Lifeboat Foundation

SYDNEY — With fangs that could pierce a human fingernail, the largest male specimen of the world’s most venomous arachnid has found a new home at the Australian Reptile Park where it will help save lives after a member of the public discovered it by chance.

The deadly Sydney funnel-web spider dubbed “Hercules” was found on the Central Coast, about 50 miles north of Sydney, and was initially given to a local hospital, the Australian Reptile Park said in a statement Thursday.

Spider experts from the nearby park retrieved it and soon realized it was the largest male specimen ever received from the public in Australia.

Over the past decades, scientists have made substantial progress unveiling the underlying mechanisms behind many psychiatric disorders. Every year, new genetic mutations or protein dysregulations are identified as potential culprits for the symptoms and sometimes even the root causes of complex neurological diseases, including autism spectrum disorder (ASD), schizophrenia, and Alzheimer’s.

Despite these efforts, the precise roles of several proteins involved in brain function remain obscure. Such is the case for indoleamine 2,3-dioxygenase 2 (IDO2), an enzyme expressed in the brain and metabolized by the tryptophan–kynurenine pathway (TKP).

Changes in the metabolites of this pathway have already been linked to many psychiatric disorders, and genetically modified mice have been invaluable tools in such studies. However, the detailed functions of IDO2 in the brain are not known.

There are many ways in which humans may one day be able to reach the icy and exotic moon of Saturn known as Titan in just two years, This direct fusion drive holds the most promise.

How can artificial intelligence help to improve the accuracy of lung cancer screening among people at high risk of developing the disease? Read to find out.

Lung cancers, the vast majority of which are caused by cigarette smoking, are the leading cause of cancer-related deaths in the United States. Lung cancer kills more people than cancers of the breast, prostate, and colon combined. By the time lung cancer is diagnosed, the disease has often already spread outside the lung. Therefore, researchers have sought to develop methods to screen for lung cancer in high-risk populations before symptoms appear. They are evaluating whether the integration of artificial intelligence – the use of computer programs or algorithms that use data to make decisions or predictions – could improve the accuracy and speed of diagnosis, aid clinical decision-making, and lead to better health outcomes.

New theoretical work explores the onset of rigidity in granular materials and other disordered systems by mapping out the edges of rigid regions.

Phase transitions are a common part of our daily lives. Many of them are intuitive: water transforms into steam or ice, birds spontaneously form a flock, and random piles of marbles suddenly jam together into a solid. Possibly the most basic phase transition, however, is a more abstract version called connectivity percolation (CP). In systems displaying CP, individual units such as persons or polymers are mapped by their contacts—or connectors—to a graph consisting of nodes and edges. As the number of connectors increases, the system switches from being disconnected (filled with small, separate clusters) to being connected (spanned by one large cluster). This connectivity phase transition is commonly seen in polymer solutions and pandemic spreading, but researchers have also used the percolation perspective to describe the onset of mechanical rigidity in disordered systems, otherwise known as rigidity percolation (RP).

University of California, San Diego study suggests new way to personalize mental health care.

Major depressive disorder affects 16.1 million adults in the United States and costs $210 billion annually. While the primary symptoms of depression are psychological, scientists and doctors have come to understand that depression is a complex disease with physical effects throughout the body. For example, measuring markers of cellular metabolism has become an important approach to studying mental illnesses and developing new ways to diagnose, treat, and prevent them.

Study links cellular metabolism with depression.

Reminds me of how the space shuttle moved in orbit. Great idea though hopefully they’ll pass it on to us civilians too. That could be very useful. Though the military sometimes passes their tech to us like the CIA is responsible for some medical science amazingly. Yes I was surprised.

DARPA has selected Aurora Flight Sciences to build a full-scale X-plane to demonstrate the viability of using active flow control (AFC) actuators for primary flight control. The award is Phase 3 of the Control of Revolutionary Aircraft with Novel Effectors (CRANE) program.

The X-65 flight is controlled by using jets of air from a pressurized source to shape the flow of air over the aircraft surface, with AFC effectors on several surfaces to control the plane’s roll, pitch, and yaw. Eliminating external moving parts is expected to reduce weight and complexity and to improve performance.

Continue reading “DARPA and Aurora Flight Sciences Building Full Scale X-65 Plane With No Moving Control” »

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Bioengineers and tissue engineers intend to reconstruct skin equivalents with physiologically relevant cellular and matrix architectures for basic research and industrial applications. Skin pathophysiology depends on skin-nerve crosstalk and researchers must therefore develop reliable models of skin in the lab to assess selective communications between epidermal keratinocytes and sensory neurons.

In a new report now published in Nature Communications, Jinchul Ahn and a research team in mechanical engineering, bio-convergence engineering, and therapeutics and biotechnology in South Korea presented a three-dimensional, innervated epidermal keratinocyte layer on a microfluidic chip to create a sensory neuron-epidermal keratinocyte co-culture model. The biological model maintained well-organized basal-suprabasal stratification and enhanced barrier function for physiologically relevant anatomical representation to show the feasibility of imaging in the lab, alongside functional analyses to improve the existing co-culture models. The platform is well-suited for biomedical and pharmaceutical research.

Continue reading “Skin-on-a-chip: Modeling an innervated epidermal-like layer on a microfluidic chip” »

Breast cancer is the most frequently diagnosed cancer and accounts for 12.5% of all new cancer cases globally. And while the overall incidence has been decreasing and five-year survival rates in the U.S. exceed 90%, the burden of this disease cannot be underestimated.

On December 20, a new study titled “ENPP1 is an innate immune checkpoint of the anticancer cGAMP–STING pathway in breast cancer” was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences by a team of Stanford researchers led by Lingyin Li, one of the top experts in the STING pathway in cancer.

Ectonucleotide Pyrophosphatase/Phosphodiesterase 1 (ENPP1) is a multifaceted enzyme that plays a significant role in various biological processes. At its core, ENPP1 is known for its ability to break down ATP, a primary energy molecule in the body, into AMP and inorganic pyrophosphate. This activity is crucial in regulating bone mineralization and preventing abnormal calcium deposits in the body. In addition to its role in bone health, ENPP1 is also involved in regulating insulin signaling, which links it to metabolic disorders like diabetes.