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'Taking Up A Dialogue' With The Brain: Letter Decoding From Single-trial Brain Signals
Brain-computer interfaces "translate" what a person is thinking in words or actions. Researchers from Maastricht University in the Netherlands performed functional MRI brain scans on healthy participants, instructing them to "type" by performing mental tasks corresponding to different letters in the English alphabet. Researchers were able to use signals from the participants" brain activation patterns to decode information about the intended letter that a participant was thinking about, and to use this in a conversation with the experimenters without any spoken words. It is hoped that such technology can enable communication with "locked-in" patients or assessment of consciousness in non-responsive patients.
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Boston Arm Of Multi-City Study To Focus On Sexual Health, HIV Risk Among Black Gay, Bisexual Men
Boston-based Fenway Health and the Multicultural AIDS Coalition "have launched the recruitment phase of a new study aimed at learning more about the sexual health of black gay and bi[sexual] men and finding effective strategies for HIV prevention within the black gay community," Bay Windows reports. The study, called Project Saving Ourselves (SOS), is seeking to recruit up to 400 participants in Boston, and also is collecting data on black gay and bisexual men in New York, Washington, D.C., Atlanta, Los Angeles and San Francisco. Ben Perkins, Project SOS director at the Fenway Institute of Fenway Health"s research division, said, "This is pretty new. In terms of the scale, there hasn"t been anything quite like it." Perkins said there are several questions researchers hope to answer about black gay and bisexual male health and HIV prevention, but the goal is to determine what factors put them at risk for HIV and help promote better health and safe behavior (Jacobs, 7/15).
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Stem Cell Protein Offers A New Cancer Target

A protein abundant in embryonic stem cells is now shown to be important in cancer, and offers a possible new target for drug development, report researchers from the Stem Cell Program at Children"s Hospital Boston. Last year, George Daley, MD, PhD, and graduate student Srinivas Viswanathan, in collaboration with Richard Gregory, PhD, also of the Stem Cell Program at Children"s, showed that the protein LIN28 regulates an important group of tumor-suppressing microRNAs known as let-7. Increasing LIN28 production in a cell prevented let-7 from maturing, making the cell more immature and stem-like. Since these qualities also make a cell more cancerous, and because low levels of mature let-7 have been associated with breast and lung cancer, the discovery suggested that LIN28 might be oncogenic. Now, publishing Advance Online in Nature Genetics on May 31, Daley, Viswanathan and colleagues show directly that LIN28 can transform cells to a cancerous state, and that it is abundant in a variety of advanced human cancers, particularly liver cancer, ovarian cancer, chronic myeloid leukemia, germ cell tumors and Wilm"s tumor (a childhood kidney cancer). They believe that overall, LIN28 and a related protein, LIN28B, may be involved in some 15 percent of human cancers. By blocking or suppressing LIN28, it might be possible to revive the let-7 family"s natural tumor-suppressing action. "Linking this protein to advanced cancer is a very exciting new result," says Daley, Director of Stem Cell Transplantation at Children"s, and also affiliated with Children"s Division of Hematology/Oncology, the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and the Harvard Stem Cell Institute. "It gives us a new target to attack, especially in the most resistant and hard-to-treat cases." LIN28, which is abundant in embryonic stem cells and prevents them from differentiating into specific cell types, was originally discovered to influence embryonic development in worms some 25 years ago. Development, stem cell generation and carcinogenesis are known to be closely related, but until last year"s study connected LIN28 to let-7, it hadn"t been clear how. "LIN28 is a fascinating protein that acts both in stem cells and cancers, and is teaching us that cancer is often a disease of stem cells," says Daley. Viswanathan, Daley and colleagues are busily searching for ways to inhibit LIN28, which could provide promising new drugs for advanced cancer. The study was funded by the National Institutes of Health, the NIH Director"s Pioneer Award, Burroughs Wellcome Fund, the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Elizabeth Andrews Children"s Hospital Boston


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