Study demonstrates the existence of cardiac stem cells

When a player is injured in the middle game, it is immediately replaced by another for his team to keep it running. However, when a heart has a heart attack, the damaged area is not repaired and the heart has to make do with the other 'players' to continue pumping, but at a different pace. Now, British scientists have developed a method for producing 'reserves' to replace dead cells in a heart attack and with the sound can continue working as before. This work, currently only has proved successful in mice but is a big step to open the door to new therapies.



Since stem cells known to exist in different parts of the human body, cardiologists have developed numerous studies with two objectives. The first is to show that even in the heart are those cells capable of becoming any cell type. On the other hand, they also seek a way to use as a therapy to regenerate cardiac tissue. Ultimately, the goal is a safe and effective method to transform these stem cells into new heart muscle components that can restore the function of the infarcted zone.

Stem cells are activated
The work, developed by researchers at University College London (United Kingdom), seems to have hit the mark of that search. These scientists focused on the epicardial progenitor cells are the stem cells of the outer membrane that surrounds the heart. In the embryo, they are able to transform into other specialty. However, it seems that when we become adults and can not give rise to other cells. The achievement of this team has been to restore that capability.

First, they injected a molecule called thymosin beta 4 in healthy hearts of adult mice. The researchers then returned to inoculate booster dose of the molecule in mice that suffered a heart attack. This substance triggered the activation of stem cells from the epicardium that began to transform into new heart muscle cells and integrate with other companions healthy heart muscle.

As the lead researcher, Paul Riley, "I could imagine that a patient with a high risk of myocardial infarction, well because of family history or symptoms because your doctor suspects to take a pill, based on this experiment, the line of statins, which could prepare their hearts so that, if you suffer a heart attack, the damage could be repaired. "

However, despite the excellent results, much work remains ahead. Although tyrosine led to the formation of adult cardiac muscle cells, their number was limited. The researchers plan to further explore the mechanism for developing a more effective method to transform stem cells into specialized cells.

To these constraints we must add the potential risks. "If this molecule is able to transform stem cells into other, could also cause tumors. So the main thing now would be to study the pharmacology of this molecule. This work he has done is to prove a concept, is further evidence that stem cells exist in the heart, contrary to what is being taught in medical schools. However, all the work that lies ahead must be done within a framework of security and this can take many years until he moved to the patient, "concludes the researcher

Recreate memory brain activity that generates

Engineers at the University of Pittsburgh were able to reproduce the complex pattern of electrical impulses in the brain in a laboratory and see how memory is formed.

For their research, engineers cultured neurons obtained from rat hippocampus, a brain area known to be associated with memory formation, a process that was followed by MRI, which showed that memory is formed when a prolonged electrical activity in the cortex or outer layer.

Similarly, the experts made a crop of proteins on silicon wafers on which placed neurons taken from rats to observe under the microscope and the same neural system seen with resonance.

After a while, proteins and neurons grew and connected to form a neural network electrical activity was maintained for 12 seconds, far more than the time it takes a brain in normal position, which lasts no more than 0.25 seconds, but it was too short to do the analysis.

Henry Zeringue, bioengineering expert and head of the study, explained that the neurons that formed the network not only were able to transmit an electrical impulse, but also could maintain this activity for some time, enough so that these neurons generate memory.

"Neurons are more connected and more interdependent than any other body cell. Not enough to know how a neuron responds to a stimulus, because a network can react differently and even contrary to that expected, "Zeringue said.

According to the expert, the study is a tiny part of what happens in the brain, but a first step toward understanding this process

Equipment for investigating nanoparticle production

Analyzer to determine the size distribution of a particle, either diluted or suspended with a highly sensitive detector, known as Light scattering, and a centrifuge are two of the technological equipment obtained by the National Engineering University (UNI) and allowing the investigation nanoparticle production at commercial level in Peru.



These machines were purchased with cofinancing of $ 45,000 Equipment Contest Science and Technology organized by the Science and Technology FINCyT, attached to the Presidency of the Council of Ministers (PCM), in agreement with the Inter-American Development Bank (BID).

The direct beneficiaries of this equipment were members of Nanostructured Materials Group (GMN), Faculty of Sciences of the UNI, composed of physicists, chemists and engineers who work on multidisciplinary projects-oriented laboratory for new materials, self-cleaning surfaces , new treatments for cancer, solar cells, fuel cells, sensors, pigments, catalysts, among others.

Obtaining results within minutes
The project coordinator, physicist Walter Estrada Lopez said before we have this equipment, the process of analyzing the samples could take up to several months, but with the new equipment over time has been reduced to minutes.

He reported that the country has around 60 experts in nanoparticles, working in laboratories Trujillo, Arequipa and Lima, and this number sufficient given the potential it represents to Peru the aim to research and nanoscale exports to stop being a primary exporter of minerals.

New Printers "Solid Ink" Xerox

The innovative technology of high speed solid ink Xerox provides a new way to print in color daily with a lower cost.

Three new platform-based MFPs ColorQube allows customers faster print speeds. The cartridge-free MFPs print and copy at speeds up to 55 pages per minute (ppm) color, 60 ppm in black and white and scan up to 60 pages per minute in color.

New Printers "Solid Ink" Xerox

The innovative technology of high speed solid ink Xerox provides a new way to print in color daily with a lower cost.

Three new platform-based MFPs ColorQube allows customers faster print speeds. The cartridge-free MFPs print and copy at speeds up to 55 pages per minute (ppm) color, 60 ppm in black and white and scan up to 60 pages per minute in color.

Mars would have formed in a few million years

Mars as a planet was developed in as little as two to four million years after the birth of the solar system, much faster than Earth, according to a new study published in the journal Nature. The rapid formation of the red planet helps explain why it is so small, scientists said Nicolas Dauphas of the University of Chicago, and Ali Pourmand, University of Miami.



Mars is probably not a planet like Earth, which grew to full size between 50 and 100 million years through collisions with other small bodies in the solar system, said Dauphas, associate professor of geophysical sciences.

"The Earth as embryos was Mars, but Mars is an embryonic planet stranded not collided with other embryos to give rise to a planet like Earth," said Dauphas.

Geological record
Pourmand Dauphas and were able to refine the age of Mars using, by way of a timer, the radioactive decay of hafnium in tungsten in meteorites. Hafnium 182 decays into tungsten 182 in an average life of nine million years. This relatively fast process means that almost all Hafnium 182 will disappear in 50 million years, providing a way to build a refined chronology of the early solar system events.

Previous estimates of the formation of Mars presented a range as high as 15 million years because the chemical composition of the Martian mantle is largely unknown. Scientists are still struggling with large uncertainties in the composition of the mantle because they alter the composition of processes such as fusion.

The secret in chondrites
The resolution of some lingering uncertainties about the composition of chondrites, a common type of meteorites, provided the data they needed. Remains essentially unchanged surplus of birth of the solar system, chondrites Rosetta stone used to deduce the chemical composition of the planet.

The cosmochemical chondrites have been studied intensively, but still have little understanding between the abundances of the two categories of items they contain, including uranium, thorium, hafnium and lutetium.

Pourmand Dauphas and analyzed the abundances of these elements in more than 30 chondrites, and compared with those of 20 other compositions of Martian meteorites.

Hafnium and thorium are both elements are refractory or non-volatile, meaning that their compositions are relatively constant in meteorites. Litofilos elements are also those who have remained in the mantle when the core of Mars was formed. Therefore, if scientists can measure the ratio of hafnium-thorium in the mantle of Mars, would the rate for the entire planet, they need to rebuild their formation history.

A premature birth
Relations between hafnium-thorium and tungsten dictated that the hafnium-thorium ratio in the mantle of Mars should be similar to the same ratio as in chondrites. To calculate the proportion of the Martian mantle hafnium-thorium ratio is divided thorium-tungsten Martian meteorites hafnium-thorium ratio of the chondrites.

Once Pourmand Dauphas and determined this relationship were able to calculate how long it took to become a planet Mars. The simulation shows that Mars must have reached half its current size only two billion years after solar system formation.

Rapid formation of Mars could help explain the puzzling similarities in the content of xenon in its atmosphere and the Earth. "Maybe it's just a coincidence, but maybe the solution is part of the Earth's atmosphere was inherited from an earlier generation of embryos that had their own environments, perhaps an environment like Mars," said Dauphas.

Recognizing the age of the stars

Using the Kepler space telescope and a new technique to determine the age of the stars with their rotation, astronomers have been able to know the age of a distant star cluster.

The research led by Soren Meibom, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, focused primarily on the star cluster called NGC 6811, one billion years in which girocronología (new method that accurately determines the ages of stars based on their speed of rotation) can have a major impact in understanding what is beyond our solar system.

In addition, the astronomers searched the glare caused by the dark markings that are equivalent to sunspots to fix the exact rotation of the stars. Aided by the Kepler telescope, designed specifically to measure the stellar brightness with high accuracy, it can also detect planets that block the light from a star slightly if they cross its surface.

"The rotation of a star decreases progressively with time, like a top (spinning object) on a table, and can be used as a clock to determine their age," says Meibom in a recent press conference the session 218 of the American Astronomical Society.

"We need to know the ages of stars and planets to assess whether extraterrestrial life could have evolved on these distant worlds," says Meibom about the importance of this study.

The researcher found rotation periods ranging from 1 to 11 days (massive stars that rotate faster and are hotter), compared with the speed of rotation of 30 days of our sun. More importantly, astronomers found a strong relationship between stellar mass and rotation rate.