Lifeboat Foundation

Fungi is getting stronger globally even alerting the WHO due to its damage.

The World Health Organization created a list of fungi that it said pose a growing risk to human health, including yeasts and molds found in abundance in nature and the body.

The WHO said Tuesday that the 19 species on the list merit urgent attention from public-health officials and drug developers. Four species were designated as threats of the highest priority: Aspergillus fumigatus, a mold found abundantly in nature; Candida albicans, which is commonly found in the human body; Candida auris, a highly deadly yeast; and Cryptococcus neoformans, a fungus that can cause deadly brain infections.

Continue reading “Fatal Fungi Threaten Global Health, WHO Says” »

A new playful demonstration of quantum pseudotelepathy could lead to advances in communication and computation.

Scientists can now “decode” people’s thoughts without even touching their heads, The Scientist reported.

Past mind-reading techniques relied on implanting electrodes deep in peoples’ brains. The new method, described in a report posted 29 Sept. to the preprint database bioRxiv, instead relies on a noninvasive brain scanning technique called functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI).

FMRI tracks the flow of oxygenated blood through the brain, and because active brain cells need more energy and oxygen, this information provides an indirect measure of brain activity.

The moment we recognize someone, a lot happens in our brains all at once. We aren’t aware of any of it.

Our immune system is the first line of defense against disease, but unfortunately it can go rogue and attack healthy tissues. Scientists at Johns Hopkins University have now engineered a protein that may help prevent these autoimmune diseases by boosting the number of regulatory T cells (Tregs).

The immune system keeps a vigilant watch over our bodies at all times, tagging and destroying foreign pathogens or problematic cells to prevent illness. However, sometimes it can get a little overzealous and start attacking the body’s own cells, which can trigger a range of autoimmune diseases like type 1 diabetes, lupus and rheumatoid arthritis.

To prevent these issues from arising, immune cells called Tregs play the vital role of keeping the immune system responses in check, but they can fail at this job. So for the new study, the researchers set out to boost their numbers, following previous studies that have shown promise in doing so to help treat autoimmune diseases like multiple sclerosis and Crohn’s disease.

Great ape animal studies have long been prohibited in Europe due to ethical concerns. An alternative to using animals in studies is the use of so-called organoids, which are three-dimensional cell structures that can be generated in the lab and are just a few millimeters in size.

These organoids can be created using pluripotent stem cells, which then subsequently develop into particular cell types like nerve cells. The study team was able to create both chimpanzee and human brain organoids by using this method.

“These brain organoids allowed us to investigate a central question concerning ARHGAP11B,” says Wieland Huttner of the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics, one of the three lead authors of the study.

Summary: A new 3D electrode array allows researchers to map the activity and location of up to 1 million synaptic links in a living brain.

Source: Rice University.

It’s a mystery how human thoughts and dreams emerge from electrical pulses in the brain’s estimated 100 trillion synapses, and Rice University neuroengineer Chong Xie dreams of changing that by creating a system that can record all the electrical activity in a living brain.

People who eat more foods with omega-3 fatty acids in midlife may have superior thinking skills and even better brain structure than people who eat few foods containing the fatty acids. This is according to an exploratory study that was recently published in Neurology, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology. Omega-3 fatty acids are found in fish such as salmon, sardines, lake trout, and albacore tuna. They are also found in dietary supplements as well as foods that are fortified with the fatty acids.

“If people could improve their cognitive resilience and potentially ward off dementia with some simple changes to their diet, that could have a large impact on public health.” —

“Improving our diet is one way to promote our brain health,” said study author Claudia L. Satizabal, PhD, of the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio. “If people could improve their cognitive resilience and potentially ward off dementia with some simple changes to their diet, that could have a large impact on public health. Even better, our study suggests that even modest consumption of omega-3 may be enough to preserve brain function. This is in line with the current American Heart Association dietary guidelines to consume at least two servings of fish per week to improve cardiovascular health.”

ELIZABETHTOWN, Ky. (AP) — When Chastity Murry had her first psychotic break, she went into her bathroom and downed a whole bottle of pills, hoping to die. Her teenage daughter had to perform CPR to save her life.

Around that same time more than a decade ago, the man who would become her husband, Dante Murry, also lost touch with reality and considered suicide.

Different illnesses led them down similar paths – bipolar disorder in her case and schizoaffective disorder in his – conditions long considered by many to be distinct and unrelated.