Lifeboat Foundation

With the first CRISPR–Cas9 gene therapy now approved, scientists are turning to newer editing technologies to produce safer, faster and better treatments for genetic diseases.

The higher cost of owning an electric versus a gas-powered vehicle is a sticking point for many would-be buyers of EVs. Now, the price of a key EV component is falling, raising hopes that automakers could close the gap as they grapple with waning demand.

Batteries make up about one-third to one-fourth of the cost of producing an electric vehicle, according to Goldman Sachs analysts. The firm predicts the global average cost to automakers for batteries in 2024 will average about $115 per kilowatt hours, about 23% lower than last year. Prices are expected fall another 20% in 2025.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk (TSLA) recently noted costs have come down for lithium-ion cells used in EV batteries, a big reversal from the “massive spike” during the pandemic when car manufacturers put in “giant, giant orders.”

Elon Musk says his startup Neuralink has implanted a brain chip into a second patient and plans to perform another eight trials later this year.

Almost half the electrodes are working… for now.

DNA contains foundational information needed to sustain life. Understanding how this information is stored and organized has been one of the greatest scientific challenges of the last century.

With GROVER, a new large language model trained on human DNA, researchers could now attempt to decode the complex information hidden in our genome.

Chromosomes are threadlike structures composed entirely of DNA that reside in the cells of all living things. Each one of these biological databanks contains a wealth of genetic information that scientists can use to glean insights into the history and evolution of life on Earth. Normally, the remains of dead creatures degrade over time, causing DNA to fragment. Most ancient animal DNA discovered to date has been incomplete, often comprised of fewer than 100 base pairs out of the billions that once made up the full sequence of the organism.

However, the 52,000-year-old skin sample at the heart of this research was taken from behind the ear of a mammoth discovered in Northern Siberia in 2018. An intensive analysis of the sample revealed the presence of complete fossil chromosomes. These chromosomes, each measuring billionths of a meter in length, had seemingly been frozen in a glass-like state for tens of thousands of years. Knowing the shape of an organism’s chromosomes can help researchers to assemble entire DNA sequences of extinct creatures, a task previously deemed nearly impossible due to DNA degradation over time.

“This is a new type of fossil, and its scale dwarfs that of individual ancient DNA fragments — a million times more sequence,” explained Erez Lieberman Aiden, a corresponding author on the study and director of the Center for Genome Architecture at the Baylor College of Medicine.

(THE CONVERSATION) Racism steals time from people’s lives – possibly because of the space it occupies in the mind.

Question Is racial discrimination associated with brain connectivity, and are alterations in deep brain functional connectivity associated with accelerated epigenetic aging?

Findings In this cohort study of 90 Black women in the US, higher self-reported racial discrimination was associated with greater resting-state functional connectivity (RSFC) between the locus coeruleus (LC) and precuneus. Significant indirect effects were observed for the association between racial discrimination frequency and DNA methylation age acceleration.

Continue reading “Racial Discrimination, Neural Connectivity, and Epigenetic Aging in Black Women” »

A Perseid is one whose path, if traced backward across the sky, intersects a spot between the constellations Perseus and Cassiopeia. Other “sporadic” meteors traveling in random directions occur once every 5 or 10 minutes. Two much weaker showers are also active at this time of the year, the Delta Aquarids and Kappa Cygnids.

You’ll need no experience to watch the Perseids. Just find a spot with a wide-open sky view and no late-night lights nearby. Bundle up warmly (it can sometimes get chilly even on summer nights), lie back on a ground pad or in a sleeping bag or even better, on a reclining lawn chair, and watch the stars. Also cover exposed parts of your body with mosquito repellent so you won’t get bit.

Be patient, and give your eyes sufficient time to dark adapt. The direction to watch is not necessarily toward Perseus but wherever your sky is darkest, probably straight up.

Researchers at the University of California, Davis have developed a rapid, noninvasive tool to track the neurons and biomolecules activated in the brain by psychedelic drugs. The protein-based tool, which is called Ca2+-activated Split-TurboID, or CaST, is described in research published in Nature Methods.

There has been mounting interest in the value of psychedelic-inspired compounds as treatments for brain disorders including depression, post-traumatic stress disorder and substance use disorder. Psychedelic compounds like LSD, DMT and psilocybin promote the growth and strengthening of neurons and their connections in the brain’s prefrontal cortex. The new tool could help scientists unlock the benefits of psychedelic treatments for patients with brain disorders.

“It’s important to think about the cellular mechanisms that these psychedelics act upon,” said Christina Kim, an assistant professor of neurology at the UC Davis Center for Neuroscience and School of Medicine, and an affiliate of the UC Davis Institute for Psychedelics and Neurotherapeutics. “What are they? Once we know that, we can design different variants that target the same mechanism but with fewer side effects.”

What could go wrong!