Lifeboat Foundation

In order to survive, organisms must control the pressure inside them, from the single-cell level to tissues and organs. Measuring these pressures in living cells and tissues in physiological conditions is a challenge.

In research that has its origin at UC Santa Barbara, scientists now at the Cluster of Excellence Physics of Life (PoL) at the Technical University in Dresden (TU Dresden), Germany, report in the journal Nature Communications a new technique to ‘visualize’ these pressures as organisms develop. These measurements can help understand how cells and tissues survive under pressure, and reveal how problems in regulating pressures lead to disease.

When molecules dissolved in water are separated into different compartments, water has the tendency to flow from one compartment to another to equilibrate their concentrations, a process known as osmosis. If some molecules cannot cross the membrane that separates them, a pressure imbalance—osmotic pressure—builds up between compartments.

In a recent study published in Nature Communications, researchers report that osteoarthritis (OA) is caused by the loss of Gremlin 1 (Grem1)-lineage chondrogenic progenitor (CP) cells.

Study: Loss of Grem1-lineage chondrogenic progenitor cells causes osteoarthritis. Image Credit: airdone / Shutterstock.com.

Despite exciting advances in gene editing, the efficient delivery of genetic tools to extrahepatic tissues remains challenging. This holds particularly true for the skin, which poses a highly restrictive delivery barrier. In this study, we ran a head-to-head comparison between Cas9 mRNA or ribonucleoprotein (RNP)-loaded lipid nanoparticles (LNPs) to deliver gene editing tools into epidermal layers of human skin, aiming for in situ gene editing. We observed distinct LNP composition and cell-specific effects such as an extended presence of RNP in slow-cycling epithelial cells for up to 72 h. While obtaining similar gene editing rates using Cas9 RNP and mRNA with MC3-based LNPs (10–16%), mRNA-loaded LNPs proved to be more cytotoxic. Interestingly, ionizable lipids with a p K_a ∼ 7.1 yielded superior gene editing rates (55%–72%) in two-dimensional (2D) epithelial cells while no single guide RNA-dependent off-target effects were detectable. Unexpectedly, these high 2D editing efficacies did not translate to actual skin tissue where overall gene editing rates between 5%–12% were achieved after a single application and irrespective of the LNP composition. Finally, we successfully base-corrected a disease-causing mutation with an efficacy of ∼5% in autosomal recessive congenital ichthyosis patient cells, showcasing the potential of this strategy for the treatment of monogenic skin diseases. Taken together, this study demonstrates the feasibility of an in situ correction of disease-causing mutations in the skin that could provide effective treatment and potentially even a cure for rare, monogenic, and common skin diseases.

Link :- https://interestingengineering.com/science/blood-test-detect…tent=Nov03

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Scientists are looking for specific DNA, cells, and molecules in our body which may be cancerous. They’ve made progress in finding some of these markers in the blood, but it’s still tricky to find them accurately and affordably for routine screening.

A team of researchers has now been able to show that there is an incredibly high biodiversity of environmentally relevant microorganisms in nature. This diversity is at least 4.5 times greater than previously known. The researchers recently published their findings in the journals Nature Communications and FEMS Microbiology Reviews.

The hidden world of microorganisms is often overlooked, even though many climate-relevant processes are influenced by microorganisms, often associated with an incredible diversity of species within the groups of bacteria and archaea (“primitive bacteria”).

For example, sulfate-reducing microorganisms convert a third of the organic carbon in marine sediments into carbon dioxide. This produces toxic hydrogen sulfide. On the positive side, sulfur-oxidizing microorganisms quickly use this as an energy source and render it harmless.

A giant underground pyramid hidden beneath a hillside in Indonesia far outdates Stonehenge or the Giza Pyramids and may come to rival the oldest megalithic structures ever built by human hands.

Remember the name Gunung Padang.

The exceptional hillside of ancient stone structures on the island of West Java is sacred to locals, who call this kind of structure a ‘punden berundak’, meaning stepped pyramid, for the terraces that lead to its peak.

A scientist claims to have developed an inexpensive system for using quantum computing to crack RSA, which is the world’s most commonly used public key algorithm.

See Also: Live Webinar | Generative AI: Myths, Realities and Practical Use Cases

The response from multiple cryptographers and security experts is: Sounds great if true, but can you prove it? “I would be very surprised if RSA-2048 had been broken,” Alan Woodward, a professor of computer science at England’s University of Surrey, told me.

Imagine this scenario: It’s early Saturday morning, you just woke up, and are trying to check the news on your phone while enjoying a cup of coffee. You notice your phone isn’t connected to the internet for some reason. You check the Starlink app for a system status, and it’s offline. Attempts to create a support ticket are unsuccessful, your Starlink account credentials aren’t being accepted. The bank calls a few moments later. They’ve frozen your credit card due to fraud. You listen, stunned, as they explain that someone has ordered over $6,000 worth of Starlink equipment in the last 24 hours.

No internet service, thousands of dollars stolen, and no help from Starlink. This is an increasingly common situation faced by Starlink customers. Hackers are gaining access to unsuspecting Starlink accounts, and using the payment information on file to order thousands in equipment. Later, they will resell the equipment on 3rd party marketplaces like Amazon, eBay, and Facebook Marketplace. In this article, I’ll explain what’s going on, how to protect yourself, and what Starlink needs to do to prevent more accounts from being hacked.

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Harnessing and controlling light is vital for the development of technology, including energy harvesting, computation, communications, and biomedical sensing. Yet, in real-world scenarios, complexity in light’s behavior poses challenges for its efficient control. Physicist Andrea Alù likens the behavior of light in chaotic systems to the initial break shot in a game of billiards.

“In billiards, tiny variations in the way you launch the cue ball will lead to different patterns of the balls bouncing around the table,” said Alù, Einstein Professor of Physics at the CUNY Graduate Center, founding director of the Photonics Initiative at the CUNY Advanced Science Research Center and distinguished professor at CUNY.

“Light rays operate in a similar way in a chaotic cavity. It becomes difficult to model to predict what will happen because you could run an experiment many times with similar settings, and you’ll get a different response every time.”