strengthen airplane skins, more
...10 times stronger at a nominal increase in cost. Moreover, advanced composites reinforced with nanotubes are also more than one million times more electrically conductive than their counterparts without nanotubes, meaning aircraft built with such materials would have greater protection against damage from lig...Domain walls that conduct electricity
... is the most familiar kind of magnetism, characterized by fields oriented by north and south poles. Ferroelectricity refers to materials which can be electrically polarized, having a preferred orientation of positive-negative electric charge. In ferroelastic materials "shape-memory" alloys, for example stress ...Peter Zoller and Ignacio Cirac, awarded by the BBVA Foundation
...ng from 1995, was the description of a theoretical model for a quantum computer. They based their conjectures on what are known as ion traps, in which electrically charged and cooled atoms are trapped by an electric field and manipulated with lasers. Today, this technique still holds out the best promise for quan...Method sorts out double-walled carbon nanotube problem
...d in transparent conductors, materials that are important components of solar cells and flat-panel displays because they are optically transparent and electrically conductive. As the demand for energy-efficient devices and alternative energy sources rises worldwide so does the demand for transparent conductive fi...National Geographic Uses Air Filtration in Bid To Be an Energy, Environmental Leader
...trionAir technology has accomplished." Aaron Ayer, P.E., and StrionAir vice president of marketing, said, "The USGBC**'s recognition that our electrically enhanced air filtration technology merits an Innovation Credit as a stand-alone product is huge. It showcases our technology's role in helping achieve...Fingerprints provide clues to more than just identity
...hey then analyzed them with a mass spectrometry technique developed in Cooks' lab. Mass spectrometry works by first turning molecules into ions, or electrically charged versions of themselves, so their masses can be analyzed. Conventional mass spectrometry requires chemical separations, manipulations of sample...New solar energy material captures every color of the rainbow
...ined in sunlight, and generates electrons in a way that makes them easier to capture. Ohio State University chemists and their colleagues combined electrically conductive plastic with metals including molybdenum and titanium to create the hybrid material. "There are other such hybrids out there, but the ad...