Lifeboat Foundation

This analysis of 2-year retrospective cohort studies of individuals diagnosed with COVID-19 showed that the increased incidence of mood and anxiety disorders was transient, with no overall excess of these diagnoses compared with other respiratory infections. In contrast, the increased risk of psychotic disorder, cognitive deficit, dementia, and epilepsy or seizures persisted throughout. The differing trajectories suggest a different pathogenesis for these outcomes. Children have a more benign overall profile of psychiatric risk than do adults and older adults, but their sustained higher risk of some diagnoses is of concern. The fact that neurological and psychiatric outcomes were similar during the delta and omicron waves indicates that the burden on the health-care system might continue even with variants that are less severe in other respects. Our findings are relevant to understanding individual-level and population-level risks of neurological and psychiatric disorders after SARS-CoV-2 infection and can help inform our responses to them.

National institute for health and care research oxford health biomedical research centre, the wolfson foundation, and MQ mental health research.

A proportion of patients experience long-lasting symptoms in the weeks and months after a diagnosis of COVID-19. ^1–3 Of those symptoms, cognitive impairment (also referred to as ‘brain fog’) is particularly worrisome: it is one of the most common, ^{4, 5} can affect those with even relatively mild acute COVID-19 illness ^{1, 5} and results in the inability to work for many affected patients. ³ While emerging research is starting to characterize the clinical presentation of post-COVID cognitive deficits, ⁶ its pathogenesis remains elusive. Identifying therapeutic targets is critical to reducing the burden of this COVID-19 complication.

Endotheliopathy has been hypothesized as one potential mechanism underlying post-COVID cognitive deficits. ⁷ According to recent research, microvascular brain pathology following COVID-19 can be caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) main protease M^pro cleaving nuclear factor-κB essential modulator thus inducing the death of brain endothelial cells. ⁸ The same study showed that pharmacologically inhibiting receptor-interacting protein kinase (RIPK) signaling prevents the M^pro-induced microvascular pathology. ⁸

This research leads to the following hypothesis: exposure to a pharmacological inhibitor of RIPK signaling at the time of COVID-19 infection reduces the risk of post-COVID cognitive deficits. In this study, we tested this hypothesis using a retrospective cohort study based on electronic health records (EHRs) data. While many pharmacological agents inhibit RIPK signaling, ⁹ most are only used in very rare clinical scenarios (e.g. sunitinib for the treatment of advanced renal cell carcinoma or pancreatic neuroendocrine tumors). The exception is phenytoin which is used as an anti-epileptic drug and which, among its other effects, is a RIPK1 inhibitor protecting against necroptosis. ^{10, 11} In this study, we compared the incidence of post-COVID cognitive deficits between patients exposed to phenytoin and matched cohorts of patients exposed to other anti-epileptic drugs at the time of their COVID-19 diagnosis.

As the size of modern technology shrinks down to the nanoscale, weird quantum effects—such as quantum tunneling, superposition, and entanglement—become prominent. This opens the door to a new era of quantum technologies, where quantum effects can be exploited. Many everyday technologies make use of feedback control routinely; an important example is the pacemaker, which must monitor the user’s heartbeat and apply electrical signals to control it, only when needed. But physicists do not yet have an equivalent understanding of feedback control at the quantum level. Now, physicists have developed a “master equation” that will help engineers understand feedback at the quantum scale. Their results are published in the journal Physical Review Letters.

“It is vital to investigate how feedback control can be used in quantum technologies in order to develop efficient and fast methods for controlling quantum systems, so that they can be steered in real time and with high precision,” says co-author Björn Annby-Andersson, a quantum physicist at Lund University, in Sweden.

An example of a crucial feedback-control process in quantum computing is quantum error correction. A quantum computer encodes information on physical qubits, which could be photons of light, or atoms, for instance. But the quantum properties of the qubits are fragile, so it is likely that the encoded information will be lost if the qubits are disturbed by vibrations or fluctuating electromagnetic fields. That means that physicists need to be able to detect and correct such errors, for instance by using feedback control. This error correction can be implemented by measuring the state of the qubits and, if a deviation from what is expected is detected, applying feedback to correct it.

This finding “proved” the significance of chromosomal rearrangement, a crucial evolutionary indicator of the emergence of a new species.

Researchers from the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) claim to have found a novel technique for programmable chromosome fusion successfully producing mice with genetic changes “that occur on a million-year evolutionary scale” in the laboratory.

The findings could shed light on how chromosome rearrangements—the tidy packages of organized genes provided in equal numbers by each parent, which align and trade or blend traits to produce offspring—influence evolution, reported Phys.org on Thursday.

Continue reading “Researchers engineer first sustainable chromosome changes in mice” »

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg was a recent guest on The Joe Rogan Experience podcast, and during the episode, he discussed, among other things, neural technology. During his conversation, Zuckerberg remarked that Elon Musk’s Neuralink would probably not be popular in the next 10–15 years because “normal people” would not want to have devices implanted in their brains that are made of non-mature technology.

Zuckerberg admitted that Meta is researching neural interface tech as part of the company’s push into the metaverse, though he also noted that the tech company is focusing on innovations that can receive signals from the brain but does not send any information back to it.

In later comments, the Meta CEO noted that companies like Elon Musk’s Neuralink, which is developing a device that can be implanted into people’s skulls, is taking neural technology “super far-off.” Neuralink’s implant is designed to record and stimulate brain activity, which Musk has stated could help people address conditions such as obesity.

Were you unable to attend Transform 2022? Check out all of the summit sessions in our on-demand library now! Watch here.

There hasn’t been a revolution quite like this before, one that’s shaken the talent industry so dramatically over the past few years. The pandemic, the Great Resignation, inflation and now talk of looming recessions are changing talent strategies as we know them.

Such significant changes, and the challenge of staying ahead of them, have brought artificial intelligence (AI) to the forefront of the minds of HR leaders and recruitment teams as they endeavor to streamline workflows and identify suitable talent to fill vacant positions faster. Yet many organizations are still implementing AI tools without proper evaluation of the technology or indeed understanding how it works — so they can’t be confident they are using it responsibly.

There’s an epidemic in Western countries, and one few people are aware of. It’s an epidemic of visceral fat, a deep kind of fat that packs around vital organs, like the liver, and is linked with health problems like diabetes, heart disease, and high blood pressure.

You might assume that only people who are overweight or obese have too much visceral fat, but that’s not the case. Thin people, particularly inactive ones and older individuals, can have enough visceral fat to increase their risk of chronic health problems. They may look thin, but they’re not healthy because they have too much visceral fat and other markers of bad health.

Although it’s not easy to trim down visceral fat, science shows there are ways to reduce your body’s visceral fat burden and improve your health simultaneously.

A pill’s active ingredient can be absorbed quickly or slowly depending upon your body posture after taking it.

Corneal blindness occurs when the transparent membrane that covers the front of the eye and acts as a lens becomes opaque and prevents the light from reaching the back of the eye, inhibiting vision. It can be solved with a transplant, but experts estimate that 12.7 million people are currently waiting for a cornea donation. These membranes are in short supply: for every 70 that are needed, only one is available. In view of this problem, especially in countries where there are fewer donations of human corneas due to limited infrastructure, a group of Swedish researchers tested corneas made from pig skin collagen in 20 people who needed transplants (all of them Iranian or Indian citizens; 14 of them were blind). After two years, they all showed improvement, and those who were blind could see again. Although more complex clinical trials are still necessary to validate the measure, the first test of this bioengineered corneal tissue has proven to be safe. The results of this pilot study were published in the Nature Biotechnology journal.

There is also a socioeconomic aspect to corneal blindness: one million new cases are diagnosed every year, but according to researchers, most are concentrated in low-and middle-income countries in Asia, Africa and the Middle East – precisely where it is most difficult to obtain a donated human cornea, due to endless “economic, cultural, technological, political and ethical barriers.” Finding an alternative to the human cornea transplant is key, the authors point out, to fighting keratoconus, a disease that weakens and thins the cornea, and which is the reason for most transplants.

In order to find an alternative to donated human cornea, the researchers bioengineered collagen, the main protein in the human cornea, as a raw material. “For an abundant yet sustainable and cost-effective supply of collagen, we used medical-grade collagen sourced from porcine skin, a purified byproduct from the food industry already used in FDA-approved medical devices for glaucoma surgery and as a wound dressing,” they explain in the article. Unlike the human corneas, which must be used in less than two weeks, bioengineered corneas can be stored for up to two years.