A new imaging approach is shedding light on one of cell biology’s most elusive questions: how lipids are organized and sorted within membranes.
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The CISO Gap: Why Every Business Needs Cybersecurity Leadership
Despite this reality, an excessive number of organizations, notably small and mid-sized businesses (SMBs), lack designated leadership in this crucial domain.
#cybersecurity #business #ciso #tech
By Chuck Brooks.
Cybersecurity is no longer an IT concern; it has become a fundamental business requirement. Viability, survivability, and ultimately commercial success are dependent on securing the devices and network for any business in the evolving digital era.
Natural competition between brain circuits may boost information processing
Over the past decades, neuroscience studies have painted an increasingly detailed picture of the human brain, its organization and how it supports various functions. To plan and execute desired behaviors in changing circumstances, networks of neurons in the brain can either work together or suppress each other, thus employing both cooperative and competitive interaction strategies.
Researchers at University of Oxford, University of Cambridge, McGill University, University of Aarhus and Pompeu Fabra University recently set out to better understand the mammalian brain’s underlying dynamics, specifically how its underlying architecture balances cooperative and competitive interactions between neural circuits. Their paper, published in Nature Neuroscience, offers new insight that could both improve the understanding of the brain and inform the development of brain-inspired computational models.
“Building models of the brain is an important part of modern neuroscience,” Andrea Luppi, first author of the paper, told Medical Xpress. “As Nobel winner Reichard Feynman said, ‘what I cannot create, I do not understand.’ Most current models, however, share a limitation. Everyday experience, from focusing attention or switching between tasks, also reveals that brain systems must compete for limited resources.
Circadian rhythm drives metabolic dysfunction in fat cells, study finds
Northwestern Medicine scientists led by Joseph Bass, MD, Ph.D., the Charles F. Kettering Professor of Endocrinology and Metabolism and director of the Center for Diabetes and Metabolism, have discovered how disruptions in the circadian rhythm impair metabolic function in fat cells, providing new insights into the molecular mechanisms that cause obesity and metabolic disease, according to a recent study published in Nature Metabolism.
“It’s not simply the accrual of excess fat that leads to disease. It’s a change in the actual function and the capacity of the energy center within the cell to work properly,” said Bass, who is also chief of Endocrinology, Metabolism and Molecular Medicine in the Department of Medicine and a member of the Robert H. Lurie Comprehensive Cancer Center of Northwestern University.
The circadian rhythm is the body’s own internal 24-hour clock that regulates the sleep-wake cycle, hormone levels and metabolism, among other systems throughout the body.
Perspectives on an Emerging 18TH Sdg Articulation — an Sri Side Event at Copuos Legal Subcommittee
(SRI) will organize a high-level side event during the COPUOS Legal Subcommittee on 16 April 2026 at UNOOSA (Vienna), proposed and convened by Dr. Gülin Dede, titled “Operationalising Space as a Cross-Cutting Enabler of Sustainable Development: Perspectives on an Emerging 18th SDG Articulation.”
The session will bring together legal, policy, industry, and Global South perspectives to examine how outer space is evolving from a sectoral domain into a critical enabling infrastructure for the 2030 Agenda, while simultaneously requiring stewardship as an environment in its own right.
Positioned as an early contribution to shaping how space sustainability is framed within the broader UN system, the event will also be broadcast by the United Nations, extending its reach beyond the room to a global audience.
Seven subsets, two fates: mouse γδ T cells in cancer immunity
Mouse γδ T cells in cancer immunity.
Mouse γδ T cells are not all the same; rather, they comprise seven subsets that influence progression in several cancer types.
Antitumor γδ T cell subsets can be tissue-resident or circulating cells, which generally rely on glycolysis for energy production, and they mediate cancer cell death via interferon-gamma or orchestration of antitumor immunity.
Protumor γδ T cell subsets use lipids for energy production, and they promote primary tumor growth and metastasis through the production of interleukin17A to modulate the behavior of myeloid cells sciencenewshighlights ScienceMission https://sciencemission.com/Seven-subsets,-two-fates
The importance of γδ T cells in cancer, as defenders against tumorigenesis, was established more than 2 decades ago. Since that time, research using mouse models of cancer has brought to light a nonuniform view of tumor-associated γδ T cells by providing granularity into the role of individual γδ T cell subsets in specific cancer types. In this review, we discuss data that highlight the unique contributions of Vγ1+, Vγ4+, Vγ5+, Vγ6+, and Vγ7+ cells throughout cancer progression. We delve into their responses to tumors, including both protective and pathogenic functions. We examine how the mechanisms by which these mouse immune cell subsets shape tumor development and spread can be exploited for therapeutic purposes in people with cancer.
Human brain operates near, but not at, the critical point
A recent study published in Physical Review Letters reveals that many widely used signatures of criticality in brain data may be statistical artifacts. They propose a more robust framework that, when applied to whole-brain fMRI data, confirms the brain operates near, but not exactly at, a critical point.
Neuroscientists have long found the idea fascinating—that the brain operates near a “critical point,” a phase transition between stable and chaotic dynamics. Theory suggests this sweet spot enhances computational flexibility, dynamic range, and sensitivity to inputs. Evidence has mounted over the years from neural recordings showing approximate scale invariance and power-law behavior across spatiotemporal scales.
The concept has even influenced AI, particularly reservoir computing, where networks near the “edge of chaos” tend to perform best. However, the field faces a persistent concern: are these criticality signatures intrinsic to the brain’s recurrent dynamics, or do external inputs and data limitations shape them?