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Dual targeting of transferrin receptor and CD98hc enhances brain exposure of large molecules

Very intriguing paper on antibodies equipped with binding domains for both the TfR1 and CD98hc receptors (found abundantly on the blood-brain-barrier). Brain uptake was enhanced by using binding domains for both receptors. Wells et al. also varied the TfR1/CD98hc affinities of the binding domains and explored how different combinations of affinities influenced brain uptake and localization within the brain. Interestingly, higher CD98hc affinity made the antibody brain concentration peak at 7 days post-injection whereas higher TfR1 affinity made the antibody brain concentration peak at 1 day post-injection. Additionally, stronger CD98hc binding led to more astrocyte localization while stronger TfR1 binding led to more neuronal localization.

Wells et al. developed a dual-targeting transport vehicle binding both transferrin receptor and CD98hc, two proteins highly expressed at the blood-brain barrier. Through affinity tuning, the authors demonstrated that brain concentration, kinetics, and cellular distribution can be modulated, offering a versatile platform for CNS delivery of biotherapeutics.

This startup’s self-driving excavators help dig up $600M in new funding

Bedrock Robotics has raised $600 million in a funding round that values the autonomous vehicle technology startup at $4.1 billion, marking a speedy ascent for the two-year-old company.

The Series C round, co-led by CapitalG and Emergence Capital, comes two months after the startup reached a key milestone: moving its autonomous excavators beyond testing and pilot programs and putting them to work on active construction sites.

Bedrock Robotics has developed a self-driving kit that can be retrofitted onto construction and other worksite vehicles. Excavators outfitted with Bedrock’s autonomous-driving tech are now commercially operating at a Nevada-based water treatment facility, an earthwork site run by Champion Site Prep in Texas, and a 1.2 million-cubic-yard civil sitework project with Zachry Construction Corporation.

This Machine Can Hijack Your Brain’s ‘Reality Engine’—And Reveal a Hidden World Inside You

Afterward, participants were led into the reflection room where staffers offered to help them process what they had experienced. At a center table, participants could draw what they’d seen. “People had very profound emotional experiences,” Crook says. “We saw a lot of grief, a lot of buried sadness or loneliness. For the first time, people were given a space in which to sit with themselves for an hour or so with their feelings and with other people around them.”

One of those people was Daniel Tudor, a young man who attended the experience 27 times in London. The Dreamachine, he says, allowed him to process unresolved trauma, including the death of his father. After the experience, he called his mother to tell her about it, and “started to cry very hard,” he told the Dreamachine team. “I have never cried in front of my mum before. It was like the experience in the Dreamachine released those emotions which I had buried since childhood.” Since then, Tudor says, he has become calmer, happier, lighter, more accepting of life as it is, more humble and tolerant, more accepting of others’ views.

So how did the Dreamachine experience facilitate that? It comes down to the way our brains experience our environment, says Reeder.

GTA Online’s loading screen fixed by a total stranger #game #story

For 7 years GTA Online kept players waiting up to 6 minutes, until a programmer with no source code found the 2 bugs behind it. He cut load times by almost 70%, and Rockstar paid him $10,000 and shipped his fix. Source (6 minutes, 70%, February 2021, Rockstar’s response): https://nee.lv/2021/02/28/How-I-cut-GTA-Online-loading-times-by-70/ Full stories on Dead Game Archive. 0:00 The paradox 0:19 It gets worse 1:38 The twist.

Cybersecurity Awareness Month is all year long

As Cybersecurity Awareness Month 2026 finishes, the stakes for digital security have never been higher. This year’s observance marks a critical inflection point, not simply another annual awareness campaign. Organizations must move beyond traditional cybersecurity checklists and periodic training toward a model of continuous, adaptive resilience.

With AI-powered attacks accelerating at machine speed, expanding vulnerabilities across cloud, IoT, and supply chain ecosystems, and the emerging challenge of quantum computing threatening current encryption methods, the threat landscape is evolving faster than ever. While foundational security practices such as multi-factor authentication, phishing awareness, software updates, and data protection remain essential, all must now be integrated into a dynamic security strategy capable of anticipating and responding to rapidly changing risks.

This Cybersecurity Awareness Month, the focus has shifted from awareness alone to building resilience for an increasingly complex and interconnected digital future. It also signifies that the complexities and threats make cybersecurity awareness a year-round endeavor.

Incyte pancreatic cancer medicine induces lasting tumor responses, company says at ESMO

MADRID — A targeted drug from Incyte, when used in combination with chemotherapy, induced lasting tumor responses in certain patients with pancreatic cancer — results, the biotech said, that support its prior decision to advance the treatment into a late-stage clinical trial.

The approval of Revolution Medicines’ pancreatic cancer drug Rasonque earlier this year showed that a medicine capable of attacking mutations in a group of genes called RAS could prolong survival for patients with the particularly aggressive cancer.

Now, companies like Incyte, Revolution Medicines, Verastem, and China’s Hengrui are developing next-generation drugs that selectively target specific mutations within the RAS family of genes, seeking even better results for patients.

Lizard tail preserved in amber sheds light on a 100-million-year-old defense mechanism

A lizard making a dramatic escape, leaving its tail wriggling behind as it darts to safety, is an image familiar to many. Tail-shedding is one of the most widespread defenses against predators among living lizards, yet tracing the origins of this extraordinary ability has proved to be surprisingly difficult—how can we tell when this escape tactic first arose in lizards?

A new Tel Aviv University study has found answers to this enigma inside a piece of amber just 18 millimeters (0.7 inches) long—the size of a fingertip—discovered in northern Myanmar. Trapped within it is a lizard’s tail that detached from its body approximately 99 million years ago. According to the researchers, it represents the best-preserved direct fossil evidence of a voluntarily dropped lizard tail through a defensive mechanism known as autotomy.

The study was led by Dolev Fabrikant, a Ph.D. candidate at Tel Aviv University’s New Environmental School, and his supervisor, Dr. Leonidas-Romanos Davranoglou of the university’s School of Zoology and Steinhardt Museum of Natural History, in collaboration with researchers from the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens and Israel’s Volcani Institute. The findings are published in Palaeontologia Electronica.