Lifeboat Foundation

American and Russian crew touch down in Kazakhstan after months on International Space Station.

Talk being ahead of the curve;

Event 201 was a 3.5-hour pandemic tabletop exercise that simulated a series of dramatic, scenario-based facilitated discussions, confronting difficult, true-to-life dilemmas associated with response to a hypothetical, but scientifically plausible, pandemic. 15 global business, government, and public health leaders were players in the simulation exercise that highlighted unresolved real-world policy and economic issues that could be solved with sufficient political will, financial investment, and attention now and in the future.

The exercise consisted of pre-recorded news broadcasts, live “staff” briefings, and moderated discussions on specific topics. These issues were carefully designed in a compelling narrative that educated the participants and the audience.

Continue reading “About the Event 201 exercise” »

The discovery that immune T cells have a spectrum of responsiveness could shed light on how our immune system responds to infections and cancer, and what goes wrong in immune diseases. Researchers at the Wellcome Sanger Institute, Open Targets, Biogen, GSK and their collaborators found that T cells responded very differently to immune signals the more ‘training’ they had been exposed to, rather than being a simple switch from naïve to experienced. This could help guide research into finding drug targets for immune diseases such as asthma and rheumatoid arthritis.

Today’s study (14^th April), published in Nature Communications, also revealed that even highly trained memory T cells are less rigidly specialized than previously thought, and are able to respond to new immune signals. This has implications for immune research, and could help understand for example how the body responds to infections.

T cells are key white blood cells that fight infection and disease, and act like police directing the immune system response. Babies are born with inexperienced — naïve — T cells, which change as they come into contact with bacteria or viruses, to create specific memory T cells that can ‘remember’ fighting against these infections. These memory T cells can then react more quickly the next time they meet the same threat, telling the immune system to remove the infection rapidly. This is how vaccination protects against disease, by delivering a safe form of an invading virus or bacterium, to train our immune system by building up specific memory T cells.

Scientists are one step closer to adapting the bacteria-killing power of a naturally occurring nanomachine, a tiny particle that performs a mechanical action.

In a study published in Nature, a UCLA-led team of researchers describe how the nanomachine recognizes and kills bacteria, and report that they have imaged it at atomic resolution. The scientists also engineered their own versions of the nanomachine, which enabled them to produce variations that behaved differently from the naturally occurring version.

Continue reading “Researchers reveal the mechanisms behind a natural bacteria killer” »

Researchers all over the world are honing in on drugs that promote the regeneration of myelin — a substance in the brain critical for its normal function.

Of the spread of COVID-19 aboard the aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt and the subsequent relief of its Commanding Officer has highlighted the tension that exists between maintaining military readiness and the need to safeguard the health of members of the armed forces in the face of a pandemic.

The disease has been a feature of war for the vast majority of human history – from the plague that ravaged Athens early in the Peloponnesian War, killing the Athenian strategos Pericles; to the diseases that European settlers brought with them to the New World, devastating local populations; to the host of tropical diseases that caused appalling casualties in the China-Burma-India and Southwest Pacific theaters in World War II. The fact that we were surprised by the emergence, growth, and spread of COVID-19 reflects the false conceit of 21^st century life that we have “conquered” disease.

In fact, pandemics are but one class of low-probability but high-impact contingencies that we could face in the coming years, including an earthquake or other natural disaster in a major urban area, regime change in an important state, and the collapse of financial markets leading to a global depression. When I served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Policy Planning between 2006 and 2009, we explored a series of such “shocks” as well as the role the Defense Department could play in responding to them as a way of helping the Department’s leaders address such contingencies. During my time in the Pentagon, we also held a series of wargames with members of Congress and their staff, governors of several states and their cabinets, and the government of Mexico, to explore in depth the consequences of a pandemic. Much of what we found then resonates with what we are experiencing now.

According to a study published in Gut Pathogens scientists suggest that they have had a breakthrough in treating the incurable disease and reports from Australia’s Center for Digestive Diseases suggest that they may have created a potential cure for Crohn’s Disease.

The Mayo Clinic describes Crohn’s Disease as an inflammatory bowel disease that can affect several different points of the digestive tract, and patients can suffer with diarrhea, abdominal pain, weight loss, and fatigue; the pain experienced can vary to be so severe that it can lead to life threatening complications.

“It has a negative impact on many aspects of quality of life, including physical, social, psychological, and sexual functioning,” researchers described in a statement.

SAN DIEGO (CNS) – Injured adult brain cells revert to an embryonic state and become capable of re-growing new connections, which under the right conditions can help restore lost brain function, according to findings published Wednesday by researchers at UC San Diego School of Medicine.

The findings, published in the academic journal ‘Nature,’ were part of a collaborative study between UC San Diego, UCLA and the University of Tennessee.

Repairing damage to the brain and spinal cord, until relatively recently, seemed an impossible task. The new study lays out a “transcriptional roadmap of regeneration in the adult brain.”

Reopening wet food markets must conform to strict standards: WHO.

GENEVA (Reuters) — The World Health Organization is not sure whether the presence of antibodies in blood gives full protection against reinfection with the new coronavirus, Mike Ryan, the WHO’s top emergencies expert, told a briefing on Friday.

Ryan also said that even if antibodies were effective there was little sign that large numbers of people had developed them and were beginning to offer so-called “herd immunity” to the broader population.

Continue reading “WHO unsure antibodies protect against COVID, little sign of herd immunity” »