Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
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Category: biotech/medical – Page 266

Numbers tell a story. From your credit score to your age, metrics predict a variety of outcomes, whether it’s your likelihood to get a loan or your risk for heart disease. Now, Stanford Medicine researchers have described another telling metric — one that can predict mortality. It’s called sleep age.

Sleep age is a projected age that correlates to one’s health based on their quality of sleep. So for instance, if you analyze the sleep characteristics of dozens of 55-year-olds and average them out, you’ll have an idea of what sleep looks like at that age. For instance, someone who’s 55 and sleeps soundly through the night with good quality REM cycles could, theoretically, might have a sleep age of 45.

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Scientists looking to tackle our ongoing obesity crisis have made an important discovery: Intermittent calorie restriction leads to significant changes both in the gut and the brain, which may open up new options for maintaining a healthy weight.

Researchers from China studied 25 volunteers classed as obese over a period of 62 days, during which they took part in an intermittent energy restriction (IER) program – a regime that involves careful control of calorie intake and relative fasting on some days.

Not only did the participants in the study lose weight – 7.6 kilograms (16.8 pounds) or 7.8 percent of their body weight on average – there was also evidence of shifts in the activity of obesity-related regions of the brain, and in the make-up of gut bacteria.

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A large number of 2D materials like graphene can have nanopores—small holes formed by missing atoms through which foreign substances can pass. The properties of these nanopores dictate many of the materials’ properties, enabling the latter to sense gases, filter out seawater, and even help in DNA sequencing.

“The problem is that these 2D materials have a wide distribution of nanopores, both in terms of shape and size,” says Ananth Govind Rajan, Assistant Professor at the Department of Chemical Engineering, Indian Institute of Science (IISc). “You don’t know what is going to form in the material, so it is very difficult to understand what the property of the resulting membrane will be.”

Machine learning models can be a powerful tool to analyze the structure of nanopores in order to uncover tantalizing new properties. But these models struggle to describe what a looks like.

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Model mice treated with extracts and powders exhibit restored cognitive and motor functions. Efforts to develop a breakthrough dementia drug are gaining attention, yet traditional medicinal products may provide valuable insights for preventive care. A research group led by Specially Appointed Professor Takami Tomiyama of Osaka Metropolitan University’s Graduate School…

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Plant based fabric can help reduce exposure to oil based fabrics so there are less cancer risk with clothing. Washi is made many different ways but can be done even with paper pulp and also paper thread.

“The fabric is soft, resistant to water, and it is even washable,” said 61-year-old company president and granddaughter of the founder, Akemi Kawamura, describing the characteristics of washi jackets.

Japanese paper is cut thin and twisted into threads before being woven into fabrics with special machines. “It’s light and airy, so it’s warm in winter, but breathable and comfortable in the summer,” she said.

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Some researchers and public health experts have also expressed concerns that microplastic exposure can lead to babies being born underweight.

Recent studies found that the average liter of store-bought bottled water contains more than 240,000 nanoplastics while the majority of meat and plant-based alternatives contain tiny plastics linked to cancer.

Scientists have cautioned that it will take time to transfer to creating the new material because existing manufacturing equipment was only built for traditional plastic.

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More than 4 million people in the U.S. have glaucoma, a group of eye diseases that can damage the optic nerve and lead to vision loss. It’s the second-leading cause of blindness worldwide and there’s currently no cure, but there’s a way to help prevent vision loss through early detection and treatment.

The two main treatment options, however, are inefficient and have downsides. Medicated eyedrops are noninvasive but can’t be absorbed for full effectiveness. Repeated injections into the eye can lead to infections or inflammation, not to mention patient discomfort.

Researchers at Binghamton University are exploring several new glaucoma treatments that would be less invasive. In a study recently published in the Journal of Materials Chemistry B, Assistant Professor Qianbin Wang and Ph.D. student Dorcas Matuwana from the Thomas J. Watson College of Engineering and Applied Science’s Department of Biomedical Engineering shared their findings for drug-carrying liposomes that could be activated in the eye using near-infrared light.

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The recipient of the world’s first Neuralink brain-chip transplant is able to control a computer mouse by thinking, the tech startup’s founder Elon Musk announced this week.

“Progress is good, and the patient seems to have made a full recovery, with no ill effects that we are aware of,” Reuters reported that Musk said in an X Spaces event on Monday. “Patient is able to move a mouse around the screen by just thinking.”

Musk added that Neuralink was trying to get the patient to click the mouse as much as possible, Reuters reported.

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