Gizmorama!

Good Morning,

It seems that the idea of robotic doctors and surgeons
aren’t so far-fetched. Make sure that you don’t pass up
today’s second story about robot-assisted kidney cancer
surgery.

Just fascinating stuff.

Until Tomorrow,
Erin

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——– Laser light used to make brain gamma waves ——–

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. - Massachusetts Institute of Technology
scientists say they’ve discovered a way to induce gamma
waves by shining laser light directly onto the brains
of mice. The high-frequency brain waves known as gamma
oscillations are thought to be crucial for consciousness,
attention, learning and memory. The study takes advantage
of a new technology known as optogenetics, which combines
genetic engineering with light to manipulate the activity
of individual nerve cells. The MIT researchers said their
findings help explain how the brain produces gamma waves
and provides new evidence of the role they play in regulat-
ing brain functions — insights that could lead to new
treatments for a range of brain-related disorders. “Gamma
waves are known to be (disrupted) in people with
schizophrenia and other psychiatric and neurological
diseases,” said Professor Li-Huei Tsai, a Howard Hughes
Medical Institute investigator. “This new tool will give
us a great chance to probe the function of these circuits.”
The study that included MIT postdoctoral fellow Jessica
Cardin, graduate student Ulf Knoblich and Associate
Professor Christopher Moore; Jessica Cardin of the
University of Pennsylvania; Karl Deisseroth and Feng
Zhang at Stanford University, and Konstantinos Meletis
of the Picower Institute appears online in the journal
Nature.

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——- Robotic renal cancer surgery found helpful ——–

PHILADELPHIA - U.S. cancer researchers say they’ve deter-
mined outcomes of robot-assisted kidney cancer surgery are
more beneficial to patients than open surgery. Medical
scientists at the Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia
led by Dr. Rosalia Viterbo said the da Vinci robot assisted
surgical system for renal cell carcinoma has enabled faster
and greater technical proficiency, allowing for quicker
completion of complex surgical procedures, facilitating a
minimally invasive approach for partial nephrectomy. “Our
patients have experienced many benefits from the robot-
assisted approach, including shorter hospital stays,
preserved kidney function, smaller scars with optimal
cosmetic results, lower blood loss and easier and earlier
return to normal activity,” Viterbo said. As a result of
the fast recovery, patients do not delay the next step in
their treatment plan — chemotherapy or radiation therapy
– thereby stopping the disease from progressing as fast,
Viterbo said. Similarly, she said, patients with disease
on both kidneys benefit because there is less waiting time
between surgeries and there is no delay on further treat-
ment — again, providing less opportunity for the cancer
to grow and spread. The research was presented this week
in Chicago during the annual meeting of the American
Urological Association.

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———- Infection study may lead to new drugs ———–

UPTON, N.Y. - U.S. government scientists say they have
decoded the structure of a protein complex secretion system
that is essential for infection. The research, conducted in
part at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Brookhaven National
Laboratory, involving a needle-like protein complex on the
surface of certain bacteria may help scientists develop new
strategies to thwart infection. The scientists said their
research involved a needle-like protein complex known as
a “type III secretion system,” on the surface of Shigella
bacteria, a cause of dysentery. The secretion system is a
complex protein structure that traverses the bacterial cell
membrane and acts as a biological syringe to inject deadly
proteins into intestinal cells. Those proteins rupture the
cell’s innards, leading to bloody diarrhea and sometimes
death. The researchers said, noting similar secretion
systems exist in a range of other infectious bacteria.
“Understanding the 3D structure of these secretion
proteins is important for the design of new broad-spectrum
strategies to combat bacterial infections,” said study co-
author Joseph Wall, a biophysicist at Brookhaven Lab. The
study is detailed in the advanced online edition of the
journal Nature Structural & Molecular Biology.

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