Researchers from the Gothelf lab at Aarhus University.
Established in Aarhus, Denmark in 1928, Aarhus University (AU) is the largest and second oldest research university in Denmark. It comprises four faculties in Arts, Science and Technology, Health, and Business and Social Sciences and has a total of 27 departments. (Danish: Aarhus Universitet.)
Researchers from North Carolina State University have identified a microRNA (miRNA) that could promote hair regeneration. This miRNA – miR-218-5p – plays an important role in regulating the pathway involved in follicle regeneration, and could be a candidate for future drug development.
Hair growth depends on the health of dermal papillae (DP) cells, which regulate the hair follicle growth cycle. Current treatments for hair loss can be costly and ineffective, ranging from invasive surgery to chemical treatments that don’t produce the desired result. Recent hair loss research indicates that hair follicles don’t disappear where balding occurs, they just shrink. If DP cells could be replenished at those sites, the thinking goes, then the follicles might recover.
A research team led by Ke Cheng, Randall B. Terry, Jr. Distinguished Professor in Regenerative Medicine at NC State’s College of Veterinary Medicine and professor in the NC State/UNC Joint Department of Biomedical Engineering, cultured DP cells both alone (2D) and in a 3D spheroid environment. A spheroid is a three-dimensional cellular structure that effectively recreates a cell’s natural microenvironment.
The immune system employs different immune cells to target infection and disease throughout the body. Immunologists, who study the immune system, have worked on therapies to get more of these cells to the site of infection and at a faster rate. Currently, it is still unclear how effectively the immune system operates in age-and sex-related research. A group at the University of Birmingham have demonstrated specific sex-related differences associated with the immune system in older female mice. This novel research introduces age and sex into the equation and will change the way we study the immune system and improve patient treatment.
A recent publication in the Journal of Leukocyte Biology, by Dr. Myriam Chimen and colleagues found that age is a significant factor that determines cell movement to the major organs in the stomach cavity. More specifically, immune cells were not going to the site of infection, but “leaking” into the stomach cavity from blood vessels. This study has found a clear difference between sexes associated with immunity, as it was previously believed women’s immune system deteriorates faster compared to men. Chimen and colleagues have confirmed this long-standing belief through their work on immune system sex-related differences.
Chimen and colleagues show that the increased immune cell presence in the stomach cavity is from “leaky” blood vessels. “Leaky” is a term used to described blood vessels that do not maintain strong structural integrity. The idea of “leaky” blood vessels occurs in inflammatory diseases such as cancer. Cancer cells travel through the blood system and commonly “leak” out of the blood stream to other sites in the body. The trafficking of cells to other sites allows the spread of cancer throughout the body, further promoting tumor growth.
A new study published in Psychological Science investigated the relationship between loneliness, brain activity, and social interactions. The results suggest that individuals who experience loneliness may process social information differently from those who do not, contributing to feelings of isolation and disconnection.
The study highlights the importance of social connection for psychological well-being. It emphasizes the need for further research in this area to develop effective interventions to help individuals experiencing loneliness improve their social connections and overall quality of life.
Humans are social creatures, and social connection is essential for physical and mental health. Social isolation and loneliness have been linked to various adverse outcomes, including depression, anxiety, cardiovascular disease, and even mortality.
Those well-established conventional IT systems, however, can no longer be taken for granted. Companies are accelerating their digital transformation efforts, automating, optimizing, and reinventing their business processes. The pace of change continues to accelerate: Deloitte reports, for example, that 58% of organizations have stepped up their modernization plans due to the covid-19 pandemic.
Many ERP apps are now being moved to public cloud services, such as AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud, while others are being replaced with SaaS-based alternatives, including Salesforce and Workday. The previously monolithic ERP platform is being deconstructed.
Enterprises now find themselves with a mixed-bag, hybrid cloud environment: some legacy core applications remain on premises, while new applications are cloud native and run in containers or as microservices.
Circa 2020
Imagine a dressing that releases antibiotics on demand and absorbs excessive wound exudate at the same time. Researchers at Eindhoven University of Technology hope to achieve just that, by developing a smart coating that actively releases and absorbs multiple fluids, triggered by a radio signal. This material is not only beneficial for the health care industry, it is also very promising in the field of robotics or even virtual reality.
TU/e-researcher Danqing Liu, from the Institute of Complex Molecular Systems and the lead author of this paper, and her PhD student Yuanyuan Zhan are inspired by the skins of living creatures. Human skin secretes oil to defend against bacteria and sweats to regulate the body temperature. A fish secretes mucus from its skin to reduce friction from the water to swim faster. Liu now presents an artificial skin: a smart surface that can actively and repeatedly release and reabsorb substances under environmental stimuli, in this case radio waves. And that is special, as in the field of smart materials, most approaches are limited to passive release.
The potential applications are numerous. Dressings using this type of material could regulate drug delivery, to administer a drug on demand over a longer time and then ‘re-load’ with a different drug. Robots could use the layer of skin to ‘sweat’ for cooling themselves, which reduces the need for heavy ventilators inside their bodies. Machines could release lubricant to mechanical parts when needed. Or advanced controllers for virtual reality gaming could be made, that get wet or dry to enhance the human perception.
The basis of the material, the coating, is made of liquid-crystal molecules, well-known from LCD screens. These molecules have so-called responsive properties. Liu: “You could imagine this as a communication material. It communicates with its environment and reacts to stimuli.” With her team at the department of Chemical Engineering and Chemistry she discovered that the liquid-crystal molecules react to radio waves. When the waves are turned on, the molecules twist to orient with the waves’ direction of travel.
Nanoscientists have developed a wearable textile that can convert body movement into useable electricity and even store that energy. The fabric potentially has a wide range of applications from medical monitoring to assisting athletes and their coaches in tracking their performance, as well as smart displays on clothing.
The research team responsible for the textile describe how it works in a paper published in Nano Research Energy.
From smart watches to cordless headphones, people already have access to a wide range of wearable electronic devices. A range of health, sport and activity monitors are now integrated into smartphones.
A video worth watching. An amazingly detailed deep dive into Sam Altman’s interviews and a high-level look at AI LLMs.
Missed by much of the media, Sam Altman (and co) have revealed at least 16 surprising things over his World Tour. From AI’s designing AIs to ‘unstoppable opensource’, the ‘customisation’ leak (with a new 16k ChatGPT and ‘steerable GPT 4), AI and religion, and possible regrets over having ‘pushed the button’.
I’ll bring in all of this and eleven other insights, together with a new and highly relevant paper just released this week on ‘dual-use’. Whether you are interested in ‘solving climate change by telling AIs to do it’, ‘staring extinction in the face’ or just a deepfake Altman, this video touches on it all, ending with comments from Brockman in Seoul.
I watched over ten hours of interviews to bring you this footage from Jordan, India, Abu Dhabi, UK, South Korea, Germany, Poland, Israel and more.
Altman Abu Dhabi, HUB71, ‘change it’s architecture’: https://youtu.be/RZd870NCukg.
A study in Australia found that men with anxiety disorders tended to have reduced bone mineral density in their lumbar spine and femoral neck bones. This association was found even when controlling for sociodemographic, biometric and lifestyle factors, other diseases, and medication use, but disappeared when participants with a history of mood disorders were excluded from the sample. The study was published in Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica.
Bone mineral density refers to the quantity of minerals, primarily calcium and phosphorus, present in a segment of bone. It serves as an indicator of bone strength and density.
Studies have shown that certain psychiatric disorders might negatively impact bone health. These include unipolar depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia and anorexia nervosa. A meta-analytic review of 21 studies conducted in 2016 reported a very clear link between depression and reduced bone mineral density in several regions.
Researchers from the University of California, Davis, and an international team of scientists have used the genome-editing tool CRISPR-Cas to create disease-resistant rice plants, according to a new study published in the journal Nature June 14.
Small-scale field trials in China showed that the newly-created rice variety, developed through genome editing of a recently discovered gene, exhibited both high yields and resistance to the fungus that causes a serious disease called rice blast. Rice is an essential crop that feeds half of the world’s population.
Guotian Li, a co-lead author of the study, initially discovered a mutant known as a lesion mimic mutant while working as a postdoctoral scholar in Pamela Ronald’s lab at UC Davis. Ronald is co-lead author and Distinguished Professor in the Department of Plant Pathology and the Genome Center.
