The variant’s emergence in South Africa has driven a sharp increase in hospitalizations in Gauteng province during the past two weeks, although fewer patients than in previous surges are being treated for severe disease.

Kind of starts out with a no but ends in a yes. Just a few minutes long.
An increasing number of studies suggest the presence of a “metabolic clock” that controls aging. This clock involves the accumulation of metabolic alterations and a decline in metabolic homeostasis and biological fitness. There are nine cellular hallmarks of aging: telomere attrition, genomic instability, mitochondrial dysfunction, cellular senescence, stem cell exhaustion, loss of proteostasis, deregulated nutrient sensing, epigenetic alterations, and altered intercellular communication. Metabolic alterations have been implicated in each of these processes.
https://www.cell.com/fulltext/S0092-8674(13)00645-4
https://www.cell.com/cell/pdf/S0092-8674(16)30981-3.pdf.
David Sinclair is a professor in the Department of Genetics and co-director of the Paul F. Glenn Center for the Biology of Aging at Harvard Medical School, where he and his colleagues study sirtuins—protein-modifying enzymes that respond to changing NAD+ levels and to caloric restriction—as well as chromatin, energy metabolism, mitochondria, learning and memory, neurodegeneration, cancer, and cellular reprogramming.
Dr David Sinclair has suggested that aging is a disease—and that we may soon have the tools to put it into remission—and he has called for greater international attention to the social, economic and political and benefits of a world in which billions of people can live much longer and much healthier lives.
An ink made using engineered bacterial cells can be 3D-printed into structures that release anti-cancer drugs or capture toxins from the environment.
The microbial ink is the first printable gel to be made entirely from proteins produced by E.coli cells, without the addition of other polymers.
“This is the first of its kind… a living ink that can respond to the environment. We have repurposed the matrix that these bacteria normally utilise as a shielding material to form a bio-ink,” says Avinash Manjula-Basavanna at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Boston.
Urban Aeronautics, the Israel-based aerospace company behind the world’s first compact, wingless electric vertical takeoff, and landing (eVTOL) vehicle, is getting closer to turning its groundbreaking concept into reality. The company said it has raised the first $10 million of a $100 million funding round this week towards CityHawk from private investors in the US, Brazil, and Israel.
According to the company, the car-sized, six-seater CityHawk has more in common with birds than with nearly every other eVTOL prototype in existence. With a distinct, wingless exterior and patented fully-enclosed Fancraft rotor system, the CityHawk is mainly designed for commercial air charters and emergency medical services (EMS). It will be fueled by hydrogen, the most sustainable technology in development today. This means it must be able to conduct multiple trips within a city per day with zero emissions and minimal noise.
An innovative Fancraft technology is based on dual enclosed, ducted rotors with a variable pitch for thrust control, which enable uncompromised stability even in strong winds and turbulence during takeoff, hovering, and landing. The enclosed structure also results in minimal noise, both inside the cabin and outside.
Detailed map captures 3D shapes of neurons and their synapses in stunning detail and is open to community for neuroscience and machine learning research July 29, 2021…
Several different mouse neurons virtually reconstructed in 3D show the complexity of tracing the shapes and branching axons and dendrites within a small piece of the brain.
A team of neuroscientists and engineers at the Allen Institute, Princeton University and Baylor College of Medicine has just released a collection of data that marries a 3D wiring diagram with the function of tens of thousands of neurons to create the most detailed examination of mammalian brain circuitry to date.
The dataset, which is publicly available for anyone in the community to browse and use, maps the fine structures and connectivity of 200,000 brain cells and close to 500 million synapses all contained in a cubic millimeter chunk of mouse brain — approximately the size of a grain of sand — from the visual neocortex, the part of the mammalian brain that processes what we see.
“Sunday Morning” anchor Jane Pauley hosts “Forever Young: Searching for the Fountain of Youth,” a one-hour primetime special exploring the wonders, rewards, and challenges of growing older, to air on CBS Sunday, November 28 at 10 p.m. ET/PT, and to stream on Paramount+.
Can we reset our biological clocks? | Watch Video Life expectancy has increased in recent decades, but researchers are looking for ways to further slow the aging process. Correspondent Lee Cowan looks into recent developments in the study of extending human life, and efforts to ward off disease by targeting the biology of aging itself.
“It is not known at this time whether the variant is more transmissible, or more dangerous to the health of those who catch it, than other coronavirus variants.”
There are two confirmed cases of the omicron variant of the coronavirus in Ottawa, the Ontario government announced Sunday.
“Today, the province of Ontario has confirmed two cases of the omicron variant of COVID-19 in Ottawa, both of which were reported in individuals with recent travel from Nigeria. Ottawa Public Health is conducting case and contact management and the patients are in isolation,” the statement said.
Cockroach farming is practiced in China on a massive scale. At present, there are hundreds of cockroach farms in China, with the total number of cockroaches produced annually exceeding the global human population. The insects produced in these unique farms are mostly used in the production of cosmetics and medicines, or for animal feed.
In 2018, Chinese pharmaceutical company Gooddoctor claims that it has earned US$684 million in revenue through selling a “healing potion” made from cockroaches that is used annually by thousands of hospitals and millions of Chinese patients to treat respiratory, gastric, and other diseases.
However, the use of cockroaches in China is not just limited to the pharmaceutical and beauty industries. The protein-rich insects are also processed and fed as an organic meal to poultry farm animals, used to deal with food waste, and are often served in special recipes in some Chinese restaurants.
A new type of cell has been identified in the heart that is linked to regulating heart rate – and the discovery promises to advance our understanding of cardiovascular defects and diseases, once these cells have been more extensively studied.
The new cell is a type of glial cell – cells that support nerve cells – like astrocytes in the central nervous system (the brain and spinal cord). Named nexus glia, they’re located in the outflow tract of the heart, the place where many congenital heart defects are found.
The new cell type was first found in zebrafish, before being confirmed in mouse and human hearts too. Experiments on zebrafish found that when the cells were removed, heart rate increased; and when genetic editing blocked glial development, the heartbeat became irregular.