44 posts · 42,663 views
Stem cells have two key characteristics. They are able to self-renew and they can differentiate into mature cells of different lineages. These two properties allow stem cells to repair and regenerate tissues and organs. Stem cells also form the corner-stone of tissue engineering. The underlying biological mechanisms that regulate stem cell function and self-renewal are fairly complex and our knowledge of remains very limited.The field of stem cell research has generated a lot of enthusiasm, but this enthusiasm can at times skew the interpretation of the actual scientific findings. I believe that the hope of being able to regenerate or rejuvenate tissues taps into the old human quest for immortality. This may be the reason why I often come across reports and discussions suggesting that stem cell therapies have a miracle-like quality and will soon be able to cure most diseases. While the ground-breaking discoveries in stem cell biology are indeed fascinating, it is also important to have a realistic view of stem cell therapies and realize that much of stem cell biology is still in its infancy. Premature attempts to use stem cells for clinical therapies are probably not going to succeed. This blog will focus on novel developments in stem cell research, regenerative biology and medicine as well as the topic of aging. The ethical and political issues that revolve around stem cell research will also be discussed. I am also interested in broader questions related to the process of scientific discovery, creativity and scientific communication, which will be addressed in some of the posts.
Jalees Rehman
44 posts
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- March 1, 2016
- 11:10 AM
- 212 views
Shame on You, Shame on Me: Shame as an Evolutionary Adaptation
by Jalees Rehman in The Next Regeneration
Can shame be good for you? We often think of shame as a shackling emotion which thwarts our individuality and creativity. A sense of shame could prevent us from choosing a partner we truly love, speaking out against societal traditions which propagate injustice or pursuing a profession that is deemed unworthy by our peers. But if shame is so detrimental, why did we evolve with this emotion? A team of researchers led by Daniel Sznycer from the Center for Evolutionary Psychology at the University ........ Read more »
Sznycer D, Tooby J, Cosmides L, Porat R, Shalvi S, & Halperin E. (2016) Shame closely tracks the threat of devaluation by others, even across cultures. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. PMID: 26903649
- January 5, 2016
- 09:16 AM
- 441 views
We Have Become Exhausted Slaves in a Culture of Positivity
by Jalees Rehman in The Next Regeneration
We live in an era of exhaustion and fatigue, caused by an incessant compulsion to perform. This is one of the central tenets of the book "Müdigkeitsgesellschaft" (translatable as "The Fatigue Society" or "The Tiredness Society") by the German philosopher Byung-Chul Han. Han is a professor at the Berlin Universität der Künste (University of the Arts) and one of the most widely read contemporary philosophers in Germany. He was born in Seoul where he stu........ Read more »
Byung-Chul Han. (2015) The Burnout Society. Stanford University Press. info:/
- December 8, 2015
- 12:46 PM
- 439 views
The Dire State of Science in the Muslim World
by Jalees Rehman in The Next Regeneration
Universities and the scientific infrastructures in Muslim-majority countries need to undergo radical reforms if they want to avoid falling by the wayside in a world characterized by major scientific and technological innovations. This is the conclusion reached by Nidhal Guessoum and Athar Osama in their recent commentary "Institutions: Revive universities of the Muslim world", published in the scientific journal Nature. The physics and astronomy professor Guessoum (American University ........ Read more »
Guessoum N, & Osama A. (2015) Institutions: Revive universities of the Muslim world. Nature, 526(7575), 634-6. PMID: 26511563
Romanowski, M., & Nasser, R. (2010) Faculty perceptions of academic freedom at a GCC university. PROSPECTS, 40(4), 481-497. DOI: 10.1007/s11125-010-9166-2
- Anthropology
- Psychology
- Social Science
- Research / Scholarship
- Health
- Educational Psychology
- Science Communication
- Industrial/Organizational Psychology
- Policy
- Career
- Geography
- Political Science
- Public Health
- Sociology
- Sociocultural Anthropology
- Funding
- Behavioral Economics
- Ethics
- Decision-Making
- Education
- October 14, 2015
- 09:53 AM
- 643 views
Feel Our Pain: Empathy and Moral Behavior
by Jalees Rehman in The Next Regeneration
"It's empathy that makes us help other people. It's empathy that makes us moral." The economist Paul Zak casually makes this comment in his widely watched TED talk about the hormone oxytocin, which he dubs the "moral molecule". Zak quotes a number of behavioral studies to support his claim that oxytocin increases empathy and trust, which in turn increases moral behavior. If all humans regularly inhaled a few puffs of oxytocin through a nasal spray, we could become m........ Read more »
De Dreu, C., Greer, L., Van Kleef, G., Shalvi, S., & Handgraaf, M. (2011) Oxytocin promotes human ethnocentrism. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 108(4), 1262-1266. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1015316108
Shalvi S, & De Dreu CK. (2014) Oxytocin promotes group-serving dishonesty. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 111(15), 5503-7. PMID: 24706799
Xu X, Zuo X, Wang X, & Han S. (2009) Do you feel my pain? Racial group membership modulates empathic neural responses. The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience, 29(26), 8525-9. PMID: 19571143
- Anthropology
- Biology
- Medicine
- Philosophy
- Psychology
- Social Science
- Neuroscience
- Abnormal Psychology
- Behavioral Economics
- Learning
- Decision-Making
- Biological Anthropology
- Emotion
- Sociocultural Anthropology
- Human Factors
- Applied Anthropology
- Social Psychology
- Behavioral Biology
- Affective Neuroscience
- Sensation and Perception
- Behavioral Neuroscience
- Cognitive Neuroscience
- Molecular Neuroscience
- Endocrinology
- Affective Psychology
- July 29, 2015
- 02:09 PM
- 812 views
The “Invisible Web” Undermines Health Information Privacy
by Jalees Rehman in The Next Regeneration
What do the third parties do with your data? We do not really know because the laws and regulations are rather fuzzy here. We do know that Google, Facebook and Twitter primarily make money by advertising so they could potentially use your info and customize the ads you see. Just because you visited a page on breast cancer does not mean that the "Invisible Web" knows your name and address but they do know that you have some interest in breast cancer. It would make financial sense to sen........ Read more »
Libert, T. (2015) Privacy implications of health information seeking on the web. Communications of the ACM, 58(3), 68-77. DOI: 10.1145/2658983
- July 20, 2015
- 10:00 AM
- 571 views
How Viruses Feign Death to Survive and Thrive
by Jalees Rehman in The Next Regeneration
During the past decade, multiple groups of researchers have come across a fascinating phenomenon by which viruses hijack the phagocytosis process in order to thrive. One of the "Eat Me!" signals for phagocytes is that debris derived from an apoptotic cell is coated by a membrane enriched with phosphatidylserines which are negatively charged molecules. Phosphatidylserines are present in all cells but they are usually tucked away on the inside of cells and are not seen by other cells. Wh........ Read more »
Amara A, & Mercer J. (2015) Viral apoptotic mimicry. Nature Reviews Microbiology, 13(8), 461-9. PMID: 26052667
- June 25, 2015
- 12:43 PM
- 841 views
The Long Shadow of Nazi Indoctrination: Persistence of Anti-Semitism in Germany
by Jalees Rehman in The Next Regeneration
Voigtländer and Voth examined the results of the large General Social Survey for Germany (ALLBUS) in which several thousand Germans were asked about their values and beliefs. The survey took place in 1996 and 2006, and the researchers combined the results of both surveys with a total of 5,300 participants from 264 German towns and cities. The researchers were specifically interested in anti-Semitic attitudes and focused on three survey questions specifically related to anti-Semitism. Survey........ Read more »
Voigtländer N, & Voth HJ. (2015) Nazi indoctrination and anti-Semitic beliefs in Germany. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. PMID: 26080394
- April 28, 2015
- 09:40 AM
- 877 views
Murder Your Darling Hypotheses But Do Not Bury Them
by Jalees Rehman in The Next Regeneration
There is surprisingly little data on how and when scientists reject hypotheses, but John Fugelsang and Kevin Dunbar at Dartmouth conducted a rather unique study "Theory and data interactions of the scientific mind: Evidence from the molecular and the cognitive laboratory" in 2004 in which they researched researchers. They sat in at scientific laboratory meetings of three renowned molecular biology laboratories at carefully recorded how scientists presented their laboratory data and how........ Read more »
Fugelsang, J., Stein, C., Green, A., & Dunbar, K. (2004) Theory and Data Interactions of the Scientific Mind: Evidence From the Molecular and the Cognitive Laboratory. Canadian Journal of Experimental Psychology/Revue canadienne de psychologie expérimentale, 58(2), 86-95. DOI: 10.1037/h0085799
- March 31, 2015
- 05:45 AM
- 778 views
African-Americans Receive Heart Transplants at Hospitals With Poor Performance Track Records
by Jalees Rehman in The Next Regeneration
About five million people in the US suffer from heart failure, and approximately half of them die within five years of being diagnosed. Only about 2,500 hundred people a year receive a heart transplant – the treatment of last resort. A new heart can be life-saving, but it is also life-changing. Even under the best conditions, the surgery is complex, and recovery carries a heavy physical and emotional burden.
... Read more »
Kilic, A., Higgins, R., Whitson, B., & Kilic, A. (2015) Racial Disparities in Outcomes of Adult Heart Transplantation. Circulation, 131(10), 882-889. DOI: 10.1161/CIRCULATIONAHA.114.011676
- March 9, 2015
- 08:58 AM
- 1,337 views
“She’s strong for a girl”: The Negative Impact of Stereotypes About Women
by Jalees Rehman in The Next Regeneration
We have all heard the stereotypes: women can’t drive, they don’t understand computers, and how many blondes does it take to screw in a light bulb? But those are all in good fun, right? But what if gender stereotypes actually bring about the observed differences between men and women that supposedly underline these stereotypes? A recent study by the psychologist Marina Pavlova at the University of Tübingen tested this idea.... Read more »
Pavlova, M., Weber, S., Simoes, E., & Sokolov, A. (2014) Gender Stereotype Susceptibility. PLoS ONE, 9(12). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0114802
- February 9, 2015
- 09:22 AM
- 618 views
Literature and Philosophy in the Laboratory Meeting
by Jalees Rehman in The Next Regeneration
Research institutions in the life sciences engage in two types of regular scientific meet-ups: scientific seminars and lab meetings. The structure of scientific seminars is fairly standard. Speakers give Powerpoint presentations (typically 45 to 55 minutes long) which provide the necessary scientific background, summarize their group's recent published scientific work and then (hopefully) present newer, unpublished data. Lab meetings are a rather different affair. The purpose of a lab meeti........ Read more »
Thomas Kuhn. (2012) The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. University of Chicago Press. DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226458106.001.0001
- January 16, 2015
- 06:10 AM
- 946 views
Fixing ‘Leaky’ Blood Vessels in Severe Respiratory Ailments and Ebola
by Jalees Rehman in The Next Regeneration
When you get an infection, your immune system responds with an influx of inflammatory cells that target the underlying bacteria or viruses. These immune cells migrate from your blood into the infected tissue in order to release a cocktail of pro-inflammatory proteins and help eliminate the infectious threat.
During this inflammatory response, the blood vessel barrier becomes “leaky.” This allows for an even more rapid influx of additional immune cells. Once the infection resolves,........ Read more »
Gong, H., Rehman, J., Tang, H., Wary, K., Mittal, M., Chatturvedi, P., Zhao, Y., Komorova, Y., Vogel, S., & Malik, A. (2015) HIF2α signaling inhibits adherens junctional disruption in acute lung injury. Journal of Clinical Investigation. DOI: 10.1172/JCI77701
- January 5, 2015
- 03:02 PM
- 986 views
Typical Dreams: A Comparison of Dreams Across Cultures
by Jalees Rehman in The Next Regeneration
Have you ever wondered how the content of your dreams differs from that of your friends? How about the dreams of people raised in different countries and cultures? It is not always easy to compare dreams of distinct individuals because the content of dreams depends on our personal experiences. This is why dream researchers have developed standardized dream questionnaires in which common thematic elements are grouped together. These questionnaires can be translated into various languages and used........ Read more »
Yu, C. (2008) Typical dreams experienced by Chinese people. Dreaming, 18(1), 1-10. DOI: 10.1037/1053-0797.18.1.1
Nielsen, T., Zadra, A., Simard, V., Saucier, S., Stenstrom, P., Smith, C., & Kuiken, D. (2003) The Typical Dreams of Canadian University Students. Dreaming, 13(4), 211-235. DOI: 10.1023/B:DREM.0000003144.40929.0b
Schredl M, Ciric P, Götz S, & Wittmann L. (2004) Typical dreams: stability and gender differences. The Journal of psychology, 138(6), 485-94. PMID: 15612605
- December 8, 2014
- 08:02 AM
- 1,159 views
Climate Change: Heatwaves and Poverty in Pakistan
by Jalees Rehman in The Next Regeneration
In the summer of 2010, over 20 million people were affected by the summer floods in Pakistan. Millions lost access to shelter and clean water, and became dependent on aid in the form of food, drinking water, tents, clothes and medical supplies in order to survive this humanitarian disaster. It is estimated that at least $1.5 billion to $2 billion were provided as aid by governments, NGOs, charity organizations and private individuals from all around the world, and helped contain the devastating ........ Read more »
Mueller V, Gray C, & Kosec K. (2014) Heat Stress Increases Long-term Human Migration in Rural Pakistan. Nature climate change, 182-185. PMID: 25132865
Miralles, D., Teuling, A., van Heerwaarden, C., & Vilà-Guerau de Arellano, J. (2014) Mega-heatwave temperatures due to combined soil desiccation and atmospheric heat accumulation. Nature Geoscience, 7(5), 345-349. DOI: 10.1038/ngeo2141
- October 20, 2014
- 04:21 PM
- 1,004 views
Moral Time: Does Our Internal Clock Influence Moral Judgments?
by Jalees Rehman in The Next Regeneration
Does morality depend on the time of the day? The study "The Morning Morality Effect: The Influence of Time of Day on Unethical Behavior" published in October of 2013 by Maryam Kouchaki and Isaac Smith suggested that people are more honest in the mornings, and that their ability to resist the temptation of lying and cheating wears off as the day progresses. In a series of experiments, Kouchaki and Smith found that moral awareness and self-control in their study subjects decreased in the........ Read more »
Gunia BC, Barnes CM, & Sah S. (2014) The Morality of Larks and Owls: Unethical Behavior Depends on Chronotype as Well as Time of Day. Psychological science. PMID: 25287664
- October 13, 2014
- 07:59 AM
- 897 views
The Psychology of Procrastination: How We Create Categories of the Future
by Jalees Rehman in The Next Regeneration
A fully rational approach to task completion would involve creating a priority list of tasks based on a composite score of task importance and the remaining time until the deadline. The most important task with the most proximate deadline would have to be tackled first, and the lowest priority task with the furthest deadline last. This sounds great in theory, but it is quite difficult to implement. A substantial amount of research has been conducted to understand how our moods, distractability a........ Read more »
Tu, Y., & Soman, D. (2014) The Categorization of Time and Its Impact on Task Initiation. Journal of Consumer Research, 41(3), 810-822. DOI: 10.1086/677840
- September 17, 2014
- 08:28 AM
- 943 views
Builders and Blocks – Engineering Blood Vessels with Stem Cells
by Jalees Rehman in The Next Regeneration
Back in 2001, when we first began studying how regenerative cells (stem cells or more mature progenitor cells) enhance blood vessel growth, our group as well as many of our colleagues focused on one specific type of blood vessel: arteries. Arteries are responsible for supplying oxygen to all organs and tissues of the body and arteries are more likely to develop gradual plaque build-up (atherosclerosis) than veins or networks of smaller blood vessels (capillaries). Once the amount of plaque in an........ Read more »
Paul JD, Coulombe KL, Toth PT, Zhang Y, Marsboom G, Bindokas VP, Smith DW, Murry CE, & Rehman J. (2013) SLIT3-ROBO4 activation promotes vascular network formation in human engineered tissue and angiogenesis in vivo. Journal of molecular and cellular cardiology, 124-31. PMID: 24090675
- July 22, 2014
- 01:48 PM
- 1,052 views
Fasting Improves Recovery of Bone Marrow Stem Cells after Chemotherapy
by Jalees Rehman in The Next Regeneration
Fasting is defined as either completely abstaining from or minimizing food intake for a defined period time - ranging from about 12 hours to even a few weeks. Calorie restriction, on the other hand, refers to an overall reduction in the daily calorie intake by about 20%-40% without necessarily reducing the meal intake frequency. Although calorie restriction is well-suited for weight loss and thus also reduces the risk of chronic diseases such as diabetes or heart disease, proponents of fasting c........ Read more »
Cheng, C., Adams, G., Perin, L., Wei, M., Zhou, X., Lam, B., Da Sacco, S., Mirisola, M., Quinn, D., Dorff, T.... (2014) Prolonged Fasting Reduces IGF-1/PKA to Promote Hematopoietic-Stem-Cell-Based Regeneration and Reverse Immunosuppression. Cell Stem Cell, 14(6), 810-823. DOI: 10.1016/j.stem.2014.04.014
- June 24, 2014
- 11:50 AM
- 1,216 views
Turning Off Inflammation: A Novel Anti-Inflammatory Switch in Macrophages
by Jalees Rehman in The Next Regeneration
Macrophages are important immune cells which regulate inflammation, host defense and also act as a 'clean-up crew'. They recognize, kill and engulf bacteria as well as cellular debris, which is generated during an acute infection or inflammation. As such, they are present in nearly all tissues of the body, engaging in 24/7 surveillance. Some macrophages in a tissue are derived from circulating blood monocytes which migrate into the tissue and become "phagocytic" - acquire to ........ Read more »
Okabe Y, & Medzhitov R. (2014) Tissue-specific signals control reversible program of localization and functional polarization of macrophages. Cell, 157(4), 832-44. PMID: 24792964
- June 16, 2014
- 01:38 PM
- 1,188 views
Does Reading ‘Moral’ Stories to Children Promote Honesty?
by Jalees Rehman in The Next Regeneration
All over the world, young children are exposed to classic fairy tales, myths and other stories. Most kids love hearing the stories, but in addition to being a fun activity, story-telling is also thought of as an educational tool which can promote moral reasoning and honesty. Conventional wisdom suggests that hearing fairy tales in which dishonest protagonists are punished might help convince the listeners to become truth-tellers. There is surprisingly little scientific data to back up this conve........ Read more »
Lee K, Talwar V, McCarthy A, Ross I, Evans A, & Arruda C. (2014) Can Classic Moral Stories Promote Honesty in Children?. Psychological science. PMID: 24928424
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