The gut microbiota is a key player in multiple facets of human health, influencing disease development and prevention. An interdisciplinary collaboration is needed to unravel its complexities and to finding potential avenues for therapeutic interventions.
Explore the following trending articles in Frontiers in Cellular and Infection Microbiology and Frontiers in Gastroenterology.
Many substances change their properties when they are cooled below a certain critical temperature. Such a phase transition occurs, for example, when water freezes. However, in certain metals there are phase transitions that do not exist in the macrocosm. They arise because of the special laws of quantum mechanics that apply in the realm of nature’s smallest building blocks.
It is thought that the concept of electrons as carriers of quantized electric charge no longer applies near these exotic phase transitions. Researchers at the University of Bonn and ETH Zurich have now found a way to prove this directly. Their findings allow new insights into the exotic world of quantum physics. The publication has now been released in the journal Nature Physics.
If you cool water below zero degrees Celsius, it solidifies into ice. In the process, it abruptly changes its properties. As ice, for example, it has a much lower density than in a liquid state—which is why icebergs float. In physics, this is referred to as a phase transition.
CAR T-cell (chimeric antigen receptor) therapy, a promising form of immunotherapy, involves reprogramming the patient’s T cells to enhance their ability to identify and combat antigens on the surface of cancer cells.
However, this therapy, which is currently approved for the treatment of leukemia and lymphoma, has a significant downside. During the process of destroying cancer cells, many of the engineered T cells get contaminated with residual cancer antigens, leading them to attack fellow T cells. This eventually results in a decrease in the body’s population of cancer-fighting cells, opening the door for a recurrence of cancer.
A new Yale study, however, has identified a way to tame the self-destructive tendencies of these killer T cells. Simply fusing a molecular tail onto the engineered T cells used in therapy, researchers say, can inhibit their proclivity to attack each other. The study was published July 27 in the journal Nature Immunology.
UC San Diego.
According to the team, the soft gripper can be put to use right after it comes off the 3D printer and is equipped with built-in gravity and touch sensors, which enable it to pick up, hold, and release objects. “It’s the first time such a gripper can both grip and release. All you have to do is turn the gripper horizontally. This triggers a change in the airflow in the valves, making the two fingers of the gripper release,” said a statement by the university.
Could this be the future of medicine?
In order for chatbots to be useful to doctors and other health professionals, they are going to need access to the latest research. But current models simply don’t have access to data beyond their latest update. Daniel Nadler has been working to resolve this issue with his new startup OpenEvidence.
He plans to achieve his lofty goal by “marrying these language models with a real-time firehose of clinical documents,” Nadler told Forbes on Thursday. He claims that his new model “can answer with an open book, as opposed to a closed book.”
SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rocket has successfully placed the commercial communications satellite in geosynchronous orbit, adding 500 gigabits per second capacity to the network’s services.
SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rocket has successfully placed in geosynchronous orbit the world’s heaviest commercial communications satellite, Jupiter-3, Space News.
SpaceX
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This comes a month after OceanGate’s submersible imploded in the ocean, killing all five on board.
The deep-sea disaster last month, which killed five on board an OceanGate submersible, is not a hurdle in the plans of its co-founder.
In an interview with Insider, Guillermo Söhnlein revealed that he has much bigger plans for the company. He said he wants to send 1,000 humans to live in Venus’ atmosphere by 2050.
His comments come a month after a submersible imploded killing all five passengers on board.
Titanic Director James Cameron, who has completed over 75 deep-sea dives, has strongly supported deep-sea mining. This controversial activity involves extracting valuable materials beyond 200 meters of seawater.
It’s a significant concern among a growing number of nations. Even the global regulatory body on deep-sea extraction, International Seabed Authority (ISA), met in Jamaica to negotiate and formulate rules for the activity. But in what came as a relief to the environmentalists, ISA’s discussions ended with a big no to industrial-scale mining.
This technology promises to revolutionize spacecraft design, save space, and enhance communication capabilities, opening up new frontiers for exploration and discovery.
In the vast expanse of space, engineers constantly push the boundaries of innovation to do more with less. Today’s small spacecraft is equipped with sensors, guidance and control systems, and operating electronics, making efficient use of every available space. But what if we could take it a step further and revolutionize the way we integrate electronics into these spacecraft?
Recently, aerospace engineer Beth Paquette and electronics engineer Margaret Samuels from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland,… More.
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