Exoskeletons

The article that caught my attention to share with the class was called Robot Exoskeletons March in to Link Mind and Body. This article is about Kevin Oldt who got in a snowmobile accident that caused him a spinal cord injury and was not able to walk for 16 years. What the Exoskeleton does is provide the extra support that patients need to take steps again, working side to side therapy it is supposed to help them regain that strength and balance they need in order to walk again. The Exoskeleton or the Ekso GT is designed for spinal cord injuries or lover back injuries.  

 "The exoskeleton’s software calibrates how much assistance Oldt needs by sensing how much force he generates as he lifts his foot off the ground and pushes forward." How the Ekso GT works is that it connects the thought with the action, as Oldt things about moving his leg and begins the process the Ekso GT provides the necessary strength to take a step. However, the Ekso GT does not take the step for him because it would not help him recover his own strength.  

In March the Ekso GT was approved by U.S. Food and Drug Administration and is now sold to hospitals or to patients directly. An Ekso GT costs around $70,000 to $150,000 this is quite pricy but to be able to walk and have that freedom again there is no price. Also the military is interested in using the Ekso GT as tools for soldiers to carry more weight. Also the U.S. government started covering treatment for paralyzed veterans who qualified.

I find all this that is happening fantastic because I know how it feels to have a loved one who is sick and there is no cure for them, and can’t get better or there is no solution for things. But know patients with spinal cord or lover back injuries have hope that things will change for them.

Steph S. 

Autophagy

In 2016 Yoshinori Ohsumi of the Tokyo Institute of Technology was awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine or Physiology for their research on Autophagy. Autography is Greek for “self eating”. Its a fundamental housekeeping function of the cell where the cell digests different large internal structures and semipermanent proteins in a continual cleanup process. Scientist think this may have evolved as a response to starvation, where the cell ate some of its own parts in order to survive. It is now a tool the cells use as many different health benefits, including being able to resist infection and possibly even fight cancer. Autophagy is very important to cells like neurons, which usually live for a long time and need to be killed off in order to make room for new ones.

This process takes place in the cytoplasm of the cell. In addition to lysosomes, Autophagy is an important cleanup process the cell uses in order to avoid being clotted with unnecessary “trash”. They would even in some cases rip apart other organelles and proteins and either dispose of all the parts or piece them back together with good old parts and new parts in order to keep the cell running properly.

I’m very interested in autophagy because if scientists can learn to control it, it may be the cure to cancer. The cells can learn to eat out the cancerous parts and spit them out, so at the very least the cancer can stop spreading or slow it down in order to better treat it. 

Chaylynn T.

Giraffes more speciose than expected

Prior to september 8, 2016, due to them being incompletely explored, and much of their biology being poorly understood, giraffes were thought to be one species with four subspecies.  These subspecies were separated by the animal's coat pattern, ossicone structure (horn) and their location. However new research into the giraffes DNA shows us that there are, “four distinct giraffe species”. Which are 1) southern giraffe (Giraffa giraffa), 2) masai giraffe (G. tippelskirchi. 3) reticulated giraffe (G. reticulata). 4) Northern giraffe (G. camelopardalis).

    This new classification is based on more than a hundred skin biopsies, which were collected by the Giraffe Conservation Foundation and their partners. The samples were taken. from many different geometric locations, including the rare Nubian giraffe. The samples were then sent to the Jane’s research group at the senckenberg biodiversity center. Where this new classification, replaced the one. Which focused on the atteriance of these giraffes.

    This new information about these wonderful animals, has already starting to change the life of the creatures native to africa, and those around them. Why? How? Well it comes after the separation of the types of giraffes that live. That showed us that the numbers alive of giraffes were not as great as once thought.  Witch put many of these creatures on the endangered species list. Not only is this discovery protecting giraffes in africa, it is also affecting those that hunt, and those that are interested in information about the lives of the many kinds of giraffes.

    As a pre-veterinary student, I try to stay current with as much of the new studies, and information that i can. I found these story to be quite interesting, simply because giraffes seem to be the “forgotten” animal a lot of the time. To see that new information has been found to create a better understanding of these animals, is amazing to me. Advances are always occurring in relation to animal sciences. I can't wait to see how much more they will discover within the giraffes in the future. Why? Because, I myself didn't even realize there was four subspecies within a category of giraffes, until now.  

- Siera B.

Possible cure for all strains of Ebola Developed

A possible treatment and cure may have been discovered for the deadly Ebola virus, according to the article “New Trojan-Horse strategy shows promise against all Ebola Viruses”. Multiple studies performed at Albert Einstein College of Medicine show that a newly developed bispecific antibody could stop the outbreaks of Ebola.

            Ebola targets its victims by using a protein that sticks out from the virus to attach to the outer membrane of a host cell. The membrane then surrounds the virus and pinches off, forming a lysosome, giving the virus access to the inside of the cell. Next, the virus binds to a specific protein (NPC1) in the lysosome membrane by a “lock and key” mechanism and then can finally push its RNA to the cytoplasm of the cell where it can replicate and take over the cell.

            Scientists developed an antibody that attacks both the “lock” on the NPC1 and the “key” on the protein of the virus. Only by stopping both can they be completely sure that the treatment will work on all different strains of Ebola. The antibody is compared to the Trojan Horse in the article because it is able to enter as deep into the cell as a lysosome by entering with the virus itself. 

           The treatment has been tested by the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases on human cell tissue and rats. The results have been positive, showing that this antibody does neutralize the reproduction of all strains of Ebola throughout a cell. Rat anatomy is slightly different than that of humans, and as a result the desired results were not obtained, but that was expected. The next step will be for the antibodies to be tested at the nonhuman primate level because the anatomy is similar.

            I chose this article because I am interested in pathological research. My close friends were living in western Africa during 2014-2015 Ebola epidemic. They were quarantined to their houses for weeks and then sent back to the United States after medical testing. I cannot imagine the fear that was felt while in that region, knowing that at anytime a deadly disease could infect you. The world goes into panic every time an epidemic happens and if this antibody really does work, it could solve a huge problem we face in society and future outbreaks could be avoided.

Category 6 Hurricanes

Are Category 6 Hurricanes Coming Soon?

Hurricanes and Typhoons pretty much the same thing: a big storm with large amounts of rain and fast wind. In the Atlantic Ocean, Gulf of Mexico, and the Eastern Pacific Ocean they are called hurricanes. In the Western Pacific, they are called typhoons. There are 5 categories of hurricanes according to the national Saffir-Simpson AHurricane Wind Scale.

Category 1: 74-95 mph winds

Category 2: 96-110 mph winds

Category 3: 111-129 mph winds

Category 4: 130-156 mph winds

Category 5: 157+ mph winds

David Enfiled (Scientist and Oceanographer) said, “The severe hurricanes might actually become worse. We may have to invent a category 6.” This scale is for the wind speeds during hurricanes, not the damage done or the amount of rain.  This article states that the reason hurricanes are becoming worse is because the seas are getting warmer. The other reason it talks about is that history is repeating itself. Mild hurricanes for a few decades and then severe hurricanes for a few decades. If this is the case then there are another 10-15 years of this active hurricane period.

Weather is fascinating. It is something the entire world has in common, something everyone is affected me. The fact is that hurricanes are increasingly becoming worse and there is not much we can do about it….well besides categorize them.

And Then There Were Four

Genetic analysis has recently demonstrated that there are four unique species of giraffes, not just one. In a study published in Current Biology and later highlighted in Nature News, The New York Times, and other news outlets, researchers used skin biopsies from 190 giraffes to look at nuclear and mitochondrial DNA. Analyzing these data, the researchers found that the samples could be grouped into four distinct categories based on patterns in the DNA. This supported classifying giraffes as four separate species. This is an important finding because previous research suggested that certain populations of giraffes rarely intermingled, but fell short of suggesting the existence of multiple species. The researchers’ use of a large sample size (skin biopsies from 190 giraffes) supports the validity of the researchers' claim and helps me trust their finding.

The difference between a species and a subspecies can be delineated in terms of the animals’ ability to successfully interbreed, where a subspecies is capable of interbreeding with another subspecies but a species is incapable of successfully interbreeding with another species. This definition occasionally breaks down and differentiating between species and subspecies is sometimes a topic of debate among taxonomists (Wikipedia). I think that using genetic analysis to determine separate species seems like a much better approach to filling in taxonomy charts. In addition to suggesting the existence of four separate species of giraffes, this study could help contribute to broadly defining what specific genetic differences constitute a new species.

The practical significance of differentiating between four unique species of giraffes lies mainly in their conservation. Separating them into species justifies protecting four different habitats and monitoring four separate population levels. The article pointed out that this will be important for two of the species whose current population levels are lower than 10,000. Understanding the differences between species can also help the caretakers of giraffes in zoos who manage their breeding.

Speaking of zoos, remember going to the zoo in elementary school and discovering that giraffes have blue tongues? I do! Blue tongues aside, one of the reasons this article interested me is that it seemed like this is something that we should have already known. DNA sequencing has been around for nearly twenty years, and it seems incongruent to live in a world quickly moving towards inhabiting Mars and not know the difference between several twenty-foot tall mammals wandering the savanna. In a way this finding reminds me of the discovery Barry Marshall made when he determined that ulcers are caused by a bacteria called H. pylori and not stress. Discoveries like Marshall’s and the existence of four different species of giraffes make me skeptical of what I have been taught and more excited to explore what else might be “hiding in plain sight.” For our society, discoveries like this support investing more in basic research to better understand the world around us.

Dogs May Understand More Than We Thought

After training thirteen dogs to lie perfectly still in an fMRI brain scan scientists were able to observe how a dog's brain reacted to hearing their person's voice. The scientists who conducted this study recruited thirteen dogs of all different breeds and sent them, one at a time through an fMRI brain scanner where when inside they would play recordings of the dog's master saying phrases such as "well done" that were commonly directed towards dogs, they also used words such as "if" and "however" that pets rarely have said to them. They saw major activity in the scans when the dogs heard "well done" especially if it was paired with a high pitched excited voice, it would activate the same activity in the brain as if the dog was being given a treat or a pat on the back. The scans showed significantly less activity when "if" and "however" were played despite the tone of voice there was still little to no reaction.

The article also taught about how dogs learn words and phrases very similar to how humans do although they do not assign meanings to their own sounds they can learn a lot of what are sounds mean. The author also mentioned that studying animals with similar brain hemispheric activity could reveal clues about how ancient language-processing mechanisms are.

I found this article truly engaging because I have always adored dogs and have been very compelled by how they interact and communicate with their masters. I do believe in general that dogs are extremely smart. I would like to know more about why police dogs can be trained to sniff out a very specific kind of drug while my dog doesn't even understand his own name. Although this study does not explain that I can assume it's the training and it is still very intriguing to learn more about what they do understand.

-Sidney A