Day: November 23, 2016

Scientists put mouse embryos in suspended animation for a month

A team of scientists from the University of California, San Francisco only wanted to slow down mice embryos’ cell growth in the lab. Instead, they managed to completely pause their development, putting the blastocysts (very early embryos) in suspended animation for a month. What’s more, they found that the process can put stem cells derived from the blastocysts in suspended animation, as well. Okay, let’s face it: that doesn’t sound nearly as cool as putting humans in suspended animation. But their finding still has huge implications for various fields of medicine. Doctors could develop a way to suspend embryos for IVF and scientists could find a method to slow down aging, among other possibilities. Helps that the researchers were able to prove that the embryos can develop normally even after a pause in their growth. Team member Ramalho-Santos from the Eli and Edythe Broad Center of Regeneration Medicine and Stem Cell Research said: “It was completely surprising. We were standing around in the tissue culture room, scratching our heads, and saying wow, what do we make of this? To put it in perspective, mouse pregnancies only last about 20 days, so the 30-day-old ‘paused’ embryos we were seeing would have been pups approaching weaning already if they’d been allowed to develop normally.” So, what exactly did the team do that led to their finding? They used a drug that inhibited the activities of a protein called mTOR, which regulates different cellular processes. By inhibiting the protein, they also inhibit the cells’ activities. In the future, the researchers want to explore mTOR inhibitors’ capability to pause stem cells’ activities in the late stages of their development, which could be used to repair or replace organs. And since other studies already showed that mTOR inhibitors can extend the lives of mice, the researchers want to explore their possible uses in aging research. Source: University of California, San Francisco

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Scientists put mouse embryos in suspended animation for a month

Credit card readers were hacked at MSG for nearly a year

Knicks fans have it rough . To watch last year’s third-worst team, fans got to pay the league’s highest ticket prices and drink the priciest beer. To add further insult, Madison Square Garden (MSG) Co. has revealed that their credit card information may have been stolen, too. Thieves tapped the magnetic card readers at merchandise and concession stands at Knicks and Rangers Games, Radio City Music Hall and other MSG locations between November 9th, 2015 and October 24th of this year, the company wrote in a special notice . That makes almost a year of theft before MSG got wise to it, with hackers spiriting away all the data needed to create a replica card. The company said it was notified of a possible breach and started looking into it along with “leading security firms.” After spotting unauthorized access, “MSG worked with the security firms to stop it and to implement enhanced security measures, ” it said. The point-of-sale systems are now safe, but MSG advises customers who visited venues during that period to check their credit card statements for unauthorized purchases. The company didn’t say how many customers were affected, but the number who went to events at those venues is in the millions. It also didn’t indicate why it took so long to spot the breach, fix it and report it to the public. The theft reportedly didn’t impact online or box office ticket sales, so if you went to the game and didn’t buy anything with a credit card, you probably weren’t ripped off (at least not by the thieves). Via: Recode Source: MSG

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Credit card readers were hacked at MSG for nearly a year