A new study reports conclusive evidence for the breakdown of standard gravity in the low acceleration limit from a verifiable analysis of the orbital motions of long-period, widely separated, binary stars, usually referred to as wide binaries in astronomy and astrophysics.

Researchers from   hope that a new, publicly available database they have created will shrink, not grow, over time. That's because it is a compendium of the thousands of understudied proteins encoded by genes in the human genome, whose existence is known but whose functions are mostly not.

Researchers have developed a new explainable artificial intelligence (AI) model to reduce bias and enhance trust and accuracy in machine learning-generated decision-making and knowledge organization.

Research shows that a tiny pulse of electricity can improve memory in people who've had a moderate or severe 

.

The painted hornshark is only found in the deep waters of northeastern Australia.

In-water monitoring shows hard coral cover across the Great Barrier Reef remains at similar levels to that recorded in 2022, with small decreases in the Northern, Central and Southern regions. AIMS' Annual Summary Report on Coral Reef Condition for 2022/23 found that while some reefs continued to recover, their increased hard coral cover was offset by coral loss on other reefs. Most reefs underwent little change in coral cover.

Developed over the past six years, MINDWATCH is an algorithm that analyzes a person's brain activity from data collected via any wearable device that can monitor electrodermal activity (EDA). This activity reflects changes in electrical conductance triggered by emotional stress, linked to sweat responses.

Developed over the past six years, MINDWATCH is an algorithm that analyzes a person's brain activity from data collected via any wearable device that can monitor electrodermal activity (EDA). This activity reflects changes in electrical conductance triggered by emotional stress, linked to sweat responses.

submitted by /u/thebelsnickle1991 [link] [comments]

India's Chandrayaan-3 rover reached lunar orbit on Aug. 5, sharing new photos and videos of the moon ahead of its planned Aug. 23 landing.

Scientists from the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), the Ministry of Environment, and the Ministry of Agriculture Forestry and Fisheries of the Royal Government of Cambodia have documented the first case of lumpy   (LSD) in wildlife in Cambodia.

Structured light waves with spiral phase fronts carry orbital angular momentum (OAM), attributed to the rotational motion of photons. Recently, scientists have been using light waves with OAM, and these special "helical" light beams have become very important in various advanced technologies like communication, imaging, and quantum information processing. In these technologies, it's crucial to know the exact structure of these special light beams. However, this has proven to be quite tricky.

Scientists from the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), the Ministry of Environment, and the Ministry of Agriculture Forestry and Fisheries of the Royal Government of Cambodia have documented the first case of lumpy   (LSD) in wildlife in Cambodia.

Scientists have created an "unknome" of proteins encoded by human genes, whose existence is known but whose functions are mostly not

Poor time management skills, particularly in organization, can lead to poor sleep quality for college students.

 have reported the first 3D measurements acquired with quantum ghost imaging. The new technique enables 3D imaging on a single photon level, yielding the lowest photon dose possible for any measurement.

The world of at-home stroke rehabilitation is growing near, after the development of an EEG headset that connects the brain of stroke patients to powered exoskeletons for rehabilitation purposes.

As climate change progresses, rising temperatures may impact nitrogen runoff from land to lakes and streams more than projected increases in total and extreme precipitation for most of the continental United States, according to new research from a team of climate scientists.

Gait-related disturbances adversely affect the quality of life of patients with Parkinson's disease (PD), a condition affecting millions worldwide. Although various pharmacological, surgical, and rehabilitative treatments exist, their effectiveness is limited. Now, a team of researchers has successfully addressed this limitation. Using a novel neuromodulation approach that incorporates gait-combined closed-loop transcranial electrical stimulation, the team demonstrated significant gait improvements in patients with various   including PD.

Using ancient DNA, researchers have determined cattle were imported from Africa to the Americas much earlier in the process of European colonization than documented. The first records of African cattle in the Americas date back to the 1800s, leading some historians to conclude that early colonists relied entirely on a small stock of European cattle initially shipped to the Caribbean Islands. DNA from archaeological specimens pushes the introduction of African cattle back by more than 100 years.

City life favors species that are adaptable and not too fussy about what they eat, among other characteristics. A worldwide consortium of scientists calls the resulting collection of traits an 'Urban Trait Syndrome.'

Nature Communications, Published online: 08 August 2023; doi:10.1038/s41467-023-40478-5

3D scaffolds can be used to recapitulate key aspects of the microenvironment of primary   and metastatic organs. Here the authors use subcutaneous porous 3D scaffold implants as a tool to study the immune signals in the lungs of metastatic  , revealing multifaceted roles of neutrophils in regulating lung metastasis.

Ukraine will soon mark the passing of 18 months since Russian forces launched their invasion in February of 2022. In recent weeks, the frontline battlefields in eastern and southern Ukraine remain punishing arenas of trench warfare, drone attacks, and artillery battles. Heavily mined and fortified Russian positions are slowing Ukraine’s long-anticipated counteroffensive. Russia’s military continues to launch missiles into all parts of Ukraine, attacking infrastructure and other targets, while Western countries continue to supply Ukraine with ammunition, equipment, and training. Gathered below are images from recent weeks, showing a region reshaped by a year and a half of war.

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[link] [comments]

An elaborate underwater experiment has pinned down the usefulness of an increasingly popular strategy in which predators hide behind other fish.

 affects as many as 1 in 7 women in 

, though there are just two treatments approved for it. Experts say the newest could be a game-changer — depending on its price tag.

(Image credit: Getty Images )

When it comes to college-aged adults who are glued to their smartphones, experts argue over whether texting while walking increases the risk of an accident. Some studies have shown that texting pedestrians are more likely to walk into oncoming traffic, while other studies suggest that young adults have mastered the art of multitasking and are able to text accurately while navigating obstacles. However, few studies have measured how texters respond to unpredictable hazard conditions. By simulating an environment with random slipping threats, researchers report that texting increases the risk of falling in response to walkway hazards.

Prose Parser

A new site, Prosecraft.io offered to lend a helping hand to struggling writers, using AI algorithims to analyze the text of thousands of books from their favorite authors. On Monday, it was abruptly shutdown by its creator.

It turns out — not surprisingly — that those authors never got a say in letting their copyrighted text get scraped wholesale, just to be graded on meaningless criteria like "vividness" and the use of passive voice.

Author Zach Rosenberg was one of the first in the community to call out Prosecraft, tagging its creator Benji Smith in a scolding and now viral post on X-formerly-known-as-Twitter.

"I demand you take my book off your site immediately," Rosenberg wrote. "I do not consent to this, and never did. And I know my publisher never would."

The Pen Is Mightier

Hell was soon unleashed on Smith. Authors almost universally lambasted the project, including well-knowns like Jeff Vandermeer (Annihilation), Hari Kunzru (White Tears), and even presidential candidate Marianne Williamson, who called the practice "deeply unethical," and that it "should be illegal."

Smith, writing with something like genuine remorse, quickly responded to the outcry.

"Hey everyone … I'm truly sorry to have hurt you in any way," he replied to Rosenberg's post. In a follow up, Smith promised to remove entries by individual request if the authors emailed him with a link to their book.

No one was buying Smith's olive branch.

"You absolutely do not need a title by title run down," Vandermeer responded. "Just run a search on your own damn site."

Another author summed up the general consensus: "Remove every single person's book unless you have [their] affirmative consent."

Happily Ever After

The proliferation of generative AI has pretty much every creative on edge — and not without good reason. These technologies are overwhelmingly trained on artworks without permission from the original creators. In this case, by Smith's admission, the full text from over 25,000 books was gleaned via web crawlers.

The outrage of the authors here was only deepened by the revelation of Prosecraft's companion project Shaxpir, a word processor made by Smith that harnesses his site's analytics tech to provide statistical insights into writing.

While not a generative AI, it did use AI to power several of its analytics features. For authors wary of the ruthless copycatting of large language models, that distinction was too thin for comfort.

Attempting to visit the site now redirects to a Medium post by Smith, in which he explains how his belief that he was "honoring the spirit of the Fair Use doctrine," since he was only publishing statistics.

On Tuesday, he posted another update, purging all Prosecraft data and removing all features on Shaxpir that relied on it.

More on AI: The New Scam Flooding Amazon: AI-Generated Travel Guides

The post Revenge of the Writers: AI Fiction Analysis Site Toppled by Revolt appeared first on Futurism.

A newly developed molecule could serve as a potential treatment for the varicella zoster virus, the type of herpes that causes both 

 and 

.

According to a new study, published in the Journal of Medicinal Chemistry, the molecule can effectively treat the uncomfortable lesions that accompany shingles and suggests the molecule may also work against the viruses that cause oral and genital herpes.

“Many viruses are becoming drug-resistant to the current medications on the market,” says lead author Uma Singh, a lecturer in the College of Pharmacy at the University of Georgia. “There is a continuous need for new molecules, and the one we developed, called POM-L-BHDU, shows much more potency against the virus than current ones.”

The researchers also found that the molecule is safe for treating varicella zoster virus in cancer patients. Additionally, the molecule can be applied topically in addition to being taken orally or intravenously, making it a great option for a future cream-based medication for both shingles and other herpes outbreaks.

While several drugs are on the market to treat the viruses caused by the varicella zoster virus, they aren’t particularly effective or can have potentially life-threatening side effects.

For example, cidofovir is an antiviral commonly used for viral eye infections and used off-label to treat warts and herpes. But it can accumulate in the kidneys and potentially cause them to fail in severe cases.

A topical medication using the patented molecule can better target localized outbreaks, preventing the virus from spreading to other areas of the body. Topical medications also limit the amount of a drug that is absorbed into the bloodstream and cut down significantly on side effects.

But the new molecule isn’t just for topical treatments.

“We want to develop this as a broad-spectrum molecule,” Singh says. “It acts against both the varicella zoster virus and herpes simplex 1 and 2 viruses. For patients who want to take it in capsules, they could. Those who want to take it intravenously, they could. And those who want to use it topically, they can easily apply it at home.”

The researchers hope the topical formula will be sold over the counter, enabling patients to easily access treatment in the privacy of their own homes without needing a prescription.

The molecule has already proven effective in vitro and in vivo mouse models.

Topical studies on adult human skin indicate that POM-L-BHDU, 0.2% formulated in cocoa butter is highly effective against both herpes simplex 1 and the varicella zoster viruses. (These results are currently unpublished.)

The next step is to get the molecule into phase 1 clinical trials, something Singh hopes will happen in the next couple of years.

“We want to push this project as soon as possible into large-scale synthesis,” Singh says. “It has the potential to benefit society on a large scale.”

Additional coauthors are from State University of New York Upstate Medical University and the University of Georgia.

Recently, the UGA Research Foundation has licensed this molecule to a company called Anterogen Co.

Source: University of Georgia

The post Molecule could treat herpes that causes chickenpox and shingles appeared first on Futurity.

New research shows that electrical stimuli passed between neighboring electrodes can also affect non-neighboring electrodes. Known as non-locality, this discovery is a crucial milestone toward creating brain-like computers with minimal energy requirements.

Current efforts to protect and restore native biodiversity is being threatened by difficulties in identifying wild and domestic cats, and categorization is likely to remain fraught for the foreseeable future, experts have warned.

Cambridge scientists have shown that the hypothalamus, a key region of the brain involved in controlling appetite, is different in the brains of people who are overweight and people with   when compared to people who are a healthy weight.

A remarkable new fossil from   reveals for the first time that a group of reptiles were already using whale-like filter feeding 250 million years ago.

Researchers have found wheat gluten causes   in mice.

As an engineering plastic having high transparency and impact resistance,   (PC) is employed in eyeglass lenses, camera lenses, DVDs, automobile headlights and bulletproof glass. The industrial production thereof is mainly performed by means of interfacial polymerization reacting highly reactive phosgene with alcohol at the interface of water and an organic solvent. However, because phosgene is extremely toxic, a synthesis method not employing it has been actively studied from the perspective of safety.

Researchers invented a novel method to measure the permittivity of insulators 100 times more accurately than before. This technology is expected to contribute to the efficient development of sensitive radio receivers for radio telescopes as well as to the development of devices for the next generation communication networks, 'Beyond 5G/6G.'

Extreme events in Antarctica such as ocean heatwaves and ice loss will almost certainly become more common and more severe, researchers say.

The activity level of six bat species was significantly reduced at solar farm sites, researchers have observed.

New research shows that electrical stimuli passed between neighboring electrodes can also affect non-neighboring electrodes. Known as non-locality, this discovery is a crucial milestone toward creating brain-like computers with minimal energy requirements.

As climate change progresses, rising temperatures may impact nitrogen runoff from land to lakes and streams more than projected increases in total and extreme precipitation for most of the continental United States, according to new research from a team of Carnegie climate scientists led by Gang Zhao and Anna Michalak published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The use of CAPTCHA tests to prove that website users are human and not bots might come under scrutiny given research showing that bots complete them faster and more accurately than we do

A new software at   will help astronomers comb the stars for signs of technological intelligence beyond Earth.

Late last month, armed troops in Niger overthrew the government, arrested the elected president, and seized power for themselves. Soon after, a small group of Nigeriens who supported the coup in the capital city, Niamey, gathered to show their support for the military government, some waving the Russian flag. They denounced the West in general, and France, the former colonial power, in particular. “Long live Putin!” they chanted. “Down with France!”

The coup has created considerable alarm in Western capitals, and with good reason. Since 2020, there have been coups throughout the Sahel, the strategically important belt of hot, semiarid land stretching across Africa just below the Sahara desert. In 2020, Mali’s government fell. In 2021, the same thing happened in Sudan, Chad, and Guinea. Last year, a coup took place in Burkina Faso. Niger was seen as the Sahel’s final bulwark against chaos and instability, the last regime standing. The United States had a drone base in Niger, and France had stationed troops there, a crucial line of defense against surging West African jihadism. Now all of that is at risk.

[Read: A dangerous immigration crackdown in West Africa]

Few Americans are in the habit of giving much thought to Niger (“Do you mean Nigeria?”), but this summer’s events seemed to offer a stark takeaway: Pro-Russian soldiers overthrew a pro-Western government. Democracy was uprooted by military dictatorship. To anyone who lived through the Cold War, the story felt familiar. The fact that Niger exports uranium—a crucial resource for nuclear reactors—makes its struggle even easier to understand as a geopolitical chess game. Niger was a pawn, and coups happen when pawns are pulled between geopolitical kings. And so, the coup has quickly become a story about America, Russia, and France—and not about Niger.

When explaining major events in international news, particularly those that take place in unfamiliar locations, we all tend to exhibit geopolitical bias, a mindset that filters every incident through the prism of international grand strategy—and makes the moral of every story about us. Simplistic, familiar narratives trounce nuanced explanations that involve political actors few nonspecialists have heard of, known by obscure acronyms and hard-to-pronounce names.

The military coup in Niger has already become fodder for sensational headlines and political statements linked to grand geopolitical tropes. A senior adviser to Ukraine’s president insisted, without evidence, that Russia instigated the coup. Bloomberg covered the coup as the latest evidence for the “Long Arm of the Kremlin.” Newsweek declared that Niger’s coup means “The Countdown to the Next Great War Has Begun in Africa.”

Russia will likely expand its influence because of the Niger coup (and there have been reports that the junta is requesting help from the Wagner Group mercenaries). But much of the speculation about the extent of Russia’s involvement so far is based on extremely thin evidence—a few hundred people, in one protest, in one city, a handful of them carrying Russian flags, in a country that’s twice the size of France and home to more than 25 million people. Even before the coup, Niger’s capital city was an opposition stronghold, so one should hardly be surprised that some people who live there would demonstrate in support of soldiers who overthrew a president they loathed.

The impetus behind the coup is very likely complex, nuanced, and less about the Kremlin than about domestic dynamics. The possibility of a more banal local cause doesn’t negate the real anger that many Nigeriens feel toward France, or the misguided impulse some have to turn to Russia as an alternative international sponsor that’s explicitly anti-Western. But the simple explanation for why the coup happened, as reported in the local media, is plausibly the right one.

The incumbent president, Mohamed Bazoum, had been planning to fire a general, Abdourahamane Tchiani, who commanded the elite presidential guard. Now that the coup has happened, General Tchiani isn’t going to be fired. Instead, he has proclaimed himself the head of the new military junta, which calls itself the National Council for the Safeguard of the Homeland.

The Occam’s-razor explanation may just be correct: A general who was going to be fired decided to fire the president instead. Many coups have such simple origin stories, triggered by factional rivalries within the military, and ambitious, self-serving men who would happily swap the barracks for the palace.

Whatever the reason for his gamble, Tchiani likely didn’t anticipate the intense opposition he has faced since seizing power. Most international actors, including Russia, have condemned the coup (though the Kremlin’s statement about respecting the constitution is best consumed with a grain of salt). And perhaps the most surprising threat to Tchiani’s plans has emerged from a major regional power broker, the Economic Community of West African States. The bloc of 15 West African countries, with Nigeria as its most powerful member, has taken a hard-line stance against the coup, even threatening military intervention. As a result, some have painted ECOWAS as a puppet of the West, the sharp end of the European and American spear.

Yet again, a simpler (and less geopolitically exciting) explanation is likely correct. ECOWAS may not be taking a tough stance against this coup because it’s a marionette or because it has an ideological aversion to Vladimir Putin; the governments of its member states may just be concerned about their own self-preservation.

“One reason why regional presidents are interested in military intervention is because they’re increasingly scared of being taken out themselves,” says Professor Nic Cheeseman, an expert on African politics at the University of Birmingham. “It comes after several other coups in the region, and they realized that they could be next if they didn’t draw a line in the sand.”

Niger’s coup may not have originated in great-power competition so much as in politics and other dynamics nearer at hand—but it could still have serious international repercussions. The security situation in the Sahel is deteriorating as jihadism rises. The junta governments that have taken power in the past three years have proved unable to combat it. Moreover, although many of the new military regimes—notably in Mali and Burkina Faso—have allied themselves with Russia, the Russian government and the Wagner Group are not exactly flush with spare cash or bursting with well-trained troops waiting to deploy to Africa, bogged down as they are by their debacle in Ukraine. In the coming months, the postcoup regimes in the Sahel are likely to realize that they’ve swapped Western partners, which had deep pockets and a long-term commitment to supplying foreign aid, for a diminished Kremlin that will inevitably overpromise and under-deliver. The money will eventually run out.

[David Patrikarakos: Russia’s hunger war]

Europe has skin in the game: France, which is mostly powered by nuclear energy, gets roughly 10 to 15 percent of its uranium supplies from Niger. Moreover, in 2015, the European Union paid Niger’s government to effectively create a European “Sahel border,” shutting down pathways of migration through Niger toward the Mediterranean. The coup could reopen that route, reinvigorating the formerly thriving transit hub of Agadez. The United States cares about Agadez too: The American drone base Niger Air Base 201 is just outside the town.

If Niger’s junta manages to stay in power, it will almost certainly align itself with Russia. The interim regime has already announced the cancellation of several military agreements with France. But it’s in for a rude awakening if it cozies up to the Kremlin. Russia, as Mali and Burkina Faso are finding out, is rich enough to pay for small contingents of mercenaries and to line the pockets of greedy soldiers, but it is nowhere near rich enough to help provide for the broader population of one of the world’s poorest countries, where the GDP per capita is less than $600 a year.  

As is so often the case in sub-Saharan Africa, the victims will be those who can least endure it. The broader population of Niger will suffer as soldiers turned politicians enrich themselves. And that story, which is not about geopolitics, but rather about the ordinary distress of millions of vulnerable people, will be one that garners substantially less ink.

The case highlights that there are unknown illnesses that can pass between cats and humans.

Nobody knows what around a fifth of your genes actually do. It’s hoped they could hold the secret to fixing developmental disorders, cancer, neurodegeneration, and more.

Researchers from   hope that a new, publicly available database they have created will shrink, not grow, over time. That's because it is a compendium of the thousands of understudied proteins encoded by genes in the human genome, whose existence is known but whose functions are mostly not.

Russia's war in the Ukraine has severe consequences not only for humans, it also has detrimental effects on populations of urban and semi-urban wildlife in the attacked cities and regions. Scientists recently examined the effects of war-related damages to buildings on urban populations of one important and widespread bat species, the Common Noctule (Nyctalus noctula), in the city of Kharkiv in north-eastern Ukraine. They showed that many buildings used by bats as roosts have been destroyed and approximately 7,000 bats were killed. In addition, partially destroyed buildings have become a death trap for bats, resulting in several thousand more victims.

People with   often have poor vision. A new study reveals the underlying cause.

It has been known for several years that the diagnosis 'multiple sclerosis' conceals a whole range of different illnesses, each requiring customized treatment. Researchers have now described a possible new MS-like disease and explained how to diagnose it.

Some HIV-1 carriers who have received an early antiretroviral treatment during several years are able to control the virus for a long term after treatment interruption. However, the mechanisms enabling this post-treatment control have not been fully elucidated. Scientists have now investigated and revealed how neutralizing antibodies, including those described as broadly neutralizing, contribute to virus control. A clinical trial involving the use of broadly neutralizing antibodies should begin in   before the end of 2023.

Two federal agencies are pointing the finger at pharmaceutical companies for massively under-producing Adderall. Along with one brave (and lone) senator, they're imploring them to step up their game.

As Le Grande Observer reports, Washington state senator Ron Wyden, is royally pissed about the (entirely) avoidable shortage after the FDA and DEA jointly condemned Big Pharma for underselling the drug to the tune of one billion doses.

On August 1st, the agencies announced a DEA investigation found manufacturers of the ADHD medication only sold 70 percent of its government-imposed quota in 2022, which meant that "there were approximately 1 billion more doses that they could have produced but did not make or ship," emphasis ours. Yes: A billion.

And the same trend appears to have continued into 2023. The DEA and FDA are urging manufacturers to either increase their production, or give up their spot as makers of the coveted drug.

Following the shocking flash-in-the-pan news, Wyden said that although he's "glad to see [the statement] out and the clarity it provides around the quota allotment issue," the shortage debacle is far from over.

"It’s clear that manufacturers have work to do in easing this crisis," the senator told the Le Grande Observer. "They need to either produce more or let other manufacturers do it, and make sure the DEA and FDA have the information they need."

Besides commentary from junior representative Abigail Spanberger (D-VA), Wyden has been mostly alone in his quest for answers and accountability behind the 

 shortage that has impacted people with ADHD oh look a cat video for going on a year.

In his own letter, the Oregonian Democrat demanded that Adderall manufacturers explain why, exactly, they haven't met their quotas and what they plan to do to fix the problem — a rare show to strength against an industry that has funded candidates across the political spectrum, including, surprisingly, Sens. Raphael Warnock (D-GA) and Bernie Sanders (D-VA).

While we still don't know why manufacturers didn't fill their Adderall quotas, this statement from the DEA and FDA, at the very least, identifies drug manufacturers as the sources of the problem. Having a senator holding Big Pharma's feet to the fire will hopefully help alleviate this drug crisis, too.

More on Big Pharma: Henrietta Lacks' Family Is Finally Getting Paid by the Biotech Company That Stole Her Cells

The post Shocker: Pharma Companies Are Behind the Adderall Shortage, Feds Say appeared first on Futurism.

Master of Coin

Zach Kirkhorn, longtime 

 CFO and "Master of Coin," has left Tesla.

Kirkhorn's departure is no small deal for the Elon Musk-helmed EV venture. In his first year as CFO, Kirkhorn soundly guided the carmaker through the absolute dumpster fire of a mess that was Tesla's Model 3 production, and throughout his four-year tenure, oversaw record Tesla profits.

Kirkhorn, will stay on through the end of the year, per CNBC.

In a Monday LinkedIn post thanking Tesla employees, he added: "I also want to thank Elon for his leadership and optimism," he continued, "which has inspired so many people." Including, if anybody, himself.

A Particular Gift of Gab

Kirkhorn's greatest skill was his reported fluency in (and poise in the face of) erratic Muskian behavior.

As The Wall Street Journal reported back in May, Kirkhorn often acted as a middleman between Musk and other employees, with some alleging that the now-former CFO was really the person keeping Telsa afloat.

And now, as the carmaker faces a fresh slew of lawsuits, government inquiries, and miscellanious Musk-induced PR issues, the stability Kirkhorn supposedly provided the firm hangs precariously in the balance as well.

Tea Leaves Abound

To that end: There's certainly speculation around the nature of Kirkhorn's farewell. As noted in The Financial Times, Tesla's most recent earnings call — delivered to investors on Wall Street just three weeks ago — offered no indication that its CFO might be bidding the firm adieu. Maybe they were just keeping things under wraps, but the shift feels sudden nonetheless.

"It's a blow in the near term as Zach was a key part of this historic Tesla turnaround the last five years," Dan Ives, a tech analyst at the investment firm Wedbush Securities, told Fortune. "This is a big surprise to the Street."

To that end, it's not surprising to see folks online quickly draw comparisons to the surprise exit of Tesla's former AI head Andrej Karpathy, who very suddenly abandoned Tesla's embattled Autopilot division last year. And as The Wall Street Journal points out, Tesla actually has a long history of executive departures in the lead-up to a new product launch. With the forever-janky Cybertruck on the horizon (maybe, probably, we don't know), perhaps the Master of Coin finally just had enough.

More on Tesla: Elon Musk Promises for the Millionth Time That Tesla Will Achieve Full Self-Driving Soon

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Researchers have discovered that old grandfather clocks and human cells have a central thing in common: They move in synchronization.

This strengthens the performance of our cells and makes them better at combating diseases, the researchers report.

The new finding in the journal Cell Systems is an important step towards understanding and preventing diseases such as cancer and diabetes.

In 1655, the Dutch mathematician and inventor of the pendulum clock, Christian Huygens, discovered something strange. If he hung two identical pendulum clocks next to each other, they would always synchronize within 30 minutes.

The new study clarifies how cells synchronize to perform the vital tasks of producing energy, transporting oxygen, or fighting diseases more efficiently.

“We’ve discovered that, in the same way as the pendulum clocks in Huygens’ experiments beat in synchronization, the cells of the body also work in uniform beats. This helps them achieve a higher degree of collaboration, enabling them to perform their tasks better and more efficiently,” says Mathias Heltberg, a postdoc at the University of Copenhagen. Heltberg created the physical and mathematical models behind the experiments with Mogens Høgh Jensen, a professor in the Niels Bohr Institute, and Malthe Skytte Nielsen, a PhD student.

Cells working in tandem

Translated into the world of a cell, the oscillations from the clock correspond to the increase and decrease in the quantity of proteins and other molecules that the cell alternately produces more or less of to perform different tasks in the body.

To examine whether the cells turn their production up and down in step with each other, the researchers created an artificial oscillation using two different transmitters injected into yeast cells. One of the transmitters was alcohol, and the other was a transmitter that imitated an infection and would therefore trigger the immune system of the cell.

Specifically, the researchers examined how the super protein NF-kappa-B fluctuates up and down. This is a protein found in most of the body’s cells and it plays a key role in countless processes. For example, the super protein is responsible for kickstarting the immune system and turning up the production of itself when the body is exposed to an attack from a bacterium.

Here, the study showed that the concentrations of the super protein were higher in the cells when they worked synchronously than if they did not.

“We had two hypotheses in advance. Either the two transmitters that hit the cell at the same time would throw it into complete chaos where it no longer functioned. Or the cell would control itself even better and synchronize its response and work in step with the other cells, which was what happened,” says Jensen.

Cell synchronization signals

The new discovery is particularly interesting because the fluctuations in the cell play a central role in our understanding of how the cell is controlled, the researchers say. A greater understanding of these processes can pave the way for new methods for treating serious diseases in the future.

“If we can understand the fluctuations, we will also know more about what goes wrong when defects in the cells lead to the body’s control systems breaking down and causing cancer or diabetes. Therefore, our results are an important step towards understanding how the body controls its cells, so that we can later develop biochemical tools that can prevent diseases,” says Nielsen.

Even though the researchers have now become a little wiser about the smallest building blocks of the body, there is still much that we do not know about the inner life of the cells. For example, it is still not known exactly how the cells communicate with each other and start working in step.

“It’s my big dream to understand how cells, that is living organisms without a brain, can transmit and translate signals and regulate themselves. This is one of the biggest questions of science, and one that I’ve so far dedicated most of my research career to,” Heltberg says.

Additional coauthors from Peking University conducted experiments on yeast cells based on the mathematical and physical models made by Heltberg, Nielsen, and Jensen.

Source: University of Copenhagen

The post Just like clock pendulums, cells move in sync appeared first on Futurity.

Overly active immune cells are often behind lung damage in diseases such as Covid-19. Researchers have developed an RNA agent for a lung spray that slows the activity of these cells, known as macrophages. A new, sugar-based transport mechanism is especially effective in bringing the therapeutic to its target.

Having a strong sense of belonging at school could mitigate suicidal tendencies among Black adolescents, a new study finds.

That sense of belonging, the subjective feeling of being accepted, valued, included, and encouraged in the school community, has long been linked to academic performance.

“Having a supportive teacher or other nonparent adult can change a child’s life because they will want to go to school,” says study coauthor Adrian Gale, an assistant professor at the Rutgers School of Social Work. “We wanted to understand the factors that affect kids’ sense of belonging at school, and how these factors might influence rates of suicide.”

For the study, published in the Journal of Racial and Ethnic Health Disparities, the researchers analyzed data from a national sample of adolescents in grades 7-12. The study, which started in the 1994-95 school year, followed the adolescents in waves, with the most recent wave in 2016-2018. They asked participants a series of questions about their emotional ties to school and experiences with teacher-based discrimination and peer-based prejudice.

The researchers found that as Black adolescents’ sense of school belonging decreased, their risk for suicidal ideation and attempts dramatically increased—by as much as 35%.

Of the 4,229 respondents, 8% said they thought about suicide and 4% had attempted it. Less than half said they felt a sense of belonging at their school, and more than half reported feeling that their teachers treated them unfairly. Slightly more than 50% of the participants said students at their school were racially prejudiced.

In 

, Black suicide rates have historically been lower than other racial groups. In 2021, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that non-Hispanic American Indian and Alaska Native people and non-Hispanic whites had the highest rates of suicide, with 28.1 and 17.4 per 100,000, respectively. For non-Hispanic Blacks, the rate was 8.7.

But Gale says recent research indicates a disturbing increase in the rates of suicide among Black boys and girls. With these trends accelerating in the COVID-era, understanding how the sense of belonging at school impacts suicidal thoughts could be useful for mitigation.

“These findings highlight the importance of working to enhance the feeling of belonging among Black teenagers in school,” he says.

To address this challenge, Gale says educators should provide thorough mental health support services that consider the cultural background of Black adolescents. Also, schools should help teachers identify indications of reduced school belonging.

“Most of the elements that influence children’s academic achievement and school life—family socioeconomic status, for instance—take a generation to change,” says Gale. “The relationship a child has with their school is something we can influence now.”

Additional coauthors are from Ohio State University, Washington University in Saint Louis, and the University of Michigan.

Source: Greg Bruno for Rutgers University

The post Can sense of belonging at school reduce Black teen suicide? appeared first on Futurity.

The vulnerability could allow attackers to take advantage of an information leak to steal sensitive details like private messages, passwords, and encryption keys.

submitted by /u/s1n0d3utscht3k [link] [comments]

Although these types of   commonly affect regular breast tissue, they are rarely found in extra, or "accessory," breasts.

A great value night vision binocular with good night-time performance and plenty of accessible features.

In 2015, research on global forest cover revealed a concerning fact: 70% of the world's remaining forest now lies within 1km of the forest's edge. This process, called fragmentation, is causing the deepest and darkest parts of the world's forests to shrink.

It's hot out there. How hot? Hot enough to scald a lizard. Hot enough to fry an egg on the sidewalk. Hot enough to make you want to live right.

It's hot out there. How hot? Hot enough to scald a lizard. Hot enough to fry an egg on the sidewalk. Hot enough to make you want to live right.

In this webinar, Noah Allen will explore how spaceflight changes the way organs and systems function, focusing on immune-mediated liver damage.

If it wants to be an innovation superpower, the UK needs to rejoin €95bn EU programme

Updated at 3:52 p.m. ET on August 8, 2023.

Country music, the century-old genre of nostalgia, tradition, and twang, has never been more in style. Last week, for the first time in the history of the Billboard Hot 100, the three most popular songs in America were country songs. One explanation for the milestone is that the genre’s artists and audiences are finally leaning into streaming: This year, country has experienced a 20 percent rise in listenership, a surge outpaced only by those of Latin music and K-pop.

But this is a strange victory to celebrate—and not only because last week’s No. 1 song, Jason Aldean’s “Try That in a Small Town,” has proved to be a political flash point. The tracks breaking through right now each sound like something other than country. The genre always conveys some amount of underdog defiance, but lately, the music and the conversation around it have a distinct tinge of resentment.

In “Try That in a Small Town,” Aldean, the 46-year-old Georgia hitmaker, salutes supposedly rural values (honor, neighborliness, gun ownership) by warning the listener that supposedly urban pathologies (robbery, spitting at cops, burning flags) don’t fly in what some would call “Real America.” “Around here, we take care of our own,” he boasts. But the music hardly brings to mind peaceful pastures or sawdust-strewn saloons. As soon as I heard the song’s grumbling guitars, drooping minor chords, and riff ripped from Foo Fighters’ “Everlong,” I felt transported back to my suburban-male adolescence, circa Y2K—a time when I lived in an oversize black hoodie, listening to the groaning of men with soul patches. Aldean’s song is country in name, but its sound is post-grunge alternative rock.

In the early ’90s, Nirvana and its peers opened space for a new strain of mainstream manliness: vulnerable about feelings of failure and alienation, but with a hard, noisy edge that no one could possibly construe as sissy. Soon came a flock of melodically moaning bands, such as Bush, Creed, and Nickelback, that sheared grunge of its punk disposition, creating a broadly appealing template for directionless angst. Now Aldean has updated that template with pedal steel and right-wing talking points.

You’ve probably heard that the song is controversial. Aldean set a perfect discursive trap, taking advantage of America’s current split between two theories of its own history, and the predictability and profitability of backlash-to-backlash cycles. Though the song makes no mention of race, many listeners heard a dog whistle in it: The “good ol’ boy” vigilantism endorsed by Aldean’s lyrics has historically been affiliated with white-supremacist violence. His music video included images of Black Lives Matter protesters (though that footage was later edited out), and was shot in front of a Tennessee courthouse where a Black man was lynched in 1927. (The production company that made the video told The Washington Post that it had chosen a “popular filming location outside of Nashville.”) But critiques of the song have only amplified it: After Country Music Television banned the video, the track’s streams shot up 999 percent.

[Read: Music that mourns, whether it wants to or not]

Aldean professes mystification at the dustup he’s provoked. The song, he has said, simply “refers to the feeling of a community that I had growing up.” (Aldean, for what it’s worth, grew up in the midsize city of Macon, Georgia.) This insistence, more than the southern lilt of Aldean’s voice, makes the track country. Aldean is working in a tradition of music that disses cities while celebrating rural can-do. But he’s not singing with the wry, plucky tone of Merle Haggard’s “Okie From Muskogee” or even with the gruff confidence of Hank Williams Jr.’s “A Country Boy Can Survive.” Nor is he delivering provocative slogans with the rock-star panache of Toby Keith. Rather, Aldean sounds wallowing and fearful in that distinctly post-grunge way—even as his words profess action.

Perhaps that vibe of sublimated anxiety reflects the tragedy underlying the song: small-town America’s decades-long economic decline. The big-city problems Aldean laments—violent crime, sedition, even fraying communal ties—are, in many cases, worse problems outside the cities than in them. This reality is a major driver of right-wing resentment—and music about it should, by all rights, have a hint of malaise. Aldean was previously known for anthems of carefree country living (although his 2018 single “Rearview Town” did almost seem like a dirge for rural dreams, it was actually a breakup song). A better precedent for “Small Town” is Staind’s 2001 hit, “It’s Been Awhile”: “It’s been a while / Since I could hold my head up high.” Not coincidentally, Staind’s Aaron Lewis is now a popular country musician—and one of the most effective right-wing protest singers in memory.

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It’s also not a coincidence that Morgan Wallen—currently the most popular country artist by a wide margin, and the singer of “Last Night,” last week’s No. 2 song on the Hot 100—is a spiritual child of Nickelback. The Canadian rock band, famous for the catchy aughts rumble of “How You Remind Me” and “Photograph,” is often mocked as the ultimate example of musical blandness. But Wallen has unapologetically cited the group as an influence. His go-to producer, Joey Moi, produced many of Nickelback’s early-2000s hits, including “Photograph”—and then co-founded Big Loud, which is now one of the hottest labels in Nashville.

[Read: Country music can no longer hide its problems]

A 30-year-old former contestant on The Voice, Wallen is a serious pop talent, and “Last Night”—a sensation since its release in February—is excellent (which explains why it replaced Aldean’s track at the top of the Hot 100 today). There’s a bit of a Nickelback quality to the laminated nature of the production, and the way that the singer conveys a light hatred of himself, but “Last Night” mostly exemplifies a separate trend in Nashville: so-called hick-hop, modern country influenced by rap. Singing in a sassy twang about drunken fighting and reconciliation, over a brisk guitar loop and handclaps that form a syncopated beat, Wallen emanates the same sleazy charm as Drake. The irony here is obvious: In 2021, Wallen was caught saying the N-word on camera, which resulted in a supposed “cancellation” that, like Aldean’s, only boosted his listenership.

Last week’s No. 3 song in the nation, Luke Combs’s take on Tracy Chapman’s “Fast Car,” has created a little controversy as well. It is basically a note-for-note cover of a 1988 classic, differentiated mostly by the gruff beauty of Combs’s voice. After it began to rise in the charts last month, some commentators pointed out that neither Chapman nor any other Black woman had ever had the kind of success in country music that Combs is enjoying. This observation sparked conservative annoyance louder than the original critique, likely boosting the song’s popularity. As my colleague Conor Friedersdorf argues, the discourse around the song demonstrates how media coverage of race can inspire more confusion than reform.

But is it tenable to ask observers of this authenticity-minded, all-

 genre to avoid speaking about conspicuous truths? The reality of country music’s Billboard Hot 100 takeover this past week is glaring. The music is diverse, but the performers aren’t: Between Aldean’s protest rock, Wallen’s laid-back rap flow, and Combs’s soul-folk cover, this boom for mainstream country is rooted not in sound but in white, male, and—at least in Aldean’s case—aggrieved identity. Of course, all genres are defined by demographics. But streaming technology, not to mention social and political media, now rewards the inflaming of passionate pluralities, including by sowing division. Inflaming stan versus stan, or right versus left, can prove profitable—at least for a short while (Aldean’s song today fell from No. 1 to No. 21 on the Hot 100).

Artists in other genres are going to learn lessons from this boomlet. Just a few days ago, Aldean made a surprise appearance at a Nickelback concert in Nashville. Nickelback’s front man, Chad Kroeger, has never been known for his political outspokenness. But that night, he made a speech: For 20 years, he said, “they’ve been trying to cancel us.”

---

This story originally misstated when Tracy Chapman’s “Fast Car” came out.

Hundreds of firefighters were on Tuesday battling a wildfire that has burned for four days in Portugal, which, like neighboring  , is sweltering in a heat wave that has triggered widespread weather alerts.

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Everyone has scents that naturally appeal to them, such as vanilla or coffee, and scents that don't appeal. What makes some smells appealing and others not?

The Persian Gold Tarantula (Chaetopelma persianum) is a newly described species recently discovered in northwestern Iran. In fact, the "woolly, golden hairs" the scientists observed and examined on a single specimen, were one of the features so unique that it was not necessary for additional individuals to be collected and physically studied. It was clear enough that it was a species previously unknown to the scientific community.

Dr. Scott F. Jones, University of North Florida assistant professor of biology, co-led recently published research from an international team of scientists that offers a united, conceptual framework for approaching salt marsh studies. The project aims to encourage cross-disciplinary and global collaborations, ultimately dramatically improving understanding of salt marsh ecosystem functions by appropriately framing the science.

For more than 20 years, Li-Qun "Andrew" Gu at the University of Missouri has developed a passion for solving life science problems by creating sophisticated diagnostic tools—in nanoscale.

Everyone has scents that naturally appeal to them, such as vanilla or coffee, and scents that don't appeal. What makes some smells appealing and others not?

 caused flooding and landslides in Sweden and Norway on Tuesday while strong winds caused a Danish wildfire to spread out of control, authorities said, with more heavy rain forecast.

Humans have physically reconfigured half of the world's land to grow just eight staple crops: maize (corn), soy, wheat, rice, cassava, sorghum, sweet potato and potato. They account for the vast majority of calories that people around the world consume. As global population rises, there's pressure to expand production even further.

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Humans have physically reconfigured half of the world's land to grow just eight staple crops: maize (corn), soy, wheat, rice, cassava, sorghum, sweet potato and potato. They account for the vast majority of calories that people around the world consume. As global population rises, there's pressure to expand production even further.

What happens when human and machine creativity meet? From an AI model trained on classic works to generate a seemingly infinite stream of portraits to a neural network that envisions otherworldly life-forms in impossible detail, media art curator Eileen Isagon Skyers showcases mind-bending art that embraces our increasingly technological future, showing how AI can stretch the scope of human imagination and help create worlds we could never design alone.

Nature Communications, Published online: 08 August 2023; doi:10.1038/s41467-023-40449-w

Here, the authors show that van der Waals isotopic heterostructures based on few-layer h10BN and h11BN can be tuned to modulate the energy-momentum dispersions of hyperbolic phonon polaritons, offering an alternative approach to engineer the nanophotonic properties of 2D materials.

Nature Communications, Published online: 08 August 2023; doi:10.1038/s41467-023-40372-0

Here, characterizing a synthetic gut bacterial community, the authors reveal a context dependency of keystone functions and bacterial interaction networks, challenging the concept of universal keystone species in the gastrointestinal ecosystem.

Under en bladretur i Ingeniørens arkiv, som er digitaliseret i projektet ‘Ingeniørernes Danmarkshistorie’ og kan tilgås af alle fra vores hjemmeside, er det ikke så sjældent reklamerne, der springer i øjnene. I de gamle numre fra begyndelsen af 1900-tallet ser man dampmaskiner, lokomobiler og rørdampkedler, men senere hen dukker der også annoncer op rettet mod forbrugerne. Et eksempel er højfjeldssolen Original Hanau, der i et annonceindstik fra 1936 lovpriser de ultraviolette strålers sundhedsgivende virkning:

Excavations revealed three human burials, as well as ceramics and architectural structures from a settlement that existed around A.D. 450 to 650.

A vaccine has induced antibodies and other immune cells against the Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) in mice. EBV can cause flu-like symptoms but is also increasingly being linked to 

The first hours after a fireball sighting are like a detective mystery. Last night around midnight, people across Melbourne took to social media to report sightings of a bright light slowly streaking across the sky.

In South Africa "umlungu" is a word that's commonly used to refer to white people. It comes from isiXhosa, the language of the country's Xhosa people. It's always been a mystery how the word originated or what it actually means because no human beings were referred to as umlungu before the arrival of white people in the country by ship. There was, however, a word "ubulungu" which meant "that deposited out by the sea" or sea scum.

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Bonding wood with uncondensed lignins as adhesives

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Research challenges the myth that clean energy acts as a brake on global economic development.

Half of the biodiversity in forests is unseen because it lives belowground. These organisms are miniscule in size, but their importance to the ecosystem is enormous.

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With increasing urbanization and advances in technology, children's exposure to the natural world has decreased.

In-water monitoring by the Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS) shows hard coral cover across the Great Barrier Reef remains at similar levels to that recorded in 2022, with small decreases in the Northern, Central and Southern regions.

Since the end of the second world war, factors such as more intensive farming and urbanization have reduced the abundance of wildflowers in  . In fact, the past 90 years have seen the loss of over 97% of the UK's wildflower meadows.

In-water monitoring by the Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS) shows hard coral cover across the Great Barrier Reef remains at similar levels to that recorded in 2022, with small decreases in the Northern, Central and Southern regions.

Since the end of the second world war, factors such as more intensive farming and urbanization have reduced the abundance of wildflowers in  . In fact, the past 90 years have seen the loss of over 97% of the UK's wildflower meadows.

Researchers have achieved a significant breakthrough by elucidating the structure of amyloid beta bound to glycolipids on the surface of nerve cells. This finding shed light on the critical role of abnormal amyloid beta fibril formation, a major contributor to Alzheimer's disease, and holds promise for innovative advancements in medicine and pharmacy.

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The success of artificial intelligence technologies depends largely on how physicians interpret and act upon a tool's risk predictions — and that requires a unique set of skills that many are currently lacking, according to a new perspective article.

Cattle may seem like uniquely American animals, steeped in the lore of cowboys, cattle drives and sprawling ranches. But cattle didn't exist on the American continents prior to the arrival of the Spanish, who brought livestock with them from Europe by way of the Canary Islands.

Uncertainty over Britain’s post-Brexit version of the CE mark has hampered the development of medical devices, says Roger Bayston. Plus a letter from Ian White

The enormous waste of resources due to red tape described by Polly Toynbee (Business is haunted by Brexit – and this safety mark fiasco is its latest nightmare, 4 August) is not just confined to 

 business – it has severely affected UK research in the area of medical devices.

Scientists need to partner with manufacturers in order to get these devices out of the lab and into the clinic. But we and others have experienced our industrial partners withdrawing support and pulling out of agreements because it has been simply too costly to embark on double certification of potential products.

Continue reading…

Cattle may seem like uniquely American animals, steeped in the lore of cowboys, cattle drives and sprawling ranches. But cattle didn't exist on the American continents prior to the arrival of the Spanish, who brought livestock with them from Europe by way of the Canary Islands.

A river that winds through the state capital of Alaska was overflowing with runoff from the Mendenhall Glacier over the weekend.

 have reported the first 3D measurements acquired with quantum ghost imaging. The new technique enables 3D imaging on a single photon level, yielding the lowest photon dose possible for any measurement.

A new study challenges the conventional wisdom surrounding genome stability within closely related organisms and sheds new light on the mechanisms underlying extensive genome size variation.

There's growing global concern about potential risks to human health and the environment from a group of industrial chemicals commonly known as PFAS, or "forever chemicals."

Every year in  , about 1.7 million youth run away from home, which places them at risk for sex trafficking and prostitution. Sadly, most youth tend to fall victim to sex trafficking between the ages of 12 to 14.

Our ongoing endeavor to venture into outer space demands substantial technological advances across various fields, including materials science. Materials used in the aerospace industry must be lightweight yet mechanically resistant, a combination that is difficult to achieve. Fortunately, metal matrix composites have come a long way since their inception in the twentieth century, and many experts believe that they will be key to near-future space applications.

A new study challenges the conventional wisdom surrounding genome stability within closely related organisms and sheds new light on the mechanisms underlying extensive genome size variation.

Here's an article that chemists in the EU will want to look over carefully: regulatory authorities there have a proposal for the European Parliament that is supposed to address the PFAS-type compounds that are so persistent in the environment and can contaminate water supplies. I have no problem with that (and neither does the author of the article), but a close reading of the text, which has been confirmed by follow-up queries, shows that this rule goes much further.

That's because the proposed rule's definition of a PFAS is "any substance that contains at least one fully fluorinated methyl (CF₃) or methylene (CF₂) without any H, Cl, Br, or I attached to it." This would cover all fluoropolymers and fluoroelastomers, as well as reagents like trifluoroacetic acid/anhydride, any trifluoromethylaryl reagents, building blocks, or intermediates, triflic acid, and many more. There is an exception for pharmaceutical and agrochemical active ingredients, but it would appear that (as written) these would have to be manufactured (not to mention discovered!) somewhere outside the EU.

Banning PTFE, PFA, and other other fluorinated polymers outright would (as the paper illustrates) cause immediate disruption in all areas of chemical research and manufacture. Consider the effects on stirring bars and blades, stopcocks, O-rings, gaskets, valves, diaphragms, membranes, shaft seals in pumps, the inner cap linings of a huge number of commercial reagents and of many types of sample vials, flow systems of many types (including the solvent lines supplying many HPLCs), sterile filters, Nafion membranes in fuel cells, PTFE-lined pipes in process plants, ball valves in water supplies. . .the list goes on. And we haven't even gotten to the reagents yet!

The authors of this proposal did not really look into the chemical and biopharma industries very closely. In fact, there's a table of uses in the document itself that shows that none of these are in the "Researched in Detail" category. The "laboratory equipment" and "medicinal products" areas are maked as "Researched in General", while the "chemical industry" category is marked as "Not Researched In Detail". It's all very well to talk about how everyone can move to alternatives, but what are those alternatives for many of these applications, anyway? Do they exist, or are we going to have to spend years inventing, testing, and validating them? What happens to research and manufacturing in the interim?

The European Chemicals Agency (ECHA) is requesting public comment on this proposal until midnight Helsinki time on September 25. If you, your research group, your department, your university, your workplace, or your company as a whole would be adversely affected by such a ban, now is the time to add your voice.

City life favors species that are adaptable and, among other things, not too fussy about what they eat. A worldwide consortium of scientists calls the resulting collection of characteristics "urban trait syndrome."

Observations of gravitational waves from merging black holes may reveal new insights about dark matter, suggests a new study from a UCL-led international team.

City life favors species that are adaptable and, among other things, not too fussy about what they eat. A worldwide consortium of scientists calls the resulting collection of characteristics "urban trait syndrome."

Nature Communications, Published online: 08 August 2023; doi:10.1038/s41467-023-40559-5

Author Correction: Robust and tunable signal processing in mammalian cells via engineered covalent modification cycles

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Chitin, the second most abundant natural polysaccharide in nature, is synthesized by chitin synthases, which are recognized as targets for antifungal and anti-insect drugs. Here the authors determine cryo-EM structures of the chitin synthase, which reveal its activation, catalytic and inhibitory mechanisms

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The origins of powered flight and laryngeal echolocation in bats are widely cited as evidence that ancestral bats evolved as insectivores. Moreover, others have hypothesis that suggesting early bats were diurnal herbivores and that insectivory emerged secondarily for protein supplementation, which suggests modern frugivorous and nectarivorous bats might have retained ancestral adaptations, rather than undergone derived specializations. Direct evidence relating to the diets of ancestral bats is lacking.

This summer, I, like so many other Americans, have forgotten what it means to be dry. The heat has grown so punishing, and the humidity so intense, that every movement sends my body into revolt. When I stand, I sweat. When I sit, I sweat. When I slice into a particularly dense head of cabbage, I sweat.

The way things are going, infinite moistness may be something many of us will have to get used to. This past July was the world’s hottest month in recorded history; off the coast of Florida, ocean temperatures hit triple digits, while in Arizona, the asphalt caused third-degree burns. As human-driven climate change continues to remodel the globe, heat waves are hitting harder, longer, and more frequently. The consequences of this crisis will, on a macroscopic scale, upend where and how humans can survive. It will also, in an everyday sense, make our lives very, very sweaty.

For most Americans, that’s probably unwelcome news. Our culture doesn’t exactly love sweat. Heavy perspirers are shunned on subways; BO is a hallmark of pubescent shame. History is splattered with examples of people trying to cloak sweat in perfumes, wash it away by bathing, or soak it up with wads of cotton or rubber crammed into their shirts, dresses, and hats. People without medical reason to do so have opted to paralyze their sweat-triggering nerves with Botox. Even Bruce Lee had the sweat glands in his armpits surgically removed, reportedly to avoid on-screen stains, several months before his death, in 1973.

But our scorn of sweat is entirely undeserved. Perspiration is vital to life. It cools our bodies and hydrates our skin; it manages our microbiome and emits chemical cues. Sweat is also a fundamental part of what makes people people. Without it, we wouldn’t be able to run long distances in high heat; we wouldn’t be able to power our big brains and bodies; we wouldn’t have colonized so much of the Earth. We may even have sweat to thank (or blame) for our skin’s nakedness, says Yana Kamberov, a sweat researcher at the University of Pennsylvania. Her team’s recent data, not yet published, suggest that as human skin evolved to produce more and more sweat glands, fur-making hair follicles disappeared to make room. Sweat is one of the “key milestones” in human evolution, argues Andrew Best, a biological anthropologist at the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts—on par with big brains, walking upright, and the expression of culture through language and art.

Humans aren’t the only animals that sweat. Many mammals—among them, dogs, cats, and rats—perspire through the footpads on their paws; chimpanzees, macaques, and other primates are covered in sweat glands. Even horses and camels slick their skin in the heat. But only our bodies are studded with this many millions of teeny, tubular sweat glands—about 10 times the number found on other primates’ skin—that funnel water from our blood to pores that can squeeze out upwards of three, four, even five liters of sweat an hour when we need them to.

Our dampness isn’t cost free. Sweat is siphoned from the liquid components of blood—lose too much, and the risks of heat stroke and death shoot way up. Our lack of fur also makes us more vulnerable to bites and burns. That humans sweat anyway, then, Best told me, is a testament to perspiration’s cooling punch—it’s so much more efficient than merely panting or hiding from the heat. “If your objective is to be able to sustain a high metabolic rate in warm conditions, sweating is absolutely the best,” he said.

[Read: You’re probably drinking enough water]

And yet, in modern times, many of us just can’t seem to accept the realities of sweat. Americans are, for whatever reason, particularly preoccupied with quashing perspiration; in many other countries, “body odor is just normal,” says Angela Lamb, a dermatologist at Mount Sinai’s Icahn School of Medicine. But the bemoaning of BO has cultural roots that long predate 

. “I’ve read discussions well back into antiquity where there are discussions about people whose armpits stink,” says Cari Casteel, a historian at the University of Buffalo. By the start of the 20th century, Americans had been primed by the recent popularization of germ theory to fear dirtiness—the perfect moment for marketers to “put the fear in women, and then men, that sweat was going to kibosh your plans for romance or a job,” says Sarah Everts, the author of The Joy of Sweat. These days, deodorants command an $8 billion market in the United States.

Our aversion to sweat doesn’t make much evolutionary sense. Unlike other excretions that elicit near-universal disgust, sweat doesn’t routinely transmit disease or pose other harm. But it does evoke physical labor and emotional stress—neither of which polite society is typically keen to see. And for some, maybe it signifies “losing control of your body in a particular way,” says Tina Lasisi, a biological anthropologist at the University of Michigan. Unlike urine or tears, sweat is the product of a body function that we can’t train ourselves to suppress or delay.

We also hate sweat because we think it smells bad. But it doesn’t, really. Nearly all of the sweat glands on human bodies are of the so-called eccrine variety, and produce slightly salty water with virtually no scent. A few spots, such as the armpits and groin, are freckled with apocrine glands that produce a waxy, fatty substance laced with pheromones—but even that has no inherent odor. The bacteria on our skin eat it, and their waste generates a stench, leaving sweat as the scapegoat. Our species’ approach to perspiration may even make us “less stinky than we could be,” Best told me. The expansion of eccrine glands across the body might not have only made our skin barer; it’s also thought to have evicted a whole legion of BO-producing apocrine glands.

As global temperatures climb, for many people—especially in parts of the world that lack access to air-conditioning—sweat will be an inevitability. “I suspect everyone is going to be quite drippy,” Kamberov told me. Exactly how slick each of us will be, though, is anyone’s guess. Experts have evidence that men sweat more than women, and that perspiration potential declines with age. But by and large, they can’t say with certainty why some people are inherently sweatier than others, and how much of it is inborn. Decades ago, a Japanese researcher hypothesized that perspiration potential might be calibrated in the first two or three years of life: Kids born into tropical climates, his analyses suggested, might activate more of their sweat glands than children in temperate regions. But Best’s recent attempts to replicate those findings have so far come up empty.

[Read: The man who did not sweat]

Perspiration does seem to be malleable within a lifetime. A couple of weeks into a new, intense exercise regimen, for instance, people will start to sweat more and earlier. Over longer periods of time, the body can also learn to tolerate high temperatures, and sweat less copiously but more efficiently. We sense these changes subtly as the seasons shift, says Laure Rittié, a physiologist at Glaxo-Smith Kline, who has studied sweat. It’s part of the reason a 75-degree day might feel toastier—and perhaps sweatier—in the spring than in the fall.

But we can’t simply sweat our way out of our climatic bind. There’s a ceiling to the temperatures we can tolerate; the body can leach only so much liquid out at once. Sweat’s cooling power also tends to falter in humid conditions, when liquid can’t evaporate as easily off of skin. Nor can researchers predict whether future generations might evolve to perspire much more than we do now. We no longer live under the intense conditions that pressured our ancestors to sprout more sweat glands—changes that also took place over many millions of years. It’s even possible that we’re fast approaching the maximal moistness a primate body can produce. “We don’t have a great idea about the outer limits of that plasticity,” Jason Kamilar, a biological anthropologist at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, told me.

For now, people who are already on the sweatier side may find themselves better equipped to deal with a warming world, Rittié told me. At long last: Blessed are the moist, for they shall inherit the Earth.

Quantum emission is pivotal to realizing photonic quantum technologies. Solid-state single photon emitters (SPEs), such as hexagonal boron nitride (hBN) defects, operate at room temperature. They are highly desirable due to their robustness and brightness.

Foreign-born CEOs are more likely to be fired than native-born CEOs if the firm they are leading is performing poorly, according to a new study from researchers at Florida Atlantic University and the University of North Carolina at Greensboro.

The basic idea of turning an asteroid into a rotating space habitat has existed for a while. Despite that, it's always seemed relatively far off regarding technologies, so the concept hasn't received much attention over the years. But, if you're retired and have an underlying interest in researching space habitats, developing a detailed plan for turning an asteroid into one seems like a great use of time.

Imagine that we've all—all of us, all of society—landed on some alien planet, and we have to form a government: clean slate. We don't have any legacy systems from   or any other country. We don't have any special or unique interests to perturb our thinking.

In the 1980s, the Elbe estuary had largely lost its function as an estuarine filter due to heavy metal pollution. After decades, the estuary was able to recover from this, as a team led by doctoral student Louise Rewrie from the Helmholtz-Zentrum Hereon has discovered by measuring carbon and other parameters.

A neural network trained on hundreds of images of hair styles can render hair so it actually looks realistic, which could be a boon for video games and animated films

Right now, people in coastal   are fleeing successive typhoons. Parts of the Philippines are awash.

A combined team of paleontologists and geoscientists from   University of Geosciences and Hubei Geological Bureau, both in China, working with a colleague from the University of Bristol, has found more evidence suggesting that the ancient marine reptile Hupehsuchus nanchangensis, was a filter feeder. In their paper published in the journal BMC Ecology and Evolution, the group describes how they compared newly found Hupehsuchus skulls to those of modern baleen whales and other creatures, and what they found by doing so.

A new ecosystem has been discovered in volcanic cavities beneath hydrothermal vents at a well-studied undersea volcano on the East Pacific Rise off Central America. The landmark 30-day expedition aboard Schmidt Ocean Institute's research vessel Falkor (too) was led by Dr. Monika Bright, University of Vienna, along with an international science team from the United States, Germany, the Netherlands, France, Costa Rica, and Slovenia.

A combined team of paleontologists and geoscientists from   University of Geosciences and Hubei Geological Bureau, both in China, working with a colleague from the University of Bristol, has found more evidence suggesting that the ancient marine reptile Hupehsuchus nanchangensis, was a filter feeder. In their paper published in the journal BMC Ecology and Evolution, the group describes how they compared newly found Hupehsuchus skulls to those of modern baleen whales and other creatures, and what they found by doing so.

Institution used concerning approval procedures for hundreds of studies, review says

• Get our morning and afternoon news emails, free app or daily news podcast

A major 

 research centre that produced one of the most widely cited and controversial research papers of the 

-19 pandemic has been found by an international research team to have used questionable and concerning ethics approval processes across hundreds of studies.

The Institut Hospitalo-Universitaire Méditerranée 

, or IHU, is a large clinical research centre in the south of France. It was founded by Prof Didier Raoult, who was also director of the centre until August 2022, when he stood down ahead of the release of findings from a government audit that found the institute conducted trials “likely to constitute offences or serious breaches of health or research regulations”.

Continue reading…

A new ecosystem has been discovered in volcanic cavities beneath hydrothermal vents at a well-studied undersea volcano on the East Pacific Rise off Central America. The landmark 30-day expedition aboard Schmidt Ocean Institute's research vessel Falkor (too) was led by Dr. Monika Bright, University of Vienna, along with an international science team from the United States, Germany, the Netherlands, France, Costa Rica, and Slovenia.

We often believe computers are more efficient than humans. After all, computers can complete a complex math equation in a moment and can also recall the name of that one actor we keep forgetting. However, human brains can process complicated layers of information quickly, accurately, and with almost no energy input: recognizing a face after only seeing it once or instantly knowing the difference between a mountain and the ocean.

Polymeric materials are essential for our everyday lives. In the search for new functional materials, scientists have placed focus on polymers composed of rigid aromatic frameworks, displaying unique electronical/optical properties, heat resistance and mechanical advantages.

In 2004, the public first became acquainted with graphene- a remarkably thin, flexible, and electrically conductive material possessing considerable strength. However, harnessing graphene's potential as a component has presented numerous challenges.

I Danmark er der planer om det stik modsatte, men Dansk byggebranche vil i samme retning som svenskerne.

President Biden is declaring a national monument around the Grand Canyon, protecting lands important to a dozen Native 

 tribes and prohibiting new uranium mining claims in the region

A team of materials scientists and engineers at Stanford University, working with a colleague from ETH Zürich and another from Washington University in St. Louis, has developed a biochip that can be used to screen thousands of molecules and that was successfully tested with a live virus. Their paper is published in the journal Nature Communications.

A team of materials scientists and engineers at Stanford University, working with a colleague from ETH Zürich and another from Washington University in St. Louis, has developed a biochip that can be used to screen thousands of molecules and that was successfully tested with a live virus. Their paper is published in the journal Nature Communications.

Detection

A new artificial intelligence algorithm has detected, for the first time ever, a killer asteroid slated to fly by Earth — and it won't be the last.

Known as HelioLinc3D, the algorithm — created specifically for the still-under-construction Vera Rubin Observatory in Northern Chile — has already identified one "potentially hazardous asteroid" or PHA that human eyes had missed, as the New York Times reports.

Dubbed 2022 SF289, the roughly 600-foot-long PHA is going to approach Earth within 140,000 miles, which is about half the distance to the Moon (i.e. a little too close for comfort). This asteroid's relatively-small stature makes its algorithmic discovery even more unprecedented because (as the report notes) asteroids under 500 feet are both harder to detect and capable of wiping out entire cities or countries if they hit the Earth.

The good news is: This asteroid isn't likely to hit our planet any time soon. But the AI's ability to find it — after the humans who run the NASA-funded Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System (ATLAS) system missed it — is absolutely a big deal. Especially given that the Rubin Observatory hasn't even unleashed its full potential yet.

As the Times notes, the observatory's giant mirror and camera will soon be able to capture images of almost the entire night sky, and it'll do so every three nights. That's a massive amount of data to sift through, and without the algorithmic help of programs like HelioLinc3D, it would be, well, impossible for even a massive team of humans to catch everything.

Burden of Proof

Ari Heinze, a University of Washington researcher who was the principal developer of the algorithm, told the Times that the proof of the program's efficacy is in the pudding.

"By demonstrating the real-world effectiveness of the software that Rubin will use to look for thousands of yet-unknown potentially hazardous asteroids," Heinze said in a UW statement, "the discovery of 2022 SF289 makes us all safer."

While conventional telescopes require four images per night to definitively detect asteroids, Rubin and HelioLinc3D only need two, and as the report notes, don't even need those two taken on consecutive nights.

Given how powerful the observatory-algorithm combo already is without even being finished, it's no doubt going to be a game-changer. Take it from Queen’s University Belfast astronomer Meg Schwab, a proponent of the tech who didn't work on it, and who told the Times that the algorithm is not only going to find asteroids but "all moving objects" that fly through our night sky.

"It’s going to rewrite the solar system," Schwab declared — and given this bold first example, she's probably not being hyperbolic.

More on asteroids: A Majority of Americans Don’t Care About Mars, Want NASA to Defend Against Killer Asteroids

The post AI Is Now Identifying Killer Asteroids Before They Approach Earth appeared first on Futurism.

Why Not

Just a coupla dudes, trying to destroy the dollar.

As CNBC reports, the crypto-anarchist movement is alive and well in Prague, where an outfit dubbed Paralelní Polis — which translates to the extremely-crypto-bro-coded "Parallel World" — promises to do away with digital censorship, reclaim and protect personal data from the "State and corporations," and, one day, do away with the American dollar (in favor of crypto). The group even has a designated and aptly named Institute of Cryptoanarchy, where they recruit new anarchists to the cause through the gospel of The Crypto Anarchist Manifesto. We all have our hobbies!

"New technology brings the possibility of choice — we are in a time that is defined by The Crypto Anarchist Manifesto," reads the webpage for the Institute. "With a fast internet connection, reliable anonymity and decentralized currency, you preserve freedom which we have been losing as a society."

Tread Lightly

And yet: Polis makes some interesting points, particularly when it comes to their hard lines data and privacy. There are legitimate critiques to be had about our global financial system, most notably, the fact that it's reliant on middlemen, and those middlemen — banks, insurers, exchanges — can fail (see: 2008). As the general logic of decentralized finance goes, removing meddling institutional middlemen and government regulation could result in disseminating (to the general population) the power those institutions once held.

In short: Destroy the dollar, and in theory, the people gain more autonomy. In their Manifesto, the anarchists liken this to nothing less than the advent of the printing press.

"Just as the technology of printing altered and reduced the power of medieval guilds and the social power structure," the Manifesto proclaims, "so too will cryptologic methods fundamentally alter the nature of corporations and of government interference in economic transactions."

The group also appears to have some notable allies; ETHPrague, for instance, was held this year at the operation's headquarters. And, per CNBC, Polis franchises have opened in Vienna, Barcelona, and two other Slavik cities.

But democratizing written knowledge and absolutely obliterating global financial systems are, of course, very different things, with very different consequences. Financial regulations — if often flawed and porous — exist for a reason, and if we learned anything from the year 2022, it's that decentralized finance can very easily be taken advantage of; last year's crypto crash caused a trillion dollars to effectively vaporize, and when it did, an incredible amount of harm was done to countless real people's bank accounts. At least for the time being, take crypto-anarchism's promises with a hefty pinch of salt.

More on crypto: The Feds Are Now Using Crypto to Catch Drug Traffickers

The post These Anarchists Want to Destroy the Dollar with Crypto appeared first on Futurism.

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Researchers have uncovered a potential route to developing the first ever drug treatments for   that directly target a cause of the condition. The research has shed light on how high blood pressure causes changes to arteries in the brain, a process that leads to the devastating condition.

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Engineers have developed nanoscale tattoos—dots and wires that adhere to live cells—in a breakthrough that puts researchers one step closer to tracking the health of individual cells.

The new technology allows for the first time the placement of optical elements or electronics on live cells with tattoo-like arrays that stick on cells while flexing and conforming to the cells’ wet and fluid outer structure.

“If you imagine where this is all going in the future, we would like to have sensors to remotely monitor and control the state of individual cells and the environment surrounding those cells in real time,” says David Gracias, a professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering at Johns Hopkins University who led the development of the technology.

“We’re talking about putting something like an electronic tattoo on a living object tens of times smaller than the head of a pin.”

“If we had technologies to track the health of isolated cells, we could maybe diagnose and treat diseases much earlier and not wait until the entire organ is damaged.”

The study appears in Nano Letters.

Gracias, who works on developing biosensor technologies that are nontoxic and noninvasive for the body, says the nanoscale tattoos bridge the gap between living cells or tissue and conventional sensors and electronic materials. They’re essentially like barcodes or QR codes, he says.

“We’re talking about putting something like an electronic tattoo on a living object tens of times smaller than the head of a pin,” Gracias says. “It’s the first step towards attaching sensors and electronics on live cells.”

The structures were able to stick to soft cells for 16 hours even as the cells moved.

The researchers built the tattoos in the form of arrays with gold, a material known for its ability to prevent signal loss or distortion in electronic wiring. They attached the arrays to cells that make and sustain tissue in the human body, called fibroblasts.

They then treated the arrays with molecular glues and transferred onto the cells using an alginate hydrogel film, a gel-like laminate that can be dissolved after the gold adheres to the cell. The molecular glue on the array bonds to a film secreted by the cells called the extracellular matrix.

Previous research has demonstrated how to use hydrogels to stick nanotechnology onto human skin and internal animal organs. By showing how to adhere nanowires and nanodots onto single cells, Gracias’ team is addressing the long-standing challenge of making optical sensors and electronics compatible with biological matter at the single cell level.

“We’ve shown we can attach complex nanopatterns to living cells, while ensuring that the cell doesn’t die,” Gracias says. “It’s a very important result that the cells can live and move with the tattoos because there’s often a significant incompatibility between living cells and the methods engineers use to fabricate electronics.”

The team’s ability to attach the dots and wires in an array form is also crucial. To use this technology to track bioinformation, researchers must be able to arrange sensors and wiring into specific patterns not unlike how they are arranged in electronic chips.

“This is an array with specific spacing,” Gracias explains, “not a haphazard bunch of dots.”

The team plans to try to attach more complex nanocircuits that can stay in place for longer periods. They also want to experiment with different types of cells.

Source: Johns Hopkins University

The post Nanoscale ‘tattoos’ could track health of single cells appeared first on Futurity.

Researchers have found a link between the FOXP4 gene and the occurrence of what's known as long 

. The finding could lead to a better understanding of a condition that affects millions.

(Image credit: Nathan Posner/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)

Chemists have developed a new method for recycling polyester.

A staggering 60 million tons of polyester are produced annually, for things like clothes, couches, and curtains. That polyester production takes a toll on the climate and  environment, as only 15% of it gets recycled. The rest ends up in landfills or incinerated, which results in more carbon emissions.

“The textile industry urgently requires a better solution to handle blended fabrics like polyester/cotton. Currently, there are very few practical methods capable of recycling both cotton and plastic—it’s typically an either-or scenario,” explains postdoctoral researcher Yang Yang of the Jiwoong Lee group at the University of Copenhagen’s chemistry department.

“However, with our newly discovered technique, we can depolymerize polyester into its monomers while simultaneously recovering cotton on a scale of hundreds of grams, using an incredibly straightforward and environmentally friendly approach. This traceless catalytic methodology could be the game-changer.”

Yang is lead author of a paper on the method in the journal ACS Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering.

The new recycling method based on hartshorn salt (ammonium bicarbonate) works on PET plastic alone, as well as on PET and cotton blended materials.

“If we throw dirty plastic waste in a container, we still get good quality cotton and plastic monomer out of it. This can even be a plastic bottle with juice residue still in it. We just put it in and begin the reaction. It still works,” says Shriaya Sharma, a doctoral student of the Jiwoong Lee group and a coauthor of the study.

“For example, we can take a polyester dress, cut it up into small pieces and place it in a container. Then, add a bit of mild solvent, and thereafter hartshorn salt, which many people know as a leavening agent in baked goods. We then heat it all up to 160 degrees Celsius and leave it for 24 hours. The result is a liquid in which the plastic and cotton fibers settle into distinct layers. It’s a simple and cost-effective process,” says Sharma.

In the process, the hartshorn salt, also called ammonium bicarbonate, is broken down into ammonia, CO₂, and water. The combination of ammonia and CO₂ acts as a catalyst, triggering a selective depolymerization reaction that breaks down the polyester while preserving the cotton fibers.

Although ammonia is toxic in isolation, when combined with CO₂, it becomes both environmentally friendly and safe for use. Due to the mild nature of the chemicals involved, the cotton fibers remain intact and in excellent condition.

Previously, the same research group demonstrated that CO₂ could serve as a catalyst for breaking down nylon, among other things, without leaving any trace. This discovery inspired them to explore the use of hartshorn salt. Nevertheless, the researchers were pleasantly surprised when their simple recipe yielded successful results.

“At first, we were excited to see it work so well on the PET bottles alone. Then, when we discovered that it worked on polyester fabric as well, we were just ecstatic. It was indescribable. That it was so simple to perform was nearly too good to be true,” says Carlo Di Bernardo, doctoral student and study coauthor.

While the method has only been tested at the laboratory level thus far, the researchers point to its scalability and are now in contact with companies to test the method on an industrial scale.

“We’re hoping to commercialize this technology that harbors such great potential. Keeping this knowledge behind the walls of the university would be a huge waste,” says Yang.

Source: University of Copenhagen

The post Method separates cotton and polyester for recycling appeared first on Futurity.

Here's how social media can help conspiracy theories spread and even spark violence

The tiny, floating blobs of mini-hearts were straight out of Frankenstein. Made from a mixture of human stem cells and a sprinkle of silicon nanowires, the cyborg heart organoids bizarrely pumped away as they grew inside Petri dishes.

When transplanted into rats with heart injuries they lost their spherical shape, spreading out into damaged regions and connecting with the hosts’ own heart cells. Within a month, the rats regained much of their heart function.

It’s not science fiction. A new study this month linked digital electrical components with biological cells into a cyborg organoid that, when transplanted into animal models of heart failure, melded with and repaired living, beating hearts.

At the heart (cough, pun intended) of the technology are electrically-active biodegradable silicon nanowires. Heart cells synchronize their movement to the beat of electrical activity, producing the standard “ba-bump, ba-bump” rhythm. A dose of nanowires into the organoids acted as a conductor to the symphony, allowing the lab-grown mini-hearts to better synchronize with their hosts.

Compared to standard heart organoids—grown exactly the same way but without the nanowire boost—the cyborg ones could better tolerate the hostile chemical environment inside the heart after a heart attack. They also better connected to their hosts during recovery, fighting off a detrimental side effect often seen after heart injuries.

For now the cyborg heart organoid transplant only works in rats. But it’s just a start.

Heartstopper

The heart is a trooper. From birth to death, it diligently contracts and releases to pump out blood full of oxygen to the rest of the body. It’s a biological wonder, faithfully lasting over 100 years in centenarians—far longer than most man-made hardware contraptions.

Yet the heart is also a failure point. Heart disease is the leading cause of death worldwide. A main reason is that cardiomyocytes—the “muscle cells” of the heart that contract—have very limited ability to regenerate. When damaged from a heart attack, scar tissue gradually grows around the injured areas, eventually limiting the heart’s ability to contract.

Scientists have long sought to treat heart disease with new, healthy cells. One popular idea is to guide human stem cells to develop into replacement cardiomyocytes. The lab-made heart muscle cells are then injected into damaged areas. Scientist have tested the treatment in a range of animal models of heart disease, including rodents, pigs, and nonhuman primates. But the healthy cells, when confronted with a hostile environment, struggled to survive. Those that did couldn’t reliably recover from heart damage, leading to potential problems with arrhythmia—irregular heartbeats that occur when different portions of the heart can’t beat in a synchronized rhythm.

Enter organoids. These structures loosely mimic their original counterparts in both their genes and diverse cell types. Grown inside lab dishes, the 3D blobs of tissue are widely used as surrogate organs to test new drugs or advance theories on how things work inside the body—for example, how to repair damage from a heart attack. But they also hold the potential to replace damaged tissue—something that’s already being explored for brain injuries.

Would it also work for the heart?

Back in 2017, the team envisioned a mini-heart—called a cardiac organoid—that combined a stew of different cell types. When churned inside a nutritious recipe “soup,” the cells organized into mini-heart organoids, such as a network of blood vessels that help carry oxygen. Yet a key component was missing: synchrony. Like a talented orchestra without a conductor, the resulting mini-hearts needed a “pulse” to keep the beat in tune.

Enter nanowires. Imagine them as rough, short hair you shave off. These strands of technological magic are made of silicon that conducts electricity. Compared to previous gold- or carbon-based nanowires, they are far more biocompatible and dissolve inside the body.

Roughly a decade ago, the team surprisingly found that the nanowires (called e-SiNW) can trigger human cardiomyocytes derived from stem cells to incorporate them as the cells develop into tiny blobs. Adding a dose of silicon made the resulting mini-hearts stronger, allowing the engineered organoid cells to pulse to the heart’s electrical tune.

Heart Broken

As a first test, the team directly injected the nanowires into the hearts of healthy rats. 28 days later (no it’s not that kind of zombie story), the rats went about their happy ways, meaning that the nanowires were biocompatible and safe.

Next, they made a “meatball” with roughly 1,000 human-derived heart cells and a similar number of nanowires, with a hefty dose of supporting cells added 10 days later. The mini-heart began pulsing inside a Petri dish in just seven days.

When transplanted into healthy rats, the cyborg meatballs slowly shredded their spherical shape, suggesting that they were integrating into the host’s heart environment. In less than a month, the mini-hearts—with their nanowires—formed multiple electrical connections with the host’s natural heart cells.

It shows that the nanowired organoids can hook up with a beating heart using electricity and blood vessels, said the team.

Then came the ultimate test: repairing issues after a heart attack. Here, the heart struggles to recover from a lack of blood and oxygen, often because of a blockage such as a blood clot. Once the blockage is cleared, blood rushes through the veins and often causes even more damage. A major hub is the left ventricle in the heart—the top-left portion of the organ. This is the “engine” of the body, pumping out blood to support the rest of the tissues. It’s also one that’s easily damaged in heart disease and generates a hostile local environment for new transplants. (Imagine trying to plant new trees inside an active volcano that just blew up.)

In one test, the team directly injected cyborg organoids and their purely biological counterparts into rats four days after a heart attack. Both grafts associated with their hosts just a week after transplant. The nanowired organoids meshed with the host hearts at a far higher level even around heavily damaged areas with scar tissue.

It’s a sign of their “capacity to survive in the most hostile regions” of the damaged heart, said the team.

Rats given the cyborg implants restored far more functionality than organoids without the nanowires. The rebuild extended beyond just the heart itself to help control blood pressure. By restoring a smooth flow of blood, the transplant “augments the therapeutic efficacy” of human mini-hearts, said the team.

The nanowires also endeared the mini-hearts to their hosts. 28 days after treatment, the hosts’ hearts had far less scar tissue that’s normally associated with heart failure. The cyborg transplants played nice with the rats’ immune systems, which usually ramp up after a heart attack. The main immune cells involved in the process are macrophages. These cells can be either devils or angels, triggering deadly immune responses or supporting restoration. Compared to unwired organoids, the cyborg ones bumped up the portion of “angel” immune cells in the graft and border zones to help mend the broken heart’s function.

There’s a long road to go before the results translate to humans. However, the results are the latest creative push for using organoids to patch up damaged organs. The “therapeutic synergy” between electrical nanomaterial and human mini-organs isn’t limited to the heart. A similar strategy could be used for other electrically active tissues such as the muscle or the brain, said the authors.

Image Credit: Tan et al/Science Advances

TikTok vil fremover give europæiske brugere mulighed for slå den personlige algoritme fra.

Nature, Published online: 08 August 2023; doi:10.1038/d41586-023-02356-4

Snippets from Nature’s past.

Big Boi

A chonker of an ancient whale with a comically small head and fins has emerged as a serious contender for the title of heaviest animal to have ever existed on Earth, according to a team of paleontologists who just published a paper about the truly massive mammal in the science journal Nature.

Weighing anywhere between 187,000 to 705,000 pounds, the only extant fossil of the creature Perucetus colossus existed about 39 million years ago, and is estimated to have a length of 56 to 66 feet, according to the BBC.

That makes it far heftier than the blue whale, the largest animal alive right now, which can weigh in between 200,000 to 300,000 pounds.

To put this in better perspective: "Perucetus could have weighed almost two blue whales, three Argentinosaurs (a giant sauropod dinosaur), over 30 African bush elephants and as many as 5,000 people," said Giovanni Bianucci, study co-author and associate professor of paleontology at the University of Pisa in 

, to CNN. In other words: A whole lot of blubber.

Big Boned

Researchers found a partial fossil of the beast actually 13 years ago in a desert in southern Peru and have been studying it closely ever since, according to the BBC.

What's especially interesting about the mammal — a type of ancient whale called a basilosaurid — is its dense, extremely heavy bones.

"Each vertebra weighs over 100kg (220 pounds), which is just completely mind-blowing," said co-author Rebecca Bennion, a researcher from the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences in Brussels, to the BBC.

The researchers surmise that the dense bones are an adaptation to give this massive whale extra bounce while it swam off the coast in relatively shallow waters. Think of it as an extremely oversized manatee.

Another interesting finding is that this ancient whale was THIS LARGE (mimes stretched out hands) at this particular time period — a far earlier sign of gigantism in whales than what scientists have traditionally thought, according to the BBC. Researchers thought gigantism in whales first emerged 4.5 million years ago.

More on fossils: Amazing Fossil Froze Dinosaur in Death Match With Prehistoric Monster

The post Scientists: Massive Ancient Whale With Silly, Tiny Head Was Real appeared first on Futurism.

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A clinical trial was the first to demonstrate that a new obesity drug could also improve patients’ heart health.

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Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) is increasingly being cited to help our global warming crisis by reducing greenhouse gas emissions through capturing carbon dioxide and storing deep underground. In the Danish North Sea, chalk rocks below the sea bed hold depleted oil and gas reserves and are now being considered for storing carbon dioxide to capitalize upon the pre-established infrastructure from the fossil fuel industry.

The long-necked, lumbering titanosaur was once found on every continent in the world during the Cretaceous period. Here's what we know about the biggest dinosaur to walk on land.

Research finds that even a slight change in salinity can affect the ability of sea urchins to securely attach their tube feet to their surroundings—like tires gripping the road.

When driving through a rainstorm, traction is key. If your tires lack sufficient tread, your vehicle will slip and slide and you won’t have the grip needed to maneuver safely. When torrential rains hit nearshore, shallow water ecosystems, sea urchins experience a similar challenge.

Heavy precipitation can alter the concentration of salt in the ocean waters causing lower salinity levels. This becomes a matter of life and death for the small spiny creatures, as they rely on their adhesive structures to move in the wave-battered rocky area near the seashore.

The survival of sea urchins is vital for maintaining balance within marine ecosystems. Sea urchins are responsible for grazing around 45% of algae on coral reefs. Without sea urchins, coral reefs can become overgrown with macroalgae, which can limit the growth of corals. With the importance of coral reefs for coastal protection and preservation of biodiversity, it is critical to safeguard the sea urchin population.

As global climate change causes weather extremes ranging from heat waves and droughts to heavy rains and flooding, the large amounts of freshwater pouring into nearshore ecosystems are altering habitats. A team of biologists, led by Austin Garner, assistant professor in Syracuse University’s biology department, studied the effects of low salinity and how it alters sea urchins’ ability to grip and move within their habitat. Garner, who is a member of the university’s BioInspired Institute, studies how animals attach to surfaces in variable environments from the perspective of both the life and physical sciences.

The team’s study, recently published in the Journal of Experimental Biology, sought to understand how sea urchin populations will be affected by future extreme climatic events.

“While many marine animals can regulate the amount of water and salts in their bodies, sea urchins are not as effective at this,” says Garner. “As a result, they tend to be restricted to a narrow range of salinity levels. Torrential precipitation can cause massive amounts of freshwater to be dumped into the ocean along the coastline causing rapid reductions in the concentration of salt in seawater.”

The group’s research took place at the University of Washington’s Friday Harbor Laboratories (FHL). The study’s lead author, Andrew Moura, a graduate student in Garner’s lab at Syracuse, traveled to FHL along with Garner and researchers from Villanova University to conduct experiments with live green sea urchins.

At FHL, the researchers separated sea urchins into 10 groups based on differing salinity levels within each tank, from normal to very low salt content. Among each group, they tested metrics including righting response (the ability for sea urchins to flip themselves over), locomotion (speed from one point to another), and adhesion (force at which their tube feet detach from a surface). In Garner’s lab at Syracuse, he and Moura completed data analysis to compare each metric.

The team found that sea urchin righting response, movement, and adhesive ability were all negatively affected by low salinity conditions. Interestingly, though, sea urchin adhesive ability was not severely affected until very low salinity levels, indicating that sea urchins may be able to remain attached in challenging nearshore environmental conditions even though activities that require greater coordination of tube feet (righting and movement) may not be possible.

“When we see this decrease in performance under very low salinity, we might start seeing shifts in where sea urchins might be living as a consequence of their inability to remain stuck in certain areas that experience low salinity,” explains Moura. “That could change how much sea urchin grazing is happening and could have profound ecosystem effects.”

Their work provides critical data that enhance researchers’ ability to predict how important animals like sea urchins will fare in a changing world. The adhesion principles Garner and his team are exploring could also come in handy for human-designed adhesive materials.

“If we can learn the fundamental principles and molecular mechanisms that allow sea urchins to secrete a permanent adhesive and use it for temporary attachment, we could harness that power into the design challenges or our adhesives today,” says Garner.

“Imagine being able to have an adhesive that is otherwise permanent, but then you add another component, and it breaks it down and you can go stick it again somewhere else. It’s a perfect example of how biology can be used to enhance the everyday products around us.”

Source: Syracuse University

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