Dopamine was long thought to play a part in the placebo effect for pain relief, but a new study is questioning its true role.
Humans have been trying to cheat death for thousands of years. Myths about elixirs promising immortality span various cultures, as do real concoctions that often did more harm than good. One of the most misguided attempts at creating a potion for immortality involved the first emperor of China and mercury pills. In his obsession with finding a formula that would grant him eternal life, Qin Shi Huang downed mercury and other toxic substances nearly two millennia ago, believing his alchemists had hit upon the perfect magical tonic. Unsurprisingly, he died prematurely at age 49.
Archeologists have discovered another 2,000-year-old “elixir for immortality” that sheds light on the true cost of chasing down eternal life.
While excavating the tomb of a Western Han noble family in China’s Henan province in 2018, researchers unearthed a bronze pot. At first, the team thought the liquid inside was wine, but more recently determined that it was an alchemist’s formulation: a yellow liquid containing potassium nitrate and alunite. These two ingredients are cited in ancient Taoist texts as ingredients for immortality. Potassium nitrate is an inorganic salt used today as a natural source of nitrate, and is a useful ingredient in food preservatives, fertilizer, and fireworks. Alunite is a mineral that forms in volcanic or sedimentary environments when sulfur-rich minerals oxidize. It has historically been used to make alum, which is important for water purification, tanning, and dyeing.
“I estimate that 80% of 80% of all jobs, maybe more, can be done by an AI,” famed investor and entrepreneur Vinod Khosla has warned. “Be it primary care doctors, psychiatrists, sales people, oncologists, farm workers or assembly line workers, structural engineers, chip designers, you name it.”
Say hello to a universal income and a 3-day week.
Continue reading “Silicon Valley billionaire says AI will take over 80% of work in 80% of jobs” »
Several years ago, MIT researchers showed that administering a series of escalating doses of an HIV vaccine over a two-week period could help overcome a part of that challenge by generating larger quantities of neutralizing antibodies. However, a multidose vaccine regimen administered over a short time is not practical for mass vaccination campaigns.
In a new study, the researchers have now found that they can achieve a similar immune response with just two doses, given one week apart. The first dose, which is much smaller, prepares the immune system to respond more powerfully to the second, larger dose.
This was created by a company called Xenex a decade ago In San Antonio Texas, where I used to live.
JOINT BASE LANGLEY-EUSTIS, Va. (AFNS) — Standing at 5 feet 2 inches tall, U.S. Air Force Hospital Langley’s newest staff member doesn’t initially have a commanding presence; however, after five minutes, its impact has the potential to save countless lives around the world.
The 633rd Medical Group received a germ-zapping robot, nicknamed “Saul,” which harnesses the power of technology to kill off viruses — including the Ebola virus. Airmen were given a demonstration of the robots functions and capabilities from Geri Genant, the Xenex Healthcare Services implementation manager.
Continue reading “AF hospital adds ‘virus-zapping’ robot to inventory” »
Robert C Williams performed genetic analysis to understand how the HLA and SLC16A11 genes affect Type 2 diabetes in Indigenous Americans.
GC Therapeutics’ plug-and-play stem cell programming platform aims to reduce cell therapy development time by up to 100 times.
Cell therapies have revolutionized the treatment of certain disease areas; however, challenges in scaling these therapies…
Cell therapy startup GC Therapeutics (GCTx) has emerged from the lab of renowned geneticist George Church, securing a $65 million Series A funding round that brings the total raised by the company to a cool $75 million. The company is on a mission to enable the next generation of cell therapies through its proprietary TFome platform, which GCTx claims is the first plug-and-play induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC) cellular programming platform.
Continue reading “George Church lab spawns $75m cell therapy startup” »
RNA interference (RNAi) technology has gradually become a cutting-edge technology for treating diseases such as genetic disorders and cancer due to its huge potential in gene expression regulation. However, the efficient delivery and safety of short interfering RNA (siRNA) remain key challenges for its clinical application.
Summary: The largest and most diverse study on recessive genetic changes in developmental disorders reveals that over 80% of cases caused by recessive variants are linked to known genes. Researchers analyzed data from nearly 30,000 families and found that a shift in focus from gene discovery to interpreting changes in known genes could double diagnosis rates.
The study highlights the importance of genetic background in diagnosis and suggests that some patients may have multiple contributing genetic factors. These findings could lead to more personalized and accurate diagnoses for families affected by developmental disorders.
Could slight wobbles in the orbit of Mars be caused by microscopic black holes that have existed since the Big Bang? This is what a recent study published in Physical Review D hopes to address as a team of researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and UC Santa Cruz investigated how these miniscule black holes could be comprised of dark matter, which was first hypothesized in the 1970s, resulting in miniscule wobbles in the orbit of Mars. This study holds the potential to help researchers better understand the characteristics of dark matter, which remains one of the most mysterious phenomena in the universe.
“Given decades of precision telemetry, scientists know the distance between Earth and Mars to an accuracy of about 10 centimeters,” said Dr. David Kaiser, who is a professor of physics and the Germeshausen Professor of the History of Science at MIT, and a co-author on the study. “We’re taking advantage of this highly instrumented region of space to try and look for a small effect. If we see it, that would count as a real reason to keep pursuing this delightful idea that all of dark matter consists of black holes that were spawned in less than a second after the Big Bang and have been streaming around the universe for 14 billion years.”
For the study, the researchers began with handwritten calculations produced by Tung X. Tran, who eventually became the study’s lead author and is a graduate student at Stanford University, which calculated the results if a primordial black hole passed through a human body, which he calculated would push the person approximately 20 feet.
