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Month: December 2012 (page 3 of 6)

12.13.2012

massachusetts eighth graders score well in science & math

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We are often told that American students aren’t excelling at science and math. What we never hear is that some school systems are in fact doing an excellent job in education our future generations. Massachusetts happens to be on state that excels. The new results from the Trends in Mathematics & Science Study, or TIMSS, reveal that Massachusetts students score highly in math and science. Only Singapore scored higher than Massachusetts in Science. And five countries scored higher than Massachusetts in math. The state performance was higher than any other in the U.S. It should be noted that not all countries participate this assesment.  See the excerpt from WBUR for links to the test results:

Massachusetts eighth-graders are among the smartest in the world when it comes to math and science, according to a new study of academic performance.

The state’s eighth-graders ranked second in science and sixth in math, respectively, in theTrends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS). More than half a million students from 63 countries participated in the test.

Only Singapore outscored the state’s eighth-graders on the science (PDF) part of the exam.

In the math section (PDF), Massachusetts students were outscored by test-takers from South Korea, Singapore, Chinese Taipei (Taiwan), Hong Kong and Japan.

12.13.2012

zinc cures jellyfish stings

 

jellyfish

A jellyfish. Image from blogs@ Cape Breton University

Looks like scientists may have stumbled upon a new cure for jellyfish stings. Scientists at the University of Hawaii found zinc gluconate inhibits the action of jellyfish venom. From Scientific American:

Yanagihara used electron microscopy to visualize the venom’s affects on blood cells, and as suspected, found that venom porins create holes that lead to cell rupture. But as previous clinical research had shown, the cells bursting wasn’t the real issue; Yanagihara found that instead, for several minutes before they break apart, red blood cells leaked potassium. Animal models confirmed that this sudden spike of potassium in the blood stream, termed hyperkalemia, is what leads to rapid changes in heart rate and function and, ultimately, the cardiovascular collapse that causes death by jellyfish. With the physiology of stings revealed, Yanagihara could finally start the laborious task of finding a way to stop the venom in its tracks.

Jellies aren’t the only animals that create porins. “The structural motif of the cubozoan porin reminded me of the bacterial porins,” said Yanagihara. “I scoured that literature to look for inhibitors of the self assembly of those pore forming toxins and discovered studies from the 1940s even as far back as the 1890′s citing zinc ion as useful in the inhibition of bacterial driven lytic reactions.” Yanagihara tested over 100 compounds to see if they inhibited jellyfish venom, and found that one of the safest—zinc gluconate—worked well.

Scientists aren’t 100% sure how zinc compounds inhibit the porins, but they believe that the zinc disrupts the binding domains necessary for the proteins to assemble to form pores. In in vitro models, Yanagihara found that a low dose of zinc gluconate completely prevented the venom’s blood cell busting effect. She then tested the compound in animal models, and found it worked better than the commercially available antivenom for box jelly stings, keeping the mice alive more than twice as long as the antivenom.

12.11.2012

stem cells from urine?

These neural progenitor cells were generated by reprogramming cells from kidney tubules that were found in urine.

That’s not quite the best description of what this is. From Popular Science:

In their study, the researchers harvested kidney cells from the urine samples of three human donors and converted the cells directly to neural progenitors. Rather than using a genetically engineered virus to reprogram the cells, they used a small piece of bacterial DNA that can replicate in the cellular cytoplasm, a technique that eliminates the need to tamper directly with the chromosome (in theory, at least, this should reduce mutations) while also speeding up the entire process. After growing their progenitors into mature neurons and glial cells, the researchers transplanted the progenitors into the brains of newborn rats. A month later, the cells were still alive in the rats’ brains, though it is not yet clear that they can survive for extended periods or mesh with the brain’s wiring to become functioning parts of the neural machine.

There’s still a lot of research to be done on this method of course, but the researchers think it may provide a way to take cells gathered non-invasively and quickly and efficiently convert them into neural cells while reducing the likelihood of genetic mutations.

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