User Datas & Informations

December 30th, 2007 by Mylo

Information on Histogenetic Probes and Diagnostic Aids:

Acquaporins
Acquaporins are water channel proteins found in the membranes along the nephron. These proteins allow you to recognize what part of the nephron you are visualizing, as different acquaporins are expressed differently along an individual nephron. Moreover, renal tumors can be revealed.

Acquaporin-1 - proximal renal tubule, descending thin limb of Henle’s loop
Acquaporin-2 - collecting ducts only

Actin
Actin is a contractile protein found in almost every cell. It allows for cell motility through changes in its shape. This is a marker of smooth muscle cells and myofibroblasts. Striated muscle actin is used to define rhabdomyosarcoma.

Albumin
Albumin is an abundant extracellular protein, with numerous functions made within hepatocytes, in the liver. Hepatocellular and hepatoid carcinomas can be marked by albumin immunohistochemistry.

Vimentin
Vimentin is one of the cytoplasmic intermediate filaments. Found almost everywhere, it is mainly prominent in mesenchymal cells, such as fibroblasts and endothelial cells. Because of its expression throughout many different cells, vimentin is often used as a positive control for the immunohistochemistry reaction.

WT-1
WT-1 is a transcription factor, found in Wilm’s Tumor (WT). WT-1 is also expressed in mesothelioma and mullerian epithelial neoplasms, such as ovarian serous carcinoma.

Z-protein
Found in the Z-band of striated muscle, the Z-protein can help mark rhabdomyosarcoma.

December 24th, 2007 by Mylo

#1 Your Hand Can Have A Mind On Its Own
Remember Devon Sawa’s character in 1999’s ‘Idle Hands’, a comedy / horror movie about a teen whose hand becomes possessed and goes on a killing spree?

Apparently this movie has some truth in it. The ‘idle hand’ which referred to as the ‘Alien Hand Syndrome’ is an unusual neurological disorder in which the sufferer’s hand seems to take on a mind of its own. This is due to the damage in the medial motor frontal region of the brain and often occurs after a brain surgery, a stroke or an infection of the brain.

The sufferer has no control over the movements of the ‘alien hand’ nor will they have any conscience idea on what that hand is doing. The person suffering from this condition can often feel disconnected with their hand, and feel as if it was not part of their body.

When the suffer is unaware the alien hand can sometime act out complex movements like unbuttoning clothing, using tools or even tearing pieces of clothing. There are no know treatments or cure for ‘Alien Hand Syndrome’ however the best solution is to give this alien hand an object it can play with to keep it distracted from doing anything harmful to the sufferer.

#2 You Could Remove A Large Part of Your Internal Organs and Survive

While the human body may appear fragile, your body is stronger than you could possibly imagine. It is possible for you to survive even after the removal of the spleen, the stomach, one kidney, one lung, 75% of the liver, 80% of the intestines, and almost every organ from the pelvic and groin area. Read the rest of this entry »

December 20th, 2007 by Mylo

Immunohistochemistry is a molecular technique that combines principles from both immunology and biochemistry techniques and principles to the study of histology and pathology by revealing molecules and patterns within cells and tissues.

The first to describe immunohistochemistry was Dr. Coons. The original immunohistochemistry method consisted of an antibody tagged with a fluorescent probe which was developed in rabbits, which was mixed with tissue sections and searched for, under a fluorescent microscope following a period of incubation. Since, numerous advancements and improvements have been done, to make the technique of immunohistochemistry fairly inexpensive and indispensable in both pathology departments and molecular laboratory benches worldwide.

Numerous different procedures are available, however the most commonly used are the peroxidase-antiperoxidase immune complex method and more so, the biotin-avidin immunoenzymatic technique.
 

December 18th, 2007 by Mylo

A research team working at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has found an explanation for the extreme sensitivity to mechanical pressure or voltage of a special class of solid materials called relaxors. The ability to control and tailor this sensitivity would allow industry to enhance a range of devices used in medical ultrasound imaging, loudspeakers, sonar and computer hard drives.

Relaxors are highly sensitive piezoelectrics — they change shape when a battery is connected across opposite ends of the material, or they produce a voltage when squeezed.

“Relaxors are roughly 10 times more sensitive than any other known piezoelectric,” explains NIST researcher Peter Gehring. They are extremely useful for device applications because they can convert between electrical and mechanical forms of energy with little energy loss.

A team of scientists from Brookhaven National Laboratory, Stony Brook University, Johns Hopkins University and NIST used the neutron scattering facilities at the NIST Center for Neutron Research (NCNR) to study how the atomic “acoustic vibrations,” which are essentially sound waves, inside relaxors respond to an applied voltage. They found that an intrinsic disorder in the chemical structure of the relaxor crystal apparently is responsible for its special properties.

Atoms in solids are usually arranged in a perfect crystal lattice, and they vibrate about these positions and propagate energy in the form of sound waves. In typical piezoelectric materials, these acoustic vibrations persist for a long time much like the ripples in a pond of water long after a pebble has been thrown in.

Not so with relaxors: these vibrations quickly die out. The research team led by Brookhaven’s Guangyong Xu, compared how the sound waves propagated in different directions, and observed a large asymmetry in the response of the relaxor lattice when subjected to an applied voltage.

“We learned that the lattice’s intrinsic chemical disorder affects the basic behavior and organization of the materials,” says Gehring. The disorder that breaks up the acoustic vibrations makes the material structurally unstable and very sensitive to applied pressure or an applied voltage.

That disorder occurs because the well-defined lattice of atoms alternates randomly between one of three of its elements—zinc, niobium and titanium—each of which carries a different electrical charge.

The research was funded by the Office of Basic Energy Sciences within the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science and the Natural Science and Research Council of Canada