Lifeboat Foundation

Researchers led by Hiroshi Ohno at the RIKEN Center for Integrative Medical Sciences (IMS) in Japan have discovered a type of gut bacteria that might help improve insulin resistance, and thus protect against the development of obesity and type-2 diabetes. The study, published August 30 in the scientific journal Nature, involved genetic and metabolic analysis of human fecal microbiomes and then corroborating experiments in obese mice.

Insulin is a hormone released by the pancreas in response to blood sugar. Normally, it helps get the sugar into the muscles and liver so that they can use the energy. When someone develops insulin resistance, it means that insulin is prevented from doing its job, and as a result, more sugar stays in their blood and their pancreas continues to make more insulin. Insulin resistance can lead to obesity, pre-diabetes, and full-blown type-2 diabetes.

Our guts contain trillions of bacteria, many of which break down the carbohydrates that we eat when they would otherwise remain undigested. While many have proposed that this phenomenon is related to obesity and pre-diabetes, the facts remain unclear because there are so many different bacteria and there is a lack of metabolic data. Ohno and his team at RIKEN IMS have addressed this lack with their comprehensive study, and in the process, discovered a type of bacteria that might help reduce insulin resistance.

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In a recent study, Ji Won Seo and team found the outcomes of single-incision laparoscopic surgery (SILS) better than conventional laparoscopic surgery (CLS) for treating gastric gastrointestinal stromal tumors (GISTs). The findings of the study were published in BMC Surgery.

Between November 2020 and April 2022, a group of 15 consecutive patients with gastric GIST underwent single-incision gastric wedge resection, forming the SILS group. This group’s early perioperative outcomes were then meticulously analyzed and compared with a corresponding group of 15 patients who had undergone conventional laparoscopic surgery (CLS). The selection criteria for the surgical approach were consistent with those used for traditional laparoscopic procedures for gastric GIST.

The study’s findings revealed several significant insights. The estimated blood loss and intraoperative blood transfusion were comparable between the SILS and CLS groups, signifying similar surgical efficacy and safety. Notably, the SILS group experienced no intraoperative complications or instances requiring a shift to multiple-port or open surgery.

A massive study of medical and genetic data shows that people with a particular version of a gene involved in immune response had a lower risk of Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease.

Microsoft will drop support for the Cortana app in Windows before the end of this year, but it may be working on a new digital assistant for wearables. The company has filed a patent application for an AI-powered smart backpack.

The proposed backpack would have a camera, microphone and other sensors to collect visual and audio data from the surroundings. It could then use this contextual data to complete voice commands given by the user.

According to the patent filing, the backpack could provide navigation assistance, add calendar events, compare prices while shopping, and more. It would access the user’s data to help provide relevant information.

Specific changes in our DNA that increase the risk of developing epilepsy have been discovered, in the largest genetic study of its kind for epilepsy coordinated by the International League Against Epilepsy, which includes scientists from the University of Melbourne and WEHI (Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research).

Published today in Nature Genetics, this research advances our understanding of why epilepsy develops and could inform the development of new epilepsy treatments. The research was produced by the International League Against Epilepsy (ILAE) Consortium on Complex Epilepsies.

Epilepsy is a common brain disorder estimated to effect more than 50 million people worldwide, where nerve cell activity in the brain is disturbed, causing seizures. It has a genetic component that sometimes runs in families. In this study, researchers compared the DNA from almost 30,000 people with epilepsy to the DNA of 52,500 people without epilepsy from around the world. The differences between the two groups highlighted areas of DNA that may be involved in the development of epilepsy.

In April of this year, Spanish athlete Beatriz Flamini emerged into the light after a 500-day stay in a cave. Her descent underground is probably the longest undertaken by a long stretch. Flamini says she lost all sense of time on the 65th day. But can she really be sure it was the 65th day? By way of comparison, in 1962 France’s Michel Siffre surfaced from the Scarasson chasm in Italy after spending what he thought was 33 days there. In fact, he spent 58 days underground.

How can isolated human beings keep regular track of time, even when they’re disconnected from their surrounding environment? Quite simply, because biological rhythms are at the heart of life, regulating it all the way from the molecular level up to that of the entire body. These include not only our sleep/wake cycles, but also body temperature, hormones, metabolism and the cardiovascular system, to name but a few.

And these rhythms have many repercussions, not least in terms of public health. Indeed, a number of diseases are episodic—for example, asthma is more severe at night, while cardiovascular accidents are more frequent in the morning. Another example is shift work, which disconnects people from their environment. It may be associated with an increased risk of cancers in workers, prompting the WHO to label it as a probable carcinogen.

Layered hybrid perovskites show diverse physical properties and exceptional functionality; however, from a materials science viewpoint, the co-existence of lattice order and structural disorder can hinder the understanding of such materials. Lattice dynamics can be affected by dimensional engineering of inorganic frameworks and interactions with molecular moieties in a process that remains unknown.

To address this problem, Zhuquan Zhang and a team of scientists in chemistry and physics at the University of Pennsylvania, University of Texas, Austin, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, U.S., used a combination of spontaneous Raman scattering, terahertz spectroscopy and molecular dynamics simulations.

The research outcomes revealed how the structural dynamics in and out of equilibrium provided unexpected observables to differentiate single-and double-layered perovskites. The study is published in Science Advances.

For the first time in my timezone, SpaceX completed 9 launches in a month. Previously, if you were based in Europe, you saw 9 launches in a month a few months ago. At 9 launches/month that is a current rate of 108 launches/year, making SpaceX’s goal of 100 launches this year a possibility.

They had a lot of trouble getting this flight off today as a recent hurricane is still affecting the weather some. They got around this by having a 5 and a half hour launch window so they just waited a few hours until the weather was clear for several minutes and they launched!

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