Lifeboat Foundation

Autophagy biology has emerged as a ray of hope in addressing age-related diseases such as neurodegenerative disorders. Substantial effort in academia has been directed at advancing our understanding of the field and paving the way for ground-breaking therapies. But with genuine challenges in harnessing the power of autophagy and in developing effective therapies in this disease area, how close are we to really finding the first autophagy boosting drugs…?

The devastating impact of neurodegenerative diseases such as Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), the most common form of Motor Neurone Disease (MND), cannot be overstated. According to the WHO, neurological diseases affect over a billion people globally and are the leading cause of disability and the second leading cause of death worldwide [1, 2]. Incidence is increasing too, predominantly driven by population growth and aging. And, with no prospect of a cure, people who develop these conditions face a bleak future.

Justifiably, this disease area has been the subject of intensive research for many years and there have been some breakthroughs along the way, possibly offering hope for the development of new therapies. However, translating scientific breakthroughs into viable drugs for patients has been enormously challenging.

Acute respiratory infection is caused by a wide range of pathogens, and an etiologic diagnosis is established in only about one third of cases. As a result, broad-spectrum antibiotics are often unnecessarily prescribed and continued. The BioFire FilmArray^® Pneumonia Panel (BioFire PN) is a commercial multiplex polymerase chain reaction (PCR) assay directed against 33 targets, including viruses, bacteria, and antibiotic resistance genes. In critically ill patients, BioFire PN results have shown a high level of agreement with culture results when tracheal aspirates (TA) or bronchoalveolar lavage fluid were sampled.

Now, in a comparative study, 298 samples (286 expectorated sputum and 12 from TA) deemed of good or moderate quality were obtained from hospitalized adult patients with acute respiratory or cardiopulmonary illness. BioFire PN detected a total of 1.23 bacterial pathogens per sample. Hemophilus influenzae was detected most often (33.0%), followed by Streptococcus pneumoniae and Staphylococcus aureus (20.5% for both), gram-negative bacilli (18.5%), and Moraxella catarrhalis (12.4%). Standard bacterial culture detected only 0.48 organisms per sample (compared with BioFire PN; P90%. Viral pathogens were detected in 51% of samples. Based on adjudication, the specificity of BioFire PN was only 45.0%. This was attributed to the greater number of potential pathogens identified compared with standard culture.

The North Carolina plant produces drugs that are injected or go through an IV.

The plant makes drugs for anesthesia, medicines that treat infections, and drugs needed for surgeries. The latter are used in surgeries or intensive care units for patients who are placed on ventilators, said Mike Ganio, who studies drug shortages at the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists.

The Pfizer site does not make or store the company’s COVID-19 vaccine or treatments Comirnaty and Paxlovid.

Amazon.com Inc. will require some corporate employees to relocate as part of a mandate requiring workers to be in the office three days a week, according to people familiar with the matter, the latest source of strain between the tech giant and its workforce following layoffs that began last year.

Top players in the development of artificial intelligence, including Amazon, Google, Meta, Microsoft and OpenAI, have agreed to new safeguards for the fast-moving technology, Joe Biden announced on Friday.

Among the guidelines brokered by the Biden administration are watermarks for AI content to make it easier to identify and third-party testing of the technology that will try to spot dangerous flaws.

Rice University engineers can turn sunlight into hydrogen with record-breaking efficiency thanks to a device that combines next-generation halide perovskite semiconductors with electrocatalysts in a single, durable, cost-effective and scalable device.

The new technology is a significant step forward for clean energy and could serve as a platform for a wide range of chemical reactions that use solar-harvested electricity to convert feedstocks into fuels.

The lab of chemical and biomolecular engineer Aditya Mohite built the integrated photoreactor using an anticorrosion barrier that insulates the semiconductor from water without impeding the transfer of electrons. According to a study published in Nature Communications, the device achieved a 20.8% solar-to-hydrogen conversion efficiency.

Newton’s first law of motion says that particles move in straight lines unless influenced by a force but a new experiment shows that the quantum version of that assumption fails for quantum particles of light.

By Karmela Padavic-Callaghan

A research team led by Prof. Chen Xianhui from the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), collaborating with the team led by Prof. Sun Jian from Nanjing University, realized a new high superconducting transition temperature of 36 K in elemental materials under high pressure. Their study was published in Physical Review Letters.

Elemental materials provide clean and fundamental platforms for studying superconductivity. Since the discovery of superconductivity in the element mercury by Dutch scientist Heike Kamerlingh Onnes in 1911, more than 50 elements in total have been found to show superconductivity under atmospheric environments or high pressures. However, most elements have low superconducting critical temperatures (T_c), with the highest previous elemental T_c of 26 K being achieved by elemental titanium (Ti) at high pressures.

Previous studies revealed that elemental scandium (Sc) undergoes four structural phase transitions under pressure. Due to the limitations of early high-pressure experimental techniques, mysteries of the superconductivity of elemental Sc at higher pressures have yet to be untangled.

Summary: Researchers reveal how a fertilized egg cell, or zygote, initiates its own genetic program, a process known as zygote genome activation.

The research identifies the OBOX gene family as master-regulators, crucial for this activation. These genes instruct the enzyme RNA polymerase II to transcribe the right genes at the right time, beginning the embryo’s development.

The team suggests that the genes’ functions are redundant to ensure this critical transition occurs successfully.