Lifeboat Foundation

Findings from study believed to be largest of its kind contradict smaller studies showing treatment’s promise.

Regular doses of the hormone oxytocin do not appear to overcome deficits in social functioning among children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), suggests a study funded by the National Institutes of Health. The findings contradict earlier reports that indicated the hormone could alleviate the difficulties in social functioning characteristic of ASD. Oxytocin is associated with empathy and social bonding. The study was conducted by Linmarie Sikich, M.D., of Duke University, and colleagues. It appears in the New England Journal of Medicine.

Funding was provided by NIH’s Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) and National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences.

Implantable heart technology is being used in Manchester to assess when a patient is at high risk of dying, thanks to an NIHR ARC-GM and University of Manchester led research published today.

The pacemakers and defibrillators contain multiple sensors that allow continuous monitoring of a patient’s heart health, 24 hours a day. The study published in Europace and funded by the Medical Research Council is a collaboration between The University of Manchester, Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust (MFT), Health Innovation Manchester, the National Institute for Health Applied Research Collaboration Greater Manchester (ARC-GM) and Medtronic – who manufacture implantable devices.

The research team examined remotely monitored health related data from 439 patients at Manchester Royal Infirmary over two years. The study reported a three-fold increase in odds of mortality for patients who spent at least one day in high-risk status. There was also a 26% increase in the odds of mortality for patients who had 14 consecutive days or more in a high-risk status compared with those whose high-risk episodes were shorter. Higher percentages of time spent in a high-risk status, and less time in a low-risk status, were also associated with increased risk of death.

China could soon outlaw all the news media outlets that are not directly funded by the Communist Party. China’s top economic planner has unveiled a new proposal that would bar private investment in news-related entities. China says that it is proposing to ban private investments to control “unlawful news media-related businesses”. Beijing is preparing to exercise greater control over the news industry, which is already heavily regulated. The current crackdown comes in the midst of a campaign by Xi Jinping to limit the power of private businesses.
#ChinaMediaBan #ChinaCrackdown #Xijinping.

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“Lower levels of DHA are associated with inflammation, cardiovascular and brain disorders, such as depression, which are all linked to migraine risk.”

Professor Nyholt said LPE(20:4) was a chemical compound that blocked the production of an anti-inflammatory molecule called anandamide.

Summary: Researchers have identified causal genetic links to three blood metabolite levels that increase migraine risks.

Continue reading “Migraines Caused by Alterations in Metabolite Levels” »

In the United States, animal health authorities are now on high alert. The US Department of Agriculture has pledged an emergency appropriation of $500 million to ramp up surveillance and keep the disease from crossing borders. African swine fever is so feared internationally that, if it were found in the US, pork exports—worth more than $7 billion a year—would immediately shut down.

“Long-distance transboundary spread of highly contagious and pathogenic diseases is a worse-case scenario,” Michael Ward, an epidemiologist and chair of veterinary public health at the University of Sydney, told WIRED by email. “In agriculture, it’s the analogue of Covid-19.”

As with the Covid pandemic at its start, there is no vaccine—but also as with Covid, there is the glimmer of hope for one, thanks to basic science that has been laying down findings for years without receiving much attention. Two weeks ago, a multinational team led by scientists at the USDA’s Agricultural Research Service announced that they had achieved a vaccine candidate, based on a weakened version of the virus with a key gene deleted, and demonstrated its effectiveness in a field trial, in pigs, in Vietnam.

The UN health agency now ranks air pollution on a par with smoking or an unhealthy diet. As a result, it has issued new, stricter guidelines they claim could save millions of lives.

How feasible is it to build a Jupiter brain, a computer the size of a planet? Just in the past few decades, the amount of computational power that’s available to humanity has increased dramatically. Your smartphone is millions of times more powerful than the NASA computers used to send astronauts to the moon on the Apollo 11 mission in 1969. Computers have become integral to our lives, becoming the backbone of our communications, finances, education, art, health care, military, and entertainment. In fact, it would be hard to find an area of our lives that computers didn’t affect.

Now imagine that one day we make a computer that’s the size of an entire planet. And we’re not talking Earth, but larger, a megastructure the size of a gas giant like Jupiter. What would be the implications for humans to operate a computer that size, with an absolutely enormous, virtually limitless, amount of computing power? How would our lives change? One certainly begins to conjure up the transformational effects of having so much oomph, from energy generation to space travel and colonization to a fundamental change in the lifespan and abilities of future humans.

Continue reading “How to Make a Jupiter Brain — A Computer the Size of a Planet” »

Endocrine disrupting chemicals cause adverse effects in animals. But limited scientific information exists on potential health problems in humans. Because people are typically exposed to multiple at the same time, assessing public health effects is difficult.

Many chemicals, both natural and man-made, may mimic or interfere with the body’s hormones, known as the endocrine system. Called endocrine disruptors, these chemicals are linked with developmental, reproductive, brain, immune, and other problems.

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Creating Smart Home Ecosystems — Enabling Health & Well-Being In Every Home — Viren Shah, VP & Chief Digital Officer, GE Appliances, Haier

Mr. Viren Shah is Vice President & Chief Digital Officer, at GE Appliances (GEA — https://www.geappliances.com/), the American home appliance manufacturer, now a majority owned subsidiary of the Chinese multinational home appliances company, Haier (https://www.haierappliances.com/).

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