Many young ADHD patients are medicated as soon as they’re diagnosed, possibly because the behavioral therapy they need isn’t available, a Stanford Medicine-led study found.
Category: biotech/medical – Page 549
A Promising Treatment for Leishmaniasis Found in Okinawan Marine Sponges
A family of compounds called onnamides shows remarkable potential against the parasite that causes a neglected tropical disease.
Leishmaniasis, a neglected tropical disease prevalent across 90 countries, affects approximately 12 million people worldwide, with 350 million more at risk of infection. Caused by unicellular parasites known as Leishmania protozoa, the disease commonly manifests as skin sores that can develop into deep ulcers. Beyond the physical damage to the skin, leishmaniasis can leave permanent scars on patients’ faces, hands, and feet, often leading to social stigma and psychological trauma. Unfortunately, the disease predominantly strikes poor communities, where medical care is often out of reach.
Atomic switching converts indoles to benzimidazoles in one pot, accelerating drug discovery
Scientists have achieved a new feat in molecular editing by swapping carbon for nitrogen, enabling the direct conversion of indoles into benzimidazoles. This simple switch in a one-pot method offers a hassle-free and effective way of designing medicinally relevant molecules. The work is published in Nature Chemistry.
Single-atom swap reactions require the selective formation and breaking of multiple bonds at the same time, making them quite rare and challenging.
Researchers from ETH Zurich overcame these hurdles by exploiting the electron-rich indole ring’s eagerness to undergo oxidative cleavage via Witkop oxidation. This step can split the electron-rich ring open to form a dicarbonyl intermediate, thereby creating an entry point for subsequent cascade reactions.
Nanoparticles supercharge vinegar’s old-fashioned wound healing power
Wounds that do not heal are often caused by bacterial infections and are particularly dangerous for the elderly and people with diabetes, cancer and other conditions. Acetic acid (more commonly known as vinegar) has been used for centuries as a disinfectant, but it is only effective against a small number of bacteria, and it does not kill the most dangerous types.
New research led by researchers at University of Bergen in Norway, QIMR Berghofer and Flinders University in Australia has resulted in the ability to boost the natural bacterial killing qualities of vinegar by adding antimicrobial nanoparticles made from carbon and cobalt. The findings have been published in the journal ACS Nano.
Molecular biologists Dr. Adam Truskewycz and Professor Nils Halberg found these particles could kill several dangerous bacterial species, and their activity was enhanced when added to a weak vinegar solution.
AI tools fall short in predicting suicide, study finds
The accuracy of machine learning algorithms for predicting suicidal behavior is too low to be useful for screening or for prioritizing high-risk individuals for interventions, according to a new study published September 11 in the open-access journal PLOS Medicine by Matthew Spittal of the University of Melbourne, Australia, and colleagues.
Numerous risk assessment scales have been developed over the past 50 years to identify patients at high risk of suicide or self-harm. In general, these scales have had poor predictive accuracy, but the availability of modern machine learning methods combined with electronic health record data has re-focused attention on developing new algorithms to predict suicide and self-harm.
In the new study, researchers undertook a systemic review and meta-analysis of 53 previous studies that used machine learning algorithms to predict suicide, self-harm and a combined suicide/self-harm outcome. In all, the studies involved more than 35 million medical records and nearly 250,000 cases of suicide or hospital-treated self-harm.
Karl J. Friston
Professors Karl Friston & Mark Solms, pioneers in the fields of neuroscience, psychology, and theoretical biology, delve into the frontiers of consciousness: “Can We Engineer Artificial Consciousness?”. From mimicry to qualia, this historic conversation tackles whether artificial consciousness is achievable — and how. Essential viewing/listening for anyone interested in the mind, AI ethics, and the future of sentience. Subscribe to the channel for more profound discussions!
Professor Karl Friston is one of the most highly cited living neuroscientists in history. He is Professor of Neuroscience at University College London and holds Honorary Doctorates from the University of Zurich, University of York and Radboud University. He is the world expert on brain imaging, neuroscience, and theoretical neurobiology, and pioneers the Free-Energy Principle for action and perception, with well-over 300,000 citations. Friston was elected a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences (1999). In 2000 he was President of the international Organization of Human Brain Mapping. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 2006. He became a Fellow of the Royal Society of Biology in 2012 and was elected as a member of EMBO (excellence in the life sciences) in 2014 and the Academia Europaea in (2015).
Professor Mark Solms is director of Neuropsychology in the Neuroscience Institute of the University of Cape Town and Groote Schuur Hospital (Departments of Psychology and Neurology), an Honorary Lecturer in Neurosurgery at the Royal London Hospital School of Medicine, an Honorary Fellow of the American College of Psychiatrists, and the President of the South African Psychoanalytical Association. He is also Research Chair of the International Psychoanalytical Association (since 2013). He founded the International Neuropsychoanalysis Society in 2000 and he was a Founding Editor (with Ed Nersessian) of the journal Neuropsychoanalysis. He is Director of the Arnold Pfeffer Center for Neuropsychoanalysis at the New York Psychoanalytic Institute. He is also Director of the Neuropsychoanalysis Foundation in New York, a Trustee of the Neuropsychoanalysis Fund in London, and Director of the Neuropsychoanalysis Trust in Cape Town.
TIMESTAMPS:
0:00 — Introduction.
0:45 — Defining Consciousness & Intelligence.
8:20 — Minimizing Free Energy + Maximizing Affective States.
9:07 — Knowing if Something is Conscious.
13:40 — Mimicry & Zombies.
17:13 — Homology in Consciousness Inference.
21:27 — Functional Criteria for Consciousness.
25:10 — Structure vs Function Debate.
29:35 — Mortal Computation & Substrate.
35:33 — Biological Naturalism vs Functionalism.
42:42 — Functional Architectures & Independence.
48:34 — Is Artificial Consciousness Possible?
55:12 — Reportability as Empirical Criterion.
57:28 — Feeling as Empirical Consciousness.
59:40 — Mechanistic Basis of Feeling.
1:06:24 — Constraints that Shape Us.
1:12:24 — Actively Building Artificial Consciousness (Mark’s current project)
1:24:51 — Hedonic Place Preference Test & Ethics.
1:30:51 — Conclusion.
EPISODE LINKS:
- Karl’s Round 1: https://youtu.be/Kb5X8xOWgpc.
- Karl’s Round 2: https://youtu.be/mqzyKs2Qvug.
- Karl’s Lecture 1: https://youtu.be/Gp9Sqvx4H7w.
- Karl’s Lecture 2: https://youtu.be/Sfjw41TBnRM
- Karl’s Lecture 3: https://youtu.be/dM3YINvDZsY
- Mark’s Round 1: https://youtu.be/qqM76ZHIR-o.
- Mark’s Round 2: https://youtu.be/rkbeaxjAZm4
CONNECT:
Metal organic frameworks enable a key step toward greener lighting and display technologies
Scientists at Oregon State University have taken a big step toward lighting and display technologies that are more energy efficient and better for the planet. The work centers around crystalline, porous materials known as metal organic frameworks, often abbreviated as MOFs, and points toward next-generation materials that may end reliance on rare earth metals.
The study by Kyriakos Stylianou, associate professor of chemistry in the OSU College of Science, and graduate students Kyle Smith and Ankit Yadav appears in Nature Communications.
The findings are important because displays—ubiquitous in communications, computing, medical monitoring and many other aspects of everyday life—and lighting contribute heavily to global energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions. The rare earth metals that underpin those technologies—europium, terbium, yttrium, cerium, gadolinium and others—are expensive and environmentally hazardous to mine and process.
Scientists map dendritic cell reactions to mRNA vaccines
Belgian scientists have uncovered new details about how the immune system responds to vaccines. Dendritic cells, which are key immune messengers that help kick-start the body’s defenses, show specific responses to lipid nanoparticles. These findings, published in Cell Reports, could lead to safer and more effective vaccines.
Dendritic cells are among the first to detect viruses, bacteria, or other immune challenges. These cells help coordinate the immune system’s response by alerting T cells, the immune system’s soldiers trained to eliminate threats. But dendritic cells don’t always respond in the same way. Some keep the immune system calm and balanced (homeostatic), while others drive a full immune attack (immunogenic).
Until now, little was known about what determines these different responses, especially when dendritic cells encounter vaccines.
Statistical mechanics method helps machines better understand complex systems
A study by University of Hawaiʻi researchers is advancing how we learn the laws that govern complex systems—from predator-prey relationships to traffic patterns in cities to how populations grow and shift—using artificial intelligence (AI) and physics.
The research, published in Physical Review Research, introduces a new method based on statistical mechanics to improve the discovery of equations directly from noisy real-world data. Statistical mechanics is a branch of physics that explains how collective behavior emerges from individual particles, such as how the random motion of gas molecules leads to predictable changes in pressure and temperature.
In this new work, statistical mechanics is used to understand how different mathematical models “compete” when trying to explain a system. This matters because many scientific fields rely on understanding how systems change over time, whether tracking disease spread, analyzing climate change or predicting the stock market. But real-world data is often messy, and traditional AI models can be unreliable when the data gets noisy or incomplete.