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Category: neuroscience – Page 654

Key to spreading inflammation in rheumatoid arthritis found

Remote inflammation in rheumatoid arthritis spreads by neuron crosstalk, and the molecule adenosine triphosphate (ATP) plays a key role in this.

Rheumatoid arthritis is a chronic inflammatory autoimmune disorder that mainly causes painful joints. It’s estimated to affect over 450,000 Australians.

Remote inflammation is a key feature – where inflammation spreads from one joint to another. Research has shown that factors involved include cells migrating from the joints and neural circuits, but until now the mechanism behind this spread had not been explained.

Now, a new study in mice has found that remote inflammation spreads by neuron crosstalk, and that the molecule adenosine triphosphate (ATP) plays a key role in this by acting as a neurotransmitter and inflammation enhancer.

Exemption from Controlled Drugs and Substances Act: Personal possession of small amounts of certain illegal drugs in British Columbia (January 31, 2023 to January 31, 2026)

In response to a request from the province of British Columbia (BC), from January 31, 2023 to January 31, 2026, adults (18 and over) in BC will not be subject to criminal charges for the possession of up to 2.5 grams of certain illegal drugs for personal use.

The federal Minister of Mental Health and Addictions and Associate Minister of Health granted the province of British Columbia (BC)’s request for a subsection 56 exemption under the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act for adults (18 years of age and older) in the province to possess small amounts of certain illegal drugs for personal use. BC has referred to this as “decriminalization of personal possession of illegal drugs”.

What this means is that from January 31, 2023 to January 31, 2026, adults (18 and over) in BC will not be subject to criminal charges for the possession of a cumulative total of up to 2.5 grams of certain illegal drugs for personal use. Instead, all individuals found in possession of substances listed in the exemption of up to 2.5 grams for personal use will, at minimum, be provided with information on available local health and social services. They can also be provided with assistance to connect with those services if requested. The exemption only covers possession for personal use by adults (18 and over) in BC with no intent to traffic, produce or export.

British Columbia has been greatly impacted by overdose deaths and related harms, and declared the overdose crisis a public health emergency in 2016. As part of the province’s comprehensive public health response, BC requested a subsection 56 exemption under the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act (CDSA) so that adults in the province will not be subject to criminal charges for personal possession of small amounts of certain illegal drugs.

Gene-edited tomatoes could be a new source of vitamin D

Tomatoes gene-edited to produce vitamin D, the sunshine vitamin, could be a simple and sustainable innovation to address a global health problem.

Researchers used gene editing to turn off a specific molecule in the plant’s genome which increased provitamin D3 in both the fruit and leaves of tomato plants. It was then converted to vitamin D3 through exposure to UVB light.

Vitamin D is created in our bodies after skin’s exposure to UVB light, but the major source is food. This new biofortified crop could help millions of people with vitamin D insufficiency, a growing issue linked to higher risk of cancer, dementia, and many leading causes of mortality. Studies have also shown that vitamin D insufficiency is linked to increased severity of infection by Covid-19.

Elon Musk versus the Woke Cartel

Many criticisms have been leveled against Elon Musk—that he’s part of the elite, that Tesla has been the beneficiary of government handouts and exemptions, that his transhumanist Neuralink is a brain-data-mining operation. Yet his planned purchase of Twitter, his supposed free-speech absolutism, and his subsequent renunciation of the Democratic Party as “the party of hate” have put Musk squarely in the crosshairs of the woke cartel.

Vitriolic Twitter storms, a New York Times-Financial Times biographical exposé, a slew of hit pieces and scaremongering segments in the legacy media, and allegations of sexual harassment have dogged the automobile magnate ever since his Twitter bid. In response, Musk announced on Twitter that he’s assembling a legal crew to sue defamers and defend Tesla (and likely himself) against lawsuits.

But the best indication that the woke cartel has really gone berserk is its removal of Tesla from the S&P 500’s ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) Index. This last rebuff proves that “ESG is a scam.”

More life — Decoding the secret of aging | DW Documentary

This just came out, a day or so ago.

Can the aging process be reversed — or even halted, altogether? If we manage to decode this final mystery of our human biology, we might soon be able to eradicate age-related illnesses like cancer, dementia and heart problems.

The race to invent the miracle pill is well underway. Today, international researchers are getting astonishingly close to realizing humanity’s dream of immortality.

The hunt for immortality gained traction with the discovery of Costa Rica’s so-called “Blue Zone, by Luis Rosero-Bixby. In the “Blue Zone, on the Nicoya Peninsular, he found a remarkable number of centenarians. Here, male life expectancy is the highest in the world. Their healthy lifestyle is one factor, but the promise of longevity is probably also because their telomeres — sections of DNA found at the end of chromosomes — are longer than those of the average person.

It’s a field of research currently being explored by Maria Blasco in Madrid. But this is just one of many possible factors influencing the process of aging. Senescent cells may also play a key role. Also known as “zombie cells, these attack our body in old age and flood it with alarm signals until, at some point, we collapse under their weight. That’s a theory proposed by another researcher in Spain, Manuel Serrano.

Continue reading “More life — Decoding the secret of aging | DW Documentary” | >

New method melds data to make a 3D map of cells’ activities

Just as it’s hard to understand a conversation without knowing its context, it can be difficult for biologists to grasp the significance of gene expression without knowing a cell’s environment. To solve that problem, researchers at Princeton Engineering have developed a method to elucidate a cell’s surroundings so that biologists can make more meaning of gene expression information.

The researchers, led by Professor of Computer Science Ben Raphael, hope the new system will open the door to identifying rare cell types and choosing cancer treatment options with new precision. Raphael is the senior author of a paper describing the method published May 16 in Nature Methods.

The basic technique of linking with a cell’s environment, called spatial transcriptomics (ST), has been around for several years. Scientists break down onto a microscale grid and link each spot on the grid with information about gene expression. The problem is that current computational tools can only analyze spatial patterns of gene expression in two dimensions. Experiments that use multiple slices from a single tissue sample—such as a region of a brain, heart or tumor—are difficult to synthesize into a complete picture of the cell types in the tissue.

Designer Neurons Offer New Hope for Treatment of Parkinson’s Disease

Summary: Researchers have designed a new method of converting non-neural cells into functioning neurons that are able to form synapses, dispense dopamine, and restore the function of neurons undermined by Parkinson’s associated destruction of dopaminergic cells.

Neurodegenerative diseases damage and destroy neurons, ravaging both mental and physical health. Parkinson’s disease, which affects over 10 million people worldwide, is no exception. The most obvious symptoms of Parkinson’s disease arise after the illness damages a specific class of neuron located in the midbrain. The effect is to rob the brain of dopamine—a key neurotransmitter produced by the affected neurons.

In new research, Jeffrey Kordower and his colleagues describe a process for converting non-neuronal cells into functioning neurons able to take up residence in the brain, send out their fibrous branches across neural tissue, form synapses, dispense dopamine and restore capacities undermined by Parkinson’s destruction of dopaminergic cells.

COVID-19 in 2022—The Beginning of the End or the End of the Beginning?

Jesper AndersonNo. Nobody can “leave their body”. There is no evidence what so ever that this is possible.

What can be done is, copy many of your attributes and create a copy which behaves very much like you. But that’s simply an advanced method of writing a book. I… See more.

Craig Everett JonesAlthough neurons are much like transistors, our emotions are not just ones and zeroes. We feel things in our gut. I think singularity fans are grossly underestimating the dependencies between human consciousness and organic physiology. And, your b… See more.

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Len Rosen shared a link.

With COVID are we at the beginning of the end or the end of the beginning? https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2793011?gu…erm=052722

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