Researchers at Karolinska Institutet and KTH Royal Institute of Technology have developed an improved method for creating insulin-producing cells from human stem cells. The results, published in Stem Cell Reports, demonstrate that these cells effectively regulate blood sugar levels in laboratory tests and can reverse diabetes in mice.
Thank you to Google DeepMind for the invite. 🙏
❤️ Check out Lambda here and sign up for their GPU Cloud: https://lambda.ai/papers.
Our Patreon if you wish to support us: / twominutepapers.
🙏 We would like to thank our generous Patreon supporters who make Two Minute Papers possible:
Adam Bridges, Benji Rabhan, B Shang, Cameron Navor, Charles Ian Norman Venn, Christian Ahlin, Eric T, Fred R, Gordon Child, Juan Benet, Michael Tedder, Owen Skarpness, Richard Sundvall, Ryan Stankye, Shawn Becker, Steef, Taras Bobrovytsky, Tazaur Sagenclaw, Tybie Fitzhugh, Ueli Gallizzi.
My research: https://cg.tuwien.ac.at/~zsolnai/
Thumbnail design: https://felicia.hu.
00:00 Intro.
University of Cincinnati structural biologists are the first in the world to visualize a key cell protein as part of newly published research from the College of Medicine. The Seegar Lab has become the first to visualize the structure of a regulator protein, iRhom1, bound to the ADAM17 enzyme, using cryogenic electron microscopy housed in UC’s Center for Advanced Structural Biology research facility.
This follows the lab’s work published last year that visualized the structure of ADAM17 bound to iRhom2.
ADAM17 enzyme activity is essential in humans for proper tissue development and immune response, and regulating its activity is a drug target in treating chronic inflammatory diseases. Ectodomain shedding is the fundamental biological process in which enzymes, such as ADAM17, rapidly cleave and release other protein targets from the cell surface, altering cell-to-cell communication.
What counts as death? And who gets to decide?
In the summer of 2013, I traveled to Scottsdale, Arizona to visit the Alcor Life Extension Foundation, the world’s leading cryonics organization, founded in 1972. CEO Dr. Max More gave me a full tour of the facilities and walked me through the entire process: from the moment clinical death is declared, through controlled cooling and vitrification, to the cryo-tanks holding (at the time) 117 patients in long-term storage.
I also asked him, somewhat selfishly, whether my big bald head would fit comfortably in a neuro-patient container.
After the tour, Max sat down with me for a 25-minute conversation that covered:
Affordability and the real cost of membership Why minimizing cooling delays after clinical death is critical, and what long-distance members do about it Preserving pets, because of course people ask Chemical brain preservation as an alternative path The importance of protecting the neuron’s microtubules The case for an X Prize style competition to reduce tissue damage Where cryonics sits inside the broader transhumanist project.
My favorite line from Max, the one I still come back to:
An international study team, led by Flinders University in collaboration with Khalifa University UAE, built the machine-learning platform to act like a “smart materials discovery engine,” which is capable of dramatically reducing the time spent on complex computer or lab experiments to test and find new materials for future semiconductors.
Semiconductors are used in high-tech applications from wearable electronics, communication systems and smartphones to medical and LED devices and solar panels.
“The challenge is that there are millions of possible material combinations, and testing them one by one in the laboratory or with complex computer simulations is extremely slow and expensive,” says Flinders University ARC Future Fellow Associate Professor Vi-Khanh Truong, lead author of a new article in ACS Materials Letters, titled “Bayesian optimization-guided discovery of gallium-containing semiconductors with targeted band gaps.”
Researchers modeled the specific dosage of trauma to highlight an escalating relationship between the sheer volume of trauma and later health vulnerabilities. Small amounts of childhood adversity corresponded to relatively modest increases in health risks. However, once a person’s trauma score passed four distinct adverse experiences, the upward trajectory of their health risk accelerated rapidly.
The researchers also investigated the stepping stones connecting early trauma to later disease onset. Using a statistical technique called mediation analysis, they looked for intermediate health issues that acted as bridges over the span of a lifetime. They found that developing either a single physical illness or isolated depression in early adulthood often served as an indirect pathway to combined disease in older age.
For individuals with the highest amounts of early trauma, early-onset depression played a particularly strong bridging role. An initial diagnosis of depression frequently paved the way for additional physical conditions as time went on. These findings align with biological theories suggesting that severe childhood stress permanently disrupts the body’s immune regulation and stress hormone pathways.
A biotech company just doubled the lifespan of mice without changing their diet and without editing their genes.
Instead, they trained the immune system to hunt down and destroy the cells that make the body age. Then they flooded the body with fresh stem cells to rebuild what was lost.
This isn’t science fiction. It’s longevity science happening right now.
In 1933, Franklin Roosevelt assembled what was then the most credentialed group of forecasters in the world. He called it the Brain Trust.
He asked them to map the next 25 years.
They missed transistors. They missed atomic energy. They missed antibiotics. They missed faster-than-sound travel. They missed space probes. They missed World War II.
I have spent the last 16 years interviewing 300 of the most credentialed futurists alive. From Ray Kurzweil to Peter Diamandis to Marvin Minsky to Sir Martin Rees.
They agree on almost nothing.
That is my report from inside the room.
There is now a professional class that sells certainty about an inherently uncertain thing. Call it the crystal ball industry. The product is confidence. The buyer is the anxious executive. The medium is the keynote stage.