Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
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Category: health – Page 2

Chronic pain conditions, characterized by persistent or recurrent pain in specific parts of the body, can be highly debilitating and often significantly reduce the quality of life of the individuals experiencing them. Statistics suggest that approximately 20.9% of adults living in the United States have experienced chronic pain at some point in their lives, while 6.9% have experienced severe chronic pain that significantly impacted their daily functioning and well-being.

Currently, chronic pain is primarily treated using pain-relief medications, many of which are based on opioids. Yet many of these are highly addictive and have severe side effects, so they often end up causing more harm than good.

In recent years, some scientists and engineers have been trying to devise alternative strategies that do not rely on opioids and can ease the pain of patients without adversely impacting their health. One proposed solution entails the use of implantable electrical stimulators, devices that can be surgically inserted into a patient’s body, delivering to their nerves or to reduce the pain they are experiencing.

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A pioneering method to simulate how nanoparticles move through the air could boost efforts to combat air pollution, suggests a study in the Journal of Computational Physics.

Tiny particles found in exhaust fumes, wildfire smoke and other forms of airborne pollution are linked with serious health conditions such as stroke, and cancer, but predicting how they move is notoriously difficult, researchers say.

Now, scientists have developed a new computer modeling approach that dramatically improves the accuracy and efficiency of simulating how nanoparticles behave in the air. In practice, this could mean simulations that can currently take weeks to run could be completed in a matter of hours, the team says.

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A joint team of researchers led by scientists at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) and King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology (KACST) has reported the fastest quantum random number generator (QRNG) to date based on international benchmarks. The QRNG, which passed the required randomness tests of the National Institute of Standards and Technology, could produce random numbers at a rate nearly a thousand times faster than other QRNG.

“This is a significant leap for any industry that depends on strong data security,” said KAUST Professor Boon Ooi, who led the study, which is published in Optics Express. KAUST Professor Osman Bakr also contributed to the study.

Random number generators are critical for industries that depend on security, such as health, finance, and defense. But the random number generators currently used are vulnerable because of an intrinsic flaw in their design.

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A study tracking 805 Brazilians in their 50s over an eight-year period has concluded that greater focus on hearing health may play a crucial role in preventing dementia. A major study from Brazil has found that people in their 50s with hearing loss face a greater risk of cognitive decline. The fi

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The Gs/Gd lineage of highly pathogenic H5 avian influenza viruses—including H5N1—has rapidly evolved, spreading globally and infecting a growing range of birds, mammals, and occasionally humans. This review highlights the expanding risks, the challenges of cross-species transmission, and urgent needs for surveillance, vaccination, and a unified One Health response.

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A new neuroimaging study from China has found that an eight-week course of bright light therapy helped reduce depressive symptoms in individuals with subthreshold depression. The treatment also altered dynamic functional connectivity in several brain regions associated with mood regulation. The study was published in the Journal of Affective Disorders.

Subthreshold depression refers to the presence of depressive symptoms that are clinically relevant but do not meet the full diagnostic criteria for major depressive disorder. Individuals with subthreshold depression may experience persistent sadness, fatigue, sleep disturbances, or concentration problems, but with fewer symptoms or a shorter duration than required for a formal diagnosis.

Despite being “subthreshold,” the condition can impair daily functioning and reduce quality of life. It is also linked to an increased risk of developing major depression in the future. Subthreshold depression is common—especially among adolescents, older adults, and individuals with chronic illnesses—and it often goes undiagnosed and untreated because the symptoms are perceived as mild or situational. However, research shows that even mild depressive symptoms can negatively affect social relationships, job performance, and physical health.

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As researchers work to improve treatment of Alzheimer’s disease, new research by UCLA Health identified a candidate drug that reduces levels of a toxic form of a protein in the brain caused by the disease and improved memory in mice by boosting production of a protective protein.

In a study published in npj Drug Discovery, UCLA Health researchers targeted the protein clusterin (CLU), which is crucial in preventing the build-up of amyloid-beta plaques and tau proteins that disrupt communication between and lead to memory impairment—a hallmark symptom of Alzheimer’s disease.

More than a decade ago, a variant of the gene that encodes clusterin was identified as the third strongest genetic risk factor for late-onset Alzheimer’s disease. It was recently reported that increased CLU protein could provide protection against Alzheimer’s disease and .

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Researchers have identified a type of chemical compound that, when applied to insecticide-treated bed nets, appears to kill the malaria-causing parasite in mosquitoes.

Published in the journal Nature, the multi-site collaborative study represents a breakthrough for a disease that continues to claim more than half a million lives worldwide every year. A lab at Oregon Health & Science University played a key role, and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, of the National Institutes of Health, supported the research.

Michael Riscoe, Ph.D., professor of molecular microbiology and immunology in the OHSU School of Medicine, designed and synthesized the anti-malarial drugs, termed ELQs, that were then screened in the lab of Flaminia Catteruccia, Ph.D., the study’s senior author and Irene Heinz Given Professor of Immunology and Infectious Diseases at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

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Self-driving cars which eliminate traffic jams, getting a health care diagnosis instantly without leaving your home, or feeling the touch of loved ones based across the continent may sound like the stuff of science fiction.

But new research, led by the University of Bristol and published in the journal Nature Electronics, could make all this and more a step closer to reality thanks to a radical breakthrough in .

The futuristic concepts rely on the ability to communicate and transfer vast volumes of data much faster than existing networks. So physicists have developed an innovative way to accelerate this process between scores of users, potentially across the globe.

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