Lifeboat Foundation

Careful retooling of laser beams allows scientists to harness photons for performing quantum calculations.

Signals originating in the brain make their way to gut nerve cells, leading to a release of inflammatory chemicals.

Mental stress has long been linked to flare-ups of gastrointestinal conditions such as irritable bowel syndrome (IBS).

A bacterium in the intestines of stressed mice interferes with cells that protect against pathogens.

Using ideas drawn from celestial mechanics, a US research team shows how light can be channeled through a clear, uniform dielectric—without waveguides or total internal reflection.

Columbia researchers analyzing images from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope have found that galaxies in the early universe are often flat and elongated, like breadsticks—and are rarely round, like balls of pizza dough.

“Roughly 50 to 80% of the galaxies we studied appear to be flattened in two dimensions,” explained Viraj Pandya, a NASA Hubble Fellow at Columbia University and the lead author of a new paper slated to appear in The Astrophysical Journal that outlines the findings. The paper is currently published on the arXiv preprint server.

“Galaxies that look like long, thin breadsticks seem to be very common in the early universe, which is surprising since they are uncommon among galaxies in the present-day universe.”

A new study reported that SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID, can infect dopamine neurons in the brain and trigger senescence—when a cell loses the ability to grow and divide. The researchers from Weill Cornell Medicine, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, and Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons suggest that further research on this finding may shed light on the neurological symptoms associated with long COVID, such as brain fog, lethargy, and depression.

The findings, published in Cell Stem Cell on Jan. 17, show that dopamine neurons infected with SARS-CoV-2 stop working and send out chemical signals that cause inflammation. Normally, these neurons produce dopamine, a neurotransmitter that plays a role in feelings of pleasure, motivation, memory, sleep, and movement. Damage to these neurons is also connected to Parkinson’s disease.

“This project started out to investigate how various types of cells in different organs respond to SARS-CoV-2 infection. We tested lung cells, heart cells, pancreatic beta cells, but the senescence pathway is only activated in dopamine neurons,” said senior author Dr. Shuibing Chen, director of the Center for Genomic Health, the Kilts Family Professor Surgery and a member of the Hartman Institute for Therapeutic Organ Regeneration at Weill Cornell Medicine. “This was a completely unexpected result.”

MKUltra is not referenced explicitly on Stranger Things — the popular Netflix show — but the series seems to be inspired by the controversial CIA program. In the show, a government laboratory is conducting illegal experiments on a young girl and other persons, torturing them, and harnessing their special abilities for their own purposes. This is similar to the goals of the CIA human experimentation project, which was started 70 years ago.

Controversial and unethical experiments were conducted on human subjects by the Agency for the MKUltra project, including the use of mind control techniques and the administration of drugs such as LSD and other chemicals. Electroshock, hypnosis, sensory deprivation, verbal and sexual abuse, and other forms of torture were also part of the non-consensual experiments, which were created because the CIA was convinced that communists had discovered a way to control human minds. Its activities — which were hidden and classified before their files being destroyed after an investigation — remain a subject of concern and investigation to this day.

MKUltra was a CIA program involving the research and development of chemical and biological agents. According to official documents, it was “concerned with the research and development of chemical, biological and radiological materials capable of employment in clandestine operations to control human behavior.”

Tesla is set to invest $500 million into building a Dojo supercomputer at its New York Gigafactory, as announced this week.

Many companies still rely on Cobol, a boomer-aged programming language whose practitioners are retiring. So CIOs are gingerly trying out generative AI tools to freshen their IT.

Tomorrow Bio’s founder Dr. Emil Kendziorra explains 3 landmark papers in the field of cryopreservation.