UCLA and NASA have partnered to combine the latest advances in biology and engineering at the Institute for Cell Mimetic Space Exploration (CMISE), which officially opens on Monday, Feb. 10. CMISE will meld the molecular world with aerospace technology to create minuscule monitoring systems, or a “lab on a chip,” that could make research safer and more efficient on earth and in space.
UCLA and University of Queensland (Australia) neuroscientists using a powerful new imaging analysis technique have created the first three-dimensional video maps showing how Alzheimer’s disease systematically engulfs the brains of living patients. The findings appear in the Feb. 1 edition of the peer-reviewed Journal of Neuroscience. The dramatic time-lapse videos show the sequential destruction of brain areas that control memory function, then emotion and inhibition, and finally sensation. They also show how the disease spares small brain regions that control vision and other functions that remain intact in Alzheimer’s patients
Using newly developed imaging techniques, neuroscientists for the first time have “unfolded” the brain’s sea-horse-shaped hippocampus to reveal how dynamic activity within the brain structure’s complex architecture orchestrates memory formation. Details appear in the Jan. 24 edition of the peer-reviewed journal Science. The researchers used extremely high-resolution functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and software developed at UCLA’s Ahmanson-Lovelace Brain Mapping Center to study blood flow within the hippocampus as 10 human volunteers learned to associate names with faces.
Researchers for the first time have identified and ranked which diseases contribute most to the life-expectancy gap between races and between education levels. The top four contributors to the life-expectancy disparity between blacks and whites are hypertension, HIV, homicide and diabetes. The top six contributors of mortality differences between education levels are all smoking-related diseases.
Second-hand tobacco smoke threatens the health of 21 million American children ? 35 percent of everyone age 17 and younger ? who live in homes where residents or visitors smoke once a week or more, according to a study published Nov. 13 by researchers from RAND and UCLA. The study is the most thorough ever conducted of youths’ exposure to environmental second-hand tobacco smoke at home. It found that 19 million American children ? 28 percent of everyone in the United States 17 and younger ? are exposed to tobacco smoke at home on a daily basis.
Researchers have created a tiny motor that they can turn on and off at will, bringing scientists one step closer to using such devices to repair cellular damage, manufacture medicines and attack cancer cells. As reported in this month’s Nature Materials, the researchers have developed a chemical switch that gives them control over a biomolecular motor just 11 nanometers, or 11 billionths of a meter, in size ? hundreds of times smaller than the width of a human hair.
Researchers in Los Angeles have localized a region on chromosome 16 that is likely to contain a risk gene for Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, the most prevalent childhood-onset psychiatric disorder. The scientists say their finding suggest that the suspected risk gene may contribute as much as 30 percent of the underlying genetic cause of ADHD and may also be involved in a separate childhood onset disorder, autism.
Antennas for the next generation of cellphones and other wireless communications devices may bear a striking resemblance to the Santa Monica Mountains or possibly the California coastline.
That’s because UCLA researchers are using fractals ? mathematical models of mountains, trees and coastlines ? to develop antennas for next-generation cellphones, cars and mobile communications devices. These antennas need to be miniature and be able to operate at multiple frequencies simultaneously.
