Mount Sinai researchers, in collaboration with scientists at The Rockefeller University, have uncovered a mechanism in the brain that allows cocaine and morphine to take over natural reward processing systems. Published online in Science on April 18, these findings shed new light on the neural underpinnings of drug addiction and could offer new mechanistic insights to inform basic research, clinical practice, and potential therapeutic solutions.
Although schizophrenia can be a very complex illness some new studies show that some major genetic factors could be the cause and then cured much easier through gene therapy.
Summary: Researchers leveraged cutting-edge technology to gain insights into schizophrenia’s neurodevelopmental origins. The researchers grew brain organoids from patients’ skin cells, finding persistent axonal disruptions in those with schizophrenia.
In another study, researchers zeroed in on a schizophrenia risk gene, CYFIP1, revealing its potential role in brain immune cells called microglia and their influence on synaptic pruning – a crucial process for brain health.
Boston Dynamics has revealed its new electric Atlas humanoid robot. It’s expected to be stronger than its hydraulic predecessor, with a range of grippers. That’s expected to give it significantly higher commercial appeal.
Extremely short pulses of laser light with a peak power of 6 terawatts (6 trillion watts)—roughly equivalent to the power produced by 6,000 nuclear power plants—have been realized by two RIKEN physicists. This achievement will help further develop attosecond lasers, for which three researchers were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2023. The work is published in the journal Nature Photonics.
With the nature of the universe’s two most elusive components up for debate, physicists have proposed a radical idea: Invisible particles called tachyons, which break causality and move faster than light, may dominate the cosmos.
For centuries, goldsmiths have sought ways to flatten gold into ever finer forms. An approach based in modern chemistry has finally created a gold material that literally can’t get any thinner, consisting of a single layer of atoms.
Sticking to the naming conventions of materials science, researchers have named this new two-dimensional material ‘goldene’, and it has some interesting properties not seen in the three-dimensional form of gold.
“If you make a material extremely thin, something extraordinary happens – as with graphene,” explains materials scientist Shun Kashiwaya of Linköping University in Sweden.
What’s the optimal way to dose a longevity drug like rapamycin? Nils Osmar looks at some different studies that provide a possible answer:
It’s worth noting that mTORC2 is not directly inhibited by rapamycin under most circumstances, but can be under some. Some studies have found that after prolonged use, rapamycin can also begin inhibiting mTORC2 (see study: Alternative rapamycin treatment regimens mitigate the impact of rapamycin on glucose homeostasis and the immune system).
So taking breaks from rapamycin may also be beneficial.
Could taking some time off undermine rapamycin’s anti-aging benefits? It’s hard to know for sure, because people are so long-lived there’s no way to test its effects on human aging directly. But in mice, at least, it’s been found that administering rapamycin for two weeks out of every four can still significantly extend lifespan (see study: Alternative rapamycin treatment regimens mitigate the impact of rapamycin on glucose homeostasis and the immune system).
As an expert in network effects, the LinkedIn co-founder and now AI entrepreneur is only too happy to spread (mostly) good cheer about AI and its societal potential.
