All posts by medical

The Sims 4: How to Do the Random Genetics Challenge – Twinfinite

Doing challenges in The Sims 4 can be a lot of fun but a lot of them also require a lot of work. Thats fun when youre looking for a more involved challenge but sometimes you just want quick and easy fun. Thats where the Random Genetic Challenge comes in. Creating your Sims is certainly one of the most fun aspects of playing The Sims 4 but sometimes its justfun to see if lady luck is on your side.Plenty of Sims 4 players have been taking to forums and social media to share the results of their own Random Genetics Challenge and heres how you can get in on the action.

You just start out by randomizing two adult Sims. You will do this by going through each of the different customizable features and clicking the dice icon for a pre-determined amount of times that you should decide on before starting the challenge. For example, if you decide your lucky number is three you will click on the dice icon three times for each of the features. Once you do this for both parent Sims you will want to use the Play With Genetics feature to create their child. Technically, you are welcome to use any age Sim youd like for this challenge but the most common and highly recommended Life Stage to use is the Teen.

The next step is incredibly simpletry to make your new offspring as beautiful as possible without actually changing any of their genetics. So you cant simply do awaywith any features you dont like but youre more than welcome to try to cover them up with different hairstyles and makeup. Now take your new family into the world and see if your Sim will become an Adult that grew into their looks or if theyll be relying on a good personality for the rest of their life.

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The Sims 4: How to Do the Random Genetics Challenge - Twinfinite

The Anatomy of a Slogan – HuffPost

Steve Bannon: So we need to come up with a response to the latest threats from the putz with the bad haircut and small hands.

Donald Trump: (Begins tweeting) Thats FAKE NEWS! And my hands are not small! SAD!

Steve Bannon: Donald, were talking about Kim Jong. Wait a minute! This just in! The latest polls show that you have the highest ratings of any president in the history of the world!

Donald Trump: Ok. Thats more like it! Can I tee off now?

Stephen Miller: Anyway, I think it should be something catchy, something that would show the devastation that could be catastrophic if they dont stop focusing on this Russian investigation---err, uhI mean, that very bad man, Kim Jong.

Steve Bannon: Yeah, something that sends a strong message to the short-fingered vulgarian with the nasty do who doesnt seem to understand diplomatic language.

Donald Trump: Fake News Alert! My fingers are not small! They are tremendous fingers! And yuge!

Kelly Anne Conway: Oh look! Theyre talking about Donald on Fox News!

Donald Trump: Where? What channel?

Chris Christie: Would anyone care for a beverage? A hot towel?

Ivanka Trump: Can we wrap this up? Its almost the Sabbath. Ill say a special barucha that we find the right name to scare the bejeezus out of that little toad with the weird haircut and spindly fingers.

Donald Trump: Ivanka, my heart! Not you too! SAD!

Donald Jr: Im thinking this may a good time to expand the brand, add a few more prime properties to our portfolio.

Eric Trump: Hey! How about Guam? I heard that prices are way down on properties there!

Chris Christie: Anyone care for a cocktail? Ive got some pigs in a blanket warming in the oven

Ivanka Trump: My people have suffered enough. We do not eat treif!

Melania Trump: How about Shock and Awe?

Steve Bannon: Lets run some scary images of post-nuclear mushroom clouds, make some comparisons to the Bay of Pigs and

Ivanka Trump: Uh treif? Sheesh!

Donald Trump: I got it! Kim Jong, youre fired!

Chris Christie: Oh lookie here! Ive got a nice hot fudge sundae for the president with two scoops!

Donald Trump: With a cherry?

Chris Christie: Of course! Now its time for your nap.

Donald Trump: Oooh Vanilla! My favorite!

Voices begin to overlap, all chiming in, as the voices begin to fade Fire and brimstone, fierce and fiery, burn baby burn, blazing dystopia dreams, Make America Nuke Again, Wag the Korean Dog, Snova sdelat' Ameriku

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The Anatomy of a Slogan - HuffPost

Anatomy of a play: The drop heard around the world – The Phinsider

September 13, 2016

It was the first game of the 2016 NFL season and excitement for the New Miami was at an all-time high. The Dolphins had just signed new head coach Adam Gase and even though we got a sneak peek throughout the preseason, EVERYONE was excited to see his high-octane offense in action. Miamis Week 1 opponent was no slouch as the team traveled cross-country to take on NFC West powerhouse, Seattle Seahawks.

Thirty seconds into the second quarter, something big happened. Down 3-0, Ryan Tannehill heaved a beautiful ball 71-yards downfield. One of the leagues most dynamic wide receivers was wide open...

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!

Most fans remember this as if it were yesterday. It may or may not have been the difference in the end, as Miami went on to lose 12-10. What was most impressive is just how wide open Stills was.

Below is what the play looked like pre-snap.

Stills designed route on the play, was a seam down the middle of the field. However, what truly opened things up was Fosters out-and-up route on the sideline. His route occupied three members of the Legion of Boom. This forces the safety on Stills, who is wide open in the middle of the secondary.

As you can see at the bottom of the screen, Fosters route allows Stills to break free down the middle of Seattles defense. Earl Thomas reacts seconds too late and the rest is pitch and catch for the Dolphins offense. At least thats what we had assumed. Whether Stills was eager to reach the end zone, had a glare in his eyes, just finished eating a greasy hamburger or whatever may had happened, this is a catch he should have made.

In the picture below, we see ho many yards Stills has on the safety. When the ball falls mercifully from Stills hands, he has a good 5-10 yards on Thomas.

Im a big fan of Kenny Stills and have to believe this play haunts him on a regular basis. With the type of roller coaster ride weve had thus far in preseason, I felt like this was a better time than ever to revisit the infamous drop from Week 1. Lets just hope with a new contract and a second year in Gases offense, Kenny Stills will have a career year. The Dolphins could certainly use it.

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Anatomy of a play: The drop heard around the world - The Phinsider

Anatomy of a murder: the brutal killing of Jason Corbett – Independent.ie

Molly Martens-Corbett and her father, Thomas Michael Martens, are now 72 hours into 20-year jail terms for the second-degree murder of Irish businessman Jason Corbett (39).

Their convictions were as much underpinned by what wasn't said in a North Carolina courthouse over the past four weeks as for what was revealed in evidence.

The father and daughter, if they contemplate the dramatic and emotion-charged events of last Wednesday morning in Courtroom C of the Davidson County courts complex in Lexington, will probably wonder precisely where the murder trial hinged?

When did the jury of nine women and three men swing towards a second-degree murder conviction rather than believing the story of self-defence? Was it the dramatic forensic evidence of blood spatter expert Dr Stuart James?

The Florida-based expert, one of the world's leading authorities on blood spatter analysis, effectively recreated the last moments of the Limerick father-of-two's life in the early hours of August 2, 2015 in the bedroom of his luxury home.

He determined that Mr Corbett may very well have suffered the first of at least 12 horrific blows to his head while in or by his bed.

He also determined that Mr Corbett's head was repeatedly struck in a descending motion - in other words as he fell to the ground.

Dr James also found, from blood impact spatters, that Mr Corbett was struck while on the ground - and with his wife and father-in-law standing over him.

"There were little bits of Jason all over her," Assistant District Attorney Alan Martin would tell the trial. "That puts her in the thick of it. It is rock solid evidence. That puts her there."

Pathology evidence indicated Mr Corbett then sustained between one and four blows to the skull when he was already dead.

Or perhaps the 33-year-old former Knoxville model and swim coach, and her father, a retired FBI agent and counter-intelligence operative, will consider the remarkable forensic work at the Panther Creek Court scene of Lt Frank Young. He preserved the clothing worn by the duo at the scene - and he compiled a video and photographic record of the property hailed as "truly excellent" by Dr James.

Thanks to his photographic record of the blood-soaked bedroom, hallway and bathroom, Dr James was able to do his work.

But in truth, the father and daughter are probably much more likely to focus on what wasn't said in Courtroom C over the three weeks of harrowing evidence in the case.

Jury foreman Tom Aamland revealed that the jury were intrigued by a number of obvious issues that weren't clarified - particularly by the Martens version of precisely what happened in the master bedroom that night.

Just like Irish jurors, an instinctive sense of curiosity, allied to a healthy common sense perception of something out of the ordinary, flooded through the North Carolina jury.

What was the young Tennessee woman doing with a heavy and unsightly concrete garden paving brick on her nightstand table that night?

"We all wondered what it was doing there," Mr Aamland said after the trial finished. No explanation was ever offered to the trial.

But there were other unanswered questions.

How on Earth could a 39-year-old, six-foot and 16-stone man grab his wife by the throat and then get engaged in a life-and-death tussle with a 67-year-old retiree and not leave a single mark on either of them?

Martens-Corbett's clothing wasn't torn, there were no marks on her neck and a delicate filigree bracelet on her wrist wasn't bent, damaged or scratched despite the ordeal she just claimed she had just gone through.

In that death struggle which ended with Mr Corbett sustaining head injuries so savage they were compared to those in a severe car crash or a fall from a great height, how could Martens recall almost every single blow struck with a metal Louisville Slugger baseball bat and yet not have a single recollection of his son-in-law being struck by a brick?

That was despite the fact the brick was not only soaked in the Limerick man's blood but was also embedded with his hair fragments and tissue.

When it was lifted by forensic experts from the bedroom floor, it left its outline in blood on the carpet. Martens similarly hadn't a single mark on him - and his clothing was likewise intact and not torn. The questions for the jury just kept mounting.

How did the powerful sedative Trazedone end up in Mr Corbett's system when the medication was prescribed for his wife just two days earlier?

But perhaps most intriguing of all for the jurors was the single most glaring omission from the accounts of both the father and daughter - where was Sharon Martens, their wife and mother, during the violent and prolonged confrontation?

Read More: Killer sought to take place of children's mother, at the ultimate cost

Martens said he was awoken from sleep in the basement bedroom by the sounds of a scream coming from upstairs.

Before the counter-intelligence operative and lawyer had even testified to that fact in court, he had given a pre-trial interview outlining precisely the same sequence of events to ABC's '20/20' programme, one of the top shows in the US.

It was almost as if, in anticipating a negative outcome to the North Carolina trial, the father and daughter were attempting to lay the groundwork for public sympathy for a subsequent appeal.

Back on August 2, at 3am, Mrs Martens apparently never awoke and stayed firmly in the basement bedroom.

This was despite the "life or death fight" that the former FBI agent said he got engaged in upstairs with his son-in-law.

This included shouting and blows to the head which left Mr Corbett's blood spattered all over three separate rooms.

Throughout it all, Mrs Martens apparently never budged from the basement bedroom.

After Mr Corbett was left in a bloody pulp on his own bedroom floor, the father and daughter never called out to Mrs Martens for help or support.

She never ventured upstairs to see what had happened and neither Martens nor Martens-Corbett called on the mother-of-four to immediately call 911.

When Davidson County police officers arrived at the scene and brought the two children, Jack and Sarah, down from their bedrooms, Mrs Martens was still in the bedroom and in total ignorance of the horror that had unfolded upstairs just metres away from her.

"It just makes no sense," Mr Martin said.

"It is like she vanished from the face of the Earth in Tom Martens's testimony."

Mr Aamland revealed that jurors were clearly taken by aspects of the prosecution case.

This ranged from the forensic evidence to the powerful closing arguments of Mr Martin and Assistant District Attorney Greg Brown.

In concise reference to evidence from paramedics and the 911 dispatcher, Mr Brown told the jury they contended the father and daughter beat Mr Corbett into a bloodied pulp on the bedroom floor and then cruelly left him to die.

They delayed calling 911 to ensure he was dead - and then engaged in a charade of "fake" cardiac pulmonary resuscitation (CPR) efforts while a 911 dispatcher listened on the line.

Despite having allegedly performed 600 chest pumps between them on Mr Corbett's blood-soaked chest, there was no blood found on the palms of either the father or daughter.

Mr Martin went even further.

He said the jury could infer whether there had been an attempt to drug Mr Corbett with a fresh mint Mojito on the evening of August 1? There had also been multiple calls - more than half a dozen - made by Martens-Corbett to her parents as they made the four-hour drive from Knoxville for the unexpected visit to the Corbett home.

In evidence, Martens said he could not recall the phone calls from his daughter.

Mr Aamland revealed that, having been asked to consider a verdict by Judge David Lee at 3.22pm on Tuesday, the jurors were already unanimously agreed that first night that Martens was guilty of second-degree murder.

The jurors had indicated, in a preliminary vote, they were split 10-2 on whether Martens-Corbett was guilty of second-degree murder.

However by 11am the following day, the two dissenting jurors had reviewed the evidence and changed their minds.

At 11.25am, Mr Aamland confirmed to Judge Lee and a shocked courtroom that unanimous verdicts had been reached.

Martens-Corbett began sobbing before either she or her father were taken into custody for 15 minutes before Judge Lee dealt with sentencing.

"I'm really sorry, Mom - I wish he'd just killed me," she wept.

Her father, after 40 years in law enforcement, remained calm and impassive, assisting bailiffs and sheriffs by holding his hands directly out behind him so he could be handcuffed.

Read More: Jason asleep as Molly attacked, jurors believed

In the public gallery there were tears of two different kinds.

On the right side of the court, the Corbett family, their friends and supporters wept in relief.

Throughout, the family's dignified and courageous approach to the case impressed all who witnessed it.

Across the aisle, members of the Martens family sobbed uncontrollably. Some were visibly devastated by the verdicts.

Mrs Martens wept and had to be comforted by her brother, Federal employee and Afghanistan Reconstruction Executive official Michael Earnest.

Her son sobbed so much he had to hold his head in his hands in a bid to regain his composure.

Mr Aamland admitted it was difficult for the jury, too.

Five jurors wept openly as the verdict was handed down and, minutes later, once again as the father and daughter received minimum 20-year prison sentences.

When they were brought back into the court, the father and daughter were a study in contrasts.

Martens was impassive but clearly worried as to the upset of his daughter and wife.

Martens-Corbett was physically shaking with emotion.

When her father declined the opportunity to address the court, she spoke briefly in an address that was almost incoherent due to sobs and wails.

"I did not murder my husband," she cried. "My father did not murder my husband.

"The incidents of August 2 happened as they happened on a somewhat regular basis.

"The only difference is my father was there," she sobbed.

Minutes later, the duo were led out of Courtroom C in a phalanx of armed Davidson County bailiffs and sheriffs.

Just over two hours later, they had changed from their clothing - a simple blue dress and a smart dark suit - into prison issue clothing.

Both wore handcuffs tied to waist chains as they walked to the waiting prison truck for transfer to high security prisons in Raleigh.

In Martens's case it was to Central Prison, where he was placed in special protective custody given his law enforcement background.

In Martens-Corbett's case, it was to the North Carolina Correctional Institute for Women.

She arrived with a recommendation from Judge Lee that she receive whatever psychological and psychiatric supports she might require.

Before their prison van left Lexington, their legal teams confirmed they intended to lodge challenges to the convictions with the North Carolina Court of Appeals.

Mr Earnest, visibly shocked by the verdict, briefly spoke to reporters outside the courthouse.

"I just want to say, in my opinion, in my personal life this is the most atrocious miscarriage of justice I have ever been a part of," he said.

Outside the Davidson Courts complex, on Salem Street, just metres from Lexington Post Office, the Corbett family issued a public statement of thanks to the jury, the District Attorney's Office and the Davidson County Sheriff's Department.

Jason's sister, Tracey Lynch, spoke as she was greeted by a bank of TV crews and photographers.

Before they had even left the court building, the family were planning flights back home to the greater Limerick area.

After four weeks in the searing heat of a North Carolina summer, the rain of Ireland was something everyone was looking forward to.

Mrs Lynch, flanked by her sister Marilyn, said their family's priority now was providing a safe, happy and positive future for two children who lost both parents to tragedies before they were 10 years old.

"We want to create a good future for Jason's two children who he loved so much," she said.

Minutes earlier, Assistant District Attorney Alan Martin had summed up the mood of all who attended the gruelling trial which came to dominate headlines on both sides of the Atlantic.

"There is no joy, there is no triumph, there is no pride. There is just grief, grief and more grief," he said.

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Anatomy of a murder: the brutal killing of Jason Corbett - Independent.ie

Anatomy of a Crisis: The North Korea threat – Politico

Where North Korea can strike

For years, North Korea has had the ability to launch short-range missiles at targets up to 800 miles away. But this year, North Korea successfully tested intermediate-range and intercontinental ballistic missiles. Experts now think the country is capable of hitting targets more than 7,000 miles away, which includes cities in the continental United States.

Active U.S.

military

personnel

Missile type

KN-08

7,200 miles

Active U.S.

military

personnel

Active U.S.

military

personnel

North Koreas nuclear program has grown under Kim Jong Un, while missile ranges have considerably expanded. Kim conducted 24 missile tests in 2016 and 14 tests already in 2017.

Missile ranges

Apr. 9, 1984: North Korea first begins testing variants of Soviet Scud missiles.

Dec. 12, 2012: Kim Jong Un becomes ruler in the wake of his father's death.

July 28, 2017: North Korea fires its second intercontinental ballistic missile.

Failed missile tests

Only 2,100 miles southeast of North Korea, Guam is a strategic target because of its two American military bases Andersen Air Force Base and Naval Base Guam. There are 3,831 U.S. military personnel stationed there in addition to several B-1 bombers and fighter jets.

Andersen

US Air Force Base

Andersen

US Air Force Base

Andersen

US Air Force Base

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Anatomy of a Crisis: The North Korea threat - Politico

Live embryos analysed with new microscopy method – physicsworld … – physicsworld.com

The internal structures of live cow embryos have been imaged in 3D by researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in the US. The method developed by Gabriel Popescu and colleagues could allow scientists to determine the health of embryos before in vitro fertilization in humans.

Biomedical microscopy methods typically involve shining light through thin slices of tissue, or using chemical or physical markers that identify a specific object in a thick sample but can be toxic to living tissues. "When looking at thick samples with other methods, your image becomes washed out due to the light bouncing off of all surfaces in the sample," says team member Mikhail Kandel.

Popescu and colleagues therefore developed a technique called gradient light interference microscopy (GLIM). The method uses two interfering light fields that are identical except for a small transverse spatial shift. By controlling the phase shift between the two waves, the researchers generate intensity images from multiple depths that can be put together to form a 3D representation of the sample.

GLIM which can be added onto an inverted optical microscope can probe both thin and thick specimens and the researchers used the technique to look at live embryos from cows. "This method lets us see the whole picture, like a 3D model of the entire embryo at one time," says team member Tan Nguyen.

At the moment, there is no universal, non-invasive technique for determining embryo viability for in vitro fertilization. An embryo is chosen based on "educated guesses" made by examining factors such as the colour of fluids in cells and development time. "One of the holy grails of embryology is finding a way to determine which embryos are most viable," explains team member Matthew Wheeler.

But the researchers will have to wait to see if their technique has successfully analysed embryo health. "The ultimate test will be to prove that we have picked a healthy embryo and that it has gone on to develop a live calf," explains Marcello Rubessa. The team hopes its research, published in Nature Communications, could help human fertility treatments in the future.

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Live embryos analysed with new microscopy method - physicsworld ... - physicsworld.com

Science supports the unborn – Times of Malta – Times of Malta

In his articleObsessive compulsive disordersome time ago,Martin Sciclunaasserted that: An ovum is a living cell, as is a spermatozoon. Both can be described as alive. The cluster of cells which is the embryo is likewise alive. But this is not the same as saying it is a human person or a baby.

The question is: at what stage of development should the status of a child be accorded to an embryo of the human species?

Fertilised eggs and embryos lack any capacity for personhood by any standard of neurological functioning... To declare them as such is to devalue the personhood of actual children.

This is paving the way for the introduction of abortion in Malta for disabled unborn children and euthanasia.

I dont know how Scicluna arrived at this description of an embryo. He is no medical scientistand isno authority on embryology. He quoted no authoritative sources at all. It washisdefinition of an embryo. Again he painted himself an authority on thissubject.

He also rested his views on what certain sectors of religious beliefs say about the human embryo. Yet, ironically, he lambastedreligious believers for thinking they alone can define a nations morality... and for wantingto impose their morality on women by telling them what they can and cannot do with their bodies.

Scicluna always portrays the image of a man of science. Yet, I am amazed at his apparent ignorance ofwhat renowned medical scientists say about the unborn child and when life begins. I believe it was a deliberate omission onhis part. Here is what some medical scientists said, already many years ago, about the beginning of human life.

According to Frank Muscat (March 21): Bernard Nathanson, the co-founder of the National Association and Reproductive Rights Action League, describes his progression from a doctor who performed 75,000 abortions during his career to a leading pro-life advocate, mainly due to increasing science and technology.

As a result of this technology looking at this baby, examining it, investigating it, watching its metabolic functions, watching it urinate, swallow, move and sleep, watching it dream, which you could see by its rapid eye movements via ultrasounds, treating it, operating on it I finally came to the conviction that this was my patient.

This was a person! I was a physician, pledged to save my patients lives, not to destroy them. So I changed my mind on the subject of abortion. There was nothing religious about it.

In 1981 a US judiciary subcommittee invited experts to testify on the question of when life begins. All of the quotes from the following experts come directly from the official records of their testimony.

Alfred Bongioanni, professor of paediatrics and obstetrics at the University of Pennsylvania, said: I have learned from my earliest medical education that human life begins at conception. I submit that human life is present throughout this entire sequence from conception to adulthood and that any interruption at any point throughout this time constitutes a termination of human life.

Every child has the right to be respected as an independent person even before birth. Every child is entitled to a secure prenatal relationship and bonding

Jerome LeJeune, professor of genetics at the University of Descartes in Paris, was the discoverer of the chromosome pattern of Downs Syndrome. LeJeune testified to the judiciary subcommittee: Each individual has a very neat beginning, at conception.

Micheline Matthews-Roth of Harvard University Medical School said: It is scientifically correct to say that an individual human life begins at conception.

Watson Bowes, from the University of Colorados Medical School, noted: The beginning of a single human life is from a biological point of view a simple and straightforward matter the beginning is conception. This straightforward biological fact should not be distorted to serve sociological, political or economic goals.

A prominent physician pointed out that at these Senate hearings pro-abortionists, though invited to do so, failed to produce even a single expert witness who would specifically testify that life begins at any point other than conception or implantation. Only one witness said no one can tell when life begins.

The International Society of Prenatal and Perinatal Psychology and Medicine (ISPPM), not a religious organisation,located in Germany, considers this earliest stage of life as the first ecological position of the human being and the womb as its first ecological environment.

Pregnancy is perceived to be a period of active and continuous dialogue between the prenatal child, the mother and her psycho-social environment. From a holistic view, human life is recognised as an indivisible entity and continuum of all human functions, both physical and psychological in which no division between body and mind can be made.

The aim of ISPPM in research and practice is the improvement of the quality of life of the human being. The prenatal stage of life represents a unique opportunity for primary prevention of psychological, emotional and physical disorders in later life.

In fact ISPPM also produced a Charter on the Rights of the Child Before, During and After Birth which says:

Every child has the right to be respected as an independent person even before birth. Every child is entitled to a secure prenatal relationship and bonding. Every child has the right to respect for, and protection of, the continuity of its experiences during pregnancy and birth.

The Charter is based on the resolution adopted by the International Congress on Embryology, Therapy and Society 2002 in Nijmegen (the Netherlands).

A similar non-religious organisation is the Association for Prenatal and Perinatal Psychology and Health of Colorado US. The prenatalin the title refers to the period of about nine months including conception and the whole of gestation.

APPPAH believes that these experiences areformativefor both babies and parents, and tend to establish patterns of intimacy and sociality for life. At stake here isquality of life the quality of personal growth and the quality of society itself. Ultimately, APPPAH points out: Womb ecology becomes world ecology.

The Malta Unborn Child Movement (MUCM) has already established contacts with ISPPM and APPPAH.

In fact MUCM has embarked on the promotion of womb ecology, development education and policymaking and on Pro-Life Day reached agreement with the Speaker and the two whips in Parliament so that, together, we will organise a national conference on womb ecology very soon.

MUCM has also suggested to the President during a courtesy call on Pro-Life Day 2016 that Malta could, and should,be a hub on womb ecology in the Mediterranean.

MUCM is suggesting further that the project will include collaborationwith research and policymaking institutions, locally and abroad.

Tony Mifsud is coordinator of the Malta Unborn Child Movement.

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Science supports the unborn - Times of Malta - Times of Malta

Lego-Like Brain Balls Could Build a Living Replica of Your Noggin – WIRED

The human brain is routinely described as the most complex object in the known universe. It might therefore seem unlikely that pea-size blobs of brain cells growing in laboratory dishes could be more than fleetingly useful to neuroscientists. Nevertheless, many investigators are now excitedly cultivating these curious biological systems, formally called cerebral organoids and less formally known as mini-brains. With organoids, researchers can run experiments on how living human brains developexperiments that would be impossible (or unthinkable) with the real thing.

Original story reprinted with permission from Quanta Magazine, an editorially independent publication of the Simons Foundation whose mission is to enhance public understanding of science by covering research developments and trends in mathematics and the physical and life sciences.

The cerebral organoids in existence today fall far short of earning the brain label, mini or otherwise. But a trio of recent publications suggests that cerebral-organoid science may be turning a cornerand that the future of such brain studies may depend less on trying to create tiny perfect replicas of whole brains and more on creating highly replicable modules of developing brain parts that can be snapped together like building blocks. Just as interchangeable parts helped make mass production and the Industrial Revolution possible, organoids that have consistent qualities and can be combined as needed may help to speed a revolution in understanding how the human brain develops.

In 2013 Madeline Lancaster, then of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, created the first true cerebral organoids when she discovered that stem cells growing in a supportive gel could form small spherical masses of organized, functioning brain tissue. Veritable colleges of mini-brains were soon thriving under various protocols in laboratories around the world.

Much to the frustration of impatient experimentalists, however, the mini-brains similarity to the real thing only went so far. Their shrunken anatomies were distorted; they lacked blood vessels and layers of tissue; neurons were present but important glial cells that make up the supportive white matter of the brain were often missing.

Worst of all was the organoids inconsistency: They differed too much from one another. According to Arnold Kriegstein, director of the developmental and stem cell biology program at the University of California, San Francisco, it was difficult to get organoids to turn out uniformly even when scientists used the same growth protocol and the same starting materials. And this makes it very difficult to have a properly controlled experiment or to even make valid conclusions, he explained.

Researchers could reduce the troublesome variability by treating early-stage organoids with growth factors that would make them differentiate more consistently as a less varied set of neurons. But that consistency would come at the expense of relevance, because real brain networks are a functional quilt of cell typessome of which arise in place while others migrate from other brain regions.

For example, in the human cortex, about 20 percent of the neuronsthe ones called interneurons, which have inhibitory effectsmigrate there from a center deeper down in the brain called the medial ganglionic eminence (MGE). An oversimplified organoid model for the cortex would be missing all those interneurons and would therefore be useless for studying how the developing brain balances its excitatory and inhibitory signals.

A stained cross section through one of the cortical organoids created by researchers at the Yale Stem Cell Center shows the organization of various cell types into layers of tissue. The organoid is 40 days old in this image. The blue dots are cell nuclei; the red patches are progenitor cells for neurons; the green patches are differentiated neurons.

Courtesy of Yangfei Xiang

Deliverance from those problems may have arrived with recent results from three groups. They point toward the possibility of an almost modular approach to building mini-brains, which involves growing relatively simple organoids representative of different developing brain regions and then allowing them to connect with one another.

The most recent of those results was announced two weeks ago in Cell Stem Cell by a group based at the Yale Stem Cell Center. In the first stage of their experiments, they used human pluripotent stem cells (some derived from blood, others from embryos) to create separate organoid replicas of the cortex and MGE. The researchers then let mixed pairs of the ball-shaped organoids grow side by side. Over several weeks, the pairs of organoids fused. Most important, the Yale team saw that, in keeping with proper brain development, inhibitory interneurons from the MGE organoid migrated into the cortical organoid mass and began to integrate themselves into the neural networks there, exactly as they do in the developing fetal brain.

Earlier this year, teams from the Stanford University School of Medicine and the Austrian Academy of Sciences published reports on similar experiments in which they too developed cortical and MGE organoids and then fused them. The three studies differ significantly in their detailssuch as how the researchers coaxed stem cells to become organoids, how they nurtured the growing organoids, and what tests they ran on the derived cells. But they all found that the fused organoids yielded neural networks with a lifelike mix of excitatory neurons, inhibitory neurons and supporting cells, and that they could be developed more reliably than the older types of mini-brain organoids.

To Kriegstein, all three experiments beautifully illustrate that the cells in organoids will readily transform into mature, healthy tissue if given the opportunity. Once you coax the tissue down a particular developmental trajectory, it actually manages to get there very well on its own with minimal instruction, he said. He believes that specialized organoids could bring a new level of experimental control to neuroscientists explorations: Scientists could probe different brain organoids for information about development within subregions of the brain and then use that combined or fused platform to study how these cells interact once they start migrating and encountering each other.

In-Hyun Park, an associate professor of genetics who led the Yale study, is hopeful that organoids might already be useful in preliminary investigations of the developmental roots of certain neuropsychiatric conditions, such as autism and schizophrenia. Evidence suggests that in these conditions, Park said, there seems to be an imbalance between excitatory and inhibitory neural activity. So those diseases can be studied using the current model that weve developed.

Kriegstein cautions, however, that no one should rush to find clinical significance in organoid experiments. What we really lack is a gold standard of human brain development to calibrate how well these organoids are mimicking the normal condition, he said.

Whatever applications organoid research may eventually find, the essential next steps will consist of learning how to produce organoids that are even more true to life, according to Park. He has also not given up hope that it will eventually be possible to create a mini-brain in the laboratory that is a more complete and accurate stand-in for what grows in our head. Maybe doing so will involve a more complex fusion of organoid subunits, or maybe it will demand a more sophisticated use of growth media and chemicals for directing the organoid through its embryonic stages. There should be an approach to generating a human brain organoid that is composed of forebrain plus midbrain plus hindbrain all together, Park said.

Jordana Cepelewicz contributed reporting to this article.

Original story reprinted with permission from Quanta Magazine, an editorially independent publication of the Simons Foundation whose mission is to enhance public understanding of science by covering research developments and trends in mathematics and the physical and life sciences.

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Lego-Like Brain Balls Could Build a Living Replica of Your Noggin - WIRED

Artificial intelligence targets human age-reversal – Digital Journal

The application of artificial intelligence is the research focus of start-up company Insilico Medicine. The medical technology company is developing artificial intelligence algorithms to study the ageing processes. The aim is to find new interventions in aging.InSilico Medicine develops knowledge management system of annotated drugs and small molecules. The company foremost develops drugs for oncology and aging, based on a patient's gene expression data. InSilico Medicine is based in Baltimore, Maryland, U.S. Last year the company launched Aging.AI 2.0, which is a blood biochemistry predictor of human age. This built on the success of its Aging.AI 1.0 platform. Version 1.0 succeeded in using just 41 blood biochemistry biomarkers to test thousands of people. Through this type of analysis Insilico Medicine becames the first company to apply deep generative adversarial networks (GANs) to generating anti-cancer new molecules.

Artificial molecules.

Physics.org

Elderly Cubans wait for help at La Milagrosa Grandparent House in Havana

Adalberto Roque, AFP

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Artificial intelligence targets human age-reversal - Digital Journal

Money Problems and Millionaires – Bloomberg

The weekend is here! Pour yourself a mug ofTrader Joe'sOrganic Fair Trade Sumatracoffee, grab a seat by the window waiting for the skies to clear, and get ready for our longer-formweekendreads:

Be sure to check out ourMasters in Businessinterviewthis weekendwithMatt Wallaert, a behavioral scientist and former director at Microsoft Ventures who works at the intersection oftechnology and human behavior.

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This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.

To contact the author of this story: Barry Ritholtz at britholtz3@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Brooke Sample at bsample1@bloomberg.net

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Money Problems and Millionaires - Bloomberg