geekosystem

Today brings us a reminder that genetic engineering can do very strange, very specific things. Researchers studying muscular dystrophy have engineered a mouse model of the disease, but needed a better way to track its progress as the disease ravages their tiny mouse muscles. The solution? Engineer the already muscular dystrophy-prone mice with a gene from fireflies that causes their muscles to glow in relation to how much damage has been done to them by the disease. So those exist now.

There's always some new "breakthrough" in weight loss, touted by celebrities or TV personalities with pills, programs, or delicious new shakes. But you know what they're not touting, but actually could work? Ingesting the gut bacteria of someone slimmer than you. That's right. A new study finds that if you had the right bacteria transplant, losing weight might not be as much of a problem.

Sometimes we bite off more than we can chew, and other times we don't bite at all and just try to swallow an entire mouse. Everyone's tried to swallow a whole mouse before, right? No? Well, Socks sure has. He's an 8-week-old kitten who is adorable because he is a kitten, but he is also a remorseless killing machine. Socks, despite the fact that his teeny tiny wittle kitten mouth wasn't yet big enough, swallowed an entire mouse, but the tail became lodged in his throat. I can has Heimlich?

For many of us, Valentine's Day is a wonderful time to celebrate the one we love. For others among us... well, we mostly just try not to hate all you cute couples too much and get through the day without feeling too many feelings.  For those of us who would rather shut down our perceptions today, there's a far-off glimmer of hope -- researchers at the University of Southern California have succeeded in turning off the ability of mice to feel. Well, to feel the sensation of cold, anyway, though we're hopeful that turning off the ability to feel the bitter sting of disappointment or the dull, lasting ache of loneliness is just down the road.

The oft-asked question "How is babby formed?" just got a little more complicated to answer. A team of Japanese researchers have reared baby mice who are the product of joining an artificial sperm cell and an artificial egg. Both of the reproductive cells in question were made by transforming adult cells into induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs), the lab created stem cell strains that have shown both promise and peril in recent studies. Those iPSCs were then turned into sperm and egg cells, respectively, and finally turned into adorable mouse pups.

Sometimes traditional input devices just don't cut it. I've never been big on the touchpad mouse, but sometimes using a traditional mouse can be annoying when you can't spare that whole hand because you need it on the keyboard. For typing, you guys. Particularly, activities like peddling between tabs in Chrome can be obnoxious while typing. Especially if you have a dozen open. The same goes for highlighting text. It's a small annoyance to grab the mouse and then go back to the keyboard, but it's a very common one. That's where the foot pedal mouse comes in. It can solve all those problems for you, that is, if it's at all usable.

We here at Geekosystem are huge fans of gaming peripheral extraordinaire Razer.From their perfectly contoured mice, to neat gaming keyboard and laptops, Razer makes a PC gamer's dreams come true. One of the best gaming mice in existence, the Razer Naga, figured out how to shove 17 buttons into a mouse, yet have the thing be totally and comfortably usable. Now, Razer is expanding the Naga line, adding the Razer Naga Hex to the fold. Whereas the original Razer Naga had 12 buttons on the side and was tailor-made for MMOs, the Razer Naga Hex cuts the buttons in half and is tailor-made for MOBAs -- otherwise known as games like Defense of the Ancients, Heroes of Newerth, and League of Legends.

Adding to the ever growing list of what stem cells can do, researchers as Kyoto University in Japan have created fully functional sperm from mouse embryonic stem cells, that resulted in the birth of viable offspring. Researchers used the sperm they created to fertilize mouse eggs in the laboratory, that were then implanted as embryos into surrogate mothers. This is the first time an animal has been born from sperm that was made from stem cells. For years, scientists have been trying to make viable sperm and eggs cells from embryonic stem cells because it could be a ground breaking treatment for infertility. However, until now all attempts at making sperm from embryonic stem cells had failed to result in offspring. Since 2009, the team from Kyoto University has been working on this problem, and devised a special method for making the cells viable.

New research from a group at Stanford University has found that broken or interrupted sleep has a negative effect on the ability to build memories in mice. The research, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, shows that disrupting the sleep of mice made it harder for them to recognize and identify objects that should have been familiar to them. To study the mice, the researchers interrupted their sleep but made sure that the amount of time sleeping was no shorter than normal. Using optogenetics, a technique where certain cells are genetically engineered to be controlled by light, the researchers targeted cells in the brain. The cells on which the researchers focused plays a critical role in switching the brain between the sleep and awake states. Light pulses were sent into the brains of the mice while they slept, to disrupt their sleep but not change their total sleep time or the quality or intensity of their sleep. The researchers then tested the mice memory by putting them in front of two objects, one new and one familiar. Mice whose sleep had been disrupted did not recognize either object, while mice who had slept undisturbed focused all their attention on the new object.

Chow down on this: scientists in Japan have used the stem cells of mice to grow replacement teeth that are fully functional when implanted into the mouse's mouth. The "bioengineered tooth unit," otherwise known as the tooth grown from the stem cells, was created by a team of researchers led by Takashi Tsuji at Tokyo University of Science. To make the teeth, the researchers removed stem cells from mouse molar teeth.The cells were put in culture in the lab to go in a specific mold that would guide the shape and size of the future tooth. When the cells had matured into complete teeth, the researchers transplanted them into the jaws of one-month-old mice. The transplanted teeth were fused with the jaw bones of the mice within an average of 40 days. At this time the researchers were also able to detect nerve fiber growth in the newly transplanted teeth.

Researchers at MIT have developed a hat that can control the minds of mice by using wireless optogenetics. The hat is really two circuit boards and an antenna that is wired directly to the mouse's brain to control the animal's behavior with flashes of light. Optogenetics is an emerging scientific field where light is used to control the behavior of cells and even entire animals.

Optogenetics works by loading cells (typically, neurons) with a protein that is light sensitive. This protein acts as a gatekeeper of the cell. When the protein is exposed to the light, it opens up and allows ions to enter the neuron, causing it to fire. By introducing the protein to exact sports, scientists can turn on certain parts of the brain or even individual neurons. Having control of the brain, and particular neurons gives researchers the ability to guide behavior.

Finding a cure for cancer has been the mission of millions of scientists around the world. Significant breakthroughs have been made in developing treatments for cancer, and even some preventative measures have been developed like the HPV vaccine that guards against certain strains of the humanpapillomavirus, one of the few viral causes of cancer. But despite advances in immuno and virotherapy, there remains a need for an effective, easily produced, and easy to tolerate treatment for cancer.

Researchers working in part at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester MN, and St. James University Hospital in Leeds, UK believe they have developed a new virotherapy with tremendous potential. Their method focuses on prostate cancer in mice, and while very successful it remains to be seen whether this therapy could be translated with the same effectiveness into humans.

Scientists have long known that the hypothalamus, sometimes called the "reptilian brain," is responsible for many basic functions like breathing in addition to being involved with emotions like anger and sexual desire. But Dr. Dayu Lin with the California Institute of Technology has taken our understanding of the hypothalamus' role a step further by controlling some of it's functions using light. Through a process called optogenetics, Dr. Lin made certain areas of a mouse's hypothalamus, specifically a region called the ventrolateral ventromedial hypothalamus (VMHvl), sensitive to light. Using fiberoptic cables, Dr. Lin was able to target these areas and stimulate them with light. The results were immediate and dramatic. From Discover magazine:

If the mice were alone, nothing happened when Lin shone a light onto their brains. But if they had company, it was a different story. A flash of light, and the mice transformed from Jekylls into Hydes. They rapidly attacked other mice, whether male, female or anaesthetised. They would even assail an inflated glove.

A recent study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences aimed to look at the physical effects of breaking the circadian rhythm -- the cycle of light and darkness that synchronizes the "internal clock" of creatures. For those living on planet Earth, our bodies (and those of plants and other animals) use the 24-hour day to regulate body functions. But our modern lives have prevented this rhythm from running our lives. From the report:

Over the past 100 y, especially with the advent of electric lighting, modern society has resulted in a round-the-clock lifestyle, in which natural connections between rest/activity cycles and environmental light/dark cycles have been degraded or even broken. Instances in which rapid changes to sleep patterns are necessary, such as transmeridian air travel, demonstrate negative effects of acute circadian disruption on physiology and behavior. However, the ramifications of chronic disruption of the circadian clock for mental and physical health are not yet fully understood.

For this experiment, scientists put several mice on a 20-hour day schedule, with 10 hours of light and 10 of darkness and observed the results.

The folks over at Shogun Bros. have developed the Chameleon X-1, the hybrid mouse that looks like a fairly standard wireless mouse from above, but hides an actual gaming controller underneath. The mouse isn't available yet, with the Shogun Bros. identifying the release window as "soon," also disclosing the price to be around $55; about the price for a worthwhile console gaming controller or a standard gaming mouse.