The troubles with transplants

For many years the limit of transplants of blood stem cells is that they can be used as donors only brothers and sisters, the only family members who may have a profile with high rates of immunogenetic compatibility. It is, however, a possibility that only occurs in 25% of cases. In addition, the percentage is expected to drop further, unfortunately, due to the decline of births in our country. To address this problem, over the years, we have created centers of collection and storage of cord blood and Registers of volunteers who collect more than 20 million bone marrow donors. Nevertheless, there is still a 30-40% of people who remain without a compatible donor.

To use the father or mother for transplantation is an important solution to this problem. The technique developed by the Child Jesus can resolve the fact that part of the parents (usually in fact the parents are immunologically compatible with the children only 50%).

In detail, the method requires that donors undergo a drug treatment that stimulates the bone marrow to "liberate" the bloodstream hematopoietic stem cells so they can be collected from the veins of your arms with a simple drawing. This technique avoids collect cells directly from the bone marrow donor to save a much more invasive procedure.

Subsequently the blood is filtered through a machine that exploits the magnetic properties of the white blood cells from the blood to remove a particular type of white blood cells known as T lymphocytes alpha-beta positive. These are responsible for a complication, known as "graft versus host disease," in which the transplanted cells attack the recipient's tissues. In the compound you get - and this is the main difference compared to normal bone marrow transplants - in addition to hematopoietic stem cells, are also natural killer cells and "gamma-delta T cells positive". "In this way - explained during the presentation of Professor Franco Locatelli - at the time of the transplant, the patient, in addition to receiving treatment for the disease that affects, is also protected from infections that can occur within four months operation, thanks to the white blood cells in the blood of the donor. We can therefore say that we managed to transplant with a donor to 50% with the same results as those completed with subjects totally compatible. "

As for the fields of application, the technique developed by the Child Jesus can be a solution for blood cancers and other diseases, including: severe combined immunodeficiency (SCID), the Fanconi anemia, the Thalassemia major and severe aplastic anemia. The results obtained in the testing phase, in fact, show that the ability to care for children with these diseases are the 90%.

"Another source of pride for their achievements - said Professor Giuseppe Profiti, president of the Child Jesus (see interview below) - it is that this method also has the advantage of being easily replicable. This means being able to significantly expand the pool of people who will have access to treatment options that this new technology offers. "

Future Expedictions to Mars Could Damage Astronaut’s Brains

Particles zipping through space could be the wrong stuff for Mars astronauts.

A study using mice found these high-energy particles slice through the brain. They pruned back connections linking brain cells. This left the animals with memory and learning problems. The study’s authors now worry that astronauts could suffer similar effects on long missions outside Earth’s protective atmosphere. One example: traveling to Mars.

The explosion of massive stars creates cosmic rays. This energetic radiation consists of electrically charged particles. Traveling through space at nearly the speed of light, theis radiation would bombard a spacecraft and its astronauts. For how long? Well, a human mission to Mars could last between one and three years, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration estimates.

Six weeks later, the mice showed memory problems. They had a harder time recognizing new toys than did unzapped mice. They also did a poorer job of remembering where a toy had been. Details appeared May 1 in Science Advances.

Visible brain damage also showed up. The radiation shortened the complex branches on nerve cells that receive messages. It also left these brain cells with fewer branches, the team found. “We weren’t expecting such dramatic effects from these charged particles,” says Limoli.

By Alex Tortosa

Ancient DNA pushes back timing of the origin of dogs

Some friendships go way back. New genetic evidence suggests that the relationship between humans and dogs may have been forged as long as 40,000 years ago.

DNA analysis of an ancient wolf calibrates the split between dogs and wolves to 27,000 to 40,000 years ago. Researchers had previously calculated that the divergence happened about 11,000 to 16,000 years ago. The new dates, reported online May 21 in Current Biology, may mean that dogs were domesticated during the last Ice Age.

Paleogeneticist Love Dalén of the Swedish Museum of Natural History in Stockholm brought the ancient wolf’s bones back from a 2010 expedition to Russia’s Taimyr Peninsula in northern Siberia. The wolf roamed the Ice Age tundra about 35,000 years ago. Dalén and colleagues extracted DNA from a rib bone and deciphered the animal’s entire genetic makeup, its genome.

By Pablo Arps

SCIENTISTS “SEE” THUNDER FOR THE FIRST TIME

We have always been able to see lightning and hear thunder, but not hear and see thunder.

Scientists shot a long wire made of copper into a cloud using a small rocket. This generated a bolt of lighting, and the current followed the wire to the ground. This allowed the scientists and researchers to record the sound waves of the resulting thunder. The intense heating of the copper wire caused the green flashes.

By Maria Ferrajoli

Antarctic glaciers are now melting rapidly!

Glaciers along the Southern Antarctic Peninsula remained roughly stable between 2003 and 2009.

New satellite observations reveal that the region suddenly destabilized in 2009 and is now shedding around 56 billion metric tons of ice each year, enough water to raise sea levels by roughly 0.16 millimeters.

The researchers believe warm ocean water melted the underside of the ice, undermining the region’s stability and triggering the abrupt decline. Even if this warm water went away, the now destabilized region would continue to shrink until reaching a new equilibrium!

By Jorge Salvador

Europe from Space

The European Agency Space does a video of the landscape that they can see from the above.

From the Canary Islands to Italy in less than 30 seconds. It looks like impossible for us but it doesn’t look impossible for technology. We can see a video from the astronauts in the International Space Station. Samantha Cristoforetti has traced a photographic video between this two different point in planet earth. The video has been done with time-lapse, which consists in using photos with movement which offers spectacular results.

Link to the video and information below:

http://www.abc.es/ciencia/20150519/abci-impresionante-viaje-espacial-201505181805.html

By Célia Estragués

Two out of three cancers are developed due to bad luck

The Medicine University John Hopkins has done a study to demonstrate that most of our cancers are not developed because of external factors, they are developed due to bad luck in the mutations of mother cells. These mutations occur when mother cells multiply themselves, smoking and other external factors can also contribute to cancer formation, but these are not the main factors in the development of cancer. Scientifics have categorized cancer into 31 different groups, divided into two main categories. 7 of those are caused by smoking and having Hepatitis C, the resting 22 are caused by the “bad luck” factor.

By Joan Estrada

The age of the Universe

The team of the probe Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP), of the NASA, could make the first detection of helium. By this helium, they have determinated how many years ago was the big bang occur and due to this an estimate age of the universe.

Finally, the NASA informed us about this saying the following words: "The light we see today as the cosmic microwave background, has traveled over 13 billion years to reach us."

FLICKR /NASA BLUESHIFT

The determinated age of the universe is 13.7 billion years old with a small percantege error.

http://curiosidades.batanga.com/2010/08/02/descubrimientos-cientificos-recientes

By Nico Van Den Brink

The ocean’s secret world revealed by the Tara expedition

After a three-year global expedition, the international team that has been studying plankton sample has been able to elaborate “the most complete description yet of planktonic organisms to date.”

They have found thousands of organisms which they believe are in a great majority, new to science. They have found 35,000 species of bacteria, 5,000 new viruses and 150,000 single-celled plants and creatures.  These organisms are vital as they make up 90% of the mass of all of the ocean’s marine life, produce half of the oxygen we breathe and are the base of any food chain.

This expedition, known as the Tara expedition, took place between 2009 and 2013. The project cost about 10 million and the Tara schooner sailed 30,000 km around the world in order to successfully carry out the expedition.  The scientists observed how he different organisms interacted and even found out that lots of the organisms, especially bacteria, are sensitive to temperature.

As a result of this study they have released one of the largest databases of DNA available, at least within the scientific community. Keeping this in mind, you should know that they have only analysed about 2% of the entire collection of samples they collected during the expedition. So this database is only the beginning of a much bigger one.

                                                                                                                          Sofía Navarro

How an Octopus can see without eyes

The California two spot octopus posesses light sensitive proteins on its skin, revealing that he can “see” with its skin. It doesn’t work the same as eyesight but it has the ability to detect light. This is because the protein, called opsin, that is found in eyes is in the octopus’ skin.

This octopus is considered one of the most intelligent cephalopods and can carry out this ability without the command of the nervous system. Its skin can detect an increase and a decrease in light, meaning that its system works better at brightness than color change.