Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
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Category: neuroscience – Page 417

New research published in Scientific Reports suggests that breathing has a crucial role in coordinating brain activity in the prefrontal brain network during wakefulness. The findings provide new insights into the relationship between respiration and cognitive processing, and could have important implications for meditative practices that involve controlled breathing.

Previous studies have indicated that respiration can have significant effects on brain activity and cognitive processes. For example, changes in breathing patterns have been linked to alterations in attention, arousal, and emotional states. The respiratory system also shares neural pathways and connections with brain regions involved in cognition.

For their new study, the researchers focused on a specific structure called the nucleus reuniens (Reu), which acts as a link between the prefrontal cortex and the hippocampus. The researchers wanted to investigate how the synchronization of neural activity, particularly in the gamma rhythm frequency range, is organized in this network.

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I believe that homelessness is often seen in America or other parts of the world as bad but with Finland they have found a housing first approach which has stopped nearly all homelessness there. I believe also regenerative medicine and lots of transhumanistic approaches to medicine would help end their aging and even repair their body if needed. Also if we research the brain we can finally discover and repair genes throughout the body essentially bringing them back near perfect and beyond. Along with ethical approaches towards a more cultural relativistic approach to all humans could show everyone how to coexist. It is still a problem of aging though which is still curable and in extreme cases will be eventually solved in the future. I think with a more comprehensive understanding of all transhumansistic medicine it would be possible to save all lives so no one is left behind.

OK, so the Finns are more generous and just shell out a lot more to help the homeless, right? Actually not. The Finns are simply smarter.

Instead of abandoning the homeless, they housed them. And that led to an insight: people tend to function better when they’re not living on the street or under a bridge. Who would have guessed?

It turns out that, given a place to live, Finland’s homeless were better able to deal with addictions and other problems, not to mention handling job applications. So, more than a decade after the launch of the “Housing First” policy, 80 per cent of Finland’s homeless are doing well, still living in the housing they’d been provided with — but now paying the rent on their own.

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Is the Executive Director of the Innovative Genomics Institute (https://innovativegenomics.org/people/brad-ringeisen/), an organization founded by Nobel Prize winner Dr. Jennifer Doudna, on the University of California, Berkeley campus, whose mission is to bridge revolutionary gene editing tool development to affordable and accessible solutions in human health and climate.

Dr. Ringeisen is a physical chemist with a Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, a Bachelor of Science in chemistry from Wake Forest University, a pioneer in the field of live cell printing, and an experienced administrator of scientific research and product development.

Before joining the IGI, Dr. Ringeisen was Director of the Biological Technologies Office at DARPA, where he managed a division working at the cutting edges of biology, physical sciences and engineering. Programs in his office included research in genome editing, epigenetics, neurotechnology, food security and biomanufacturing, as well as diagnostics and therapeutics development.

Prior to DARPA, Dr. Ringeisen ran his own research group at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory as the head of the Bioenergy and Biofabrication Section where he oversaw diverse research programs including the development and application of laser-assisted printing approaches to biology, development of organs-on-a-chip, microbial energy harvesting and extracellular electron transfer as well as microbial discovery and microbiome characterization.

Dr. Ringeisen now uses his amazing expertise to guide IGI’s scientific and development strategy, but his duties also include promoting entrepreneurship, working with biotech investors and companies to ensure commercial translation of technologies, donor outreach and development, scientific project development and team building, communication with campus leadership, personnel management and mentoring, program management, and reporting and engagement with both Governance and Scientific Advisory Boards.

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A new Jell-O-like material could replace metals as electrical interfaces for pacemakers, cochlear implants, and other electronic implants.

Do an image search for “electronic implants,” and you’ll draw up a wide assortment of devices, from traditional pacemakers and cochlear implants to more futuristic brain and retinal microchips aimed at augmenting vision, treating depression, and restoring mobility.

Some implants are hard and bulky, while others are flexible and thin. But no matter their form and function, nearly all implants incorporate electrodes — small conductive elements that attach directly to target tissues to electrically stimulate muscles and nerves.

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A new type of macrophage recently identified in atherosclerotic lesions could provide a missing link in understanding the inflammatory origins of the common yet fatal condition.

Atherosclerosis is a common condition in which an accumulation of fat, named plaque, builds up on the innermost walls of arteries, causing them to become narrow and restrict the blood flow to such as the heart and the brain. It can be life-threatening if untreated—narrow arteries increase the risk of a blockage and lead to a or stroke.

Macrophages are immune cells that play essential roles in organ homeostasis as well as infection and injury. Key to their success is the ability to alter their transcriptional patterns of gene expression to perform highly-specialized roles in specific organs and tissues. However, their prominent role means that when things go wrong, macrophages can be impactful drivers of disease.

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Engineers from Rice University and the University of Maryland have created full-motion video technology that could potentially be used to make cameras that peer through fog, smoke, driving rain, murky water, skin, bone and other media that reflect scattered light and obscure objects from view.

“Imaging through scattering media is the ‘holy grail problem’ in at this point,” said Rice’s Ashok Veeraraghavan, co-corresponding author of an open-access study published today in Science Advances. “Scattering is what makes light—which has lower wavelength, and therefore gives much better spatial resolution—unusable in many, many scenarios. If you can undo the effects of scattering, then imaging just goes so much further.”

Veeraraghavan’s lab collaborated with the research group of Maryland co-corresponding author Christopher Metzler to create a technology they named NeuWS, which is an acronym for “neural wavefront shaping,” the technology’s core technique.

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While mitochondria play a crucial role in producing the energy our cells need to carry out their various functions, when damaged, they can have profound effects on cellular function and contribute to the development of various diseases.

Broken-down are usually removed and recycled through a garbage disposal process known as “mitophagy.”

PINK1 and Parkin are two proteins vital to this process, responsible for “tagging” malfunctioning mitochondria for destruction. In Parkinson’s disease, mutations in these proteins can result in the accumulation of damaged mitochondria in the brain, which can lead to motor symptoms such as tremors, stiffness and difficulty with movement.

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