FIGHTING TO STAY ALIVE

Using Strategy Improvement to Stay Alive

We design a novel algorithm for solving Mean-Payoff Games (MPGs). Besides solving anMPG in the usual sense, our algorithm computes more information about the game, information that is important with respect to applications. The weights of the edges of an MPG can be thought of as a gained/consumed energy – depending on the sign. For each vertex, our algorithm computes the minimum amount of initi...

Neurons eat glutamate to stay alive

Neurons are thought to primarily rely on glucose to fuel mitochondrial metabolism. In this issue, Divakaruni et al. (2017. J. Cell Biol. https://doi.org/10.1083/jcb.201612067) show that neurons are also happy to use glutamate. When neurons use this neurotransmitter, its concentration drops, thus protecting against glutamate-induced excitotoxic stress.

Books: Reasons to Stay Alive: Helping the Sad.

'....officiously to keep alive'.

Modern medical technology has provided powerful tools with which to initiate and sustain life and understandable concern is being expressed about scientists and doctors 'playing God.' The view that 'the clinician's freedom to stop intensive treatment when the probable outcome is severe handicap is part of the package of neonatology" is far from unanimous. The hard facts are, however, that today...

How to keep photoreceptors alive.

O ver the last 40 years, there has been increasing success in the surgical treatment of retinal detachment in that the retinal reattachment could be achieved in a high proportion of cases but visual recovery was frequently poor. An explanation for this poor visual outcome was derived from work on experimental retinal detachment in which it was shown that photoreceptor cell death occurred becaus...