The mouse study shows that microplastics block blood flow in the brain
Nature’s Pick for Research Integrity: Five Ways to Strengthen China’s Policies to Combat Cancer and its Frustrated Machines
“No one in the long history of mathematics ever became better known for less,” said mathematician William Dunham of John Venn. Jack Murtagh, a mathematician and puzzle-maker, argues that the interlocking circles of the venn diagrams are useful when simple and provocative. As the number of circles in the diagram rises, the number of regions delineated by their intersections skyrockets, leading us into a pleasant thicket of questions about geometry and symmetry.
In both the number of papers published and number of papers that are being withdrawn, China overtook the United States. China has issued hundreds of policies to strengthen research integrity, but the lack of impact “could be metaphorically likened to a tiger that persistently sharpens its claws and teeth, and yet lacks the drive to hunt”, write research-integrity scholar Shaoxiong Brian Xu and applied linguist Guangwei Hu. They propose five initiatives to strengthen China’s effort to combat the problem, including a national database of retractions and a website modelled on the PubPeer platform that allows for post-publication review.
Nature’s pick of the technologies to keep your eye on this year includes ‘self-driving’ labs that use robotics and AI algorithms to help ramp up speed and capacity, CAR-T-cell therapies — made by re-engineering a person’s own immune cells — that attack solid tumours and treat autoimmune diseases, and ‘bioremediation’ strategies that use microbes to clean up microplastics and other pollutants.
Source: Daily briefing: Cancer ‘poisons’ the immune system by giving it faulty machinery
Tracing microplastics in the brains of mice using intravenous injections of plastic nanotubes in response to Nvidia
When a T cell (right) tries to attack a cancer cell (left), the cancer cell fights back by sending defective mitochondria in an extracellular ‘parcel’ called a vesicle, which the T cell takes in. The defective organelles are coated in a protein called USP30 that prevents the T cells from breaking them down. At the same time, the cancer cell steals healthy mitochondria from the T cell through a passage it can make between them called a tunnelling nanotube. T cells are useless at killing cancer cells if they do not have healthy mitochondria. (Nature News & Views | 7 min read, Nature paywall)
The current volatility in the quantum-computing share market isn’t justified by the breakthroughs and setbacks in the field, says Global Quantum Intelligence (GQI), a company that tracks the quantum market. The share prices in several quantum-computing companies crashed due to comments made by the Nvidia CEO. The announcements pushed them to record highs. The stock market has overreacted to all of the announcements according to Doug Finke, the chief content officer. The difficulty with properly valuing quantum stocks is that no firm has mature products to sell, and no one company appears to have truly pulled ahead in the race to make a useful quantum computer.
Immune cells carry plastic that is less than 5mm in diameter through the bloodstream to the brain, where they form microplastics. The plastic-packed cells appeared in the brains of mice just hours after they were given the water and piled up like a car crash. The obstructions sometimes cleared eventually, but others stayed stuck for the entire month-long observation period and had effects including impairing the mice’s mobility. It’s not clear whether such blockages occur in people.
When the researchers injected the plastic spheres into the mice intravenously, they observed the glowing cells within minutes. Smaller particles resulted in fewer obstructions.
Environmental health researcher Eliane El Hayek says the technique can be used to trace microplastics as they move through the bloodstream. It is very helpful and very interesting.
Microplastics are specks of plastic, less than 5 millimetres long, that can be found everywhere, from the deep ocean to Antarctic ice. The air, water, and food that we consume are all contained in them. They can even enter our bloodstreams directly through plastic medical devices.
US researchers injected plastic spheres with nanotubes into the brains of mice and observed glowing cells within minutes. Immune cells carry plastic that is less than 5 mm in diameter through the bloodstream to the brain, where they form microplastics. The plastic-packed cells appeared in the brains of mice just hours after they were given water and piled up like a car crash.