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Your pancreas may be making its own version of Ozempic

Alpha cells in the pancreas can produce GLP1, not just glucagon, offering a surprising backup system for blood sugar control.

Duke University scientists have discovered that pancreatic alpha cells, long believed to only produce glucagon, actually generate powerful amounts of GLP-1 — the same hormone mimicked by popular diabetes drugs like semaglutide (Ozempic and Wegovy). Even more surprisingly, when glucagon production is blocked, alpha cells “switch gears” and boost GLP-1 output, enhancing insulin release and blood sugar control.

A new study from Duke University School of Medicine is challenging long-standing views on blood sugar regulation — and pointing to a surprising new ally in the fight against type 2 diabetes.

Chandra finds black hole that’s growing at 2.4 times the Eddington limit

A black hole is growing at one of the fastest rates ever recorded, according to a team of astronomers. This discovery from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory may help explain how some black holes can reach enormous masses relatively quickly after the Big Bang.

The black hole weighs about a billion times the mass of the sun and is located about 12.8 billion light-years from Earth, meaning that astronomers are seeing it only 920 million years after the universe began. It is producing more Xrays than any other black hole seen in the first billion years of the universe.

The black hole is powering what scientists call a quasar, an extremely bright object that outshines entire galaxies. The power source of this glowing monster is large amounts of matter funneling around and entering the black hole.

Exploring The Multiverse

The universe is beyond immense, and yet it might be nothing more than a tiny dot beside the rest of reality.

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Credits:
Exploring The Multiverse.
Originally aired as Episode 462b; September 1, 2024
Produced, Written & Narrated by: Isaac Arthur.
Editors: Thomas Owens.
Select imagery/video supplied by Getty Images.
Music Courtesy of Epidemic Sound http://epidemicsound.com/creator.
Stellardrone, \

The Dark Side of AI Hacking — Could Online Images Hijack Your Computer?

Explore how malicious images and pixel manipulation can hack AI agents, hijack systems, and bypass security. Learn risks, real-world cases, and protection strategies. AI hacking, malicious images, pixel manipulation attack, AI security, Trojan images, adversarial AI attacks, AI vulnerabilities, AI cybersecurity, image-based hacking, hijacking AI agents

Demonstration of a next-generation wavefront actuator for gravitational-wave detection

In the last decade, the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) and the European Virgo Observatory have opened a new observational window on the universe. These cavity-enhanced laser interferometers sense spacetime strain, generated by distant astrophysical events such as black hole mergers, to an RMS fluctuation of a few parts in 1021 over a multi-kilometer baseline. Optical advancements in laser wavefront control are key to advancing the sensitivity of current detectors and enabling a planned next-generation 40 km gravitational wave observatory in the United States, known as Cosmic Explorer. We report an experimental demonstration of a wavefront control technique for gravitational-wave detection, obtained from testing a full-scale prototype on a 40 kg LIGO mirror. Our results indicate that this design can meet the unique and challenging requirements of providing higher-order precision wavefront corrections at megawatt laser power levels while introducing extremely low effective displacement noise into the interferometer. This technology will have a direct and enabling impact on the observational science, expanding the gravitational-wave detection horizon to very early times in the universe, before the first stars formed, and enabling new tests of gravity, cosmology, and dense nuclear matter.

Venus flytrap’s touch response traced to specialized ion channel in sensory hairs

Plants lack nerves, yet they can sensitively detect touch from other organisms. In the Venus flytrap, highly sensitive sensory hairs act as tactile sensing organs; when touched twice in quick succession, they initiate the closure cascade that captures prey. However, the molecular identity of the touch sensor has remained unclear.

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