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Oct 28, 2024

Plastic-Eating Enzyme Identified in Wastewater Microbes

Posted by in categories: biological, food

Plastic pollution is everywhere, and a good amount of it is composed of polyethylene terephthalate (PET). This polymer is used to make bottles, containers and even clothing. Now, researchers report in Environmental Science & Technology that they have discovered an enzyme that breaks apart PET in a rather unusual place: microbes living in sewage sludge. The enzyme could be used by wastewater treatment plants to break apart microplastic particles and upcycle plastic waste.

Microplastics are becoming increasingly prevalent in places ranging from remote oceans to inside bodies, so it shouldn’t be a surprise that they appear in wastewater as well.

However, the particles are so tiny that they can slip through water treatment purification processes and end up in the effluent that is reintroduced to the environment. But effluent also contains microorganisms that like to eat those plastic particles, including Comamonas testosteroni—so named because it degrades sterols like testosterone.

Oct 28, 2024

New method achieves functional protein delivery into living cells

Posted by in category: futurism

In cooperation with researchers from the China University of Petroleum, the working group of Dr. Werner Nau, Professor of Chemistry at Constructor University, has demonstrated the effectiveness of a new method of intracellular protein transport.

Oct 28, 2024

Megagonlabs/Hallucination_MDS

Posted by in category: futurism

From single to multi: how llms hallucinate in multi-document summarization.

C G. belem, P pezeskhpour, H iso, S maekawa…


Contribute to megagonlabs/Hallucination_MDS development by creating an account on GitHub.

Oct 28, 2024

Investigating the possibility of using Asteroid material to Grow Edible Biomass for Astronauts

Posted by in categories: alien life, futurism

A team of engineers and planetary scientists at Western University’s Institute for Earth and Space Exploration, in Canada, has found that it might be possible to produce food for space travelers by feeding bacteria asteroid material, resulting in the growth of an edible biomass.

In their paper published in the International Journal of Astrobiology, the group describes how they tested the idea by calculating how much asteroid material would be needed and what they found.

Prior research has shown that future spacecraft traveling to remote parts of the solar system or beyond could not possibly hold enough food to sustain astronauts. Such craft could not support the growth of enough food onboard, either.

Oct 28, 2024

Mouse study sheds light on the secret to maintaining a youthful immune system

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, engineering, life extension

What keeps some immune systems youthful and effective in warding off age-related diseases? In a new paper published in Cellular & Molecular Immunology, USC Stem Cell scientist Rong Lu and her collaborators point the finger at a small subset of blood stem cells, which make an outsized contribution to maintaining either a youthful balance or an age-related imbalance of the two main types of immune cells: innate and adaptive.

Innate immune cells serve as the body’s first line of defense, mobilizing a quick and general attack against invading germs. For germs that evade the body’s innate immune defenses, the second line of attack consists of , such as B cells and T cells that rely on their memory of past infections to craft a specific and targeted response. A healthy balance between innate and adaptive immune cells is the hallmark of a youthful immune system—and a key to longevity.

“Our study provides compelling evidence that when a small subset of overproduces innate immune cells, this drives the aging of the immune system, contributes to disease, and ultimately shortens the lifespan,” said Lu, who is an associate professor of stem cell biology and , , medicine, and gerontology at USC, and a Leukemia & Lymphoma Society Scholar. Lu is also a member of the Eli and Edythe Broad Center for Regenerative Medicine and Stem Cell Research at USC, and the USC Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center at the Keck School of Medicine of USC.

Oct 28, 2024

AI ‘can stunt the skills necessary for independent self-creation’: Relying on algorithms could reshape your entire identity without you realizing

Posted by in categories: information science, media & arts, robotics/AI

“If you constantly use an AI to find the music, career or political candidate you like, you might eventually forget how to do this yourself.” Ethicist Muriel Leuenberger considers the personal impact of relying on AI.

Oct 27, 2024

Longitudinal Multi-omic Immune Profiling Reveals Age-Related Immune Cell Dynamics in Healthy Adults

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, life extension

The generation and maintenance of protective immunity is a dynamic interplay between host and environment that is impacted by age. Understanding fundamental changes in the healthy immune system that occur over a lifespan is critical in developing interventions for age-related susceptibility to infections and diseases. Here, we use multi-omic profiling (scRNA-seq, proteomics, flow cytometry) to examined human peripheral immunity in over 300 healthy adults, with 96 young and older adults followed over two years with yearly vaccination. The resulting resource includes scRNA-seq datasets of 16 million PBMCs, interrogating 71 immune cell subsets from our new Immune Health Atlas. This study allows unique insights into the composition and transcriptional state of immune cells at homeostasis, with vaccine perturbation, and across age. We find that T cells specifically accumulate age-related transcriptional changes more than other immune cells, independent from inflammation and chronic perturbation. Moreover, impaired memory B cell responses to vaccination are linked to a Th2-like state shift in older adults’ memory CD4 T cells, revealing possible mechanisms of immune dysregulation during healthy human aging. This extensive resource is provided with a suite of exploration tools at https://apps.allenimmunology.org/aifi/insights/dynamics-imm-health-age/ to enhance data accessibility and further the understanding of immune health across age.

A.W.G. serves on the scientific advisory boards of ArsenalBio and Foundery Innovations.

Oct 27, 2024

10 Things about you did not know about Agora Garden, Taipei

Posted by in category: habitats

Located in the Xinyi District of Taipei, Tao Zhu Yin Yuan, more famously known as the Agora Garden, is an ultra-modern residential building. It has been a point of observation and study for many designers for its peculiar twisted structure. The building has a height of 306 ft comprising 21 floors above ground and three basements. It has a LEED gold and diamond label and has also won multiple awards.

Oct 27, 2024

‘Brain dead’ man trapped in body heard debate about turning off his life support

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, chemistry, neuroscience

In 2017, Jacob Haendel was living a normal life as a head chef in…


A paralysed man who had an extreme form of locked-in syndrome and heard a nurse say he was “brain dead” has become the first ever to recover after hearing medical professionals debating whether or not to switch off his life support.

In 2017, Jacob Haendel was living a normal life as a head chef in Boston, Massachusetts but in the space of a few weeks, his life was turned upside down after he was diagnosed with acute toxic progressive leukoencephalopathy, which progressed into locked-in syndrome and forced his body would slowly shut down. An extreme form of locked-in syndrome is a condition where a patient is aware but cannot move or communicate verbally due to complete paralysis and can be caused by brain trauma, infection or exposure to toxins.

Continue reading “‘Brain dead’ man trapped in body heard debate about turning off his life support” »

Oct 27, 2024

Observations explore the nature of stellar stream Icarus

Posted by in category: space

Astronomers from Italy and Chile have investigated an accreted stellar stream named Icarus in the Milky Way’s disk. Results of the study, detailed in a research paper published October 16 on the preprint server arXiv, yield crucial information regarding the nature of this stellar stream.

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