Lifeboat Foundation

The technology could eventually revolutionize health care. We’ve seen CRISPR start to be used experimentally to treat children with cancer, for example. It is being explored for lots of genetic diseases. And last year, a company used CRISPR to try to treat a woman with dangerously high cholesterol.

But CRISPR could also transform farming, including aquaculture. This week, I wrote about researchers who inserted an alligator gene into catfish. The idea isn’t to make these fish more alligator-like, but to make them more resistant to disease. It turns out that alligators have a particular talent for fighting off infections.

These gene-edited fish, pigs, and other animals could soon be on the menu.

Continue reading “How CRISPR is making farmed animals bigger, stronger, and healthier” »

Understanding the basics of artificial intelligence in healthcare.

Healthcare spending simply isn’t keeping up. Healthcare systems will struggle to remain viable unless big structural and transformational changes are implemented. Automation, along with artificial intelligence (AI), has the potential to revolutionize healthcare.

Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare is utilized to analyze and avoid illness treatment procedures. AI is employed in many fields of healthcare, including diagnosis, drug research, medication, patient monitoring care centers, and so on.

The human body reveals compelling evidence of evolution. By examining its intricacies, we uncover remnants of our animal ancestors. One such example is the palmaris longus, a vestigial muscle in the forearm. Although it no longer affects grip strength, it can be removed for reconstructive surgeries. Our outer ear muscles also bear witness to our evolutionary past. While their movement is limited to humans, they once aided early nocturnal mammals in sound localization. Today, electrodes can detect slight muscle activity in response to sudden sounds.

Goosebumps offer another intriguing clue. When we’re cold, tiny muscles connected to body hairs contract, causing the hair to stand upright, and creating bumps on the skin. This response, useful for furry mammals’ insulation, can also be triggered by intense emotions or surprising musical moments in humans. Lastly, the tailbone, or coccyx, composed of fused vertebrae, represents the vestiges of our ancestors’ tails. Although all humans develop a tail during embryonic stages, it regresses and disappears, except in rare cases of a vestigial tail present at birth. These remnants within our bodies provide tangible proof of evolution. Delving into these fascinating traces deepens our understanding of our evolutionary journey and our place in the natural world.

Busso also said we don’t yet know the long-term effects of these treatments on normal cells or what the long-term impact of killing zombie cells might be. Additionally, because zombie cells play an important role in wound healing, “We don’t want to remove all of them,” he said. “We don’t know the ideal regimen, daily versus weekly versus monthly.”

Hopefully, we won’t have to wait long for answers about the best way to get rid of zombie cells on the skin. “Major breakthroughs and contributions to delaying of the aging process are expected in the near future,” Busso said.

Although it’s still unclear whether zombie cells can be safely and effectively cleared from the skin, it is possible to prevent some zombie cells from forming in the first place. Collins explained that zombie cells are formed as the result of both biological and environmental factors. “The internal factors, like aging or genetic disease, are not so much within our control,” but the external factors can be controlled, she said.

The rapid rise of digital and data-driven technology in healthcare could offer unprecedented potential in the diagnosis and treatment of cancer worldwide.

Oxford Research has reveals how high blood glucose reprograms the metabolism of pancreatic beta-cells in diabetes, acting as a major causal factor of Type 2 diabetes. This is significant because glucose metabolites (chemicals produced when glucose is broken down by cells), rather than glucose itself, have been discovered to be key to the progression of Type 2 diabetes.

With diabetes, the pancreatic beta-cells do not release enough of the hormone insulin, which lowers blood glucose levels. This is because a glucose metabolite damages pancreatic beta-cell function. High blood glucose levels cause an increased rate of glucose metabolism in the beta-cell which leads to a metabolic bottleneck and the pooling of upstream metabolites.

Around 90 percent of global cases of diabetes are Type 2 diabetes (T2D). T2D normally presents in later adult life, and by the time of diagnosis, as much as 50 percent of beta cell function has been lost. In T2D, the beta-cells have a reduced insulin content and the coupling between glucose and insulin release is impaired.

It’s a scene straight out of a horror movie — a submersible with five souls on board implodes, deep below the ocean’s surface, at the resting place of the infamous Titanic.

Many reporters are asking if there will be an attempt to bring up the bodies.

Mitochondria are the powerhouses of the cell. New research shows cancer cells can steal these energy generators from healthy cells to speed their growth.

17:13 minutes.

Which is why biophysicist Adam Lamson is collaborating with artist Laura Splan in a project the two of them call ‘Sticky Settings.’ It’s a kind of an inside joke about the nature of DNA strands, and the kinds of digital transformations that can be applied to data in animation software.