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Category: biotech/medical – Page 1,149

Researchers describe a ‘POT-hole’ that protects our chromosome ends

Researchers have determined a new feature of how the natural ends of our chromosomes are protected from harmful outcomes.

In a new study, University of Michigan researchers looked at how the DNA damage recognition process seems to know the difference between harmful DNA breaks that need repair versus the natural ends of chromosomes, called , that need to be left alone.

“If possible, you repair it, and if you can’t repair it, then the cell dies. You don’t want to keep dividing with broken DNA. That’s what happens in a normal cell, and that’s a good thing,” said Jayakrishnan Nandakumar, a professor of molecular, cellular and developmental biology.

WHO: 63% increase recorded in number of COVID-19 cases worldwide in last 28 days

O.o!!!!!

In the last 28-day period (July 17 to August 13), over 1.4 million new COVID-19 cases and over 2,300 deaths were reported from the World Health Organization’s (WHO) six regions, an increase of 63% and a decrease of 56%, respectively, compared to the previous 28 days, noted the latest WHO report.

As of August 13, over 769 million confirmed cases and over 6.9 million deaths have been reported globally. While four WHO regions have reported decreases in the number of both cases and deaths, the Western Pacific Region has reported an increase in cases and a decrease in deaths.

Also, WHO stressed the increase in cases of contracting the new Covid variant Eris or EG.5, noting that as of August 17, Eris was detected in 50 countries.

Google’s Apparently Building an AI That Tells You How to Live Your Life

Google DeepMind researchers have finally found a way to make life coaching even worse: infuse it with generative AI.

According to internal documents obtained by The New York Times reports, Google and the Google-owned DeepMind AI lab are working with “generative AI to perform at least 21 different types of personal and professional tasks.” And among those tasks, apparently, is an effort to use generative AI to build a “life advice” tool. You know, because an inhuman AI model knows everything there is to know about navigating the complexities of mortal human existence.

As the NYT points out, the news of the effort notably comes months after AI safety experts at Google said, back in just December, that users of AI systems could suffer “diminished health and well-being” and a “loss of agency” as the result of taking AI-spun life advice. The Google chatbot Bard, meanwhile, is barred from providing legal, financial, or medical advice to its users.

UCLA Researchers Introduce GedankenNet: A Self-Supervised AI Model That Learns From Physics Laws and Thought Experiments Advancing Computational Imaging

Recent advancements in deep learning have significantly impacted computational imaging, microscopy, and holography-related fields. These technologies have applications in diverse areas, such as biomedical imaging, sensing, diagnostics, and 3D displays. Deep learning models have demonstrated remarkable flexibility and effectiveness in tasks like image translation, enhancement, super-resolution, denoising, and virtual staining. They have been successfully applied across various imaging modalities, including bright-field and fluorescence microscopy; deep learning’s integration is reshaping our understanding and capabilities in visualizing the intricate world at microscopic scales.

In computational imaging, prevailing techniques predominantly employ supervised learning models, necessitating substantial datasets with annotations or ground-truth experimental images. These models often rely on labeled training data acquired through various methods, such as classical algorithms or registered image pairs from different imaging modalities. However, these approaches have limitations, including the laborious acquisition, alignment, and preprocessing of training images and the potential introduction of inference bias. Despite efforts to address these challenges through unsupervised and self-supervised learning, the dependence on experimental measurements or sample labels persists. While some attempts have used labeled simulated data for training, accurately representing experimental sample distributions remains complex and requires prior knowledge of sample features and imaging setups.

To address these inherent issues, researchers from the UCLA Samueli School of Engineering introduced an innovative approach named GedankenNet, which, on the other hand, presents a revolutionary self-supervised learning framework. This approach eliminates the need for labeled or experimental training data and any resemblance to real-world samples. By training based on physics consistency and artificial random images, GedankenNet overcomes the challenges posed by existing methods. It establishes a new paradigm in hologram reconstruction, offering a promising solution to the limitations of supervised learning approaches commonly utilized in various microscopy, holography, and computational imaging tasks.

Decoding how molecules ‘talk’ to each other to develop new nanotechnologies

Two molecular languages at the origin of life have been successfully recreated and mathematically validated, thanks to pioneering work by Canadian scientists at Université de Montréal.

The study, “Programming : allostery vs. multivalent mechanism,” published August 15, 2023 in the Journal of the American Chemical Society, opens new doors for the development of nanotechnologies with applications ranging from biosensing, drug delivery and .

Living organisms are made up of billions of nanomachines and nanostructures that communicate to create higher-order entities able to do many essential things, such as moving, thinking, surviving and reproducing.

Genetic determinants of retinol circulation and their impact on health

In a recent pre-print study posted to the medRxiv* server, researchers conducted a comprehensive genome-wide association study (GWAS) to elucidate the genetic architecture of circulating retinol, identify its potential causal relationships with various clinical phenotypes, and evaluate its therapeutic or nutritional implications.

Study: Genetic influences on circulating retinol and its relationship to human health. Image Credit: SciePro/Shutterstock.com.

*Important notice: medRxiv publishes preliminary scientific reports that are not peer-reviewed and, therefore, should not be regarded as conclusive, guide clinical practice/health-related behavior, or treated as established information.

A simple mouth rinse could spot early heart disease risk

What if we could identify the earliest warning signs of cardiovascular disease from a simple saliva sample? Scientists think they have found a way to do so. Gum inflammation leads to periodontitis, which is linked with cardiovascular disease.

The team used a simple oral rinse to see if levels of —an indicator of —in the saliva of healthy adults could be linked to warning signs for cardiovascular disease. they found that high levels correlated with compromised flow-mediated dilation, an early indicator of poor arterial health.

“Even in young healthy adults, low levels of oral inflammatory load may have an impact on cardiovascular health—one of the leading causes of death in North America,” said Dr. Trevor King of Mount Royal University, corresponding author of the study published in Frontiers in Oral Health.

Immune Checkpoint Inhibitor Demonstrates Significant Glioblastoma Regression

Glioblastoma is a fast-growing and aggressive brain tumor. As one of the most common malignant brain tumors, life expectancy after diagnosis is between 14 and 16 months. Roughly 1% of patients survive more than ten years with the longest patients living over 20 years. Symptoms include headaches, double vision, vomiting, loss of appetite, changes in mood and personality, inability to accurately think and learn, seizures, and difficulty speaking. Unfortunately, there is no cure, and treatment options include radiation and chemotherapy with limited efficacy. Glioblastoma is difficult to treat due to its location in the brain, its resistance to common treatment, the brains limited ability to heal itself, disrupted blood supply, blood vessel leakage, seizures, and neurotoxicity from treatments. Due to limited treatment and the life expectancy of this devastating disease, researchers at the SALK Institute in La Jolla, California have set out to find better ways to treat glioblastoma and prolong survival in patients.

Immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs) are a form of immunotherapy that block receptors on immune cells which activate them to kill tumor cells. The ICI using by the SALK group is known as anti-CTLA-4, which binds to the CTLA-4 protein on the T immune cells responsible for killing infected cells. This therapy was generated by Dr. James Allison at the MD Anderson Comprehensive Cancer Center in Houston, Texas. For his work, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2018. While this therapy proved effective in other cancers such as melanoma, it was unclear its effect in glioblastoma. The researchers at SALK recently published their findings on the effect of anti-CTLA-4 on glioblastoma.

The study published in Immunity by Dr. Susan Kaech and colleagues at SALK demonstrated prolonged survival of mice with glioblastoma after treatment with anti-CTLA-4. They also discovered that the treatment was largely dependent on CD4+ T cells, which aid in activating other cells, and not CD8+ T cells, which directly kill the tumor. More specifically, CD4+ T cells were found to infiltrate the brain and trigger other immune cells, like microglia to destroy cancerous cells. In Kaech’s work, the lab significantly shrunk the glioblastoma in mice and in some cases completely eradicated it.

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