Neat News 4559 (added 2019-04-30)

Better understanding of dementia

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In the past, many patients have been misclassified as suffering from Alzheimer's disease although they suffer a different form of dementia. Now, a better understanding of different types of dementia has been achieved. This is an important step in the development of treatment possibilities.

Neat News 4558 (added 2019-04-29)

Finding antibiotics

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Scientists have developed a method to test millions of peptides in a few days for their potential antibacterial properties. This will allow to work faster on the development of urgently needed new antibiotics.

Neat News 4557 (added 2019-04-28)

Peppermint oil for better swallowing

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People who have problems swallowing may be able to improve their situation by a spoonful of peppermint oil. In a study this was reported by 63 percent of people with difficulties.

Neat News 4556 (added 2019-04-27)

Nano-robots for drug delivery

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Tiny robots have been developed that can deliver drugs in the body. This may be used to apply drugs in a targeted way to cancer regions.

Neat News 4555 (added 2019-04-26)

Taxi driver's trust

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A taxi driver offered his own credit card to take abroad to a passenger who forgot his money. The story happened in Sweden, the taxi driver, who is originally from Turkey, did not know his passenger. Still the trust was justified since the driver got his money back.

Neat News 4554 (added 2019-04-25)

Brain implant to generate speech

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A brain implant allows to translate thoughts into speech allowing people who have lost their voice to speak.

Neat News 4553 (added 2019-04-24)

Awakened after 27 years in persistent vegetative state

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A woman awoke after 27 years in a persistent vegetative state. She suffered a brain injury in a traffic accident in 1991 while protecting her four year old son. As has been made public now, she regained consciousness last year.

Neat News 4552 (added 2019-04-23)

Vaccination trial against malaria starts

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In Africa die more than 250,000 children of malaria every year. Now a big trial of vaccination against malaria has started in Malawi. In early trials the vaccination proved 40 percent effective. That is, the trial has the potential of a 40 percent reduction of cases and in consequence of deaths.

Neat News 4551 (added 2019-04-22)

Cooling with passive Peltier element

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Scientists managed to use oscillations in temperature to use a passive Peltier element to cool a piece of copper from over 100C to below room temperature without the usage of energy. The transition looks like magic since it seems to contradict the second law of thermodynamics. It has potentially significant applications.

Neat News 4550 (added 2019-04-21)

Solar beyond electricity

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Solar energy can be used in many ways beyond producing electricity. For instance, it can directly be used to produce steam at an industrial scale and reduce the carbon footprint of heat intensive industries such as desalination or cement production.

Neat News 4549 (added 2019-04-20)

New anti-body

Regular infusions of an anti-body called UB-421 can suppress HIV for up to four months and give patients a pause in their antiretroviral therapy.

Neat News 4548 (added 2019-04-19)

Children with immune deficit successfully treated

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Eight young children with a very weak immune system have successfully been treated with gene therapy and have now a functioning immune system. This allows them to have a normal life.

Neat News 4547 (added 2019-04-18)

Laser for sound

Lasers are everywhere and play an important role in modern life. They are based on light waves. Now an analogous invention has been made for sound waves. The new approach allows it to be applied for levitation of a range of objects, from a single electron to small organisms.

Neat News 4546 (added 2019-04-17)

Immune response to radiation therapy

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Radiotherapy may trigger an immune response that targets cells all over the body, but it may also not. There is better understanding why this happens, related to T-regulatory cells. In the long run this may lead to a better understanding how to help the immune system to attack cancer cells.

Neat News 4545 (added 2019-04-16)

3D-printed heart

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Using material from a human, a scaled-down version of a human heart has been printed using a 3D-printer. This is an important step on the long way to such a heart beating in the chest of a human. Such a printed heart would not cause an immune reaction since it would be built from the patient's own genetic material.

Neat News 4544 (added 2019-04-15)

Baby whales

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Right whales off the US coast have a small baby boom. This is very good news since there are only around 450 of the species left.

Neat News 4543 (added 2019-04-14)

Seychelles to protect ocean space

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The president of the Seychelles has pledged to protect 30 percent of the ocean space of the Seychelles by next year.

Neat News 4542 (added 2019-04-13)

Smiling for happiness

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Smiling makes people feel happier, even if only to a small degree. This has been found in a new psychological meta-study evaluating data from 138 studies involving 11000 people.

Neat News 4541 (added 2019-04-12)

Hydrogen sensor

Hydrogen promises solutions to many energy problems, from heating to traffic, since its only emission is water. A major problem is that it is explosive when mixed with air. For this reason it is important to have good sensors. Such a sensor has been developed now.

Neat News 4540 (added 2019-04-11)

Black hole photographed

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By combining many observatories a picture of a black hole has been made for the first time. The black hole has a mass of 7 billion times our sun's.

Neat News 4539 (added 2019-04-10)

Life on exo-planets

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According to new research nearby exo-planets could have conditions that allow them to develop life. This could be the case, for instance, for Proxima-b, on a cosmical scale a close neighbour with only 4.24 light years away.

Neat News 4538 (added 2019-04-09)

Non-thermal plasma to kill viruses in the air

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Charged particles can kill airborne viruses to a large degree. There is work to use this for cleansing the air around infected patients by combining it with filtration and ultraviolet light.

Neat News 4537 (added 2019-04-08)

Memory boost by electric brain stimulation

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By targeted electric stimulation of the brain it is possible to give people in their sixties and seventies a memory that is comparable to that of twenty year olds. In the experiments, the effect lasted for 50 minutes after the stimulation ended.

Neat News 4536 (added 2019-04-07)

Bacteria related to Alzheimer's

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There is new evidence that Alzheimer's disease is linked to gum bacteria that can move from the gum to the brain. This gives potentially a handle to prevent the disease.

Neat News 4535 (added 2019-04-06)

Being online fine for adolescents?

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A new study with 17000 teenagers casts doubt on the idea that spending a lot of time in front of a screen - internet, computer games and the like - damages the mental health of young people.

Neat News 4534 (added 2019-04-05)

Tallest tropical tree discovered

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In a Borneo rain forest the tallest known tropical tree with a height of more than 100 metres has been discovered.

Neat News 4533 (added 2019-04-04)

Cervical cancer reduction by vaccination

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The programme introduced in Scotland 10 years ago to vaccinate girls at the age of 12 or 13 against the human papiloma virus has led to a 90 percent fall in the cases of cervical pre-cancer in young women.

Neat News 4532 (added 2019-04-03)

How to understand metaphor

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By studying the activation levels of different regions of the brain it has been found that a metaphor leads to the activation of the region related to the concrete meaning of an expression.

Neat News 4531 (added 2019-04-02)

Temperature of the moon

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Using information about the structure of the moon, a model has been built on the temperature in the inner of the moon. It is supposed to be between 1300 and 1470 degrees Celsius, much warmer than the surface temperature of -10 degrees Celsius.

Neat News 4530 (added 2019-04-01)

Ancient Maya farms detected

Archaeologists have discovered ancient farms of the Mayas in Mexican wetlands. The find shows that the Mayas were cultivating cotton which they were trading.